Obama judges resurrect spurious 'criminal contempt' case against DOJ over attempts to enforce immigration law

An Obama judge in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals smeared a Trump-appointed judge with unfounded allegations of “contempt” as she and her colleagues considered whether to reopen a criminal case against the Justice Department for flouting an injunction on deporting illegal aliens.

Watchdog reporter Julie Kelly revealed that Judge Patricia Millett “was particularly unhinged” during the recent oral arguments before the full DC appellate court.

“Often pounding on the dias to emphasize her point and raising her voice, Millett badgered assistant attorney general for civil division Brett Shumate about the government’s opposition to Boasberg’s witch hunt,” Kelly wrote.

Millett cited the so-called whistleblower claims of Erez Reuvini, an attorney for the leftist organization Democracy Forward, who accused former acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove of saying the DOJ would tell the activist judges “f**k you” with respect to the immigration injunctions.

Bove, who represented President Donald Trump in some of the high-profile lawfare cases against him prior to his 2024 reelection, has since been appointed a federal judge in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

The legal proceedings began early in Trump’s second term with a ruling by Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg that sought to block the new administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador.

At the time, the hostile Venezuelan government, run by then-dictator Nicolás Maduro, was refusing to cooperate with efforts to return the criminals to their native country. El Salvador, under pro-Trump President Nayib Bukele, has been known for its tough-on-crime policies and signaled its willingness to take the detainees into custody.

But Boasberg issued a restraining order mid-flight demanding that the plane turn around and bring the gang members back.

The activist judge, known for having rubber-stamped the FBI’s requests to use the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Trump as part of the Russia-gate conspiracy, then threatened the DOJ with criminal contempt for failing to realize ahead of his injunction that he intended to block it from enforcing immigration law.

Millett was part of a three-judge panel that later upheld Boasberg’s order.

Kelly pointed out other examples of flagrant bias on the leftist-packed DC Circuit Court, noting that, in fact, Millett was the first judge appointed after Democrats, under then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, rewrote the rules on federal judicial appointments to let in a flood of lifetime-appointed radical activists during Obama’s presidency.

Millett “was the first beneficiary of the ‘nuclear option’ in 2013 and replaced [Supreme Court Chief Justice] John Roberts on the DC appellate court,” Kelly noted.

Hans Mahncke, founder of the Counterlawfare Institute, chimed in with another egregious example of judicial overreach from the DC court, involving a judge’s vendetta against former national security adviser Michael Flynn after he was ensnared in an FBI perjury trap stemming from the Russia hoax.

“As I’ve said many times, once a case has even the slightest connection to Trump, the law, the facts, the quality of the arguments, and the caliber of the lawyers making them all become totally irrelevant,” Mahncke wrote in an X post. “The outcome is determined solely by which judges are assigned to the case.”