Democrats strongly condemned political violence following news that a suspect had been arrested for threatening to injure and kill six of the nine Supreme Court justices and some of their family members.
“Threats and acts of violence are unacceptable. Period,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told the Washington Post. “As President Biden and Vice President Harris have consistently said, violence has no place in our country. Violent rhetoric and threats are unacceptable,” said White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates. “There is no place for political violence in this country, period,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.
It is not yet known exactly which judges Panos Anastasiou, 76, of Alaska, intended to target.
However, a complaint filed against him on Wednesday said his threats included anti-Black slurs — and there is only one Black justice on the Supreme Court: Clarence Thomas, who typically votes with the Court’s conservative majority. Additionally, the complaint said Anastasiou’s threats included extreme comments about a former president described by Anastasiou as a “convicted felon.” Former President Donald Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a felony, earlier this year.
Alaskan man arrested for threatening six martinez members of the supreme court
The Anchorage, Alaska, home of Panos Anastasiou, who has been indicted in federal court for allegedly threatening U.S. Supreme Court justices and their family members. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)
Democrats have repeatedly criticized the Supreme Court as illegitimate. In a prescient speech at Duke Law School on Monday, Kannon Shanmugam, considered one of the country's leading appellate litigators who has argued 35 cases before the Supreme Court, said that “attacks on the legitimacy of the courts are contributing to the threat of violence against judges at large.”
“Enough is enough. When will the media put pressure on Democrats like Sen. Schumer, Sen. Durbin, Sen. Whitehouse, Vice President Harris and others to stop launching baseless attacks on the Supreme Court that have created real threats to the safety of our judges?” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., asked after news of Anastasiou’s arrest. “Hey, look, someone who took Chuck Schumer seriously,” said Trent England, founder and CEO of the conservative nonprofit Save Our States. Other critics noted that Anastasiou was a frequent donor to Democrats.
ROE VS. WADE ABORTION RULING: DEMOCRATS CONSIDER SUPREME COURT “ILLEGITIMATE”
Trump's ability to reshuffle the Supreme Court with new justices has not sat well with Democrats.
In an impassioned speech before the Supreme Court after a preliminary ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade In the spring of 2020, when a leak of Trump’s letter emerged, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., took aim at conservative judges Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, both Trump nominees: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have unleashed the whirlwind, and you will pay the price,” Schumer exclaimed outside the Supreme Court in 2020. “You won’t know what hit you if you follow through with these horrible decisions.”
Justices serving on the U.S. Supreme Court. (front row, left to right) Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. (back row, left to right) Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. ((Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images))
“The Supreme Court is not right and the people know it,” a group of Democratic senators said in an August 2019 brief after the Supreme Court took up a case over the constitutionality of a New York City law restricting legal gun owners from transporting their firearms.
In 2020, during the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, Trump's final Supreme Court nomination that would ultimately make it to the court, then-Senator Kamala Harris called the confirmation “illegitimate” and “reckless.” Following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. WadeHarris warned that there is “a national movement underway to attack hard-won and fought-for freedoms.”
“I don't want, at this point, to use my voice in an alarmist way,” he added earlier this year in an interview with the New York Times. “But this court has made it very clear that it is willing to override recognized rights.”.”
HARRIS WAS 'OPEN' TO EXPANDING SUPREME COURT DURING 2019 PRESIDENTIAL BID
The United States Supreme Court Building in Washington, DC, is the seat of the Supreme Court of the United States and the judicial branch of government. (Robert Alexander/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, in July, Senator Ed Markey said: “Donald Trump and his MAGA partners” were to blame for the fact that “our most fundamental freedoms are under attack by an illegitimate and extremist majority on the US Supreme Court.”
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“They started by breaking the rules for confirming judges and ended up breaking the Supreme Court itself,” Markey said.
The Justice Department said Wednesday that Anastasiou was charged with nine counts of threatening a federal judge and 13 counts of threatening in interstate commerce. He faces up to 10 years in prison.
“Our justice system depends on the ability of judges to make decisions based on the law and not fear,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday. “Our democracy depends on the ability of public officials to do their jobs without fearing for their lives or the safety of their families.”
