In pushing back against Trump’s attack on a federal judge, the chief justice neglected to mention the substantive dispute of the case.
Yesterday, the Trump administration battled against a federal judge using the instruments of the law. After James Boasberg demanded answers on why hundreds of Venezuelans had been rendered to El Salvador, in apparent defiance of an order he gave, Justice Department attorneys tried to get a hearing canceled, then refused to tell the judge much and suggested he be removed from the case.
This morning, Donald Trump himself entered the fray, using the instruments of politics. “This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President,” he posted on Truth Social. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”
That was enough to provoke a reply from Chief Justice John Roberts, who seldom makes public comments. “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,” he said in a statement. For Roberts, that qualifies as a sharp response.
The chief justice is right. Trump’s attack on Boasberg is juvenile, civically illiterate, and perilous to the rule of law. (It was also just an echo of his sidekick Elon Musk’s recent rants about courts.) But the statement is notable for what it leaves out: any acknowledgment of the substantive dispute in the case, which is whether Trump is defying court orders. Roberts seems more concerned about rhetorical attacks on the personal integrity or employment status of judges than he does with systemic attacks on the judiciary as a whole.
In his end-of-year report last year, Roberts wrote that “elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings.
