Barb McQuade: Great piece from Vladeck on why AG Bondi's complaint about Judge Boasberg is not baseless, but a hit job

It is a long article--but of substance with lots of details.
And if Barb McQuade says it is a great piece then I was sure to read it.



Barb McQuade @BarbMcQuade
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4h
Great piece from Steve_Vladeck on why AG Bondi’s complaint about Judge Boasberg is not just baseless, but a hit job designed to intimidate other judges and discredit the judiciary.

Link to tweet

DOJ's (Ridiculous) Misconduct Complaint Against Chief Judge Boasberg


DOJ's complaint that Chief Judge Boasberg engaged in "misconduct" would be laughably stupid if it didn't reflect such a transparently obvious and dangerous attempt to delegitimize the federal courts.

Steve Vladeck Jul 29, 2025

https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/170-dojs-ridiculous-misconduct-complaint?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

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DOJ’s Complaint

Although it includes a bunch of extraneous material, the crux of DOJ’s “complaint” (which is signed only by the Attorney General’s Chief of Staff, Chad Mizelle) is in this paragraph on page 2:1

On March 11, 2025, at one of the [Judicial] Conference’s semiannual meetings,[2] Judge Boasberg disregarded its history, tradition, and purpose to push a wholly unsolicited discussion about “concerns that the Administration would disregard rulings of federal courts, leading to a constitutional crisis.” By singling out a sitting President who was (and remains) a party to dozens of active cases, Judge Boasberg attempted to transform a routine housekeeping agenda into a forum to persuade the Chief Justice and other federal judges of his preconceived belief that the Trump Administration would violate court orders.

There are two critical pieces of context that neither DOJ’s “complaint” nor the sensationalist story in the right-wing outlet, The Federalist, that “broke” this episode have provided: For starters, the Judicial Conference’s entire meeting is … not public. The Conference may sometimes have a press availability at the end of the meeting, but the internal conversations and deliberations have not historically been a matter of public record—a point that’s going to matter in a minute. So when the Attorney General of the United States tweets about “improper public comments,” she is not accurately describing what happened at all. (Nor are the repeated references in the complaint to “public” statements accurate.)

Second, DOJ’s entire complaint is apparently based upon a (non-public) memorandum prepared by one of the attendees (a member of the Judicial Conference)—which itself appears to have been meant to do nothing more than provide a summary of the gathering to the attendees’ judicial colleagues (a copy of the memo apparently may be attached to the complaint as Appendix A). Indeed, the fact that The Federalist appears to have obtained that confidential memo but has not published it seems to strongly suggest, among other things, that the memo is not only entirely benign, but that it may provide even further context for Boasberg’s remarks.

And although it’s clear from the story in The Federalist, DOJ’s complaint also leaves out that the putatively inappropriate comments made by Boasberg were his efforts to convey the views of his colleagues on the district court, and not his own opinions. That, too, is going to matter below.


Four (Fatal) Problems With DOJ’s Complaint

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