Philadelphia : A federal judge has warned of an “existential threat to democracy” in a searing first-person essay, saying he had stepped down from the bench to speak out against US President Donald Trump.

He accused Trump of “using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution and possible punishment”.

The judge, Mark L. Wolf, wrote in The Atlantic magazine on Sunday, US time, that Trump’s actions were “contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench”.

The publication of the essay by Wolf, 78, came two days after an announcement by the Federal District Court for Massachusetts that he was leaving his post as a senior-status judge.

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