Former federal prosecutor and ex-FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann on Monday flagged what he sees as a “chilling” word in Chief Justice John Roberts’ 6-3 majority Supreme Court opinion upholding the power of Donald Trump and any president to fire members of independent regulatory agencies for any reason.
“It’s hard to stress enough for people the ramifications of this decision,” Weissmann told Nicolle Wallace on MS NOW’s “Deadline: White House,” of the ruling in Trump v. Slaughter, which stemmed from Trump’s March 2025 firing of Democrat-appointed Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter.
“It is so far-reaching,” he added.
“The language from the chief justice here continues in a very scary way, his theory of presidential power, saying that it’s necessary, what they ruled today … to have the vitality, and in a word, I found chilling, the ‘secrecy’ of the executive branch.”
“That was a word that was not in the immunity decision, and should think about that, that this was trying to vindicate the presidential power,” he added, referring to a prior Supreme Court ruling.
Weissmann argued that the Slaughter ruling “unleashes political patronage.”
“Why should people care? You do not want a Republican president to come in and fire every Democrat, and you do not want every Democratic president to come in and fire every Republican,” he said. “You want career people in place with experience, who are supposed to be apolitical, regardless of party.”
“And here you have a very ahistoric decision” that has “very, very long coattails in terms of how it’s going to affect our justice system.”