Breccan Thies writes for the Federalist about dubious actions from a judge with a questionable history.
Judge James Boasberg, the lawfare fanatic serving as the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for D.C., issued an order intended to conceal the Biden administration’s attempted seizure of Sen. Ted Cruz’s phone records. In doing so, it appears he likely violated federal law.
According to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, as part of the Biden administration’s “Arctic Frost” inquiry dead set on targeting Republicans in battleground states, Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the get-Trump lawfare for years, “secretly obtained phone record data from at least eight senators and one congressman.”
Smith also sought to obtain Cruz’s phone records from AT&T, which ultimately declined to hand over the records.
The Biden Department of Justice tried to seize Cruz’s “cell phone communications,” according to the senator, and Boasberg signed off on a “nondisclosure” gag order on AT&T that would have kept the telecommunications company from notifying Cruz of the seizure for at least a year. According to Boasberg’s order, obtained by Cruz, “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.”
There is “precisely zero evidence to conclude that I am likely to destroy or tamper with evidence or to intimidate potential witnesses,” Cruz said. “Zero evidentiary basis for that. This order is an abuse of power. This order is a weaponized legal system.”
But aside from the bogus basis for the gag order, Boasberg actually appears to have violated federal law in issuing the order in the first place.
“If this phone was an official phone (I suspect it was), then this was likely in violation of 2 U.S.C. 6628. If Smith or Boasberg violated that statute, it’s a very serious problem that probably justifies a bar investigation and could predicate an impeachment inquiry,” Mike Fragoso, fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, noted.
