A former U.S. attorney said that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s remarks that Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh will “pay a price” if they rule a certain way on an upcoming case “may very well be criminal.”
Schumer told pro-abortion rally attendees Wednesday that both justices would “pay the price” and would not “know what hit” them if they ruled against the pro-choice cause in an upcoming case. The Senate minority leader drew condemnation from many, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and later walked back the remarks.
Guy Lewis, who served as a U.S. attorney during the George W. Bush administration, broke down Schumer’s comments with Fox News’ Harris Faulkner on Thursday’s edition of “Outnumbered Overtime.”
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“Look, the ABA [American Bar Association] is no friend of the Republican Party,” Lewis said, responding to Faulkner’s citation of the organization’s condemnation. “I got to tell you, and Schumer’s kind of backtracking, that we’ve heard today. I think it’s a day late and a dollar short. Listen, as a young prosecutor down here in Miami, I actually prosecuted, put somebody in jail for about three years, if I recall correctly, under a similar circumstance where they had threatened a federal judge that had a case pending before her. And so, listen, I don’t think this is bad judgment. This may very well be criminal.”
“When he says he meant what they were talking about, not necessarily threatening them as individuals, what do you do with that?” Faulkner asked.
“Here’s the problem,” Lewis responded. “First of all, you look at the words. Everybody concluded that it is a threat. There is no question. What people don’t understand is that, as soon as that happens, it’s not necessarily Chuck Schumer. Nobody thinks Chuck Schumer is going to go cause bodily harm to the new Trump justices of the Supreme Court. But it incites people, Harris. People listen to that. People act on that.” (RELATED: Josh Hawley To Introduce Senate Motion To Censure Chuck Schumer For SCOTUS ‘Intimidation’)
Based on what he knows about U.S. Marshals Service “procedure,” Lewis speculated that “about a dozen U.S. Marshals are now assigned to these two justices, their families, and for the next six months, they are going to be monitoring them very, very carefully.”