U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the announcement of new fuel economy standards, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 3, 2025. REUTERS Brian Snyder
Bloomberg reports a senior Washington federal judge lobbed a rare rebuke condemning president by President Donald Trump’s “vitriolic attacks” against the judiciary have led to an increase in violent threats.
“The President knows that mob mentality is a powerful force. And dog whistles count, too,” said Senior Judge Paul Friedman of the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
Speaking to a crowd of lawyers and judges earlier this year, Friedman said Trump, since winning reelection in 2024, has “ratcheted up to a new level his personal, vitriolic attacks on judges who have ruled against him or with whom he disagrees,” said Friedman, adding that his attacks “have gotten more partisan, more personal, more threatening, and more purposefully misleading than ever before.”
Combined with Trump’s “incitement” of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol and eventual pardons of those rioters, Friedman said Trump “contributed significantly” toward a trend of threatening judges.
It is a damning blast from a sitting judge, but Friedman is only the latest judge to warn of rising threats to judges and how the intimidations impact the judicial system’s independence.
“Friedman, in his prepared remarks, recounted specific comments Trump made about the judges who oversaw the various criminal and civil cases against him in a personal capacity,” reports Bloomberg. “He also highlighted Trump’s remarks about those who have ruled against him since he returned to office.”
Trump called Washington’s Chief Judge James Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge” after Boasberg ruled against deportations of alleged gang members under a wartime authority. Trump also called Supreme Court justices who ruled against him on his controversial and unpopular tariffs as “fools and lapdogs,” reports Bloomberg.
But Friedman pointed out that Trump metaphorically covers with kisses judges who rule in his favor: “Apparently judges who rule for President Trump — like Judges Aileen Cannon in Florida in the Mar-a-Lago documents case and Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas in the FDA approval of mifepristone case — are just wonderful, while those who rule against him are lunatics, agitators, fools, and insurrectionists,” Friedman said.
Friedman also hit Trump’s enabling Republican-controlled Congress with damage, calling the GOP lawmakers “complicit” in the president’s actions.
“It almost never second-guesses the President or joins in legislation designed to curb his excesses — even when one of his executive orders violates a statute enacted by Congress,” Friedman pointed out. He also slammed the conservative-dominated Supreme Court for ruling in the Republican president’s favor the majority of the time on its so-called emergency docket.
“The constant attack on courts by the Administration and the acquiescence by Congress and the Supreme Court further undermines trust in the courts and the impartiality of judges and their rulings,” Friedman said.