Donald Trump’s attacks on the judges and court staff overseeing his criminal trials have much deeper legal implications than petty fines. Instead, the attacks—and the responding “passivity, acquiescence, and submissiveness by the nation”—are actively undermining the nation’s entire judicial system, prominent conservative judges are warning.
In a CNN interview Thursday evening, Republican-appointed federal District Judge Reggie B. Walton felt compelled to announce that Trump’s continued attacks could result in “tyranny.” Just hours later, former Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, also a conservative judge, issued his own warning cry, declaring that Trump is responsible for the “dismantling” of the nation’s “system of justice.”
“The Nation is witnessing the determined delegitimization of both its Federal and State judiciaries and the systematic dismantling of its system of justice and Rule of Law by a single man – the former President of the United States,” started Luttig in a multi-part thread on X.
“In the months ahead, the former president can only be expected to ramp up his unprecedented efforts to delegitimize the courts of the United States, the nation’s state courts, and America’s system of justice, through his vicious, disgraceful, and unforgivable attacks and threats on the Federal and State Judiciaries and the individual Judges of these courts.”
“Never in American history has any person, let alone a President of the United States, leveled such threatening attacks against the federal and state courts and federal and state judicial officers of the kind the former president has leveled continually now for years.”
Luttig also warned that Trump isn’t accomplishing the task alone. It’s the complicit Supreme Court—and the American people—that’s letting Trump get away with it.
“It is the responsibility of the Supreme Court of the United States in the first instance to protect the federal courts, the federal judges, and all participants in the justice system from the reprehensible spectacle of the former president’s inexcusable, threatening attacks, just as it is the responsibility of the respective State Supreme Courts in the first instance to protect their courts and their state judges from the same,” he added. “Ultimately, however, it is the responsibility of the entire nation to protect its courts and judges, its Constitution, its Rule of Law, and America’s Democracy from vicious attack, threat, undermine, and deliberate delegitimization at the hands of anyone so determined.”
Here was Walton’s own dire warning:
Senior Judge Reggie Walton: “We do these jobs because we’re committed to the rule of law & we believe in the rule of law & the rule of law can only function effectively when we have judges who are prepared to carry out their duties without the threat of potential physical harm.” pic.twitter.com/V1GC7LVD2g
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) March 29, 2024
