It is not unusual for presidents to complain when court decisions go against them. But Donald Trump has expressed his displeasure with a degree of nastiness that is unprecedented. In a Memorial Day social media tirade, he denounced judges ruling against his immigration policies as “sick, and very dangerous for our country” as well as “monsters who want our country to go to hell.”
Such over-the-top rhetoric has raised concerns for the personal safety of the judges and their families. The other issue is how this menacing language may affect the way the jurists rule. It is safe to assume Trump thinks this trash talk may work to his benefit, since attempted intimidation is his modus operandi in just about all situations.
It is worth noting that the federal judges being asked to rule on Trump’s executive orders are not the only members of the judiciary he is confronting. Trump may no longer be facing criminal charges, but his private business interests are embroiled in a variety of lawsuits being heard in state courts.
Those private interests are unprecedented. Trump has blown past all previous norms in his efforts to enrich himself while in office. Apart from the development deals his sons are shamelessly pursuing around the world, the Trumps are using a company called Trump Media & Technology Group to exploit other opportunities.
Trump Media was originally a way to promote the Truth Social platform, but now it is going in other directions. The company, which is majority owned by Donald Trump via a trust run by his son Donald Jr., has just announced it is raising $2.5 billion that will be used to invest in Bitcoin. This comes after the introduction of the $TRUMP meme coin, a sort of digital currency being marketed to Trump backers. The fact that these moves are occurring while the Trump Administration increasingly deregulates cryptocurrency seems to be of no concern.
Because Trump Media is publicly traded, it must disclose details on its legal proceedings in public SEC filings. The latest 10-Q report contains a section on lawsuits that is more than 5,000 words long. It lists disputes playing out in courts in Delaware, Florida, and New York.
One of those cases was brought by Wes Moss and Andy Litinsky, two former contestants on “The Apprentice” who helped Trump launch Truth Social and now claim that Trump engineered a series of maneuvers that diluted their stake in the company in a way that violated Delaware corporate law.
Lawyers for Trump were recently in court arguing that he should be immune from the state litigation while in office, with one of the attorneys asserting that the case is “a danger to the operations of our national government.”
It is likely that when Trump lashes out at judges, he is at least in part thinking of Lori Will, who is hearing the Moss-Litinsky action and who ruled against Trump Media in another case last year. She is weighing the immunity claim against precedents such as the landmark 1997 ruling in the case involving Bill Clinton and Paula Jones in which the Supreme Court held that a sitting president can be sued for unofficial acts.
Trump does not have as much at stake in these state civil suits as he did in his now-defunct criminal cases, but he does not like to lose–even if it means attacking a co-equal branch of government.