I don’t know a whole lot about Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who serves on the District Court for the Southern District of California, but I can surmise some things from his Wikipedia page. I see that he was born in East Chicago, Indiana, and that he received undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Indiana. I can see that he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of California from 1989 to 2002, which makes it appear that he was appointed to this position by President George Herbert Walker Bush. I see that he served as an Assistant D.A. for the Central District of California from 2002 to 2006, which means he was reassigned during the Presidency of George Walker Bush. I see that he was elected to the Superior Court of San Diego in 2007, during the governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
There’s not much in that biography to suggest that Judge Curiel is a partisan Democrat, nor that he is some typical Southern California Mexican-American who might be unnaturally offended by Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall on the Mexican border to keep out the rapists. It’s true that President Obama nominated him to the federal district court in 2012, but it’s also true that his nomination was confirmed unanimously and uncontroversially in a Senate voice vote.
The reason Judge Curiel is in the news today is because he’s presiding over a civil suit against Donald Trump and the fake university Trump set up to defraud people out of tens of thousands of dollars each in return for run of the mill real estate investment advice, and because Trump just devoted twelve minutes of a speech he delivered in San Diego to what amounted to an “extended tirade” against the judge.
Mr. Trump’s attack on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel was extraordinary not just in its scope and intensity but for its location: Before a crowd packed into a convention center here that had been primed for the New York billionaire with a warm-up speech from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
“I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He’s a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel,” Mr. Trump said, as the crowd of several thousand booed. “He is not doing the right thing.”
The most disturbing thing about Trump’s verbal assault was the racial component.
“We’re in front of a very hostile judge,” Mr. Trump said. “The judge was appointed by Barack Obama, federal judge. Frankly, he should recuse himself because he’s given us ruling after ruling after ruling, negative, negative, negative.”
Mr. Trump also told the audience, which had previously chanted the Republican standard-bearer’s signature “build that wall” mantra in reference to Mr. Trump’s proposed wall along the Mexican border, that Judge Curiel is “Mexican.”
“What happens is the judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great. I think that’s fine,” Mr. Trump said.
Trump went on to attack Judge Curiel’s integrity:
“I think Judge Curiel should be ashamed of himself,” Mr. Trump said. “I’m telling you, this court system, judges in this court system, federal court, they ought to look into Judge Curiel. Because what Judge Curiel is doing is a total disgrace, OK?”
What had Judge Curiel done to arouse Trump’s wrath? He recently agreed to delay the trial until late November, after the voters will have gone to the polls, so he hadn’t tried to use the trial to damage Trump’s prospects of becoming president. Yet, on the same day he was personally attacked, the Judge ordered the unsealing of “a series of internal Trump University documents that Trump’s lawyers asked be kept from the public.” In fact, while the order wasn’t issued until a few hours after the Trump’s speech, the hearing on the motion to unseal them was occurring while Trump spoke. It’s not clear if the judge was even aware of Trump’s remarks when he made his ruling.
What is clear is that Trump made a nakedly racist appeal in a border city against a Latino judge in order to cast doubt on the integrity of that judge and of our entire federal legal system. And he did it to shield himself from accountability for committing what appears to be blatant fraud.
This is despicable on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to begin.
