WASHINGTON — The growing clash between President Trump and the federal courts escalated Tuesday, when Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. rebuked the president’s call for impeaching a judge for ruling against him.
Roberts issued a rare statement a few hours after Trump posted on social media that a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and an agitator … should be IMPEACHED!!!”
He was referring to U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington. On Saturday evening, Boasberg ordered a halt to the administration’s deportation of several hundred alleged Venezuelan criminal gang members.
They were being flown from Texas to be held in a prison in El Salvador. The planes took off during the hearing, and the judge’s order was mostly ignored. But the law authorizing the mass deportation remained in doubt.
While migrants may be deported if they are shown to have a criminal record, Trump asserted that they could be deported en masse under his wartime authority as commander in chief. He has called illegal immigration an “invasion” of the United States.
This has been seen by legal experts as a dubious claim, and one subject to challenge in the Supreme Court.
The president and his lawyers point to the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which in the event of a “declared war” or an invasion “by any foreign nation or government” authorized the president to remove those who were “subjects of the hostile nation.”
Boasberg, an appointee of President Obama, is known for his mild manner, but he questioned whether that law authorized deporting the men with no hearing. However, his orders to halt the flights did not prevent the more than 200 men from being shipped to El Salvador.
When asked for a comment on the call for Boasberg’s impeachment, the chief justice said, “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Roberts is a conservative and likely to rule for Trump on many but not all of his claims of expanded executive power. But he is also protective of the independent power of federal judges to decide on the proper interpretation of federal law and the Constitution.
In Trump’s first term, he spoke out when the president criticized “an Obama judge” who had ruled against him.
President Trump greets Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. after he was sworn in as president on Jan. 20 in the Capitol.
(Chip Somodevilla / Associated Press)
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them,” Roberts said in 2018.
Trump’s attacks on judges are not likely to win him more support at the Supreme Court.
Two weeks ago, Justice Amy Coney Barrett was the target of scathing attacks from some conservatives after she joined Roberts in a 5-4 order turning down an emergency appeal from the administration.
Many of Trump’s executive orders are likely to come before the Supreme Court in the months ahead, and the president will need the votes of Roberts and Barrett to prevail.
Legal commentators also questioned the calls for impeachment.
“I’d be open to impeaching judges for persistent bad-faith or wild rulings. Nothing remotely like that here,” said Ed Whelan, a conservative and former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia. “Impeachment threats are at best performative nonsense. Even worse, they may provoke threats of violence against judges and family members.”
Trump’s call for impeachment “is par for the course. He routinely berates and threatens judges and others who dare to question the legality of these actions,” said Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina. “It is the duty of a judge to ensure compliance with the rule of law, no matter how powerful those charged with violating the law happen to be.”
There is nothing new about a president and his administration’s lawyers being unhappy with court rulings, noted Jonathan H. Adler, a law professor at Case Western in Cleveland. “It is inevitable that judges will occasionally issue rulings that disappoint or anger political figures. We saw plenty of such examples during the Biden administration. A lone erroneous ruling, even on an issue of national significance, has never been understood to meet the threshold for impeaching a federal judge.”
On Monday, Boasberg held a follow-up hearing and criticized Trump administration lawyers for not abiding by his order to halt the flights to El Salvador. They noted his were verbal orders, not written ones.
“That’s one heck of a stretch, I think,” the judge replied.
But his criticism appears to have triggered Trump’s call for his impeachment.
Rep. Brandon Gill, a Texas Republican, announced Tuesday he had introduced articles of impeachment “against radical activist Judge James Boasberg. He is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors and should be removed from office.”
He was quickly joined by several others.
Elon Musk, who owns the social media platform X and is a Trump White House advisor, reposted Gill’s message to his 200 million followers.
