A Texas woman has been arrested and charged with threatening to kill the federal judge overseeing the criminal case against former President Donald Trump in Washington.
Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, also threatened to kill U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat running for mayor of Houston.
Shry told the U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the election conspiracy case against Trump, “You are in our sights; we want to kill you.”
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Prosecutors allege Shry also 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, a Texas Democrat running for mayor of Houston, according to the Associated Press.
Court records show Shry is represented by the Houston public defender’s office, which did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled in favor of Trump on an evidence motion last Friday while also rejecting key requests that Trump had sought in the case.
Trump’s attorneys appeared in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday regarding the issuance of a protective order in the case, which would limit the prosecution’s evidence disclosed to Trump and his legal team that they could, in turn, disclose to the public.
“I’m not persuaded that the government has shown good cause to subject to the protective order all the information in this case,” Chutkan remarked during the hearing, denying the special counsel’s request to restrict Trump from disclosing all the evidence in the case, which he had opposed. “I don’t want this order to be overinclusive. I don’t want to just issue a blanket protective order over information that is not sensitive,” Chutkan added, while ruling that only information deemed “sensitive” would be subject to the order.
The request for a loose protective order had been sought by Trump’s team given his candidacy for president in the 2024 election, where his criminal charges and the alleged weaponization of the Department of Justice are a central discussion point for his campaign. Trump, on Aug. 8, accused Smith of “taking away my First Amendment rights” by seeking the order in a post on Truth Social.
On the question of what was “sensitive” information, neither Chutkan nor the special counsel’s prosecutor, Thomas Windom, set a comprehensive definition. The special counsel plans to disclose up to 11.6 million pages of evidence to Trump, a vast amount of discovery that includes testimony from Trump administration officials, telephone transcripts and social media records, among others, The Hill reported.
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Chutkan, however, said that witness interviews and recordings of conversations would be deemed “sensitive,” given their alleged potential for misuse by Trump. “I can see how in advance of trial making public statements about potential witnesses is going to in and of itself affect the orderly administration of justice and could run afoul of his release conditions,” Chutkan said, referring to the bar on Trump communicating with any witnesses in the case that was ordered at his arraignment on Aug. 3.
During those arguments, Windom said that the special counsel had received some confidential witness transcripts from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, which had not been previously released to the public and whose existence wasn’t known.
Chutkan, further rejected several requests by Trump’s attorney, John Lauro, for exemptions to the definition of “sensitive material.” She also declined to permit Trump to enlist the help of volunteer attorneys to help review the 11.6 million pages of discovery, citing its enormity and asked Lauro to submit a detailed proposal regarding review.
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Regarding Trump’s personal review of the documents, Chutkan said that Trump would not be permitted to review them while using an electronic device, citing his propensity to disclose information. “He cannot have access to any electronic device [while reviewing] … anything that could reproduce or copy those materials,” Chutkan said, while also ordering Trump’s attorneys to review any handwritten notes he makes about the matter.
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