‘Principled and fair’: Judge Boasberg had nonpartisan record before facing Trump’s fury

He’s a former law school roommate of Brett Kavanaugh and his personality has poked through his rulings with quirky references to Star Trek and Fugees lyrics.

James Boasberg wasn’t supposed to be famous. As the chief judge for the federal court in Washington, DC, Boasberg is well-liked in wonky legal circles and in the courthouse community. He’s a former law school roommate of Brett Kavanaugh and his personality has poked through his rulings with quirky uses of Star Trek quotes and Fugees lyrics. Even with 23 years as a judge in DC, Boasberg is very far from a household name. That all changed last week when Boasberg was randomly assigned a case that put him at a loggerheads with President Donald Trump and his administration’s efforts to use colonial-era laws and send undocumented immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador. His attempts to reign in Trump administration officials who appeared to violate his orders with controversial deportation flights to El Salvador earned him the unwanted position of being the target of Trump’s red-hot fury. In a series of social media posts, Trump smeared Boasberg as a “Radical Left Lunatic Judge” and called for his impeachment, drawing a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts. You wouldn’t know it from Trump’s angry reaction, but plenty of Boasberg’s past rulings and actions have actually aligned with the president’s political interests.