Performative Judicial Complaint? Meet Freedom Of Information Act.

Cough it up, Chad!

On Monday, July 28, Attorney General Bondi’s Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle, hand-delivered an ethics complaint to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. In typically indignant terms, it alleged a gross violation of judicial ethics by Chief Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

Specifically, it accused the judge of intimidating Chief Justice Roberts and publicly expressing bias toward the Trump administration at the biannual meeting of the Judicial Conference, convened to hash out recommendations for administration of the judiciary.

“Judge Boasberg attempted to improperly influence Chief Justice Roberts and roughly two dozen other federal judges by straying from the traditional topics to express his belief that the Trump Administration would ‘disregard rulings of federal courts’ and trigger ‘a constitutional crisis,’” the document intoned ominously.

The Justice Department howls that this violates the Judicial Canons by denigrating “the integrity and independence of the judiciary” and making “public comment on the merits of a matter pending or impending in any court.”

As multiple legal observers have already pointed out, that’s ridiculous. The meeting is not public, and nothing said in its cloistered breakout rooms could possibly be construed as “public comment” harming the integrity of the judiciary. And of course, Judge Boasberg’s fears were immediately realized, with the DOJ defying court orders in one in three cases, according to the Washington Post.

Nonetheless, the DOJ indulged in a round of melodramatic flopping, demanding that Judge Srinivasan initiate disciplinary proceedings against Judge Boasberg and remove him from the J.G.G. case in which he’s already found probable cause to believe the government is in contempt of court.

So far, so standard operating procedure. The GOP loves performative ethics complaints. Rep. Elise Stefanik alone filed four in 2024, targeting Justices Arthur Engoron and Juan Merchan in New York; Judge Beryl Howell in DC; and Special Counsel Jack Smith. And Chad Mizelle channeled his own inner Karen for a complaint against Judge Ana Reyes in February. Demanding to speak to the manager and then running to Fox News to yell about it is kind of their thing.

But this time, there’s something weird going on. Because minutes of Judicial Conference coffee klatches are not released. And while Judge Srinivasan was in the room and presumably knows what went down in March, there’s no evidence in this complaint that this damning conversation ever happened. The best they’ve got is a cryptic reference in a footnote to “Attachment A at 16.” And Mizelle’s “See Attachment A” T-shirt is raising questions! Because Attachment A is not attached — at least not to the version of the document given to every reporter in DC Monday night. And while AG Bondi was happy to yell about the complaint on Twitter, she wasn’t sharing her sources there either.

But someone out there is quoting from this document. And that someone is rightwing hyperventilator Margot Cleveland of (Who Funds) The Federalist, who theatrically clutched her pearls on the topic on July 16.

Here’s what she had to say:

In a memorandum obtained exclusively by The Federalist, a member of the Judicial Conference summarized the March meeting, including a “working breakfast” at which Justice Roberts spoke. According to the memorandum, “District of the District of Columbia Chief Judge James Boasberg next raised his colleagues’ concerns that the Administration would disregard rulings of federal courts leading to a constitutional crisis.”

Note that Mizelle, the purported Ethics Understander, appears to have doctored this quote to obscure the fact that Judge Boasberg was speaking about a generalized concern of his colleagues, not, as the complaint suggests, “his preconceived belief.”

And while Mizelle confines himself to one quote from the supposed memo, Cleveland cannot help but add a second.

“Chief Justice Roberts expressed hope that would not happen and in turn no constitutional crisis would materialize,” according to the memorandum. The summary of the working breakfast added that Chief Justice Roberts noted that “his interactions with the President have been civil and respectful, such as the President thanking him at the state of the union address for administering the oath.”

Did he now?

Chief Justice Roberts, who devoted his end-of-year missive to warning about the dangers of demonizing judges and just a month ago decried the overheated rhetoric against judges coming out of the Trump administration, said “Don’t worry guys, it’s cool, Trump thanked me at the State of the Union?”

Obviously this complaint is going nowhere, despite John Yoo’s dogged efforts to waterboard it into existence. Let’s accept for the sake of argument that an actual sitting federal court judge took diligent notes of this meeting and accurately conveyed said notes to The Federalist. That would mean that there really is a memo, and that “Attachment A” is more than a hyperlink to Cleveland’s histrionics. But they aren’t sharing!

But Kel McClanahan, Executive Director at National Security Counselors, says the government may not refuse to disclose it.

“FOIA applies to all agency records. It does not apply to Congressional or Judicial records,” he said. “But it does apply to records which originated outside an agency but were later put into the agency's files for its own purposes.”

And we said … BET.

The Law and Chaos Podcast filed a FOIA request for this document which absolutely positively exists. (Unless it doesn’t.)

“When this record was created by a judge, it was not subject to FOIA,” McClanahan continued. “When it was leaked to Cleveland, it was not subject to FOIA. When it was given to DOJ, it arguably became an agency record, but you could make an argument it still wasn't. But when the Department of Justice explicitly used it to create a complaint to be filed with the D.C. Circuit, it undisputedly became an agency record. And therefore, undisputedly subject to FOIA.”

All we’re asking for is that the administration make public the supposed evidence that would support those very serious allegations against Judge Boasberg.

So cough it up, Chad, or we’ll see you in court!