Ex-DOJ lawyer warns Trump's next 'onslaught' will be the Supreme Court
This week, the House passed legislation barring federal district court judges from issuing nationwide injunctions.
The New York Times characterized it as an escalating Republican campaign to target judges who have moved to halt some of President Donald Trump's executive orders.
Speaking to MSNBC on Thursday, former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and former Justice Department lawyer Andrew Weissmann called it destructive of the judiciary.
"A lot of Americans don't understand how our courts work," McCaskill said. "Our trial courts are the finders of fact. The district courts [at] the federal level is where you bring evidence in. And a judge decides what evidence is admissible. And either a jury or a judge makes decisions about whether or not witnesses are believable, and what laws should be applied to those facts."
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The new law requires cases to move directly to appeals courts.
"Well, how are they going to be the finders of fact?" she asked. "They don't hear evidence. They're not on the front row to hear the witnesses and understand the testimony. So, what they're really doing is saying, listen, judges, we're trying to tell you to quit ruling against a president that's acting unlawfully. That's really what they're doing. And shame on them, because their job is they're supposed to be checking the president and the executive branch, not trying to undermine the ability of the only branch left that is willing to try to extract some kind of accountability from this guy" Donald Trump.
She ultimately argued that if lawmakers weren't willing to perform the checks and balances the founding fathers tasked them with, they shouldn't stand in the way of the court's attempts to do its work.
Weissmann predicted that this attack on the judiciary wouldn't stop at the House's bill.
"You're going to see the onslaught that you've seen with respect to prosecutors, with respect to the media, with respect to anybody who has stood up to Donald Trump," he predicted. "You are going to see that onslaught, and the next onslaught is going to be not just the four judges who were, or I should say, the three judges overseeing Donald Trump's criminal cases because one he liked. You're going to see that with respect to a whole array of courts up to and including the Supreme Court."
Weissmann said that courts have so far ruled that the administration violated due process, the First Amendment, the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, "and so on."
He noted that the judges being attacked are those appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents, including some who Trump appointed.
See the clip below or at the link here.
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