Chief Justice John Roberts doesn’t use social media, much less follow President Donald Trump on his online platform Truth Social.
But when Trump posted an attack on a federal judge just after 9 a.m. Tuesday, calling for his impeachment after an adverse ruling, Roberts took the extraordinary step of issuing a statement with equally extraordinary speed.
“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 statement released to ABC News just before noon. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
While Roberts didn’t mention Trump or the specific judge by name, the rebuke was squarely aimed at the president, his senior adviser Elon Musk and congressional Republican allies who have called for the removal of district court judges who block, temporarily or otherwise, any administration action.
Trump had singled out U.S. District Court Judge Jeb Boasberg, who days earlier had ordered the administration to temporarily halt deportation flights of alleged Venezuelan gang members. Boasberg was seeking information on the detainees, who were arrested and removed without any due process under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
The government continued the flights anyway and is currently appealing Boasberg’s order. Trump nonetheless asserted the judge should be removed. “This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President,” Trump wrote on social media.
The public exchange between the heads of two branches of American government thrust into the spotlight Roberts’ apparently growing concern about eroding respect for rule of law.
The chief justice — who heads the nation’s federal judiciary — rarely speaks in public and almost never comments on partisan debate, much less responds to a politician in real time over a dispute he will likely be asked to review.
The court as an institution prizes its independence and its members, appointed for life, have historically maintained strict silence on active legal disputes they could resolve.
That Roberts chose to respond at this moment is an indication of the seriousness of his concern about the current relationship between this White House and the courts.
Just days before Trump was sworn in a second time, Roberts warned of precisely the types of attacks on judges now proliferating.
“Within the past few years, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings,” Roberts wrote in his annual report on the judiciary, just days before Trump was sworn in for a second time. “These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.”
“Every Administration suffers defeats in the court system — sometimes in cases with major ramifications for executive or legislative power or other consequential topics,” Roberts wrote. “Nevertheless, for the past several decades, the decisions of the courts, popular or not, have been followed.”
Allies of the president note that, for all his bluster, he never openly flouted a federal court ruling during his first term in office.
“I always abide by the courts, always abide by them. And we’ll appeal,” Trump said last month from the Oval Office. But he has also shown openness to a different approach: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” he later posted on social media.
Legal scholars say recent rhetoric from the Trump administration has brought the nation to the brink of a constitutional crisis — a moment when the democratic system of government, with three independent branches providing a check on the others, fails to function properly.
“There’s a centuries-old understanding that if the impeachment power is used to punish judges for their rulings, it undermines the vital independence of the judicial branch,” wrote Douglas Keith, a constitutional scholar and attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan legal advocacy group.
In 2018, Roberts and Trump famously clashed in public over a similar scenario: a district court judge blocking a Trump immigration policy.
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts wrote in a Thanksgiving Day statement. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
Trump at the time shot back: “Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’ and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.”
Trump has challenged the courts in ways not other modern president has, loudly and personally attacking judges, their family members and staff, often by name.
It remains a striking phenomenon of this presidency.
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