Brett Kavanaugh, the US supreme court justice, will “step up” for Donald Trump and help defeat attempts to remove the former president from the ballots in Colorado and Maine for inciting an insurrection, a Trump lawyer said.
“I think it should be a slam dunk in the supreme court,” Alina Habba told Fox News on Thursday night. “I have faith in them.
The supreme court said Friday it will consider the Colorado matter.
“You know, people like Kavanaugh, who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place, he’ll step up. Those people will step up. Not because they’re pro-Trump but because they’re pro-law, because they’re pro-fairness. And the law on this is very clear.”
Kavanaugh was the second of three justices appointed by Trump, creating a 6-3 rightwing majority that has delivered major Republican victories including removing the federal right to abortion and loosening gun control laws.
Habba’s reference to Trump “going through hell” was to a stormy confirmation during which Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault, which he angrily denied. Trump reportedly wavered on Kavanaugh, only for senior Republicans to persuade him to stay strong.
Observers were quick to notice Habba’s apparent invitation to corruption.
Caroline Ciccone, the president of the watchdog Accountable.US, said: “Former President Trump’s lawyers are saying the quiet part out loud.
“The Trump administration outsourced judicial selection efforts to [the rightwing activist] Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, who hand-picked the current conservative majority, funded their confirmation battles, and have been rewarding them with off-the-books gifts and luxury travel ever since.
“The former president’s lawyer asking judges the Trump administration appointed to ‘step up’ to shield him from consequences is disgraceful and raises significant questions about the independence of the court.”
Michael Kagan, a law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, sounded a “legal ethics alert”, adding that if Kavanaugh “feels in any way that he owes Trump and will ‘step up’, then [Habba] should be sanctioned by the bar for saying this on TV and thus trying to prejudice a proceeding.”
Last month, the Colorado supreme court and the Maine secretary of state ruled that Trump should be removed from those states’ ballots under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, passed after the civil war to stop insurrectionists holding office.
Trump incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress in 2021, an attempt to stop certification of his defeat by Joe Biden. Impeached but acquitted, he is now the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for the presidential election this year.
Trump appealed both state rulings. In a supreme court filing in the Colorado case, lawyers argued that only Congress could resolve such a dispute and that the presidency was not an office of state as defined in the 14th amendment.
The relevant text does not mention the presidency or vice-presidency. ABC News has reported exchanges in debate in 1866 in which those positions are covered.
On Fox News, Habba said Trump “has not been charged with insurrection. He has not been prosecuted for it. He has not been found guilty of it.”
She then made her prediction about Kavanaugh and other justices “stepping up”.
