Notorious J6 Jailer Plays Victim

DC Judge Beryl Howell loves to shoot off her mouth when it comes to the president and his supporters. Now she's playing the victim as Trump DOJ uses her own words, and actions, against her.

As the manhunt for American citizens who participated in the events of January 6 accelerated in early 2021, the Biden Department of Justice took an unprecedented approach in the handling of political protesters: demand pretrial detention even for those charged with nonviolent offenses such as obstruction and conspiracy.

A special prison for J6ers had been opened in the nation’s capital a few days after Jan 6; individuals from around the country were being transported to the DC gulag after being denied release following an arrest in their home state. Judges in Washington were flooded with DOJ requests to keep J6ers, most of whom had no criminal record, behind bars awaiting trial; judges needed guidance as to how to proceed.

So, in stepped Beryl Howell, the chief judge of the D.C. district court at the time.

In February 2021, in another unprecedented move, Howell established what became known as the “Chrestman factors.” Named after William Chrestman, a member of the Proud Boys from Kansas, Howell claimed that “the undeniably traumatic events of January 6” required the courts to ditch the standard practice of evaluating pretrial detention on an individual basis and instead lump all J6ers together.

Howell laid out the “differentiating factors that warrant pretrial detention of certain defendants facing criminal liability for their participation in the mob.” Judges should, according to Howell, determine whether the defendant was part of a group that planned in advance to go to the Capitol; injured or interfered with police that day; or used “words and movements during the riot” that represented (in her mind) “egregious” misconduct.

Over the course of the J6 prosecution, Howell sentenced more than three dozen J6ers to hard time in federal prisons—but not before enduring one of her notorious tongue lashings. For example, she berated a man from Tennessee in 2022 convicted of a single misdemeanor for “engaging in political violence that shook our country.” She also forced the man to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

After running roughshod over J6ers for four years, Howell now insists she is the victim of an “ad hominem attack” by the Trump DOJ, which last week asked Howell to recuse herself from presiding over a lawsuit brought by Perkins Coie, the infamous law firm responsible for the Steele dossier.

Protecting Perkins Coie Once Again

Perkins Coie is suing the president over his March 6 executive order that accused the firm of “dishonest and dangerous activity” and stripped Perkins Coie employees of security clearances and government contracts. (A good backgrounder here.)

The lawsuit landed on Howell’s desk. Given her role overseeing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into imaginary Trump-Russia election collusion as chief judge—in a lengthy 2018 decision, Howell determined Mueller’s appointment was legal and did not violate the Constitution, a finding directly contradictory of what Judge Aileen Cannon concluded on the same question in 2024—Howell should have stepped aside.

She is unquestionably conflicted since Perkins Coie acted as the money laundering machine to conceal the role of Democratic consulting shop Fusion GPS—who hired Christopher Steele, an FBI informant and foreign lobbyist at the time—the Hillary Clinton campaign, and the Democratic National Committee in producing the dirty dossier and peddling it around Washington before and after the 2016 election.

But instead of stepping aside from the case, Howell immediately gutted most of the president’s executive order, going so far as to instruct top Trump officials including Attorney General Pam Bondi to notify government agencies “to suspend and rescind any implementation” of three key sections of the president’s directive.

The Trump administration had had enough. (In fact, the week before the Perkins case landed on her desk, Howell issued a scathing 36-page order related to Trump’s firing of a NLRB member, a move Howell repeatedly claimed was “unlawful” and “illegal.” She suggested the president considered himself a “king” and that he “seems intent on pushing the bounds of his office and exercising his power in a manner violative of clear statutory law to test how much the courts will accept the notion of a presidency that is supreme.”)

Citing Howell’s involvement in the Mueller probe; her questionable handling of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation including the suggestion Trump was a “flight risk” to justify a nondisclosure order related to Smith’s successful demand for the president’s Twitter data; and her anti-Trump statements made in and out of court, the DOJ asked Howell to recuse in a March 21 motion.

“As demonstrated through comments in this proceeding, other judicial proceedings, and in the public, observers might reasonably have concerns about the Court’s impartiality in this matter. Recusal is warranted to ensure these proceedings fair and free from concerns about impartiality,” the DOJ wrote.

Poor Poor Pitiful Me

Which prompted an “well I never!” response from the former Democratic Senate staffer and Obama appointee. As is typical for bullies—and there are few bigger bullies inside the DC federal courthouse than Howell—the judge accused the Trump administration of being the bully. And like most bullies when confronted, Howell backed away from her comments and actions in an attempt to portray them as anodyne judicial observations rather than the clearly partisan and at some points vicious attacks they represented.

The DOJ’s detailed account of her open hostility toward Trump and his supporters, Howell argued, represented “innuendo,” an “attack [on] the messenger,” and an attempt to “impugn the integrity of the federal judicial system”—as if Howell and her cohorts are not the ones responsible for the public’s all-time low trust in the judiciary.

Her keynote speech at a November 2023 dinner emceed by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who called Howell a “mentor,” and attended by known Trump saboteurs Lisa Monaco (deputy attorney general at the time), Sally Yates, and Andrew Weissmann had an “apolitical, nonpartisan theme,” Howell insisted. Her obvious shots at the president, intended to gratify the Trump haters including herself in attendance at the dinner, have been “twist[ed]” and “mischaracterize[d]” by the DOJ.

But it is Howell, not the Trump administration, now mischaracterizing her comments and conduct in court. Far from being the victim, Howell is one of the chief instigators leading the decade-long legal and judicial assault against the president, his lawyers, his associates, his campaign aides, and his voters. Not only should she be removed from this case and any case related to the president, but she should also step down from the federal bench as a disgrace to the robe she wears and the threat she poses to American jurisprudence.

And as for her repackaging of that 2023 speech? You be the judge: