July 29 (UPI) — Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday evening announced that a misconduct complaint has been filed against District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg “for making improper public comments” about President Donald Trump, amid his administration’s targeting of the U.S. judicial system.
Boasberg, a President Barack Obama appointee, has rejected Trump’s attempt to deport hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador to be interned in a notorious mega prison for terrorists, attracting the ire of the president, who has called for the judge’s impeachment.
The complaint, obtained by both Politico and Courthouse News, focuses on comments made by Boasberg to Chief Justice John Roberts and some two dozen other judges who attended a March 11 judicial conference.
According to the document, Boasberg said he believed that the Trump administration would “disregard rulings of federal courts,” which would trigger “a constitutional crisis.”
The Justice Department alleges that the comments deviated from the administrative matters generally discussed at the conference and were intended to influence Roberts and the other judges.
The conference was held amid litigation on Trump’s ability to summarily deport the Venezuelan migrants, and days before Boasberg ruled against the administration. He also ruled that Trump had deported the migrants to El Salvador in violation of his order — an order that was vacated in April by a divided Supreme Court.
The complaint states that within days of making the alleged comments, he “began acting on his preconceived belief that the Trump administration would not follow court orders.”
“These comments have undermined the integrity of the judiciary, and we will not stand for that,” Bondi said in a statement on X announcing the filing of the complaint.
The Trump administration has attracted staunch criticism from the legal profession over actions it has taken that have been described as targeting the independence of the U.S. judiciary system.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has threatened to impeach judges who rule against him, including Boasberg, described them as “rouge judges,” sanctioned law firms and lawyers linked to his political adversaries and has ignored or defied rulings he disagrees with.
His administration most recently fired newly appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Desiree Leigh Grace because the New Jersey judges did not select Trump’s pick for the position.
The complaint against Boasberg was signed by Chad Mizelle, chief of staff for Bondi, who alleged in a statement that Boasberg’s March comments violated the Canons of the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges.
“Federal judges often complain about the decline of public trust in the judiciary,” he said on X. “But if the judiciary simply ignores improper conduct like Judge Boasberg’s, it will have itself to blame when the public stops trusting it.”
The Justice Department, in the complaint, is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to launch a special investigation to determine whether Boasberg’s conduct constitutes prejudice against the Trump administration. It also seeks “interim corrective measures,” including reassignment of the cases related to the deportation of the Venezuelan migrants to another judge.
The complaint is also the second that the Trump administration has filed against a judge. In February, Bondi filed a complaint — which is still under review — against Judge Ana Reyes for “hostile and egregious misconduct” against the Trump administration during litigation on the president’s executive order to ban transgender service members from the military.