By Nate Raymond
Jan 31 (Reuters) – A federal appeals court judge dismissed a judicial misconduct complaint by the U.S. Justice Department against a judge who clashed with President Donald Trump’s administration over his move to deport several Venezuelans to El Salvador.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi took the rare step in July of announcing the complaint against Chief US District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, DC, alleging he made inappropriate comments about Trump during a meeting of the judiciary’s policymaking body, the Judicial Conference.
US Circuit Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in a newly issued order dated December 19 said that the alleged statements, even if true, do not violate the rules of judicial ethics.
The Justice Department did not respond Saturday to requests for comment. Boasberg, appointed by former Democratic President Barack Obama, declined to comment.
Bondi announced the complaint days after Boasberg said he may begin disciplinary proceedings against Justice Department lawyers for their conduct in a lawsuit brought by Venezuelans challenging their removal to a Salvadoran prison.
Boasberg concluded in April that the administration appeared to have acted “in bad faith” when it rushed three deportation flights on March 15, at the same time it was conducting emergency court proceedings to evaluate the legality of the effort.
The DOJ complaint focused on comments attributed to Boasberg by conservative media The Federalist during a meeting of the Judicial Conference of the United States in March attended by Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court John Roberts.
The Justice Department alleged that Boasberg expressed his concern to Roberts and others that the administration would ignore court rulings and cause a “constitutional crisis.”
The DOJ argued that those comments go against the code of judicial conduct, and that Boasberg acted wrongly on his beliefs in the litigation on the Venezuelans, who were removed from the United States under the Alien Enemy Act.
Because of potential conflicts among judges in DC, Roberts transferred the complaint to the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit Judicial Council.
Sutton said the DOJ did not have proof that Boasberg made these statements, which even if they were said would not be inappropriate during the closed-door meeting of the judicial policy-making body.
“In these settings, a judge’s expression of anxiety about the executive branch’s compliance with judicial orders, whether well-feared or not, is not so far removed from customary topics in these meetings—judicial independence, judicial security, and inter-branch relations—that it violates the Code of Judicial Conduct,” he wrote.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alistair Bell)