A federal judge blasted Donald Trump and his administration Wednesday for disobeying court orders—and warned them they would be held in contempt.
James Boasberg, chief judge of the Washington D.C. district court, escalated a feud with the president in a blistering ruling which sets the clock ticking on possible prosecutions for Trump officials. The judge said he was prepared to name a special prosecutor so the case would not be handled by Trump’s attorney general Pam Bondi.
It escalates the personal stand-off between Boasberg and Trump, who has demanded the judge be removed from the case and even impeached, and smeared him on social media as a “radical-left lunatic.”
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The ruling comes amid warnings of a “constitutional crisis” over the Trump administration’s defiance of court orders, including Boasberg’s order to turn back planeloads of migrants being deported to El Salvador’s hell-hole megaprison last month, and another judge’s order to bring back wrongly deported dad Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
The 46-page ruling is a forensic dismantling of arguments the Trump administration has made in court and on television and slams the tactics DOJ lawyers have used in the case, including claiming that telling the judge what happened as impossible because it was a “state secret.”
In a statement, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast, “We plan to seek immediate appellate relief. The President is 100% committed to ensuring that terrorists and criminal illegal migrants are no longer a threat to Americans and their communities across the country.”
The Justice Department did not immediately return a a request for comment.
The bitter dispute between the president and the judge started on March 15, when Boasberg issued an emergency ruling telling the Department of Homeland Security to turn round two planes carrying 261 alleged Venezuelan gang members being sent to El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo. They had been deported by the Trump under the Alien Enemies Act, a 200-year-old wartime law, which Boasberg had ruled could not be used to remove them.
But the DHS ignored his ruling and the migrants were paraded in front of cameras, then filmed having their heads shaved and being thrown in mass cells.
Five of the migrants are suing saying that their clients are not members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, and were deported without due process.
After the judge issued his order to turn back the planes, Trump called for his impeachment, declaring him a “Radical Left Lunatic” and a “troublemaker and agitator.”
Trump’s attack sparked a rare public statement from Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts, who rebuked the president.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said.
As Trump has continued to ignore Boasberg’s demands to respond to the lawsuit, the judge’s exasperation has become apparent. In March, he dismissed the administration’s filing addressing the complaint as “woefully insufficient.”
The president fired back that Boasberg was “a local, unknown Judge, a Grandstander, looking for publicity, and it cannot be for any other reason, because his ‘Rulings’ are so ridiculous, and inept.”
Trump’s attacks aside, former colleagues of Boasberg’s from his time as a homicide prosecutor previously told the Daily Beast that they held him in high regard.
”He was absolutely, totally adored by everybody,” retired Det. James Trainum of the Metropolitan Police Department said. “A straight shooter…Nothing could rattle him. He just took everything in stride, but really, really smart [and] fair. I just could not say enough good things about him.”
Trump has also raged over Boasberg being randomly assigned to a lawsuit stemming from last month’s Signal chat leak, when an Atlantic journalist was accidentally added to a discussion of sensitive military plans.
The president declared the assignment, which came in late March, “statistically IMPOSSIBLE” and accused Boasberg of “Massive Trump Derangement Syndrome!”
Boasberg’s ruling on Wednesday takes the two men’s feud to the next level.
The judge wrote that he did not reach his conclusion “lightly or hastily.”
“Indeed, [the court] has given Defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions,” he said. “None of their responses has been satisfactory.”
Boasberg said he would give the administration one week to “purge” itself of contempt by coming into compliance with his original court order.
“The most obvious way for Defendants to do so here is by asserting custody of the individuals who were removed in violation” of the order, he wrote, although he acknowledged that they would not need to be returned to America.
Boasberg then plans to request sworn statements from Trump officials about their decision-making—with the possibility of live testimony or depositions.
If Trump’s team does not submit to this, Boasberg said he will name specific officials to be held in contempt, who will then be subject to prosecution by a state attorney.
Should the Justice Department, led by Trump-loyal Bondi, refuse to prosecute Trump’s team, Boasberg said he will name a special prosecutor to do so.
Punishments for criminal contempt can include fines, probation, and even jail time.
