US chief justice pushes back on Trump’s call to impeach federal judge
US Chief Justice John Roberts has rebuked President Donald Trump for urging the impeachment of a federal judge.
In a rare statement, Judge Roberts wrote: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
He wrote the correct response was to file an appeal.
John Roberts has been serving as chief justice of the United States since 2005. (Reuters: Jabin Botsford)
Washington-based US District Judge James Boasberg ordered the Trump administration on Saturday to halt the removal of alleged Venezuelan gang members, which Mr Trump has argued is authorised by an 18th-century law historically used only in wartime.
Tensions have been rising in the eight weeks since Mr Trump returned to the White House, and the president and his allies have publicly criticised courts for blocking aspects of the Trump administration’s agenda.
At a hearing, Judge Boasberg had ordered a suspension of all deportations carried out under the Alien Enemies Act, including turning around any planes already in transit.
Two planes carrying at least 238 alleged gang members were already in the air and did not return, prompting accusations that Mr Trump’s administration defied the court order.
The Trump administration wrote that two flights had departed before the judge’s written order was issued and that spoken orders the judge had issued in court before the written notice hit the docket were not enforceable.
Donald Trump’s social media post calling for the impeachment of a federal court judge. (ABC News)
“I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do. This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Mr Trump wrote on social media on Tuesday. He also called the judge a “Radical Left Lunatic.”
Billionaire Elon Musk, a close Trump ally, and Republican politicians have described US judges as threats to democracy.
“The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges,” Mr Musk said in one social media post.
Doubts raised over impeachment of judges
Eight judges have been impeached, convicted, and removed in US history, the last being in 2010,
Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, is one of the legal scholars who have raised doubts about the possibility of any impeachment of Judge Boasberg.
Mr Adler told Reuters it was inevitable that judges would issue rulings that disappoint or anger politicians.
“A lone erroneous ruling, even on an issue of national significance, has never been understood to meet the threshold for impeaching a federal judge, and there is little question that federal judges are not going to be removed on that basis,” Mr Adler said.
Retired federal judge Jeremy Fogel, who heads the Berkeley Judicial Institute at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, said he agreed with Judge Roberts’s statement.
“I think that realistically the threats have no chance of succeeding, but they contribute to a toxic atmosphere that makes the already difficult work of federal judges more difficult,”
Fogel said.
Mr Trump’s social media post marked the first time during his second term as president that he has called for a judge’s impeachment.
Just hours after Mr Trump’s post, Republican politician Brandon Gill of Texas said on X that he had introduced articles of impeachment against Judge Boasberg in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
To remove a judge from office, the House must pass articles of impeachment by a simple majority vote, and then the Senate must vote by at least a two-thirds majority to convict the judge. Republicans control both chambers of Congress but do not have a two-thirds majority in the Senate.
‘We do not have Obama judges’
The statement by Judge Roberts, a conservative who former Republican president George W Bush appointed, echoes one from 2018 when the judge defended the judiciary’s independence after persistent attacks by Mr Trump during his first term in office.
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Judge Roberts said in a statement at the time.
“What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them,”
he said.
“That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”
Mr Trump appointed three of the justices to the nine-member Supreme Court himself.
He once called a judge who ruled against his policy barring asylum for certain immigrants an “Obama judge”.
A narrow majority of Supreme Court justices, including Judge Roberts, has pushed back against Mr Trump in a pair of procedural rulings issued since the president took office on January 20.
On February 21, the court declined to let Mr Trump immediately fire the head of a federal watchdog agency after a judge’s order temporarily blocked the dismissal.
On March 5, the court declined to let the Trump administration withhold payment to foreign aid organisations for work they already performed for the government.
The court is weighing Mr Trump’s March 13 request asking it to intervene in his bid to curb automatic US birthright citizenship.
Reuters
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