Judges face rising threats amid political rhetoric

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Even as the president is directing a chorus of hateful rhetoric at them, state and federal judges are not letting it affect their work, according to former members of the bench.

Still, some wonder if the particularly perilous moment warrants an increased commitment to the personal security of the judiciary and other court personnel.

Relatively speaking, members of the federal bench may have more reason for concern than their state counterparts, as they have most occasion to issue rulings that the president’s supporters view as unfairly impeding his agenda, stoked by President Trump’s own social media posts.

After U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg, chief of the federal court in Washington, D.C., issued an order temporarily halting the administration’s plan to deport Venezuelan immigrants, Trump demanded Boasberg be impeached, calling him a “Radical Left Lunatic, a troublemaker and agitator” on social media, the New York Times reported.

In a rare public statement, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. knocked down the impeachment idea, suggesting that the “normal appellate review process” is the appropriate response to disagreement with a judicial decision.

But as the Times noted, Roberts’ statement did little to stem the torrent of social media posts referring to judges who have ruled against the Trump administration as “traitors” and “lawless” and calling for them to be sent “to GITMO for 20 years.”

To be sure, violent rhetoric — and actions — have not only been directed at judges perceived to be “anti-Trump.” Last month, a 29-year-old California man, Nicholas John Roske, pleaded guilty to having traveled to Maryland to carry out an assassination attempt of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh after a draft of the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization had been leaked.

And one of conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s sisters was also recently targeted with a hoax involving a pipe bomb that had allegedly been placed in her mailbox.

Still, data shows that the Trump-led campaign to direct hateful and violent rhetoric at judges may be unprecedented.

Violent rhetoric never more prevalent

Welton Chang is the co-founder and CEO of Pyrra Technologies, which uses AI-powered social intelligence to detect threats emerging on a wide array of online channels.

On a recent appearance on the NPR podcast “Question Everything,” Chang called the sharply rising number of people echoing calls for violence against judges the online trend that he was most concerned about possibly driving real world action.

Over a recent seven-day period, Chang said, the Pyrra system had catalogued 21,000 posts related to judges, and some 3,000 — about one in seven — were classified as violent. On any given topic — Chang used video games as an example — only about 0.5 to 1 percent of the posts are violent, meaning that violent rhetoric has recently been around 20 times more prevalent in discussions about the judiciary.

“The level of violent rhetoric and chatter around this topic today is at the highest level it’s ever been,” Chang said on the podcast.

In a demonstration of Pyrra for Lawyers Weekly, Chang’s searches revealed that, at least for now, Massachusetts judges are being spared the worst of online vitriol. But they are not being ignored entirely.

Her forthcoming judicial misconduct hearing — and the similar actions allegedly taken by Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan, who was indicted by a federal grand jury May 13 — have brought the name of District Court Judge Shelley Joseph back to the fore.

The post Pyrra ranked as most violent involving Joseph read: “Deport Judge Shelley Joseph To El Salvador CECOT… This Is A Deliberate, Coordinated Effort By Democratic Judges To Wipe The United States Off The Face Of The Earth.”

I hope that there are people in positions of power looking at this and saying, ‘We need to increase security for these folks.’

 — Welton Chang, CEO of Pyrra Technologies

The post was made on Gettr, the social media platform and microblogging site founded in 2021 by former Trump aide Jason Miller.

Also popping up regularly in recent posts was the name of U.S. Magistrate Judge Jessica Hedges, who on April 24 granted the pretrial release to home custody of UMass-Boston student Owen McIntire. McIntire is charged with using a homemade incendiary device to damage two Tesla Cybertrucks and charging stations at a dealership in his native Kansas City, Missouri.

A poster on the social networking site Gab called Hedges’ decision “complete insanity” and called for her impeachment.

On the podcast, Chang stressed that he would not recommend the judges themselves consume everything that is being said about them online.

However, he added, “I hope that there are people in positions of power looking at this and saying, ‘We need to increase security for these folks.’”

Steps that need to be taken, Chang said, including making sure that the private information about judges, including where their kids are attending school, “isn’t just floating around online.”

Chang told Lawyers Weekly it would be hard to accurately assess the magnitude of the risk of real-world violence posed by the proliferation of online rhetoric. But he likens the volume of alarming chatter to that which Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, faced as the country emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.

While he certainly hopes nothing will come of all the rhetoric, Chang called the level of chatter “concerning.” Violence, he said, does not just come out of nowhere.

“We’re in a world where manifestation is possible because of the level of violent rhetoric we’re seeing,” he said.

Thus far, one of the more notable manifestations of that rhetoric seems relatively harmless at first: Judges involved in Trump cases in at least seven states have reported receiving unsolicited pizza deliveries to their homes, which the U.S. Marshals Service is investigating.

