Sen. Durbin wants DOJ to probe anonymous pizza deliveries to judges

The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday called on the Justice Department and FBI to investigate a series of anonymous pizza deliveries made to the homes of federal judges in recent months, saying they appeared to be part of a wave of threats against the judiciary.

Sen. Dick Durbin (Illinois) asked Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel in a letter for a full accounting of how many anonymous or pseudonymous deliveries have been made to judges or their families since the beginning of the Trump administration, including the number of judges affected and the districts or circuits where the judges serve.

Many of the pizzas reportedly showed up at the homes of judges presiding over cases the administration was defending. Some were made in the name of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas’s son, Daniel Anderl, who was fatally shot in 2020 by an attorney who posed as a delivery person, Salas and trial attorney Paul R. Kiesel wrote last month.

Durbin asked Bondi and Patel to report back to him by May 20 on whether they had identified suspects, initiated prosecutions, or found evidence that the deliveries were coordinated. He also asked them to describe what steps their agencies have taken to protect judges and their families.

The deliveries began around late February, as government lawyers tried to fend off a growing list of legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s policies, and Trump and his allies lobbed near-daily attacks on judges whose rulings they disliked.

The U.S. Marshals Service, which provides security for federal judges and courthouses, is investigating the deliveries, but it is not clear what if any role Justice Department headquarters and the FBI have played so far. Representatives from the Justice Department and FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In March, the office of the U.S. Marshal for the Southern District of New York sent a memo to some judges in the area mentioning the anonymous pizza deliveries and saying the incidents appeared to be connected to high-profile court cases, according to a person familiar with the memo who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains under investigation.

The senders have targeted judges at multiple levels, including Supreme Court justices, and the children of some judges, Durbin wrote in his letter, which cited several news reports on the matter.

“These deliveries are threats intended to show that those seeking to intimidate the targeted judge know the judge’s address or their family members’ addresses,” Durbin wrote.

Durbin’s letter also called for Bondi and Patel to commit to maintaining or increasing the number of employees with the Marshals amid pressure to downsize.

“It is inappropriate and unacceptable to reduce the size of the agency tasked with protecting the federal judiciary and the judicial process,” Durbin wrote.

Current and former judges have increasingly expressed concern regarding what they have said is a spate of threats, harassment and inflammatory rhetoric against the judiciary. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in his annual report on the judiciary in December that judges faced mounting threats of violence, intimidation, disinformation and officials saying they may defy lawful court decisions.

J. Michelle Childs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said she was among the judges who recently received an anonymous pizza delivery.

At first, she thought it was a mistake when the delivery driver showed up at her door on a Saturday night, she said in a podcast interview with the National Constitution Center in April. She said she mentioned the delivery at a federal judges meeting soon after, saying “something felt odd about it.” She found out weeks later that the Marshals were looking into similar deliveries to other federal judges, she said.

Salas, whose husband was critically injured by the attacker who killed her son, wrote in an essay with Kiesel that some judges had received pizzas with messages saying, “I know where you live.”

They wrote that the issue involved cruelty and “calculated intimidation.”

“These are not isolated events,” they wrote. “They are part of a broader pattern of fear-based tactics aimed at silencing legal professionals and undermining the independence of the courts.”