Funny how now the Democrats pretend to care about politicians throwing shade at judges.
As you doubtlessly know, the left has been complaining about the treatment Judge James Boasberg has gotten from President Donald Trump’s administration for blocking his use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants who have been linked to Tren de Aragua and other such gangs.
The latest move from Boasberg, who has ordered deportation flights to stop, came on Thursday, where he said he believed the Trump administration’s lawyers “acted in bad faith” and that the arguments he was getting from them were “pretty sketchy.”
Trump, in return, has denounced Boasberg as an “activist” and called for his impeachment on social media, according to Politico.
This back and forth served as backstory for a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday titled “Rule by District Judges II: Exploring Legislative Solutions to the Bipartisan Problem of Universal Injunctions.” (Look for “Rule by District Judges III: My Way or the Highway” to be in theaters this summer.)
One of the individuals testifying was Jesse Panuccio, a former acting associate attorney general of the U.S. during Trump’s first term who’s currently in private practice. During the hearing, Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota asked him, with all the concern she could fake, whether he was worried about this talk to the same extent she pretended to be.
Panuccio’s response, TL;DR: Sure, but it would have helped if you cared about this a few years ago.
“President Trump’s attacks on these judges has made for some major, major risks for these judges,” Klobuchar said.
“Not in a partisan way, just normal, as a partner in a law firm, would you ever — have you ever taken to social media to personally attack a judge who ruled against you? That’s all my question is,” she asked.
Are Democrats hypocritical to criticize Trump for his comments on judges?
“Senator, thanks for the question,” Panuccio replied. “I think that attacking judges personally, and not their reasoning, well, let me just give you a quote: ‘I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price —’” Panuccio said.
Klobuchar realized where this was going and tried to interrupt, but Panuccio wasn’t having it.
“‘You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with those awful decisions.’ That was something that Sen. Schumer said,” he said.
“I thought it was awful, and it unleashed a wave of violent threats against Supreme Court Justices. I do think that’s problematic, that kind of language.”
Amy Klobuchar gets absolutely wrecked as she goes after Trump’s comments on judges —
— and gets reminded of Chuck Schumer’s own words by GOP witness Jesse Panuccio.
💥BOOM💥 pic.twitter.com/4CdHE09SW4
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) April 4, 2025
Just in case you forgot, this was Schumer’s attack on Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh in regards to abortion law in 2020:
Today’s Left:
First Schumer tells President-elect Trump: “You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”
Today he threatens 2 Supreme Court justices: “You will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you.”pic.twitter.com/jGQ8m5qcjB
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) March 4, 2020
Yes, that was the then-Senate majority leader and current Senate minority leader implicitly threatening Supreme Court justices he didn’t agree with.
Making this especially bad for Klobuchar is the fact that a man pleaded guilty to trying to make Kavanaugh feel “the whirlwind” — i.e., attempted assassination — on the same day and in the same city in which this hearing held.
Of all the days not to fall into this trap, this was it — but Klobuchar went right ahead, then tried to brush this off with a remark that, “I have no doubt the language is a problem on the left or right.”
However, it’s worth noting that this is overwhelmingly a problem of the left. In fact, if you want to trace the current situation back to its root, it began with then-President Barack Obama scolding the Supreme Court at the 2010 State of the Union address over the campaign finance case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission: “Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests,” he said at the time.
This was unheard of at that juncture, but the Democrats made sure we heard much more of it.
Go from there to Democrats torpedoing the judicial filibuster and then complaining that the Republicans were taking advantage of the lack of filibuster once they regained the White House, to the specious attempts at derailing Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees on the basis of a “stolen seat,” to a sexual assault allegation that turned into a media circus with little to evidence back it up, to attacks on justices’ religious beliefs to relentless ethical smears.
You can pretty much draw a straight line from that State of the Union to now. The Democrats opened Pandora’s Box and are surprised they, too, ended up getting burned by the evils therein.
Too bad for Democrats that Mr. Panuccio remembered — and Senator Klobuchar didn’t.
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