The battle between Donald Trump and the federal judiciary rages on.
Dating back to Trump’s first administration, we have seen some judges go completely out of character in frustration over their views on the president's actions.
Nothing compares, however, to the move just made by a judge who walked away from the bench after having a complete Trump meltdown.
When you think about Trump, one of the best examples of a judge making up their mind solely based on a litigant's identity is that of New York Judge Arthur Engoron.
Engoron was on the bench during the civil fraud case against Trump filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
He issued a partial summary judgment against Trump before the trial got started, more or less sealing his fate long before attorneys even began arguing the case.
Engoron was also very confrontational in his interactions with Trump and his attorneys throughout the case, demeaning their arguments and regularly “warning” the lawyers about potential sanctions.
A judge who I firmly believe needs to be assessed by the judiciary review panel is Judge James Boasberg.
Boasberg took a Trump-involved case in which he clearly lacked jurisdiction, prompting the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse his decision and order the matter refiled in the proper district.
What really stunned me here, however, was that Boasberg continued to present rulings in the case, even calling for possible contempt charges, after the Supreme Court ruled the case should have never been heard in his court.
Boasberg was also a judge who regularly shredded Trump’s legal team, once calling their arguments “woefully insufficient.”
That brings us to Ronald Reagan-appointed Judge Mark Wolf, who just penned an op-ed in left-leaning publication The Atlantic, resigning his lifetime judicial appointment after blistering Trump.
In part, he wrote, "My reason is simple: I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom. President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment.”
Wolf continued, "This is contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench. The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable."
Nobody is constraining judges, but we are asking them to apply the law properly and not to decide a case before any evidence is heard simply because of the name on the docket or their political ideology. As I have stated before, with courts the way they are now, I have been able to predict better than 90% of the outcomes simply by seeing which president appointed the judge to the bench. That, my friends, is not justice, and it is not fair. But it is activism on the bench.
