“It was frightening”: Federal judges speak out on vicious threats from MAGA fans

John J. McConnell Jr., the chief U.S. district judge in Rhode Island, recently decided to break his silence. By his own account, the 67-year-old McConnell, who has served on the federal bench since 2011, has faced an unprecedented deluge of attacks this year, ranging from 500 “vile” phone calls and six credible death threats to two judicial misconduct complaints and a set of impeachment articles filed against him.

One particularly appalling voicemail, he said, shook his faith in the judicial system so much that he felt he needed to speak out.

“It’s daunting. It was frightening,” the Obama appointee said. “I’ve never had anyone threatening to put me in prison, threatening bodily injury, wishing that I was assassinated.”

McConnell described the galvanizing effect the threats have had on him during Thursday’s edition of the nonpartisan Speak Up for Justice forum, a grassroots effort to advocate for judicial independence and judges’ safety. He and two other federal judges, led by New Jersey U.S. District Judge Esther Salas, recounted the startling and sometimes violent threats they’ve received this year after issuing rulings against the Trump administration or speaking out against the attacks on the judiciary. For McConnell and Judge John Coughenour, a senior district court judge in the Western District of Washington, this marked the first time either has spoken out about the harassment and attacks they’ve incurred for upholding the rule of law. Each warned of the chilling effect these acts could have on judicial independence.

“I didn’t want to be here. It took me a long time,” McConnell said, crediting Salas’ courage following the 2020 murder of her son, Daniel Anderl, by an assailant who was targeting her, for his willingness to speak out.

“I’ve never spoken about what’s happened to me personally because I’m not looking for pity. I’m not looking for sympathy,” McConnell said. “I want to be able to just do my job again, and I want to be able to uphold the Constitution. I want the public to speak out once again and support an independent judiciary, a judiciary where each one of us is safe to follow the rule of law without fear or favor.”

In the expletive-laden voicemail McConnell received, which played at the beginning of the webinar, an angry caller accused the judge of overstepping his authority and threatened to harm him.

“Tell the son of a b**ch, we’re going to come for him. His ass is going to prison,” the caller said. “I double dare you to try to put charges on Donald J. Trump, you son of a b**ch. You’re gonna get your asses whupped, OK? I will slap the f**king s**t out of it, OK? I’ll slap your face to your face, motherf**ker. But you know what, motherf***ker, your ass is gonna go to prison. OK, son of a b**ch? And I wish somebody would f**king assassinate your ass. Somebody needs to f**king wipe his ass out.”

Earlier this year, McConnell ruled against the Trump administration’s executive order freezing funding for grants and federal aid, first ordering the restoration of the funding cuts and then issuing a second order to enforce it. Since then, he’s also been subject to “pizza doxing,” the practice of sending large pizza orders to someone’s home. (In his case, the order was placed in the name of Judge Salas’ murdered son.) Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., hung a wanted sign with McConnell’s picture on it in the halls of Congress. An unknown person, McConnell said, searched for his home address on the dark web, while Trump allies Laura Loomer and Elon Musk verbally attacked McConnell’s daughter, a former federal employee.

“I don’t know that the public understands how the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary is so violently under attack [in ways] I’m not sure we’ve ever seen in this country,” McConnell said.

For Coughenour, who is now 84 and was originally appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, the threats against him and his family followed his January order blocking the Trump administration’s executive order on birthright citizenship. He described being “swatted” after the local sheriff’s office received a call alleging that he had murdered his wife and a message from the FBI that someone had left a bomb at their home. (There was no bomb.) He chose to be a judge and will endure the attempts to intimidate him, Coughenour said, but his family hadn’t signed up for this level of harassment.

“What kind of people do these things? It’s just so disgusting,” he said. “It’s unspeakable that people will do these things.”

“It’s just been stunning to me how much damage has been done to the reputation of our judiciary because some political actors think that they can gain some advantage by attacking the independence of the judiciary and threatening the rule of law,” Coughenour added.

District Judge Robert Lasnik, who serves with Coughenour in the Western District of Washington, said he was probably the only judge who actually wanted to speak out Thursday. The senior judge made a decision earlier this year to recuse himself from cases relating to the Trump administration so that he could remain free to “comment on the overall picture of what’s happening to the federal judiciary under these threats and intimidation.”

Lasnik also received a pizza delivered in the name of Salas’ son after he called on Trump and his supporters to tone down the rhetoric directed toward the federal courts. More alarming still, his two adult children each received pizzas in Anderl’s name delivered to their homes.

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“What’s the message to Judge Lasnik? ‘We know where you live. We know where your children live, and they could end up dead, like Judge Salas’ son did.’ That’s a pretty cruel thing to do,” the Clinton appointee said, adding that federal marshals are investigating incidents reported by more than 50 judges who said they received pizza deliveries they didn’t order.

When Judge Salas was asked how these doxings in the name of her murdered son had affected her, she grew emotional. The fifth anniversary of Anderl’s killing was son July 19, and she spoke to Salon about the dangers facing federal judges just a few days later.

“What we’re talking to everyone about here today is that judges are being threatened. These threats go to the core of a human being, and that’s when you’re messing with someone’s family,” she said during Thursday’s forum.

These speakers acknowledged that judges have sometimes faced attacks from left-wing critics as well, such as the 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. But Salas emphasized that the nature of the inflammatory rhetoric coming “from the top down” this year alone amounts to a different threat entirely.

“We, in fairness, are nonpartisan, but we have to speak the facts,” she said. “The facts are that we have political leaders with large social platforms, political leaders with power, calling us ‘deranged’ and ‘idiots.’ That is the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that I think caused the judges that are on here today to come forward.”