'Hostile fire': Ex-Trump lawyer highlights moment Neil Gorsuch targeted his former clerk

The Supreme Court was filled with drama as former law clerks were challenged by their former bosses.

For Trump's former attorney in his federal classified documents obstruction case Jim Trusty, there was one moment where fireworks seemed to be set off.

It was Judge Neil Gorsuch who was sparring with his former clerk Jason Murray about the merits of his case where he was attempting to convince the bench that former President Donald Trump deserved to be disqualified in Colorado's GOP primary contest because he claimed he engaged in insurrection which violates the Constitution.

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I think they went reasonably well," Trusty told CNN's Kaitlan Collins. "These lawyers are people that clerked for Supreme Court justices, they were pretty at home."

"There were different levels of hostile fire as we heard before in terms of Justice Gorsuch turning the tables on his own former law clerk for a minute. It was not particularly aggressive. It wasn't what I would call an extra hot bench."

That moment of "hostile fire" was initiated by Justice Kagan who was pressing Murray (who also clerked for her) about what would happen if his argument were to be switched out from Colorado to a swing state and what those implications would mean.

“Maybe put most boldly, I think that the question you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States,” she said. “That seems quite extraordinary, doesn’t it?”

Murray answered that it was “not unusual that questions of national importance come up through different states.”

That led to Justice Gorsuch bringing some firepower with his question.

“Do you agree that the state’s powers here over its ballot for federal officer election have to come from some constitutional authority,” he asked.

Murray made his best attempt to explain that the answer remains undecided.

He said, “Members of this court have disagreed about that.”

Then Gorsuch hit him again, “I’m asking you."

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