Senior District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi / ALM)

A federal judge on Wednesday publicly denounced Donald Trump over his attacks on the judiciary, declaring that the president has undermined confidence in the legal system by impugning members of the federal bench and disparaging decisions against his administration.

Senior Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, delivering the annual Judge Thomas A. Flannery Lecture in Washington, highlighted several examples from the past two years in which Trump assailed judges for ruling against his administration.

Friedman bemoaned what he said was the growing belief that jurists reflexively decide cases in line with their political beliefs, and he said at least some of the blame for that trend rests with Trump.

"We are in uncharted territory," Friedman said, in an address trumpeting the importance of an independent judiciary.

"We are witnessing a chief executive who criticizes virtually every judicial decision that doesn't go his way and denigrates judges who rule against him, sometimes in very personal terms. He seems to view the courts and the justice system as obstacles to be attacked and undermined, not as a co-equal branch to be respected even when he disagrees with its decisions."

Later, he added: "This is not normal. And I mean that both in the colloquial sense and in the sense that this kind of personal attack on courts and individual judges violates all recognized democratic norms."

Friedman's remarks, rare for a sitting trial judge, were met with a standing ovation inside the ceremonial courtroom of the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse. Many judges from the federal trial and appeals courts were in attendance, along with Trump appointees, including Jessie Liu, the top federal prosecutor in Washington, and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

"I couldn't have said it better myself," said Senior Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee and former chief judge of the federal trial bench, as the event concluded.

Friedman's remarks came just hours after Trump and Senate Republican leaders gathered at the White House to celebrate the 156 trial and appellate judges the administration has appointed to courts across the country. "I will do everything in my power to halt judicial activism and to ensure the law is upheld equally, fairly and without political prejudice for all of our citizens," Trump said during his remarks. Trump lambasted what he called "resistance" judges who have issued nationwide injunctions against the administration.

Friedman called attention to examples where Trump pilloried individual judges. In 2016, Trump cited the Mexican heritage of San Diego-based District Judge Gonzalo Curiel of the Southern District of California to question whether he could rule impartially in a fraud case against Trump University. On the campaign trail, Trump called the Indiana-born Curiel a "hater of Donald Trump," demanded that the judge recuse himself from the case and said that someone "ought to look into" him.

"His introduction of such personal ad hominem attacks against the judge set a terrible precedent and encouraged others to join the chorus," Friedman said. "This was beyond a dog whistle. This was a shout."

In his speech, Friedman said he was disheartened more broadly by the politicization of the judiciary. He said it has become routine for press coverage of the courts to identify the president who nominated the judge or judges who decided cases.

"In reading the newspaper, I sometimes think 'Clinton judge' is a part of my name," he said.

Friedman took senior status in 2009, allowing him to take on a lighter caseload. In recent years, his most publicly visible rulings have relaxed the restrictions on John Hinckley Jr., who in 1981 attempted to assassinate then-President Ronald Reagan.

Friedman's remarks broadly echoed recent lamentations from other federal trial judges and U.S. Supreme Court justices, who seize opportunities to tell the public that members of the high court are not "politicians in robes."

Appearing recently for a discussion at Yale Law School, Justice Elena Kagan struck back at the political labels often seen in news reports about the Supreme Court.

"Sometimes the way the press talks about the justices—well, those are the 'Democratic' and those are the 'Republican' justices—I think this is a very harmful thing for the court," Kagan said. "I think it's incumbent on us to do the best we can to not act in ways that bring it on."

Last year, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. rebuked Trump after the commander in chief criticized an "Obama judge" in California for delivering a court ruling against the administration in an immigration case.

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., U.S. Supreme Court.  (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi / ALM)

"We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges," Roberts said in a statement issued by the court. "What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for."

Friedman underscored Roberts' speech in his address Wednesday and pointed also to federal appeals court judge's opinion in 2017 in a travel-ban case.

In that opinion, Judge Jay Bybee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed with Trump on the legal issues surrounding his administration's ban on visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries. But he used the opinion—dissenting from the Ninth Circuit's decision not to review a panel decision against Trump—to condemn the "personal attacks" on judges.

"Such personal attacks treat the court as though it were merely a political forum in which bargaining, compromise, and even intimidation are acceptable principles," Bybee wrote, without explicitly referencing Trump's comments on the case. "The courts of law must be more than that, or we are not governed by law at all."

 

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