WASHINGTON (AFP) – United States (US) President Donald Trump’s rumbling conflict with the judiciary burst into open confrontation on Tuesday as Supreme Court Justice John Roberts issued a rare public rebuke of a US president over his call for the impeachment of a federal judge.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in a brief statement.
“The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Roberts’ extraordinary rebuke of the president came after Trump called for the impeachment of District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the suspension over the weekend of deportation flights of alleged illegal migrants.
The White House has been sharply critical of district courts that have blocked some of the president’s executive actions.
However, this was the first time Trump has personally called for a judge’s impeachment since he took office in January, saying that Boasberg was a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama”. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” he said in a Truth Social post earlier on Tuesday.
Hours later, Brandon Gill, a Republican lawmaker from Texas, announced on social media platform X that he had introduced articles of impeachment in the House against Boasberg, whom he described as a “radical activist judge”.
Following Roberts’ rare statement, Trump said in another post: “If a President doesn’t have the right to throw murderers, and other criminals, out of our Country because a Radical Left Lunatic Judge wants to assume the role of President, then our Country is in very big trouble, and destined to fail!”
Federal judges are nominated by the president for life and can only be removed by being impeached by the House of Representatives for “high crimes or misdemeanors” and convicted by the Senate.
Impeachment of federal judges is exceedingly rare and the last time a judge was removed by Congress was in 2010.
Trump, the first convicted felon to serve in the White House, has a history of attacking the judges who presided over his civil and criminal cases.
A University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias described Roberts’ intervention as “extremely rare” and recalled that the chief justice made similar remarks after Trump criticised the rulings of federal judges during his first term.
Roberts was compelled to respond at the time by saying the federal bench “does not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges, or Clinton judges”, Tobias said.
Boasberg ordered a suspension last Saturday to the deportation flights taking alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to El Salvador, where they were put in prison.
The White House invoked little-used wartime legislation known as the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as legal justification for the move.
