By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) – A Texas woman pleaded guilty on Wednesday after being charged with threatening to kill individuals including the federal judge overseeing the 2020 election subversion criminal case against Republican President-elect Donald Trump.
Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, pleaded guilty in federal court in Houston to a threat-related charge arising out of a voicemail prosecutors said she left with the chambers of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, in Washington, D.C., threatening to kill her and others.
She is slated to be sentenced Jan. 31. Shry’s lawyer declined to comment.
Shry was charged last year amid a surge in threats to judges nationally, as documented in a Reuters investigation. Serious threats against federal judges rose to 457 in fiscal-year 2023, from 224 in fiscal 2021, the U.S. Marshals Service said.
Authorities said Shry in her voicemail used a racist slur to address Chutkan, who is Black, and threatened to kill anyone who went after Trump, who was charged with conspiring to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020’s presidential election.
Shry also threatened in the voicemail to kill U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat who later died in July 2024 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, other Democrats and members of the LGBTQ community, authorities said.
She placed her call on Aug. 5, 2023, just days after Special Counsel Jack Smith’s election-subversion case was unsealed and assigned to Chutkan, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama.
The effort by Trump and his allies to reverse Biden’s victory culminated in the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol following a fiery speech by the then-president near the White House. Trump has denied the charges.
Chutkan last week approved a request by Smith to put the case on hold while prosecutors assess its future following Trump’s victory in the Nov. 5 election. Justice Department policy bars prosecuting a sitting president.
Shry’s call was not the only threat Chutkan faced while overseeing Trump’s case. In January, she was the victim of an apparent “swatting” call falsely reporting a shooting at her home, prompting a police response.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Lisa Shumaker)
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