Trump an ‘enemy of the rule of law’

In a personal attack on James Robart on Saturday, the US President described him as a “so-called judge” in a series of ill-tempered tweets.

He also accused the Seattle judge of opening “up our country to potential terrorists” with his “ridiculous” decision to halt the order that temporarily blocked all refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US.

n a blog post, dated Sunday, Judge He Fan who serves at the Supreme People’s Court of China, blasted Mr Trump for “insulting” Mr Robart.

He wrote that under the American system’s separation of powers, a president who is dealt a judicial defeat should bear the loss silently, rather than lash out at the judge in question.

He said Mr Trump had set a poor example and lost respect for having “led the way in insulting a judge, with the Vice President and his political party swarming to his defence (and) in a country known as the most democratic and most respectful of the rule of law”.

“The president who would curse a judge and the thug who would kill a judge are both public enemies of the rule of law,” he wrote, referencing the recent murder of a retired judge in southern China.

“Who cares that you control the armed forces and have nuclear weapons at your disposal. Your dignity has been swept away and you are no different than a scoundrel,” he added.

The US Department of Justice is challenging Mr Robart’s ruling and wants the immigration restrictions reinstated.

The President’s decree, signed on 27 January, barred entry for 120 days for any refugees awaiting resettlement.

Citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen were also banned for 90 days.

A US federal appeals court will later announce whether it has decided to uphold Mr Robart’s judgment – or reinstate the immigration restrictions.

Government lawyers insist Mr Trump’s executive order is a “lawful exercise” and that the President has clear authority to “suspend the entry of any class of aliens” in the name of national security.

They have also criticised Washington and Minnesota, the two states which launched the legal challenge against the executive order, for asking courts to “take the extraordinary step of second-guessing a formal national security judgment made by the President himself”.

Three judges, randomly selected at the California-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, have been hearing the case.

If either side is unhappy with the outcome, a showdown in the Supreme Court may follow.

Lawyers representing Washington and Minnesota have warned that resuming the travel ban would “unleash chaos again” – separating families and leaving university students stranded.

Their case has been buoyed by 10 former US officials – including secretaries of state and CIA directors who served under Republican and Democratic presidents – who filed a declaration in the case arguing that the travel ban served no national security purposes.

A coalition led by some of the world’s biggest tech firms is also taking on the ban, with Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX the latest to add their names to a list of 30 companies including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter.

It comes as the President has accused the media of deliberately minimising coverage of the threat posed by Islamic State.

A list of 78 terror attacks has been released by the White House, with the administration claiming “most” of them did not get sufficient media attention.

The Paris attacks of November 2015 and the San Bernardino shootings of December 2015, both of which received widespread attention and in-depth reporting, are among the events on the list. news.sky.com