Chief Justice Roberts admonishes President Trump over deportation flights

This week, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare public criticism aimed at President Donald Trump. This was in response to President Trump’s calling for the impeachment of a lower court judge who temporarily blocked the deportation flights of alleged Venezuelan gang members.

Paul Charlton, Partner at Dentons, joined us to discuss.

President Trump described the judge as a “radical left lunatic” in a social media post and called for his removal. Chief Justice Roberts stated, “Impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”

Charlton said this is not the first comment Chief Justice Roberts has made publicly however “it is still a rare thing to hear.” He added that impeachment needs 2/3 of the senate vote, including judge impeachments. Charlton said that seems unlikely to be the conclusion of this situation.

“Impeachment, as Chief Justice Roberts said, is the kind of thing you do when there is truly bad behavior on the bench, not simply a decision with which you disagree,” Charlton said.

The reason as to why President Trump calls on the impeachment has to do with the Alien Enforcement Act of 1798 that allows the president to detain or deport citizens of an enemy country.

“Now being used again by this administration to say that this is a war powers act that we should be able to use to round up a Venezuelan gang but the ACLU says “No that is not a correct interpretation of the law and those individuals that you removed from the United States claiming that they were subject to this law, never got due-processed,” Charlton said.

The American Civil Liberties Union, also known as the ACLU, wanted the process of employing the law to stop however the court gave them a temporary injunction until the judge could get proof from the government that their actions were lawful, according to Charlton.

The judge and the Department of Justice lawyers then argued on the timeline of when the planes left for El Salvador compared to when the written order and oral order were issued.

“They have tried now, a couple of times, in some I would say unusual ways, they wrote a letter to the Court of Appeals saying “Take this judge off this case.” Writing letters to the Court of Appeals… in my experience, an unusual way of expressing your displeasure with a judge,” Charlton said.

Overall, Chief Justice Roberts disagrees with the action of impeachment and would rather to take the judge on appeal, according to Charlton.