Trump’s rhetoric breeds 'unprecedented' threats, federal judge in Seattle says

A federal judge in Seattle is calling on President Trump and his supporters to tone down hostile language toward the courts.

U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik said calling judges names and threatening to seek their impeachment has resulted in an unprecedented number of online threats to judges themselves. Those get forwarded to the U.S. Marshals Service for investigation.

“Never have we been under the kind of volume of threats and need for [U.S.] Marshals to really research where is this threat coming form. Is it from this country or out of the country? Is it credible or not credible? And they’re working really hard,” he said.

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Lasnik said he’s speaking publicly because he is not presiding over any of the lawsuits filed in Seattle challenging Trump’s orders on everything from refugee admissions to transgender health care for minors. And while threats have always been an occasional concern, he said it’s been hard to see his newly appointed colleagues on the bench in Seattle, including Jamal Whitehead and Lauren King, targeted after they placed Trump’s executive orders on hold.

“Right away they were subject to a lot of hostility online,” Lasnik said. “I tell them, ‘I feel for you, and especially for your families.’ It’s not easy for the families to see what your reaction is, and to worry about their own safety.”

His colleague Judge John Coughenour also reported a swatting attack in which someone sent sheriff’s deputies to his home after he blocked Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship.

In 2020, the 20-year-old son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas was shot and killed at her home by a self-described "anti-feminist" lawyer, according to The New York Times.

Lasnik said the Marshals have instructed court employees on how to keep safe.

“We’re having training, we’re having alerts,” he said.

Lasnik pointed to his employee badge.

“We’re being asked not to wear anything like this that identifies who you are when you’re going out into public," he said.

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Lasnik said judges would feel more secure if politicians would lower the temperature.

“It’s okay to criticize our rulings, that’s perfectly alright,” he said. “But there’s no need to refer to a judge as a radical left-wing lunatic,” as Trump called the district judge in Washington, D.C., who issued an order temporarily blocking deportation of Venezuelan immigrants, or to call for impeachment of judges as Trump and his advisor Elon Musk have done.

“It breeds threats of violence against judges,” he said.

Lasnik said judges were heartened when Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement last month saying, “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

“No one else has that platform that [Roberts] has — so he needs to do it,” Lasnik said. “We don’t know if it’s going to stop what’s going on, but just to know that the chief justice has your back makes you feel good.”

Lasnik said he was also encouraged by a recent poll that found 70% of Americans oppose impeaching judges for ruling against Trump’s orders.

Lasnik said it should give the public confidence to see that judges from different backgrounds, appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents, are coming to similar conclusions on the legality of Trump’s executive orders.

“We’re applying the rule of law,” he said, pointing to two different challenges to Trump’s order disqualifying transgender people from military service.

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One challenge was filed in district court in the District of Columbia, before Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee.

“She was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. She’s in her early 50s," Lasnik said. "She’s the first Hispanic and LGBTQ federal judge in the District of Columbia.”

As reenacted on a recent episode of "This American Life," Judge Reyes told the lawyer defending Trump’s order that the “unsupported assertions” about transgender service members lacking integrity showed the government’s animus without facts to back it up.

Reyes compared its arbitrariness to the idea of her suddenly banning lawyers in her courtroom who graduated from UVA law school on the unsupported claim that they lack integrity — and then she told that lawyer to sit down, to illustrate her point.

“Some people might say she even crossed some lines of decorum, but the ruling itself: strong on the law,” Lasnik said.

Lasnik pointed out a similar challenge was considered by U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma, a former captain in the Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps at Fort Lewis, who was appointed by George W. Bush.

“You couldn’t find two more different people in terms of background,” Lasnik said. “But he got to the same result because we’re applying the law.”

Lasnik said both judges blocked Trump’s order on the basis that “there's simply no evidence to support the executive order’s findings that being a transgender person is dishonest and makes you not qualified to be in the military.”

He said it’s also distressing to see the U.S. Justice Department becoming more politicized.

“There's always been a wall between the sitting president and his attorney general,” he said, “and that should remain there. So it's worrisome to see the attorney general talking about these judges needing to be removed…That's very unfortunate.”

Lasnik said he’s not close enough to the various legal challenges to say whether the Trump administration is complying with the many court orders issued so far.

“So far, the president has not defied an order from the U.S. Supreme Court," Lasnik said. "And that's the ultimate question there, in terms of, are we in a true, full-out constitutional crisis? And I'm hopeful that the president, if it comes to that, will still abide by the tradition that every president has abided by, which was to follow the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, even if they disagree with him.”