'Have her life ended immediately!' Threats against judges explode under Trump
Since President Donald Trump has taken office, over 100 federal cases have been filed about violent threats made against public officials, according to CBS News — including numerous federal judges.
Frequent targets for this hate are judges who have ruled against Trump on various issues — one being U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, a Seattle-based jurist appointed by former President Ronald Reagan who ruled against Trump's executive order rewriting the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship protections.
Coughenour told CBS he "has had security details in response to threats a handful of times in his 45 years as a judge ... including when he presided over the trial of leaders of an anti-government group in the late 1990s," but nothing compares to how bad it is now. "The judge said he was swatted, an illegal scheme in which people make fake emergency calls to draw SWAT teams to the homes of public figures. The FBI also told him there was a bomb in his house, Coughenour recalled. He said he's also received hundreds of threatening voicemails and other communications."
"If I were in my 30s or 40s with young children at home and thinking about going on the federal bench, one of the factors [to consider] is that we may be exposing ourselves to possible violence," he said.
"Half the people that come before us for trial are going to be unhappy with the result," he added. "But it had never before reached the level where the president and the attorney general and the president's staff were making hypercritical comments and calling judges monsters and referring to a judicial coup. Things like that, that's all new. I've never experienced that before."
In one of many such cases, Jeffrey Petersen, a Minnesota man, allegedly made violent threats against a Supreme Court justice, seven federal judges, 11 legislators, peppered his social media post with "thinly veiled racial epithets," and anonymized himself with account names taking after mass shooters. "That POS Judge … MUST have her life ENDED Immediately! Get it done, Patriots!!" said one such post.
Many of these threats against public officials have ended in tragedy, with former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband being murdered in their home. Trump barely expressed sympathy over the killing, and even promoted conspiracy theories that Democratic Gov. Tim Walz was somehow involved.
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