President Trump called on liberal Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg late Monday to recuse themselves from cases involving him or his administration after Justice Sotomayor criticized conservative justices for consistently ruling in favor of the president.
“Trying to ’shame’ some into voting her way?” Mr. Trump tweeted from India. “She never criticized Justice Ginsberg [sic] when she called me a ’faker.’ Both should recuse themselves on all Trump, or Trump related, matters!”
He said of Justice Sotomayor’s comments, “This is a terrible thing to say.”
“While ’elections have consequences’, I only ask for fairness, especially when it comes to decisions made by the United States Supreme Court!” Mr. Trump said.
Justice Sotomayor, an Obama appointee, wrote a dissenting opinion last week in a 5-4 high court ruling that cleared the way for the administration’s “public charge” rule to go into effect.
She bemoaned a “now-familiar pattern” in which the administration “seeks emergency relief from this Court, asking it to grant a stay where two lower courts have not.”
“The Government insists — even though review in a court of appeals is imminent — that it will suffer irreparable harm if this Court does not grant a stay. And the Court yields,” she wrote.
She appeared to target her conservative colleagues when she wrote that “the Court’s recent behavior” has benefited “one litigant over all others.”
The president continued his criticism at a press conference in India on Tuesday.
“I just don’t know how they can’t recuse themselves for anything Trump related,” the president said. “They’ll have to decide what to do.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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