Trump-appointed judges are blocking investigations to hold officials in contempt

In April 2025, Judge James Boasberg found probable cause to hold President Donald Trump's administration in contempt. For a year, he has been attempting to investigate who was at fault for violating his court order to return planes filled with migrants sent to the brutal CECOT Prison in El Salvador. Today, two Trump-appointed judges attempted to stop everything again. For the past year, the Trump administration has worked to appeal Boasberg's ruling, so no contempt hearing and investigation really got started, CNN reported. On Tuesday, a group of Trump appointees on the court of appeals decided to stop the probe entirely, claiming that Boasberg's contempt probe represents "a clear abuse" of power. As Politico reported, a 2-1 ruling Tuesday in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals claimed that Boasberg should not have continued his contempt charges after they previously attempted to stop them. Writing about it on BlueSky, Lawfare editor-in-chief Roger Parloff said that four judges on the appeals court who were appointed by Trump have prevented the probe from moving forward. He explained that after Boasberg found cause for a contempt proceeding, the DOJ asked for a stay, and two Trump-appointed judges granted it. "Such stays, which provide no reasoning and are unappealable, are only supposed to last a week or so, if that," said Parloff. "But this one lasts 112 days." By June 2025, there was a whistleblower complaint saying that then-Assistant Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told DOJ staff that they may have to say "f—— off" to court orders. In November, the stay was lifted, and a rehearing of the stay before the full court was denied. Six of the 11 judges said in statements that Boasberg can "resume fact-finding for possible contempt because changes on the ground have rendered Judge Rao's theory of mandamus inoperative."Judge Neomi Rao was one of the two who first granted the stay. "Law Dork" Chris Geidner explained that Rao, along with Judge Justin Walker, issued a writ of mandamus, effectively overturning Boasberg's contempt-related order from April. Boasberg was allowed to move forward thanks to six of the 11 judges on the appeals court who agreed with Boasberg. “A majority of the en banc court believes that the panel majority erred when it issued the writ of mandamus," they wrote. Boasberg began to move on the case, finally. He set hearings for witnesses to provide testimony about what happened inside the Trump administration. So, the administration asked again for the appeals court to stop the proceedings. The Trump-appointed judges then granted another “administrative” stay, putting everything back on hold again. The second administrative stay has lasted for 123 days. The result has been a delay of 363 days in the contempt proceedings.Boasberg was set to hold a hearing with the Justice Department whistleblower who alleged that the staff at DOJ was told by Trump-appointed officials to lie to Judge Boasberg about the El Salvador flights. Now that everything has been so delayed for so long by the Trump judges, they're demanding that Boasberg drop the issue entirely. “The district court proposes to probe high-level Executive Branch deliberations about matters of national security and diplomacy. These proceedings are a clear abuse of discretion,” Rao and Walker said in the unsigned opinion, according to CNN.“The district court has launched an intrusive criminal contempt investigation into whether the government acted willfully when it transferred suspected Tren de Aragua members to Salvadoran custody. But the end of this investigation is a legal dead end,” the Trump-appointed judges said.One of the most problematic issues in the case is that it involves Bove, who is now a judge serving on the very appeals court that this case is under. If he is found to have been the person who ordered the violation of the court's order, it would mean a federal appeals court judge would be charged with criminal contempt. That could easily spark talk of impeachment if Democrats retake the House and the Senate in November.