President Donald Trump greets Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts as he arrives to deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2020 (Leah Millis/Pool via AP).
Chief Justice John G. Roberts on Tuesday issued a rare public statement rebuking those publicly calling for judges to be impeached over disagreements with their rulings.
The ranking justice on the U.S. Supreme Court put out the statement just hours after President Donald Trump posted a diatribe on social media calling for the impeachment of a judge who over the weekend issued an order stopping his administration from conducting deportations under an obscure 18th century wartime authority that does not require due process.
The chief justice’s statement was released by the Supreme Court’s public information office.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Trump on Tuesday morning took to social media to suggest that Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, of Washington, D.C., be removed from the bench, referring to the Barack Obama-appointed jurist as a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator.”
Trump continued, claiming that one of the primary reasons he won reelection was his stance on combating illegal immigration. He also called for the impeachment of other judges who have presumably ruled against his administration.
“I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do,” the president wrote. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY.”
While Trump did not call out Boasberg by name, the Truth Social post was clearly directed at the judge, who over the weekend issued a 14-day halt on the Trump administration deporting alleged gang members under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
Apparently taking the president’s invective to heart, Rep. Brandon Gill, a Republican from Texas, on Monday afternoon said he “introduced Articles of Impeachment” against Boasberg in the House.
Though public statements from the high court are not common, Tuesday is not the first time the chief justice felt compelled to defend the judiciary against Trump’s relentless attacks.
Roberts criticized Trump in November 2018 after the president referred to U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar an “Obama judge” after the jurist ruled against his administration’s attempt to ban asylum-seekers that did not enter the country at official ports of entry.
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said shortly after Trump’s comments. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”
Similar to a presidential impeachment, a judge’s impeachment requires a majority vote in the House, but conviction and removal require a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate. Only 15 federal judges have been impeached and only eight have been subsequently convicted and removed.
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