Half a dozen Republican senators are calling on the leading judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to suspend a rogue district judge as efforts to impeach him get underway.
On Monday, Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution Chair Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., and five of his GOP colleagues sent a letter to D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan asking that D.C. District Judge James Boasberg be “administratively suspended pending formal impeachment by the House of Representatives and, if impeached, an impeachment trial by the Senate.” The letter’s other signatories include Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee.
“No more delays. Judge Boasberg must be suspended immediately,” Schmitt wrote in a series of X posts. “We cannot tolerate rogue, self-professed prejudicial judges ruling on our nation’s most important cases.”
In their letter to Srinivasan, an Obama appointee, the GOP senators referenced Articles of Impeachment filed against Boasberg earlier this month by Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas. The filing accused Boasberg, of “[i]gnoring his responsibility to wield the power of his office in a constitutional manner.”
The letter and impeachment articles cite allegedly improper actions by Boasberg — most notably his role in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s anti-Trump “Arctic Frost” probe.
As The Federalist previously reported, Smith’s expansive lawfare involved the seizure of several Republican senators’ phone records. At a press conference last month, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, noted how Jack Smith sent a subpoena to AT&T to obtain his phone records and how Boasberg “issued an order to AT&T and signed that order prohibiting AT&T from informing [him] of this subpoena for at least one year.”
“I’m going to quote from the order Judge Boasberg signed: ‘The court finds reasonable grounds to believe that such disclosure will result in destruction of, or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses, and serious jeopardy to the investigation,'” Cruz said. There is “precisely zero evidence to conclude that I am likely to destroy or tamper with evidence or to intimidate potential witnesses. Zero evidentiary basis for that. This order is an abuse of power. This order is a weaponized legal system.”
(House Speaker Mike Johnson did not respond to The Federalist’s previous comment request about whether he plans to “lead House Republicans to hold impeachment hearings for James Boasberg” in response to his disclosed role in the Arctic Frost investigation.)
Also referenced in Monday’s letter is news originally broken by The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland earlier this year. Writing in these pages, Cleveland reported on the contents of a memo detailing the March 2025 Judicial Conference, during which Boasberg gave a speech expressing his “concern[s] that the [Trump] Administration would disregard rulings of federal courts leading to a constitutional crisis.”
“Judge Boasberg disregarded [the Conference’s] history, tradition, and purpose to push a wholly unsolicited discussion about” this issue, Schmitt and his GOP colleagues wrote.
Addressing Srinivasan, the Republican senators noted that “[t]here is precedent for administratively suspending a judge pending an impeachment inquiry,” and that, “[a]s Chief Judge of the applicable circuit judicial council, [he is] tasked with overseeing the Article III remedial process for the misconduct of the appellate and district judges of [his] circuit.”
They further referenced a formal judicial misconduct complaint filed by the Justice Department against Boasberg in late July. While the senators noted how federal law mandates Srinivasan “to ‘expeditiously’ review this complaint and determine whether to take ‘appropriate corrective action’ or dispense with the case ‘by written order stating his . . . reasons,'” it appears that he has “yet to take any published steps regarding this very public complaint.”
“Given you have not entered an order under 352(b), we assume you are following your duties under 28 U.S.C. § 353, which mandate that you ‘shall promptly’ establish a special committee ‘to investigate the facts and allegations contained in the complaint,'” the letter reads. “While this impeachment process proceeds, we must have transparency regarding the actions the Circuit Judicial Council is taking against the judicial misconduct of Chief Judge Boasberg.”
The senators concluded their letter demanding that Srinivasan provide answers about the status of the DOJ’s July complaint, as well as any and all potential investigative steps taken over the matter. They requested that, in addition to themselves, all such information be provided to the DOJ and the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.