Attorney General Jeff Sessions said President Donald Trump’s criticism of federal judges is in line with historical precedent. | Getty Sessions: Some judges are ‘using the law to advance an agenda’

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is “not above being talked about” by President Donald Trump, especially given the reputation that particular circuit has earned for too often wading outside of judicial norms, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday,

Trump and other White House officials have not held back in their criticism of the 9th Circuit, the San Francisco-based appeals court that has twice ruled against the Trump administration, once on the president’s executive order banning individuals from certain nations from entering the U.S. and, this week, on an order to deny federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities.


On Twitter, Trump called both “ridiculous rulings” and announced his intention to appeal the 9th Circuit’s sanctuary cities decision to the Supreme Court. His criticism against the 9th Circuit, and the judiciary in general, has raised eyebrows and sparked backlash from some who accuse the president of seeking to undermine one of the government’s three branches.

But Sessions said Trump’s criticism of federal judges is in line with historical precedent.

“It's right for the president as he's done historically over the centuries to express opinions about judicial opinions,” Sessions said on “CBS This Morning.” “They have a lifetime appointment. Their pay can't be cut and their decisions can be commented on. And the one that he criticized, I think, was wrong.”

Instead of Trump undermining the judicial branch, Sessions suggested Friday morning that it is the judges, themselves, who have done damage to its reputation with rulings that he said have basis outside of the law. “The greatest threat the independence of the judiciary is if judges become more political. People cease to believe they're deciding opinions based on law and the facts,” Sessions, a former federal prosecutor, said.

The solution, the attorney general said, is to appoint more judges to the 9th Circuit that will “will be responsible and more restrained in their actions.” In the meantime, exempting the judicial branch from criticism only serves to create “a superior branch of government.”

“We have a number of judges in the country that have departed a bit too far from classical enforcing the law as written and using the law to advance an agenda that they may have personally. And so the ninth circuit has been criticized for that tendency more than any other circuit,” Sessions said.

