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The U.S. Secret Service is investigating actor John Schneider’s post he made on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
The post was about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter calling for them to be “publicly hung.”
This all happened on Wednesday hours after the “Dukes of Hazzard” star appeared on the Fox singing competition show “The Masked Singer.”
The post has since been taken down but it was obtained by Deadline.
The 63-year-old’s tweet read: “Mr. President I believe you are guilty of treason and should be publicly hung. Your son too. Your response is..? Sincerely John Schneider.”
The post was in response to President Biden’s post about former President Donald Trump.
“Trump poses many threats to our country: The right to choose, civil rights, voting rights, and America’s standing in the world,” Biden wrote. “But the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy. If we lose that, we lose everything.”
The actor issued two statements on this to the outlet.
“Seriously, folks?” he asked. “This is my final comment on this. I neither said nor implied any such thing. Despite headlines claiming otherwise, in my post, I absolutely did not call for an act of violence or threaten a U.S. president as many other celebrities have done in the past. I suggest you re-read my actual post and pay attention to the words before believing this nonsense.”
“It’s my position, which I am entitled to have, that some of our nations [sic.] leaders in Washington have lost their way, and corruption runs rampant, both on our nation’s borders and abroad. Transparency and accountability must happen in order for our constitutional republic to survive. There is no threat implied or otherwise in that statement.”
The Department of Homeland Security, which the White House and Secret Service fall under, did tell Deadline they are aware of the comments but will not speak publicly about it.
“The Secret Service is aware of the comments made by Mr. Schneider, and as a matter of practice, we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence,” a Secret Service spokesperson said. “We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees.”
Sources confirmed to Deadline that the investigation is in the “preliminary stage.”
Threatening the president is a federal felony and consists of “knowingly and willfully mailing or otherwise making any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict great bodily harm upon the president of the United States.”
Someone convicted of the crime can serve up to five years and be fined up to $250,000.
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