A chilling new tactic is sweeping the United States judiciary: strangers ordering pizzas to federal judges' homes to prove they know exactly where they live. The campaign, which federal prosecutors have labelled 'pizza doxxing,' has now touched more than 50 judges nationwide, according to testimony from sitting jurists.
A Murdered Son's Name Turned Into a Weapon
The most disturbing feature of the campaign is not the pizza itself. It is the name on the order.
In approximately two dozen cases across the country, judges received unsolicited pizza deliveries addressed to Daniel Anderl, the late son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas, the New Jersey judge whose family was attacked in 2020. On 19 July 2020, Salas and her husband, Mark Anderl, were celebrating their son Daniel's 20th birthday at their New Jersey home when the doorbell rang.
A man posing as a delivery driver opened fire, killing Daniel, her only child, and wounding Mark. The gunman, Roy Den Hollander, was a self-proclaimed men's rights lawyer who fled the scene and later took his own life in upstate New York.
Whoever is placing these orders now exploits that tragedy with deliberate precision. Salas has described the message the perpetrators are sending as: 'I know where you live. I know where your kids live. Do you want to end up like Judge Salas? Do you want to end up like her son?'
Seattle District Judge Robert Lasnik, who has spoken publicly about attacks on the judiciary, said that to his knowledge more than 50 judges nationwide have been pizza-doxxed, not including judges' families and associates.
Threats Against Judges at a Multi-Decade High
The pizza deliveries are one front in a broader assault on the judiciary. Last year, 400 federal judges were the targets of serious threats; a 78 per cent jump compared to four years ago, according to the U.S. Marshals.
Federal District Judge John Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee who has served for 44 years, said he faced 'dozens if not hundreds' of death threats after he temporarily blocked President Trump's birthright citizenship executive order and called it 'blatantly unconstitutional.'
The threats did not stop at letters and emails. Armed sheriff's deputies appeared at Coughenour's front door responding to a hoax report that he had killed his wife. A bomb threat followed the next day. A congressman subsequently posted a wanted poster featuring Coughenour and other federal judges who had ruled against the administration.
Ron Zayas, CEO of Ironwall, a company that scrubs judges' personal data from the web — described a shift in the nature of the threats. 'The threats used to be, 'you ruled against me and I want to kill you,' ' Zayas told CBS News. 'Now the kind of threats we're seeing, there's a whole other sphere of saying 'I want to influence what you do.' It's mob mentality.'
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SS: Reported threats to judges are becoming common place with more sophisticated and pervasive tactics increasingly used. Pizza deliveries marked with the name of a slain Judge’s is one of the latest tactics used to intimidate judges. The integrity and safery of the justice system to outside threats and intimidation are key aspects of liberalism.