Elise Stefanik Files Complaint Against Obama-Appointed U.S. District Judge

U.S. Rep Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has filed a complaint against U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama-appointee who has made a number of controversial rulings in the Trump and January 6 cases.

Stefanik is formally seeking an ethics investigation into Howell due to a “highly inappropriate political speech” delivered by Howell in November,

“Judge Howell, after becoming the chief judge of the D.C. District Court in 2016 before stepping down on March 17, 2023, supervised the D.C. grand jury and other legal proceedings against President Donald J. Trump, his top aides, and his supporters on January 6th,” Stefanik wrote. “This included Judge Howell’s supervision of the discredited Mueller probe that substantially interfered with the Trump presidency, along with then-Chief Judge Howell’s supervision of Biden Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations that resulted in two unprecedented and highly controversial indictments of a former President of the United States and the leading presidential candidate for 2024.”

🚨🚨🚨 I filed a Complaint of Judicial Misconduct against Judge Beryl Howell, because election interference by judges destroys public confidence in the federal judiciary, tears apart the fabric of our Republic, and is illegal. It must end now.

DC Obama Judge Beryl Howell gave a… pic.twitter.com/LBBDmK5CXb

— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) December 15, 2023

Howell was responsible for overseeing grand jury proceedings relating to former president Trump’s case and has made a number of controversial rulings. In one instance, she gave Jack Smith permission to comb through Trump’s Twitter data before she was overruled by an appellate court.

Stefanik cited the fact that she has praised former Attorney General Lorretta Lynch and acting Attorney General Sally Yates — both of whom served under President Obama — as the “pantheon of other champion awardees” and “living heroes in the law.”

Howell also made a number of partisan accusations in the rare public speech, stating that the re-election of former President Trump would lead to “fascism in America.”

“My D.C. judicial colleagues and I regularly see the impact of big lies at the sentencing of hundreds, hundreds of individuals who have been convicted for offense conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, when they disrupted the certification of the 2020 presidential election at the U.S. Capitol,” Howell said.

“We are having a very surprising and downright troubling moment in this country when the very importance of facts is dismissed, or ignored,’ Howell told the annual gala of the Women’s White Collar Defense Association at a Washington D.C. hotel. ‘That’s very risky business for all of us in our democracy. … The facts matter.’