Barrett Tells Congress Of Chilling Threats Against Her

Justice Amy Coney Barrett delivered a chilling account to lawmakers on Tuesday on the threats she has faced after the infamous Dobbs leak.

Testifying before a House Appropriations subcommittee on the Supreme Court’s 2027 budget, Barrett revealed that her own children have been swept up in the wave of threats and harassment aimed at the nation’s highest court — from a bulletproof vest she had to explain to her young son to a terrifying swatting hoax that sent police cruisers swarming her street.

Roughly six weeks before her testimony, Barrett revealed, her family was targeted in a swatting attack — a false report of gunfire and yelling inside her home that sent a fleet of police cars racing to her door. One of her teenage sons opened the door to head out with friends only to find the street lined with squad cars, she said. Supreme Court police on scene were able to convince local officers that the call was a hoax before anyone tried to force entry.

Barrett said she and other justices have also received anonymous, intimidating deliveries sent under a specific name: Daniel Anderl, the slain son of federal judge Esther Salas.

Anderl, 20, was gunned down at the family’s North Brunswick, New Jersey, home in July 2020 by a gunman disguised as a FedEx courier. The shooter, lawyer Roy Den Hollander, had appeared before Salas in court and was believed to have been targeting the judge herself. Anderl answered the door and was killed instantly; his father, attorney Mark Anderl, was critically wounded. Den Hollander took his own life soon after, and investigators later discovered he’d been scoping out other female judges as potential targets.

The killing spurred passage of “Daniel’s Law” in New Jersey and the federal Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, signed in December 2022, which shields judges’ home addresses and personal data from public disclosure.

Barrett’s remarks also revived scrutiny of the still-unsolved Dobbs leak — the 2022 disclosure of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion gutting Roe v. Wade, published by POLITICO weeks before the official ruling. The breach, the first of its kind in Court history, ignited protests outside justices’ homes and led to a man’s arrest near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s residence on attempted murder charges.

A probe that grilled nearly 100 court staffers came up empty in 2023; the FBI announced in 2025 it was reopening the case.

The leaker’s identity remains one of the Court’s most stubborn unsolved mysteries.