Donald Trump 'set the stage' for judges to receive thousands of death threats: report

Former president Donald Trump has "set the stage" for U.S. judges to be pummeled with death threats by disparaging the judiciary system and those who have sworn to uphold it, according to a new report.

Trump, the frontrunner Republican in the 2024 presidential race, also faces 91 felonies in four criminal court cases he has cast as a political witch hunt.

That rhetoric, according to a federal judge who handles dozens of Jan. 6 cases, comes at a price.

“I could not believe how many death threats I got," U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth told Reuters Thursday.

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The judge, who has overcome threats from drug cartels and terrorists loyal to al Qaeda, has fielded phone calls to his home with "graphic vows to murder him," he told Reuters.

“We had never even contemplated that one of us could get killed in this job,” he said.

Reuters reports a recent spike in the annual average of threats against federal judges, court staff and prosecutors. Before Trump's 2016 campaign the average was about 1,180. Afterward, it tripled to 3,810.

In chatrooms, the tenor has been boiling, according to the report.

“Hanging judges for treason is soon to be on the menu boys!” reads one anonymous entry on the pro-Trump forum Patriots.

“Donald Trump set the stage,” retired Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who is also a Republican, said before hanging up her robe in 2022.

She continued to say the former president “gave permission by his actions and words for others to come forward and talk about judges in terms not just criticizing their decisions, but disparaging them and the entire judiciary.”