Obama-appointed judge refuses DOJ demand to kick herself off Trump case

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell rejected the Justice Department’s demand that she recuse herself from a case involving President Trump, saying Wednesday that the allegations against her were “innuendo and basic legal disagreements.”

Trump lawyers had accused the judge of “disdain” and “hostility” to the president based on past behavior and comments, including suggesting he would lead the country to authoritarianism and her defiant treatment of his pardons of Jan. 6 defendants.

The Justice Department had asked that she take herself off a case where Mr. Trump tried to punish a Democrat-connected law firm for spreading disinformation during the 2016 campaign with the now-infamous Steele dossier.

But Judge Howell said her comments were being twisted out of context and nothing she said crossed lines.

She said judges often comment on legal issues in books and speeches.

“This reality does not undermine a judge’s impartiality,” she said.

She said her comments about authoritarianism stemmed from a single line about “big lies” and the mob that attacked the Capitol, which was art of a broader nonpartisan speech that never mentioned Mr. Trump.

And Judge Howell said her stern condemnation of Jan. 6 defendants in response to Mr. Trump’s pardons was a response to “their conduct — not their beliefs and not their political views.”

She said that was within the purview of a judge, and it doesn’t taint her to have disagreed with the president’s beliefs.

“While the president may want a judicial imprimatur to bolster his reasons for a pardon, no court is required to grant this wish, though courts should explain the reasons for any judicial decision. That is the responsibility this court fulfilled,” she wrote.

Judge Howell, an Obama appointee, is one of two judges on the federal district court in Washington whom the Trump team is trying to boot from cases.

The other, Judge James Boasberg, has halted the president’s deportations of Venezuelan gang suspects, saying they deserve a chance to argue they aren’t actually gang members.

In that instance, the Justice Department has asked the appeals court in Washington to kick Judge Boasberg off the case. He has since called the Justice Department lawyers “intemperate” and questioned the truthfulness of what the administration has been saying.

In Judge Howell’s case, the Trump administration asked her to recuse herself.

That case involves a Trump executive order directing the government to stop doing business with Perkins Coie, a Democrat-connected firm that Mr. Trump said engaged in “dishonest and dangerous activity.”

Perkins Coie was the conduit for the Clinton campaign to hire Fusion GPS, which employed Christopher Steele to compile a dossier of salacious and unsubstantiated rumors about Mr. Trump. That dossier helped fuel the FBI’s now-discredited probe into Mr. Trump, which included fabricating evidence to obtain a secret surveillance warrant.

Judge Howell issued a temporary restraining order blocking most of the president’s executive order.

During a hearing on the case, Judge Howell suggested Mr. Trump had “a bee in his bonnet” over the dossier, which contained untrue claims about him and his supposed ties to Russia.

“He keeps bringing it up. It’s like he doesn’t want any of us to forget Fusion GPS,” Judge Howell said.

In her ruling Wednesday she said Mr. Trump’s complaint is that she hasn’t sufficiently adopted his views about the law firm.