On his Truth Social site on Sunday, Trump called the search of his Florida home a break-in, and a described it as “a sneak attack on democracy” that was conducted while he was away.

The next day, Trump told Fox News he had offered help to the Justice Department with its ongoing investigation “because the temperature has to be brought down in the country.”

“If it isn’t, terrible things are going to happen,” the former president said, noting that there was “tremendous anger” in the United States as a result of “years of scams and witch hunts.”

His comments came after a man was shot dead while trying to breach an FBI office in Cincinnati, Ohio, last Thursday. The individual was believed to have been in Washington, D.C., in the days before the breach of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, and may have been present at the Capitol on the day.

Political scientists told Newsweek that Trump’s recent rhetoric reminded them of the period leading up to the Capitol riot, as the former president engages in a balancing act—using harsh rhetoric but stopping short of calling for direct action.

Ratcheting Up Anger

Trump has not called on his supporters to engage in violence and has even said the “temperature” needs to be turned down. But Thomas Gift, founding director of University College London’s Center on U.S. Politics, told Newsweek the former president was sending a message to his supporters.

“Just like in the lead-up to January 6, Trump’s ominous language around the FBI raid goes far enough to ratchet up anger among this base to an 11, but with enough qualifiers and ambiguity to give him plausible deniability when he’s accused of inciting actual violence,” Gift said.

According to Gift, Trump’s “recent warning that ’terrible things are going to happen’ is classic Trump—telegraphing to his base that terrible things in fact should happen, but without specifying how, or where, or when.”

Delegitimizing the Investigation

The FBI investigation into the handling of classified White House documents is still ongoing following the search at Mar-a-Lago, and the former president’s recent comments could be part of a strategy to deal with the probe.

“The rhetoric is certainly in line not just with the pre-January 6 language but, more generally, the kind of abrasive and crude language Trump has used since he began his presidential bid in 2015,” said Robert Singh, a professor at the Department of Politics at Birkbeck, University of London.

“How much of this is a strategic matter regarding the FBI and the DOJ is unclear,” he said. There was “little Trump can do to deter or dissuade any legal action if the DOJ decides, on the basis of the evidence, to go ahead,” Singh said.

“But Trump, it seems to me, is more concerned to delegitimize the investigation, and any charges subsequently, in a political sense,” Singh said. “He may well end up arguing, as some have done recently, that even if this process goes ahead, only an impeachment proceeding by Congress can stop him running for the presidency again.”

Neither Trump nor anyone else has yet been charged as part of the investigation, but if charges are brought, they would almost certainly complicate any campaign for the White House that Trump may be planning.

Trump’s Advantage

Trump has painted the Mar-a-Lago search as part of a years-long effort to discredit him, and the ongoing investigation could play to his advantage, especially among Republicans.

“The self-portrayal as a martyr plays into the existing narrative of the ‘deep state’ seeking to derail him politically,” Singh told Newsweek. “Just at the moment when many Republicans were looking to other candidates for the 2024 nomination, this affair is something he can work to his advantage.”

“As we saw in his term in the White House, Trump has no respect for U.S. institutions, from the press to intelligence agencies. This was, after all, part of his appeal to many Republicans—that his crudeness and antipathy to institutions that they had also lost trust in was part of his ‘authenticity,’” Singh said.

“The darker side of this, as we’ve already seen over the past few days, is that it is encouraging some of his more extreme supporters to resort to their own actions, sometimes violent, to target local FBI offices and agents,” Singh said. “Once again, the shadow of political violence is a fire that Trump seems more than willing to fan.”

What makes Trump “so dangerous,” Thomas Gift said, was his “ability to bloviate out of both sides of his mouth, motivating his far-right MAGA foot soldiers toward extremism, while at the same time deftly escaping any criminal liability when they act.”