The U.S. Secret Service has opened an investigation into Dukes of Hazzard star John Schneider after he called for a public hanging of President Joe Biden and his son Hunter in a now deleted social media post.
Schneider went to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Wednesday night to respond to a post President Biden made about former President Donald Trump being the greatest threat to American democracy.
“Mr President, I believe you are guilty of treason and should be publicly hung,” Schneider wrote in response to Biden’s post. “Your son too. Your response is..? Sincerely, John Schneider.”
The comment has since been deleted, but not before it caught the attention of the Secret Service.
Anonymous sources close to the matter told Deadline that the Secret Service had opened a preliminary investigation into Schneider.
The probe comes as Schneider is defending his comments, insisting that he did not threaten Biden.
“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,” he told Deadline in a statement.
“It’s my position, which I am entitled to have, that some of our nations leaders in Washington have lost their way, and corruption runs rampant, both on our nation’s borders and abroad,” he said. “Transparency and accountability must happen in order for our constitutional republic to survive. There is no threat implied or otherwise in that statement.”
