Michigan man threatened whistleblower's attorney, prosecutors say

President Donald Trump was standing at a lectern adorned with the executive office seal, addressing an arena packed with thousands of his most strident supporters, when he paused his standard rally stump speech and reached into his suit coat.

As he harangued the "hyper partisan impeachment witch hunt" and the whistleblower who helped launch it, Trump unfolded a print out of a just-published Fox News story and waved it at the crowd in northern Louisiana last year.

"Look at this character, they just handed me this story," the president said of the article, which detailed the old tweets of Mark Zaid, who grew up in Jericho and is one of the attorneys representing the intelligence official who sounded the alarm about Trump's Ukraine pressure campaign.

The 2017 posts were critical of the president, mentioning the need for "#rebellion," and before reading them aloud Trump called Zaid, "a sleaze ball." Trump ended his digression by saying, "These people are bad people, and it's so bad what they do to our country. They rip the guts out of our country."

The next day, Nov. 7, 2019, Zaid received an ominous email.

"All traitors must die miserable deaths," the message read. "Those that represent traitors shall meet the same fate. We will hunt you down and bleed you out like the pigs you are."

The email came from Brittan J. Atkinson, said Michigan federal prosecutors, who indicted the man for making death threats against Zaid. The newly unsealed court filing was first reported by Politico and noted by Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.

Atkinson sent the menacing message from Gladwin County, in northern Michigan, the indictment said, and he's charged with violating federal interstate communication laws, which prohibit "any threat to injure the person of another." The felony offense is punishable by up to five years in prison.

The filing says Atkinson signed off by telling Zaid, "We have nothing but time, and you are running out of it."

"Keep looking over your shoulder," Atkinson allegedly wrote. "We know who you are, where you live and who you associate with. We are all strangers in a crowd to you."

It's unclear whether Trump's words inspired Atkinson to send that email, but experts say the threat highlights the dangers of the barbed rhetoric and often personal insults deployed by the president and his supporters, who have attacked the whistleblower repeatedly, posting his purported identity online and reading his name aloud in the Senate.

"I hope this indictment sends a message to others that such behavior will not be tolerated by a civil society that is governed by law," Zaid said in a statement.

"My job was to ensure the rule of law was followed in how whistleblowers are treated. That role should not be negatively weaponized by partisans," he added. "I will continue to zealously represent my clients, to include and especially whistleblowers, and to ensure the rule of law is enforced and protected."

Zaid wasn't the only one to get threats. Bradley Moss, a partner at Zaid's firm, tweeted to Trump the morning after his Louisiana rally.

"Thank you so much for the specific commentary about my firm last night," Moss wrote, tagging Trump's Twitter handle. "I woke up to a ton of hate mail and death threats."

As news of the indictment spread, some in the legal community applauded the prosecutors in Michigan's Eastern District and called for increased protections for whistleblowers and their lawyers.

"Whistleblowers are not traitors," said David Colapinto, the general counsel at the nonprofit National Whistleblower Center. "It is the job of the president to protect whistleblowers, not incite violence against them."

Walter M. Shaub Jr., the former director of the independent Office of Government Ethics who clashed with the Trump administration over ethics violations, said the threats could portend further violence.

"Trump is going to get someone hurt or worse with this personal attacks on people," Shaub said on Twitter.

An attorney for Atkinson could not be reached for comment. The Detroit News reported that Atkinson appeared in court on Thursday and entered a plea of not guilty.