Judge, DA in Trump trial testify against Nevadan accused of threats

Mark Robison

• In opening argument, the prosecution says Spencer Gear's messages to public officials were threats that would put a reasonable person in fear.
• The defense counters that if Gear had intended his words to have been true threats, he would've disguised his identity better.

Is it legal to threaten to kill federal judge if you mention putting them on trial first?

That’s a central defense argument in the case of former Sparks resident Spencer Gear.

Gear, whose federal trial in Las Vegas is entering its second week, faces 10 counts of threatening a federal official and 12 counts of transmitting a communication containing a threat to injure.

Among those testifying in person last week were Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.

Bragg succeeded in getting 34 felony convictions in May 2024 against President Donald Trump for falsifying business records. The case stemmed from Trump paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. Merchan presided over the case.

Also appearing have been U.S. District Court Judge Jia Cobb, who oversaw 30 trials involving Jan. 6 defendants, and a number of law clerks for federal judges involved in J6 cases.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Operskalski told the jury during opening arguments to notice what Gear is not charged with: intending to carry out his threats.

“Because that's not what he's charged with,” Operskalski said.

Gear's charged only with making threats and sending threats.

“Spencer Gear is not charged with attempting to murder these officials," Operskalski added.

Gear’s defense argues that his admittedly profane, sexist and racist messages weren't real threats, otherwise he would've concealed his phone number.

Instead, his defense says, Gear’s words calling for the execution of his perceived foes are simply how people speak in the political arena these days.

“This case is about political rhetoric, the language that we use in politics, the very core of the First Amendment freedom of speech,” public defender Sean McClelland responded. “Like it or not, politics recently uses harsh language, angry language, violent language. In politics, people threaten each other with death.”

He said the officials didn’t change their decisions or security details and some didn’t even listen to his voicemails.

“These are not true threats,” McClelland told the jury.

Highlights from prosecution’s opening arguments in Spencer Gear trial

Giving a short but forceful opening argument, the prosecution grabbed the jury’s attention from its first words.

“Do you f---ing understand, b---h? You can't be protected,” Operskalski said, quoting Gear directly.

“Any FBI fifth bag that thinks I am f---ing threatening you, I am. I am f---ing promising you death."

He said that Gear wanted to influence public officials and to get back that them.

“From November 30th of 2023 to July 7th of 2024, Spencer Christjencody Gear terrorized his victims by sending threats from here in Nevada to all throughout the country against public servants, trying to influence them to get them to act according to his values and to retaliate against them for apparently violating his worldview,” Operskalski told the jury.

He said Gear threatened to kill public servants of all kinds. They included federal judges, a Bureau of Prisons director, a Department of Health and Human Services manager in Montana and a U.S. Congress member.

“These were not joking remarks or a playful comment,” Operskalski said. “These were threats made under circumstances that would put a reasonable person in fear that he wanted to take action against them.”

He said the evidence will show this was not ordinary political discourse.

“This is not a concerned citizen making his feelings known. Not at all,” Operskalski said. “The evidence will show that he was not trying to go through any legitimate democratic process but, instead, that Spencer Gear wanted to place fear in his victims to change the way they acted and to retaliate against them.”

Highlights from defense's opening arguments in Spencer Gear trial

The defense took more time in its opening remarks to the jury.

“In casual language, you could call these death threats,” McClelland said about Gear’s messages, but not that they’re “true threats.”

“In each of these messages,” he continued, “you'll hear him talk about things like the Constitution. He'll talk about courts. He'll talk about trials. He'll talk about lawful process and lawful punishment. So when you hear something like ‘promising you death,’ he's talking about a specific procedure that he hopes will happen to the individuals that receive this message.”

McClelland described the words as free speech, not a crime.

“Mr. Gear is on trial for allegedly threatening high-level public officials with actual violence — that's it,” he said.

He asked the jury to pay close attention to the political context behind his comments.

“You'll learn that people up to the very highest levels of government use virtually the exact same words that Mr. Gear does,” McClelland said. “You'll also learn that Mr. Gear was aware of this political language, that he was using it in a similar way. You'll learn, for instance, that Mr. Gear is highly involved in politics. You'll learn that he worked actually on the Nevada gubernatorial campaign for Republican candidate” Joey Gilbert, a Reno attorney.

The targets of his threats were people involved in high-profile cases.

“For the most part,” McClelland said, “they were presiding over January 6th trials, putting all sorts of people in jail, sentencing them to very lengthy prison conditions in harsh environments.”

Gear used the same phone and the same phone number for his calls.

“It's a 775 number,” McClelland said. “If y'all are familiar with area codes in Nevada, that's Northern Nevada. Mr. Gear is from Sparks, right outside Reno. It's easy to track. Same number, over and over.

“He's not using a voice scrambler or caller ID blocker or routing his calls through other folks. None of that. He's calling them from his own phone with his own voice for all the world to see.”

The implication is that if he truly meant to follow through on killing the officials, he would've concealed his identity better.

McClelland added that if Gear’s words had been taken seriously as threats, the judges would've changed their behavior.

“As much as Mr. Gear's frustration about these political topics had good reason, his messages did not change a single decision or ruling that any of these judges made. Not a single one,” he said.

“The judges, for instance, continued putting January 6th protesters in jail. Mr. Gear's messages did not intimidate these officials. ... All of that is consistent with what these messages were: First Amendment protected political speech, political rhetoric, not a crime.”

Federal Judge Jia Cobb on Spencer Gear’s call — ‘That was disturbing’

In its opening arguments and cross-examinations of witnesses, Gear’s defense emphasized that Gear mentioned the U.S. Constitution when talking about killing judges.

This showed the lack of a real threat, the defense said, because rather than a direct threat of violence, there would be a legal, democratic process first.

The prosecution zeroed in on this, too.

In Operskalski’s questioning of District of Columbia Judge Jia Cobb, he asked her about comments from Gear that she would be thrown in a prison cell to be raped every day.

“I thought it was an effort to frighten me, to influence my judicial decisions,” she said.

What about the part where Gear said, “For f---ing $5, I can find your address?”

“I was concerned,” she said. She’s “a single parent with a son, so that was disturbing.”

Asked if Gear’s mention of the Constitution, comforted her.

“I didn't hear these messages to be a discussion of any kind of legitimate legal proceeding or disagreement about the law or how the Constitution might apply,” Cobb said. “It didn't comfort me, in light of the references to finding my address and that I'm not safe, that I'm dead.”

New York Judge Juan Merchan said time with his children affected by Gear’s call

Merchan fielded similar questions.

Operskalski asked: “When (Gear) says things like, ‘Any day you walk around, you could be f---ing sniped, you could be grabbed, you could be stabbed, you could be shot, you're not safe in this country, none of you traitors are,’ was that concerning to you?”

Merchan responded it was.

“It's concerning for anyone who's with me,” he said. “It affected the time that I spent with my children, where I went with them, what I did with them, when I spent time with them. I felt that anyone who was with me could potentially be hurt as well.”

Asked if it was comforting that Gear would put him on trial before killing him, Merchan said no.

“The thought of some sort of a vigilante court judging my fate” was even more alarming, he said. “And (Gear) then goes on to say: We're going to kill you anyway. So obviously it was not really a fact-finding court at all.”

Mark Robison is the state politics reporter for the Reno Gazette Journal, with occasional forays into other topics. Email comments to [email protected] or comment on Mark’s Greater Reno Facebook page.