This week, a Democratic donor was taken into custody on suspicion of threatening to assassinate six justices of the United States Supreme Court as well as several of their relatives.
On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice made public that Panos Anastasiou, 76, had written over 465 threatening communications to the Supreme Court using the court’s public website.
The messages, sent between March 2023 and July 2024, “escalated to messages intending to threaten harm toward the victims,” according to the DOJ. “The messages contained violent, racist, and homophobic rhetoric coupled with threats of assassination by torture, hanging, and firearms.”
According to court documents, the threats were made with the intention of “treating Supreme Court Justices 1-6 with fear and as a form of reprisal for official actions that the Justices had taken in their capacity as federal judges.”
Six of the nine Supreme Court justices are regarded as conservative, despite the fact that the targeted judges were not mentioned by the prosecution.
Nine counts of intimidating federal judges and thirteen counts of making threats through interstate communication are the charges brought against Anastasiou. He may spend up to 155 years in jail if found guilty on all counts, with fines of $10 years for each threat made against judges and $5 years for each threat made across state lines.
“We allege that the defendant made repeated, heinous threats to murder and torture Supreme Court Justices and their families to retaliate against them for decisions he disagreed with,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland. “Our justice system depends on the ability of judges to make their decisions based on the law, and not on fear. Our democracy depends on the ability of public officials to do their jobs without fearing for their lives or the safety of their families.”
Anastasiou contributed 82 times to Democratic politicians and left-wing causes, mostly through ActBlue, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records.
