WASHINGTON (AP) — Hundreds of federal judges face the same task every day: reviewing an affidavit filed by federal agents and approving applications for search warrants. But for US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, the fallout from his decision to approve a search warrant has been far from routine.
He has faced a firestorm of death threats since his signing earlier this month cleared the way for the FBI to search former president donald trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as part of an investigation into whether it improperly removed sensitive White House materials. Reinhart’s home address was published on right-wing sites, along with anti-Semitic slurs. The South Florida synagogue he attends canceled its Friday night Shabbat services in the wake of the uproar.
Trump has done little to lower the temperature among his supporters, denouncing the search as political persecution and calling on Reinhart to recuse himself in the case because he previously made political donations to Democrats. However, Reinhart has also contributed to the Republicans.
The threats against Reinhart are part of a broader attack on law enforcement, particularly the FBI, by Trump and his allies after the manhunt. But experts warn that focusing on one judge, amid rising threats to the judiciary in general, is dangerous to the US rule of law and the country’s viability as a democracy.
“Threats against judges who carry out their constitutional responsibilities strike at the very core of our democracy,” said U.S. Second Circuit Judge Richard J. Sullivan, chair of the Judicial Conference Committee on Judicial Safety, in a statement. statement issued recently after the search. “Judges shouldn’t have to fear retaliation for doing their job.”
A phone message left in Reinhart’s rooms was not immediately returned. He will preside over a hearing Thursday at the request of media organizations, including The Associated Press, seeking to uncover the underlying affidavit the Justice Department submitted when it requested the Mar-a-Lago search warrant.
The vitriol directed at him, while shocking, is becoming increasingly common. In 2014, the US Marshals Service handled 768 incidents that it classified as “inappropriate communications” directed at judges and court employees. Last year, it reported more than 4,500.
At one point, “virtually everyone recognized how inappropriate it was to threaten the life or safety of a judge because of a disagreement with the judge’s decision,” said Barbara Lynn, chief judge for the Northern District of Texas. “Now I think there are a lot of people who don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”
Lynn is one of many court officials pushing Congress to pass the Daniel Anderl bill, named for the 20-year-old son of District Judge Esther Salas. They killed him in 2020 when an armed man arrived at his New Jersey home. His father was injured. The bill, which is supported by groups ranging from the American Bar Association to the National Association of Attorneys General, would keep more of the judges’ personal information private.
In June, a retired Wisconsin county circuit judge, John Roemer was assassinated at his home in what authorities said was a targeted killing by a gunman, who was also fatally wounded. Later that month, protesters converged on the homes of conservative US Supreme Court justices after they overturned a 49-year-old ruling that women have a constitutional right to have an abortion. Police arrested a man with knives, bridles and a gun near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home and said he planned to kill the conservative justice. Congress quickly approved money to beef up security at judges’ homes and provide 24-hour protection for their families.
The rise in attacks on judges comes as trust in public institutions plummets and partisan rhetoric rises. It’s part of a pattern that Steven Levitsky has seen before.
“This is a classic precursor to democratic collapse,” said Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and co-author of How Democracies Die. “To call this a warning sign is an understatement.”
Trump’s initial presidential campaign, during which he personally convicted a judge who ruled against him in a lawsuit over his now-defunct Trump University, changed the ground rules governing threats and explosive rhetoric, said Matthew Weil, executive director of Trump University. Democracy Initiative at Bipartisan. Policy Center in Washington, DC.
“Now there are threats everywhere, it has become more normalized because he changed what was allowed in public discourse,” said Weil, who said both the right and the left have resorted to threatening the judiciary.
Nathan Hall, senior consultant for the National Center for State Courts, noted that the combination of a lagging public trust, coupled with access to judges’ addresses and personal information, affects everyone from nationally known Supreme Court justices even anonymous state judges.
“This gets to the core issue of having equal access to justice, a fundamental foundational principle of our ability to function as an independent third branch of government. He’s really shocked to the core,” Hall said. “Judges are just people at the end of the day. They put on a robe, but still go home to their families.”
The latest warning sign came after last week’s search of Mar-A-Lago, the resort and Trump’s personal and political headquarters in Florida. FBI agents seized 11 sets of classified information as part of an investigation of three different federal laws, including one governing the collection, transmission or loss of defense information under the Espionage Act, according to court records.
Trump accused the government of abuse of power by attacking him, and his followers criticized the search onlineaddressed to the FBI and the Department of Justice. An armed man who posted threats against the FBI on the social network Truth de Trump was killed by authorities after trying to storm the agency’s office in Cincinnati.
Still, Trump and his supporters have waged a rhetorical war against the FBI for years since it was investigated whether Russia aided his initial campaign in 2016. The intense focus on an individual judge like Reinhart is relatively new.
Gretchen Helmke, a political scientist at the University of Rochester, said Trump’s action mirrors what demagogues have done in other countries where democracy has collapsed. “A popularly elected leader targeting a judiciary is often an early indicator of democratic erosion,” Helmke said in an email.
Helmke cited Venezuela, Bolivia and Peru as places where an incoming administration promised to clean up the judicial system and then packed it with its supporters. “The public never develops real trust in the judiciary, and it is essentially free for each incoming administration to use the previous government’s manipulation of the judiciary as a pretext to create the court it wants, Helmke said. “The end result is that there is no judicial independence and no rule of law.”
Hall said people can look to other countries and see what happens when public servants fear retaliation, places where “the rule of law has suffered. I guess there are probably a lot of differences of opinion about how far down that road we are, but it does raise an important question.”
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Riccardi reported from Denver.
More on the investigations related to Donald Trump: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump
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