Anchorage man charged with threatening to kill U.S. Supreme Court justices ordered released from jail

A 76-year-old Anchorage man was ordered released from jail Thursday after his arrest on federal charges accusing him of threatening to kidnap and kill six U.S. Supreme Court Justices and their relatives.

Panos Anastasiou was arrested Wednesday at his Spenard home on 22 charges tied to more than 465 messages sent through the Supreme Court’s public website that “contained violent, racist and homophobic rhetoric coupled with threats of assassination by torture, hanging and firearms,” according to a memorandum seeking his detention filed by Taylor. The messages escalated in early January, it said.

Anastasiou was indicted by an Alaska grand jury on Tuesday and arrested Wednesday, the same day he pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. He appeared again Thursday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Anchorage for a detention hearing.

The detention memo filed by prosecutors didn’t mention 11 additional threats Anastasiou has made since July, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney William Taylor.

A search of Anastasiou’s home this week turned up ammunition and a handgun that it’s illegal for him to own because he is a convicted felon, Taylor said. Anastasiou pleaded guilty more than 30 years ago to federal charges tied to distribution of cocaine, tax evasion, and falsely reporting his income, according to news coverage at the time.

On Thursday, Magistrate Judge Kyle Reardon ordered Anastasiou released if he agreed to follow a series of conditions including remaining in Anchorage, GPS monitoring, not contacting the people he has threatened or possessing any devices with internet access that can send messages.

It wasn’t immediately clear Thursday afternoon whether he had been released.

Anastasiou, who has been diagnosed with throat cancer, said in an early September message that his dying wish was to see “certain high-level” government officials assassinated before he dies, Taylor said.

Anastasiou describes himself as a Vietnam War veteran. Reardon said during Thursday’s hearing that Anastasiou is a longtime Alaskan who was born in Greece and previously lived in Texas and Washington.

A sign hanging above the door of a tidy, single-story Spenard home listed in municipal records as belonging to Anastasiou on Thursday morning featured an image of a gun and said “I don’t call 911.” Another sign identified the occupant as a veteran and said “My oath never expires.”

In posts to his Facebook page in 2014, Anastasiou said he regretted his military service to the “POLICE STATE” the country has become “in large part by the rulings by the Supreme Court favoring police tactics and shredding the fourth amendment.”

Anastasiou began sending concerning messages through the online portal to the Supreme Court in the spring of 2023, according to the federal memorandum filed this week. Supreme Court police reviewed the messages and contacted FBI agents in Anchorage, it said.

After the agents contacted Anastasiou in Alaska last year, he sent another message to the Supreme Court referencing the interview and “’daring’ the Justices to personally visit his house,” the memorandum said.

The messages continued and became increasingly violent in early 2024, it said.

Several messages included in the memorandum contained racial slurs, homophobic rhetoric and violent threats with descriptions of assassination by hanging, torture and shooting. He called for “mass assassinations” in one of the messages and encouraged others to participate in violence against the Supreme Court justices and their family members.

Anastasiou admitted sending threatening messages to the Supreme Court justices this year, the email address he used to send them contained his name, and investigators tracked the IP information included with the messages to his Anchorage home, the memorandum said.

Documents filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage don’t specify which Supreme Court justices Anastasiou targeted. The current court is divided 6-3 ideologically, with six judges considered more conservative and three considered more liberal.

Reardon said during Thursday’s hearing that Anastasiou called for the assassination “of at least two Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices” to allow the Biden Administration to appoint justices who would shift the court to a Democratic majority.

Anastasiou is registered as a nonpartisan voter but has donated nearly $800 since 2016 to ActBlue, a nonprofit fundraising platform for Democratic candidates and progressive causes, according to campaign contributions reported to the Federal Election Commission.

The memorandum said he previously sent similar threats to a governor of another state. It did not include specifics about those threats, including which governor or when.

Reagan Zimmerman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alaska, on Thursday said she was not able to provide information about those threats. There do not appear to be any criminal charges tied to Anastasiou in that incident.

The messages in the memorandum also mention a former president assumed to be Donald Trump because they say he has been convicted of a crime.

During Thursday’s hearing, Anastasiou referred to Reardon as “sir” and thanked him when he ordered his release.

His appointed attorney, Assistant Federal Defender Jane Imholte, told the judge that Anastasiou should be released from custody because he is dealing with several medical conditions, including cancer, high blood pressure and back pain.

Anastasiou has no intention of leaving Alaska after living here for 67 years, Imholte said. He is eager to get home to his three dogs Freddy, Buddy and Cutiepie, she said. A neighbor who has been watching the dogs since Anastasiou’s arrest watched the proceedings Thursday from the gallery.

“Mr. Anastasiou is not going anywhere. He has limited means, surviving off of Social Security at this point,” Imholte said. “And actually is just living for him and his dogs.”

Imholte said it’s not clear whether Anastasiou’s threats were authentic or the product of the kind of “depersonalization that is so common now in our discourse, where a person can fire off something on their computer and send it out to the ether.”

“It may be vitriol, it may be vile, it may be even illegal, but it’s simply venting of a disaffected citizen,” she said.

Taylor told the judge that Anastasiou’s threats were especially concerning because he had access to a handgun, and in the messages he “alternates between whether he should be the one that carries out the assassination, someone else should carry out an assassination or whether it should be ordered by some sort of government entity.”

In some of the messages, Anastasiou lamented the failed assassination attempts, he said.

Threats targeting federal judges overall have more than doubled in recent years amid a surge of similar violent messages directed at public officials around the country, the Associated Press has reported. In 2022, a man with a gun and a knife was arrested near the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh after the leak of a draft court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.

A Delta Junction man was sentenced to 32 months in prison and a $5,000 fine after pleading guilty to federal charges he threatened to murder U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan.