Category: Attack the Judiciary

Trump labels US justice system ‘laughing stock’

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President Donald Trump called for “quick justice” and “strong justice” for terror suspects in the wake of the deadly New York City attack.

We have to come up with punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now. They’ll go through court for years. At the end, they’ll be — who knows what happens. We need quick justice, and we need strong justice. Much quicker and much stronger than we have right now, because what we have right now is a joke, and it’s a laughing stock. And no wonder so much of this stuff takes place.

Tuesday’s terror attack in New York was the city’s deadliest since 9/11. Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov drove a rented van down a bike path, law enforcement sources have said. The attack killed six victims instantly, while two others died later. New York politicians and officials quickly labeled the incident a terror attack.

[CNN]

Reality

As Vox points out, this is verifiably false pretty much from top to bottom.

There is no evidence that US courts are unable to prosecute terrorism suspects in a timely fashion. The opposite: Since 9/11, more than 620 individuals have been convicted on terrorism charges in 63 separate federal courts, according to a May 2017 count by Human Rights First. None of these terrorists have broken out of prison, and none of the courts have suffered retaliatory attacks.

Moreover, the US already tried to set up an alternative system — the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that George W. Bush established after 9/11 — and it was a disaster.

Military courts are well equipped to try US service members who violate military laws, but aren’t set up to deal with complex and wide-ranging constitutional and classification issues raised by major terrorism prosecution. This makes them slower and puts verdicts on less sure legal footing. In the same time span that civilian courts convicted 620 individuals on terrorism charges, military commissions convicted a grand total of eight people.

Trump Pardons His Friend Sheriff Joe Arpaio

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President Donald Trump has pardoned controversial former sheriff Joe Arpaio of his conviction for criminal contempt, the White House said Friday night.

Arpaio, who was a sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona, was found guilty of criminal contempt last month for disregarding a court order in a racial profiling case. Arpaio’s sentencing had been scheduled for October 5.

“Not only did (Arpaio) abdicate responsibility, he announced to the world and to his subordinates that he was going to continue business as usual no matter who said otherwise,” wrote US District Judge Susan Bolton in the July 31 order.

Trump indicated he would pardon Arpaio at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, on Tuesday: “I won’t do it tonight because I don’t want to cause any controversy.”

“I’ll make a prediction,” Trump said, adding, “I think he’s going to be just fine.”

However, civil rights groups have pushed back against the possibility of Arpaio’s pardon.

After Trump’s comments at the Phoenix rally, the ACLU tweeted: “President Trump should not pardon Joe Arpaio. #PhoenixRally #noarpaiopardon,” accompanied with a graphic that reads, “No, President Trump. Arpaio was not ‘just doing his job.’ He was violating the Constitution and discriminating against Latinos.”

Arpaio, who has called himself “America’s toughest sheriff,” was an early Trump supporter, but his stance on illegal immigration was what had earned him national recognition.

[CNN]

Trump Brags to Russians About Firing ‘Nut Job’ Comey

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President Donald Trump bragged to two top Russian officials last week that firing “nut job” FBI Director James Comey eased “great pressure” on him, The New York Times reported Friday.

“I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Trump said, according to the Times. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak came one day after Comey was fired.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer did not refute the Times story but said it was Comey’s “grandstanding and politicizing” of the Russia investigation that put pressure on the administration’s ability to engage Moscow.

“The President has always emphasized the importance of making deals with Russia as it relates to Syria, Ukraine, defeating ISIS and other key issues for the benefit and safety of the American people,” Spicer said in a statement to CNN. “By grandstanding and politicizing the investigation into Russia’s actions, James Comey created unnecessary pressure on our ability to engage and negotiate with Russia.”

He added, “The investigation would have always continued, and obviously, the termination of Comey would not have ended it. Once again, the real story is that our national security has been undermined by the leaking of private and highly classified conversations.”

Trump’s dismissal of Comey was met with bipartisan derision. The move, which came after Trump asked Comey for his loyalty and, according to memos written by the former FBI director, requested he kill an investigation into Trump’s top national security adviser, was seen as a clear violation of protocol and had some Democrats calling for impeachment.
The President maintains he was surprised by the response to Comey’s firing.

