Texas woman pleads guilty to threatening judge in Trump, DOJ search dispute News
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Texas woman pleads guilty to threatening judge in Trump, DOJ search dispute

A Texas woman pleaded guilty on Friday to a charge of making threats against US District Court for the Southern District of Florida judge Aileen Cannon. Cannon currently oversees former President Donald Trump’s legal disputes around documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago, Florida residence.

Tiffani Shea Gish pleaded guilty to one charge of  interstate communications with a threat to kidnap or injure. The charge was one of two listed in a September 2022 criminal complaint. The complaint detailed three voicemails in which Gish posed as a federal agent and threatened to kill Cannon and bomb her home. The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) was able to locate Gish through a phone records search. FBI agents went to Gish’s residence, where Gish admitted to leaving the voicemails from a phone which no one else had access to.

The judge who accepted Gish’s plea ordered her to be held in custody until sentencing in February 2024. Gish was previously held in custody pending a motion for competency evaluation. When sentenced, she faces up to five years imprisonment and a possible fine.

The prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani, stated that the plea was a step toward the mission “to always protect the rule of law… [and] protecting the judges who interpret and apply the law.”

Gish is the second Texas resident to be charged with threatening a judge involved in a Trump-related case. In August, a woman was charged for threatening to kill the federal Judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case in Washington D.C.