Federal Judge Dismisses Disturbing DOJ Indictment, Says Defendant Was Simply Not a Threat

When does an angry online comment cross the constitutional line into a “true threat”? Federal prosecutors in Florida argued that a 35-year-old woman’s social media post saying she wished “someone would in alive” another person was enough to support a criminal indictment. A judge disagreed, dismissing the case and concluding that the alleged statement was “simply not a threat.”

Law&Crime has repeatedly covered cases involving people accused of threatening or carrying out violence against President Donald Trump, his political opponents, cabinet officials, federal judges and justices, members of Congress, and others in public life.

But those prosecutions have also raised a harder question: whether the government’s response to volatile online speech is beginning to sweep too broadly, putting the First Amendment rights of ordinary people at risk when they react angrily to current events. Not every statement labeled a threat, courts have made clear, qualifies as a “true” one.

Former FBI Director James Comey is one high-profile defendant now pressing that point as he challenges his “8647” seashells threat prosecution on the merits. His argument draws on recent decisions favoring anti-Trump activists, including protesters who sued and fought to preserve their permits after displaying “8647” flags on National Park Service property near the National Mall.

By contrast, the threats case against Neda Joudeh in the Middle District of Florida appears to have drawn little public attention, apart from Court Watch in November. That outlet warned at the time that the prosecution “may be the most elastic application of 18 U.S.C. 875 we’ve ever seen.”

That federal statute makes it a crime to transmit “in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another.” A conviction can carry a prison sentence of up to five years.

The indictment itself was sparse. It alleged only that Joudeh, posting under the handle falasteen8090 on June 21, 2025, wrote “I wish someone would in alive him” with the intent to “communicate a true threat of violence.”

An affidavit in support of a search warrant revealed that the government made a federal case of Joudeh’s reaction to commentary about the New York Times article, “White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views, It Won Him an Award,” after a Trump-appointed federal judge contacted U.S. Marshals.

U.S. District Judge John Badalamenti in 2024 taught a class at the University of Florida on originalism and awarded Preston Damsky, a “white nationalist and antisemite,” an accolade signifying his work was the best in the law class, the Times reported.

Joudeh’s alleged offense from there was her reaction to attorney Qasim Rashid’s criticism of Badalamenti and the university.

“As Trump attacks students who dare speak up for basic justice for Palestine, a student at the University of Florida Law School named Preston Damsky wrote a paper arguing that the Constitution only applies to white people & Jews and non-whites should be ‘abolished by any means necessary,” Rashid said at the time, according to a court exhibit. “A Trump-nominated judge named John L. Badalamenti who teaches the class gave Damsky the highest grade and awarded him the Book prize. University of Florida Law School defended the decision as ‘free speech.'”

The government’s affidavit said U.S. Marshals and the judge “suspected” that the Instagram user later revealed to be Joudeh “meant to say ‘unalive him,’ meaning ‘kill him.'”

Days later, Marshals interviewed Joudeh in Austin, Texas, while she was on the phone with a lawyer, and she “confessed to authoring the Instagram post in question on her account[.]”

Documents said she admitted posting “out of anger but had no intentions of acting on” that, also agreeing she meant to say “unalive” in reference to the judge.

Ultimately, her decision to delete the post was construed as creating the “inference that Defendant knew her Charged Statement would be viewed differently than others,” and an indictment followed on Oct. 29, 2025.

While an affidavit stated the judge and his “family are Jewish and [were] concerned that the comment from Falasteen8090 was also partially motivated by antisemitism,” the government as recently as three days ago said that was “incorrect.”

“Additional investigation has revealed that J.B. and his family are not Jewish, and the foregoing statement was incorrect,” a discovery-related filing said.

Part of the affidavit focused on other unrelated comments Joudeh made, like, “Iran please hit their news channels so we stop hearing people like this.”

In early July, Joudeh filed a motion claiming that she was selectively prosecuted based on the fact she is a “Muslim-American woman of Palestinian heritage.”

Orlando-area defense attorney Fritz Scheller, Joudeh’s lawyer who once represented former Matt Gaetz “wingman” Joel Greenberg during the DOJ’s sex-trafficking probe, additionally filed a motion to dismiss an indictment criminalizing speech that “is not a true threat as a matter of constitutional law.”

U.S. District Judge Carlos E. Mendoza, a Barack Obama appointee, made short work of the indictment on Saturday, granting dismissal and setting an in-person status conference for 9:30 a.m. on Sept. 4 — unless the DOJ appeals.

The judge was not impressed with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida’s case, which former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s interim pick, Gregory Kehoe, still oversees as acting U.S. attorney.

“The facts alleged in the Indictment state that Defendant violated this statute via an online comment that included the statement, ‘I wish someone would in alive him.’ The Indictment provides no further information as to where or why this comment was posted, to whom it was communicated, or who the referenced ‘him’ is in the comment,” Mendoza began, observing that “no reasonable jury could consider this broad, non-detailed wish to be a threat at all, much less a true threat.”

Joudeh’s post, the judge went on, was “not specific, not graphic, and not explicitly violent,” and didn’t “express an intent to commit harm in the past, present, or future,” so it is “simply not a threat” and “[n]o reasonable jury could conclude otherwise.”

“The Indictment is due to be dismissed,” Mendoza stated.

Reached for comment on the dismissal, Scheller told Law&Crime that his client’s case was the “disturbing, but expected result, of a justice system that has been infected by political considerations.”

“It has probably always been that way,” Scheller allowed, “but it sure feels different now based on the type of federal prosecutions being brought across the land.”

“In such a corrupt realm,” the defense attorney said, “Ms. Joudeh’s case proves once again that federal district court judges constitute democracy’s last line of defense — safeguarding the rule of law and our constitutional liberties.”

Law&Crime reached out to Kehoe for comment.

The post A federal judge just dismissed a ‘disturbing’ DOJ indictment you’ve probably never heard about: ‘Simply not a threat’ first appeared on Law & Crime.