At today's House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) called out federal judges targeted by Republicans over concerns about federal injunctions against President Trump.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to our witnesses for joining us today.
00:09So why have 34 federal judges from 11 different districts with a combined 474 years of service
00:18on the bench, judges appointed by Presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump,
00:26entered 57 different preliminary injunctions and temporary restraining orders against President
00:31Trump and Elon Musk's executive orders and actions, like the ones nullifying constitutional
00:37birthright citizenship, unilaterally dismantling congressionally created agencies, or impounding
00:44and diverting funds appropriated by Congress?
00:47Well, the majority says it's because these are radical judges, and they lead off, as
00:52our good Chairman Issa did, with Judge Jeb Boasberg, the Chief Judge of the District
00:58Court of the District of Columbia, who enjoined the mass roundup and deportation of immigrants
01:02to an infamous El Salvadoran prison in peacetime, without any due process at all, allegedly
01:09under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a statute explicitly limited to wartime and military
01:17invasion.
01:19Some of our colleagues have been railing against Judge Boasberg for ordering the planes to
01:23be turned around.
01:25They say those planes were filled with terrorists, I think my good friend from Texas said.
01:30Well, here's one person of many who wasn't a terrorist on that flight or a gangbanger.
01:38His name's Kilmer Garcia.
01:40He's a Marylander married to a U.S. citizen who has a five-year-old son with autism, and
01:45he went to pick up his son, but he was picked up first by ice, and then he was shackled
01:52and put on that airplane and shipped off to the torturers of El Salvador without ever
01:59having the benefit of those two most beautiful words in the English language, due process.
02:06He never saw a judge.
02:07Nobody ever told him what he was being charged for.
02:11Nobody ever told him that there were any charges against him.
02:15And he was sent to a mega prison run by the self-proclaimed dictator of El Salvador.
02:20And yesterday, you know what happened, Mr. Chairman?
02:23The Trump administration admitted that it had made a mistake.
02:27He was not actually a gangbanger.
02:31He was not a criminal.
02:32It was all a mistake.
02:34If there had been due process, maybe that would have been determined, but there wasn't.
02:38But they put him on that plane and he's in El Salvador.
02:40Well, all's well that ends well, right?
02:42No.
02:43The Trump administration says there's nothing they can do about it now because he's no longer
02:46in U.S. custody.
02:47This guy who lives in my state, married to a U.S. citizen with citizen children, he's
02:55stuck with the dictator of El Salvador.
03:00Well, Judge Boasberg, some of our colleagues want to impeach him.
03:09Some of our colleagues, they've got for-wanted signs in the Cannon House office building
03:14with the names and faces of judges on them.
03:18They want to impeach them now.
03:20They want to impeach Judge Boasberg.
03:23Some of my colleagues should be alerted to this fact.
03:25Judge Boasberg was first named to the bench by President Bush, who's Justice Kavanaugh's
03:31roommate at Yale, known in legal quarters as a very conservative judge.
03:38But they want to impeach him because he stood up for the rule of law.
03:44Now Democrats say all of these executive orders and actions are being struck down not because
03:49these are radical left-row judges, but because the judges, regardless of who appointed them,
03:57are doing their jobs.
04:00If the number of decisions striking down Trump illegality is unprecedented today, it's only
04:06because the sheer number of illegal acts committed in the first 100 days is unprecedented.
04:12America's never seen anything like it before in our entire history.
04:16Trump and Musk have been systematically violating the Constitution and breaking the law to trample
04:22the rights of the people and steal our data, fire excellent federal workers en masse, and
04:28dismantle congressionally created government agencies and programs, from the VA and Medicaid
04:34to NOAA, NIH, and Social Security, which Elon Musk called, quote, the biggest Ponzi scheme
04:42of all time.
04:45When brave Americans go to court to defend themselves against the President of the United
04:48States and the richest man in the world, these judges from across the political spectrum
04:53are showing up to work, and they're showing America why we have an independent judiciary.
04:59And yes, I've got to tell my friend Chairman Jordan that even if you campaign on doing
05:06something unconstitutional, like naming people kings and queens or stealing other people's
05:13money, no, that doesn't make it constitutional, even if you campaigned on it.
