On February 29, an investigation into death threats targeting mostly federal judges involved in Donald Trump-related cases, including threats those judges received personally, revealed that violence maybe creeping into US elections. For this story, Reuters examined three prominent pro-Trump websites to assess the prevalence of violent online posts directed at the state judges handling some of the highest-profile cases against Trump.

He’d look good hanging from a noose.

In trying to restrain Trump’s attacks on social media, New York Justice Juan Merchan has cited the former president’s “singular power” to inspire his followers and inject fear in his targets. Trump’s followers have reacted with posts on Trump’s own Truth Social platform calling for Merchan’s execution.

The judges in both of Trump’s New York cases issued gag orders barring him from attacking judicial staff and, in Merchan’s court, witnesses, jurors and family members of the judge and prosecutors. On April 30, Merchan held Trump in criminal contempt for violating one of those gag orders, fined him $9,000 and warned him that he could be jailed for further infractions. On May 6, Merchan fined Trump an additional $1,000 for a subsequent violation.

His April order noted the “singular power” that Trump’s derisive statements and social media posts have to inspire his followers, instil fear in his targets and endanger the rule of law. The judge has warned that he could impose jail time for any additional violations by the former president, who calls the gag orders “election interference.”

Reuters examined more than 1,800 posts by Trump on Truth Social from March 1 to April 30. In at least 129 of them, he attacked judges handling his cases in New York, Georgia and other jurisdictions, either in his own words or by re-posting critical comments or videos from supporters or others.

Much of his anger is focused on Merchan, who is presiding over Trump’s criminal prosecution on charges that he violated New York law by falsifying business records to conceal a sex scandal during his 2016 campaign. Trump also frequently attacks New York  Justice Arthur Engoron, who ruled in February during a separate civil trial that Trump committed fraud by inflating his properties’ values on financial documents. Trump has appealed the verdict.

Trump often labels both judges “corrupt” and “conflicted,” and falsely accuses them of taking orders from President Joe Biden, his Democratic rival for the White House. As state judges, they weren’t appointed by the president, who has no authority over them.

Trump’s comments and re-posts on Truth Social often trigger a furious response from his supporters. At least 152 posts on the three pro-Trump websites in March and April urged the beating or killing of Merchan or Engoron in New York or Judge Scott McAfee in Georgia, Reuters found. At least 65 of those were on Truth Social, about half in replies to the former president’s posts. The rest were split about evenly between Gateway Pundit and Patriots.Win.

All three sites have comment policies discouraging threatening or violent rhetoric. Truth Social’s terms of service forbids users from writing posts  that are “filthy, violent, harassing, libelous, slanderous” or “advocate, incite, encourage or threaten physical harm against another.” A Truth Social spokesperson said the company “works expeditiously to remove posts that violate” those standards. The Gateway Pundit and Patriots.Win did not respond to requests for comment.

There was evidence on each site that at least some comments had been removed. However, most of the posts advocating violence stayed up on the sites for days or weeks.

Three experts in violent political speech reviewed the posts documented by Reuters, including Jonathan Leader Maynard, a London-based political extremism expert who said many of them echo the “quasi-fascist language” language used by “lone wolf terrorists” to justify their bloodshed.

Politically motivated harassment of judges is not exclusive to the political right. Left-wing activists have protested at the homes of judges who have restricted abortion rights. A California man was accused of travelling to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home intending to kill him. Nicholas John Roske has pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempted assassination. Plea negotiations are ongoing, court records show. Roske’s lawyer didn’t reply to a request for comment.

A Reuters examination of websites catering to the left revealed dozens of hostile comments attacking the competence and credibility of conservative jurists. The targets include US District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who has issued a number of rulings favourable to the former president in his ongoing federal prosecution in Florida for misappropriating classified documents after leaving office.

On Democratic Underground, a liberal site, posters have attacked Cannon as “corrupt” and suggested she be tried for espionage. But a review of comments on those sites did not reveal the sort of violent language that Trump supporters use in their online posts, including suggestions that judges be beaten or killed.

