‘He’s like a mob boss’: Legal experts alarmed by Trump’s attacks on judges
Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom with his legal team before the continuation of his civil business fraud trial at New York Supreme Court, in New York.
As Donald Trump faces 91 criminal charges including 17 for his multifaceted drive to overturn his 2020 election loss, and a high-stakes civil trial, he has launched a spate of ad hominem attacks on two judges overseeing trials, posing physical risks for the judiciary and weakening the US judicial system, say former judges and legal experts.
Rising concerns about Trump’s attacks on judges and prosecutors were underscored this month when a federal judge in Washington DC and a state judge in New York issued tailored gag orders to curb Trump’s public tirades.
“Trump’s attacks on judges poison the civil atmosphere and make physical attacks … more likely,” said the retired Massachusetts judge and Harvard Law School lecturer Nancy Gertner. “Trump is challenging the very role of judges.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers have filed multiple motions to delay his trial on charges of mishandling classified documents until after the 2024 election, a major goal for Trump as he runs again for president and paints the numerous charges he faces as political vendettas by Democrats to energise his base and raise funds.
Legal experts say Trump’s tactics are unlikely to quash the criminal and civil charges from federal and state prosecutors in New York, Washington DC, Georgia, and Florida, but that the former president’s strategy is to delay some trials with court motions, as he mounts incendiary attacks against judges and prosecutors that could disrupt the judicial system.
To date, Trump’s verbal assaults on judges seem to echo harsh personal attacks he has made against the special counsel Jack Smith, who Trump has labeled “deranged”, “crooked” and a “thug”, after Smith brought two separate cases of federal charges against him.
In August Trump blasted Tanya Chutkan, the Washington DC judge overseeing the four-count election interference charges brought by Smith, on his Truth Social platform. He called her “highly partisan” and VERY BIASED and UNFAIR”, only days after she told him not to make incendiary comments about the case.
Trump’s attacks on judges have also overlapped with some violent threats against them. Chutkan in August received a letter from a woman in Texas threatening to kill her, which led to the woman’s arrest.
On October 16 Chuktan held a hearing to weigh imposing a limited gag order on Trump to curb attacks on potential witnesses as well as court officials and prosecutors for his trial next March.
Prosecutors noted with concern that Trump used Truth Social to attack the retired general Mark Milley, the ex-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and a likely witness, who Trump darkly suggested might deserve being put to death.
Despite heated warnings from Trump lawyers that any gag order would infringe on his first amendment rights and be appealed, Chutkan issued a limited gag order that restricts the former president from “publicly attacking” witnesses, prosecutors or court staff involved in the federal case accusing Trump of conspiracy to overturn his 2020 defeat.
Chutkan said Trump can continue to “argue that this prosecution is politically motivated”, but he cannot “vilify [the prosecutor] and implicitly encourage violence against public servants who are simply doing their jobs”.
Further, the New York judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing a trial involving a civil suit by the state attorney general that could lead to $250m in penalties, has ruled that Trump committed bank and insurance fraud, and this month issued a limited gag order on Trump after several attacks against Engoron and his law clerk.
“Personal attacks of any member of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate and I will not tolerate them,” Engoron said.
Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers have accelerated efforts to portray the multiple federal cases against Trump as sinister political efforts to hurt his presidential campaign. For instance, a filing on October 11 by Trump’s lawyer Christopher Kise attacked the timing and motives behind Smith’s two cases against Trump involving charges of election subversion and improper retention of classified documents, both slated to be tried in 2024, as a “reckless effort”.
Trump has denounced the federal and civil cases, and said he is innocent of all charges.
Former judges, prosecutors and legal experts have raised alarms about Trump’s attacks as he tries to discredit the charges against him by smearing judges.
The Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin, who taught constitutional law for more than 25 years, sees Trump’s tactics as consistent with his past disdain for legal and democratic norms.
“Trump’s relationship to the law and the justice system is straight out of the autocrat’s playbook,” said Raskin. “He’s incapable of seeing judges acting in anything other than completely personal and political ways.
“The law and justice system are just a favor bank in Trump world. He’s like a mob boss. For him, a judge is either a lackey in his pocket or his sworn enemy. Trump’s legal and political agendas are fused at this point. His whole strategy is to avoid a reckoning with justice before the election.”
“When you have a former president calling judges corrupt and crooked, it tends to rend the fabric of our society and the judicial system,” said the former New York judge Richard Holwell.
Trump’s verbal pyrotechnics, ex-judges say, are part of his longtime modus operandi.
“As often with Trump, he’s testing the boundaries of what he can get away with by acting in such bizarre ways,” said Robert Smith, an ex-New York court of appeals judge. “He’s acting like a petulant nine-year-old as he often does.”
Likewise, Gertner said: “If it’s open season on judges in advance of trials, then we risk undermining the system. You can’t have a trial in which the parties have poisoned the media coverage by attacking the judges.”
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