Meet the federal judge labeled 'radical left lunatic' by Trump, derided by DOJ for 'micromanaged' request
Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg of the District of Columbia stands for a portrait at E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, D.C., on March 16, 2023. (Photo by Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
A federal judge facing President Donald Trump’s ire because of his rulings on deportation authority was once a housemate with Brett Kavanaugh, a future U.S. Supreme Court justice, at Yale Law School.
Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, 62, of the District of Columbia “has a history of bipartisan support,” the Washington Post reports, having been nominated to the District of Columbia Superior Court by a Republican president and to the federal court in Washington, D.C., by a Democratic president.
He also appears for speaking engagements at Yale with U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of the District of Columbia, a Trump appointee, where they emphasize a commitment to rule of law, according to NPR.
But Boasberg is being targeted by Trump, who wrote on social media that the judge is a “radical left lunatic of a judge, a troublemaker and agitator” who should be impeached.
Boasberg is overseeing a lawsuit challenging Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members. Boasberg ordered the administration not to use the law for deportations and told Department of Justice lawyers Saturday that planes carrying the deportees should be turned around.
Three planes carrying 238 immigrants reached their destination in El Salvador in Central America, the New York Times reports. Boasberg gave the administration a Wednesday deadline to provide details on the flights, which was met with a government request for a stay that said the judge’s quest for information was a “micromanaged and unnecessary judicial fishing expedition,” NBC News reports.
“Continuing to beat a dead horse solely for the sake of prying from the government legally immaterial facts and wholly within a sphere of core functions of the executive branch is both purposeless and frustrating to the consideration of the actual legal issues at stake in this case,” the DOJ said.
In a March 19 order, Boasberg agreed to provide the government an extra day to decide whether to invoke the state secrets privilege, “although their grounds for such request at first blush are not persuasive.” Rather than engaging in a fishing expedition, he said, he was seeking information “to determine if the government deliberately flouted” his orders.
Boasberg grew up in Washington, D.C., where his father worked for former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration, according to the New York Times.
He attended Yale as an undergraduate, where he played basketball and also obtained a master’s degree in history from the University of Oxford. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1990.
After graduation, Boasberg worked as a law clerk for a federal appeals judge, as an associate at two law firms, and as a homicide prosecutor at the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C. He was appointed to the District of Columbia Superior Court in 2002 by former President George W. Bush and to the federal bench in 2011 by former President Barack Obama. He also served a seven-year term on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
On the bench, Boasberg “is something of a stickler for footnote brevity,” according to a prior ABA Journal story. He has tossed briefs in several suits for violating a local court ruling banning excessive footnotes.
He is also known “for his booming baritone voice and for peppering legal opinions with colorful language and pop culture references,” according to Reuters. In one opinion, Boasberg “cited a Star Trek reference to the Borg catchphrase ‘Resistance is futile,’” the article reports.
He has also been involved in other cases involving issues of importance to Trump.
“In his 14 years on the federal bench,” the Associated Press reports, Boasberg “has resolved secret grand jury disputes that arose during the special counsel investigations into Trump, oversaw improvements after the Trump-Russia investigation in how the Justice Department conducts national security surveillance, and handled his share of sentencings for rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”
One of the rioters called Boasberg a “clown” and a “fraud” during a court hearing. Boasberg “calmly listened,” according to the AP.
The deportation suit is J.G.G. v. Trump.
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