Federal judge's remarks were 'hardly apolitical,' GOP lawmaker says in ethics complaint
Then-Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell of the District of Columbia listens during an investiture ceremony in April 2018 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.
A Republican lawmaker has filed an ethics complaint alleging that U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell of Washington, D.C., suggested that reelecting former President Donald Trump "will lead to fascism in America” during a speech last month.
Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, didn’t mention Trump by name during the speech Nov. 27 when she accepted an award from the Women’s White Collar Defense Association, NBC News reports.
But Republican U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York said Howell’s remarks were “hardly apolitical” and “plainly inappropriate.”
After NBC News broke the news, other publications followed, including Axios, Bloomberg Law, Above the Law and USA Today.
Howell has presided over cases of defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. She is also overseeing Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial, in which jurors delivered a $148 million defamation verdict, and oversaw grand juries in probes by special counsels Robert Mueller and Jack Smith.
In her speech, Howell said she and her colleagues “regularly see the impact of big lies” during sentencing of Jan. 6 defendants. She also referred to “a very surprising and downright troubling moment in this country, when the very importance of facts is dismissed or ignored,” according to coverage of the speech by Politico.
Howell also referred to a book, Democracy Awakening, which Stefanik characterized as an “anti-Trump, anti-Republican Party screed.” Howell repeated with approval the book’s claim that the United States is “at a crossroads, teetering on the brink of authoritarianism” and its warning that “big lies are springboards for authoritarians.”
Stefanik said Howell’s remarks “promoted the Democrat political campaign theme that the reelection of Donald Trump equates to America choosing authoritarianism. This is conduct unbecoming of a federal judge.”
Stefanik has also filed an ethics complaint against Judge Arthur Engoron of New York, who is overseeing the civil fraud case against Trump.
Noah Bookbinder, president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit focused on government ethics and accountability, told Bloomberg Law that Stefanik’s complaint against Howell is “political grandstanding.”
In Bookbinder’s opinion, Howell’s speech doesn’t “have any indicia of the kinds of things that could create real ethics problems,” he said.