“Director Comey was very unpopular with most people,” he said Thursday at a news conference. “When I made that decision, I actually thought that it would be a bipartisan decision. Because you look at all of the people on the Democratic side, not only the Republican side, that were saying such terrible things about Director Comey.”
The news broke shortly after Trump took off for his critically important five-country, eight-day foreign trip, the first of his presidency.

Even before Friday’s report, news about Comey and the newly named special counsel for the Russia investigation has threatened to overshadow Trump’s trip.

Trump’s meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak was controversial before news of talk about Comey ever came out. No United States media were invited in for the meeting, but a photographer from TASS, the Russian state media organization, was in the room for at least part of the gathering. The meeting was also personal request from Vladimir Putin. The Russian President asked that they meet when he spoke with Trump earlier this month.

[CNN]

Reality

The White House did not refute the report, but instead tried to claim “pressure” Trump was referring to was the FBI’s investigation gave Trump an inability for diplomatic negotiations with Russia But how is that any better? The White House is still admitting Comey was fired for political reasons.

Update

The White House claimed it did not know the only person in the room was a TASS photographer, but members of the press saw the photographer enter through the press area with a TASS press pass and accompanied by an official from the State Department.

Trump Uses Power of Office to Intimidate Witness Sally Yates

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CNN’s Dana Bash and John King slammed President Trump on Monday for tweeting about former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, calling it “witness intimidation” ahead of her testimony to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.

“Before I covered politics all the time, I used to cover the courts a lot. A lawyer would call that witness intimidation,” King, the host of “Inside Politics,” said.

Bash agreed with that charge. “Completely. Look, I think that we have all been kind of desensitized, in some way, to his tweets and to his statements that are so out of the norm,” Bash, the network’s chief political correspondent, said. “This is beyond out of the norm. This is inappropriate.

“For the president of the United States to be this aggressive with somebody who used to work for him, who is coming before the United States Congress in sworn testimony hours later, is beyond the pale. It just is.”

Trump sent two successive tweets on Monday morning, including one directed at Yates urging lawmakers to ask “if she knows how classified information” was leaked to the press.

Yates, a former acting attorney general who was fired by Trump for her refusal to defend his travel ban, will testify during a Senate hearing on Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.

Yates is expected to testify that she warned the White House about former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russia, which would contradict the administration’s claims.

(h/t The Hill)

Media

Trump Says He May Break Up 9th Circuit Court After Rulings Go Against Him

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President Trump is considering breaking up the 9th Circuit Court after a federal district court judge in its jurisdiction blocked his order to withhold funding from “sanctuary cities.”

In a Wednesday interview with the Washington Examiner, Trump said “there are many people who want to break up the 9th Circuit. It’s outrageous.”

In the interview, Trump accused liberals of “judge-shopping” for a court that would strike down his executive order.

“I mean, the language on the ban, it reads so easy that a reasonably good student in the first grade will fully understand it. And they don’t even mention the words in their rejection on the ban,” Trump said.

Trump claimed the court oversteps its authority and that his opponents “immediately run” to the court for “semi-automatic” rulings.

The 9th Circuit earlier this year blocked Trump’s executive order that barred immigration from certain Muslim-majority countries and banned all Syrian refugees from the U.S. for a period of time.

Earlier Wednesday, Trump railed against the 9th Circuit over a judge blocking his order withholding funds from sanctuary cities.

If Trump decides to move forward with plans to break up the court, he’ll have Republican support. Earlier this year, Sen Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) voiced support for breaking up the court, which is seen as one of the most liberal in the country.

On Tuesday, a federal judge rejected Trump’s order to defund sanctuary cities, arguing that the White House had overreached with requirements not related to law enforcement.

The 9th Circuit Court covers Arizona, California, Alaska, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Washington and Hawaii, as well as Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Eighteen of the court’s 25 judges were appointed by Democratic presidents.

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

First of all, Trump is angry at the wrong court. The most recent ruling against Trump, in which Judge William Orrick issued an injunction blocking his executive order targeting so-called sanctuary cities, wasn’t handed down by the 9th Circuit. Orrick sits on the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, which is one level below the appeals court.

