By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) – Key members of the U.S. federal judiciary warned on Tuesday of a rising number of threats directed at their colleagues and described calls to impeach judges over their rulings “concerning” as some Republican lawmakers push to remove jurists who have blocked U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies.
U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Sullivan, who chairs the U.S. Judicial Conference’s security committee, told reporters following a meeting of the judiciary’s top policymaking body in Washington that the court system was doing everything it could to bolster security for judges at work and at home.
“The security of judges and courthouses is a top priority for the judiciary,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan, who was appointed to the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by Trump in his first term, said he was “not here to point fingers” and had seen no data yet reflecting whether threats directed at judges are up this year.
But he said public officials need to be “very careful and responsible” in what they say about other branches of government and the U.S. system of justice, given that some people may act “inappropriately” based on what they read.
Billionaire Elon Musk and other Trump administration allies have publicly sought to discredit judges who stand in the way of White House efforts to slash federal jobs and programs, including by calling for the impeachment of some.
Reuters last week reported that U.S. marshals have warned judges of unusually high threat levels, according to several judges. Security has been bolstered for some judges assigned cases over Trump administration initiatives, Reuters reported.
Sullivan said his concerns about threats mirrored those in Chief U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts’ year-end report on December 31. The report noted that in the past five years, the U.S. Marshals Service has investigated more than 1,000 serious threats against federal judges.
Some Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives in recent weeks have introduced resolutions seeking to impeach three jurists who blocked Trump initiatives.
To remove a judge from office, the House must pass articles of impeachment by a simple majority vote and then the Senate must vote by at least a two-thirds majority to convict the judge. Republicans control both chambers of Congress but do not have a two-thirds majority in the Senate.
Only 15 federal jurists have ever been impeached, and only eight have been convicted by the Senate, most recently in 2010. Under the U.S. Constitution, the grounds for impeachment are treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
Sullivan said if someone dislikes a ruling, they can appeal.
“Impeachment shouldn’t be a short circuiting of that process,” Sullivan said. “And so it is concerning if impeachment is used in a way that is designed to do just that.”
U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush on the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who chairs the Judicial Conference’s executive committee, echoed those comments.
“One thing worth keeping in mind is if we dilute the standards for impeachment, that’s not just a problem for judges,” Sutton said. “That’s a problem for all three branches of government.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Richard Chang)
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