When pizzas started arriving at his house, Judge John McConnell was intrigued.
What seemed like a weird joke wasn’t much compared to everything else, he thought.
Everything else is the campaign of intimidation orchestrated against him after he suspended the implementation of an executive order from Donald Trump canceling transfers of federal funds to the states.
America First, an organization founded by Stephen Miller, a radical right-wing ideologue who advised Trump, filed a lawsuit against the judge to have him removed. A Republican representative put up a “wanted” poster with the judge’s photo as a criminal inside the Capitol. Another officially called for his dismissal. He then received between 400 and 500 “degrading” calls. The US Marshals, who protect judges, investigated six “credible death threats” aimed at him.
So, some unsolicited pizzas…
Except that these pizzas, intercepted by the US Marshals, were addressed to a certain Daniel Anderl. Anderl was the son of Judge Esther Salas. One day, a delivery man rang the doorbell. He came to murder his mother. He killed the son and almost killed the father. It was July 2020. The assassin was a 72-year-old lawyer involved in anti-feminist causes who had lost a trial before Judge Salas. He came to take revenge. He committed suicide afterwards.
The murder had no partisan political overtones. Five years later, the young man’s name is being used to terrorize judges who make rulings displeasing to Trump.
We call it “pizza doxing”. A way of telling a judge: we know where you live. We can pick you up anytime.
This is far from being a marginal phenomenon. Judge Leo Gordon of the Federal Judges Association of the United States tells me that more than 50 judges have been victims of this maneuver. Sometimes it is their children on the other side of the country who receive them.
The perpetrators have not been identified, but foreign agents are believed to be involved, according to the Marshals, underlines Judge Gordon.
“I am very concerned,” said the judge, on the sidelines of a conference on the rule of law in Ottawa last week, organized by the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice.
The number of threats has increased so much that, according to his calculations, 22% of federal judges have received threats in the last 12 months.
The US Marshals opened 800 investigations – out of a pool of 2,600 judges.
Judge Leo Gordon of the Federal Judges Association of the United States
Marshals statistics show threats against 162 judges… only between 1is March and April 14, 2025.
It didn’t start with Donald Trump. But it is impossible, given the recent outbreak of threats, not to make the link with the political climate, and the return to power of the greatest denigrator of the judiciary.
Donald Trump, imitated by several members of his government, regularly denounces “radical”, “Marxist”, “dishonest”, “crazy”, “out of control” judges, etc.
Judge Gordon is careful not to make any political comments. In his speech, due to a duty of reserve, he simply said that we must better educate the population about civility and the importance of institutions. Even at court, civility is lost, he said. He cited Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox advocating for a “better way to disagree.” He won’t go any further.
Judge Salas, since the tragedy that struck her family, has been on several platforms to denounce the deterioration of the social climate. She also, being in office, does not want to point out one political trend more than another for this atmosphere of violence. “It came from all sides,” she once said.
Except that now, the signal of incivility, aggressiveness and intimidation of judges comes from the highest political level, which has never been seen to this degree.
Judge Gordon, 73, was appointed under George W. Bush without even applying (he was a clerk for the Court of International Trade and the judges on his court suggested his name). With other jurists, he felt the need to found a non-partisan organization called “Speak Up for Justice,” which organizes meetings to defend the rule of law.
But in the meantime, dozens of lawyers have been fired from the Justice Department in a broad political purge. Those who touched on investigations into Trump or the January 6, 2021 attackers in particular. In an investigation by New York Times with 60 ex-prosecutors, the lawyers described a climate of chaos and political takeover.
Some of the richest law firms have signed non-aggression pacts with Trump and even promised him hundreds of millions of dollars in free work fees.
All this in the same great movement of crushing and intimidation of an independent judiciary. Even Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has twice denounced Donald Trump without naming him for his attacks on judges.
Judge Gordon does not appoint politicians. He does what he can to sound the alarm without crossing ethical boundaries.
He can’t do it, but the big law firms can. And a staggering number of them have given in to the president’s fear and threats, kept silent, collaborated.
