Secretary of State Marco Rubio flippantly said he does not have to listen to court orders at a Senate hearing Tuesday.
Senator Chris Van Hollen asked Rubio about the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador on the government’s own admission. Rubio repeated the Trump administration’s false claims of Abrego Garcia’s gang membership and alleged crimes.
“We deported gang members. Gang members, including the one you had a margarita with. And that guy is a human trafficker, and that guy is a gang banger, and the evidence is going to be clear in the days to come,” Rubio said, referring to Van Hollen’s visit to El Salvador last month to verify Abrego Garcia’s well-being.
Van Hollen interrupted and tried to refute Rubio’s lies, telling Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jim Risch that Rubio “can’t make unsubstantiated claims like that.”
“Secretary Rubio should take that testimony to federal court in the United States because he hasn’t done it under oath,” Van Hollen asserted, only to be reprimanded by Risch. Then Rubio made his outrageous claim about the federal judiciary.
“There is a division in our government between the federal branch and the judicial branch. No judge, and the judicial branch, cannot tell me or the president how to conduct foreign policy,” Rubio said. “No judge can tell how I have to outreach to a foreign partner or what I need to say to them. And if do reach to that foreign partner and talk to them, I am under no obligation to share that with the judiciary branch.”
FIREWORKS: Marco Rubio just declared that he doesn’t have to comply with the judiciary after clashing with Senator Chris Van Hollen who asked him to stop making unsubstantiated claims about Kilmar Abrego Garcia. pic.twitter.com/wC9TJRP3Zp
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) May 20, 2025
First of all, Rubio completely gets the branches of government wrong, as there are three of them: the executive branch, consisting of the presidency; the legislative branch, comprising Congress; and the judicial branch, made up of the federal court system. But perhaps even more troubling, Rubio also declared that he did not believe in the Constitution’s separation of powers, in which the three branches exist together in a system of checks and balances.
Rubio betrayed what seems to be the Trump administration’s actual beliefs about the U.S. government: that the presidency is more like an absolute monarchy that isn’t subject to congressional or judicial oversight. The conservative-controlled Supreme Court seems to have inspired that belief last year in its ruling on presidential immunity. Now, as President Trump deports immigrants without evidence or due process, we are seeing the actions of a president who believes he is above the law.
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