The federal judge who tried to block President Donald Trump’s deportation efforts has a history of stonewalling Trump’s immigration policies and spared one of the FBI officials behind the Russiagate hoax from prison.
United States District Judge James Boasberg placed a 14-day restraining order on Trump’s effort to rapidly deport criminal illegal aliens associated with Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang and foreign terror organization, prompting public outcry and igniting an effort to impeach him from his seat.
Boasberg, an Obama appointee, hindered Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts in 2018 with a ruling that limited the administration’s ability to detain migrant families who had entered the country.
The judge’s ruling took aim at five Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers, preventing them from categorically denying parole to foreign nationals and effectively instructing the administration to release a greater number of migrants into the interior of the country. The ruling undermined the administration’s attempt to discourage border crossings by detaining migrants rather than by rewarding them with release into the United States.
In another widely-publicized ruling, Boasberg showed leniency to FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, the only person charged in connection with the probe into Trump’s 2016 campaign. Clinesmith admitted that he altered an email to an FBI agent that was used to support a surveillance application against the Trump campaign. Carter Page, an advisor for the Trump campaign, was incorrectly labeled as “not a source” for the CIA in the email, a move which heightened suspicions of the campaign.
Clinesmith pled guilty to a felony false statement, but Boasberg refused to send him to prison, indicating that the disgraced former FBI attorney had already suffered enough after enduring a “media hurricane.” Clinesmith instead was only sentenced to one year of probation and 400 hours of community service.
“He went from being an obscure government lawyer to standing in the eye of a media hurricane,” Boagsberg remarked. “He’s not someone who ever sought the limelight or invited controversy other than by his criminal action here. … Anybody who’s watched what Mr. Clinesmith has suffered is not someone who would readily act in that fashion.”
Boasberg’s wife, Elizabeth Manson, has also been involved in partisan political activity and even donated over $11,000 to Democratic candidates, federal data shows. Manson gave a combined $3,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund and Hillary for America when the Democratic candidate was facing off against Trump in the 2016 election.
“Be prepared to get weepy. It’s an amazing feeling,” Manson wrote on Facebook in the lead-up to the 2016 election in anticipation of a Clinton victory that never materialized. She went on to bemoan the Trump victory shortly after. “I needed a smile on my [Facebook] page after this ghastly week,” she wrote.
Manson is also the founder of Meadow Reproductive Health and Wellness, an abortion clinic in northern Virginia. “In-clinic abortions are safe, simple medical procedures. At Meadow, our providers offer procedures up to 15 weeks of gestation,” Manson’s clinic writes on its site. “We offer both telehealth and in-person medication abortion services for patients up to 11 weeks of gestation.”
Boasberg’s restraining order came after the Trump administration had already deported more than 250 criminal illegal aliens to El Salvador, which has formed a partnership with the United States and has agreed to detain the aliens in its Terrorism Confinement Center.
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) has now announced that he will be filing articles of impeachment against Boasberg this week.
