The federal judge blocking President Trump’s bid to deport alleged Venezuelan gangsters once showed leniency to an FBI Russiagate lawyer who fudged evidence to surveil a Trump campaign official.
US District Judge James Boasberg gave former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith probation instead of jail time four years ago when the latter pleaded guilty to forging an email used as evidence to surveil 2016 Trump campaign official Carter Page.
“Courts all over the country rely on representations from the government and expect them to be correct,” Boasberg chided at the time.
But Boasberg ordered Clinesmith to serve 12 months of probation and perform 400 hours of community service instead of spending any time in a cell. Clinesmith was the only individual charged in the Justice Department’s probe into the origin of the Russiagate inquiry.
Boasberg bought into the arguments that Clinesmith’s lawyers made — that the ex-FBI lawyer doctored the email to save himself time and wasn’t necessarily harboring political animus against Trump.
Still, Boasberg also has a history of leniency toward Trump, including by previously supporting his push to keep his tax returns hidden.
In the case of Page, the feds wiretapped the energy executive during the 2016 campaign cycle out of concerns that Russian spies may have been trying to court him. The secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved Page’s surveillance application.
During one of the renewal applications, Clinesmith was asked if Page was working as a source for the CIA. Clinesmith doctored an email from the CIA, which said he was a source, to edit out that critical detail.
Boasberg, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, drew Trump’s wrath last week by imposing a 14-day temporary injunction on the administration’s efforts to use the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act to fly alleged Tren de Aragua members to El Salvadoran prisons.
The White House’s effort had faced a prompt lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups representing five Venezuelans who sued the administration. Some of the legal concerns over the Trump action involve due process and provisions in the law stating that the US can deploy the power against nationals of a warring nation.
The Alien Enemies Act was infamously used by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to detain an estimated 120,000 Japanese Americans as well as Americans of German and Italian ancestry during World War II.
Boasberg’s injunction is meant to be temporary, as the litigation against the administration plays out. Still, more than 200 migrants have been flown from the US to El Salvador on three planes despite the injunction.
Trump has demanded that Boasberg be impeached for his interference.
“This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President,” Trump fumed on Truth Social on Tuesday.
“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” he said. “WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
White House critics have raised separation-of-powers concerns over the Trump administration’s decision to allegedly flout the court order. Lawyers for the Justice Department argued in court before Boasberg on Monday that two of the planes flew off before the written order was given and that the judge’s earlier, largely identical oral directive wasn’t binding.
“The idea that because my written order was pithier it could be disregarded, that’s one heck of a stretch, I think,” Boasberg chided at the hearing.
Boasberg’s past leniency in favor of Trump, aside from the tax return issue, included the judge backing conservative legal group Judicial Watch’s demand for the release of 14,000 emails from Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state. Those files had been stashed on her private server.
While Boasberg was appointed to his current role by Obama, a Democrat, he had previously been elevated to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by a Republican, President George W Bush.
