‘This is a problem’: Boasberg attending anti-Trump org's event spurs calls to ban judicial junkets

A Republican member of Congress and a Harvard professor are calling for a ban on special interest judicial junkets following Just the News revealing that Judge James Boasberg attended a privately-funded conference with an anti-Trump organization last year.

Just the News reported Sunday night that, months before he blocked President Donald Trump’s deportations of illegal alien gang members, Boasberg attended a privately-funded legal conference in Idaho that featured sponsors and speakers who have expressed clear anti-Trump sentiments — particularly on immigration and January 6th — and a theme that echoed the Democrat Party’s 2024 stated mission of "saving democracy." Federal judicial ethics rules currently allow such junkets.

Congressman Andy Biggs, R-Az., said during a Monday interview on "Just the News, No Noise" with John Solomon and Amanda Head that banning these privately-funded judicial junkets is “something that needs to happen” and said he would be including that ban in upcoming legislation, arguing it is time to say, “Look, no go. No more of that.”

“This is a problem, isn't it? I mean, you really want to have your judges kind of stay aloof, if possible, from some of the top issues. … A responsible judge is going to recuse themselves, and they're going to say, ‘Look, I can't really get there because I have had, I’ve got unique knowledge. I've been engaged in things.’ In fact, you could even say it has the appearance of impropriety and then step away from it. But this judge doesn't seem to have that capacity in him,” Biggs, the chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, said of Boasberg on Monday, adding, “He should step aside now, of course, but we're down the road quite a good ways here with him.”

Biggs added that “I think Democrats actually would support the ‘no junkets’ idea, so this is something that needs to happen, I do believe.”

Appearance of a conflict of interest

The Rodel Institute conference, details of which were contained in a “Privately Funded Seminar Disclosure Report” they are required to file, was part of the institute’s Judicial Fellowship and each of the judges in attendance — including Boasberg — was a first-year fellow. Rodel itself is funded by the same leftwing foundations who often sponsor anti-Trump programs and publications. The group is led by an anti-Trump critic, and at least one of the speakers at the conference is a law professor who has repeatedly condemned Trump’s immigration policies.

Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz also said on the John Solomon Reports podcast on Monday that Boasberg’s attendance at the Rodel Institute conference was “a creation of, obviously, a conflict of interest, at least in appearance” and that “when you have cases like this, you have to be absolutely above reproach.”

Dershowitz said that “it would be better to have a blanket rule” banning these paid junkets, “but a lot of judges would get very upset, because they really live for the summer.”

“I think it begins and ends with Congress,” Dershowitz said of banning privately-funded judicial trips. “Now, Congress clearly has the authority over the lower courts. … I think it would be better to have a blanket rule prohibiting the junkets. Right now, they have to be reported, and we know there have been some instances where they haven't been reported, right? … People love the cliché ‘nobody is above the law.’ Certainly judges are not above the law.”

Boasberg attended the conference last summer in ritzy Sun Valley, where two of the four Rodel Institution sessions were titled “Role of Judges in a Democracy” and the “State of Democracy."

Trump shared the article by Just the News early Monday morning, blasting Boasberg and comparing him to Judge Juan Merchan, who had presided over Trump’s hush money case in New York.

“This Judge is almost as conflicted (actually, not even close!) as the Judge whose daughter made Millions of Dollars representing Biden/Harris against me, while her father presided over a Fake Case against me, and refused to RECUSE himself,” Trump said on Truth Social. “He should be disbarred! Crooked Alvin Bragg was the D.A. in the case. They put me under a GAG ORDER so that I could not talk about it. Miscarriage of Justice!!!”

Elon Musk also tweeted out a screenshot of Trump’s Truth Social post early Monday morning.

Many of those on Rodel's leadership team and its institutional partners, funding sources, and faculty partners are left-leaning or anti-Trump, and its annual book award is named for former Congressman Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman who is a harsh Trump critic and endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024.

The Rodel Institute, which describes itself as non-partisan, defended itself in a statement to Just the News, stating in part that “the Rodel Judicial Fellowship began in 2022 as an effort to counter the appearance of a more fractured, more political, and less collegial judiciary and as a way for judges to grow by sharing their beliefs and experiences with each other.”

Populist versus elite nature of our politics

Will Chamberlain, a senior counsel at The Article III Project, said Monday that “obviously, I don’t think judges should be getting free trips” during an interview with Just The News, No Noise. 

Chamberlain said he guessed that Rodel “probably used to be bipartisan” but that politics had shifted over the past eight years, and so “there used to be a lot of areas of bipartisan consensus, and now those sort of moderate Republicans that would have made up that consensus are aligned with the Democrats, and we have this sort of populist versus elite nature of our politics now. So I think that sort of explains why you have these sort of lingering quote-unquote ‘bipartisan’ conferences and get-togethers that aren’t really bipartisan anymore, and judges certainly shouldn’t be participating in.”

Officials and agents with the Justice Department and FBI have also been known to accept paid junkets from special interest groups.

Chief Justice Roberts says appellate process is the answer

Boasberg, nominated to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by then-President Barack Obama in 2011, is currently engaged in an all-out legal battle with the Trump Justice Department.

Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in a proclamation this month against Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal gang which Trump said “is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization with thousands of members, many of whom have unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States.”

