All points
1962 words
- Threats against federal judges have increased by 400% in five years. The report puts the number at more than 4,000 in the previous year, later giving the precise figure of 4,200. Many were death threats, and some had resulted in physical violence. Judges, traditionally reluctant to speak publicly about their personal security, were increasingly appealing directly to lawmakers for protection.
- Appealing a judicial decision is the legitimate alternative to threatening a judge. The report establishes that people regularly disagree with court rulings and that the normal remedy is an appeal. The growing problem is that political hostility is increasingly turning disagreement with judicial decisions into threats against judges and their families.
- Federal Judge Esther Salas's family was attacked at their New Jersey home in July. Salas was in the basement with her son Daniel, cleaning up after his 20th birthday party, when a man disguised as a FedEx delivery driver arrived. Daniel went upstairs after the doorbell rang, despite his mother's attempt to stop him. She subsequently heard multiple gunshots.
- Daniel was killed while his father, Mark, survived three gunshot wounds. Salas found Daniel bleeding near the door and Mark on his knees holding his side. Mark had been shot in the right chest, left abdomen and arm. Daniel died on the way to hospital, while Mark survived and subsequently required additional surgery.
- Daniel appears to have tried to protect his father from the gunman. According to the FBI, the location and nature of Daniel's wounds suggested he had attempted to block the shooter. He was a college sophomore and the only child of Salas and Mark.
- The Salas family had been exceptionally close. They called themselves the Three Musketeers, and Daniel was described as the centre of their universe. Salas recalled watching her only child die and described the experience as a parent's worst nightmare.
- The attack was specifically intended to kill Judge Salas. She initially did not understand why her family had been targeted. FBI briefings subsequently established that the gunman had been hunting her personally.
- The gunman was Roy Den Hollander, a 72-year-old lawyer with deep hatred towards women. He left behind a bitter manifesto attacking Salas, calling her a "lazy Latina" and accusing her of delaying his lawsuit. He shot himself the day after the attack.
- Den Hollander had murdered another lawyer approximately one week before attacking the Salas family. The FBI discovered the earlier killing during its investigation. He subsequently travelled to Salas's home to carry out the attack against her.
- The gunman had assembled an extensive personal intelligence file on Judge Salas and her family. He knew their home address, her routes to work, their church, Daniel's school and his baseball schedule. Salas said investigators established that the information came from publicly accessible legal and other open sources.
- Publicly available personal information enabled a targeted attack against a federal judge. The case demonstrated that information obtainable through legitimate public records could be assembled into a detailed surveillance profile. The danger was not necessarily an unlawful data breach, but the ease with which a hostile individual could combine publicly accessible information to locate and track a judge and her family.
- The attack permanently changed the Salas family's circumstances. Six months after Daniel's murder, the family had sold the house where they had spent 20 years building memories. Mark still needed additional surgery, and Salas described their lives as containing 20 years of wonderful memories alongside one excruciating experience.
- Judge Salas broke with judicial tradition by publicly appealing to lawmakers on YouTube. In August, following Daniel's funeral, she made a personal appeal for legislation protecting judges' private information. Her argument was that authorities might not be able to prevent every attack, but they could make it considerably harder for potential attackers to track judges down.
- The FBI discovered a second storage locker belonging to Den Hollander in New Jersey. Investigators found another gun, a Glock, additional ammunition and a Manila folder containing an intelligence dossier on Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
- Den Hollander had compiled detailed information about Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The folder included her favourite restaurants, where she exercised and information about her friends. Salas described the discovery as particularly disturbing, and the programme revealed the existence of this dossier publicly for the first time during the interview. The discovery established that Den Hollander's targeting extended beyond Salas.
- Judge Salas became an advocate for removing judges' personal information from the internet. She argued that judges routinely expose themselves to danger simply by performing their public duties. The discovery of the Sotomayor dossier made her campaign for federal legislation more urgent.
- Salas was the first Hispanic woman to serve as a district court judge. She was sworn into office in 2011 and said she had never imagined that accepting judicial office would put her family in danger.
- The previous major judicial security upgrade had followed another deadly attack on a judge's family. Approximately 15 years earlier, Chicago Judge Joan Lefkow returned home to discover that her husband and mother had been shot dead by a disgruntled plaintiff. The comparison demonstrated that attacks on judges' families were not entirely new, while the security response had not kept pace with the continuing threat.
- Proposed federal legislation would allocate more than $250 million towards judicial security. The measures being taken up by the Senate included funding for home security and 1,000 additional deputy US marshals.
- The proposed legislation would remove sensitive personal information about judges from public internet sources. The information identified for removal included home addresses, driver's licence details and property tax records. The intention was to make it more difficult for hostile individuals to locate judges and their families.