Calls to execute judges picked up in April on pro-Trump sites, when Merchan began hearing Trump’s prosecution for allegedly trying to hide a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, the first of four criminal prosecutions Trump faces.

“He should be recused from living,” one Trump supporter wrote of Merchan in an April 14 post on Truth Social. That comment and other calls for violence cited in this story were posted anonymously.

Merchan, 61, has served on the criminal bench since 2009. He grew up in the New York City borough of Queens, also Trump’s boyhood home, and began his career as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, the office now prosecuting Trump.

In 2022, Merchan presided over a tax fraud conviction for Trump’s business, ordering his company to pay a $1.6 million fine. Last year he sentenced Trump’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, to five months in prison after Weisselberg’s conviction on tax fraud.

Trump also has directed vitriol at Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, an executive at Authentic, a digital marketing agency that works with Democratic candidates. Trump has said the judge is “conflicted” because of his daughter’s work and should recuse himself.

Pictures of Merchan’s daughter have featured regularly in broadsides by Trump supporters on Truth Social. Some mocked her physical appearance and called for her arrest. On one website, an avowed white supremacist published personal information about both Merchan and his daughter, including home addresses and the judge’s phone number. Last June, the New York Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics ruled that Merchan’s “impartiality cannot reasonably be questioned” based on his daughter’s work for Democratic campaigns.

A spokesperson for the New York courts, Al Baker, said both Merchan and Engoron have “been subjected to threats as have many other judges” and their safety is “the utmost priority.” He declined to elaborate on security arrangements. Loren Merchan did not respond to a request for comment.

Engoron, 74, has been bombarded with invective from Trump and threats from his supporters.

A New York court security officer reported in a sworn statement last year that Engoron and his staff had received hundreds of threatening and harassing messages, including some laced with profanity and anti-Semitic insults against the judge, who is Jewish.

The hostile communications spiked after Trump attacked the credibility of Engoron and his clerk on Truth Social, the statement said. “Resign now, you dirty, treasonous piece of trash snake,” said one voicemail left at his chambers and included among a half-dozen quoted in the security officer’s statement. “We are coming to remove you permanently.”

“My chambers have been inundated with hundreds of harassing and threatening phone calls, voicemails, emails, letters and packages.”

A Democrat, Engoron was elected in 2015 to the state Supreme Court and has been a judge for two decades. He has drawn the former president’s rage after repeatedly ruling against him in a civil business fraud suit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Engoron ultimately ordered Trump to pay a $454 million fine in that case.

The judge issued a gag order last October after Trump shared on social media a photo of Engoron’s law clerk posing with US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, and falsely described her as “Schumer’s girlfriend.” Engoron barred Trump from making any statements disparaging court staff.

The judge fined Trump twice for violating the order. “The threat of, and actual, violence resulting from heated political rhetoric is well-documented,” Engoron wrote in a November court filing.

Engoron received a fake bomb threat at his home in January, and an unknown threatener sent an envelope containing white powder to his chambers the following month, said court and law enforcement officials.

In a March 22 post on Truth Social, Trump labelled him a “Corrupt, Radical Left Judge in New York, a Trump hater [at] the highest level.” Calls by his supporters for the judge’s death came quick. One poster on Truth Social said Engoron should be hanged. Another wanted him executed. Online rage thundered for days, accompanied by appeals for violence. “He should be skinned alive, bobbed in a vat of alcohol, then dipped in honey before being staked to an anthill,” read a March 25 post about Engoron on Patriots.Win.

The threats aren’t limited to New York. As state courts in Colorado, Illinois and Georgia have taken up Trump-related cases, at least four judges in those states have faced threats or harassment, according to interviews with court and law enforcement and officials and a review of social media posts. State courts typically provide judges with far less protection than their counterparts receive on the federal bench, where some Trump-related cases have also landed.

• A Reuters report