In this June 30, 2019, file photo, U.S. President Donald Trump, left, meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the border village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone, South Korea. North Korea on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019, said the U.S. redesignation of Pyongyang as a sponsor of terrorism is dimming prospects for nuclear diplomacy between the countries. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File).
The DOJ filed a judicial misconduct complaint against “just shy of the entire bench” in the District of Minnesota on Wednesday, roughly two weeks after judges — some named and most not — blasted the Trump administration’s “disregard for court orders” in the pages of the New York Times.
Senior U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz served as the chief judge when the government initiated the deadly mass deportation campaign known as “Operation Metro Surge.” Before the George W. Bush-appointed judge assumed senior status in July, he made headlines for quashing the administration’s “risible” and “blatantly unlawful” subpoenas of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Months before that, Schiltz issued a brief order in a habeas corpus case, detailing that the courts were “overwhelmed with the legal work created by Operation Metro Surge” and that “extraordinarily patient” judges and even lawyers at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota were put in an “impossible” situation by DOJ “superiors.” At the time, the judge said, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had violated some 210 court orders, which he called “beyond the pale.” He floated the possibility of using “criminal contempt” as a tool to force ICE’s compliance.
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Much of what Schiltz said in court documents about the chaos on the ground he repeated during a “rare interview” with the Times published in the Sept. 17 story, “Trump’s Minnesota Surge Threatened Democracy, Judge Warns.”
“I can’t talk to you about the specific details of cases or things, for those you have to rely on the opinions, but judges are able to talk about the rule of law and to defend the rule of law, and what happened in our court — especially in January through March of this year — was pretty much unprecedented in the history of the United States, at least going back to the Civil War. And it created a grave threat to the rule of law, and I think the more the public learns about it and learns about how our court responded to it the better it is for everybody,” the judge explained.
“It’s the rule of law. If you don’t have it, you have either anarchy or you have authoritarianism. You have Russia or you have China or you have North Korea,” he added.
Bill Clinton-appointed Senior U.S. District Judge John Tunheim joined Schiltz in commenting on the record, while several others who remained anonymous are also subject to the complaint at issue.
Left: Senior U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz. Right: Senior U.S. District Judge John Tunheim (U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota).
“They weren’t arresting, in my view, people who were dangerous criminals on the street,” Tunheim said. “If you are an immigrant here and you are a dangerous criminal, you are in prison because you’ve been prosecuted. There was no need to go hunt those people down because they were committing crimes, that just is not the case.”
Undeterred by the failure of an “uncorroborated” complaint against Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., the DOJ alleged “flagrant” violations of the Code of Judicial Conduct in a complaint to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and its Chief Judge Steven Colloton, also a Bush appointee.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward — a former criminal defense lawyer for President Donald Trump’s valet — and Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter — who was recently called out for showing a “lack of respect for the Judiciary as a co-equal branch” — signed the DOJ complaint. The president’s former criminal defense lawyer, Attorney General Todd Blanche, announced the complaint at a press conference.
These officials claimed that Schiltz’s “overtly political” comments about the threat the administration posed to the “constitutional order” were ethical violations. Though “less verbose,” the DOJ said, Tunheim’s remarks likewise were “prohibited,” as judges cannot “comment[] publicly on cases pending in any court and mak[e] political or policy statements concerning matters that are or have been before them.”
“Oddly, Judge Schiltz, accused the Trump Administration of undermining the rule of law while alternately arguing that any violations of court orders were due to staffing shortages and what he characterized as ‘incompetence.’ But that characterization, while less charged than an accusation of intentional malfeasance, is itself political. Judge Schiltz’s analogy between the Administration’s actions and the behavior of foreign adversaries such as Russia, China, and North Korea is equally outrageous.”
“Statements like these (to say nothing of the accompanying photograph posed for a New York Times photographer) plainly support the inference that Judge Schiltz consciously or subconsciously covets publicity,” the complaint went on .”And purporting to educate or ‘help Americans better understand’ these issues is not a justification to violate ethical rules.”
One remedy the administration seeks is an order forcing Schiltz and Tunheim to “recuse from any matters involving DHS because the public reasonably questions their impartiality in cases involving immigration.”
In a statement reported by Politico, Schiltz said “legal-ethics experts” are on his side.
“As legal-ethics experts have confirmed, I was acting well within the ethical rules that apply to federal judges in speaking to the New York Times. Indeed, in February of this year, the Committee on Codes of Conduct issued an advisory opinion to emphasize that federal judges may ‘speak[] and writ[e] on core judiciary matters such as advocacy for the rule of law and judicial independence,'” he reportedly said. “That is exactly what I did.”
The post Judge’s ‘outrageous’ move to say he doesn’t want US to become North Korea should force his recusal from ‘any’ DHS matters, Trump DOJ demands first appeared on Law & Crime.
