U.S. District Judge Stephen Bough said Monday that his family was the target of threats after he blocked the Trump administration from deporting five Missouri college students.
Bough, who is part of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, told KCUR’s Up To Date that he received two unsolicited pizza deliveries early one Sunday morning last April. But even more alarming, Bough said, was when his daughter also received a pizza at her home in Atlanta.
“It's clearly designed to send a message that we know where you live, and other messages that have gone along with that,” Bough said.
Federal judges have reported hundreds of threats that often happen after President Donald Trump derisively calls attention to rulings that don’t go his way. Some 26 sitting judges recently told CBS that they feel under siege. The U.S. Marshals Service reports hundreds of threats that required protective investigations during the past few years.
Some judges across the country who received the pizzas said they were sent in the name of Daniel Anderl, a reference to the son of U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas of New Jersey. In July 2020, a disgruntled lawyer posing as a delivery driver targeted her home, killing her 20-year-old son and wounding her husband, Mark Anderl.
Since then, Salas has spoken out about the surge in threats.
“Judges are being threatened, and these threats are threats that go to the core of a human being,” Salas told NPR. “And that's when you're messing with someone's family.”
Bough said Salas attends federal judges’ events, handing out bracelets with her son’s name on them and urging all judges to be more alert and use the offered resources.
“She personally lobbied for the Danny Anderl Security Act to help get some of our private information off the internet and to pay for our security system, or pay for part of our security system at our house,” Bough said. “And so you start worrying, what's the next step?”
Bough said U.S. Marshals officials are concerned. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, in a year-end report last year, said there were more than 1,000 "serious threats" investigated by the U.S. Marshals Service in the past five years.
“They're willing to show up. They're willing to work with local law enforcement,” Bough said of the marshals. “It only takes one, right?”
- Stephen Bough, U.S. district court judge
