President Donald Trump lashed out at Washington, D.C. Chief District Court Judge James Boasberg in a Truth Social post Tuesday after a ruling against the Trump administration's forced deportation of migrants to El Salvador — some of which faced no due process.
But his furious message is being dismissed as empty bluster by legal experts.
Trump claimed those sent to El Salvador over the weekend were gang members. The judge ordered the planes return to the U.S., CBS News reported.
Politico's legal reporter Kyle Cheney posted on Blue Sky that Trump's Truth Social "call to impeach Chief Judge [James] Boasberg for a ruling he disagrees with is an escalation of his administration's increasingly ominous battle with the judiciary."
"To Trump, Boasberg isn't just the guy who is handling the Alien Enemies Act case. The Obama-appointed judge — known as a pretty measured and congenial guy — also presided over key aspects of the grand jury that indicted Trump over his 2020 election scheme," he continued.
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Cheney added, "The invective from Trump against Boasberg also is set against the message from Chief Justice Roberts, who warned against efforts by public officials to intimidate judges — including by the threat of impeachment — which could provoke "dangerous reactions."
Laurence Tribe, a 50-year constitutional law professor at Harvard, commented, "The idea of filing inevitably doomed articles of impeachment against Chief Judge Boasberg of DC is worse than absurd. It’s a way of saying you don’t respect the rule of law, don’t believe in checks and balances, and don’t understand — or have utter contempt for — the United States Constitution."
Appellate lawyer Matthew Stiegler responded to a post from Reuters legal reporter Brad Heath, who shared a story about tasking the national security division at the Justice Department to focus on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
"DOJ — realizing that its homework is in fact due today — has ordered nearly all of the attorneys in the National Security Division to start reviewing records on the JFK assassination," said Heath.
Stiegler joked, “Sorry, Judge Boasberg, we just didn’t have enough time to find the answer to that one, either.”
Assistant Professor David Ryan Miller of American University said, "Today would be a great day for Article I to wake up and start impeachment proceedings. Not against Judge Boasberg, but against President Trump, who is speedrunning autocratic regime change."
Trump's DOJ also appealed to a higher court to have Boasberg removed from the case, Politico reported.
