The Not So Funny Pizza Gambit: Judicial Threats

I provided a discussion of an actor defending his trans daughter and a "Say No to Cuomo" piece here.

The annual average rose from 1,180 incidents in the decade prior to Trump’s campaign to 3,810 in the seven years after he declared his candidacy and began his practice of criticizing judges. In all, the Marshals documented nearly 27,000 threatening and harassing communications targeting federal courts from the fall of 2015 through the fall of 2022, a volume they consider unprecedented in their 234-year history. There is no national data collection for threats against state and local judges. Many states do not even track the problem.

Concerns about attacks on the judiciary have been going on for years now. It is not just about Trump, though he plays a special role. We saw this during his first administration and during the interregnum involving attacks on judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials. 

A harassment called "squatting" is one egregious technique, including sending pizzas.

Federal judges say unsolicited pizza deliveries to jurists’ homes that began in February may number in the hundreds across at least seven states, prompting increased security concerns and a demand from a Senate leader for a Justice Department investigation.

Some of the pizza deliveries have gone to judges’ relatives. In recent weeks, orders have been placed in the name of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas’s son, Daniel Anderl, who was fatally shot at the family home in New Jersey in 2020 by an attorney who posed as a delivery person.

Judge J. Michelle Childs stands out since Senator Graham latched onto her as the "bipartisan" alternative to Ketanji Brown Jackson. You know, like Merrick Garland was the "bipartisan" alternative to Sotomayor and Kagan until he was actually nominated and never received a hearing.  

I did a quick media article check and did not see Lindsey Graham concerned about threats to Judge Childs. Maybe I missed something. There are so many Republicans concerned about Trump, so it is easy to lose track. I kid.

"Can it be so that Judges aren't allowing the USA to Deport Criminals, including Murderers, out of our Country and back to where they came from? If this is so, our Country, as we know it, is finished! Americans will have to get used to a very different, crime filled, LIFE. This is not what our Founders had in mind!!!"

The Trumpian rhetoric, not just "IMPEACH HIM!," is incitement. We cannot just take some tweet or whatever as a one-off. We have years of these things. We have January 6th. 

It is also not just Trump. 

Bondi-authored memo said that “an unelected district court yet again invaded the policy-making and free speech prerogatives of the executive branch.”

US Citizenship and Immigration Services reworked a notice posted to its website announcing that a Trump immigration policy had been paused by a court in California, according to court filings from the policy’s legal challengers. The initial version of the notice announced the court’s ruling and its impact on the policy using straight-forward language. But a few days later the notice was redrafted to take several swipes at the judge’s ruling.

“The Administration is committed to restoring the rule of law with respect to Temporary Protected Status (TPS),” the redrafted notice said, referring to the immigration program that Trump was blocked from winding down. “Nonetheless, on March 31, 2025, Judge Edward Chen, a federal judge in San Francisco, ordered the department to continue TPS for Venezuelans.”

Trump, by a broad brush, talks about "bad people" who investigated and went after him, including public servants and law firms. He did this in remarks at the Justice Department. Multiple justices, including Chief Justice Roberts, opposing calls for impeachment, responded.

“Across the nation, judges are facing increased threats of not only physical violence, but also professional retaliation just for doing our jobs,” Jackson said while addressing a group of judges gathered for a conference in Puerto Rico, according to The New York Times. 

“Our job is to stand up for people who can’t do it themselves. And our job is to be the champion of lost causes,” Sotomayor said during a Thursday event for the American Bar Association, according to The Associated Press. 

Like many of those pardoned January Sixers, these people feel they are following the wishes and instructions of Donald Trump. They are not deluded in so thinking. 

White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in an emailed statement that attacks against judges and other public officials “have no place in our society.”

“President Trump knows all too well the impact of callous attacks having faced two assassination attempts,” Fields said.

Sure, Jan. The attacks on judges are selectively criticized by some conservatives when the targets are judges they like. This includes when the "attacks" are reasonable criticism of ethics violations or mere disagreements of opinions. Roberts' end-of-the-term report mixed a bit of that in, too. 

When this happens, we get references to a mentally unwell person showing up near Kavanaugh's house armed with zip ties or the like before turning himself in, or a Barrett talking about wearing a bulletproof vest. Meanwhile, violent threats on Sotomayor are ignored. Bad pool, people.

Congress in 2022 passed the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, which restricts the disclosure or sale of personal information of federal judges and their family members.

And that is appreciated. 

Nonetheless, our abuser in chief is a symbol of the problem. There is a difference between valid criticism -- the Roberts Court surely is worthy of that -- and the Attorney General and other branches of the U.S. government making partisan attacks on judges. Toss in stonewalling or worse. 

I saw a few concerned liberal sorts oppose doing much at all when Trump attacked judges during his civil and criminal proceedings, even when he used rhetoric that would have resulted in sanctions for others. We get talk about the First Amendment and attacks on people as being too prosecution-friendly. What of the concern about the rule of law?

Thanks to all those judges, and their law clerks (the judges aren't writing those thousands of pages of opinions by themselves), who are doing their jobs. Maybe, someone should send (in their own names) thank you flowers or something. Or whatever is ethically allowed. 

Maybe something in their names, since these days they know not to receive things from strangers.  

Perhaps, a (vegan) pizza.