President Donald Trump’s angry call Tuesday for the impeachment of a federal judge who ruled against his administration on deportation flights has set off a string of near-instant social media taunts and threats, including images of judges being marched off in handcuffs.
The call came against an ominous backdrop. Nine days earlier, police officers in Charleston, South Carolina, had been dispatched to the home of one of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s sisters because of a threat that there was a pipe bomb in her mailbox. “The device’s detonation will be triggered as soon as the mailbox is next opened,” the emailed threat read.
The pipe bomb proved to be a hoax, but the threats and intimidation faced by judges and their families in recent weeks are real, judges say. At a moment when the judiciary is weighing pivotal decisions on the legality of Trump administration policies, the potential for violence against judges seems to be rising.
“I feel like people are playing Russian roulette with our lives,” said Judge Esther Salas of U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, whose 20-year-old son was shot and killed at her home in 2020 by a self-described “anti-feminist” lawyer.
“This is not hyperbole,” she added. “I am begging our leaders to realize that there are lives at stake.”
The threats and intimidation may have not become actual violence, but they appear to be mounting, as Trump, his advisers and his supporters are questioning almost daily the legitimacy of the U.S. legal system. There is no evidence that jurists’ judgment in the high-profile cases before them has been warped by their antagonists. But at the least, public perceptions of judicial decisions could be shaped by the volume of attacks on the courts.
The attempts at intimidation have taken many forms: bomb threats, anonymous calls to dispatch police SWAT teams to home addresses, even the delivery of pizzas, a seemingly innocuous prank but one that carries a message.
“They know where you and your family members live,” said one judge who is overseeing litigation against the Trump administration and has received a pizza delivery. The judge requested anonymity, citing concerns for their own security and that of their family.
On the day that police responded to Barrett’s sister home, the U.S. Marshals Service in the Southern District of New York issued a bulletin: Federal judges were being targeted with anonymous Domino’s deliveries. Police say members of Barrett’s immediate family were among those who received pizza deliveries.
“This emerging form of harassment has been seen in several districts throughout the country,” the bulletin read.
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