Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Trumped

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump is under attack for comments made calling into question the impartiality of Mexican-American Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, who is overseeing the Trump University case.

“I’m building a wall. I’m trying to keep business out of Mexico. Mexico’s fine,” Trump said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “He’s of Mexican heritage, and he’s very proud of it, as I am of where I come from.” Trump has called on Curiel to recuse himself multiple times.

President Obama and his administration have done more to undermine both the independence of the judicial branch, and the people’s trust in it, than Donald Trump ever could.

Critics say Trump’s remarks are not only racist but that they also threaten to undermine judicial independence, but the fact is that President Obama and his administration have done more to undermine both the independence of the judicial branch, and the people’s trust in it, than Donald Trump ever could.

Trump’s pondering publically about whether or not a judge of Mexican heritage could be impartial — given the media circus and public debate spawned by his comments on the Mexican border and those who cross it illegally — seems innocuous, especially compared to Barack Obama’s 2010 comments about the then recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision at his own State of the Union address.

“I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests or, worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct some of these problems,” said Obama, barely a week after the Court’s decision, and within spitting distance, of six of its justices.

“I can’t ever recall a president taking a swipe at the Supreme Court like that,” Lucas A. Powe Jr., a Supreme Court expert at the University of Texas law school, said at the time. Of course, many who now say Trump’s bullyish behavior threatens the integrity of the judicial branch sat silently as Obama launched a near unprecedented attack against the wisdom and intelligence of the highest court of the land.

And when Obama wasn’t attacking the judiciary, he was using it to bludgeon his way around the separation of powers and around Congress, overturning the will of the people in multiple states and imposing gay marriage on the entire country.

[lz_third_party includes=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bR_9wmNnD4″]

Non-threats to the judiciary from Trump’s words aside, were his controversial comments about Curiel actually racist? Former U.S. Attorney, Alberto R. Gonzales — himself a Mexican-American — doesn’t think so.

“Regardless of the way Trump has gone about raising his concerns over whether he’s getting a fair trial, none of us should dismiss those concerns out of hand without carefully examining how a defendant in his position might perceive them,” Gonzales wrote in the Washington Post on Saturday.

Gonzales noted Curiel is a member of a group called La Raza Lawyers of San Diego, and that Curiel appointed a law firm to represent plaintiffs in the Trump University case — Robbins Geller — that has paid the Clintons $675,000 in speaking fees since 2009.

Gonzales concedes that Trump’s critics are right to want to protect an independent judiciary from unwarranted attacks by members of government in other branches, but chastises them for their shortsightedness in failing to realize Trump himself is protecting something equally as important.

“An independent judiciary is extremely important. But that value is not the only one in play here. Equally important, if not more important from my perspective as a former judge and U.S. attorney general, is a litigant’s right to a fair trial,” Gonzales said.