A federal judge in Washington criticized the Justice Department for trying to tarnish her reputation and the integrity of the judicial system. Judge Beryl Howell strongly responded to the Trump administration’s criticism of court rulings that halted some of the president’s policies.
She rejected the Justice Department’s request to have her removed from a case involving an executive order affecting a prominent law firm. The administration accused Howell of showing bias against President Trump. Howell, appointed by President Obama, highlighted the seriousness of attacking a federal judge’s character.
Howell emphasized that attacking a judge’s character has broader implications beyond the individual judge’s reputation. The Justice Department’s strategy of personal attacks goes beyond challenging one judge and affects the entire judicial system’s credibility.
“This strategy is designed to impugn the integrity of the federal judicial system and blame any loss on the decision-maker rather than fallacies in the substantive legal arguments presented.”
It’s the latest development in the Trump administration’s battle with the judiciary over legal setbacks to his sweeping executive actions around immigration and other matters. The Trump administration has ramped up its criticism of judges in recent weeks, accusing the judiciary of improperly impinging on the president’s powers. Trump has called for impeaching another Washington federal court judge who ruled against the president’s deportation plans.
Howell said the Trump administration’s claims of “ongoing improper encroachments” of Trump’s executive power sounds “like a talking point from a member of Congress rather than a legal brief from the United States Department of Justice.” Furthermore, it “reflects a grave misapprehension of our constitutional order,” she wrote.
“Adjudicating whether an Executive Branch exercise of power is legal, or not, is actually the job of the federal courts, and not of the President or the Department of Justice, though vigorous and rigorous defense of executive actions is both expected and helpful to the courts in resolving legal issues,” she wrote.
Howell was the chief judge of Washington’s federal court during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and in that capacity, ruled that the House of Representatives was entitled to secret grand jury testimony for its its own inquiry into Trump.
The Trump administration also cited Howell’s comments calling Trump’s characterization of the Jan. 6 criminal cases a “revisionist myth.” And it pointed to a ruling from Howell ordering a Trump lawyer to answer additional questions before a grand jury investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
The Justice Department had argued that “reasonable observers” may view Howell as unable to impartially rule on “the meritless challenges to President Trump’s efforts to implement the agenda that the American people elected him to carry out.”
“This Court has not kept its disdain for President Trump secret,” Justice Department lawyers wrote. “It has voiced its thoughts loudly — both inside and outside the courtroom.”
Howell said the administration’s bid to get a new judge “relies only on speculation, innuendo, and basic legal disagreements that provide no basis for disqualification.”
Howell earlier this month temporarily blocked the Trump administration from enforcing portions of the executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie. The punishment arises from the firm’s hiring of Fusion GPS, a research and intelligence firm, to conduct opposition research on then-candidate Trump’s potential ties to Russia.
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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.
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