The DOJ Appears to Be Investigating a Federal Judge for ... Annoying the President

The Department of Justice—Pam Bondi, Malignant Overlord—has decided to investigate a federal judge for a) what is essentially a thought crime, and b) for Annoying the President in the First Degree, an entirely new federal offense. From One First with Steve Vladeck:

I wanted to put out a quick issue today to cover the misconduct complaint that the Department of Justice has filed against D.C. district court Chief Judge Jeb Boasberg—based on comments that Boasberg apparently made at a March meeting of the Judicial Conference of the United States. I’ll say more about the background below, but the gravamen of the complaint is that Boasberg’s comments reflect bias against the Trump administration and should subject him to censure by the Judicial Council of the D.C. Circuit.

You all will be shocked, I’m sure, to learn that the complaint the DOJ has filed against Judge Boasberg is laughably devoid of anything resembling a legitimate basis. But, as Vladeck points out, the filing itself is not the point. The point of the filing is to remind federal judges that the Eye Makeup of Justice is upon them.

But the bigger issue is that the Department of Justice (and the Attorney General, specifically) filed this nonsense (and then tweeted about it) in the first place. I very much doubt that Judge Boasberg is the kind of jurist who will be at all intimidated or in any way cowed by such a maneuver. But there are two other audiences for this charade: The first is other federal judges, who may be less willing to speak out or to raise concerns about the Justice Department’s behavior going forward lest they, too, find themselves the subject of a misconduct complaint. And the second is the current administration’s supporters, for whom the complaint can be pointed to as yet further evidence that the lower federal courts are out to get President Trump (since no one will still be paying attention when—not if—it gets rejected). Yet again, the executive branch is actively seeking to discredit the federal judiciary. And far too many people who ought to be speaking out against this nonsense will just quietly tsk at the Department of Justice and shake their head.

If it weren’t for people like Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Cory Booker, the entire federal judiciary would be completely transformed into a threadbare puppet show with Leonard Leo and his black legions of dark money pulling the strings. Look at this miserable rag of an argument:

On March 11, 2025, at one of the [Judicial] Conference’s semiannual meetings, Judge Boasberg disregarded its history, tradition, and purpose to push a wholly unsolicited discussion about “concerns that the Administration would disregard rulings of federal courts, leading to a constitutional crisis.” By singling out a sitting President who was (and remains) a party to dozens of active cases, Judge Boasberg attempted to transform a routine housekeeping agenda into a forum to persuade the Chief Justice and other federal judges of his preconceived belief that the Trump Administration would violate court orders.

Vladeck does a fine job vivisecting the DOJ’s complaint, as well as the DOJ’s public attempts to sell this lemon to the American people. But I think my favorite part of this whole burlesque is how some pretend to be concerned that anyone would think this administration would ignore court orders. This preposterous assertion came on the same day that the Republican Senate majority handed obvious Roger Corman villain Emil Bove a lifetime seat on the federal bench, despite credible whistleblower testimony that Bove once told government lawyers that they might have to “fck the courts” to do what the president wanted. Irony swallows a handful of ludes, washes them down with a flagon of Everclear, and throws itself off the dock.