Alaska man arrested for threatening to kill 6 Supreme Court justices
A man living in Alaska has been arrested and charged for allegedly sending hundreds of hateful and threatening messages to six justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and their families.
A federal grand jury indicted 76-year-old Panos Anastasiou of Anchorage on Wednesday of threatening to injure and kill six justices, as well as some of their family members.
Anastasiou was charged with nine counts of making threats against a federal judge as well as 13 counts of making threats in interstate commerce, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Alaska.
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If convicted, Anastasiou faces up to 10 years in prison for every count of threatening a federal judge and as much as five years for every count of making threats in interstate commerce.
The U.S. Attorney's Office accuses the Alaska resident of sending more than 460 messages via a website to the Supreme Court from March 2023 until July 2024, with the rhetoric becoming increasingly hostile.
"Beginning on Jan. 4, 2024, Anastasiou's messages allegedly escalated to messages intending to threaten harm toward the victims," the U.S. Attorney's Office explained. "The messages contained violent, racist and homophobic rhetoric coupled with threats of assassination by torture, hanging and firearms."
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, the indictment does not specifically name the six Supreme Court justices who were targets of Anastasiou's messages. Instead, they are identified as "Supreme Court Justices 1-6."
At present, the Supreme Court has six members who lean conservative on most high-profile decisions, while the other three typically lean liberal.
The Notice of Intent to Seek Detention Hearing submitted by the attorneys for the plaintiff provided copies of some of the messages that Anastasiou allegedly sent to the Supreme Court.
One of them identified a justice as having a "white trailer trash n—loving insurrectionist wife." This unnamed justice is likely Justice Clarence Thomas, an African American whose wife, Ginni Thomas, is Caucasian and has been accused of communicating with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the aftermath of the 2020 election, calling it a "heist." Although she believes there were election irregularities, she has since clarified that she does accept Joe Biden as the president of the United States.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that he believed 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."
"Our justice system depends on the ability of judges to make their decisions based on the law, and not on fear," stated Garland. "Our democracy depends on the ability of public officials to do their jobs without fearing for their lives or the safety of their families."
The Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, a controversial 1973 decision that had established abortion as a constitutional right, allowed several states to ban abortion in nearly all circumstances.
Since the initial leaking of a draft of the decision in May 2022, there have been several threats made against conservative members of the high court, prompting increased security.
Earlier this year, for example, 43-year-old Neal Brij Sidhwaney of Florida was sentenced to 14 months in prison for threatening Chief Justice John Roberts via a phone call in July 2023.
A man was arrested in 2022 for plotting to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his home in Maryland in response to the leak of a draft opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
