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“Right now the courts are under vicious verbal attacks,” said Wolf, adding that judges can’t communicate with the public beyond what’s detailed in the decisions they hand down, and those findings are now often “drowned out” by misinformation. In some cases, when both Republican and Democratic appointees have ruled against Trump, he’s accused them of being “crooked” and said they should be impeached, Wolf said. “It’s just not true,” Wolf said. The personal and heated attacks have triggered “unprecedent threats of violence against judges and their staff.” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson fired back at Wolf in an email Monday, saying “Judges that want to inject their own personal agenda into the law have no place on the bench.” Citing 20 Supreme Court victories, Jackson said, “the Trump Administration’s policies have been consistently upheld by the Supreme Court as lawful despite an unprecedented number of legal challenges and unlawful lower court rulings.” She added that “any other radical judges that want to complain to the press should at least have the decency to resign before doing so.” Wolf’s first public comments about Trump came after the US District Court in Massachusetts announced Friday that he was retired. Wolf, 78, who has been serving on senior, or semi-retired status since 2014, first spoke about his reasons for resigning in an essay published Sunday in The Atlantic magazine, writing that Trump “is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment.” He wrote that, “The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable.” He said he planned to join others, including former federal judges, who have been opposing the Trump administrations actions, which he called an “existential threat to democracy and the rule of law.” During Monday’s interview with the Globe, Wolf said he plans to join the Boston law firm of Todd & Weld, which will support his work with individuals and organizations as he assists with filing lawsuits and amicus briefs in cases involving actions by the Trump administration. “A very big concern I have now is that judicial orders are not being obeyed” by the Trump administration, Wolf said. “We can issue orders but we don’t have armies to go out and enforce them.” He added, “Public officials have to know that the American people will not tolerate disobedience of court orders, that people have confidence that those orders result from the impartial decisions of judges.” Wolf, a Boston native, joined the Justice Department in 1974 as a special assistant to the US Attorney General. He was a protege of Attorney General Edward Levi, who was appointed by President Gerald Ford to restore credibility and transparency to the Justice Department after the Watergate scandal led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Later, Wolf prosecuted public corruption cases as chief of the public corruption unit in the US Attorney’s office in Boston. In 1985, he was appointed to the federal bench. He has overseen a number of high-profile cases, including the first death penalty case of Gary Lee Sampson, the conviction of former Massachusetts House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, and racketeering cases involving the hierarchy of the New England Mafia. In 1999, after holding lengthy hearings, Wolf issued a 661-page ruling condemning the FBI’s alliance with Bulger and fellow informant, Stephen Flemmi, which led to Congressional hearings, revisions of the FBI’s informant guidelines, and wrongful death suits filed by the families of Bulger’s victims. The racketeering case before Wolf was dismissed after Bulger was captured in 2011 after 16 years on the run, and the gangster was convicted of 11 murders in a subsequent case tried before another judge. Bulger, 89, was beaten to death by fellow inmates in a West Virginia federal penitentiary in 2018. “I decided all of my cases based on the facts and the law, without regard to politics, popularity, or my personal preferences,“ Wolf said. ”That is how justice is supposed to be administered—equally for everyone, without fear or favor. This is the opposite of what is happening now.” He recounted that in 1974, the US Supreme Court unanimously ordered Nixon to release tapes that had been subpoenaed by the Justice Department. The tapes implicated the President and his colleagues in the 1971 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. At the time, Nixon knew he had no choice but to turn over the tapes because the American people wouldn’t tolerate his disobedience of the Supreme Court order, Wolf said. “I don’t know where the American people are now,” said Wolf, adding that if they don’t have confidence in the judiciary, then the law “will be eroded and destroyed.”
