Author of ‘How to Kill a Federal Judge’ Convicted of Threatening US Judges

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

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

Ivers was previously convicted of threatening to kill a federal judge in 2019. He was arrested in September 2025 as threats targeting members of the federal judiciary mounted. The US Marshals Service says it recorded threats against 299 different judges during 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 to them.

Prosecutors alleged that Ivers gave staff a three-page flyer describing 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 said a subsequent search of Ivers’ car uncovered, among other items, 20 spiral-bound copies of his manuscript. Prosecutors described the document as a “manifesto” containing the names of several people and judges.

Among those named was Iowa-based US District Judge Robert Pratt, who, before his death in January, had presided over Ivers’ 2019 trial because of recusals by judges in Minnesota. Ivers was convicted in that case of threatening to kill US District Judge Wilhelmina Wright.

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

The indictment said a copy of the manuscript was mailed to the lawyer’s firm. Prosecutors also said Ivers told law enforcement that he had sent copies to both judges as well as all nine US Supreme Court justices.

Prosecutors initially secured an indictment charging Ivers with threatening to kill a Supreme Court justice. They later dropped that charge after Ivers’ then-lawyer said prosecutors had changed their theory about which justice he had threatened, from Chief Justice John Roberts to Justice Neil Gorsuch.

The case is US v Ivers, US District Court for the District of Minnesota, No. 25-cr-00347.

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