Chief Justice John Roberts rebukes Trump rhetoric on federal judge

Big news out of the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice of the United States of America just issued a rare statement on President Trump's call to impeach the judge in his Alien Enemies Act case. I want to go straight to Paula Reid.

Paula. Wow. This is a very big deal.

This is a huge deal. Here you have Chief Justice John Roberts appearing to push back on statements President Trump made earlier today, suggesting that a judge, James Boasberg, who, of course, temporarily blocked deportations by the Trump administration or at least tried to you should be impeached. And here the chief justice writes 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. Now, this is, of course, a very short statement, but it says so much data because earlier today, in a Truth Social post, President Trump sort of went on a tangent about how angry he was at this judge and saying this judge, like many of the crooked judges, I am forced to appear before, should be impeached. And this comes just several days after Boasberg tried to temporarily block some deportations by the Trump administration, and the Trump administration did not abide by his order to turn around two planes that had already taken off.

And in a pretty heated hearing yesterday, the Justice Department insisted that they did not need to abide by the judge's oral order from the bench, something the judge took issue with. And then, even when the judge had issued a written order, they still did not comply. And in court yesterday, they were arguing that the reason they did not need to comply with that written order is because they said that President Trump has a broad executive authority when it comes to foreign affairs.

And the reason that this whole case is significant, Dana, is because this is not just another test of Trump's expansive use of executive power. It is also a test of the extent to which he and his lawyers believe he can be checked by the court. So here, Judge Boasberg getting some support from really the most senior justice in the land.

Yeah. Your eyes are going wide, David Chalian. It's astonishing.

And I don't want to diminish the importance of the specific case that that this whole thing that it is, obviously. But it's so much bigger than the two. This is I just want to step back here because there are so many people.

I think that said, in the last couple days of why are we in a constitutional crisis or not? And if they really defying an order or a let's pass, whether it was a written order or a verbal order, it's two early. It's too soon to get worked up about this or concern about this.

And John Roberts, who does not choose to jump into the political fray at all if he doesn't have to, says, no, no, no, it's not too soon. I am the guy that sits atop one of the three co-equal branches as designed by the Constitution. And it's not too soon for me to say, back off, Mr President.

You should not be talking about impeaching a district judge, a district level judge, because you don't like the ruling. That's not the way the last two centuries have worked. And so I think, you know, he doesn't get involved very often.

The fact that he's chosen to step in here, you see, he's responding to what Trump put in that Truth Social this morning, which I'll, which I'll get to. But I also just the, the the the aggressiveness to push back on Trump this way choosing to speak and speaking the way he did in this statement. We should all take note of this.

Okay, I don't not sure if we have it yet because we just got it to put up on the screen, but I'm just going to read it one more time. And the it being John Roberts statement, which we just got a few moments ago for more than two centuries, it's it has been established that the impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.

Okay. Now let me catch up our viewers and saw it a little bit on the screen, but I just want to point specifically to what this is. In response to Donald Trump's post, here's what Donald Trump said.

This radical left lunatic of a judge, a troublemaker, and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama was not elected president. He went on to say, I'm just doing what the voters wanted me to do this judge, like many of the crooked judges I am forced to appear before, should be impeach. Now, before we continue our conversation, I just want to add another layer to this, which is remember what Donald Trump said just on Friday, which was, I don't know what for four days ago when he was at the Justice Department about a different judge, we had a an amazing judge in Florida, and her name is Eileen Cannon, and I didn't know her.

I still don't know her. I don't believe I ever spoke to her, even during the trial, but I did a point pointer federal judge and these fake lawyers, these horrible human beings, were hitting her so hard public relations wise. They were playing the refs.

I don't think it's legal. I don't think it's legal. The judges that side with him, he's cool with the judges that don't.

He's calling for an impeachment. That's what John Roberts was trying to get at it. Hypocrisy, I think, is what you're going for on some level here.

