Featured photo by Rainclaw7. CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED.
Update: On December 15, 2023, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) filed an official Complaint of Judicial Misconduct Against Judge Beryl Howell relating to the events described in this column.
The judicial pile-up against President Trump, led by Obama-appointed federal judges in D.C., has become increasingly brazen. Comments by these judges reveal a shocking level of political bias by people whose job requires them to be strictly nonpartisan.
Judicial bias was on full display last week at a posh D.C. hotel where the Women’s White Collar Defense Association gave its “champion” award to a sitting federal judge, Beryl Howell. With almost no Republicans on hand to deter them, the powerful Democratic women lawyers felt free to let down their hair and say what they think about Trump.
As chief judge on the D.C. district court until earlier this year, Howell issued a series of one-sided rulings that included ordering Trump’s attorney to turn over his confidential notes to federal prosecutors. Most criminal defense attorneys would have howled in protest at her defiance of the traditional attorney-client privilege, but these liberal Democratic women lawyers gave her a high award instead.
In remarks accepting her undeserved award, Judge Howell bragged that she and her D.C. colleagues were, in effect, saving America from Donald Trump, whom she falsely accused of pushing our country to the “brink of authoritarianism.” She incorrectly referred to our country as a “democracy” when we are a republic in which our laws are made by elected representatives restrained by checks and balances, not by a direct popular vote.
Judge Howell avoided mentioning Trump’s name, but the context of her remarks left no doubt that her comments were directed at Trump and his supporters, as the media reported. She went on in her speech to claim that she and her fellow federal judges in D.C. see “the impact of big lies” by Trump in cases arising from the January 6 protest.
When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made partisan comments against Trump in 2016, even the New York Times called her out in an editorial entitled, “Donald Trump Is Right About Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” Trump had said “I think it’s highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign, frankly. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.”
Howell’s comments were particularly objectionable because her court is presiding over ongoing cases against Trump and hundreds of people who rallied to support him on January 6, 2021. Another Obama appointee, Judge Tanya Chutkan, continues to preside over Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump despite making a string of biased comments in her courtroom.
Chutkan has overseen convictions of more than 30 defendants in cases related to the January 6 rally, and has not acquitted a single defendant. According to The Washington Post, she has been the harshest sentencing judge, ordering at least some jail or prison time in all cases while sometimes exceeding the cruel sentences demanded by prosecutors.
Last Friday Judge Chutkan issued a 48-page diatribe against Trump, who is the frontrunner to be reelected president next year. The Jamaican-born federal judge made strained analogies to the founder of our country, George Washington, while imposing tyranny from the bench in her courtroom.
All that was missing from her narrative was a claim that she and other D.C. judges are courageously crossing the Delaware River as Washington did. The real tyranny is from crossing the Potomac River, where these judges have ruled against Trump and his supporters on every legal issue, while making absurd historical allusions.
The American people are turning against what Julie Kelly has called “January 6 jurisprudence,” confirmed by the reputable Pew Research in a recent survey about declining trust in government. Pew found that only 15% of Americans feel that the federal government is right “most of the time,” while a rock-bottom 1% say that the Feds are right “just about always.”
These liberal federal judges should read what Thomas Jefferson said 200 years ago about tyranny from the bench. As the author of the eloquent manifesto against the tyranny of King George III in 1776, Jefferson later recognized tyranny when he saw it coming from federal judges.
“As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam,” Jefferson wrote, referring to the notorious English insane asylum, “so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may, indeed, injure them in fame or in fortune,” Jefferson continued, “but it saves the republic, which is the first and supreme law.”
The nearby Supreme Court should rein in the judges presiding over Trump-related cases in D.C., which have become show trials used by Biden supporters to crush his opposition. But instead the High Court wasted weeks pandering to liberal demands for a new code of ethics, and last Friday the Justices gave themselves a three-day weekend based on the death of long-forgotten former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who resigned nearly two decades ago.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.
