Texas woman charged with threatening to kill judge in Trump election case
A Texas woman has been arrested and charged with threatening to kill the federal judge overseeing the criminal case against the former US president Donald Trump in Washington DC, and a member of Congress.
Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, called the federal courthouse in Washington DC and left the threatening message, using a racist term for the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, on 5 August, court records allege. Investigators traced her phone number and she later admitted to making the threatening call, according to a criminal complaint.
In the call, Shry told told the judge, who is overseeing the election conspiracy case against Trump: “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” according to the documents. Prosecutors allege Shry also said: “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you.” She also threatened to kill Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat representative running for mayor of Houston, according to court documents. A judge earlier this week ordered Shry jailed. Court records show Shry is represented by the Houston public defender’s office, which did not immediately return a message on Wednesday asking for comment.
Trump has publicly attacked Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by the then president, Barack Obama, calling her “highly partisan” and “very biased and unfair” because of her past comments in a separate case overseeing the sentencing of one of the defendants charged in the 6 January 2021 riot at the US Capitol.
In a hearing on Friday, Chutkan imposed a protective order limiting the evidence handed over by prosecutors that the former president and his legal team could publicly disclose.
She told Trump’s lawyers that his defence should be mounted in the courtroom and “not on the internet”.