Look, I think what's fascinating about this moment is one to David's point, I think everybody's been kind of waiting for, to the extent there are still guardrails that exist in this moment in time, because they certainly don't in the legislative branch with Republicans in control of both chambers, when were they going to run up against it in the legal system? And what I've been struck by over the course of the last probably 6 or 7 weeks, there have been dozens upon dozens upon dozens of lawsuits filed related to what Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency are doing, and pretty much and I've read way more paper than I want to about those lawsuits. And the Justice Department, the civil division of the Justice Department, the acting assistant attorney general, have complied with what the courts have asked for over and over and over again, even if they disagree with the assessment.

This was the first time on a very specific issue that the president likes politically. It's deep to the core of his campaign and his presidency. They decided this was the moment to have the fight, apparently, based on what we've seen over the course of the last several days, the kind of hole in the strategy that has kind of always been hanging out there is great politically.

We know they want this fight. They are happy to have this fight. They win this fight based on every poll that you're looking at.

But over the course of the last 8 to 10 months, legally, the question becomes there are the the appellate process. And as you start to move up the ranks, how do judges feel about this? They have a more friendly court, particularly on the court, that John Roberts sits on than any president has had in a very long time.

And they knew that this they were going to have to appeal an appeal and eventually get it up to the Supreme Court. They did it with several other immigration actions. Why would you do this now on the district court level, when you know you have an appeal to do this, meaning call for it and have this fight go as aggressive as they have, not just with all the top officials signing off on what they've done, which is a really, salient point for people to point out.

But the fact that they've tried to remove the judge when they go over to the circuit court, they are just going nuclear at the lowest level of a multi-step process that they know was going to play out over multiple steps. Why are they doing it now, Frank, weigh in on this. Roberts, why think why are they doing this now?

Well, the early stages of this administration have been an enormous power grab, and they're testing institutions to see what they can get away with in the Congress. They've seen all the ways in which Senate Republicans have been able to have been willing to cede all of this institutional prerogative to the administration. When it comes to the courts, the courts have slowed them down somewhat.

I mean, in the bigger scheme of things, all of these judicial orders haven't actually slowed them down meaningfully because they've been able to destroy the democracy, regardless of all of these orders that have that have intervened. But there is within MAGA, within, you know, we've been hearing this from Steve Bannon. we've been hearing it from Elon Musk for weeks.

That they have, they, they want they're going for as much as they can now because the conditions for them to achieve their goals are essentially optimal. And the base is aching for it. So they're going to keep pushing and pushing until they get reprimanded.

And even if they are reprimanded, it's not entirely clear what effect that would have on their process. Will they ignore these orders even when they come down from the Supreme Court of the United States? And on that note, you mentioned what we're hearing from MAGA.

Let's listen to, what MAGA world has been saying about this, starting with the aforementioned Steve Bannon. We're supposed to have the power of the U. S.

government, and you see that these these judges are kind of act like their own DOJ, as per usual, a far left judge tried to intervene, but it was too little, too late. The illegals were already out of the country on flights to El Salvador. If a district judge has the power to do a nationwide injunction, and you have these judges who've been appointed by Obama, appointed by Biden, they've been radicalized to hate Trump for a decade.

They're going to come up with a justification for a nationwide injunction on anything. Kelly. Yeah.

What strikes me the most about the statement from Chief Justice John Roberts is the fact that MAGA world and the administration has really tried to discredit any cases, any decisions that come out of courts lower than the Supreme Court. So even federal district courts, they're discrediting it. And this is straight from the Supreme Court, a court that they respect, signaling that they are taking these threats very seriously.

They're also taking this threat from Trump on Truth Social about impeaching the judge very seriously. So I'm very interested to see how allies of the president respond to this. But it's the truth is they really see the president's having these really broad executive powers.

And I think nobody more than Stephen Miller, who is really an architect of the president's domestic policy, believes this. And these are really laws that they have been looking at and planning on for years before Trump. Yeah.

The other thing that this statement reminds me of is that moment after the joint address when the president, was exiting and he shook hands with Chief Justice Roberts and said, thank you. Thank you will never forget. We're not quite sure what he was like, for I'm not sure it would have such a chummy moment, from Donald Trump after this, rebuke.