Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann expressed deep concern about the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in Trump v. Slaughter, which overturned 91 years of precedent allowing presidents to fire independent agency members without cause.
Weissmann highlighted Chief Justice Roberts' use of the word "secrecy" when describing executive branch vitality, calling the language "chilling."
He argued the ruling extends Roberts' expansive presidential power theory from the Trump v. United States immunity case.
Weissmann warned the decision "unleashes political patronage" and deemed it "a very ahistoric decision" with significant long-term consequences. He cautioned against allowing presidents to replace career officials based on party affiliation, invoking Justice Robert Jackson's warnings from his Nazi prosecution work at Nuremberg.
"You do not want a Republican president to come in and fire every Democrat, and you do not want every Democratic president to come in and fire every Republican," he said.
Weissmann also criticized the court's originalism claims as "laughable," pointing to its simultaneous decision protecting the Federal Reserve as evidence of result-oriented judging.
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