WASHINGTON – The lawyer who killed the son of a federal judge and seriously injured her husband at her New Jersey home last summer was also tracking Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the judge said in a television interview.
State Judge Esther Salas said that FBI agents discovered the information in a cabinet with attorney Roy Den Hollander. “They found another weapon, a Glock, more ammunition. But the most worrying thing they found was a manila folder with an investigation into Judge Sonia Sotomayor,” Salas said in an interview with CBS News “60 Minutes”. The segment is scheduled to air on Sunday, but part of the interview aired on Friday on “CBS This Morning”.
Both the Supreme Court and the FBI declined to comment on Friday. “We don’t discuss security as a matter of court policy,” court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said in an email.
Authorities said Den Hollander, a human rights lawyer with a history of anti-feminist writings, pretended to be a FedEx delivery man and shot Daniel Anderl, 20, and injured his father, Mark Anderl, in July. Salas was in another part of the house at the time and was not injured.
Den Hollander, 72, was found dead by a self-inflicted gunshot the day after the ambush. Authorities believe he also shot and killed a fellow lawyer in California days before the attack on Salas’ home.
The AP previously reported that when Den Hollander was found dead, he had a document with information on a dozen judges from across the country, half of whom are Latino, including Salas.
Salas has called for more privacy and protection for judges, including removing personal information from the Internet to deal with the growing cyber threats. The US Marshals Service, which protects some 2,700 federal judges, said there were 4,449 threats and inappropriate communications in 2019, against 926 such incidents in 2015.
The legislation named after Salas’s son, which would make it easier to protect judges’ personal information from the public, was not passed in the Senate in December, but could be reintroduced this year.