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.
