The US House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance held a hearing Wednesday with US Marshals Service Director Ronald Davis to discuss the agency’s response to threats against federal judges one day after Davis revealed to Reuters that threats against federal judges have skyrocketed across the country in the last year due to “politically driven violence.”
Davis told Reuters on Tuesday that threats against federal judges across the country have more than doubled since fiscal year 2021. The US Marshals Service provided Reuters with data showing that serious threats against judges jumped from 224 in fiscal year 2021 to 457 in fiscal year 2023, which ended in late September. Davis attributed the rise to social media and politicization, telling Reuters:
The threat environment right now that is causing me concern is when people disagree with the judicial process or the government, and that turns into those verbal attacks. And that is the beginning of the process that threatens the judiciary and threatens our democracy.
During the opening of Wednesday’s House hearing at which Davis testified, subcommittee chairman Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ) alleged that the Marshals had done a poor job of enforcing the newly enacted Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, intended to protect judges’ privacy and to prevent violent attacks. Biggs claimed that despite the act’s passage, US Attorney General Merrick Garland told Marshals to “avoid arresting protestors” at the homes of multiple Supreme Court Justices after a leaked copy of the court’s proposed ruling in the abortion rights case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health circulated.
When asked by Congressman Thomas Tiffany (WI-R) about Garland’s guidance not to arrest protesters, Davis testified that he had not received such guidance from Garland and that the only guidance Garland provided was to protect the justices and their families. Davis was asked about the guidance again by Congressman Barry Moore (AL-R), to which Davis stated:
The Attorney General’s guidance was clear, indeed crystal clear, to protect the lives of the justices and make sure that we still had full authority to make arrests, but not to engage in any activity that would compromise their [the justices] safety. I did not receive any order from the Attorney General to avoid any specific arrest.
The Reuters report and hearing come as reports of threats against local, state and federal judges have proliferated nationwide. In 2022, after US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart unsealed the search warrant and other documents in the Florida case against former president Donald Trump over his handling of classified documents at his home Mar-a-Lago, Reinhart faced a barrage of violent and anti-semitic threats. In 2023, a Texas woman pleaded guilty to a charge of making threats against US District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the Florida classified documents case. Also in 2023, Judge Arthur Engoron released a statement asking the state appellate court to uphold a gag order against Trump in the New York state fraud trial, claiming he received numerous “threatening, harassing, disparaging and antisemitic messages,” which he claimed were fewer in number when Trump did not discuss Engoron or the trial due to the gag order. Engoron alleged in 2024 that the threats have continued. In late 2023, the FBI announced it was investigating a series of violent threats made against the Colorado Supreme Court after the court ruled that Trump should be disqualified from the state’s 2024 presidential ballot.
