Justice Sonia Sotomayor was targeted by gunman, federal judge tells ’60 Minutes’
US District Court Judge Esther Salas said that a gunman who killed her son and wounded her husband in 2020 had also set his sights on Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, according to a CBS News “60 Minutes” report airing Sunday.
Salas said that authorities found a dossier on Sotomayor in a locker used by the assailant, Roy Den Hollander, a lawyer who had a case before Salas and took his own life after killing her son Daniel.
“They found another gun, a Glock, more ammunition. But the most troubling thing they found was a manila folder with a workup on Justice Sonia Sotomayor,” Salas said in the interview.
A Supreme Court spokeswoman declined to comment on the report, saying the court does “not discuss security as a matter of court policy.”
Chief Justice John Roberts has not commented directly on the attack but has spoken out about security concerns in the past, issuing a rare rebuke to then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for criticisms he made of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch on the court steps in 2020.
“Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest level of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous,” Roberts said at the time.
Salas and others are working to pass legislation that would protect judges’ personally identifiable information from publication on public internet sites.
“Who knows what could have happened?” Salas told CBS. “But we need to understand that judges are at risk. That we put ourselves in great danger every day for doing our jobs.”
James Duff, then-director of the Administrative Office of the US Courts, told Congress last year that there were 4,449 threats and inappropriate communications in 2019, up from 926 such incidents in 2015, according to the US Marshals Service.
