These stories were reported in this morning’s TCinLA substack.
As I reported yesterday,
Judge Boasberg was appointed to the case of a lawsuit to preserve the messages
in the Signal group chat planning a military strike against Houthis in Yemen.
This is the same judge that ordered planes to turn around that were carrying
Venezuelans being deported to a prison in El Salvador.
On hearing the news President
Trump ranted on his social media platform:
“How disgraceful is it that ‘Judge’ James Boasberg has
just been given a 4th “Trump Case,” something which is,
statistically, IMPOSSIBLE. There is no way for a Republican, especially a TRUMP
REPUBLICAN, to win before him. He is Highly Conflicted in his hatred of me –
Massive Trump Derangement Syndrome! Boasberg, who is the Chief Judge of the
D.C. District Court, seems to be grabbing the ‘Trump Cases’ all to himself,
even though it is not supposed to happen that way. There must be an immediate
investigation of this Rigged System, before it is too late!”
Boasberg was appointed to
the D. C. superior Court by George W. Bush and promoted to the District Court
by President Obama. He was the judge who released Hillarie Clinton’s emails and
allowed Trump to avoid having to release his income tax returns. Apparently
Trump has a short memory.
In Thursday’s hearing
Judge Boasberg, in an apparent response to Trump’s tweet, publicly explained
how the case had come to him. He had been assigned to this case, he patiently
explained, in the normal process of random selection out of the 24 judges in
the district.
While Boasberg’s rebuttal
to Trump’s lies was very mild, Judge Beryl Howell’s pushback was a tad
stronger.
The Justice Department was
trying to remove Howell from a case over Trump’s executive order attacking the
Perkins Coie law firm. The DOJ accused Howell of “repeatedly demonstrat[ing]
partiality against and animus towards the president” and is therefore “unable
to impartially rule on the meritless challenges to President Trump’s efforts to
implement the agenda that the American people elected him to carry out”.
In a 21 page ruling Howell
denied the bid to replace her on the case and called the DOJ and AG Pam Bondi out
for attacking her character and undermining the judicial system. The bid to
replace her, Howell wrote, “relies only on speculation, innuendo, and basic
legal disagreements that provide no basis for disqualification.”
In the order denying the
bid to replace her, Judge Howell wrote:
“When the U.S. Department of Justice engages in this
rhetorical strategy of ad hominem attack, the stakes become much larger than
only the reputation of the targeted federal judge. This strategy is designed to
impugn the integrity of the federal judicial system and blame any loss on the
decision-maker rather than fallacies in the substantive legal arguments
presented”.
She added that the Trump
administration’s claims of “ongoing improper encroachments” on his
executive powers … “reflects a grave misapprehension of our constitutional
order. … Adjudicating whether an Executive Branch exercise of power is legal, or
not, is actually the job of the federal courts, and not that of the president or
the Department of Justice…”.
She wrote that the
president’s actions (e.g. against Perkins Coie) send a chilling message that lawyers can be punished for
representing clients unfavorable to the administration. “Such a circumstance
threatens the very foundation of our legal system. Our justice system is based
on the fundamental belief that justice works best when all parties have zealous
advocates.”
Justices like Boasberg and
Howell are fingers in the dike holding back the utter destruction of America by
Trump and his gang of thugs.
Sources:
https://tcinla757.substack.com/p/poking-around-at-the-end-of-week-1ca
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/us/politics/signal-chat-houthis-court-decision.html
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