Stephen Breyer Calls Chief’s Rebuke of Trump Appropriate (1)

Retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said Chief Justice John Roberts did the right thing in releasing a public statement pushing back on President Donald Trump’s calls to impeach a judge who ruled against him.

“He’s trying to explain to the people of this country how the legal system works and how it doesn’t work,” he said in a live interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN Wednesday morning. “It doesn’t work by impeaching a judge ‘cause you don’t like his decision.”

Breyer’s interview comes a day after Roberts made a rare public statement rebuking Trump’s calls for Judge James Boasberg, chief judge of the US District Court for D.C., to be impeached in a post on social media.

The post came after Boasberg temporarily stopped Trump from deporting hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members. Trump didn’t refer to Boasberg by name, but called the Obama appointee a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator.”

In a statement released by the Supreme Court’s Public Information Office, Roberts called the remarks “not an appropriate response” to disagreement with a court ruling.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in the statement Tuesday morning. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

Breyer was asked what Roberts’ statement says about Trump, but he declined to answer.

“The statement doesn’t mention the president,” he said. Blitzer pushed back, saying it’s obvious given the timing of its release, but Breyer said Blitzer “can ask the person who made the statement.”

Trump responded to Roberts with an additional post on social media Tuesday night in which he doubled down in his criticisms of Boasberg.

“If a President doesn’t have the right to throw murderers, and other criminals, out of our Country because a Radical Left Lunatic Judge wants to assume the role of President, then our Country is in very big trouble, and destined to fail!” he said.

During a press conference Wednesday afternoon, however, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Trump administration “will continue to comply” with court orders and “fight these battles in courts.”

“But it’s incredibly apparent that there is a concerted effort by the far-left to judge shop, to pick judges who are clearly acting as partisan activists from the bench in an attempt to derail this president’s agenda,” she said.

Leavitt called Boasberg a Democrat activist, who’s consistently shown his disdain for Trump and his policies.

“The president has made it clear that he believes this judge, in this case, should be impeached and he has also made it clear that he has great respect for the Chief Justice John Roberts and it’s incumbent upon the Supreme Court to rein in these activist judges,” she said.

Breyer, who retired from the court in 2022, was asked during his interview if the court has enough credibility with the people in the US right now to push back against the president when necessary.

“You don’t want a president to be looking over his shoulder to public opinion,” Breyer said. “No judge decides a case by looking to the temperature of the day, but every judge is aware of the climate of the era.”