Pam Bondi's attack on a judge faces senator's scrutiny

In an interview with All Rise News, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse explains why he suspects Judge Jeb Boasberg may already be secretly cleared of Bondi's complaint.

The levers of accountability can be hidden in a labyrinth.

All Rise News is your map.

Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff filed a highly misleading misconduct complaint last summer accusing Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of making “improper public comments” that the Justice Department would disregard federal court orders.

In an interview with All Rise News, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) explains why he suspects that Judge Boasberg may have been secretly cleared of the allegations without any disclosure to the public.

"MAGA is 100 percent about narrative creation and narrative maintenance, facts be damned," said Whitehouse, the topic Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts.

‘A constitutional crisis’

As previously reported on All Rise News, the Justice Department based its disciplinary complaint against Boasberg on doctored quotations and lies.

In the complaint, the Justice Department falsely accused Boasberg of publicly declaring that the Trump administration would “disregard rulings of federal courts,” triggering “a constitutional crisis.” Bondi’s chief of staff Chad Mizelle claimed that the alleged remarks showed Boasberg’s bias, damaged faith in an impartial judiciary, and prejudged ongoing contempt proceedings before him.

But Boasberg never actually made those comments, even if he would have been fully justified in believing them after the Justice Department ignored his order to return El Salvador-bound flights to the United States in March 2025.

The Justice Department based the allegations on a memo summarizing Boasberg’s remarks during a closed-door meeting of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Leaked to The Federalist, a right-wing website, the memo said: “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.”

There is no verbatim record of Boasberg’s remarks during the meeting. According to the summary, Boasberg attributed the concerns to his colleagues, and he made those remarks privately.

‘A prop’

Some six months later, the D.C. Circuit has not publicly responded to the Justice Department’s complaint against Boasberg.

Sen. Whitehouse noted in his letter to Attorney General Bondi that may be by design.

“It is my understanding that the resolution of a disciplinary complaint such as yours is not released publicly until any reconsideration request is final, but it is released to the complainant after an initial decision is made,” the letter states.

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee held a hearing about Boasberg, where Republicans cited the allegations of the complaint as a reason to agitate for his impeachment.

If that complaint had already been dismissed — and Bondi knew it — Whitehouse believes there could be repercussions for allowing allies to use it “as a prop” against Boasberg.

“I think that's the kind of thing that even bar examiners might be concerned about,” Whitehouse said.

The Justice Department and the chambers of the chief judge for the D.C. Circuit didn’t respond to requests for comment.

You can watch the full interview along with other videos on the All Rise News playlist on Legal AF.