What could they possibly hope to accomplish with a threatening note and drone photos other than to provide fodder for his complaint?

Why would drone photos even be necessary when you’ve already demonstrated that you know where they live?

What possible purpose does such a threat serve?

not sure if this is a serious question…? what would it accomplish if you were the whistleblower? if it was me, my family would be on the first flight out of the country

It would convince me that whoever I was whistleblowing on was so remarkably stupid as to engage in a felonious criminal conspiracy while leaving behind physical evidence thereof.

I hope that the threatening note and photos have been turned over to the police, where they can be analyzed for fingerprints, printer microdots, et al, and the police can canvas the neighborhood for security camera footage.

As a tactical move, this kind of threat makes zero sense for anyone in the government to carry out if they are even a semi-rational actor.

That assumes that legal repercussions are expected. The current administration behaves as if laws are only to be followed in case of failure, and only temporarily.

They refer to "lawfare", where you do whatever you feel necessary, and only engage in legal systems where absolutely required, and only to make whatever inciting behaviour legal in retrospect.

our HIGHEST-level government people are texting each other (along with whoever else happens to be in their contacts) war plans so you know, stupid is as stupid does :)

To intimidate. To scare into silence.

Except that all you’d be doing is creating a trail of physical evidence demonstrating a felony conspiracy — and a frankly stupid one at that.

From recent news it seems unlikely these guys are interested in behaving rationally.

It just doesn’t pass the smell test.

- Who decided to threaten the whistleblower and why?

- Who approved such an idiotic idea?

- Who determined his home address?

- Who flew the drone, timed to capture photos of the whistleblower while on his way to/from his home?

- Who took the drone photography, printed out the images, and wrote a threatening note?

- Who then took all that and physically posted it on his door?

That’s a very involved process, with substantial risk, with no realistic upside. None of the incentives are aligned with the behavior. It simply doesn’t make sense.

Applying Occam’s razor, it seems a lot more likely to be fabricated — that’s a scenario in which incentives actually align with the behavior.

In practice, that shouldn’t make a difference to the investigation; given the physical evidence, they should investigate in great detail the origin of the threat — regardless of whether it’s a hoax or real.

You don't think Big Balls can order a drone on amazon? He was already fired once for intimidating rival companies online https://newrepublic.com/post/191325/elon-musk-doge-teen-cori...

I'm not sure what you're referring to; that article says he leaked internal information to a competitor.

That's not ethically excusable, but it's worlds apart from the kind of very real-world felonies involved in this kind of intimidation.

This kind of intimidation would be an incredible and extremely stupid escalation that carries the potential for decades in federal prison, and for what? DOGE has the ruling party and the full force of the executive branch backing their actions. They have no need whatsoever to engage in behavior so ridiculous and counterproductive.

To be clear, this would have required stalking the whistleblower at and around his home, in person. It would have required creating significant physical evidence that could trivially lead back to the perpetrator. There will be cell phone ___location records, security camera footage, printer microdots, camera lens/sensor fingerprints.