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... Roberts in an annual year-end report, opens new tab on the judiciary released just weeks before Republican President-elect Donald Trump takes office did not directly address what polling suggests has been a decline in public confidence in the judicial system broadly.

But Roberts said he felt compelled to highlight several areas of "illegitimate activity" that went far beyond informed criticism and debate concerning judicial rulings, which he said "threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends."

Those areas of threats, he said, include a "significant" uptick in violent threats and online intimidation directed at judges, disinformation about court cases magnified by social media, and cyber threats posed by foreign state actors.

In the past five years, the U.S. Marshals Service has investigated more than 1,000 serious threats against federal judges, Roberts wrote. In some extreme cases, judicial officers have been issued bulletproof vests, he said. ...

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