Fact-checking misleading statements by Trump and his allies about Judge James Boasberg

Two-plus months into office, President Donald Trump has signed more than 100 executive orders that inspired over 150 legal challenges against his administration.

As Trump exercises and seeks to expand executive powers, people affected by his actions on everything from immigration to civil service employment have taken their complaints to the judiciary in hopes of relief.

Displeased with the check on Trump’s power, the president and his allies have lashed out at federal judges — and against one judge in particular: James Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

After Trump invoked the rarely used 1798 Alien Enemies Act to round up and deport Venezuelans and other immigrants to El Salvador on several flights, Boasberg temporarily ordered the administration to stop deportation flights, sparking Trump to call for Boasberg’s impeachment.

When Boasberg weeks later was assigned a case related to Trump administration officials’ use of the commercial messaging app Signal to discuss their plans to bomb Yemen, the judge ordered the executive branch to preserve those communications.

Trump responded by attacking Boasberg in a Truth Social post, describing him as "highly conflicted" and suffering from "Massive Trump Derangement Syndrome!"

Trump and his allies’ many attacks on Boasberg need fact-checking. Here are a few: 

Trump, March 27 on Truth Social: Boasberg "seems to be grabbing the ‘Trump Cases’ all to himself."

This is wrong. Judges don’t self-select their cases; cases are assigned to judges randomly through an automated process. 

Court rules say that the clerk, under the direction of the Calendar and Case Management Committee, which is composed of judges, assigns cases to about 15 active judges plus senior judges — those who are at least 65 years old, have at least 15 years on the bench and can take a reduced workload.

ABC News and Politico reported that in court March 27 Boasberg explained how the automated case assignment system works: Clerks use an electronic deck of cards to randomly and fairly distribute cases in different categories to various judges.

"That’s how it works and that’s how all cases have continued to be assigned in this court," Boasberg said, according to the news outlets.

Michael Weinstein, a criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor with the U.S. Justice Department, told PolitiFact that cases are assigned on a rotating basis with exceptions, such as if a new case is related to an existing case.

"Judges don’t just go to the clerk’s office and ‘pick’ a new filing," to the exclusion of other judges, Weinstein said. On a practical level, that may occur in a very small one judge district but not in a large district such as the District of Columbia, he added.

Erica Hashimoto, a Georgetown law professor and former assistant federal public defender, told PolitiFact that with the number of lawsuits being filed against the Trump administration, "It would not be surprising if a judge on the DC district court was randomly assigned more than one case related to the Trump administration."

Trump, March 18 on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle": Boasberg is "radical left. He was Obama-appointed." 

This is misleading. 

In 2002, Republican President George W. Bush nominated Boasberg, previously a federal homicide prosecutor, as an associate judge of the District of Columbia Superior Court. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, nominated Boasberg in 2010 to the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. In 2011, the Senate confirmed Boasberg unanimously.

Boasberg has sometimes ruled in ways that align with Trump’s views. In 2016, he ordered the release of thousands of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s work emails sent from a private server. He later dismissed cases seeking more disclosure. Trump had campaigned on a promise in 2016 for Clinton to face prosecution over her emails. In 2017, Boasberg ruled that the court lacked authority to order the IRS to release Trump’s tax returns.

Bill Shipley, a former federal prosecutor who represented dozens of defendants facing charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack, said in an X post that Boasberg gave lenient sentences in comparison with other judges presiding over such cases. Shipley supported Trump’s pardons of Jan. 6 defendants. 

When we asked the White House for evidence to support Trump’s statement, staff pointed us to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s March statement  calling Boasberg an Obama-appointed "Democrat activist" whose  wife donated more than $10,000 to Democrats.

Public campaign donation records show a Washington D.C. donor with the same name as Boasberg’s wife donated to Democrats from 2007 to 2022, including to Hillary Clinton in 2007, when she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination against then-Sen. Barack Obama.

Canon 5 of the code of conduct for federal judges says that a judge should not "make a contribution to a political organization or candidate," but it doesn’t apply to spouses. 

Trump, March 22 on Truth Social: A photo shows Boasberg has a "conflict of interest" because he appeared at an event with Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband.

This is a stretch. The event Trump posted about was neither related to a factual case or politics and it has traditionally involved high-level judges of all political persuasions and backgrounds.

Trump’s post relied on a single photo showing Boasberg next to lawyer Doug Emhoff, Harris’ husband, along with six other people. It was taken at a 2022 Shakespeare Theatre Company "mock trial" where the "legal dispute" was between Margaret and Hero of Shakespeare’s comedy, "Much Ado About Nothing." 

The decades-long theatrical tradition aims to explore the connection between classical theater and modern day law. Past participants included U.S. Supreme Court justices, including Trump appointees Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh.

Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, March 19 on X: "Rogue district court judges are trying to invalidate the results of the 2024 election by issuing lawless rulings against the President."

Gill’s post did not mention any judge by name, but a day earlier Gill introduced a resolution to impeach Boasberg. The resolution said Boasberg "has abused the powers of his judicial authority."

Boasberg’s March 15 order in the deportation case halted for 14 days the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport anyone in immigration custody. Boasberg later extended that to April 12.

His order was unrelated to the 2024 presidential election results. We don’t know how Boasberg will rule on the merits of the deportation case.

A disagreement does not mean that the judge is lawless or undermining the election, Hashimoto, the Georgetown professor, said. "Parties, including the federal government, sometimes think a judge is mistaken in a particular ruling. But then that party can appeal and explain to an appeals court why the district court erred."

X account Insurrection Barbie, March 23: In a speech to law students, Boasberg "openly admitted that he didn’t think harsh enough laws existed on the books to punish J6 defendants. … He openly discussed his bias towards these defendants when speaking to future lawyers. He thought people should have been treated differently because it was J6." 

This statement, from an anonymous conservative X account with 1 million followers, referred to Boasberg’s remarks to University of Chicago law school students during a January 2023 guest lecture. Available information about his comments do not support this characterization.

The school and the judge’s chambers told PolitiFact they had no recording or transcript from Boasberg’s speech. But a student-authored article posted on the law school’s website includes some of his quotes — and none reveal Boasberg saying the laws weren’t harsh enough or advocating a clear political stance. The article said Boasberg spoke about the value of being apolitical and described the Jan. 6, 2021-related cases as challenging because they involved an area with "a lot of law still to be made." 

"There were no statutes that were written that said, ‘it is a criminal offense to storm the capital and interfere with the counting of certification of the electoral college after the presidential election’… No one could fathom something like this," the article quoted Boasberg as saying.

Boasberg said the charges did not always fit the conduct; some defendants, for instance, pled to the misdemeanor of "parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a capitol building," a charge meant to cover people disrupting Congress, not the crime of storming the Capitol, the article said. He predicted that many cases would be decided by higher courts to determine what obstruction, corruption, and conspiracy means in this context.

Boasberg said that it was important to model apolitical behavior during sentencing and take the time to "explain why we’re doing things, so we’re seen as being thoughtful and not politicized."

Boasberg oversaw dozens of Jan. 6 cases, according to the Associated Press, which also wrote that the judge often issued "sentences significantly more lenient than what prosecutors recommended" and displayed "a measured" approach.

PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this article.