Fake pizza orders sent to judges seen as threat to judicial safety

Federal judges say unsolicited pizza deliveries to jurists’ homes that began in February may number in the hundreds across at least seven states, prompting increased security concerns and a demand from a Senate leader for a Justice Department investigation.

Many of the deliveries have gone to judges presiding over lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s policies. The U.S. Marshals Service has been tracking the deliveries, and judges have been sharing details about their experiences in hopes of finding out more about what they call an ongoing attempt at intimidating the judiciary.

Some of the pizza deliveries have gone to judges’ relatives. In recent weeks, orders have been placed in the name of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas’ son, Daniel Anderl, who was fatally shot at the family home in New Jersey in 2020 by an attorney who posed as a delivery person.

In an interview with the Washington Post, U.S. Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs, who serves in Washington, said she has received seven anonymous pizza deliveries at her home in the past few months – one shortly after she took part in a ruling against the Trump administration in a lawsuit over the firing of an independent government watchdog.

“It’s unsettling because I’d like to go to work every day, even with the hardest case, just feeling like there’s no sense of intimidation,” said Childs, president of the Federal Judges Association.

“It’s really an unnecessary and an unfortunate threat to our security when we’re trying to be judicial officers in a very neutral position with respect to our cases,” she said. “You need a strong judiciary for the system to work. This is infringing on democracy generally.”

Childs and Salas said that they and other judges have discussed the deliveries with the marshals, relaying information to them each time a pizza arrives at the door. Childs serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Salas serves on the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

The Marshals Service declined to discuss the deliveries in detail, including the number of deliveries that judges have reported or how many judges have been targeted. A Marshals Service spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the agency “is looking into all the unsolicited pizza deliveries to federal judges and taking appropriate steps to address the matter.”

In March, the office of the U.S. Marshals Service 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 review.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. warned about harassment and threats directed at the federal judiciary in his year-end report in December, saying threats of violence, disinformation and defiance of court orders had risen significantly.

As the administration fights more than 200 legal challenges to its policies, President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly criticized judges who rule against them, at times describing them as radicals. Trump in March called for the impeachment of Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, who temporarily barred the government from using a wartime authority to deport alleged gang members without due process. The impeachment call drew a rare rebuke from Roberts.

White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in an emailed statement that attacks against judges and other public officials “have no place in our society.”

“President Trump knows all too well the impact of callous attacks having faced two assassination attempts,” Fields said.

Childs said she was at home doing chores on a weekend in February when the first unsolicited pizza arrived at her house. It came not long after she and another circuit judge rejected a motion by administration lawyers that would have cleared the way for Trump to fire Hampton Dellinger, who was the head of the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency that protects whistleblowers.

She mentioned the experience at a judges meeting soon after, saying it felt strange, then got word a couple of weeks later that the marshals were looking into similar deliveries.

In the following months, six more pizzas arrived at her house. Some came in early April, Childs said, right after she lectured on the rule of law at the National Judicial College and spoke about threats to the judiciary on a National Constitution Center podcast.

Childs said she and her husband now know not to answer the door when a delivery person arrives. They talk through their Ring doorbell camera instead.

“We’ve been asking questions, not opening the door, just looking through the Ring,” she said, adding that the deliveries have come through multiple pizza vendors and one third-party delivery app. “Each time, we learn a little bit more.”

The deliveries to Childs and others share some characteristics with swatting, the popular and dangerous form of harassment in which law enforcement officers are called to respond to a fake crime at a person’s home as a hoax. Judges, administration officials and other public figures have been targeted with swatting in recent years. Authorities in many swatting cases have struggled to track down the callers, who use various technologies to hide their identities.

Salas, the federal judge whose son was murdered, said she has watched with growing alarm over the past few months as whoever sent the pizzas to judges appeared to change tactics.

“It went from judges getting pizzas, to then judges’ children getting pizzas, to then judges getting pizzas or their children getting pizzas that they didn’t order in my murdered son’s name,” Salas said.

Daniel Anderl was 20 when a lawyer who had a case before Salas fatally shot him at their home. Salas’ husband was critically injured by the gunman, who killed himself after the shooting. In response, Congress in 2022 passed the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, which restricts the disclosure or sale of personal information of federal judges and their family members.

The methods people use to shield their identities when sending the pizzas or to find the home addresses of judges and their relatives remain unclear. A search by the Post found that some of that information is accessible on doxing websites, public records platforms and property databases.

Salas said a federal judge handling a case involving the administration was the first to tell her he had received a pizza in Daniel’s name. The judge called April 8 as she was preparing a speech she would make the next day for the opening of a food pantry dedicated to her son.

It felt like “psychological warfare,” she said.

“We know what that all means, right?” Salas said. “We know the first is, ‘I know where you live.’ Second is, ‘We know where your children live.’ And the third now is, ‘Do you want to end up like Judge Salas? Do you want to end up like Daniel?’”

In the time since, she said, pizzas have been sent to judges in her son’s name in D.C. and at least seven states: Rhode Island, New York, California, Tennessee, South Carolina, Maryland and Oregon.

“To have his name weaponized as a vehicle of fear and intimidation, that takes quite a toll,” she said.

“Our leaders, people in positions of power, people with large social platforms need to think about the consequences that may flow” from the inflammatory rhetoric directed at judges, Salas added. “Lives are very well at stake, and we can look to examples like Daniel.”

The pizza deliveries have drawn the attention of Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, who last week called on the Justice Department and FBI to investigate. Durbin, of Illinois, said the deliveries were “threats intended to show that those seeking to intimidate the targeted judge know the judge’s address or their family members’ addresses.”

In a letter, he asked Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel to inform him by May 20 whether they had identified suspects, initiated prosecutions or found evidence that the deliveries were coordinated.

It is not clear what, if any, role Justice Department headquarters and the FBI have played in investigating the deliveries so far. The FBI referred questions about the matter to the Marshals Service, and a Justice Department spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

Paul Redmond Michel, a former federal appeals court judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan, said the pizza deliveries and other threats highlighted an urgent need for Trump, Bondi and other administration officials to make clear that they will follow court orders, regardless of the outcome, and prioritize judges’ safety.

“We know from the January 6, 2021, rioters that there are people out there who are perfectly prepared to be extremely violent and damaging and threatening,” said Michel, a member of the newly formed Keep Our Republic’s Article III Coalition, an advocacy group of about two dozen former judges.

“Judges have to feel confident enough in being protected,” he said, “that they can make decisions without looking over their shoulders and worrying about whether the decision, if it’s unpleasing to the administration, might cause them some kind of harm.”