In another round of late-night social media posts, President Donald Trump attacked the Supreme Court for not overturning his loss in the 2020 presidential election — and tried to pressure the court to rule his way in future election cases.
Flurries of angry social media posts are not unusual for Trump, but this one was particularly alarming for its scope and the criticism it directed against the nation’s highest court, where six out of nine justices are conservatives and three are Trump appointees.
“They wouldn’t even call out The Rigged Presidential Election of 2020, because they said that I, as President of the United States, did not have ‘standing’ to challenge it,” Trump wrote.
Trump was referring to the Supreme Court declining to hear a 2020 lawsuit filed by Texas and supported by 18 Republican state attorneys general and 106 Republican members of Congress that sought to invalidate former President Joe Biden’s victories in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“This completely inept and embarrassing Court was not what the Supreme Court of the United States was set up by our wonderful Founders to be,” the president added. “They are hurting our Country, and will continue to do so.”
Since returning to office, Trump has relentlessly attacked lower court judges for being “rogue” or “bad” when they’ve ruled against his administration’s policies, but he had largely held off on directly condemning the Supreme Court in the rare moments it rebuffed his aggressive attempts to expand presidential power.
That all changed last month when Trump erupted on the Supreme Court after it declared that he violated federal law by unilaterally imposing sweeping tariffs across the globe last year.
After the ruling, Trump accused “certain” Supreme Court justices of being “unpatriotic and disloyal.” Though he never said their names, his inflammatory statements were directed at Chief Justice John Roberts and Trump-appointed Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch.
In addition to going after the Supreme Court, Trump Sunday night berated Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and James Boasberg, the chief judge of District Court for D.C.
On Friday, Boasberg quashed two grand jury subpoenas issued by Trump loyalist Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington D.C., against the Federal Reserve and Powell.
Though Trump appointed Powell in his first term, the president has repeatedly attacked the chairman for not reducing interest rates as quickly as he would like.
The criminal investigation Pirro launched against Powell, which was denounced by both Democrats and Republicans, related to renovation at the Fed’s headquarters, though it clearly stemmed from Trump’s desire to increase his influence over the Fed and enact retribution on the chairman.
While dismissing the subpoenas, Boasberg excoriated the DOJ for attempting to initiate a probe against Powell and the central bank, calling it political persecution aimed at pressuring the Fed chair to lower interest rates.
In one of his posts Sunday night, Trump lamented that Powell was “not even allowed to be investigated” and said Boasberg should “suffer serious disciplinary action” and be barred from presiding over all cases involving the Trump administration for quashing Pirro’s probe.
“In case after case, Boasberg has displayed open, flagrant, and extreme partisan bias and contempt against Republicans and the Trump Administration,” Trump wrote, adding that the judge was “Wacky, Nasty, Crooked, and totally Out of Control.”
“What Boasberg has done on the ‘Too Late’ Powell case, and many others, has little to do with the Law, and everything to do with Politics,” Trump wrote, adding, “Cases don’t matter, the Judge does!”
Last year, Attorney General Pam Bondi, one of Trump’s former attorneys, sought to punish Boasberg by filing a formal misconduct complaint against him. Bondi claimed that he violated the judicial code of conduct by raising concerns to Chief Justice John Roberts about the Trump administration possibly ignoring future court orders.
A high-ranking federal appeals judge tossed the complaint last month. However, Boasberg has also become the leading target of a judicial impeachment effort by Trump’s allies in Congress.
