A north suburban man is facing federal charges after allegedly sending threatening letters to two U.S. district court judges appointed by President Donald Trump.
James Lebuhn, 65, of Libertyville, has been charged with two felony counts of mailing threatening communications. The charges, filed last Friday in Chicago, allege that last March, Lebuhn sent letters addressed to district court judges in Amarillo, Texas, and Fort Pierce, Florida, “for the purpose of making a true threat.”
Though the charges do not identify the judges, the only district judge who is sitting in the Amarillo courthouse in the Northern District of Texas is Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of Trump. Likewise, fellow Trump appointee Aileen Cannon is the only district judge in the Fort Pierce courthouse, which is a satellite of the Southern District of Florida.
A law enforcement source confirmed to the Tribune on Monday that Kacsmaryk and Cannon are the two alleged victims in the case.
Lebuhn is represented in the case by Steven Jerome Dollear, former head of Cybercrime and National Security for the U.S. attorney’s office. Reached by phone Monday afternoon, Dollear declined comment, noting that he doesn’t comment on pending cases.
Kacsmaryk and Cannon were both appointed during the first Trump administration. They were among more than 230 judges installed to the federal branch in Trump’s first term as part of a movement by the Republican president and Senate conservatives to shift the American judiciary to the right, according to The Associated Press.
Kacsmaryk, a former federal prosecutor and lawyer for the conservative First Liberty Institute, was confirmed in 2019 despite fierce opposition by Democrats over his record opposing LGBTQ rights. Nearly three years ago, the Texas judge sparked a legal firestorm with an unprecedented ruling halting approval of the nation’s most common method of abortion. The case went to the Supreme Court, which ultimately preserved access to the medication.
Before the abortion pill case, Kacsmaryk was at the center of a legal fight over Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required tens of thousands of migrants seeking asylum to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court.
Cannon, meanwhile, was appointed to the bench in 2020. Her post in Fort Pierce is about an hour’s drive north of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Much of Cannon’s tenure has been defined by the historic federal criminal case against Trump alleging he stored sensitive documents at his Florida estate after he left the White House following his first term and that he obstructed government efforts to give them back.
Cannon was assigned the case, which thrust the then-largely unknown judge into the spotlight. In 2024, she dismissed the case, and earlier this year she permanently barred the release of a report detailing a special counsel investigation into Trump’s hoarding of documents.
Lebuhn, with last week’s filing, was charged in a criminal information — as opposed to a grand jury indictment — which is typically an indication that a defendant plans to plead guilty.
The Associated Press contributed.
