Threats against judges skyrocketed during the Trump era, and experts are now fearing for the worst
Alex Brandon/AP
- The number of logged threats to judges and other officials nearly doubled early in the Trump era.
- Federal judges involved in matters related to the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago have faced threats.
- The attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband underscored the threat public figures are facing.
On the campaign trail in 2016, Donald Trump took an unusual tack as he defended his namesake "university" against fraud allegations.
Rather than deferring to his lawyers, or reserving his public rhetoric for the former Trump University students behind the class-action lawsuit, Trump impugned the character of the federal judge presiding over the case.
"I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He's a hater," Trump said of Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a 2012 appointee to the federal trial court in San Diego. A month later, as Trump called for building a wall on the US-Mexico border, the future president noted the Indiana-born judge's Mexican heritage to question whether he could rule impartially in the Trump University case.
The remarks set the tone for what legal experts saw as Trump's politicization of the federal judiciary. Trump would go on to win the election, and during his four years in the White House, federal judges and other officials under the protection of the US Marshals Service would face a remarkable rise in threats, according to government data reviewed by Insider.
Between fiscal years 2016 and 2018, the total of reported threats nearly doubled, from 2,357 to 4,542, according to a US Marshals Service report. The total has remained above 4,000 every year since, according to the annual report for the fiscal year 2021 — the latest year for which data are available.
In a statement to Insider, a spokesperson for Trump blamed the trend on the news media and liberals.
"The trend is due, nearly entirely, to a divisive media who defines every decision made by a Republican-appointed judge in partisan terms, while failing to do so for decisions made by Democrat-appointed judges," the spokesperson, Taylor Budowich, said in an email. "It is also due to the radical left activists who threaten the lives of judges to try to influence the court, like after the draft Roe v Wade decision was leaked. The media and the left have a disgusting and reckless disregard for the safety of America's judge [sic]."
The violent assault of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Pelosi, on Friday underscored the stakes of the threats facing public officials and their families. Before his arrest, the man accused of attacking Pelosi with a hammer posted memes and conspiracy theories on Facebook about COVID-19 vaccines, the 2020 election, and the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
In an interview, former Judge John Jones attributed the rise in threats against judges to a "road-rage society," in which public figures are not confining their criticism to points of disagreement but going further to impugn the character of their perceived opponents.
"It's completely irresponsible. It's like public figure malpractice, because we're dealing with a really volatile public at this point," Jones, a George W. Bush appointee, told Insider. "I'm sickened by the fact that we can't moderate some of this rhetoric. It's literally become so toxic now that I think we're going to get somebody hurt or killed by it."
Jones, now the president of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, wrote an op-ed in August — title: "I'm afraid a judge is going to be killed" — after a federal magistrate judge came under threat for signing off on a search warrant allowing the FBI to search Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate and private club in South Florida.
Following the FBI raid, Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhardt faced an onslaught of antisemitic attacks and online threats, including some targeting the synagogue where he serves on the board.
"He and judges like him signed up for a job that entails risk, but they didn't sign up to be killed," Jones wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
A month later, a Texas woman was arrested on charges she left threatening messages on the voicemail of Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee presiding over the former president's legal challenges to the FBI's seizure of thousands of records from Mar-a-Lago, Trump's resort residence in Palm Beach, Florida. In those voicemails, the woman threatened to have Cannon assassinated in front of her family for "helping" the former president, according to court filings.
That case came just months after the arrest, in June, of a man who arrived outside the house of Justice Brett Kavanaugh with a gun, knife, and zip-ties. In court papers charging the man with attempting to kill Kavanaugh, prosecutors said the man told police that he was upset with a leaded draft opinion showing that the Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that established a constitutional right to an abortion.
Weeks before the man's arrest, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered around-the-clock protection for Supreme Court justices in response to the leaked draft opinion. But, as the threats to the federal judges in South Florida showed, the trend is extending down through the lower courts.
As recently as last week, a grand jury indicted a Pennsylvania man on charges he sent a letter to Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the House January 6 committee, containing what appeared to be a white powder. A message in the letter alluded to anthrax and included threats to kill Thompson, his family, President Joe Biden, and Judge Robert D. Mariani, of the US District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
This year, at least three packages containing suspicious white powder have arrived at the federal courthouse in Washington, DC, according to people familiar with the incidents and local officials. Hazmat crews responded each time and determined the packages — reminiscent of anthrax-laced threats sent after the 9/11 attacks — did not contain a hazardous substance.
The latest of such packages arrived in August and entered the chambers of Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly — a rare breach that unnerved judges and courthouse staff, according to people familiar with the incident. The substance in the package turned out to be baby powder, a spokesperson for the Washington, DC, Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department told Insider.
A month earlier, shortly after 11:15 p.m. on July 21, police responded to the home of Judge Emmet Sullivan, who was set to preside the next day over a plea hearing in a high-profile prosecution stemming from the January 6 attack on the Capitol. In a hoax call, known as a "swatting," an unknown caller pretended to be Sullivan and claimed to police that someone had arrived at the judge's home with a weapon, according to people familiar with the incident and a police report.
Officers arrived to find Sullivan "safe and secure," according to the police report. Bloomberg first reported on the "swatting" incident.
Kollar-Kotelly, a 25-year veteran of the federal trial court in Washington, DC, declined to comment, as did Sullivan.
The US Marshals Service said it does not comment on specific incidents. But in a statement to Insider, a spokesperson acknowledged "that high-profile cases often generate increased attention, including threats." It declined to give a broader assessment for the increase in threats to judges and other Marshals Service protectees.
"The security of our federal judiciary is the cornerstone of our nation's democracy, and the Marshals take that responsibility very seriously," the spokesperson said. "Federal judges make hard decisions based on the rule of law in large part because the Marshals ensure they can make these decisions without fear, intimidation, or retaliation."
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