WASHINGTON, Aug 5 (Reuters) – Democratic U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is raising the alarm about an appeals court’s handling of allegations that Trump administration officials violated a judge’s order stopping flights carrying Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.
In a July 30 letter to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, which has not been previously reported, Whitehouse said he had “real and grave” concerns about the conduct of two Trump-appointed judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
The Rhode Island senator wrote that the two D.C. Circuit judges — Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao — appear to be stalling contempt proceedings initiated in April by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg.
Whitehouse said Katsas and Rao may have allowed the contempt proceedings to languish for months in order to protect Emil Bove, a Justice Department official, from scrutiny.
Katsas and Rao did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Senate voted last week to confirm Bove to a Philadelphia-based appeals court, ending a contentious confirmation battle in which Bove was the target of whistleblower complaints alleging he oversaw an effort at the Justice Department to mislead judges and defy court orders. Bove has denied that he advised colleagues to defy court orders.
“If a court of the United States was used to stall contempt proceedings, in order to create a window for Senate confirmation of an individual central to those contempt proceedings…it would be a significant blow to the independence and integrity of the Judicial Branch,” Whitehouse wrote in the letter to Roberts.
The letter did not request any specific action by Roberts. A Supreme Court spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Boasberg in April had concluded that the Trump administration appeared to have acted “in bad faith” when it hurriedly assembled three deportation flights on March 15 at the same time that he was conducting emergency court proceedings to assess the legality of the effort.
Boasberg said there was “probable cause” to find the Trump administration in criminal contempt of court for violating his order to turn deportation flights around.
The Justice Department has argued in court filings that it never defied a court order. It had said that an oral command from Boasberg to turn around airplanes was not legally binding because he did not put it in writing.
In a 2-1 order, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit halted Boasberg’s contempt finding days later, but has yet to rule on whether it should be reversed. Legal experts have said the delay is unusually long.
Katsas and Rao were the two judges in the majority in that order, known as an administrative stay. Judge Cornelia Pillard, an appointee of former President Obama, dissented.
