Interview transcript: 

Jared Serbu Mr. McDaniel, let’s talk a little bit about some of the underlying factors and reasons why you organized this letter in the first place. What has changed that concerns you enough to take this step in recent days, weeks, months?

Dustin McDaniel Well, we’ve seen a significant increase in threats on the judiciary both at the state and federal level for the last several years. We pointed out that threats have increased significantly as per the numbers from the U.S. Marshal Service, and that doesn’t even count state judicial officials. And honestly, we were aware of it, but earlier this year, a group of incumbent actively serving federal judges reached out to me and my co-chair of SAGE, the Society of AGs Emeritus in Nebraska, John Brunning, and they asked specifically for former attorneys general to use their voices as lawyers and as former chief law enforcement officials in our states to encourage Congress to focus on the issue. And that was a very unusual thing. We’ve never had federal judges ask us, honestly, for anything. And so it drew our attention to the fact that they must genuinely be afraid for themselves, their families, and the integrity of the judicial system. So that was the first thing that sparked it. I will also tell you that back in September, I was in New Jersey for a meeting of attorneys general and Federal Judge Esther Salas spoke to the group and she had the most tragic story which she has been telling across the nation. But as a federal judge, she was targeted for assassination. And the man came to her home and her son and husband made it to the front door before she did. And her husband was shot several times and survived, but her son was murdered. And she was the intended target. And since that time, she has been an evangelist around the country trying to raise awareness that these threats are not just against individual members of the judiciary, but against our judicial system as a whole, undermining the rights and liberties of every single American. So between the call this summer and hearing Judge Salas speak so personally about her own experience, we felt moved to try to do what we could.

Jared Serbu And judges generally don’t go out and hold a press conference every time they receive one of these threats and they probably don’t get the media or public attention that they probably otherwise would if they were to do something like that. I mean, what’s your sense of how commonplace these sorts of things are becoming that just sort of escape public attention, because the U.S. Marshal Service, the statistics keeping agency, is really the only one tracking it?

Dustin McDaniel Well, I know that when I was attorney general, we had a political assassination in Arkansas of a high ranking official, and that prompted me to do internal security reviews in our own office. And I had no idea how many threats that I as the AG was getting on a a rather frequent basis. And so we have seen attorneys general, at that time security for AGs was kind of the exception. Today it’s the norm. And you talk to attorneys general who never thought they would want or need to have part-time or even full-time security detail, and it’s because of the credibility and frequency of the threats against them and their families that they simply have no choice. We are hearing that at the same level in the judiciary. After Judge Salas’ son Daniel’s tragic and senseless murder, we have seen a significant increase in threats on judges in the form of pizza deliveries. Federal judges at their home will receive late at night an unordered pizza delivery, and the name on the pizza will be Daniel, which is Judge Salas’ dead son’s name. That only signal to a federal judge is, we know who you are, we know where you are, and that we are sending you a message, whoever they are. Even if that never results in violence, that clearly is intimidating and upsetting and undermining the independence and security of our judicial system, which again is about more than just the judges. It’s about the people.

Jared Serbu Have you seen any indications, and this is impossible to quantify, I realize, that this change in the threat environment is influencing either the ways or the actual content of judicial decisions? Do we have any indication that it’s playing a role in how the judiciary operates?

Dustin McDaniel Well, we have always known that jurors who are judicial officials, even though they’re ordinary citizens, when they are serving as a member of a jury, they are judicial officials critical. And we know that intimidation and bribery of jurors has long been a concern. And we do have specific cases of that. I don’t have any specific cases that I can cite where a federal judge folded under threat or pressure and ruled in a way that he or she would not have ruled otherwise, but they’re human beings. And of course they’re going to have to take some of that into consideration. And it certainly makes it harder. The federal judges that I talk to, most of whom, they’re all underpaid. Our federal judges are underpaid. They certainly could make more money in private practice if they didn’t commit themselves to a lifetime of service to the nation. And the ones I talk to do it because they believe it’s their duty, and their patriotic duty to the country to serve in that capacity. So what I’m seeing from judges is a strong resilience and a commitment that they’re not going to be intimidated and they are going to do their jobs despite these threats, which makes them all the more important for us to protect them. And certainly their families didn’t sign up for that that risk and duty. And so the fact that they continue to go to work and make tough decisions every day is, they’re used to it when they are sentencing mob bosses. They’re not used to it when just their ordinary daily duties lead to the crazy people in their community targeting them for violence, often for political reasons.

Jared Serbu And so part of the ask in the letter is increased funding, and more security kind of throughout the Article III World. What would that actually look like in practice? And are there obvious gaps that you see right now that’s kind of low-hanging fruit that needs to be taken care of right away?

Dustin McDaniel Well, we got forty, the former attorneys general of forty states and the District of Columbia and I think three territories to sign on to this letter because we recognize that the problem has to be addressed. That being said, we stopped short of trying to tell Congress how to do their job. The Congress can appropriate money, and I think everybody trusts the U.S. Marshal Service to know their jobs and know how to fill the gaps once they get adequate funding and resources. I know from my own experience that they have proactive means to where they are looking for threats, even those that have not made themselves known, and then they have a reactive function to react once a threat comes in or someone says or does something that gets on their radar. I trust the U.S. Marshal Service to do their job well as long as they’re given adequate resources and time and personnel to do it. And make no mistake, this is only at the federal level. It was not practical for us to send a similar letter to every state legislature in the country. However, this is a pressing issue in every state in America.

Jared Serbu What’s behind all that? Because that fact, the fact that this is happening both in federal cases that may receive a lot of media attention or are politically charged in some way, that it’s not isolated to those and that it’s also extending to state courts, kind of points to some sort of broader, I almost want to say cultural problem. I don’t know what it is. What’s your take on what’s behind all this? And, to the extent we can point to those things, are there things that can be done, again to take your point on proactive versus reactive, to tamp down those threats instead of just responding to them?

Dustin McDaniel Well, it’s a way bigger issue than any one person can really address, and my opinion on how it’s come to be is just like anyone else’s, but we’ve certainly seen in the last thirty years a rise in school shootings, mass casualty events, online hostility, people venting their tempers in ways that would have not been anticipated, much less considered acceptable, not that long ago. There are angry people in our society. Why they’re angry, everyone’s got their opinion on that. How they manifest their frustrations, regardless of whether they’re with the economy or their elected officials or the judicial system or things that are much more personal, there are outlets, but one outlet that is simply not acceptable and that we cannot tolerate is threatening those people that we as a society entrust to hold folks accountable, to enforce our rights, to keep us safe in our own homes. We can’t expect any of that of the judiciary if they themselves are under daily threat.

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