Trump Senecal
© NY Daily NewsDonald Trump and Anthony Senecal
The United States secret service has opened an inquiry over a call by a former butler of Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump to kill President Barack Obama. The investigation was launched over a Facebook post in 2015 by Anthony Senecal, 74, in which he had said Obama should be hanged for treason. Senecal worked for decades as a butler at Trump's Palm Beach mansion, Mar-a-Lago, according to Reuters.

After reports of Senecal's comments began to circulate, the secret service said in a statement, "The US secret service is aware of this matter and will conduct the appropriate investigation."

Senecal has not served as a butler to the billionaire candidate since 2009, but he was identified in a March 15 profile in the New York Times as a current employee of Mar-a-Lago, serving as the estate's historian.

"It is time for our military to drag that fraud out of the white mosque and hang his a** for treason and other high crimes against AMERICA!" Senecal wrote on September 13, 2015, in reference to Obama. Senecal has also reportedly called for Obama to be shot.

Trump's campaign has been marred by his defamatory remarks against minorities in the US. His comments include calling for a total ban on Muslims from coming to America and forced deportation of Mexican migrants. The race for Republican nomination saw countless instances of scandals, mudslinging and onstage vulgarity, where rivals time and again seized opportunities to blacken their opponents and push them down the gutter.

According to an NBC News/Survey Monkey poll of voters released recently, nearly half of respondents, 47 percent, said they were "scared" that Trump has become the presumptive GOP nominee, while 26 percent said they were "hopeful".