Senate Republicans Call to Impeach Federal Judges Over Rulings

Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans ramped up calls for the House to impeach a pair of federal judges caught in President Donald Trump’s crosshairs for rulings they issued seen as unfavorable to the administration.

The lawmakers at a hearing on Wednesday tore into Chief Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg of the Washington federal trial court for orders he signed related to former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“No republic can survive if its judges help opposition officials surveil the people’s elected representatives,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chair of the committee’s courts panel, said.

Senators also called for impeaching Maryland federal judge Deborah Boardman, who handed down an eight-year sentence for the person convicted of attempting to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022. That was 22 years lower than prosecutors requested.

The two judges earlier declined to testify at the hearing.

Cruz asked House Speaker Mike Johnson in a letter on Wednesday to move forward with impeachment proceedings against the judges.

“Each has placed personal ideology above law and therefore beyond the bounds of constitutional trust,” Cruz wrote.

Committee Democrats said the proper remedy to contest a judge’s decision is through the appellate courts. And they tied impeachment calls to the rising threats against federal judges.

“All of this looks very much like a MAGA-coordinated strategy to bring pressure and threats to bear on a federal judge, in an environment in which violent threats are prevalent,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the courts panel.

The GOP-led hearing that was dubbed “holding rogue judges accountable” builds upon rising tension between the judiciary and other branches of government.

Trump and other top officials have criticized judges who’ve ruled against the administration’s agenda, with the Justice Department’s second-in-command, Todd Blanche, recently describing a “war” against the judiciary in public remarks.

Attorney General Pam Bondi also filed a complaint against Boasberg through the judiciary’s misconduct process, while House Republicans have filed resolutions of impeachment against multiple federal judges who have ruled against Trump’s agenda.

Several Republican committee members expressed support for the two judges to be impeached, building on similar calls.

An impeachment vote would face challenging numbers in the Republican-controlled House. Republicans there face an increasingly slim margin to enact their agenda, following the unexpected death of Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) this week.

Contested Decisions

Senate Republicans’ impeachment call centered on non-disclosure orders Boasberg signed for Smith’s subpoenas targeting phone records of GOP lawmakers who spoke to Trump in the days around the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol led by the president’s supporters.

Boasberg wouldn’t have known the targets of the subpoena, as applications for non-disclosure orders don’t typically include those named in a subpoena.

At the hearing, Cruz questioned what evidence Boasberg could’ve relied on to sign off on the orders and said the fact that he didn’t know the subpoena targets “makes it worse.” Cruz also accused Boardman of giving Kavanaugh’s would-be assassin a lower sentence because the defendant, Sophie Roske, is transgender, calling the decision “a gross dereliction of duty.”

Boasberg has long been a target of administration officials. He ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of alleged gang members deported to a Salvadoran prison under a wartime deportation law. He has also initiated an inquiry into whether administration officials defied court orders in the litigation.

Fifteen judges have been impeached throughout US history. The most recent was in 2010, when Louisiana federal judge G. Thomas Porteous, Jr., was removed from the bench for accepting bribes and making false statements.

Chief Justice John Roberts said in March that impeachment “is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”