A Texas woman, convicted of threatening a federal judge who handled the now-dismissed Jan. 6-related case against President Donald Trump, did not report to prison this week. This prompted a federal judge to issue a warrant for her arrest, according to court records.
Abigail Jo Shry was supposed to self-surrender on Tuesday, February 17, 2026, by 2 p.m. to the Federal Bureau of Prisons to start a 27-month sentence. However, she failed to show up, as U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison noted in an order filed in Houston. Ellison instructed the U.S. Marshals Service to find Shry and take her to FCI Tallahassee in Florida.
CBS News reported that federal authorities could not find Shry after she missed the surrender deadline.
Shry, 44, from Alvin, Texas, pleaded guilty in November 2024 to a federal charge of transmitting an interstate threat. Prosecutors said she left a racist and violent voicemail in August 2023 for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C. Chutkan had taken the case just hours earlier regarding Trump’s prosecution linked to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
According to a federal complaint obtained by WUSA9, the message left at the judge’s chambers around 7:50 p.m. was filled with anger and explicit threats. It started with: “Hey, you stupid slave n—-r,” she wrote in her message to the judge’s chambers, as stated by Department of Homeland Security officials in the complaint.
Investigators say Shry, 43, went on to threaten violence against anyone she believed opposed Trump. This included Chutkan and Lee, as well as “all Democrats in Washington, DC and all people in the LGBTQ community,” according to the complaint.
The threats became more direct and personal. “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” she said.
She linked the warning to the 2024 election, adding, “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, bitch,” she told Chutkan.
The message ended with an alarming final line: “You will be targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it,” she added.
In its announcement of Shry’s guilty plea in 2024, the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of Texas said Shry threatened public officials in phone calls. She later told authorities that she did not intend to carry out the threats, claiming her statements were protected speech. U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani stated that Shry was mistaken about the First Amendment.
Reuters reported in November 2025 that Ellison sentenced Shry to 27 months in prison for the threats against Chutkan. This sentence was less than what prosecutors sought, according to Reuters.
The criminal case against Trump that Chutkan oversaw was eventually dismissed after Trump returned to office, in line with the longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president, as reported by Reuters.
CBS News previously noted that Shry’s case was one of the few remaining prosecutions related to the January 6 investigation after Trump issued widespread pardons for Capitol riot defendants.
In its February 19, 2026, report on Shry’s missed prison surrender, CBS mentioned that Shry had filed several motions to delay the start of her sentence. A judge denied these requests before setting the February 17 surrender date. CBS also reported that Texas authorities investigated Shry in 2023 for separate threats related to state politics, which led to a plea agreement in state court.
Shry’s failure to surrender might lead to additional federal charges and ignoring a surrender order can create new legal risks and result in extra penalties.
The warrant order does not detail Shry’s location and federal court records indicate that the Bureau of Prisons designated FCI Tallahassee as the facility where she was to report.
