“There are clear choices facing our profession,” the ABA said in a statement.
The American Bar Association this week rejected attacks on the court system and the legal profession, after billionaire Elon Musk used his X platform to call for the impeachment of judges who have overruled or delayed aspects of President Donald Trump’s moves to overhaul the federal government.
The ABA said in a statement that it would “not stay silent in the face of efforts to remake the legal profession into something that rewards those who agree with the government and punishes those who do not,” calling for an end to efforts meant to “cow our country’s judges, our country’s courts and our legal profession” and saying that such attempts at intimidation “cannot be sanctioned or normalized.”
Trump attacked judges whose decisions he disagreed with during his first term in office, as well as some of the judges who oversaw the four criminal cases against him during the intervening four years away from the White House.
Now, with Trump back in the Oval Office and Republicans in control of both the House and Senate, the federal judiciary has paused or overturned some of the most aggressive measures implemented by Trump and Musk, who has repeatedly urged the impeachment of judges who help up Trump’s measures.
“We are witnessing an attempted coup of American democracy by radical left activists posing as judges!” Musk wrote on Feb. 11.
“There need to be some repercussions above ZERO for judges who make truly terrible decisions,” Musk added.
“When judges egregiously undermine the democratic will of the people, they must be fired or democracy dies!” Musk wrote on Feb. 25.
“The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges,” Musk added.
When a judge blocked a Trump order that paused refugee admissions, Musk posted that the judge was “violating the will of the people.”
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“If ANY judge ANYWHERE can block EVERY Presidential order EVERYWHERE, we do NOT have democracy, we have TYRANNY of the JUDICIARY,” Musk posted.
The nonpartisan ABA did not explicitly name Musk in its statement, instead broadly noting, “High-ranking government officials (appointed and elected) have made repeated calls for the impeachment of judges who issue opinions with which the government does not agree.” The ABA cited two phrases — “corrupt judges” and “corruption” — that were used by or reposted by Musk and noted that those criticisms had been aimed only at judges who ruled against the government.
“We may disagree with interpretation of case law, but it is unacceptable to personally target judges just because we disagree with their ruling,” the ABA statement read. “We cannot have a judicial system where the government seeks to remove judges simply because they do not rule as the government desires. Considering the increasing physical threats to judges, these are clearly efforts to intimidate judges and our courts.”
The ABA’s statement also noted that the intimidation efforts had also been aimed at members of the legal profession, noting that Justice Department attorneys and assistant U.S. attorneys had been “the subject of personal attacks, intimidation, firings and demotions for simply fulfilling their professional responsibilities” even though the Trump administration had “espoused publicly” that it wouldn’t weaponize or politicize the Justice Department. “The actions against Department of Justice employees belie these assertions,” the statement read.
They also referred to the government deciding to “punish a prominent Washington, D.C., law firm because it represents a party that the administration does not like,” referring to the Trump administration’s targeting of Covington & Burling because of the firm’s pro bono representation of former special counsel Jack Smith. Smith oversaw the two federal criminal investigations into Trump, one related to his handling of classified documents after he left the White House and another into his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
“We support the rights of people to advance their interests in courts of law when they have been wronged. We reject the notion that the government can punish lawyers who represent certain clients or punish judges who rule certain ways. We cannot accept government actions that seek to tip the scales of justice in this manner,” the ABA stated.
“There are clear choices facing our profession,” the statement continued. “We can choose to remain silent and allow these acts to continue or we can stand for the rule of law and the values we hold dear. We call upon the entire profession, including lawyers who serve in elected positions, to speak out against intimidation. We acknowledge that there are risks to standing up and addressing these important issues.”
