A 59-year-old North Carolina man entered a guilty plea Wednesday in federal court for posting a Supreme Court justice's home address online, part of a months-long pattern of threats against the nation's highest court that included urging social media users to turn justices "into charcoal."
Kyle Andrew Edwards pleaded guilty to doxing the justice's home address with the intent to threaten, intimidate, or incite a crime of violence, The Hill reported, citing a release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of North Carolina. The charge carries a statutory maximum of five years in prison.
Edwards was released on bond after his plea. No sentencing date has been set. The case was investigated by the Supreme Court Police's Protective Intelligence Unit.
The timeline laid out by U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson's office makes clear this was not a one-off outburst. Edwards's conduct stretched across months and escalated alongside major Supreme Court decisions.
On April 8, 2025, one day after the Supreme Court vacated a federal judge's order blocking the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans, Edwards posted the home address of a Supreme Court justice on social media. That same day, he posted partial or historical information about the neighborhoods or former home addresses of two other justices and threatened multiple members of the bench.
Edwards warned the justices to "think again" if they believed "their families are safe." He encouraged other social media users to "start dragging the SC out by their robes" and turn the justices "into charcoal." In one post, he noted that a different justice's home address was unavailable online "to prevent people from assassinating him."
The Supreme Court's April ruling on the Alien Enemies Act saw the court's conservative majority prevail, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett partially joining the three liberal justices in dissent.
Nearly three months later, on June 27, the final day the Supreme Court released opinions before its summer recess, Edwards posted that the court "must be destroyed." Two days later, he posted that a certain justice should "buy Kevlar robes."
That June 27 session included two additional rulings that split the court along its 6-3 ideological lines. In one, the justices limited the ability of judges to issue universal injunctions against the Trump administration. In the other, the court backed a group of religious parents seeking to opt their children out of reading books with LGBTQ themes in school.
Ferguson's office defined doxing as gathering and posting personal identifying information, such as a home address and other sensitive data, on the internet without the person's knowledge or consent. In a statement accompanying the plea announcement, Ferguson did not mince words.
"Doxxing is dangerous. It exposes officials to all sorts of people that may cause harm, and that harm may be even worse than the doxxer expected or intended. That is why we take it seriously."
Ferguson added a pointed message aimed at anyone who might consider similar conduct.
"Threatening or harming federal officials is not the way to change policy. If you want to change policy, get involved and go vote."
The U.S. attorney's office stated that Edwards's sentence will be determined by the court based on federal sentencing guidelines and "other statutory factors." The Hill reached out to the Supreme Court for comment.
The specific Supreme Court justice whose home address Edwards pleaded guilty to posting has not been publicly identified. Nor have the identities of the two other justices whose neighborhood or former address information he shared. The social media platforms and account handles involved were not disclosed in the federal announcement.
But the contours of the case are familiar enough. Edwards's threats tracked the court's most politically charged decisions, rulings on immigration enforcement, executive power, and religious liberty. Each time the conservative majority handed down a decision that the political left opposed, Edwards escalated. He moved from posting addresses to urging others to act, from coded warnings about assassination to explicit calls for physical confrontation.
The Supreme Court's internal tensions have been well documented this term, with justices publicly clashing over the emergency docket and the pace of major rulings. Those disagreements, however fierce, play out within the bounds of the institution. What Edwards did was something else entirely, an attempt to make the justices' private lives a weapon against them.
This kind of intimidation is not new. Since the leak of the Dobbs draft opinion in 2022, threats against Supreme Court justices have become a recurring feature of American political life. A man was arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh's home that year with a firearm and tools, charged with attempted murder. The climate around the court has not meaningfully improved since.
Ferguson's statement, "get involved and go vote", is the kind of common-sense admonition that should not need to be said by a federal prosecutor. Yet here we are. Edwards faces up to five years in prison. Whether the sentence he ultimately receives matches the seriousness of his conduct remains to be seen.
The court's most consequential rulings this term have drawn enormous public attention and sharp political reaction. That attention is healthy in a republic. Posting a justice's home address and encouraging people to drag them from the building is not political engagement. It is criminal intimidation, and the guilty plea confirms it.
The broader question is whether a five-year statutory maximum is sufficient deterrence for conduct designed to make Supreme Court justices fear for their lives. Edwards encouraged strangers on the internet to show up at a justice's home. He told the justices their families were not safe. He urged people to turn them "into charcoal."
A court already navigating sharp public divisions among its own members should not also have to wonder whether its justices can safely sleep at night. The men and women who sit on that bench, regardless of ideology, accepted a duty to interpret the law. They did not sign up to have their home addresses weaponized by people who lost an argument.
Edwards pleaded guilty. That is accountability. But accountability without consequence is just paperwork. The sentencing judge will have the final word, and the country will be watching to see whether the federal system treats threats against the judiciary with the gravity they deserve.
When the rule of law depends on nine people willing to make hard calls, the least the rest of us can do is let them make those calls without fearing for their families.
