US Justice Department’s misconduct complaint against Judge Boasberg gets tossed
By Nate Raymond
Jan 31 (Reuters) – A federal appeals court judge dismissed a U.S. Justice Department complaint of judicial misconduct against a judge who clashed with President Donald Trump’s administration over its move to deport large numbers of Venezuelans to El Salvador.
U.S. Attorney Pam Bondi took the rare step of announcing in July that she had filed a complaint against U.S. Chief Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., alleging he made inappropriate comments about Trump at a meeting of the Judicial Conference, the policy-making body of the judiciary.
U.S. Chief District Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals said in his newly released Dec. 19 decision that the alleged statements, even if true, would not violate rules of judicial conduct.
The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment Saturday. Boasberg, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, declined to comment.
Bondi announced his complaint days after Boasberg said he might initiate disciplinary proceedings against Justice Department lawyers for their conduct in a case challenging the deportation of Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador.
Boasberg concluded in April that the administration acted in “bad faith” when it hastily put together three deportation flights on March 15, and was also pursuing emergency court proceedings to evaluate the legality of that effort.
The Justice Department’s complaint focused on comments attributed to Boasberg by conservative media outlet The Federalist at a March meeting of the U.S. Judicial Conference attended by U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts.
The Justice Department alleged that Boasberg expressed concerns to Roberts and others that the administration would ignore court orders and trigger a “constitutional crisis.”
The Justice Department argued that those comments violated the judiciary’s code of conduct and that Boasberg acted wrongly in his belief in the case of Venezuelans removed from the United States under the Alien Enemies Act.
Because of potential disagreements among judges in D.C., Roberts referred the complaint to the Judicial Council of the 6th Circuit, based in Cincinnati.
Sutton said the Justice Department had no evidence that Boasberg made such statements and that they would not have been inappropriate even if they had been made at a closed-door meeting of the judicial policy-making body.
“In these settings, a judge’s concern for the executive branch’s compliance with judicial orders, whether justifiably feared or not, is not so far removed from the customary issues at these meetings (judicial independence, judicial security, and interbranch relations) as to violate the Rules of Judicial Conduct,” Sutton wrote.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alistair Bell)
