Donald Trump was curbed by other courts before he took office
Before he became president, Donald Trump lost more than a couple of rounds in more than a couple of courtrooms.
Now that he is president, Trump gets free access to all the legal help he wants.
Which means that when Federal Judge James Robart temporarily blocked a controversial ban on certain refugees and travelers, Trump could have chosen to react stoically.
Instead, the new president called him a “so-called judge” and tweeted out a bitter grievance.
“Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril,” Trump fumed. “If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!”
Despite this huffing and puffing — and an attempt to overturn the ruling over the weekend — the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld Robart.
Nobody need be shocked. Last year, Trump gave the public a preview of how he might behave when foiled even briefly in court. Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel ruled against his motions during the fraud case over Trump University; candidate Trump blamed the judge’s Mexican heritage, without offering any evidence.
Before taking office, Trump ended up paying millions to settle the civil charges.
If nothing else, the current immigration storm gives Democrats an added question in the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s potentially crucial pick for the Supreme Court.
That question is whether Gorsuch can stand apart from these executive-branch eruptions.
One cannot read minds, but maybe Trump’s testy responses to adverse judicial rulings are somehow rooted in his private-sector experiences.
Back in 2009, Court of Claims Judge Francis T. Collins ruled that Trump and other developers of Trump on the Ocean — planned for Jones Beach but later aborted — couldn’t seek damages for the state’s refusal to issue timely permits.
But Trump had won a ruling that the state was “arbitrary” in denying the permits.
Also in 2009, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Michele Fox dismissed a Trump lawsuit for defamation against an author whose book said he wasn’t worth as much as he claimed to be.
In 1991, Manhattan Federal Court Judge Charles Stewart shot down a Trump argument that he didn’t know about the hiring of undocumented workers from Poland at the demolition site that would become Trump Tower.
Stewart found Trump’s company took part in a “conspiracy” to cheat Housewreckers’ Local 95 out of pension and welfare benefits payments.
In the 1980s, before Manhattan Federal Judge Peter Leisure, a jury found partly in favor of Trump and fellow team owners in the U.S. Football League who claimed in an antitrust case that the National Football League was a monopoly.
But the Trump side was awarded only $1 in damages — and the case’s outcome signaled the league’s demise.
Trump took part in at least one federal case in another way.
Back in 1987, he sent a letter of reference to Newark federal court Judge Harold Ackerman, who was due to sentence Trump friend Joseph Weischelbaum on a cocaine-trafficking conviction.
By 1990, Trump was involved in yet another high-profile court fight involving his divorce from first wife Ivana Trump.
All these cases arose in published reports during last year’s presidential campaign.
Now, Trump is in a position of great leverage regarding the judiciary.
The world waits to see how the system responds.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
