Vicky Arias, FISM News
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House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is demanding answers on why protesters outside Supreme Court justices’ homes weren’t arrested after a Supreme Court draft decision to overturn federal abortion protections was leaked in May 2022.
Jordan penned a letter to the U.S. Marshals Service on Wednesday probing the department for information related to its failure to arrest the protesters.
“Following the leak of [the] Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in May 2022, some Supreme Court justices faced relentless protests at their homes, seemingly intended to influence the Court’s decision,” Jordan writes.
Jordan notes that “radical left-wing groups engaged in prolonged harassment and intimidation campaigns outside justices’ homes,” but that there was a noted absence of arrests despite the protests violating federal law.
Following the Dobbs leak, some Supreme Court justices faced relentless protests at their homes, seemingly intending to influence the Court’s decision.
These types of “protests” clearly violate federal law.
But U.S. Marshals were told not to make any arrests.
Why? pic.twitter.com/xfrPwQj89p
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) May 3, 2023
Section 1507 of federal law prohibits “pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States, or in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer” when such demonstrations have “the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty.”
In March, Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) also questioned why federal marshals were told to stand down in the face of these “intimidation campaigns” during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing.
Britt showed the committee slides of training materials created for marshals on how to protect the residences of Supreme Court justices.
Despite the prohibition to influence a judge, the slides reveal that marshals were directed to arrest protesters only as “a last resort to prevent physical harm to the justices and/or their families.”
Jordan explains that “while authorities apprehended the man who intended to do harm to Justice Kavanaugh, [the committee is] aware of no other arrests or charges for agitators demonstrating outside of the justices’ homes, despite the actions clearly violating federal law.”
The man to which Jordan is referring is Nicholas John Roske, a 26-year-old man from California who authorities charged with attempted murder after arresting him near Kavanaugh’s home in June 2022 with a gun, hammer, knife, pepper spray, and other items. According to an affidavit, the man planned to kill Kavanaugh and then himself because, according to law enforcement. He was reportedly enraged about the pending Supreme Court decision to strike down federal abortion protections and the Uvalde school shooting.
Rep. Jordan has been investigating the weaponization of the federal government for political gain and, in his letter, explained that “the training materials provided to the U.S. Marshals strongly suggest that the Biden administration is continuing to weaponize federal law enforcement agencies for partisan purposes.”