Trump's latest maneuvering will 'not sit well with John Roberts': legal expert
The Donald Trump administration's abrasive battles with judges combined with new news that the president bullied a highly-regarded law firm into submission is not going unnoticed by members of the Supreme Court and could come back to haunt him.
That is the opinion of Politico's Senior Legal Affairs correspondent Josh Gerstein who appeared on MSNBC on Friday morning and claimed Trump may be pushing conservative Chief Justice John Roberts into the arms of the court's liberal wing.
During his appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Gerstein was asked by a "Morning Joe" regular about the president's DOJ "probing" attacks to see how far they can go with criticizing judges as they test legal limits of ignoring court orders.
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"I mean, there's one thing here, which is there are nine very important people that are watching this all play out and a lot of these fights, if they are not settled, are going to end up at the Supreme Court," he predicted.
"And people I've been talking to in the legal community think things like going after the big law firms, for example, along with the words that Trump and even officials like the attorney general have been using about Judge James Boasberg is just not going to sit very well with, for example, Chief Justice John Roberts and perhaps even with other justices of the Supreme Court," he continued.
"[Justice] Amy Coney Barrett has already shown that she's going to tack somewhat independently of the Trump administration," he elaborated. "Those two votes, right there, could be very, very important not only for these attacks, but for other Trump policies that will be coming to the court in rapid-fire succession over the course of the next few months."
He then added, "And so a lot of people that I talked to, judges, for example, say they think this is ultimately counterproductive. it's setting up sort of mood music and an atmosphere that is not going to be helpful for Trump in terms of his agenda at the Supreme Court, or in finding the five votes that he needs to make sure that his policies go forward."
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