- Salas rejected the argument that public accountability requires judges to expose their private homes and families. When asked whether becoming a public figure meant surrendering personal information, she acknowledged her responsibility as a public servant. However, she distinguished between challenging a judicial decision through an appeal or visiting the publicly known courthouse and targeting a judge's private residence. Her central question was: why should someone who disagrees with a ruling need to come to her home?
- US marshals now provide round-the-clock protection for Judge Salas. Her security arrangements reflect the seriousness of the threats against her. She also described the continuing stream of threatening messages directed at federal judges.
- The 4,200 reported threats included explicit threats against judges and their families. Salas read examples calling for the killing of supposedly corrupt politicians, judges and their families, describing a judge as a traitor deserving a death sentence, and directly threatening to kill a judge. Another message threatened to obtain a gun and shoot people. The examples included threats associated with State of Washington v. Donald J. Trump and a separate message originating in Mississippi.
- Senior US District Judge James Robart experienced an extraordinary wave of threats after blocking Donald Trump's first travel ban. Robart had temporarily blocked the executive action barring certain Muslim travellers. Opponents published his home telephone number and address online, exposing him to direct harassment.
- Trump's public attacks intensified the hostility directed at Judge Robart. Trump used Twitter to describe him as a "so-called judge" and subsequently suggested that Robart would be responsible if a terrorist attack occurred. At the time, Trump's Twitter audience numbered approximately 40 million.
- Robart believed Trump's language undermined the authority of the judiciary. He explained that calling someone a "so-called judge" communicated to millions of followers that the judge had no legitimate authority to issue the decision. Even if Trump intended to attack the ruling rather than the institution, Robart argued that the message encouraged people to reject the legitimacy of judicial decisions.
- Robart distinguished between political criticism and threats of violence. He acknowledged that the president had the right to criticise his decision, although he personally questioned whether attacking judges in this manner was acceptable. However, he considered threats to kill or injure judges, particularly threats against their families, completely unacceptable.
- Robart received approximately 40,000 messages, of which 1,100 were serious enough to investigate. The volume and seriousness of the threats forced US marshals to establish a security presence around his home. The response was substantially more extensive than ordinary personal protection.
- Judicial protection disrupted Robart's ordinary private life. Before he could have lunch at a restaurant, security personnel sometimes required a bomb-sniffing dog to inspect the premises. He described arriving with visible US marshals and a barking dog as an effective way to become unpopular with restaurant owners. Although he could joke about it during the interview, he acknowledged that the experience had been difficult at the time.
- Federal investigators discovered that thousands of apparently American threats against judges actually originated in Russia. The investigation revealed that some messages presented as domestic American hostility were part of a broader Russian effort to deepen divisions within the United States.
- Russia's strategy was described as an attempt to undermine confidence in American democracy and its justice system. The objective was not simply to threaten individual judges. By encouraging Americans to regard judicial decisions as illegitimate and judges as political enemies, Russia could weaken public acceptance of court decisions and generate domestic instability.
- Suzanne Spalding explained how Russia exploited existing American political divisions. Spalding, who had led cybersecurity operations under both Democratic and Republican administrations, said Russia encouraged suspicions that judges were partisan rather than impartial. The strategy was to portray judicial decisions as expressions of personal political preferences instead of applications of the rule of law.
- The campaign against Judge Robart illustrated how foreign influence could amplify domestic hostility. Russia targeted the perception that Robart had acted politically when blocking Trump's travel ban. According to Spalding, this framing encouraged people to regard threats of violence against judges as justified. She connected the broader climate of hostility to the actual violence suffered by Judge Salas's family.
- Spalding warned that the United States had already experienced a demonstration of this destabilising threat on January 6. She pointed to the Capitol attack as an indication of what can happen when hostility towards democratic institutions escalates beyond online rhetoric.
- The January 6 Capitol siege increased pressure on law enforcement to distinguish online threats from genuine preparations for violence. Authorities faced the difficult task of identifying which aggressive online messages might translate into physical attacks and which individuals posed an immediate danger.
- An Alabama man demonstrated how online threats could become an actual assassination attempt. Investigators encountered a man who had responded to an online call by arriving with a truckload of weapons and a handwritten hit list. An Indiana judge was listed second from the top, demonstrating that the threats against judges could involve concrete plans and identifiable targets.
- The First Amendment protects unpopular opinions but does not prevent legitimate investigation of threats and incitement to violence. Spalding acknowledged the right to express political opinions, even aggressive or unpopular ones. However, she distinguished protected expression from threats of violence and incitement, explaining that law enforcement could legitimately investigate such conduct, particularly when public servants were targeted.
- Judge Salas intends to continue serving despite the murder of her son. With the courthouse preparing to reopen after the pandemic, she acknowledged that she and Mark had been permanently changed by the attack. Nevertheless, she believed Daniel would want her to continue doing her work.
- Salas refuses to allow Den Hollander to undermine her judicial independence. She said the attack would not change how she performed her duties on the bench. Her integrity, work ethic and pride in her profession would remain intact, despite the devastating personal cost of the attack.