Former President Donald Trump's constant attacks on the justice system as he faces down four criminal cases are putting judges in mortal danger, warned CNN law enforcement analyst John Miller on Tuesday morning.
"I have been through these investigations before many times in the New York City Police Department," said Miller. "We ... have a specific threat squad that does threat assessments. They send people out and interview these people and assess the person who posted it, and sometimes they say I didn't mean that or I was drunk or angry. Sometimes they'll say, we're going to take this investigation a step further and into another case they can make an arrest." This matters, he added, because tragedies have happened, from the shooting of Judge Esther Salas' family in New Jersey to the murder of retired Judge John Roemer in Wisconsin.
"Threats against judges in this country have skyrocketed; between 2016 and, I think 2018, they doubled," said Miller. "Last year, for federal judges, just federal judges, that's 2,700 federal judges, there were 4,500 threats that are serious enough to merit an investigation by the United States Marshals."
"That's an incredible number, 4,500 against judges," said anchor Poppy Harlow. "What is driving it?"
ALSO READ: Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition includes bigots, advocate of killing Obama
"Well, a couple of factors," said Miller. "Number one, there is the perceived anonymity of a person making threats of the internet, of social media. It's not like you're calling up the judge's office in most of these cases and saying, I'm going to kill Judge Smith. But when you're on message boards and using a handle or a screen name that's not your true name and the conversation gets going, and I saw this in the first criminal indictment in Manhattan where they started threatening the prosecutor, the Manhattan D.A., where they started threatening the judge."
"But beyond that ... you have Donald Trump, a former President of the United States, making vivid vitriolic personal attacks on prosecutors, on judges, calling them names, that adds gasoline to the fire into these chatrooms and people feel they are being called on," he continued. "The problem is, for authorities, is sorting out the noise from who the real player is going to be, who might show up and do something. You look at the Nancy Pelosi case where an individual showed up at her home in San Francisco, home invasion, assaulted her husband. Someone who was not on the radar screen and comes out of the woodwork. So these are difficult cases."
Watch the video below or at the link here.
John Miller on Trump threat to judgeswww.youtube.com
