A Texas woman has been charged with threatening to kill the federal judge overseeing the criminal case against former President Trump in Washington, D.C., and a member of Congress, the Associated Press reports. Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Tex., called the federal courthouse in Washington and left the threatening message — using a racist term for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — on Aug. 5. Investigators traced her phone number and she later admitted to making the threatening call, according to a criminal complaint. In the call, Shry told the judge, who is overseeing the election conspiracy case against Trump, “You are in our sights, we want to kill you.” Prosecutors allege Shry said, “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you,” and she threatened to kill U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), who is running for mayor of Houston.
A judge ordered Shry jailed. Trump has publicly assailed Chutkan, a former public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Obama, calling her “highly partisan” and “ VERY BIASED & UNFAIR!” because of her past comments in a separate case sentencing a defendant charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Chutkan has imposed a protective order in the Trump case limiting what evidence handed over by prosecutors the former president and his legal team can publicly disclose. She warned Trump’s lawyers that his defense should be mounted in the courtroom and “not on the internet.”