Washington — An Alaska man was arrested Wednesday for allegedly threatening to assassinate six members of the Supreme Courtroom and hurt two members of the family, the Justice Division stated.
Panos Anastasiou, 76, is accused of sending greater than 465 messages to the Supreme Courtroom by a web based portal, which included violent, racist, and homophobic rhetoric, in response to courtroom filings. Anastasiou allegedly threatened to assassinate, kidnap, torture, grasp, behead and execute the justices, and inspired different individuals to hitch him in committing acts of violence, the Justice Division stated.
He faces 9 counts of constructing threats in opposition to a federal choose and 13 counts of constructing threats in interstate commerce. Anastasiou appeared earlier than a federal Justice of the Peace choose Wednesday and pleaded not responsible.
“We allege that the defendant made repeated, heinous threats to homicide and torture Supreme Courtroom Justices and their households to retaliate in opposition to them for choices he disagreed with,” Legal professional Common Merrick Garland, a former federal appeals courtroom choose, stated in an announcement. “Our justice system relies on the flexibility of judges to make their choices based mostly on the regulation, and never on worry. Our democracy relies on the flexibility of public officers to do their jobs with out fearing for his or her lives or the protection of their households.”
The Supreme Courtroom declined to touch upon the fees. An lawyer for Anastasiou was not listed in courtroom data.
The focused justices aren’t named within the indictment and recognized solely as “Supreme Courtroom justices 1-6.” Charging paperwork state that a number of the threats allegedly made by Anastasiou “had been supposed to intimidate” the justices and “retaliate in opposition to them for official actions” that they had taken of their capability as judges.
The messages had been despatched between January and July, when the Supreme Courtroom ended its time period, courtroom paperwork.
In one of many messages, despatched Jan. 4, Anastasiou allegedly threatened to homicide one justice by “offering the rope” to “grasp … from an Oak tree.” One other on Could 10 included a risk to kill the identical justice by “lynching.”
Courtroom filings state that in a Could 16 message referring to a second member of the Supreme Courtroom, Anastasiou allegedly threatened to kill the justice by “placing a bullet in his … head.” The Justice Division stated a message despatched the next day was focused not solely on the first two justices, but in addition two unnamed members of the family and warned of sending “fellow veterans” to “spray” their homes with bullets with hopes of killing them.
The Supreme Courtroom has a 6-3 conservative majority and has come beneath immense criticism lately for choices on politically charged points together with abortion, weapons and presidential energy. In its most up-to-date time period, the six conservatives voted to seek out former President Donald Trump is entitled to immunity from federal prosecution for official acts undertaken within the White Home.
Its June 2022 choice unwinding the constitutional proper to abortion was extremely criticized and led to protests outdoors the houses of a number of conservative justices, together with Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. A California man was arrested in June 2022 after he was discovered outdoors of Kavanaugh’s Maryland home with a gun, knife and numerous instruments, and charged with threatening to assassinate the justice. He pleaded not responsible.
