A federal trial court judge in North Carolina used a highly unusual footnote in a ruling Friday to take a swipe at the Supreme Court, accusing the conservative majority of attempting to “redesign” the presidency when it granted sweeping immunity to Donald Trump.
In a lengthy footnote at the end of his opinion, US District Judge William G. Young, appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, appeared to praise the high court’s rulings this year affirming the use of jury trials in some situations.
But then Young offered a caveat, citing the court’s major decision in the Trump immunity case delivered along 6-3 conservative-liberal lines.
Young described the outcome of that case as a “six-member majority, eschewing historical analysis,” that “sought fundamentally to redesign the relationship between the sovereign people and the first citizen of the Republic.”
The Supreme Court on July 1 ruled that Trump may claim immunity from criminal prosecution for some of the official actions he took to overturn the 2020 election. Special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump is now pending in a US District Court in Washington, DC, and the next hearing won’t be until September.
The court’s decision has drawn sharp criticism from the left, including President Joe Biden and many Democrats on Capitol Hill. Unlike with other historic cases entwined with presidential politics, the court failed to find any compromise between the justices nominated by Republican presidents and those picked by Democrats.
Young, who in 2021 assumed senior status – a form of semi-retirement for judges – normally sits in Massachusetts. He was brought in to handle the case in North Carolina because it involved claims of sexual harassment against judicial officials there.
In the footnote at the end of his opinion, Young praised the attorneys involved in the case and encouraged “each of you to continue in trial work.” Young wrote that the federal judiciary appeared to be at a “hinge moment where we need every trial attorney we can get.”
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