The FBI on Monday released new details about the armed Utah man who was shot and killed by agents as they were serving a warrant for allegedly making violent threats to President Joe Biden and other elected and law enforcement officials.
The man was identified as Craig Deleeuw Robertson, a 75-year-old Air Force veteran who was described by family and friends as an avid churchgoer, but was accused in court documents of repeatedly posting death threats in the last few months targeting Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and FBI agents investigating his social media posts.
Robertson was killed last week by agents who were attempting to serve a warrant at his home in Provo, Utah, just hours before President Biden was set to arrive to visit a Veterans Affairs hospital in nearby Salt Lake City.
Among the alleged threats cited in court documents was one made just two days before Biden was set to arrive in Utah, in which Robertson wrote that he was “cleaning the dust off the M24 sniper rifle” ahead of the president’s visit.
In a statement last week, Robertson’s family said that he would not have acted on the threats he made.
“As an elderly – and largely homebound – man, there was very little he could do but exercise his First Amendment right to free speech and voice his protest in what has become the public square of our age–the internet and social media,” his family wrote at the time. “Though his statements were intemperate at times, he has never, and would never, commit any act of violence against another human being over a political or philosophical disagreement.”
But on Monday, the FBI released a statement which shed new light into the incident, including noting that Robertson “resisted arrest” and pointed a firearm as agents attempted to take him into custody.
“The incident began when special agents attempted to serve arrest and search warrants on 75-year-old Craig Deeleuw Robertson at his home for threats to elected officials and law enforcement officers,” an FBI spokesperson said in a statement. “Robertson resisted arrest and as agents attempted to take him into custody, he pointed a .357 revolver at them.”
The FBI said it is still reviewing the shooting, noting that it takes all such incidents involving its agents “seriously” and has no additional details to provide at present.
Robertson had been making threats long before this week, federal authorities alleged.
“The time is right for a presidential assassination or two. First Joe then Kamala!” Robertson wrote on Facebook in September 2022.
He also threatened in March of this year to go to New York City to “stand over Bragg and put a nice hole in his forehead with my 9mm."
Prosecutors said the FBI received a tip from a social media company about the March threat to Bragg and began investigating Robertson. That same day, the FBI observed him outside his home and described him as a heavy-set white male in his seventies wearing an AR-15 style rifle pin and a Trump hat.
Robertson repeatedly posted he was a Trump supporter, writing “I’m a MAGA TRUMPER” – a reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan – in a post taunting his FBI investigators.
Bragg has been subject to frequent death threats since indicting former President Trump in April on charges related to hush money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to two women who allege they had affairs with him. Multiple letters with suspicious white powder were sent to his offices in the weeks surrounding the indictment.
FBI agents approached Robertson on that first day of observation and he confirmed the social media post was his but declined to answer any more questions. Before and after the visit, he made multiple posts mocking and taunting the FBI, including saying the “FBI cowards” would die if they kicked in his door.
James, the New York attorney general, was threatened with a “sniper’s bullet.” Garland was compared to Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Holocaust, and threatened by Robertson with a hanging. In an October 2022 post, Robertson described a “patriotic dream” he had of standing over Newsom’s corpse after shooting him, per the complaint.
In one post, Robertson simply wrote “death to Joe Biden” four times.
The posts painted a markedly different picture of Robertson than how some neighbors described him, as a caring, religious man.
Several neighbors said Robertson — a homebound, overweight man who used a cane to walk — wasn’t shy about his right-wing political beliefs. But they questioned whether he posed a credible enough threat to the president to justify the raid.
They said FBI agents arrived early in the morning to attempt an arrest of Robertson. Several who knew Robertson said his home and the two sheds behind it contained large caches of firearms, which he modified as a post-retirement hobby.
Katie Monson, Robertson’s next-door neighbor, said last week that she saw agents attempt to breach his front door with a battering ram before driving a tactical vehicle onto his lawn, close enough to pierce his front window.
She subsequently heard an exchange of shots before tactical officers dragged Robertson onto the sidewalk to wait for emergency medical personnel. FBI investigators spent the rest of the day clearing the home and photographing evidence.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.