Donald Trump Meets Chief Justice Roberts To Talk Inauguration

Presumably to discuss the oath of office.

President-elect Donald Trump had a brief meeting in Washington with Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday, a day before the two men are set to meet again for the oath of office.

Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg confirmed the meeting, which took place at Blair House. As the Constitution prescribes, Roberts is expected to swear in Trump at noon Friday.

Roberts had invited Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence to visit the Supreme Court ahead of the inauguration, Arberg said, but the justices’ busy oral argument schedule this week and other inaugural conflicts kept the visit from happening.

President Barack Obama received a similar invitation prior to his inauguration in 2009, which he and Vice President Joe Biden accepted.

“The associate justices and I would be pleased to see that sporadic practice become a congenial tradition,” Roberts told Obama, then a senator, in a letter. In 2005, Obama voted in the Senate against Roberts’ nomination to be chief justice.

Pence has asked Justice Clarence Thomas to administer his oath of office on Friday.

Unlike his running mate, Trump has never been administered an oath of office. Roberts on Thursday may have given him quick pointers on the process, which takes a few seconds, but officially vests the oath-taker with the office of the presidency, as well as all its powers and duties.

Roberts infamously mixed up the words of the oath when he swore in Obama in 2009, leading to a do-over at the White House a day later “out of an abundance of caution.”

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