Donald Trump is still learning the Constitution. His hands are completely tied when it comes the the courts. Trump can’t break up a circuit court on his own. He needs the help of Congress, who would need a super-majority to pass. While most Republicans polled wouldn’t back it, Democrats alone could block any legislation to break up the 9th circuit.

Trump just blasted the wrong court for ‘blocking’ his sanctuary cities order

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President Donald Trump lashed out again at the American judiciary for blocking a piece of his agenda.

Except on Wednesday, he got his court wrong.

In a morning tweet, he blamed the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for blocking his order to withhold funding from so-called sanctuary cities. He called the ruling “ridiculous” and signaled that his administration will appeal by saying “see you in the Supreme Court.”

The problem: Tuesday’s ruling did not come from the 9th Circuit. It was made in federal district court in San Francisco.
Earlier this year, the 9th Circuit did block Trump’s executive order restricting travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus also targeted the appeals court in comments to reporters Tuesday, according to The Hill.

Politico, which first pointed out Trump’s error, noted that the 9th Circuit would hear the case next if the Trump administration appeals.

(h/t NBC News)

Jeff Sessions Dismisses Hawaii as ‘an Island in the Pacific’

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke dismissively about the State of Hawaii while criticizing a Federal District Court ruling last month that blocked the Trump administration from carrying out its ban on travel from parts of the Muslim world.

“I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power,” Mr. Sessions said this week in an interview on “The Mark Levin Show,” a conservative talk radio program.

Mr. Sessions’s description of Hawaii, where the federal judge who issued the order, Derrick K. Watson, has his chambers, drew a rebuke from both of the United States senators who represent the state. Annexed as a territory of the United States in the late 19th century, Hawaii became the 50th state in 1959.

“Hawaii was built on the strength of diversity & immigrant experiences — including my own,” Senator Mazie Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii, wrote on Twitter. “Jeff Sessions’ comments are ignorant & dangerous.”

The other senator from Hawaii, Brian Schatz, who is also a Democrat, expressed similar sentiments, writing on Twitter: “Mr. Attorney General: You voted for that judge. And that island is called Oahu. It’s my home. Have some respect.”

Asked for a response from Mr. Sessions, Ian Prior, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said in an email: “Hawaii is, in fact, an island in the Pacific — a beautiful one where the attorney general’s granddaughter was born. The point, however, is that there is a problem when a flawed opinion by a single judge can block the president’s lawful exercise of authority to keep the entire country safe.”

(The State of Hawaii is a chain of islands, one of which is also called Hawaii; the judge’s chambers, however, are in Honolulu, which is on the island of Oahu.)

Judge Watson, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, was confirmed in 2013 by a 94-to-0 vote; Mr. Sessions, then a United States senator from Alabama, was among those who cast an approving vote. A former federal prosecutor, Judge Watson earned his law degree from Harvard alongside Mr. Obama and Neil M. Gorsuch, the newly seated Supreme Court justice. He is the only judge of native Hawaiian descent on the federal bench.

Last month, Judge Watson issued a nationwide injunction blocking President Trump’s travel ban, ruling that the plaintiffs — the State of Hawaii and Ismail Elshikh, the imam of the Muslim Association of Hawaii — had reasonable grounds to challenge the order as religious discrimination. He cited comments dating to Mr. Trump’s original call, during the 2016 campaign, for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

During the arguments, the government had contended that looking beyond the text of the order to infer religious animus would amount to investigating Mr. Trump’s “veiled psyche,” but Judge Watson wrote in his decision that there was “nothing ‘veiled’” about Mr. Trump’s public remarks. Still, Mr. Sessions reiterated that line of argument in the radio interview, saying he believed that the judge’s reasoning was improper and would be overturned.

“The judges don’t get to psychoanalyze the president to see if the order he issues is lawful,” Mr. Sessions said. “It’s either lawful or it’s not.”

(h/t New York Times)

Media

 

Trump Slams His Own SCOTUS Pick, “I’ll Criticize Judges!”

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President Trump on Tuesday said the courts aren’t helping the administration in its attempts to strengthen the country’s vetting procedures to weed out potential terrorists.

“We’re also taking decisive action to improve our vetting procedures,” Trump said, speaking at the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner.

