As Partisan Rancor Fuels Political Extremists, a Pro Bono Group Takes Action to Protect Its High-Risk Client
CASE STUDY
As the U.S. political discourse surrounding the 2020 U.S. presidential election intensified, key leaders, witnesses and whistleblowers featured in the news increasingly found themselves and their families to be the targets of threats. To help protect these at-risk individuals, attorneys providing pro bono services needed hour-to-hour, open-source intelligence (OSINT) and threat monitoring research support through behavioral threat assessment.
The Problem
Over the last several years, the volume and intensity of U.S. political discourse has escalated from passionate civil disagreement to a new cultural cocktail of hate, outrage, misinformation and extreme behavior that sometimes erupts in explicit threats and even violence. As this toxic dynamic wrapped itself around the issues at the center of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, key leaders, witnesses and whistleblowers featured in the news increasingly found themselves and their families to be the targets of threats. At one particular juncture, attorneys providing pro bono services to these at-risk individuals engaged Jensen Hughes to provide hour-to-hour open-source intelligence (OSINT) and threat monitoring research support through behavioral threat assessment.
The Solution
The Jensen Hughes team began by identifying and analyzing possible high-level risks, threats and vulnerabilities regarding several individuals with national prominence and very high media profiles. The team integrated automated tools and manual techniques to review public social media conversations for references to these executives and leadership teams and any adversarial individuals or groups it identified. Within hours of initiating monitoring, the team identified more than 2,000 mentions of these individuals. The posts were concentrated primarily on a handful of extremist forums and news outlets that regularly trafficked in misinformation, conspiracies and intentional inaccuracies designed to stoke partisan passions, increase inbound traffic, and raise donations to various political action committees and dark-money sources. The mentions labeled the principals traitors and called for them to be subjected to a range of treatments, from imprisonment and torture to execution.
The Results
Over a two-week period, total mentions of these individuals exceeded 18,000. On two occasions, at our recommendation, the client tasked us with conducting a formal behavioral threat assessment of malicious actors – an analysis that resulted in recommendations the client implemented immediately. No harm came to the principals or their families over the duration of the engagement.
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