A prominent supporter of former President Donald Trump wants liberals to learn lawfare is a game both sides can play.
Michael Davis, an activist and former clerk for the Supreme Court who now heads the conservative legal group the Article III Project, is taking aim at a U.S. district judge who used a CNN interview last week to launch an attack that essentially accused Trump of threatening a New York judge and that judge’s daughter, according to the New York Post.
And he’s using the judge’s own words against him.
In the CNN appearance on Thursday, D.C. District Judge Reggie Walton supported a gag order imposed by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing Trump’s trial in Manhattan for allegedly falsifying business records.
Trumps’s social media posts about Merchan and Merchan’s daughter, Walton said, were beyond the pale of what can be accepted in the United States.
“We do these jobs because we’re committed to the rule of law and we believe in the rule of law,” Walton told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
“And the rule of law can only function effectively when we have judges who are prepared to carry out their duties without the threat of potential physical harm.”
Check out the interview below:
Well, first of all, Trump’s comments on the Truth Social platform were full of typical Trump bluntness, but they’re not threatening by any normal human being’s understanding of the word.
Is Donald Trump getting railroaded by the courts?
Second, a conservative American — or even just an intellectually honest American — might have problems believing in the whole bit about judges being so committed to the rule of law when it comes to Trump and his supporters.
Time and again, the country has watched as driven Democratic prosecutors — special counsel Jack Smith at the federal level, the hypocritical DA Alvin Bragg in Manhattan and the ludicrously dangerous Fani Willis in Fulton County, Georgia — have stretched the laws almost beyond recognition to bring Trump into their courtrooms on criminal charges.
And that doesn’t even include New York Attorney General Letitia James’ infamous civil lawsuit that aims to financially cripple, or even bankrupt, Trump for engaging in routine real estate practices.
And it hasn’t just been prosecutors putting on a show.
There have been judges, too, like Judge Beryl Howell in D.C., who asked prosecutors why they didn’t seek longer sentences for defendants in cases from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion.
There are Judges Tanya Chutkan in D.C., Judge Arthur Engoron in Manhattan, whose anti-Trump bias is clearly on display, and even Judge Merchan, the jurist who admits to donating to now-President Joe Biden’s campaign for the 2020 election, but claims he can be impartial.
Throw in the fact that Merchan’s daughter is a high-profile liberal activist who, as Newsweek reported, is a partner in Authentic Campaigns, “a progressive political consulting firm.”
Newsweek didn’t mention it, but the New York Post reported Saturday that Authentic Campaigns clients include Rep. Adam Schiff, the loathsome California Democrat who was a prosecutor in Trump’s first impeachment trial. (He’s now a candidate for U.S. Senate, God help us.)
The Post also reported that Schiff and another Authentic Campaigns client, the Democratic outfit called Senate Majority PAC, had raised $93 million using the case in their email solicitations.
And Judge Walton is outraged that Trump noticed it?
The complaint Davis filed with the Judicial Council of the District of Columbia Circuit Court, which oversees the U.S. Court of Appeals for District of Columbia Circuit, accused Walton of making “highly prejudicial” statements about Trump.
“Judge Walton’s highly inappropriate, pre-planned, highly prejudicial, political CNN interview will cause the federal judiciary to lose its legitimacy with a broad swath of the American people,” the complaint stated. “D.C. federal judges must get their house in order and take immediate corrective action against Judge Walton. This will send a clear message to other federal judges, especially D.C. judges, that they cannot take off their judicial robes and climb into the political ring.
“And federal judges certainly cannot throw political punches against any criminal defendant — especially one who happens to be the leading presidential candidate during the heat of the highly contentious presidential election season. Thus, we file this complaint for Judge Walton’s judicial misconduct.”
In Truth Social posts included in the complaint, Trump wrote that Merchan’s daughter had posted a picture of Trump behind bars to social media — which Collins disputed — and he referred to Merchan’s daughter as a “Rabid Trump Hater.”
The complaint also noted that Collins publicized the interview on her X account, greatly increasing its audience over the standard CNN crowd:
Senior Judge Reggie Walton: “We do these jobs because we’re committed to the rule of law & we believe in the rule of law & the rule of law can only function effectively when we have judges who are prepared to carry out their duties without the threat of potential physical harm.” pic.twitter.com/V1GC7LVD2g
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) March 29, 2024
It’s one of the great tragedies of the Trump era that the American people have been able to see so clearly how a justice system they were taught to believe in has become a snake pit of partisans pretending to be jurists.
It would be a greater tragedy if the rank partisanship of the current era is allowed to poison the judicial system in the decades and generations to come.
The whole country watched as leftist agitators demonstrated outside the homes of Supreme Court justices because progressives were trying to influence the court on abortion.
The country watched as an actual assassination plot against Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the bugaboo of the left since their character assassination failed to keep him off the high court in 2018, was uncovered.
The establishment media largely shrugged.
Now, it’s watching more kangaroo court “justice” being meted out to Trump, and an actual sitting judge is going on a leftist cable network to actively build the idea in the public mind that the man who could be the next president (if the country is very lucky) is actually a danger to public safety — and to the Republic.
The complaint Davis’ group filed is more than merited. And Walton deserves a reprimand — a public reprimand — for that CNN performance.
“We are seeing a dangerous pattern in which D.C. federal judges, like Beryl Howell and now Reggie Walton, have convinced themselves they have a duty — unbounded by the judicial canons — to make extrajudicial pronouncements about President Trump,” the complaint said.
“But this is so much bigger than President Trump — or even one presidential election. These judges are setting a very dangerous precedent, which can get deployed against less wealthy and powerful defendants. The D.C. federal judges must get their house in order. Otherwise, Congress should do it for them.”
Lawfare can go both ways. Democrats and their establishment media allies are glorying in it now against Trump and his supporters because they pretend their intention is to “save democracy.”
But the road to hell is paved with good intentions — and Trump’s enemies in politics and in the media have already taken more than a few steps down it.
