Republican Senators Take Aim at Boasberg

As support grows to impeach Trump's biggest nemesis on the federal bench, the embattled D.C. chief judge plans to resume contempt proceedings against the administration.

Are Republicans finally preparing to oust Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg?

This week, six Republican senators asked Sri Srinivasan, the chief judge of the D.C. circuit court, to suspend Boasberg pending potential impeachment proceedings in the House against the embattled Obama appointee.

Senators Eric Schmitt, Mike Lee, Tommy Tuberville, Lindsey Graham, Bill Hagerty, and Kevin Cramer want Srinivasan to sideline Boasberg indefinitely; earlier this month, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) filed articles of impeachment against Boasberg following disclosures that Boasberg had prohibited two cell phone carriers from informing at least a dozen sitting U.S. lawmakers that Special Counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed their phone records related to the January 6 investigation. Boasberg claimed in the nondisclosure orders that notifying the senators would result in “destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses, and serious jeopardy of the investigation”—completely baseless accusations alone worthy of an independent investigation into Boasberg’s reasoning, or lack thereof.

The senators also want Srinivasan, Boasberg’s fellow Obama appointee, to provide an update on a misconduct complaint filed by the Department of Justice against Boasberg in July. According to reporting earlier this year by The Federalist, Boasberg had made inappropriate remarks during a judicial conference that signaled his political bias against President Trump and foreshadowed what later would become Boasberg-manufactured drama over the administration allegedly “defying” court orders.

“You are mandated to ‘expeditiously’ review this complaint and determine whether to take ‘appropriate corrective action’ or dispense with the case ‘by written order stating his…reasons,’” the senators wrote Srinivasan on November 17. “On information and belief, you are yet to take any published steps regarding this very public complaint.” They also indicated “bicameral support” for impeaching Boasberg; two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote in support of removing Boasberg following impeachment by the House.

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Judge Denied an Election-Year Show Trial

But threats of long-awaited Congressional action are not slowing down Boasberg, who has served as the powerful chief judge of the D.C. district court since 2023. (Srinivasan, however, has supervisory authority over Boasberg.) Boasberg plans to resume contempt proceedings against the Trump DOJ for allegedly defying his “oral” order to return planes carrying illegal Venezuelans covered under the president’s Alien Enemies Act proclamation last March. (Some of my background reporting can be found here and here.) Following a hasty process intended to bolster his own earlier warnings about an insubordinate executive branch, Boasberg claimed to have found “probable cause” that the Trump administration committed criminal contempt against his court. “The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders—especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it,” Boasberg wrote in April in a made-for-clicks opinion.

A panel of the D.C. appellate court vacated his contempt finding over the summer in a somewhat convoluted ruling; the full court kicked the matter back to Boasberg on Friday, allowing him to restart the process. He immediately set a Wednesday afternoon hearing “to discuss next steps in this Court’s contempt inquiry.”

The move is the judge’s latest salvo against the president and his administration. Boasberg, who notably attended Trump’s arraignment in Washington for the J6 criminal indictment, made plans to put Trump on trial during the 2024 campaign season. According to a new book detailing efforts by the Biden DOJ to get Trump, Boasberg reportedly worked with Tanya Chutkan, the judge presiding over Trump’s J6 case, to prepare for the trial but became disillusioned after the Supreme Court took up the question of presidential immunity.

“The two judges had…been meeting every two weeks with the U.S. Marshals and court staff to work out the security logistics of holding Trump’s trial,” authors Carol Leonnig and Aaron David write in “Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished the America’s Justice Department.” “To ensure security for everyone, they had decided to move the trial from Chutkan’s court to another at the end of a back hallway with limited public access. But the [Supreme Court’s] refusal to hear the immunity challenge quickly gave the two district court judges their first reason to doubt the election case would be heard that year. Would this historic case have a chance of going to trial before the presidential election? The two judges paused some of their logistics planning.”

In other words—two Obama appointed judges with a record of making inflammatory and in some instances false accusations against the president and his supporters who protested at the Capitol on January 6 were “concerned,” according to the authors, that the Supreme Court refused to take the highly unusual step of bypassing the appellate court and taking up the immunity question immediately.

After all, they had an election-year show trial to produce! How dare the justices follow normal court processes!

An Election-Year Test of Wills

Since Trump’s inauguration, Boasberg has made other questionable courtroom calls in addition to his farcical contempt crusade. Boasberg supported the pretrial release of two individuals arrested in August for making threats against the president. In the case of a woman who had traveled from New York to Washington and posted on Facebook her willingness to “sacrificially kill this POTUS by disemboweling him and cutting out his trachea,” Boasberg overturned another judge’s decision to keep her behind bars awaiting trial. “[Why] shouldn’t we consider this the rantings of someone with a mental illness with no ability to carry this out,” Boasberg asked prosecutors before granting her release from custody.

And Boasberg’s ruling on Tuesday in favor of Meta and against the Federal Trade Commission is viewed by some as another shot at the president. An FTC spokesman said, “the deck was always stacked against us with Judge Boasberg.” Article III founder Mike Davis issued a statement after Boasberg determined Meta’s purchase of a few competitors did not represent a monopoly. “It should come as no surprise the same radical DC Obama judge (Jeb Boasberg) who freed someone who traveled to the White House after threatening to murder Trump just rewarded with antitrust amnesty the Big Tech oligarch (Meta) that spent $400 million chasing Trump out of office in 2020.”

But Boasberg might have kicked the political hornet’s nest one too many times. After all, it takes quite a bit of prodding to raise the ire of Tennessee’s Bill Hagerty, who is not exactly considered a firebrand in Washington but does face re-election next year. Hagerty’s support of Boasberg’s suspension and apparent support of his impeachment may signal Republicans finally understand the electoral risk of not seeking the removal of Boasberg.

A Rasmussen poll taken after the release of Boasberg’s nondisclosure orders against sitting members of Congress showed a slight majority of respondents support his removal from the bench. That figure climbed to 70 percent among Republicans.

A spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee told me via text on Tuesday that “everything is on the table when it comes to impeachment.” But with the midterm election one year away, Republicans have little time left to get everyone at the table. Time to move forward with a Boasberg impeachment feast.