Conservative Judges Sound Alarm: Trump Will Shred Our Justice System

Donald Trump’s attacks on the judges and court staff overseeing his criminal trials have much deeper legal implications than petty fines. Instead, the attacks—and the responding “passivity, acquiescence, and submissiveness by the nation”—are actively undermining the entire judicial system, prominent conservative judges are warning.

In a CNN interview Thursday evening, Republican-appointed federal District Judge Reggie B. Walton felt compelled to announce that Trump’s continued attacks could result in “tyranny.” Just hours later, former Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, also a conservative, issued his own warning cry, declaring that Trump is responsible for the “dismantling” of the nation’s “system of justice.”

“The Nation is witnessing the determined delegitimization of both its Federal and State judiciaries and the systematic dismantling of its system of justice and Rule of Law by a single man—the former President of the United States,” started Luttig in a multipart thread on X.

“In the months ahead, the former president can only be expected to ramp up his unprecedented efforts to delegitimize the courts of the United States, the nation’s state courts, and America’s system of justice, through his vicious, disgraceful, and unforgivable attacks and threats on the Federal and State Judiciaries and the individual Judges of these courts.”

“Never in American history has any person, let alone a President of the United States, leveled such threatening attacks against the federal and state courts and federal and state judicial officers of the kind the former president has leveled continually now for years.”

Luttig also warned that Trump isn’t accomplishing the task alone. It’s the complicit Supreme Court—and the American people—that are letting Trump get away with it.

“It is the responsibility of the Supreme Court of the United States in the first instance to protect the federal courts, the federal judges, and all participants in the justice system from the reprehensible spectacle of the former president’s inexcusable, threatening attacks, just as it is the responsibility of the respective State Supreme Courts in the first instance to protect their courts and their state judges from the same,” he added. “Ultimately, however, it is the responsibility of the entire nation to protect its courts and judges, its Constitution, its Rule of Law, and America’s Democracy from vicious attack, threat, undermine, and deliberate delegitimization at the hands of anyone so determined.”

Here was Walton’s own dire warning:

Georgia Republican lawmakers, in the dead of night, passed a bill that will make it easier to challenge a voter’s registration, dealing a huge blow to voting rights just months before the 2024 election.

The measure, which has already passed the Senate, also passed the House along party lines early Friday, despite opposition from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. If Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signs the bill into law, it will go into effect on July 1.

The bill increases the number of reasons that a person’s voter registration can be challenged, such as registering in another state or jurisdiction, using a different residence to obtain a homestead tax exemption, or registering at a nonresidential address. In smaller Georgia towns, where there aren’t enough residents in the zip code for the post office to deliver mail to home addresses, many residents use their post office box as their voter registration address. This would also be banned.

The measure would require homeless people to use the country registrar’s office as their voting address, which could be complicated for both the registrars and the people trying to register. This requirement could also violate the National Voter Registration Act.

The bill would make other changes to Georgia’s voting laws, including requiring that the printed text on a ballot be used to count votes, instead of a scannable bar code, and requiring absentee and advanced ballots to be counted within one hour of polls closing on Election Day.

Voting rights advocates have slammed both the bill and Republicans for seeking to create more barriers to voting. Andrea Young, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, warned the bill would encourage “anti-democratic vigilantes to come in and challenge your right to be on the voting list.”

“What we’re saying is that it should be easy for every citizen to vote,” she told The Guardian. “That’s what makes this a democracy. And all of these tricks to try to create barriers for Georgia citizens to have a voice in their government is anti-democracy.”

Since the 2020 election, Republicans across the country have tried to pass restrictions on voting, particularly mail-in and advanced voting. While the GOP lawmakers claim they are trying to protect the integrity of U.S. elections, the real effect of their actions has been to make it that much harder for many people, especially people of color, to vote.

Ironically, the measure passed Georgia’s House of Representatives just days after a judge determined that a state resident had voted illegally. Brian Pritchard, the first vice chairman of the state Republican Party, violated state election laws when he voted illegally in nine elections from 2008 to 2010. At the time he cast those votes, Pritchard was still on probation after being convicted of a forgery felony in Pennsylvania in 1996.

Party backed-candidates competing in New Jersey’s elections will no longer have a leading edge after a judge ruled on Friday that the state’s controversial balloting system must undergo an immediate redesign, with the “integrity of the democratic process” at stake.

The decision is a major win for Representative Andy Kim, who, along with House candidates Sarah Schoengood and Carolyn Rush, brought the lawsuit to buck the state establishment and a coalition of local party bosses. The decision will level out the playing field in the state’s June 4 primary to replace indicted Senator Bob Menendez, who faces charges of corruption and obstruction of justice for allegedly acting as a foreign agent and accepting bribes in exchange for coordinating business deals between New Jersey real estate titans and Qatar and Egypt. So far, Menendez has refused to resign and has even left the door open for himself to run for reelection as an independent candidate.

