Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer on Wednesday accused Senate Democrats of "utter hypocrisy" for a threat to pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices if they win the presidency next year.
"The Democrats accused the Supreme Court of being too political, but their plan to 'reduce the influence of politics' on the court is to have senators order the justices how to decide or face political consequences?" Fleischer, who served in the George W. Bush administration, said on Twitter. "What utter hypocrisy."
Fleischer's post included a link to an opinion piece by conservative columnist Marc Thiessen in The Washington Post on slamming five top Democrats for threatening the justices if they agreed to hear a challenge to several New York City gun laws that they opposed.
The case was moot because New York later rescinded the laws, but the senators said in an amicus brief that had the justices upheld the gun regulations, voters might ultimately demand that the court be "restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and 52 other Senate Republicans responded to the brief last week by vowing to beat back Democratic efforts to tinker with the court.
"Talk about disdain for an independent judiciary," Thiessen wrote. "Democrats are not simply criticizing a ruling they disagree with; they are preemptively threatening the court before a case is even taken up.
"Can you imagine if Trump issued such a preemptive threat?" he asked. "Heads would explode," adding that the Democrats "issued their threat in a carefully crafted legal brief submitted to the court.
"They thought this through and decided that blackmailing the Supreme Court was a good idea."
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