Anti-Trump judge criticized for biased rulings, speeches


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Beryl Howell, a controversial DC Circuit Court Judge, has once again stirred controversy with her recent actions targeting former President Donald Trump and January 6 defendants. In November 2023, she delivered a politically charged speech suggesting America was moving towards authoritarianism, not due to her judicial decisions, but allegedly because of Trump’s actions.

As the judge overseeing DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump, Howell’s impartiality came into question when she publicly criticized the former president while presiding over his legal matters. She specifically targeted Trump’s claims about the 2020 election during her speech.

Her involvement with Jack Smith extended to handling unconstitutional requests regarding Trump’s Twitter followers. Moreover, Howell’s connections to previous investigations became apparent through her role in Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation. Together with Smith, she allegedly attempted to conceal their characterization of Trump as a flight risk to justify a nondisclosure order on Twitter.

The Justice Department’s actions under her watch included obtaining a secretive nondisclosure order preventing Twitter from informing Trump about Smith’s subpoena for his records.

Attorney Mike Davis outlined Howell’s concerning background, noting her partisan history as an Obama appointee, her work as a Democratic staffer for Senator Patrick Leahy, and her collaboration with notable figures like Loretta Lynch and Andrew Weissmann. Her controversial decisions included harsh sentencing of January 6 defendants and pressuring the DOJ for stricter sentences.

In December 2023, Howell made headlines by ruling against Rudy Giuliani in a defamation case involving Georgia election workers, ordering him to pay $148 million without a trial. Her handling of January 6 cases has been particularly controversial, given that many defendants were peaceful protesters who entered through open Capitol doors.

Most recently, Howell criticized Trump’s pardons of January 6 defendants while dismissing charges against Nicholas DeCarlo and Nicholas Ochs. “No ‘process of national reconciliation’ can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity,” Howell wrote in the order.

Her actions continue to raise questions about judicial impartiality and the proper role of federal judges in politically sensitive cases.