Trump calls to impeach US judge, drawing rebuke from Roberts
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts speaks at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 2014. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)
President Donald Trump called Tuesday for the impeachment of a federal judge who had ruled against him, prompting the chief justice of the United States to issue a stern statement rejecting the idea and asserting the independence of the judiciary.
The Trump administration has forcefully pushed back against U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, who ordered the government not to use a controversial wartime authority to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members while litigation over the matter proceeds.
Impeachment of judges is extremely rare, and it is very unlikely that an effort to remove Boasberg would gain the required majorities in a closely divided Congress. But the White House sees the fight - against a judge appointed to the bench by presidents of both parties - as a winning strategy, part of a years-long effort by Trump to use immigration to his political advantage and cast doubts on the credibility of the courts.
Trump posted on social media that Boasberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for D.C., was a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge,” writing: “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”
In response to media requests for comment about Trump’s online remarks, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. issued a rare public statement. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” he wrote. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Statement of the American Bar Association: ABA stands firmly with statement of Chief Justice John Roberts in rejecting inappropriate calls for judicial impeachment
Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge and law lecturer at Harvard, said Trump’s comments were irresponsible in the current political environment, which includes rising threats against judges. “This is an exercise of power over the courts,” Gertner said. “The calls for the impeachment of a judge just doing his job fits into that category. It is unbelievably dangerous.”
Boasberg is weighing a lawsuit over the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has previously been invoked only during wartime. On Saturday evening, he ordered the government not to use that authority to deport people while litigation continues.
He said any planes carrying such deportees should be turned around. But the White House said the next day that 137 deportations had been carried out using the act, with the men taken to a mega-prison in El Salvador.
A Justice Department attorney told Boasberg on Monday that the government had not violated his order, arguing that the planes carrying the alleged gang members were over international territory when the ruling was issued and therefore beyond the judge’s jurisdiction. The government also suggested Boasberg’s oral order to turn the planes around did not carry sufficient legal force since it was not included in a later written order.
Boasberg seemed highly skeptical of both arguments, calling the latter a “heck of a stretch.” He has ordered the government to provide more details of the timing and occupants of the flights by Wednesday.
Trump has a long history of criticizing judges, including in his own criminal cases. He unsuccessfully tried to remove the judge in his New York state trial, where he was convicted of falsifying business records connected to a hush money payment to a porn actress.
At the time, some Trump critics suggested that attacking the courts so directly would cost him swing votes. But Trump and his campaign hammered a message that he was being unfairly targeted by the justice system.
Within the legal system, it’s unlikely Trump’s calls to remove Boasberg will go anywhere.
Federal judges have life tenure. Only 15 have been impeached by the House since 1804, according to data from the Federal Judicial Center, generally for personal or professional misconduct such as intoxication on the bench or tax evasion. About half those judges were then convicted by the Senate. The last impeachment occurred in 2010.
In September, federal judiciary leaders asked Congress to consider impeaching a federal judge in Alaska who resigned this summer after an investigation found he created a hostile work environment in his chambers and engaged in an inappropriate sexual relationship with a former law clerk.
Rank-and-file Republican lawmakers, particularly Rep. Andrew Ogles (Tennessee), for weeks have been calling for impeachment proceedings against judges who have blocked some of Trump’s initiatives. Ogles keeps a poster outside his Capitol Hill office in the Cannon building with names and pictures of 11 judges he describes as “get-Trump activists” whom he wants to impeach. Four are named in articles of impeachment that have been drafted.
Winning the required simple majority in the House would be difficult, given Republicans have just two votes to spare and would probably meet unanimous Democratic opposition. A Senate trial is all but guaranteed to end in acquittal because a 67-vote supermajority would be needed to convict and expel a judge.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) criticized Trump and Republican lawmakers for what he called a crusade to erode the independence of the judiciary.
“We have never impeached a judge for the substance of his ruling in a case, much less for the substance of a correct ruling in a case. Erroneous decisions should be appealed and reversed,” Raskin said in a statement.
Senior Republican lawmakers have generally shied away from talk of impeaching federal judges, focusing instead on finding ways to legislatively rein in the power of individual jurists to impose sweeping rulings with national impact.
Conservatives took advantage of that possibility during the Biden administration, filing lawsuits in single-judge courthouses where they were almost certain to get directives by President Joe Biden overturned.
Last year, lawmakers from both parties proposed bills to address the problem, with Republicans seeking to limit the power of district courts to issue injunctions and Democrats wanting to require lawsuits to be randomly assigned to judges within a judicial district. Neither bill advanced.
Nationwide injunctions are put in place by judges when they believe a law or executive branch action may be unconstitutional. They remain in place only while litigation continues, and they can be overturned by higher courts that determine the proposed action is legal or can take effect on an interim basis.
On Monday, in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee again proposed establishing parameters on the impact of these initial judicial rulings, never mentioning impeachment.
“My colleagues and I in the Senate are watching this issue closely. I will be working to solve the problem of judicial overreach,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote. His letter included a handwritten note telling Bondi it is “a very important issue for me.”
A White House official said there has been no coordination with Congress about impeaching Boasberg. White House advisers believe that broad public support for Trump’s aggressive immigration policies insulates him from blowback over the attacks. And they argue that the judicial branch is attempting to stifle a key part of the agenda Trump was elected on - “mass deportations.”
Trump appears to think his attacks on Boasberg may pay political dividends, whatever the outcome of the case in court and the chances of impeachment. On Truth Social, Trump wrote that he was elected with an “overwhelming mandate” to fight illegal immigration.
“I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do,” Trump posted.
Andrew C. McCarthy, a writer for the conservative National Review, posited that Trump’s fight with Boasberg was one Trump officials “covet.”
“The administration reasonably … calculates that the deportations will not only be popular but will make the president more popular if they are portrayed as yet another instance of Democrats and Democrat-appointed judges siding with alien lawbreakers over Americans,” McCarthy wrote.
Courts have served as one of the few bulwarks against Trump’s agenda, repeatedly slamming the brakes on executive actions, including a ban on birthright citizenship, the firing of thousands of probationary workers and the freezing of foreign aid.
Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk have called for ignoring court orders and impeaching judges, and the Trump administration in some cases has failed to promptly comply with court orders.
White House border czar Tom Homan said in an interview on “Fox & Friends” on Monday that the administration will continue to deport alleged gang members, declaring, “I don’t care what the judges think.”
Hours afterward, Bondi told Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro that Boasberg’s order was an “intrusion on the president’s authority.”
“And we will continue to follow the Alien Enemies Act,” she said.
The unusual statement by Roberts on Tuesday followed his admonition in late December that personal attacks against judges had gone too far. “Violence, intimidation, and defiance directed at judges because of their work undermine our Republic, and are wholly unacceptable,” Roberts wrote in his annual report on the court system.
The chief justice had previously chided Trump in 2018, after Trump denounced “Obama judges” who had ruled against the administration during his first term in office.
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said then. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
Trump then pushed back on Twitter, writing, “Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges.’”
In addition, Roberts rebuked Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) after his denunciation of two conservative Supreme Court justices at an abortion rights rally outside the Supreme Court in 2020.
“Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous,” Roberts said. “All members of the court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter.”
The U.S. Marshals Service has reported that threats against judges have increased over the past decade. It investigated more than 820 incidents in 2024.
“The threat landscape over the last several years has been devolving and it certainly involves more threats to judges,” Judge Richard J. Sullivan, a Republican appointee in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, said during a news conference this month. “A lot of this is technology based. It is easier than ever to make threats and it’s easier … to use the dark web to help convey those threats.”
Patrick Svitek contributed to this report.
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