Overview:
Abigail Jo Shry told a federal judge she did not understand that making threats, even with no intention to harm, was against the law.
An Alvin woman pleaded guilty Wednesday to threatening to kill the federal judge overseeing President-elect Donald J. Trump’s election interference case and the late Houston Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.
Abigail Jo Shry, 44, admitted to calling U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan’s chambers on Aug. 5, 2023, and leaving a voice mail message in which she called the judge, who is Black, a racial slur and threatened to kill her and Jackson Lee, who died in June amid a battle with pancreatic cancer.
Shry also threatened to kill “all Democrats in Washington D.C. and all people in the LGBTQ community,” according to a criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of Texas.
In the message, Shry told Chutkan: “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, bitch,” according to the complaint. She added, “You will be targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it.”
According to the complaint, Shry told federal agents who visited her home three days after she called Chutkan’s chambers that she had no plans to go to Washington D.C. or Houston. But she also said that “if Sheila Jackson Lee comes to Alvin, then we need to worry.”
During a Wednesday re-arraignment hearing, Shry told U.S. Magistrate Judge Dena Palermo that she had decided to change her plea because she now understood that making threats, even if she had no intention of carrying them out, was against the law.
“I thought freedom of speech was protected if you didn’t have an intention to carry out what you said,” Shry said.
Shry’s federal public defender, Amr Ahmed, told Palermo that even if his client initially believed that making an empty threat was not illegal, she was not denying that she had made the threat and that ignorance of the law is not a defense. The case is being prosecuted by Richard Hanes of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas.
David Weinstein, of Jones Walker LLP in Miami, said people do not have an unbounded right to free speech. In this case, government officials only needed to prove that Shry knowingly made the threat, not that she intended to act on it.
The magistrate judge said she would recommend that U.S. District Court Judge Keith Ellison accept Shry’s plea. Sentencing has been tentatively set for January 31 after a presentencing report is compiled. Shry, charged with one felony count of “communication containing a threat to injure the person of another,” faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. She told the court she suffers from anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder.
At a detention hearing last year, Shry’s father described his daughter as a nonviolent alcoholic who calls people and threatens them after “drinking too many beers” and becoming “agitated by the news,” court papers said. The papers also said that Shry has been charged four times for engaging in similar conduct.
Chutkan, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama and randomly assigned to Trump’s 2020 election case, has faced verbal attacks from the president-elect. Most recently in October, he called her “the most evil person” for ordering the release of 1,900 pages of previously sealed documents filed by prosecutors, NBC News reported.
After Chutkan warned him last year against making comments that could intimidate witnesses, Trump posted a message on his social media platform, Truth Social, saying “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!,” NPR News reported. Trump’s campaign later told The New York Times that his words, which came one day before Shry’s call, were not directed against anyone involved in the election interference case.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print.
