Judge Trump Loathes From Mueller Era Returns for Big Law Fight

Federal judge Beryl Howell and President Donald Trump continued to spar Wednesday, as Trump attacked her on social media as “highly biased,” and Howell cited McCarthyism in rejecting the latest defense of his executive order against a law firm.

In a hearing over Trump’s sanctioning of Perkins Coie, Howell said the Justice Department was throwing a “temper tantrum” that was “worthy of a two-year old” in continuing to suggest the executive order she ruled against could be enforced.

Trump claiming “absolute power” to declare a law firm a national security threat, and revoke security clearances for individual employees without reviews, is reminiscent of the “Red Scare” and the McCarthy era, Howell said.

It was the latest in a series of courtroom disagreements between Trump and Howell dating back years.

Former colleagues who worked with Howell, who spent years as a New York prosecutor and Capitol Hill legal adviser, generally sidestepped questions about Trump, but said they’re not surprised when she forcefully defends her view of the law.

“I don’t think she’s changed very much,” said Bruce Cohen, who worked with Howell on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “The environment, the challenges she faces, may have changed around her.” But “I still recognize the Beryl Howell I worked with as judge Howell now on the bench.”

After some 15 years on the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Howell has gained notice for her writing as well as the substance of rulings in high-stakes legal battles, many of which have centered on Trump in recent years.

She supervised grand juries handling matters from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, people accused in the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol, and Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Recent Skirmishes

Two days after Trump’s second inauguration, Howell criticized the widespread pardons of those who attacked the Capitol as part of an order dismissing charges against two people involved. “This Court cannot let stand the revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement,” Howell wrote.

“She spoke to the nation, not just to the individual defendants and the individual prosecutors who brought those cases, and she said, ‘Look, this doesn’t mean that it wasn’t just to prosecute these people,” said Hofstra Law professor James Sample. “It doesn’t mean that the events of Jan. 6 are not a stain.”

Last month, in reversing Trump’s firing of a National Labor Relations Board member, Howell wrote: “An American President is not a king—not even an ‘elected’ one.”

Justice Department lawyers tried to have Howell removed from a challenge to Trump’s executive order against Perkins Coie, alleging she “has repeatedly demonstrated partiality against and animus towards the president.”

On Wednesday, Trump himself blasted Howell on Truth Social, calling her a “highly biased and unfair disaster.”

In court, Howell assured the government lawyer: “I’m not a bully.”

But Howell has refused to step aside, decried a “rhetorical strategy of ad hominem attack,” and wrote: “The stakes become much larger than only the reputation of the targeted federal judge.”

Some legal observers said such language can go too far.

“Judges should resist the temptation to be outspoken about the president and should instead stay in their lane to resolve questions of law,” said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston. “Judges will never have the sort of bully pulpit that the president has, and they should not try.”

But Sample, who focuses on democracy and constitutional law issues, said Howell has become a barometer of the moment.

“By doing her job, she becomes a kind of lightning-rod litmus test for polarized America,” said Sample.

‘Impact of Big Lies’

Howell, born in 1956 in Fort Benning, Ga., earned a degree in philosophy from Bryn Mawr College in 1978 and graduated from Columbia Law School in 1983.

After a stint with law firm Schulte, Roth & Zabel, Howell became an assistant US Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, where she received commendations for work in narcotics, corruption, and laundering cases.

She spent a decade on Capitol Hill, including as general counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee, from 1993 to 2003. Howell also served two terms as a commissioner on the US Sentencing Commission, and was an executive managing director and general counsel for a cybersecurity services firm.

In 2023, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) requested an ethics investigation into Howell over a speech at the Women’s White Collar Defense Association’s gala, where Howell said she and colleagues “regularly see the impact of big lies” at sentencing for Jan. 6 defendants, and called the attack on the Capitol a “downright troubling moment in this country.”

Broadly speaking, “without getting into the specifics of what she said, I think that this is where judges do need to be more careful,” said Charles Gardner Geyh, an Indiana University law professor specializing in judicial misconduct.

Said Sample: “Judge Howell probably believes that, as a relatively senior member of the trial bench, she has a capacity and maybe a responsibility to speak on behalf of judges more generally, in defending them and herself for doing what judges do.”

But Blackman said, “Trump has a tendency to get judges to overreact. In turn, judges overreact and cause Trump to further overreact.”

‘For a Lot of People’

Cohen, now an attorney with Phillips & Cohen, said she brought to the Judiciary Committee a toughness she’d exhibited from her previous work as a prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York, where she went after “very dangerous people.”

Cohen said Howell “was always on the merits” while working extensively on criminal justice issues and matters involving the Freedom of Information Act.

After 9/11, Howell was the Senate’s lead staff negotiator on the Patriot Act, which gave the government new surveillance and investigative powers. Cohen called it a “very intense period” with “almost round the clock negotiations.”

A 2010 appointee to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, Howell was chief judge of the US District Court for the District of Columbia from 2016 to 2023 and took senior status in 2024, which means she now hears fewer cases, although many cases coming before her court are major national issues.

“The nature of the cases that are in front of her are such that they mean a lot for a lot of people,” said Lenny Powell, a Native American Rights Fund attorney who clerked for Howell from 2019 to 2020. “Some of them matter for everyone in this country. She wants her opinions to be valuable to anyone who reads them.”