'How to Kill a Federal Judge' author convicted of threatening US judges

A Minnesota man was convicted on Friday on charges that he wrote and distributed a 236-page manuscript titled "How to Kill a Federal Judge" that threatened members of the federal judiciary, including a judge who presided over an earlier, similar case against him.

A federal jury in St. Paul, Minnesota, found Robert Phillip Ivers, 73, guilty on all three counts, including mailing threatening communications and threatening to murder a federal judge, according to court records.

His court-appointed lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ivers, who was previously convicted of threatening to kill a federal judge in 2019, was arrested in September 2025 as a torrent of threats targeting members of the federal judiciary mounted. The US Marshals Service says it has recorded threats against 299 different judges in the current fiscal year.

Federal prosecutors brought charges against Ivers after staff at a library in Wayzata, Minnesota, reported seeing him print copies of his manuscript, which he showed them.

Prosecutors alleged that Ivers gave them a three-page flyer that described his book as a guide "designed to teach extremists on how to plan, train, hunt, stalk and kill anyone including judges, their family members, politicians and more!"

Authorities have said that a later search of Ivers' car uncovered, among other things, 20 spiral-bound copies of his manuscript. Prosecutors described the document as a "manifesto" that included the names of several people and judges.

Among them was Iowa-based US District Judge Robert Pratt, who before his death in January had, due to recusals by judges in Minnesota, presided over a 2019 trial in which Ivers was convicted of threatening to kill US District Judge Wilhelmina Wright.

Pratt sentenced Ivers to 18 months in prison. The indictment charged Ivers with not only threatening Pratt but also a lawyer who testified to hearing Ivers threaten to kill Wright.

A copy of the manuscript was mailed to the lawyer's law firm, the indictment said, and prosecutors said Ivers told law enforcement he also sent copies to both judges as well as all nine US Supreme Court justices.

Prosecutors initially also secured an indictment charging Ivers with threatening to kill a Supreme Court justice. But they later dropped that charge after Ivers' now-former lawyer said prosecutors altered their theory of which one he threatened from Chief Justice John Roberts to Justice Neil Gorsuch.