Federal prosecutors said they may appeal D.C. District Chief Judge Jeb Boasberg’s decision to release Nathalie Rose Jones while she awaits trial.
WASHINGTON — A federal judge will allow a New York woman to return home on GPS monitoring days after a magistrate denied her bond over alleged threats to kill President Donald Trump.
D.C. District Chief Judge Jeb Boasberg said he was concerned by “oddly specific” threats investigators say Nathalie Rose Jones made toward Trump, but felt federal prosecutors hadn’t met their burden under the law to keep her detained pending trial. Jones, a 49-year-old former pharmacist, allegedly began posting threatening messages towards Trump in early August, including a post in which she tagged the FBI and wrote she was willing to kill the president by “disemboweling him and cutting out his trachea.”
U.S. Secret Service officers visited Jones’ New York apartment earlier this month to question her about her posts and emails she sent to government officials. She was arrested a day later in D.C. after traveling to the city to attend a protest. Jones’s attorney, assistant federal public defender Mary Petras, said she was in the process of switching mental health medications and cooperated fully with the Secret Service – including telling them during the visit that she planned to come to Washington the next day.
“If she had a gun with her this case is easy,” Boasberg said Tuesday. “But the question is, why shouldn’t we consider this the rantings of someone with a mental illness with no ability to carry this out?”
Federal prosecutors said they may seek a swift appeal of the order, which directs the Alexandria Jail where she’s being held to release Jones early Wednesday morning. She will have the day to drive back to New York, where she will be placed on a GPS monitor. Boasberg also ordered Jones to stay away from D.C. except for court hearings.
Boasberg’s order reverses a decision by Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya last week to keep Jones detained while she awaits trial on felony charges of threatening to kill the president. Upadhyaya also ordered Jones to undergo a competency evaluation to determine her fitness to stand trial.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joshua Satter argued Tuesday that Jones should remain behind bars, saying she’d expressed a “propensity to commit violence” and had shown no concern for her actions. Satter pointed out the Secret Service quickly sought a warrant for her arrest after receiving a ping from her phone in D.C.
Boasberg, however, questioned how dangerous Jones really was if the Secret Service had decided not to arrest her a day earlier – despite saying she planned on coming to Washington.
“They don’t dissuade her from coming,” he said. “Doesn’t that kind of suggest they didn’t take those threats that seriously?”
Federal prosecutors have had difficulty convincing judges in D.C. and elsewhere that alleged threats against Trump warrant detention. On Tuesday, Boasberg ordered another man, Edward Dana, released to home detention after he was charged last week with threatening to kill Trump. According to charging documents, Dana was making unusual and erratic statements at the time – including that he was a member of the Russian mafia and a descendant of the Huguenots – and may have been intoxicated.
In June, a federal judge in Virginia granted release on home detention to a 63-year-old Coast Guard veteran, Peter Stinson, accused of posting threats toward Trump. Prosecutors also opposed release in that case, highlighting what they described as a litany of posts celebrating or encouraging violence against Trump dating back to April 2020.