The ruling will scrap a feature of the Garden State’s ballot known as the “county line”—an entire column, usually the first, leftmost line—that allowed each county to prominently advertise the candidate that its local party wanted to feature in the ballot’s prime real estate. Candidates who didn’t win the coveted nomination would be relegated to what was referred to as “ballot Siberia,” columns so far away from the county line that they were practically abandoned.

“Plaintiffs have put forth credible evidence not only that their constitutional rights are violated by the present ballot design used in New Jersey, which is used in no other state in the country,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi in a 49-page decision, noting that “defendants would suffer minimal harm in implementing the ballot design requested.”

“The integrity of the democratic process for a primary election is at stake and the remedy Plaintiffs are seeking is extraordinary. Mandatory injunctive relief is reserved only for the most unusual cases. Plaintiffs’ burden on this Motion is therefore particularly heavy,” concluded Quraishi. “Nevertheless, the Court finds, based on this record, that Plaintiffs have met their burden and that this is the rare instance when mandatory relief is warranted.”

The man who will likely temporarily replace Representative Ken Buck in Congress has a history of frightening run-ins with the law.

A Republican committee on Thursday chose Greg Lopez, the former mayor of Parker, Colorado, as the party nominee for the upcoming special election to replace Buck. Buck, who left Congress last week, represented Colorado’s 4th district, a Republican stronghold. While Lopez’s victory was a surprise, his nomination almost guarantees he will be the one to complete Buck’s term.

If Lopez wins, it will be his first victory in a while. He ran for Colorado governor in 2018 and 2022, but he lost both times during the primaries.

Aside from struggling with elections, Lopez has also struggled with the law. He is open about his past encounters with law enforcement, which include being arrested for driving under the influence. Lopez has said he can’t remember when that happened.

But the most frightening instance occurred in 1993, when Lopez and his wife, Lisa, were both charged with domestic violence. He allegedly shoved Lisa, who was six months pregnant at the time, to the floor and kicked her after she hit him on the top of the head. They each pleaded guilty to a single charge of harassment.

Reporter Kyle Clark asked Lopez about the domestic assault in 2022, comparing it to Lopez’s anti-abortion stance in that both involve “exerting control over a woman’s body.” Lopez hastily insisted the domestic violence “wasn’t a violent situation.”

“There’s only been one perfect man that’s ever walked this earth, and we nailed him to the cross,” Lopez said. “I’m not a perfect man. I’ve made my mistakes. But I’ve learned from them.”

Lopez also paid $15,000 in 2020 to settle a lawsuit filed by federal prosecutors who accused him of trying to improperly influence the Small Business Administration, a violation of federal law. Lopez worked at the SBA from 2008 to 2014 as the Colorado district attorney, and his alleged attempts to influence the organization occurred after he had left.

Lopez has backed banning abortion with no exceptions and falsely claimed that climate change isn’t caused by human activity. His conservative beliefs should be no surprise, given the strength of the Republican Party in the 4th district.

Buck was similarly in favor of exerting control over other people’s bodies. He was staunchly anti-abortion and did not believe in exceptions for rape or incest. What’s more, in 2005, when he was still a district attorney, Buck refused to prosecute an alleged rape case. The alleged victim released a recording of an interview she had with Buck, during which he appeared to blame her for the assault.

But a key difference between the two men is that Lopez has said that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, which is not true. Buck, on the other hand, has repeatedly pushed back on the 2020 election conspiracies, slamming them as “self-serving lies.” He is also one of the only Republicans who has refused to fall in line with his party’s efforts to impeach Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, continually noting that neither impeachment effort is based on any evidence of wrongdoing.

Following multiple departures, the House Republican majority is razor-thin. And it seems Lopez can be counted on to vote with his party on their main priorities.

One of the MAGA foot soldiers tapped as a potential vice president pick by Donald Trump argued in an interview on Fox Business on Friday that the federal government “should not be involved in elections.”

“There are a lot of questions about some of the efforts around the open border and what it means for the census and what it might mean for the upcoming election,” started Maria Bartiromo. “What are you doing to ensure a transparent and free election in November?”

“The federal government, we don’t get involved in elections,” Donalds responded. “We should not be involved in elections. That is something that states have to do.”

Byron’s answer then extended into the territory of fearmongering, baselessly claiming that New York state allows undocumented immigrants to participate in elections—which it absolutely does not.

“Unfortunately, New Yorkers lost their ever-loving mind, I don’t know what they’re doing in that state when it comes to the law, but it’s going to be incumbent on other states to make sure that illegal aliens do not vote in our upcoming elections,” he added.

While the Florida Republican may not have intended to involve Trump in his answer, it’s hard to ignore the irony in his words. The former president—who is on the wire for a slew of criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results while he was still president—would definitely fall under the umbrella of his critique.

Donalds has been critical of Trump in the past. In a batch of recently unearthed messages, he referred to Trump as a “huge distraction” and celebrated when Trump announced he wouldn’t run against former President Barack Obama.

“Trump is a huge distraction, and cares more about himself than the country in my opinion, but I could care less about him,” he wrote in a 2011 Facebook post, referring to Trump’s attacks on Obama’s birth certificate.