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March 9, 2020

A letter to United States Senators:

Last Wednesday morning on the steps of the Supreme Court, while an oral argument in
a pending case was underway inside, Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke
to a rowdy crowd of pro-abortion demonstrators: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you,
Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what
hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Schumer’s threatening words were unmistakable, unprecedented, and unacceptable.


When confronted, he never apologized. Instead, he tried to blame others. He still has not
apologized. We urge you to condemn them in the strongest possible terms by censuring
Schumer on the Senate floor.

Schumer unmistakably meant to threaten Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh.


Contrary to what his spokesman later claimed, Schumer’s words were not addressed to Senate
Republicans, but to two Supreme Court Justices, ​by name.​ Schumer’s threat wasn’t that
Republicans would face electoral consequences, but that Justice Gorsuch and Justice
Kavanaugh “will pay the price” and “won’t know what hit them.” Schumer tried and failed to stop
Gorsuch and Kavanaugh’s confirmation. On Wednesday he tried to achieve through thuggish
intimidation what he could not accomplish on the Senate floor.

This threat is unprecedented in the history of our nation. By comparison, President


Obama’s critical comments about the Court’s ​Citizens United​ ruling, delivered in the presence of
six justices during the 2010 State of the Union Address, seem tame. Yet at the time, only a
decade ago, commentators rightly objected to that statement as an unprecedented violation.
There is simply no parallel to Schumer’s threat, which he directed to two justices by name.

Schumer’s defenders have tried to compare Schumer’s threat to President Trump’s


recent suggestion that Justice Ginsburg and Justice Sotomayor should recuse themselves from
cases involving his administration because of their obvious antipathy toward him. It is unclear
how this is a defense of Schumer. For one thing, Democrats widely denounced that comment by
President Trump . But for another, suggesting based on public evidence that a judge is biased is
nothing like vowing a judge will “pay the price” and “won’t know what hit them” if they rule
against you.

One of America’s most-senior legislators explicitly threatening two of its most-senior


judges is plainly unacceptable. Not just conservatives but many leading liberals have
condemned it. Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe called Schumer’s remarks “inexcusable.”
Another liberal Harvard law professor, Noah Feldman, wrote that “Schumer’s language was so
extreme as to be almost bizarre,” and was “completely out of line.” Professor Garrett Epps
called threatening judges “a dreadful thing to do,” and said “Schumer has, by popping off on this
occasion, taken the current political situation—already nearly catastrophic—and made it worse.”
President Clinton’s former acting Solicitor General, Walter Dellinger, stated: “It’s with regret that
I have to agree that Leader Schumer’s remarks about two Justices in a pending case were
totally unacceptable and that his apology was wholly inadequate. He needs to give a major
speech about why he his remarks were so wrong.” Most notably of all, Chief Justice John
Roberts issued an extraordinary comment that “[s]tatements of this sort from the highest levels
of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”

Indeed, though Americans of all stripes immediately rejected Schumer’s despicable


threat, the crowd gathered on the Supreme Court steps cheered it. This shows the clear and
present danger of Schumer’s thuggish words: there are people in Schumer’s party who look up
to him as a leader, who joined a protest at the Supreme Court to celebrate abortion, and who
erupted in cheers when Schumer promised that two Justices “won’t know what hit you” if they
vote the wrong way.

In a better world, this episode would mark the end of Chuck Schumer’s political career.
But even in America in 2020, it should be a permanent blot on Schumer’s record. We therefore
strongly support a resolution to censure Schumer on the Senate floor.

Respectfully submitted,

Mike Davis

Founder and President,

Article III Project (A3P)

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry

Chairman,

RAGA

Senator Jim DeMint,

Chairman

Conservative Partnership Institute

Ian Prior
Former Spokesman,

Department of Justice

Matthew Heiman

Associate Director,

George Mason Law School

Jessica Anderson

President,

Heritage Action

Kelly Shackelford

President and CEO,

First Liberty Institute

Cleta Mitchell,

Partner

Foley and Lardner

Rachel Bovard

Senior Policy Director,

Conservative Partnership Institute

Charlie Kirk

President and Founder,

Turning Point USA

Eric Beach
Chairman,

Great Again PAC

Ed Rollins

Former National Campaign Director,

President Ronald Reagan

Terry Campo

Former General Counsel,

Senate Judiciary Committee

William Chamberlin

Editor and Chief,

Human Events

Jenny Beth Martin

Honorary Chairman,

Tea Party Patriots Action

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