Department of Justice

Jan 31 (Reuters) – A federal appeals court judge dismissed a judicial misconduct complaint brought by the U.S. Department of Justice against a judge who clashed with President Donald Trump’s administration over its decision to deport several Venezuelans to El Salvador.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi took the rare step in July of announcing the complaint against Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., alleging that he made inappropriate comments about Trump during a meeting of the judiciary’s policy-making body, the Judicial Conference.

Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a newly released order dated Dec. 19, said the alleged statements, even if true, would not violate judicial ethics rules.

The Justice Department did not respond Saturday to requests for comment. Boasberg, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, declined to comment.

Bondi announced the complaint days after Boasberg said he may initiate disciplinary proceedings against Justice Department lawyers for their conduct in a lawsuit brought by Venezuelans challenging his deportation to a Salvadoran prison.

Bloomberg via Getty Images

In April, Boasberg concluded that the administration appeared to have acted “in bad faith” when it hurriedly assembled three deportation flights on March 15, while also conducting emergency judicial proceedings to evaluate the legality of the effort.

The Justice Department’s complaint focused on comments attributed to Boasberg by the conservative media outlet The Federalist during a March meeting of the United States Judicial Conference attended by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

The Justice Department alleged that Boasberg expressed concern to Roberts and others that the administration would ignore court rulings and trigger “a constitutional crisis.”

The Justice Department argued that those comments contradicted the code of judicial conduct and that Boasberg acted wrongly based on his belief in the litigation regarding the Venezuelans, who were removed from the United States under the Alien Enemies Act.

Due to potential conflicts between judges in D.C., Roberts transferred the complaint to the Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit Judicial Council.

Sutton said the Justice Department lacked evidence that Boasberg made such statements, which even if uttered would not be inappropriate during the judicial policymaking body’s closed-door meeting.

“In these environments, a judge’s expression of anxiety about the executive branch’s compliance with court orders, whether rightly or wrongly, is not so far removed from the usual topics at these meetings (judicial independence, judicial security, and interbranch relations) as to violate the Codes of Judicial Conduct,” Sutton wrote.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alistair Bell)