Colorado attorney mistaken for lawyer of Boulder terror attack suspect's family, receives death threats

CBS News

4 hours ago

A construction law attorney in Colorado has been receiving death threats due to being mistaken as the immigration attorney representing the family of Mohamed Soliman, the suspect of the Boulder terror attack.
The Colorado attorney has received threats of harm from persons confusing him with a Michigan attorney of the same name, who is representing Soliman's wife and children in federal immigration proceedings. That Michigan attorney, too, has received threats, including one that suggested he be set on fire.
A court sketch shows Mohamed Soliman in Denver federal court on June, 6, 2025.
Robyn Cochran-Ragland
Soliman has been charged with 118 state criminal charges, including 28 counts of attempted murder, and a federal hate crime charge after authorities said he attacked a peaceful walk by Run for Their Lives with Molotov cocktails, leaving 15 people and one dog injured. The group walks each week to bring awareness to Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
Several days after the attack, Soliman's wife and five children were taken into ICE custody. Authorities said Soliman is an Egyptian national who arrived in the United States on a non-immigrant visa in 2022. He filed for asylum in 2022, said officials, and his visa expired in 2023. The family has been living in Colorado Springs.
Mike Michalek, FBI special agent in charge of the Denver field office, said the family has been cooperative with the investigation, and Soliman's wife took her husband's iPhone to the Colorado Springs Police Department. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the family would be processed under expedited removal, a move a federal judge blocked this week. The family is being held in an ICE facility in Dilley, Texas.
Media walk past classrooms during a tour of ICE's South Texas Family Residential Center, Friday, Aug. 23, 2019, in Dilley, Texas. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement hosted a media tour of the center that houses families who are pending disposition of their immigration cases.
Eric Gay / AP
Many state and local officials, faith leaders and community members publicly denounced the violent terror attack and stressed the dangers of antisemitism, but some people have been directing their anger towards Soliman's family. Michigan-based lawyer Eric Lee, who is representing Soliman's wife and children in immigration court pro bono, said there has been a "substantial influx" of criticism and death threats both to him and his former employers.
He shared a recent voicemail with CBS Colorado, in which a person claiming to be a former Colorado police officer threatened him. "Yeah, uh, two hostages, Americans, rescued dead in Israel," the message began, referencing the recovery of the bodies of two Israeli-American hostages earlier this week.
The speaker continued, "If you're representing a terrorist family, I hope somebody pours gas on you and burns you, because you're a scumbag and you're anti-American. And as a retired Colorado cop who had to leave there after 23 years of service in the Denver metro area, some Park Counties people like you are a reason I had to leave because you're a [expletive] scumbag and you love terrorists. So, I hope they pour gas on you and burn you somewhere along the line in life, and if not that, you go to hell and burn in fire forever you [expletive] scumbag."
In a statement to CBS Colorado, Lee denounced the "atmosphere of violence" and said he will not be intimidated.
"In the past 24-hours, I have received a substantial number of threats, including death threats, because I represent a wife and five children (ages 4 to 17) who were arrested, shipped to a detention center in the dark of night and slated for deportation. Another attorney representing the family has also received threats, my former employer's office has faced harassment, and attorneys who share my name have reported receiving death threats as well.
The president is responsible for creating an atmosphere of violence by repeatedly dehumanizing immigrants and disparaging their rights. Attorneys representing non-citizens are fulfilling our responsibility to ensure that everyone in this country—citizen and non-citizen alike—obtains the protection of the Constitution. Our legal team will not be intimidated."
Colorado-based attorney Eric Lee, who specializes in construction law and works with the Decker & Murphy law firm, has nothing to do with the case. Yet, he's been mistaken for the Soliman family's lawyer due to his name and has also received numerous death threats, his law firm confirmed.
CBS Colorado has inquired if either attorney has reported these threats to federal officials, but has not yet received a response.
In a recent case involving interstate threats, a Colorado man was sentenced to three years and one month in prison for making violent threats towards election officials in Colorado and Arizona. In 2024, a man in New York pleaded guilty to federal charges of making interstate threats to congressional offices and was sentenced to 13 months in prison.
The problem is continuing to grow. In February, the American Bar Association published an article on the increasing threats to judges, civil servants and other public officials, addressing rising safety concerns of those who work in public service and the negative impact it has on those professions. Threats to federal judges alone have risen every year since 2019.