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Donald Trump's rhetoric and attacks and his perceived judiciary enemies have been blamed for the rise in threats against judges, including the Colorado Supreme Court justices who disqualified him from running for president in the state.
John Miller, a former deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism for the New York Police Department, was reacting to the reports that the judges who barred Trump from the Colorado ballots in 2024 for violating the U.S. Constitution have received a slew of violent threats against them online, resulting in an increase of police security around their Denver homes.
On December 19, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in a 4-3 decision that Trump's actions on and around January 6, 2021, violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which states a person who "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" after taking an oath of office to support the U.S. Constitution should be barred from running for office again.
Trump is set to appeal the ruling in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Denver Police Department said it is now "providing extra patrols around justice's residences" following the apparent threats against the justices. The FBI also confirmed that it is working with law enforcement officials in Colorado to "vigorously pursue" allegations of threats of violence by someone who uses "extremist views to justify their actions regardless of motivation."
Miller, CNN's law enforcement analyst, said that threats against justices have "skyrocketed" in recent years, including 4,500 threats against federal judges that were "serious enough" to merit an investigation.
When asked what is driving this rise in threats of violence against justices, Miller said there are a "couple of factors," including claiming that attacks from Trump against judges and prosecutors as he faces four criminal trials add "gasoline to the fire" to the violent language being made in online forums and message boards.
"Number one, there is the perceived anonymity for persons making threats over the internet and on social media. It's not like you're calling up the judge's office in most of these cases and saying, 'I'm going to kill Judge Smith,'" Miller said.
"But beyond that, the gasoline on the fire is when you have Donald Trump, a former president of the United States, making vivid, vitriolic personal attacks on prosecutors, on judges, calling them names—that adds gasoline to the fire in these chat rooms and people feel they're being called on," he said.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's office via email for comment.
Miller said that such threats against judges should be taken seriously while noting the attacks on the family of New Jersey U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas, whose 20-year-old son, Daniel Anderl, was killed and her husband severely injured after a gunman posed as a FedEx delivery worker and shot them at their home in July 2020.
It was later found the gunman, Roy Den Hollander, who died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds following the attack, had previously posted racist and misogynistic comments online, including against the judge.
In June 2022, retired Wisconsin Judge John Roemer was shot and killed by a man whom he had previously sentenced.
"The problem for authorities is sorting out the noise from who the real player is going to be who might show up and do something," Miller said.
"You look at the Nancy Pelosi case, where an individual showed up at her home in San Francisco and assaulted her husband, someone who was not on the radar screen and came out of the woodwork," he said, referring to David DePape attacking Paul Pelosi with a hammer in October 2022.
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About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more