Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett pleaded with lawmakers for a massive boost in security funding Tuesday and revealed she sometimes wears a bulletproof vest.
'My security details sent me home with a bulletproof vest. I carried it into my house, put it into my bedroom, dropped it down on the table, turned around, and my 12-year-old son was standing in the middle of my bedroom,' the mother of seven said during her House hearing.
Barrett appeared with Elena Kagan, marking the first time in seven years that justices appeared on Capitol Hill, and they requested $14 million in additional security funding for the next fiscal year.
Kagan and Barrett noted at the outset of the hearing that threats are on track to rise by 38 percent this year - on top of a 25 percent increase last year.
‘Those statistics sound abstract,' Barrett told lawmakers. 'But being on the receiving end of them is not.'
Barrett went on to detail how she was recently provided with a bulletproof vest, at a time when threats against her 'were particularly intense,' a few years earlier.
'He wanted to know what it was and why I had it,' she said of her son. 'I didn't know how to respond. Maybe I lack imagination, but I didn't expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one.'
Her sister, who lives in South Carolina, was the target of a separate threat last year.
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts after her investiture ceremony in Washington, DC, in 2021
Barrett was one of two justices who appeared on Capitol Hill to request additional security funding on Tuesday. Above, at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, in March
President Donald Trump and Barrett after her confirmation hearing in 2020
Justices Roberts, Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh at the US Capitol for Trump's State of the Union address
Their remarks come as Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts has continued to speak out about the rise in threats against the high court - most recently in March, during a rare public speech to students at Rice University.
'Personally directed hostility is dangerous,” Roberts told the audience, 'and it’s got to stop.'
Roberts's remarks were seen at the time as a not-so-subtle nod to President Donald Trump, who blasted a federal judge on social media hours earlier as 'wacky, nasty, crooked' and 'totally out of control' for ruling against the administration.