JUDGES set to meet about Trump, Barr.

Intervention in sensitive cases at issue

The head of the Federal Judges Association is calling an emergency meeting to address the intervention in politically sensitive cases by President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr.

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, the Philadelphia-based judge who leads the voluntary association of about 1,100 life-term federal judges, told USA Today that the issue “could not wait.” The association, founded in 1982, ordinarily concerns itself with matters of judicial compensation and legislation affecting the federal judiciary.

On Sunday, more than 1,100 former Justice Department employees released a public letter calling on Barr to resign over the Roger Stone case.

A search of news articles since the group’s creation revealed nothing like a meeting to deal with the conduct of a president or attorney general.

Rufe, appointed to the bench by former President George W. Bush, could not be reached for comment late Monday.

The action follows a week of turmoil that included the president tweeting his disagreement over the length of sentence recommended by career federal prosecutors for his friend Stone, and the decision by Barr to withdraw that recommendation.

In between, Trump singled out the judge in the Stone case, Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court in Washington, for personal criticism, accusing her of bias and spreading a falsehood about her record.

“There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about,” Rufe said to USA Today. “We’ll talk all this through.”

Trump’s criticism of federal judges who have ruled against his interests began before he took office, starting with U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel. After Curiel ruled against Trump in 2016 in a pair of lawsuits detailing predatory marketing practices at Trump University in San Diego, Trump described him as “a hater of Donald Trump,” adding that he believed the Indiana-born judge was “Mexican.”

Rufe’s comments gave no hint of what the association could or would do.

Some individual judges have already spoken critically about Trump’s attacks, among them U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, a colleague of Jackson’s in Washington, and most recently, Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court in Washington.