WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s efforts to put troops on American streets have encountered a new and possibly formidable obstacle: a federal judge Trump himself appointed six years ago, and is therefore harder to malign as “Democrat,” “leftist,” or “woke.”
Many judges have ruled against Trump in the nine months since he returned to the presidency, but most were appointed to the federal bench by Democratic and pre-Trump Republican presidents.
Karin Immergut was given the lifetime U.S. District Court judgeship in Oregon by Trump himself, following years as the U.S. attorney for Oregon and, prior to that, worked for independent counsel Kenneth Starr as he investigated then-President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
Trump and his staff, nevertheless, have attacked her anyway.
“That judge ought to be ashamed of himself,” Trump told reporters Sunday, perhaps not remembering that Immergut is not a man. “If he made that kind of a decision ― Portland is burning to the ground. You have agitators, insurrectionists, all you have to do is look at the ― look at the television, turn on your television, read your newspapers. It’s burning to the ground. The governor, the mayor, the politicians are petrified for their lives.”
