Following the results of this year's presidential election, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said on Friday that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon should replace Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on the bench.
Following Donald Trump's electoral victory earlier this week, in which he won the popular vote and the Electoral College, there have been various calls on social media as well as, according to NBC News reporter Sahil Kapur "one official in the Biden administration," urging Sotomayor to resign from the bench so that President Joe Biden, with support from a Democrat-majority Senate, would be able to appoint a new justice ahead of Trump's second term.
Sotomayor, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009, is the first Latina and the third woman to serve on the Supreme Court. At 70, she is the oldest Democrat-appointed justice on the Court, which has a 6-3 conservative supermajority.
The renewed push stems from concerns that Trump, along with the newly elected Republican-majority Senate, could appoint a conservative-leaning justice, further tipping the Court to the right.
In an appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast on Friday, conservative attorney Mike Davis who previously served as a clerk for Gorsuch, agreed that Sotomayor should step down as he called on Cannon to replace her.
"I agree with the Democrats, justice Sotomayor should step down for the good of the country and then Senate Republicans should grind the Senate to a halt so we can replace justice Sotomayor with justice Aileen Cannon," Davis said.
Newsweek has reached out to the Supreme Court via online form and Cannon via email for comment.
Cannon, who previously oversaw Trump's federal classified documents case, was appointed to the federal bench by Trump in 2020.
Trump was facing 40 federal charges over his alleged handling of sensitive materials seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after leaving the White House in January 2021. He was also accused of obstructing efforts by federal authorities to retrieve them.
The president-elect had pleaded not guilty and has said the case was part of a political witch hunt. Cannon, who dismissed all charges against Trump, faced criticism, largely along party lines, for delaying the trial and not setting a start date. Cannon has also been accused by legal analysts of being too favorable to Trump and has had frequent clashes with Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith.
Meanwhile, Davis, who has been said to be a potential attorney general in Trump's upcoming administration, has been highly critical of the legal perils against the president-elect as he has previously suggested he would take "severe" legal action against Smith, who is leading two federal criminal investigations against Trump.
Davis also issued a threat to New York Attorney General Letitia James while speaking on The Benny Show on Thursday, saying, "We're not messing around this time and we will put your fat a** in prison for conspiracy against rights." James' office won a civil case against Trump and his family business earlier this year after a judge found that Trump and others associated with The Trump Organization were liable for misleading lenders and insurers for better terms.
Davis' remarks come after James held a press conference following Trump's victory saying she "did not expect this result but we are prepared to respond to this result." James said her office has been preparing for several months "because we've been here before."
"We've studied their platforms. We've identified certain possibilities, fact patterns. We've created contingency plans. So, no matter what the next administration throws at us, we're ready," James said. "We're ready to respond to their attacks. We're ready to respond to any attempts to cut or eliminate any funding to the great state of New York as the governor outlined."
It's unclear if Davis, who is one of Trump's attorneys, will serve in the new administration. He has been praised, however, by several people close to Trump. In an interview with Politico Magazine published in September, Donald Trump Jr., the president-elect's son, called Davis "the tip of the spear defending my father from these corrupt Democrat prosecutors. He's exactly the type of fighter that I'd like to see involved in a second Trump administration."
In the same Friday interview, Bannon also mentioned the late-Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died of pancreatic cancer at age 87, just weeks before Biden won the 2020 election, "Are they [Democrats] going to have the same situation with Sotomayor, is her illness or perceived illness going to drive her off the Supreme Court next year?"
Sotomayor has type 1 diabetes.
Davis responded: "Personally, I have not heard that her health is dire like that. I think this is more the Democrats being partisan hacks and trying to throw Justice Sonia Sotomayor off the bench so they can replace her" with another judge.
Following Ginsburg's death, then-President Trump nominated Justice Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat on the Court, pushing it further to the right. During his first term, Trump also appointed Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
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