Gorsuch: Criticizing a Federal Judge Is ‘Disheartening, Demoralizing’
Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee said it was “disheartening” and “demoralizing” for anyone — including Trump — to criticize the integrity of the judiciary.
“When anyone criticizes the honesty or integrity or the motives of a federal judge, I find that disheartening, I find that demoralizing, because I know the truth,” Gorsuch said when pressed by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal on Trump’s criticism of a federal judge who ruled against a travel ban he ordered as president and, Gonzalo Curiel, who rejected a motion to dismiss a fraud case against the now-defunct Trump University when he was a presidential candidate.
The remark is Gorsuch’s harshest public rebuke of the president who nominated him to date, and come nine hours into confirmation hearings in which many senators sought to determine just how independent the judge would be from the president.
It’s also the same sentiment (and word choice) Blumenthal told reporters that Gorsuch shared with him in a private conversation last month, in which Gorsuch was responding to Trump's tweets attacking the federal judge who ruled against his first executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority nations.
At the time, Blumenthal earned his own Twitter attack from Trump, who suggested Blumenthal was lying about the conversation, but Gorsuch's phrasing during Tuesday's hearing indicates that he was indeed accurately representing the conversation.
Pressed to go further by the Connecticut Democratic senator, Gorsuch declined.
“Senator, I’ve gone as far as I can go, ethically,” he said. “Respectfully, I believe I’ve gone as far as I can go.”