https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02/18/judges-meeting-trump/
Legal Reporter
Washington Post
Fred Barbash reports for the WashPost:
By
Feb. 18, 2020 at 3:16 a.m. EST
The head of the Federal Judges Association is taking the extraordinary step of calling an emergency meeting to address the intervention in politically sensitive cases by President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr.
U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe, the Philadelphia-based judge who heads the voluntary association of around 1,100 life-term federal judges, told USA Today that the issue “could not wait.” The association, founded in 1982, ordinarily concerns itself with matters of judicial compensation and legislation affecting the federal judiciary.
Republicans defend Barr as Klobuchar looks forward to testimony
Lawmakers and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway commented Feb. 16 on President Trump’s tweets and the conduct of Attorney General William P. Barr. (The Washington Post)
On Sunday, more than 1,100 former Justice Department employees released a public letter calling on Barr to resign over the Stone case.
More than 1,100 ex-Justice Department officials call for Barr’s resignation
A search of news articles since the group’s creation revealed nothing like a meeting to deal with the conduct of a president or attorney general.
Rufe, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, could not be reached for comment late Monday.
The action follows a week of turmoil that included the president tweeting his outrage over the length of sentence recommended by career federal prosecutors for his friend Roger Stone and the decision by Barr to withdraw that recommendation.
In between, Trump singled out the judge in the Stone case, Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court in Washington, for personal attacks, accusing her of bias and spreading a falsehood about her record.
“There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about,” Rufe said to USA Today. “We’ll talk all this through.”
Trump began disparaging federal judges who have ruled against his interests before he took office, starting with U.S. District Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel. After Curiel ruled against Trump in 2016 in a pair of lawsuits detailing predatory marketing practices at Trump University in San Diego, Trump described him as “a hater of Donald Trump,” adding that he believed the Indiana-born judge was “Mexican.”
Trump keeps lashing out at judges
President Trump has a history of denouncing judges over rulings that have negatively affected him personally as well as his administration’s policies. (Drea Cornejo/The Washington Post)
Faced with more than 100 adverse rulings in the federal courts, Trump has continued verbal attacks on judges.
Rufe’s comments gave no hint of what the association could or would do in response.
Some individual judges have already spoken out critically about Trump’s attacks generally, among them U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman, a colleague of Jackson’s in Washington, and most recently, the chief judge of the court in Washington, Beryl A. Howell.
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In reality, judges were among those inside Germany who might have effectively challenged Hitler’s authority, the legitimacy of the Nazi regime, and the hundreds of laws that restricted political freedoms, civil rights, and guarantees of property and security. And yet, the overwhelming majority did not. Instead, over the 12 years of Nazi rule, during which time judges heard countless cases, most not only upheld the law but interpreted it in broad and far-reaching ways that facilitated, rather than hindered, the Nazis ability to carry out their agenda.
— United States Holocaust Museum, Law, Justice, and the Holocaust, at 8 (July 2018)
How soon we forget!
Will Trump & Barr eventually separate Article III Judges’ families or send them to danger zones in Mexico or the Northern Triangle to “deter” rulings against the regime? Will Mark Morgan and Chad Wolf then declare “victory?” Will their families be scattered to various parts of the “New American Gulag” with no plans to reunite them? Will they be put on trial for their lives without access to lawyers? Are there costs for failing to take a “united stand” for the rule of law, Constitutional Due Process, human rights, and the human dignity of the most vulnerable among us?
Why does it take the case of a lifetime sleaze-ball like Roger Stone to get the “life-tenured ones” to “wake up” to the attacks on humanity and the rule of law going on under noses for the past three years?
Complicity has costs!
Due Process Forever; Complicit Courts Never!
PWS
02-18-20