Anchorage man arrested on charges he threatened to kill 6 US Supreme Court justices
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A 76-year-old Anchorage man was arrested this week on federal charges accusing him of threatening to kidnap and kill six U.S. Supreme Court Justices and their relatives in scores of messages beginning last year.
Panos Anastasiou was arrested Wednesday at his Spenard home on 22 charges tied to more than 465 messages sent through the Supreme Court’s public website that “contained violent, racist and homophobic rhetoric coupled with threats of assassination by torture, hanging and firearms,” according to a memorandum seeking his detention filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney William Taylor.
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The memo said the messages escalated in early January.
A sign hanging above the door of a tidy, single-story Spenard home listed in municipal records as belonging to Anastasious on Thursday morning featured an image of a gun and said “I don’t call 911.” Another sign identified the occupant as a veteran and said “My oath never expires.”
In posts to his Facebook page in 2014, Anastasiou said he regretted his military service to the “POLICE STATE” the country has become “in large part by the rulings by the Supreme Court favoring police tactics and shredding the fourth amendment.”
Anastasiou began sending concerning messages through the online portal to the Supreme Court in the spring of 2023, according to the federal memorandum filed this week. Supreme Court police reviewed the messages and contacted FBI agents in Anchorage, it said.
After the agents contacted Anastasiou in Alaska, he sent another message to the Supreme Court referencing the interview and “‘daring’ the Justices to personally visit his house,” the memorandum said.
The messages continued and became increasingly violent in early 2024, it said.
Several messages included in the memorandum contained racial slurs, homophobic rhetoric and violent threats with descriptions of assassination by hanging, torture and shooting. He called for “mass assassinations” in one of the messages and encouraged others to participate in violence against the Supreme Court justices and their family members.
Anastasiou describes himself in the messages as a Vietnam War veteran.
He admitted sending threatening messages to the Supreme Court justices this year, the email address he used to send them contained his name, and investigators tracked the IP information included with the messages to his Anchorage home, the memorandum said.
Documents filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage do not specify which Supreme Court justices Anastasiou targeted. The current court is divided 6-3 ideologically, with six judges considered more conservative and three considered more liberal.
Anastasiou is registered as a nonpartisan voter but has donated nearly $800 since 2016 to ActBlue, a nonprofit fundraising platform for Democratic candidates and progressive causes, according to campaign contributions reported to the Federal Election Commission.
The memorandum said he previously sent similar threats to a governor of another state. It did not include specifics about those threats, including which governor or when.
Reagan Zimmerman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alaska, on Thursday said she was not able to provide information about those threats. There do not appear to be any criminal charges tied to Anastasiou in that incident.
He was indicted by a grand jury on Tuesday and arrested Wednesday, according to court records. Anastasiou appeared in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the charges. He was assigned a federal public defender and is scheduled to appear again Thursday afternoon in U.S. District Court in downtown Anchorage for a detention hearing.
Defense attorney Jane Imholte declined to comment, and publicly listed phone numbers for Anastasiou were disconnected, according to reporting by The Associated Press.
He remained in custody at the Anchorage Correctional Complex on Thursday morning.
Threats targeting federal judges overall have more than doubled in recent years amid a surge of similar violent messages directed at public officials around the country, the Associated Press has reported. In 2022, a man with a gun and a knife was arrested near the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh following the leak of a draft court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.