05:18And the vast majority of the things here, I never heard of them campaigning on, but
05:22in any event, it's irrelevant to the job of the courts.
05:26Anyone who's read any of the decisions knows that what we're witnessing today is a matchless
05:32constitutional crime spree by a rogue president and his Doge enforcer, a government contractor
05:40who has pocketed $38 billion from the taxpayers, multiples more than he has ever even claimed
05:48to have saved us.
05:50And we know how Doge makes typos converting millions into billions.
05:55Read the decisions.
05:57Look at these cases, finding that Trump violated Congress's spending power and usurped our
06:03lawmaking power under Article 1.
06:05Read the cases finding that Trump violated the First Amendment free speech rights, the
06:09Fifth Amendment due process rights, the Sixth Amendment counsel rights of the people, even
06:14by discriminating by name against law firms and lawyers, actually banning specific firms
06:19and lawyers from federal buildings and courthouses, federal contracts and federal employment,
06:25all simply because they dared to represent their clients and Trump hates them.
06:30Now out of this mountain of cases, which I can only surmise our colleagues have not read,
06:35let's zero in on Trump's executive order contradicting the very first sentence of the 14th Amendment,
06:41which says that any person born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction
06:45thereof is a citizen of the United States.
06:48Trump got struck down by a Reagan judge, a Biden judge, an Obama judge, and a Bush judge.
06:55The Reagan judge said, quote, I've been on the bench for four decades.
06:59I can't remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one.
07:06This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.
07:11Blatantly.
07:12This is from a Reagan judge.
07:14Now my colleagues seem to think that an executive order is greater than a law or the Constitution
07:20itself.
07:21But an executive order cannot trump a federal statute, much less the Constitution.
07:27Executive order is just an order to the executive bureaucracy to follow a policy unless and
07:33until it's countermanded by law, by the courts.
07:37Many of our colleagues are following Trump and Musk in calling for impeachment right
07:41now.
07:42There have been only 15 federal judges impeached in all of American history, always for serious
07:49professional misconduct, like taking bribes, stealing from the court, or habitual drunkenness.
07:57Not even occasional drunkenness.
07:59Habitual drunkenness on the bench.
08:01Congress has never defined a doctrinal or interpretive disagreement as a high crime
08:07and misdemeanor, much less when the judge's reasoning was airtight correct.
08:13The spreading movement to impeach and attack judges is so alarming that Chief Justice Roberts
08:19issued a rare statement last week.
08:22He said, for more than two centuries, it's been established that impeachment is not an
08:26appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.
08:31The proper response, of course, is to appeal the decision.
08:36And to be fair, Chairman Issa expressed his strong disapproval of these wanted posters
08:42yesterday in the Rules Committee.
08:44Now for some members, talk of impeaching these so-called rogue judges is just fun and games.
08:50But the vicious assault, the vicious rhetorical assault on the judiciary has turned into something
08:57more sinister in certain quarters.
08:59Actual violent threats, bomb threats, direct intimidation.
09:03Judge Boasberg, the Bush appointee, must endure scandalous online attacks and insults
09:10by President Trump and Elon Musk and their followers.
09:13Even worse, the campaign of vilification is spread to Judge Boasberg's family, including
09:18outrageous attacks on his daughter, who's had her photo and her place of work posted
09:23on social media by Elon Musk to his 290 million followers.
09:28These threats follow an actual bomb threat made to the sister of Supreme Court Justice
09:33Amy Coney Barrett.
09:35And there are numerous other threats taking place today.
09:38And of course, we've seen threats and actual violence and murders take place in the past.
09:43I call on my colleagues right now to call off the campaign, to impeach federal judges
09:49for doing their jobs.
09:52I call on them to demand that the Trump administration comply with all judicial orders while appealing
09:58whichever ones they want to appeal, and to demand the return of people unlawfully taken
10:04to El Salvador on that so-called plane full of gangbangers.
10:08And I especially call on them today to denounce all violent threats, doxing, online vilification,
10:14and threats against our judges.
10:17This is the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives, and we should
10:21act like it.
10:22I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
10:24I thank the gentleman.
10:25I'd ask unanimous consent that the official statement by ICE officials.