Beneath the innocuous act appears to be an ominous message: We know where you live. To make sure that ominous message is not missed, some of the orders have reportedly been placed in the name of U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas’ son, Daniel Anderl, who was fatally shot at his family’s New Jersey home by an attorney who posed as a delivery person.

A focus on security

Last fall, the U.S. Department of Justice released a report indicating that about 28 percent of federal judges were not yet taking advantage of a program offered by the U.S. Marshals Service to provide electronic security systems for their homes, Reuters reported.

That 72 percent participation rate was an increase from the 60 percent rate found in a 2021 audit, which Reuters noted roughly corresponds to a rise in serious threats against federal judges, from 224 in fiscal year 2021 to 457 in fiscal 2023.

At the state court level, the Trial Court makes residential security assessments available to judges when needed, according to spokesperson Jennifer Donahue.

She noted that the Trial Court’s Chief of Threat Management Neil Sullivan, who previously worked for the U.S. Marshals Service for 26 years, leads the efforts to assess threats and conduct training. Sullivan has conducted more than 10 training sessions for judges and clerks in the last three years, according to Donahue.

Those training sessions include a threat assessment overview, how to identify the level of threats, mitigation techniques to counter risk from threats, and home and online security measures that judges can take to keep themselves and their families safe, Donahue said.

This spring, the Trial Court also contracted with a vendor to increase judges’ online security. That initiative is currently being rolled out, she said.

As for credible, specific threats, the Trial Court Security Department refers those to the State Police for investigation.

“The Security Department works closely with state, local and federal law enforcement partners in reporting threats and referring them for investigation and prosecution,” she said.

Visitors to the state’s courthouses have been entering through metal detectors for decades, but retired Superior Court Judge Christopher J. Muse recalls how that came to be. Shootings at the Roxbury and Dorchester District courts in the 1980s created the political will to invest in better courthouse security. At the time, Muse was labor counsel for the court employees and led lobbying efforts as his alarmed membership demanded action.

When he sat on the bench, Muse said he never felt unsafe.

“We had quite a bit of security instruction,” he said. “We had panic buttons. We had telephone numbers to call directly if there was an issue. We had State Police that would handle any kind of issue that we personally might have.”

The young man who opened fire in the Roxbury District Court and the copycat who followed in Dorchester “spawned an entire industry with hundreds of employees,” Muse said, noting that in addition to Sullivan, the Trial Court also employs a director of security, Michael McPherson.

As a result, Muse is not too fazed by the heated rhetoric of the current political moment. Online outrage when a judge has, for example, released a criminal defendant who commits another crime while on bail has been around for a quarter century, he noted.

Former Superior Court Judge John T. Lu agreed with Muse’s high confidence in the Massachusetts Trial Court security department, though he was a bit quicker to acknowledge the heightened challenge the current moment presents.

“Court officers do not get the respect they deserve,” he said. “But they are not superhuman.”

But Lu also suggested that the Trial Court might consider sending one of its “eminently qualified” security experts to each judge’s house for a one-time security assessment, which might include installing a home security system. While mindful of resource limitations, a highly rated home security system sells for approximately $300 on Amazon, Lu noted.

No pulled punches

The former judges were emphatic, however, that they have seen little sign in judges’ decisions that they are being cowed by the hostility increasingly directed at them.

When you look at these decisions and the speed with which they’re coming out and sometimes the tone of them, I don’t see anybody pulling their punches.

— retired Judge Nancy Gertner

Former Massachusetts federal judge Nancy Gertner highlighted not just Boasberg’s decisions but that of 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III. A Reagan appointee, Wilkinson blistered the Trump administration for its failure to provide due process to Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March.

“When you look at these decisions and the speed with which they’re coming out and sometimes the tone of them, I don’t see anybody pulling their punches,” Gertner said.

Gertner also pointed to letters like the one she and former 4th Circuit Judge J. Michael Luttig recently drafted criticizing Dugan’s arrest in Wisconsin, to which 160 retired judges signed their names.

“If they were as intimidated by the violence as some have suggested, you wouldn’t see them signing their names to protest the treatment of Judge Dugan,” Gertner said.

Muse, who signed Gertner and Luttig’s letter, agreed that he sees no signs that judges are being intimidated. However, he acknowledged that there is a “heightened sense of concern,” especially given how Dugan’s arrest and arraignment were handled.

“That was designed clearly to send a very chilling message to judges: Don’t mess,” he said. “And if that’s not what their intent was, believe me, that was the way it was received.”

Still, Muse said he does not believe that judges are going to change the way they go about their business.

“Their decisions will continue to be based on fairness principles and what the evidence is,” he said.

If anything, Gertner said she is a bit envious of judges like Boasberg and Wilkinson.

“I didn’t miss being off the bench before, but I do now — although I really love being able to speak,” she said.

Gertner said she suspects that most judges took their jobs knowing that they would have to make hard decisions and face criticism.

“If you’re not ready for that, you shouldn’t take the job,” she said.