U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas, whose son was killed and her husband was injured in an attack intended for her, says the gunman also had his sights set on Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Salas reveals that authorities for the first time found a docket on Sotomayor in a case that her attacker, Roy Den Hollander, a lawyer who had been in front of Salas, committed suicide after killing her son, Daniel. Salas appears in a Bill Whitaker report on the dramatic increase in the number of threats against federal judges in the US that will be broadcast on Sunday, February 21 at 7:00 PM ET / PT on CBS.
Her son’s death sent Salas on a crusade to pass legislation that would scrape the personal information of judges on the internet. When she finds out what the FBI finds in the box, she realizes that she’s not the only one in Hollander’s sights. “They found another gun, a Glock, more ammunition. But the most disturbing thing they found was a manila paper with an exercise on Justice Sonia Sotomayor,” Salas said. She says it was icy to see a high court member in his sights. “Who knows what could have happened? But we need to understand that judges are in danger,” she tells Whitaker. “That we put ourselves in great danger every day because we do our job.”
Salas told 60 Minutes in the months following the death of her son, judges continued with new threats. She shared a few examples, one of which read: ” We, ” quote, ‘must start killing these corrupt politicians and judges and their families,’ end quote. ‘
Threats against federal judges have risen 400% in the past five years to more than 4,000 incidents. These include hate mail, telephone harassment, protests at their homes and actual attempted murder. The U.S. Marshals, which protects federal judges, are asking for another 1,000 officers at a cost of $ 250 million. The new bill that Salas supports also calls for a few more million to upgrade home security systems for judges.
Whitaker is also speaking with Judge James Robart, a senior district court judge, whose temporary block of then-President Trump’s travel ban resulted in an unprecedented 40,000 messages, including more than a hundred death threats. Critics call him a ‘dead man walking’ and post his phone number and address on social media. President Trump then inflamed the situation by mocking Robart as a ‘so-called judge’.
“If you call someone a so-called judge, you are only doing the judiciary … I thought he had the right to attack my decision. I do not think criticism of a judge is acceptable,” he told Whitaker. and adds the threats include that he is harming his family.
Investigators have discovered that thousands of the threats against Robart were apparently from Americans, but actually from Russia. This surprises Suzanne Spaulding, who conducted cyber security operations for Republican and Democratic governments. “If Putin can undermine a significant part of the population’s willingness to accept a court ruling, he could wreak havoc in this country,” Spaulding said.