Sheldon Whitehouse Accuses Trump Administration Of Creating ‘Atmosphere Of Threat And Intimidation’ For Judges

Forbes Breaking News

During a Senate Democratic press briefing on Thursday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) spoke about the Trump Administration’s recent actions towards the judiciary.

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Chuck. It's a great honor to follow Judge Gertner to this podium.

00:06My message is that this provision in the reconciliation bill has to be understood

00:13in the context of a campaign, an orchestrated and coordinated campaign of threats and intimidation

00:24against the federal judiciary. This is just one thread of that campaign. If you look at what

00:32congressional Republicans are up to, it's not just this bill. It's wanted posters outside their

00:38offices with judges' names and faces. It's articles of impeachment filed against judges for decisions

00:47they disagree with. It's a hearing called District Judges vs. Trump, designed to whip up anti-judiciary

00:56animus. It's a bill calling federal judges judicial insurrectionists. And it's echoed over at the

01:05White House by Trump's commentary. Trump's attacks include calling judges USA-hating, calling them

01:13monsters, calling them communists, calling them radical left lunatics, who could, quoting him again,

01:22very well lead to the destruction of our country. And then for good measure, his White House throws in

01:28an official statement calling judges leftist, crazy, unconstitutional people. The third wing of this

01:37attack on the judges comes through MAGA, through Elon Musk, and through Laura Loomer, and the X platform,

01:45which posts information about judges, posts information about their families. They seem to particularly like

01:52to post judges' daughters in order to create attacks on those individual judges. Musk has called them

02:03corrupt. He's called them radical. He's called them evil. At the moment, one of the tricks of this

02:10campaign of threat and intimidation is to send two judges and to their families unsolicited pizza

02:17deliveries, often in the name of the murdered son of a federal judge, saying to them, we know where you

02:26live. This is about intimidating you, and we are capable of violence. X has curated over years a horde of what I

02:42call flying monkeys. Disordered people who, when provoked and triggered by Musk, by Loomer, by X, will do the job

02:54of delivering vile and violent threats against the target. And that has caused the judges to have to

03:04take this far more seriously. Justice Roberts had to make an uncharacteristic public statement saying,

03:11if you think we're wrong, appeal. Don't threaten impeachment. He did that because he was getting

03:17pressure from district judges who were feeling left hung out to dry in this atmosphere of threat

03:23and intimidation. The judges through the judicial conference have had to create a judicial security

03:28and independence task force to deal with this campaign of threats. And the question we're about

03:34to face is whether the MAGA attorney general, Pam Bondi, in the face of this campaign of threat

03:42and intimidation, will allow the marshal service to do its work of investigating those crimes.

03:49Not only investigating those crimes, but investigating those who are orchestrating and coordinating that

03:57campaign of threats. If, in fact, as all the evidence suggests, that campaign leads back to MAGA,

04:04then Bondi has every incentive to squelch these investigations. So keep a sharp eye out for her.

04:13We're up to 162 threats now. If that's not a campaign, if that's not predication for these investigations,

04:20I do not know what is.

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