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AO 724 (Rev. 8/82) His defense was simply that he did not know that the object of his threat was a federal judge when he threatened her, a position which the Eleventh Circuit rejected under a plain error | standard of review. Id at 532. Accordingly, I reject the government’s argument. B. That leaves the government’s contention that Fenton intended to retaliate against Congressman Murtha. This too is problematic, and the question turns on how “retaliation” is defined. Fenton asserts that there can be no threat with intent to retaliate unless the threatening words are communicated to their intended target. Dkt. no. 130, at 50. The government, for its part, essentially argues that communication of the threat to the victim is unnecessary if the defendant has the present intention of carrying out the threat at the time it is made. Dkt. no. 131, at 18. It seems clear that, aside from the unfortunate circumstance in which the threat is actually carried-out, no intent to retaliate can exist unless there are facts to support either the government’s or Fenton’s theory. A threat that is never communicated to the victim and is not intended to be carried out by its speaker is no retaliation at all. Indeed, it is no more than reciting lines of a play, in a closed room, to oneself. For the reasons already discussed, of course, there is no evidence that Fenton intended that his threats be communicated to Murtha. That squarely raises the question of whether a present intention to carry out a threat suffices to make out the intent to retaliate under § 115¢a)(1)B). The government relies on Snelenberger, in which the court, with scant analysis and without reference to whether there was a present intent to carry out the threat, opined that there was no need for the threat to be communicated to the victim in order to have an intent to 15