A federal jury in St. Paul convicted 73-year-old Wayzata resident Robert Phillip Ivers of threatening to murder a U.S. district judge and mailing threatening communications, capping a four-day trial that exposed a decade-long pattern of retaliation against judges and officials who crossed him. Jurors found Ivers guilty on all charges after deliberations presided over by visiting U.S. District Judge Karen E. Schreier, a South Dakota jurist serving by designation in Minnesota.
Prosecutors demonstrated that Ivers mailed copies of his 236-page manuscript, How to Kill a Federal Judge, to a Minneapolis law practice and the University of St. Thomas School of Law, according to the United States Department of Justice. According to Reuters, the recipients included senior U.S. District Judge Robert W. Pratt, who presided over Ivers’ 2018 criminal prosecution, and an attorney who testified in that earlier court. Prosecutors had previously obtained an indictment charging Ivers with threatening to murder a United States Supreme Court justice, but the charge was dropped before trial after defense counsel questioned which justice was being targeted, noting that the government’s theory had shifted between Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch, according to Reuters.
According to the Pioneer Press, the case dates back to September 2025, when Ivers was allegedly spotted printing copies of the manifesto at the Wayzata Public Library. He revealed manifesto pages to library employes and handed them a three-page flier advertising the document, and the employes reported the incident to police. The flier reportedly stated that the material was intended to teach extremists how to plot, train, hunt, stalk, and kill people, including judges, family members, and politicians, and warned that judges would be killed. Ivers later told detectives that he had showed his manifesto to library workers.
According to the Pioneer Press, a search of Ivers’ vehicle yielded 20 spiral-bound copies of the 236-page book, as well as various advertising fliers. Investigators also discovered a list of federal judges, a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook, a box of pyrotechnics, a package of CO2 cartridges and pellets, a white foam box holding a miniature imitation handgun, and a photograph of the former pope with crosshairs centered on his head. The manifesto itself apparently includes sketches and handwritten threats to kill judges, as well as their children and pets, identified individual federal judges, and included at least one page picturing the murder of children alongside a gun image.
When confronted, Ivers gave a disturbing reaction concerning the manifesto’s purpose, apparently telling investigators, “It was supposed to!” Following his detention, he claimed to be having a heart attack and was transferred to Hennepin County Medical Center, where he walked out alone overnight before being apprehended again two days later, on September 5, 2025, according to MPR News. According to the publication, Wayzata police did not have an officer available to keep him safe in the hospital overnight.
This is not Ivers’ first conviction for intimidating a federal judge. He was previously convicted in 2018 of threatening to murder U.S. District Judge Wilhelmina Wright after she denied his civil claim against an insurance firm, according to the complaint, which portrayed Ivers as obsessed with the judge who ruled against him. According to FindLaw, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded in July 2020 that the threat was not protected by attorney-client confidentiality, noting Ivers’s own declaration to his lawyers that “You don’t know the 50 different ways I planned to kill her.”
Ivers was accused in November 2022 with threatening to murder his probation officer after growing furious during a probation revocation hearing, smashing a chair leg, and hurling paperwork, according to KFGO. That hearing arose from probation violations related to his 2018 conviction. Brett Kelley, a court-appointed defense attorney who has represented Ivers in numerous federal cases, argued last September that the manifesto constituted protected speech because it had already been introduced as a government exhibit during Ivers’ 2018 and 2022 federal cases without being charged, according to The Washington Post.
Outside of the courtroom, Ivers has stood for mayor of Hopkins several times, collecting 194 votes in November 2017 and 113 votes, or 4%, in the November 2025 municipal election, according to FOX 9. According to the Pioneer Press, Ivers attended several church services at an Episcopal church in Minnetonka, telling parishioners that he planned to attend future events such as a family picnic and potluck, an annual baptism service, and a blessing for children returning to school attended by state lawmakers, and that he was reported for concerning behavior there.
U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen issued a news statement Friday in response to the verdict, emphasizing that anyone who threaten witnesses or judges with violence will face full accountability. The jury found Ivers guilty of one count of threatening to murder a United States District Judge and two counts of mailing threatening materials, his second federal conviction for threatening to kill a judge.
The case comes at a time when threats to the federal judiciary are on the upswing nationwide. According to US Marshals Service records, protective investigations into threats against federal judges totaled 564 in fiscal year 2025, targeting 396 individual judges, up from 509 the previous year. Prosecutors say Ivers’ case exemplifies the type of persistent, repeat offender that the agency and federal courts are increasingly having to deal with.
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