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Background: Associate US Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett poses for the official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC on October 7, 2022. (Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY / AFP) (Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images). Inset: The mailbox of the home of the sister of Justice Amy Coney Barrett is investigated after an alleged bomb threat (WCIV/YouTube).
The home of the sister of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was reportedly targeted with a bomb threat in South Carolina earlier this month.
According to Reuters, officers with the Charleston Police Department on Monday responded to the home of Amanda Coney Williams after receiving an email from someone claiming to have planted a bomb at her home. Williams, like her sister, is also an attorney.
“I’ve constructed a pipe bomb which I recently placed in Amy Coney Barrett’s sister’s mailbox at her home,” the email reportedly said, according to police. “The device’s detonation will be triggered as soon as the mailbox is next opened. Free Palestine!”
Police conducted a preliminary investigation and reportedly did not find any kind of explosive device at the residence, ultimately determining that the threat was a false alarm.
ABC News reported that the threat was initially emailed to an executive assistant at the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office at about midnight on Saturday, March 8. However, the employee was not working Saturday and Sunday, so she did not see the message until Monday morning. She then reportedly notified Sheriff Carl Ritchie “within five minutes of arriving” at work. The sheriff subsequently forwarded the email to police.
The sender reportedly included details about the purported bomb, writing in the email that it was made from “a 1×8-inch threaded galvanized pipe, end caps, a kitchen timer, some wires, metal clips and homemade black powder.”
In addition to the bomb threat, Newsweek reported that several of Barrett’s other relatives had strange encounters over the weekend. The report states that an unknown person attempted to deliver pizzas to houses where Barrett’s relatives lived.
David Williams, Barrett’s brother-in-law, reportedly told police he did not know of anyone who would want to target their household.
Barrett, who was appointed to the court by Donald Trump during his first term in office, has played a surprising role in the stream of court orders halting the president’s agenda, with multiple judges citing to her while issuing administrative stays of Trump’s executive orders. That, plus Barrett siding with the court’s liberal bloc in a recent ruling on billions in foreign aid, has resulted in some of Trump’s most ardent supporters second-guessing Barrett’s appointment to the court.
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