UPDATE (March 7, 2025, 12:35 p.m. ET): In a post to TruthSocial on Wednesday night, President Donald Trump said his “thank you” to Chief Justice John Roberts at his joint address to Congress earlier in the week was about Roberts having sworn him in on Inauguration Day.
What was Donald Trump thinking about when he thanked Chief Justice John Roberts and said he wouldn’t “forget”?
If the answer lies in any Trump-friendly court rulings, then the president might’ve been thinking about multiple things.
Trump made the remark Tuesday night, as he shook hands with the Supreme Court justices attending his congressional address. Starting at about 2:20:05 on C-SPAN’s recording, the president shook hands with retired Justice Anthony Kennedy (who stepped down during Trump’s first term, making way for Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment); then Trump’s third appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whom Republicans pushed through at the end of his first term after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died; then Kavanaugh; then Justice Elena Kagan; and finally Roberts, whom Trump thanked “again,” said he wouldn’t forget, and then patted him on the back/shoulder area.
“Thank you again. Thank you again. Won’t forget it,” Trump says while shaking the hand of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts after the State of the Union.
— Anna Bower (@annabower.bsky.social) 2025-03-05T05:18:11.964Z
An obvious first guess at what Trump could’ve been talking about (if anything specific) is the immunity decision that Roberts authored last year. The high court’s handling of that appeal helped Trump avoid a trial in the federal election interference case and could even help him overturn his state conviction in New York in his only criminal case that went to trial before he won the 2024 election.
On the subject of that political victory, another crucial Roberts Court decision last year was in Trump v. Anderson, the case that kept Trump on the ballot despite the 14th Amendment’s insurrectionist ban. And on the subject of Jan. 6, there’s the Roberts-authored ruling in Fischer v. United States, which narrowed obstruction charges against Jan. 6 defendants in a case that could’ve also benefited Trump’s legal challenge to his federal election interference charges. We’ll never know the full extent to which the Fischer ruling would’ve helped Trump; due to the Justice Department’s policy against charging sitting presidents, his victory in November led the prosecution to drop the case entirely. To be sure, Roberts hasn’t always sided with Trump. Indeed, on Wednesday morning, the chief justice and Barrett were in the majority of a 5-4 decision rejecting the administration’s bid to avoid paying out certain congressionally appropriated funds. As Trump’s litigation-packed second term gets underway, the president will likely win some court cases and lose others. But he has the Roberts Court to thank for being in a position to play the game at all. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in Donald Trump’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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