It is a new frontal attack on justice on the part of the White House. The latter accused the judges on Wednesday, March 19, which made decisions to suspend or cancel certain measures from the Trump administration to “usurp” the presidential authority of Donald Trump.
“Not only do they usurp the will of the president and chief of the executive of our country, but they also undermine the will of the American people,” Karoline Leavitt, spokesperson for the White House, said at the aftermath of Donald Trump’s call to dismiss a judge who had suspended an expulsion of migrants. “It is very clear that it is an activist judge who tries to usurp the authority of the president,” Karoline Leavitt also said during the press point, about this same judge.
A extremely rare development by the Supreme Court
The administration of the republican billionaire has been in open conflict with justice for several weeks. But a new threshold was crossed this Tuesday with these calls for the dismissal of a judge. This request even provoked a recall to the extremely rare order on the part of the Supreme Court itself, declaring that the American president was not founded to demand such a decision. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that dismissal has not been an appropriate response to a disagreement about a court decision,” said John Roberts, the president of the country’s highest court, without directly citing Donald Trump. “The ordinary appeal procedure exists for this purpose,” he said, in a extremely rare public expression.
Donald Trump had launched just before one of his most direct attacks on the judicial institution. “This judge, like many of the corrupt judges before which I am forced to appear, should be dismissed,” he asked on his social social platform about James Boasberg, federal magistrate in Washington. “If a president no longer has the right to expel assassins and other criminals because a leftist and crazy judge wants to play the president, then our country has big problems and goes right to failure!”, Donald Trump insisted on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, after the communication of the Supreme Court.
Legal battles
As rare as it is, the recall to the order of the President of the Supreme Court is not unprecedented. In 2018, during Donald Trump’s first term, John Roberts was already released to the surprise of his reserve to reframe the republican president who, already, had accused a magistrate of being a supporter. “There are no pro-Obama judges or pro-Trump, pro-Bush or Pro-Clinton judges,” he said.
Seized in an emergency, judge Boasberg had ordered this Saturday suspension for fourteen days of any expulsion of migrants led by the Trump administration on the basis of an exceptional law of 1798. This law allows in war to stop and expel “foreign enemies”, but Donald Trump invoked it, for the first time, in peacetime. The judge in particular demanded to interrupt the expulsion to Salvador of more than 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang.
The Trump administration argued that the planes had already taken off and even left American airspace when the judge rendered his written decision and that she therefore did not contravene. During a hearing on Monday, the judge, however, was skeptical and summoned the government to explain it.
The latter executed by reaffirming that no plane carrying migrants expelled on the basis of this exceptional law had taken off since the publication of the judge’s decision. However, the latter has requested additional information within twenty-four hours.
Heavy procedure
Numerous decrees taken by Donald Trump since his return to the White House have been attacked in court, and often suspended by judges believing that the president was going beyond his prerogatives, in particular to the detriment of the congress. And if the first President of the United States sentenced to criminal people often attacked the judicial institution, he had not until then called on the revocation of a magistrate since the start of his new mandate.
Federal judges are appointed for life by the presidency. A possible dismissal procedure would first involve indictment before the House of Representatives. If it approved it, the process would take its course with a lawsuit in the Senate. And for the dismissal to be completed, the upper room should then vote for two thirds.
Heavy procedure dedicated to failure due to the current American political landscape. The dismissals of federal judges are rare. The last dates back to 2010.