A woman from Texas was detained last week after she allegedly left a threatening and racist voicemail for the federal judge in Washington, D.C., who was randomly selected to supervise the Justice Department’s election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.
A criminal complaint filed this week alleges that on the evening of August 5, Abigail Jo Shry left a voicemail for Black Judge Tanya Chutkan that said, in part, “You are in our sights, we want to kill you.”
According to the lawsuit, Shry warned Chutkan in a message that “we are coming to kill you” if Trump were not elected president in 2024. Shry further claimed that Chutkan’s “personal, public, your family, all of it” would be targeted.
According to the complaint, in the same voicemail Shry also threatened the LGBTQ community and fellow African-American Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas.
The tweet below verifies the news:
A Texas woman has been charged with threatening the federal judge overseeing Trump’s Jan. 6 case. https://t.co/efrAQ9daZp
— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 17, 2023
According to court filings, three days after the call, special agents from the Department of Homeland Security visited Shry’s house in the Houston suburb of Alvin, where she allegedly confessed to making the call.
She allegedly informed the special agents, “if Lee comes to Alvin, then we need to worry,” despite the fact that she had no plans to visit the nation’s capital. According to the complaint, Shry was then detained on federal charges of communicating a threat to hurt the person of another through interstate or foreign commerce.
According to the court docket, a detention hearing took place on Tuesday. Detention of Shry was ordered by a federal judge in Texas. The public attorney defending Shry did not answer to CBS News’ requests for comment, and the federal court in Washington, D.C. also declined to comment.
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This month, a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., charged Trump on four felony charges relating to his alleged efforts to change the outcome of the 2020 election. He is denying the allegations against him and has entered a not guilty plea.
Last Monday, Chutkan, who has presided over multiple cases relating to the January 6 rebellion in the Capitol, issued a protective order restricting the use and disclosure of “sensitive” evidence in the case. On Sunday, Trump posted an open attack against Chutkan on Truth Social, calling her “very unbiased & unfair.”
The Georgia district attorney for Fulton County just delivered Trump the fourth of four criminal cases on Monday. To further muddy the waters, the grand jury indictment also charges Trump and 18 others with plotting to alter the outcome of the 2020 election.
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