Washington — A federal appeals court judge dismissed a judicial misconduct complaint that the Justice Department filed against U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, whom President Trump has denounced over his handling of a legal battle involving the Alien Enemies Act and the administration’s swift removals of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.
In a December decision, Judge Jeffrey Sutton, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, faulted the Justice Department for failing to provide “sufficient evidence” about an alleged statement Boasberg made last March during a closed-door meeting of judges, which sparked the judicial misconduct complaint.
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The complaint was filed last July by Chad Mizelle, then-chief of staff to Attorney General Pam Bondi. He claimed Boasberg made “improper public comments” about Mr. Trump and his administration during the meeting of the Judicial Conference, the policymaking body of the federal courts.
Boasberg allegedly expressed concerns that the Trump administration “would disregard rulings of federal courts, leading to a constitutional crisis.” The Justice Department’s complaint also cited Boasberg’s handling of a case involving Mr. Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport Venezuelan migrants who were allegedly members of the gang Tren de Aragua.
The department identified in its complaint one source of evidence for Boasberg’s statement and where it was allegedly made, but did not include that source, Sutton said. When the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., reached out to the Justice Department about the missing information, the department didn’t provide it, according to Sutton’s order.
“In the absence of the attachment, the complaint offers no source for what, if anything, the subject judge said during the Conference, when he said it, whether he said it in response to a question, whether he said it during the Conference or at another meeting, and whether he expressed these concerns as his own or as those of other judges,” the judge wrote.
The Justice Department also mentioned in the complaint a Fox News clip discussing the allegations against Boasberg, which Sutton said also did not offer details about his alleged comment.
“A recycling of unadorned allegations with no reference to a source does not corroborate them. And a repetition of uncorroborated statements rarely supplies a basis for a valid misconduct complaint,” he wrote.
Sutton also noted that meetings of the Judicial Conference aim to facilitate “candidate conversations” among judges, and said any claim that Boasberg’s alleged comment was made in public and in reference to a pending case “falls short.”
“In these settings, a judge’s expression of anxiety about executive-branch compliance with judicial orders, whether rightly feared or not, is not so far afield from customary topics at these meetings — judicial independence, judicial security, and inter-branch relations — as to violate the Codes of Judicial Conduct,” he found.
The complaint was initially filed with Judge Sri Srinivasan, the chief judge of the U.S. appeals court in Washington, D.C. But he asked Chief Justice John Roberts to transfer the complaint to another appeals court because of appellate challenges to Boasberg’s rulings. Roberts then transferred the matter to the 6th Circuit’s Judicial Council in December, according to Sutton’s order.
Top administration officials and Mr. Trump himself have attacked Boasberg for his decisions in the fast-moving legal fight over the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act and the summary removal of Venezuelan migrants to a notorious Salvadoran prison, which played out last year.
Boasberg had ordered the Trump administration to turn around two planes carrying the alleged gang members that was bound for El Salvador and said that the government did not stop the removals. He ruled last April that probable cause existed to find government officials in criminal contempt over their defiance of his decision and said the government demonstrated a “willful disregard” for his order.
Mr. Trump and some Republicans in Congress had called for Boasberg to be impeached, though it’s unlikely that would happen. The Justice Department has also filed a judicial misconduct complaint against U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, who sits on the same court as Boasberg, for what it says was “hostile and egregious misconduct” during a hearing last February.
Reyes was presiding over a case involving Mr. Trump’s plan to bar transgender people from serving in the military and blocked enforcement of the policy last March. The Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to implement the ban while litigation continues.
