CNN
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President Donald Trump has privately complained that the Supreme Court justices he appointed have not sufficiently stood behind his agenda, according to multiple sources familiar with the conversations. But he has directed particular ire at Justice Amy Coney Barrett, his most recent appointee, one of the sources said.
The behind-closed-doors grievances have been wide-ranging, and while many have been about Barrett, Trump has also expressed frustration about Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, the sources familiar with the matter said. The complaints have gone on for at least a year, the sources said.
The president’s anger, sources said, has been fueled by allies on the right, who have told Trump privately that Barrett is “weak” and that her rulings have not been in line with how she presented herself in an interview before Trump nominated her to the bench in 2020.
“It’s not just one ruling. It’s been a few different events he’s complained about privately,” a senior administration official told CNN.
In a statement, principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields said: “President Trump will always stand with the U.S. Supreme Court, unlike the Democrat Party, which, if given the opportunity, would pack the court, ultimately undermining its integrity. The President may disagree with the Court and some of its rulings, but he will always respect its foundational role.”
A spokesperson for the Supreme Court did not respond to a request for comment.
The complaints about Barrett and other justices come as Trump wages an increasingly public battle with the judiciary and the conservative legal establish over rulings that have gone against him. Last week, as Trump raged over a three-judge panel’s decision against his tariff plan, he took aim at Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo, who played a major role in helping Trump identify judges to put on the federal bench.
In a Truth Social post, Trump called Leo a “real ‘sleazebag’ … a bad person, who in his own way, probably hates America.”
Trump’s anger at Barrett predates his more recent frustration with judges he appointed. Many conservatives were apoplectic in March when Barrett voted to reject Trump’s plan to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid. The backlash over that decision from some close to Trump was swift, with one conservative legal commentator describing her on a podcast as a “rattled law professor with her head up her a**.” Others took to social media to describe her as a “DEI hire” and “evil.”
That came on top of a decision before the inauguration in January that allowed Trump to be sentenced in his New York hush money case. Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts, a fellow conservative nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush, joined with the court’s three liberals to reach that decision. At the time, Trump brushed aside the ruling as a “fair decision,” and Trump was ultimately sentenced without penalty.
But the anger in Trump’s orbit against Barrett appeared to intensify last month when the Supreme Court divided 4-4 in a high-profile case questioning whether a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma should be entitled to taxpayer funding. Barrett recused herself from taking part in the case – she had multiple ties to the attorneys representing the school – and the even split left in place a ruling from Oklahoma’s top court that found the school unconstitutional.
“It seems this goes beyond her duty to recuse,” Carrie Severino, president of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, posted on social media, “which could have pernicious long-term consequences if other justices were to do the same.”
Some of Trump’s allies have privately expressed the view that Barrett’s rulings might have been shaped by menacing behavior and threats of violence directed at her family. In March, her sister was targeted with a bomb threat at her home in Charleston, South Carolina, police said. Trump has asked advisers and allies if they think Barrett needs more security, asking if that might make her more comfortable, the sources said.
While the president has privately expressed his displeasure with Barrett, a source close to Trump insists he does not want to attack her publicly. In March, after Barrett voted against Trump’s plan to cut foreign aid, Trump declined to criticize her publicly, telling reporters at the time, “She’s a very good woman. She’s very smart, and I don’t know about people attacking her, I really don’t know.”
“He does truly respect the Supreme Court, so he doesn’t want to torch any of his appointees,” one senior White House official told CNN. “He’s called on them as a group to rein in the lower courts and do the right thing, but has intentionally not attacked any of the Justices by name.”
Much of the criticism from the right has overlooked the fact that Barrett remains a reliable vote for conservative outcomes at the Supreme Court. She did not dissent in recent cases allowing Trump to enforce his ban on transgender service members, end temporary deportation protections for Venezuelans, fire board members at independent agencies and cut millions in education grants.
Barrett, a former law professor and appeals court judge who is publishing a book in September, voted with the court’s two most conservative justices – Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – more than 80% of the time in the term that ended last year, according to data compiled by the Empirical SCOTUS blog. She was slightly more likely to side with Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, two conservatives who are often viewed as sitting at the court’s ideological center.
Her decision to recuse in the Catholic school case was a factor in the school’s loss, but the 4-4 split meant that one other member of the court’s conservative wing likely sided with the liberals. That case was also filed against the school by Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a conservative Republican.
And yet Barrett is nevertheless one of the most important justices to watch because she does, at times, break with the more rigid conservativism embraced by Thomas and Alito. A year ago, when the Supreme Court was hearing arguments about whether to grant Trump sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution, it was Barrett who was at the center of some of the most compelling exchanges with Trump’s attorney. Barrett was one of several justices who prodded Trump’s attorney to agree that a president’s “private” actions would not qualify for immunity.
But when the court’s decision landed in July, Barrett ultimately sided with the court’s conservatives to grant immunity to Trump.
