Attorney General Pam Bondi stated that the federal judge tasked with deciding the case involving the Signal group chat “cannot be objective,” adding that “many judges need to be removed.”
Bondi described the appointment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to hear the Signal case, in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President Vance, and other officials discussed a military strike on Houthi rebels in Yemen, as a “wild coincidence against Donald Trump and our administration.”
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, accidentally received the chat, leading to its public disclosure.
Judge Boasberg decided against the Trump administration in a different case involving deported Venezuelan migrants who were allegedly members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
Boasberg had maintained that for the courts to review the situation, planes should be reversed to return those who are being deported.
“He shouldn’t be on any of these cases. He cannot be objective. He’s made that crystal clear,” Bondi said of Boasberg.
Boasberg is now overseeing four lawsuits about the second Trump administration, including the addition of a Signal-related lawsuit against important Trump officials. He was allegedly given each case at random.
Due to the Signal chat, American Oversight, a watchdog group, filed a lawsuit. According to the group’s submission, Trump officials violated the Federal Records Act by neglecting to preserve Signal messages about the recent attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Advertisement
A federal appeals court panel on Friday temporarily blocked U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s contempt proceedings against the Trump administration over its deportation flights to El Salvador last month.
A split U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit noted its order is intended to provide “sufficient opportunity” for the court to consider the government’s appeal and “should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion.”
For now, the ruling stops Boasberg from proceeding with efforts to hold Trump administration officials in contempt.
Boasberg claimed to have found probable cause, describing the administration’s refusal to reverse the March 15 deportation flights as “a willful disregard” of his court order, even though the case has been removed from his courtroom by the Supreme Court and remanded to a federal court in Texas.
The D.C. Circuit’s three-judge panel split 2-1.
Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, both appointed by President Trump, sided with the administration, while Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee, dissented.
“In the absence of an appealable order or any clear and indisputable right to relief that would support mandamus, there is no ground for an administrative stay,” Pillard wrote in her dissent, The Hill reported.
Boasberg, an Obama appointee, has faced criticism from President Donald Trump since he blocked the administration last month from using the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport alleged Venezuelan gang members to a high-security prison in El Salvador. The illegal migrants targeted under the law are members of the MS-13 gang, which Trump has designated a terrorist organization and foreign combatants on U.S. soil.
The Supreme Court later overturned Boasberg’s order, ruling that while migrants must be given the opportunity for judicial review, they must file legal challenges in the jurisdiction where they are detained. Despite that ruling, Boasberg has continued to pursue contempt proceedings, arguing that his original order remained in effect until the high court lifted it, The Hill noted.
The D.C. Circuit’s ruling on Friday came just as Boasberg was drawn into a new legal fight over deportation flights. The decision was issued moments after Boasberg concluded an emergency hearing on a request from the American Civil Liberties Union, which is seeking to block what it describes as an imminent new wave of deportations to El Salvador.
“I am sympathetic to everything you’re saying. I just don’t, I think, I have the power to do anything,” Boasberg said during the emergency hearing, declining to block the deportations.
Before declining to intervene, Boasberg questioned a Justice Department attorney about whether the administration intended to proceed with the deportations on Friday night or Saturday. DOJ lawyer Drew Ensign responded that while no removal flights were currently scheduled, the Department of Homeland Security reserved the right to carry out deportations on Saturday.
Meanwhile, early Saturday, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily halted the deportation of immigrants potentially targeted under the Alien Enemies Act, issuing a stay in a rapidly evolving case involving a group of Venezuelan nationals in Texas who claim the Trump administration is attempting to remove them.
The court’s brief order did not include an explanation and drew dissents from Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
Attorneys for the immigrants filed an emergency appeal Friday, arguing they faced imminent removal without adequate notice or opportunity to challenge their deportation. The high court directed the Trump administration to respond to the appeal after the federal appeals court in Louisiana takes further action in the case, CNN reported.
The justices added, “The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court.”
