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In a rare public statement Tuesday, US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts criticized President Donald Trump’s calls to impeach a federal judge who ruled against the administration.
Roberts said the president’s suggestion was “not an appropriate response” to US District Judge James E. Boasberg’s ruling over the weekend to block the administration’s deportation of Venezuelan migrants under a 1798 law.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said in the statement.
The chief justice has previously warned of “dangerous” calls to disregard federal court rulings — echoing legal experts’ concerns as the Trump administration comes up against mounting legal challenges to its aggressive overhaul of the US government.
Roberts’ Tuesday intervention came after Trump lashed out in a social media post at the Obama-appointed Judge Boasberg, calling him a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator.”
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This is not the first time the chief justice has criticized Trump over his treatment of the judiciary. After Trump decried a different federal court ruling against his first administration in 2018, Roberts issued a statement saying, “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges… What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”