DOJ considers referring federal judges to Congress for impeachment

A Department of Justice official raised the possibility of referring federal judges to Congress for impeachment in what would be a dramatic escalation of the administration’s fight with judges it views as activist and obstructionist.

The idea was floated by a senior DOJ official during a recent virtual meeting with U.S. attorneys across the country, a source familiar told Fox News Digital. It marked a new possible avenue for the executive branch to confront the judiciary — by turning to Congress, which has sole authority over impeachment, to take the rare step of voting to oust federal judges.

The meeting, led by Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh, was routine, but impeachment had not been raised in one before, the source said. Singh broached it after the DOJ received numerous complaints from the U.S. attorneys’ offices about judges, the source said. Bloomberg Law first reported on the meeting.

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Singh asked the U.S. attorneys to compile examples of issues they have had with judges, which the DOJ could then use to determine if referring judges for impeachment was appropriate. 

A DOJ spokesperson confirmed the move in a statement to Fox News Digital, saying the Trump administration is “facing unprecedented judicial activism from rogue judges who care more about making a name for themselves than acting as impartial arbiters of the law.”

“The Department of Justice solicited the most egregious examples of this obstruction from our U.S. Attorney Offices to assist Congress with efforts to rein in judges violating their oaths in accordance with their constitutional oversight authority of the judicial branch,” the spokesperson said.

Any referral would be sent to the House, which must then vote on impeachment. Doing so would be extraordinarily rare as the House has only ever impeached 15 judges, typically for crimes like corruption and bribery.

This year, Congress has weighed impeaching at least two federal judges, James Boasberg and Deborah Boardman.

Boasberg, an Obama appointee, has made a handful of adverse rulings against the Trump administration in high-profile immigration cases, while Boardman deviated heavily downward in her eight-year sentence for Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s attempted assassin. Numerous Republicans have called for their impeachment, but the House has not moved to initiate the proceedings.

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As a recourse against adverse rulings, the DOJ has publicly decried judges’ decisions or appealed them, the latter of which requires layers of internal approvals.

Calling on the House, narrowly led by Republicans, to impeach judges would be a new approach. Two-thirds of the Senate would then need to vote to convict the judges, which would strip them of their lifetime appointments.

The DOJ has been managing hundreds of lawsuits, a large fraction of which deal with the administration’s aggressive crackdown on immigration and controversial deportation tactics. Adverse rulings and reprimands from lower court judges have been frequent.

Prosecutors, for instance, charged Juan Espinoza Martinez with engaging in a murder-for-hire plot against U.S. Border Patrol official Greg Bovino. However, Espinoza Martinez was acquitted in January after a Clinton-appointed federal judge in Chicago rejected the DOJ’s requests to inform the jury that Martinez allegedly belonged to the Latin Kings gang, contending that the department did not have enough evidence to raise that claim in court.

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The DOJ spokesperson further outlined the department’s frustrations, telling Fox News Digital that district court and magistrate judges have refused to sign criminal complaints or search warrants when clear probable cause exists, made bad rulings about evidence and jury instructions, granted emergency restraining orders against the government without giving the DOJ a reasonable time to respond and “erroneously” involved themselves in the U.S. attorney nominations process.

Fox News Digital reached out to the House Judiciary Committee, which would vet any judicial impeachments, about how it would handle the possible referrals.