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Alaska man charged with threatening to assassinate 6 Supreme Court justices
Washington — An Alaska man was arrested Wednesday for allegedly threatening to assassinate six members of the Supreme Court and harm two family members, the Justice Department said.
Panos Anastasiou, 76, is accused of sending more than 465 messages to the Supreme Court through an online portal, which included violent, racist, and homophobic rhetoric, according to court filings. Anastasiou allegedly threatened to assassinate, kidnap, torture, hang, behead and execute the justices, and encouraged other people to join him in committing acts of violence, the Justice Department said.
He faces nine counts of making threats against a federal judge and 13 counts of making threats in interstate commerce. Anastasiou appeared before a federal magistrate judge Wednesday and pleaded not guilty.
“We allege that the defendant made repeated, heinous threats to murder and torture Supreme Court Justices and their families to retaliate against them for decisions he disagreed with,” Attorney General Merrick Garland, a former federal appeals court judge, said in a statement. “Our justice system depends on the ability of judges to make their decisions based on the law, and not on fear. Our democracy depends on the ability of public officials to do their jobs without fearing for their lives or the safety of their families.”
The Supreme Court declined to comment on the charges. An attorney for Anastasiou was not listed in court records.
The targeted justices are not named in the indictment and identified only as “Supreme Court justices 1-6.” Charging documents state that some of the threats allegedly made by Anastasiou “were intended to intimidate” the justices and “retaliate against them for official actions” they had taken in their capacity as judges.
The messages were sent between January and July, when the Supreme Court ended its term, court documents.
In one of the messages, sent Jan. 4, Anastasiou allegedly threatened to murder one justice by “providing the rope” to “hang … from an Oak tree.” Another on May 10 included a threat to kill the same justice by “lynching.”
Court filings state that in a May 16 message referring to a second member of the Supreme Court, Anastasiou allegedly threatened to kill the justice by “putting a bullet in his … head.” The Justice Department said a message sent the following day was targeted not only at the first two justices, but also two unnamed family members and warned of sending “fellow veterans” to “spray” their houses with bullets with hopes of killing them.
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority and has come under immense criticism in recent years for decisions on politically charged issues including abortion, guns and presidential power. In its most recent term, the six conservatives voted to find former President Donald Trump is entitled to immunity from federal prosecution for official acts undertaken in the White House.
Its June 2022 decision unwinding the constitutional right to abortion was highly criticized and led to protests outside the homes of several conservative justices, including Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. A California man was arrested in June 2022 after he was found outside of Kavanaugh’s Maryland house with a gun, knife and various tools, and charged with threatening to assassinate the justice. He pleaded not guilty.
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McDonald’s investing $100 million to lure customers back to the fast food giant after E. coli outbreak
McDonald’s is investing $100 million to bring customers back to stores after an outbreak of E. coli food poisoning tied to onions on the fast-food giant’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers.
The investments include $65 million that will go directly to the hardest-hit franchises, the company said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that slivered onions on the Quarter Pounders were the likely source of the E. coli. Taylor Farms in California recalled onions potentially linked to the outbreak.
The E. coli outbreak has sickened 104 people in 14 states, federal health officials said in an update on Wednesday.
At least 34 people have been hospitalized, and four developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a serious condition that can cause kidney failure. An 88-year-old man who resided in Grand Junction, Colorado, died, as previously reported. The illnesses began at the end of September, and the most recent onset of illness occurred as of Oct. 21, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The Food and Drug Administration has said that “there does not appear to be a continued food safety concern related to this outbreak at McDonald’s restaurants.”
However, the outbreak hurt the company’s sales.
Quarter Pounders were removed from menus in several states in the early days of the outbreak.
In a statement Wednesday obtained by CBS News, McDonald’s said it had found an “alternate supplier” for the approximately 900 restaurants that had temporarily stopped serving Quarter Pounders with slivered onions.
“Over the past week, these restaurants resumed the sale of Quarter Pounder burgers with slivered onions,” McDonald’s said.
CBS News reached out to McDonald’s on Saturday for a statement regarding the reported investment.
Health officials said Saturday they have confirmed the first U.S. case of a new form of mpox that was first seen in eastern Congo.
The person had traveled to eastern Africa and was treated in Northern California upon return, according to the California Department of Public Health. Symptoms are improving and the risk to the public is low.
Mpox is a rare disease caused by infection with a virus that’s in the same family as the one that causes smallpox. It is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals.
Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new form of mpox in Africa that was spread through close contact including through sex.
More than 3,100 confirmed cases have been reported just since late September, according to the World Health Organization. The vast majority of them have been in three African countries – Burundi, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Since then, cases of travelers with the new mpox form have been reported in Germany, India, Kenya, Sweden, Thailand, Zimbabwe, and the United Kingdom.
Health officials earlier this month said the situation in Congo appears to be stabilizing. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated Congo needs at least 3 million mpox vaccines to stop the spread, and another 7 million vaccines for the rest of Africa.
The current outbreak is different from the 2022 global outbreak of mpox where gay and bisexual men made up the vast majority of cases.
