President Trump and fellow Republicans began an impeachment effort Tuesday against a federal judge whom Mr. Trump labeled a “troublemaker and agitator” for trying to thwart his deportation of Venezuelan gang members.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. denounced attempts to retaliate against judicial rulings through impeachment power.
The flared tempers were the latest escalation in a case that has quickly become the centerpiece of the legal resistance to Mr. Trump. The president’s opponents accuse him of defying a judge’s orders, and the White House says U.S. District Judge James Boasberg is threatening national security.
Both sides have described a burgeoning constitutional crisis.
Mr. Trump, a survivor of two impeachment attempts, raised the idea on social media.
“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges I am forced to appear before, should be impeached!!! We don’t want vicious, violent and demented criminals, many of them deranged murderers, in our country,” the president wrote, using his all-caps writing style for emphasis.
SEE ALSO: Chief Justice Roberts shames judicial impeachment talk, rebukes Trump stance
Mr. Trump didn’t identify Judge Boasberg by name but clearly had him in mind.
Chief Justice Roberts issued a statement saying that kind of talk went too far.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s attorneys were already pursuing that appeals process. Indeed, they asked the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to remove Judge Boasberg from the case for what they described as unprecedented judicial meddling in a president’s national security powers.
The appeals court did not take action on Mr. Trump’s requests.
Judge Boasberg, over the weekend, tried to halt deportation flights taking hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador.
SEE ALSO: Congressman announces articles of impeachment against federal judge blocking Trump
The administration first cited Mr. Trump’s proclamation flexing the 1798 Alien Enemies Act as justification for the removals. His administration also has cited his inherent powers as commander in chief, given that he has declared Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that infiltrated the U.S. in the Biden years, as a foreign terrorist organization.
Judge Boasberg demanded that flights be stopped and turned around if they were already in the air so he could rule on the legality of Mr. Trump’s moves.
The administration carried out three flights to transfer the Venezuelan deportees to El Salvador, which is being paid to hold them. A Department of Homeland Security official confirmed in a court filing Tuesday that one of the flights left after the judge issued his order.
The official said all the people on that flight had been ordered deported by an immigration judge, so they were subject to removal even without Mr. Trump’s emergency powers under the Alien Enemies Act.
In a hearing Monday, Judge Boasberg sparred with the Justice Department, demanding to know why it wouldn’t answer more questions about the deportation flights.
In an order Tuesday, he demanded that the government reveal details to him.
Mr. Trump said on social media that Judge Boasberg, an Obama appointee and the chief judge of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, “was not elected president.”
“I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do,” Mr. Trump wrote.
Republicans on Capitol Hill agreed.
Rep. Brandon Gill, Texas Republican, filed an article of impeachment against Judge Boasberg on Tuesday.
“By thwarting President Trump’s lawful efforts to deport violent illegal alien gangsters, Judge Boasberg created a constitutional crisis,” Mr. Gill said on social media.
Democrats said the calls for impeachment were attempts to undermine judges who stepped in to derail Mr. Trump’s early initiatives.
“Drowning in these humiliating legal defeats but refusing to accept that we are still a nation of laws and not Royal edicts, Trump is now lashing out at the judges who have been upholding the Constitution against his lawlessness,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.
He sided with Chief Justice Roberts, saying that further court action, not impeachment, should address unfavorable rulings.
Mr. Trump and his team have been critical of other judges, but none has earned the vitriol of Judge Boasberg and his deportation ruling.
The judge has become an international target of mockery. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele chided the judge for failing to stop the flights.
“Oopsie… Too late,” he posted to social media over the weekend.
Mr. Bukele also released a video of his new guests, showing men being manhandled off the plane, having their hair and beards shorn off, dressed in white T-shirts, white undershorts and white sandals, shackled and taken to cells.
Judge Boasberg’s family has also been under scrutiny. His wife is listed as the founder and board member of an abortion clinic in Northern Virginia, and his daughter works at an organization that assists criminal defendants.
In 2014, Chief Justice Roberts named Judge Boasberg to a seat on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secretive panel that polices the government’s snooping programs.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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