By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) - An Alaska man has been arrested on charges that he threatened to assault, kidnap and murder six U.S. Supreme Court justices and some of their family members in online messages that contained violent and racist language.
Panos Anastasiou, 76, was arrested on Wednesday after prosecutors said he sent more than 465 messages to the Supreme Court through its website beginning in March 2023 that turned increasingly violent starting in January 2024.
The 22-count indictment did not identify the justices by name.
But some appeared to belong to the court's 6-3 conservative majority, including Justice Clarence Thomas. Prosecutors said some threats concerned a former president Anastasiou referred to as a "convicted criminal," a likely reference to Republican former President Donald Trump after his New York trial.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement on Thursday that Anastasiou was accused of making "repeated, heinous threats to murder and torture Supreme Court justices and their families to retaliate against them for decisions he disagreed with."
The Supreme Court's most recent term ended with a ruling holding presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution, handing Trump a victory in his efforts to defeat federal charges over his efforts to undo his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
The Anchorage resident pleaded not guilty on Wednesday. His lawyer declined to comment. The Supreme Court did not respond to requests for comment.
The case was filed amid a surge in threats to judges nationally, as documented in a Reuters investigation. Serious threats against federal judges rose to 457 in fiscal-year 2023, from 224 in fiscal 2021, the U.S. Marshals Service said.
A California man, Nicholas Roske, is awaiting trial after being charged in 2022 with attempting to assassinate conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Among the threats made by Anastasiou, according to prosecutors, were one in January saying he wanted to see one of the justices hanged from a tree with the former president.
Anastasiou used racist slurs when referring to that justice and made one threat targeting him and his "white ... insurrectionist wife," according to court papers.
Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly called for Thomas, who is Black, to recuse himself from cases involving the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack because text messages showed his wife, Ginni Thomas, who is white, encouraged attempts to overturn Trump's 2020 electoral loss.
Prosecutors said that Anastasiou wrote on May 17, 2024, that he hoped the justice and his wife would be visiting the residence of another "disrespectful" justice and his wife when he hoped they would be shot by other Vietnam veterans like himself with AR-15 semi-automatic rifles.
A day earlier, the New York Times had reported that an American flag was photographed hanging upside down at the Virginia home of Justice Samuel Alito in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot, which Alito attributed to his wife.