This article has been updated since the original post.
The Bush-appointed judge who likened the government fining its citizens for not purchasing a product to taxation, Justice John Roberts, laid bare his naivete this week in a statement defending the judiciary after President Trump referred to a federal judge as an “Obama Judge” for ruling against his migrant asylum order.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Tigar in San Francisco (an Obama appointee) blocked a policy of President Trump’s that says illegal immigrants detained at non-points of entry cannot apply for asylum. President Trump immediately lamented that opponents of his policy always file lawsuits in left-leaning courts packed with Clinton and Obama appointees where wins are guaranteed. AP notes that conservatives did the same tactic during Obama’s reign by filing lawsuits in Texas, part of the conservative-leaning 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Every case that gets filed in the 9th Circuit, we get beaten. And then we end up having to go to the Supreme Court, like the travel ban, and we won,” Trump said. “This was an Obama judge. And I’ll tell you what, it’s not going to happen like this anymore.”
Since the judiciary has become a bully-club for leftists to push agendas that Americans reject in the ballot box in recent decades, President Trump was simply speaking the obvious. Chief Justice John Roberts, however, disagrees. In a rare and public rebuke of President Trump, Justice Roberts decided to gaslight the American public by assuring them of an independent judiciary.
“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,” Roberts said in a statement that was released by the Supreme Court.
On the day before Thanksgiving, he concluded, “The independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”
If only America had an independent judiciary, which it does not. Roberts should know that, considering every one of his leftist colleagues on the court vote party line with virtually every major decision.
President Trump, of course, did not take the snap from Justice Roberts lying down and immediately issued his own retort to the Chief Justice on Twitter.
“Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’ and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country,” Trump tweeted.
The president pointed at the 9th Circuit judges, saying that if they were as independent as Roberts makes them out to be, then “why are so many opposing view (on Border and Safety) cases filed there, and why are a vast number of those cases overturned. … these rulings are making our country unsafe! Very dangerous and unwise!”
UPDATE: Originally, the article said that Justice Roberts never criticized Obama during his presidency. That was inaccurate. In 2010, when President Obama criticized the Supreme Court for the Citizens United decision, Justice Roberts later expressed displeasure with having the Justices present for what he described as a political pep rally. “The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court – according to the requirements of protocol – has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling,” he said.