“The courts are not helping us, I have to be honest with you. It’s ridiculous. Somebody said I should not criticize judges. OK, I’ll criticize judges.”

Earlier this year, Trump blasted James Robart, the federal judge for the Western District of Washington who placed a halt on Trump’s initial travel ban. The president referred to Robart as a “so-called judge.”

During the campaign, he also attacked the judge hearing a lawsuit against Trump’s defunct real estate education program, Trump University, saying that his Mexican heritage makes him unable to be impartial.

On Tuesday, Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch said during his confirmation hearing that he finds the president’s criticism of judges’ integrity “disheartening and demoralizing.”

“I know these people and how decent they are, and when anyone criticizes the honesty, integrity and motives of a federal judge, I find that disheartening and demoralizing because I know the truth,” Gorsuch told Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

“Anyone including the president of the United States?” Blumenthal asked.

“Anyone is anyone,” Gorsuch replied.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in Hawaii issued a temporary restraining order on parts of the president’s revised travel ban.

(h/t The Hill)

Media

Trump Slams 9th Circuit Court, Which Blocked His Immigration Ban, As ‘In Chaos’

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During his first solo press conference as commander-in-chief, President Donald Trump on Thursday slammed the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals as being “in chaos” and “in turmoil.” The 9th Circuit Court ruled unanimously to block Trump’s ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim nations earlier this month.

Trump vowed to appeal the court’s ruling in Thursday’s press conference; he had previously vacillated on whether his administration would issue a brand new executive order on immigration or appeal the current order all the way to the Supreme Court.

Trump has been criticized in recent weeks for his apparent attempts to undermine the American judiciary system, with his own Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch calling Trump’s repeated attacks on judges’ integrity “demoralizing.” On Thursday, Trump said he’d “heard” that 80 percent of the 9th Circuit Court’s decisions are overturned — a claim that is patently false, and which Snopes debunked here.

(h/t The Week)

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Trump Says Refugees Are Flooding U.S. in Misleading Allusion

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President Trump said on Saturday that judicial decisions that halted his executive order banning travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries had allowed a flood of refugees to pour into the country.

“Our legal system is broken!” Mr. Trump wrote in a Twitter posting a day after he said that he was considering a wholesale rewriting of the executive order to circumvent legal hurdles quickly but had not ruled out appealing the major defeat he suffered in a federal appeals court on Thursday. “SO DANGEROUS!” the president added.

Mr. Trump cited a report in The Washington Times that asserted that 77 percent of the refugees who entered the United States since Judge James L. Robart of Federal District Court in Seattle blocked the order on Feb. 3 had been from the seven “suspect countries.”

Still, his allusion to a rush of dangerous refugees is somewhat misleading. According to an analysis of data maintained by the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center, the percentage of refugees arriving from those countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — has risen considerably since the directive was suspended, but the weekly total of refugees arriving from the targeted countries has risen by only about 100. And all are stringently vetted.

At the same time, refugee arrivals from countries not affected by the order have fallen sharply. Since the judge blocked the ban, 1,049 of the 1,462 refugees who have arrived in the United States, or 72 percent, were from the seven countries affected. In Mr. Trump’s first week of office, before he issued his order, more refugees arrived, 2,108, and 935 of them, representing 44 percent, were from those seven nations.

The figures suggest that the State Department and refugee resettlement agencies, which meet weekly to determine which individuals and families to admit to the United States, may be stepping up their efforts to help refugees from the seven countries.

Mr. Trump’s order also sought to put an indefinite freeze on Syrian refugee admissions and temporarily suspend the rest of the refugee program until the screening process could be reviewed and made more restrictive.

The figures show a similar phenomenon for Syrian refugee arrivals; their proportion has nearly doubled since Mr. Trump moved to block them, although that represents a relatively small increase of about 100. While the 296 Syrians who arrived during the president’s first week in office made up 14 percent of the total, the 402 who have entered since his order was blocked amount to 27 percent of all refugee arrivals over that period.

Refugees already face the strictest of vetting procedures to enter the United States, a process that takes from 18 months to two years because of multiple layers of security and background checks.

Mr. Trump made his Twitter post at the start of a day of golf with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan at his resort in Jupiter, Fla.

(h/t New York Times)

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