Threats to judges result in new charges for Hopkins man

A man who went to prison for threatening to kill a federal judge in 2017 and was later charged with threatening a probation officer is now accused of threatening a second judge.

According to the latest criminal complaint against Robert Phillip Ivers, 72, staff at the Wayzata Public Library called police Sept. 3 after seeing Ivers printing a 236-page document entitled "How To Kill a Federal Judge."

“Ivers told the librarian about the manuscript he had written,” prosecutors allege in the complaint. “He showed the librarian a page from his manuscript. The librarian recalled that the page said something about killing children and had a picture of a gun on it.”

Ivers gave library staff a three-page summary document that includes a photo of a man holding a rifle, and that the guide “is designed to teach extremists on how to plan, train, hunt, stalk and kill anyone including judges, their family members, politicians and more!”

Wayzata police arrested Ivers the same day. Shortly after, Ivers allegedly claimed he was having a heart attack. Authorities transported him to Hennepin County Medical Center, but staff there declined to share information about his condition because of patient privacy laws, according to a search warrant request from Wayzata police.

The department did not have an officer available to guard Ivers at HCMC and he “reportedly left the hospital sometime during the night,” writes Sgt. Dan Lee.

Police re-arrested Ivers on Sept. 5. According to the federal complaint, investigators “asked Ivers if he thought his book would have scared anybody. In response, Ivers shouted: ‘It was supposed to!’” Ivers is currently in police custody.

The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office said that the names of multiple federal judges appear in the document, including that of retired U.S. District Judge Wilhelmina Wright, as well as the judge who presided over the later case involving threats against a probation officer.

In 2018, a jury convicted Ivers of threatening to kill Wright after she ruled against him in a lawsuit that he filed against an insurance company.

While on supervised release in North Dakota, Ivers allegedly threatened a probation officer, “leaving a series of angry, violent and sexually graphic voicemail messages” after he denied Ivers’ request to return to Minnesota. Prosecutors filed new charges in 2022 but dropped them after Ivers agreed to plead guilty to a supervised release violation.

After interviewing library staff, investigators say they learned that Ivers exhibited "abnormal behavior" during a recent visit to a Minnetonka church.

Staff contacted authorities on Aug. 28, the day after the mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, and reported that Ivers had told members that he planned to return for three events in September where children and public officials would be present.

A search of Ivers’ vehicle allegedly turned up 20 copies of Ivers’ spiral-bound self-printed book along with lists of federal judges, a “miscellaneous list of colleges,” a photo of the former Pope overlaid with crosshairs, a replica firearm, pellets and Co2 cartridges, and a box of fireworks.

Ivers twice ran for mayor of Hopkins. During a 2017 debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters, Ivers complained that the planned Green Line light rail extension would bring "ethnics" into the Minneapolis suburb.