The Trump administration sent three planes carrying more than 200 Venezuelan illegal immigrants to El Salvador, and Boasberg issued an order temporarily blocking the administration from using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to carry out deportations. The judge also attempted unsuccessfully to stop multiple U.S. deportation flights from leaving the country.

“This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President… This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump said on Truth Social earlier this month. “WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY.”

Just hours later, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts released a statement to some media outlets rebuking Trump.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.” It was actually Roberts who appointed Boasberg to a seven-year term on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court starting in May 2014.

Boasberg refuses to lift injunction

Attorney General Pam Bondi argued in court earlier this month that Boasberg’s efforts “interfere with the President’s national-security and foreign-affairs authority, and the Court lacks jurisdiction to do so.”

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign also sent a letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals earlier this month, arguing that the case should be reassigned away from Boasberg, criticizing the judge’s “highly unusual and improper procedures” and his “hasty public inquiry into these sensitive national security matters.”

Boasberg on Monday denied efforts by the Trump DOJ to lift the temporary restraining order he had granted blocking future deportation flights. The judge noted that each of the alleged Venezuelan gang members in the case “denies being a member of Tren de Aragua” and so “the Court issued two Temporary Restraining Orders that together prohibited the Government from relying solely on the Proclamation to remove the named Plaintiffs or any other Venezuelan noncitizens in its custody.”

Republican Congressman Jim Jordan told Fox News today that “what we’re trying to do is take legislative action” to stop what he viewed as judges like Boasberg overstepping their authority, referring to Boasberg’s “crazy decision to turn the plane around and bring the bad guys back to America — that makes no sense.”

Boasberg's "Russia collusion" connection

“There’s the broader issue of all these judges’ injunctions, and then decisions like Judge Boasberg, what he’s trying to do and how that case is working. We’re going to have hearings on all of that, because particularly when you look at Judge Boasberg, it starts to look like this is getting totally political from this guy, particularly when you remember he is also the judge who was part of the Trump-Russia FISA Court.”

In his role as the head of the FISA Court, Boasberg made a number of divisive decisions, including a slap on the wrist for a member of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team, the appointment of Obama-era DOJ officials who had defended the FBI’s actions during the "RussiaGate" saga, the renewal of the FBI’s FISA powers, and more.

Boasberg, in his role as a federal judge, denied the Justice Department’s efforts to seek up to six months behind bars for ex-FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty in special counsel John Durham’s Trump-Russia investigation — instead giving Clinesmith a year of probation, 400 hours of community service, and no fine.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz in 2019 found huge flaws with the FBI’s Russia collusion investigation, finding at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the FISA warrants against former Trump campaign associate Carter Page. He also criticized the “central and essential” role of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s debunked dossier in the FBI’s politicized FISA surveillance.

An investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller “did not establish” any Trump-Russia collusion. Special Counsel John Durham’s report concluded that “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”

“It really starts to look like Judge Boasberg is operating purely politically against the president, and that’s what we want to have hearings on — this broad issue, and some of what Judge Boasberg is doing,” Jordan said of Boasberg’s past links to the Russia collusion investigation saga and to his current battles against the Trump DOJ.

Record number of nationwide injunctions

The “No Rogue Rulings Act” introduced by Republican Congressman Darrell Issa in late February would limit nationwide injunctions by judges, and it passed the House Judiciary Committee in early March.

“We have a major malfunction in one part of our federal judiciary: Judges who abuse their power with nationwide injunctions that target President Trump to stop him from advancing the policies the American people elected him to carry out,” Issa said earlier this month. Jordan also told Fox News today that Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson “has indicated he’d like to get this bill to the floor next week.” Jordan said his House Judiciary Committee will begin holding hearings on Boasberg and other judges next week and that he believes Senator Chuck Grassley will do the same.

“The recent surge of sweeping decisions by district judges merits serious scrutiny,” a spokesperson for Grassley told Just the News. “The Senate Judiciary Committee is exploring potential legislative solutions and will closely examine this topic in an upcoming hearing.”

Republican Senator Josh Hawley tweeted last week that “District Court judges have issued RECORD numbers of national injunctions against the Trump administration — a dramatic abuse of judicial authority. I will introduce legislation to stop this abuse for good.”

John Kroger, the CEO of the Rodel Institute since August 2021, said last year that Trump was “disqualified” from being president in his view, writing that “calling the convicted felons who attacked the Capitol on January 6 ‘patriots’ and ‘hostages,’ giving them a salute, and promising them pardons disqualifies you from being president.”

"Truly awful," Kroger added. "Real patriots oppose political violence and support the rule of law, plain and simple. Please support decency, values and common sense this election cycle, not extremism.”

Boasberg attended the conference, along with judges nominated by both Democrats and Republicans, despite the declared anti-Trump sentiment of the Rodel Institution. Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, said that it appears that the Rodel Institute is part of the “anti-Trump movement.”

“The expectation is that judges are public figures, public officials, and should educate the public and participate in proceedings that help the public understand the role and function of the judiciary under our constitutional system,” Fitton said on Monday on Just The News, No Noise. But he said that judges “should be careful and cautious” about affiliating themselves with groups that are “extremist” and “overtly political, such as this group seems to be.”