Fresh Trump-linked case puts Boasberg back in GOP crosshairs

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg is again facing scrutiny for his assigned cases after California Rep. Eric Swalwell's high-profile lawsuit accusing a senior Trump housing official of brazen misconduct landed in his court.

Judges are "totally reactive" by design, Philip Pro, a former U.S. district judge and Reagan appointee, said last month about the cases judges are tasked with hearing.

"We're sitting in our districts. The cases are randomly assigned," Pro said. "There is nothing 'rogue' about these decisions."

Boasberg's earlier work on the FISA Court - and his rulings in cases tied to the Trump era - have long made him a focal point for Trump's criticism.

In 2014, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts appointed him to serve a seven-year term on the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA Court - a court composed of 11 federal judges hand-selected by the chief justice.

After returning full-time to the federal bench, Boasberg oversaw the sentencing of former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to doctoring a 2017 email asking to extend surveillance permissions for the wiretap of former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. Boasberg declined to sentence Clinesmith to prison time and instead ordered him to 12 months of probation and 400 hours of community service - a notable decision, given his own background on the FISA Court.

He said in his sentencing decision that he believed Clinesmith's role at the center of a years-long media "hurricane" had provided sufficient punishment.

Trump has since zeroed in on Boasberg, now the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., as he continues to rail against so-called "activist judges" - though Boasberg is far from the only district judge to draw the former president's ire.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, for example, has presided over cases involving the Trump administration's attempt to restrict or ban transgender U.S. service members, and an early challenge to Trump's National Guard deployment.

U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb in November sought to temporarily block the continued deployment of National Guard troops in D.C. Cobb also issued a temporary order in September blocking Trump from immediately firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

Despite Boasberg's emergency order blocking the flights from leaving U.S. soil, the planes arrived in El Salvador hours later - kicking off a separate, months-long review of whether senior government officials knowingly defied his court order. A list of declarations from government officials is due Friday as part of that process, which Boasberg said he will use to determine which officials he plans to call as witnesses in the contempt proceedings.

"The Senate has made great mention of the fact that the judiciary should not be involved in that decision," former U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady said about the Alien Enemies Act case in a recent interview with Fox News Digital.

Boasberg "didn't pluck this issue out of the sky and say, 'Oh, I'm going to refuse this, because I don't believe that the Alien Enemies Act is appropriately being used,'" said O'Grady, who spent 16 years as a judge in the Eastern District of Virginia and was appointed by Chief Justice John Roberts to serve on the FISA Court, where he overlapped with Boasberg.

Boasberg "has a case before him where one side is saying, 'it can't be used,' and the executive branch is saying, 'it can be used,'" O'Grady said of the Alien Enemies Act case. "And it's up to him to make that decision." 

Former judges note that the D.C. District Court, by design, has jurisdiction over a large share of cases that emanate in the nation's capital, including lawsuits against government agencies or administrative actions.

It's not the first time Trump's allies in Congress have attempted to cast doubt on the randomized assignments.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the D.C. clerk's office in May seeking more information about how cases are assigned in the district, after Boasberg was assigned to an earlier case brought by the American Oversight group in response to the so-called "Signalgate" controversy.

The lawsuit accused the Trump administration of potentially violating federal recordkeeping laws when they exchanged sensitive information - including a planned strike in Yemen - in the Signal messaging app.

That case appears to be all but mooted, as lawyers for the Justice Department and American Oversight told Judge Boasberg in a status update Monday.

They are expected to resolve the issue without further judicial involvement, according to the filing, and will submit a formal notice to that effect by mid-December.