An Anchorage man is jailed on charges that he threatened to hurt and kill U.S. Supreme Court justices and their family members.
Federal authorities arrested Panos Anastasiou, 76, after a grand jury handed up a 22-count indictment Wednesday, according to the Alaska U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Anastasiou allegedly sent more than 465 threatening messages to six Supreme Court justices through an online portal from March 2023 to July 2024. The messages were violent, racist and homophobic and included threats of torture and hanging, according to the indictment.
Anastasiou allegedly encouraged others to participate in the violence. In a message in May, he wrote to two justices threatening to send fellow veterans to “spray” their homes with bullets “hopefully killing” them, the indictment says.
According to a Wednesday court filing supporting prosecutors’ assertion that Anastasiou should be jailed pending trial, FBI agents contacted him in the spring of 2023 to talk about the messages he had sent up to that point.
But the messages continued and became more violent, according to the memorandum in support of detention.
Neither the indictment or the memorandum includes the names of the six justices Anastasiou was alleged to have threatened, but they appear to be the Supreme Court’s 6-3 majority of conservative justices, including Justice Clarence Thomas.
One message included in the memo threatens the assassination of a former president referred to as a “convicted criminal,” likely Donald Trump.
Anastasiou pleaded not guilty Wednesday. A judge agreed with prosecutors and ordered that he be detained.
Casey Grove is host of Alaska News Nightly, a general assignment reporter and an editor at Alaska Public Media. Reach him atcgrove@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Caseyhere.
