WASHINGTON — A Texas woman faces federal charges for allegedly threatening to kill the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s election fraud case and a Democratic member of Congress earlier this month.
In a criminal complaint filed Friday, federal investigators say Abigail Jo Shry, 43, of Alvin, Texas, left a voicemail on Aug. 5 threatening to kill U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX). News of the complaint was first reported Wednesday evening by Bloomberg Law.
According to the complaint, Shry admitted to Department of Homeland Security investigators she left the voicemail, which began, “Hey you stupid slave” followed by a racial epithet and then proceeded to threaten to kill anyone who went after Trump. That list included Chutkan, Lee, “all Democrats in Washington D.C. and all people in the LGBTQ community,” investigators wrote. “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” Shry allegedly said at one point, later adding, “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, b****.”
“You will be targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it,” she is alleged to have said.
On Monday, a federal judge in Texas ordered Shry held without bond during a preliminary detention hearing. Magistrate Judge Sam S. Sheldon’s detention order noted Shry has been charged four times in the past year for engaging in similar conduct, including at least two cases that resulted in conviction and 30 days imprisonment. According to Sheldon, Shry was also charged on July 11 with misdemeanor threat causing fear of imminent serious bodily injury and was on bond in that case when she made the alleged call to Chutkan’s office in D.C.
A full bond hearing for Shry was scheduled for Sept. 13 in the Southern District of Texas.
Trump has publicly assailed Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, calling her “highly partisan” and “ VERY BIASED & UNFAIR!” because of her past comments in a separate case overseeing the sentencing of one of the defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Chutkan in a hearing Friday imposed a protective order in the 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.”
