A conservative watchdog filed a formal misconduct complaint Tuesday against Judge James Boasberg, the federal judge who presided over some of the most consequential legal battles involving former President Donald Trump, alleging he improperly consulted with Biden Department of Justice officials before charges against Trump were ever brought.
The complaint was filed by the Center to Advance Security in America and obtained by Fox News Digital. CASA accused Boasberg of engaging in “probable judicial misconduct” by consulting with officials from special counsel Jack Smith’s team on Operation Arctic Frost, the FBI investigation that ultimately led to Trump being charged over the 2020 election.
“While the facts strongly suggest that Boasberg violated the canons of judicial ethics, investigation should be promptly opened to confirm,” wrote CASA Director of Research and Policy Curtis Schube.
The complaint was filed with the D.C. appellate court. CASA filed a similar complaint against Judge Beryl Howell, another Obama appointee, last week.
The basis for both complaints comes from internal DOJ meeting notes dating to January 2023, recently made public by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Those notes referenced briefings Smith’s team gave to Boasberg and Howell as Arctic Frost and a separate probe into Trump’s handling of classified documents were both underway.
The notes included a detail about Howell: “[Howell] liked our approach of pursuing the executive privilege litigation in an omnibus fashion,” Smith’s team wrote. A forthcoming meeting with Boasberg was also referenced, set for March 18, 2023, the day after he was set to take over from Howell as chief judge of D.C.’s federal court.
Boasberg went on to sign a series of nondisclosure orders that blocked telephone and technology companies from alerting Republican targets when Smith’s team subpoenaed their phone records or other data. Some of those targets were sitting GOP members of Congress, who later publicly accused the Biden DOJ and Boasberg of violating the Constitution’s speech or debate clause.
CASA’s complaint pushed back hard on any claim that judicial immunity shields Boasberg from accountability.
“There is no world in which the statutes were designed to protect a judge meeting with prospective litigants to strategize with them on how to win a case in front of them in the future,” Schube wrote. “This is especially true when the meetings are designed for the government to determine ways to put its political opposition in jail, which is exactly what Arctic Frost was designed to do.”
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said in December that Boasberg would not have known whose phone numbers appeared on the subpoenas, citing the court’s standard practice. Smith has also defended his conduct before Congress, testifying that his team followed DOJ policy on subpoenas.
Smith’s investigations led to criminal charges against Trump on two fronts: alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election result and improper retention of classified documents. Trump called both cases a “witch hunt” and accused everyone involved of corruption.
Neither case survived to trial. Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the classified documents case after ruling Smith had been improperly appointed as special counsel. Smith was in the process of appealing that ruling when Trump won the 2024 presidential election. Following Trump’s victory, Smith terminated both cases, citing DOJ policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
