U.S. District Judge James Robart was hit with so many credible death threats after temporarily blocking ex-President Donald Trump’s “Muslim travel ban” in 2017 that U.S. marshals had to be stationed at his home after his address was posted online.
Robart told “60 Minutes” in a pre-taped interview on Sunday that the threats started pouring in after Trump dragged him on Twitter over his decision, calling him a “so-called judge” who “put our country in such peril.”
“People took that as somehow I was giving permission for their families to be endangered. And then the tone for a number of the messages turned into ‘you must be stopped,'” the judge said.
Robart said Trump had a “right” to attack his decision, though he believed that criticizing judges themselves was not acceptable.
“I recognize there’s a dispute on that,” the judge added, but “there is no dispute at the point that you start to talk about ‘I’m going to kill you’ or ‘I’m going to hurt you,’ or more importantly to me, ‘I’m going to hurt your family.'”
He received approximately 40,000 angry messages, and 1,100 of them prompted investigations, according to “60 Minutes.”
Trump’s ban aimed to bar entry into the U.S. against individuals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. President Joe Biden revoked the ban on his first day in office on January 20.
