Disgraced former President Donald Trump’s supporters have already proven themselves dangerous to American lives and American democracy over and over again. And it turns out one of them could have been planning to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Roy Den Hollander volunteered to help Trump’s campaign in 2016, and just like Trump, held racist and sexist views and grudges against judges who didn’t side with him.
That’s why he disguised himself as a delivery man and went to District Judge Esther Salas’ home in July 2020 to murder her. Instead, he badly wounded her husband and shot and killed her 20-year-old son.
It’s a frightening example of just how dangerous Trump’s rhetoric and behavior is, and why his supporters are still threats to our society. After all, just five months later the country would watch in horror as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a scheme to murder lawmakers and overthrow democracy to keep Trump in power.
It turns out that Hollander had even more sinister plans he could have put in motion had he not committed suicide after murdering Judge Salas’ son.
According to USA TODAY, Salas revealed that Hollander put together a dossier on Sotomayor.
U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas told 60 Minutes in an interview that will air Sunday that authorities found a dossier on Sotomayor in a locker used by the assailant, Roy Den Hollander.
“They found another gun, a Glock, more ammunition,” Salas told the CBS News program. “But the most troubling thing they found was a manila folder with a workup on Justice Sonia Sotomayor.”
Keep in mind that Trump repeatedly attacked Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonia Sotomayor, even demanding they recuse themselves from cases involving him just months before Hollander targeted Salas.
Ginsberg passed away in October, thus giving Trump the sleazy opportunity to replace her with someone not qualified to take her place, and someone whom Senate Republicans jammed through confirmation.
Just imagine if Hollander had assassinated Sotomayor to clear the way for Trump to name her replacement, and we all know he would have done so. And Senate Republicans would have happily helped Trump drag Sotomayor to her grave in order to further pack the high court with another right-wing judge.
While Trump himself didn’t kill Salas’ son and would not have been the one pulling the trigger on Sotomayor, if that’s what Hollander was planning, his rhetoric clearly motivated and pushed extremists like Hollander and the Capitol insurrectionists to commit crimes on his behalf that would have benefited him and his desire to be an all-powerful dictator. Senate Republicans have only enabled such behavior by refusing to hold Trump accountable.
What’s truly scary is that there are still millions of Trump supporters out there who can clearly be incited to doing bad things for a pathetic loser who doesn’t actually care about them or this country.
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