Last week, Mark Wolf resigned from the bench after four decades of service as a federal district judge. In a new piece for The Atlantic, the Ronald Reagan appointee says he made that decision because he could no longer be restrained by Donald Trump and his administration.
Wolf wrote that the president was “using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment.” The longtime judge called that “contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench.”
“Silence, for me, is now intolerable,” he wrote.
On Monday, Wolf sat down with Nicolle Wallace on “Deadline: White House” to discuss his resignation and why he believes there’s an “even higher responsibility on the judiciary to properly perform its functions.”
He described his experience being threatened, which he called “deeply disturbing,” saying he had been targeted “by people who are crazy and also by others who were, I believe, were [in] positions of official responsibility.” While he noted that “it comes with the territory,” he said it was “particularly disturbing to members of our family, who didn’t sign up for this.”
Wolf said he doesn’t think the threats “affect how any judge performs his or her work,” but acknowledged “it does make it more difficult, more anxious, and particularly imposes harms or anxieties on people close to us.”
The retired judge stressed the important role an independent judiciary should play in maintaining democracy. “We have a system that divides power and creates checks and balances,” he said. “Under the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, all power is in the people of the United States. Some of that power is delegated to elected officials, and it’s the role of the courts to hold those officials to the limits of their power.”
But, as Wolf noted, the courts aren’t the sole check on the president’s powers. “It’s also a shared responsibility with the Congress,” he said, adding: “I think that there’s fair criticism that Congress has not served as intended, as an effective check or balance for the executive, but has been abdicating some of its responsibilities.”
In Congress’ absence, he said, the “proper functioning” of the courts is “even more important now than it always is.”
You can watch Wallace’s full interview with Wolf in the clip at the top of the page.