Conservative former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig on Tuesday warned about what he described as President Donald Trump’s “war on the rule of law in America” and the unprecedented consequences for the country should Trump defy a federal court order or federal judge.
Asked by MSNBC’s Ali Velshi what will happen if Trump actually defies such an order, Luttig admitted: “We don’t know what happens.”
The country “will be in a constitutional crisis” as no president of the United States has flagrantly done so before, he noted.
“The courts are considered the least powerful branch because they control neither the purse nor the sword and they have no effective means to enforce their orders other than by judgments of contempt that theoretically, but theoretically only, can be enforced by the marshals of the court,” Luttig explained.
“So, as a practical matter, if the president of the United States defies even a Supreme Court order, there is nothing that the Supreme Court itself could do,” he added. “And this has been a very tempting thing for this president ever since his first term, as we all know.”
Luttig’s admission came during a discussion on Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ recent rebuke of Trump’s call to impeach judges who ruled against his immigration policies.
Trump’s recent actions are a “full frontal assault on the Constitution, the rule of law, the federal judiciary, the American justice system and the nation’s legal profession,” he said. “When the president of the United States wages a war on the rule of law and the federal judiciary, Ali, America is in a constitutional crisis.”
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