A Republican ally of Donald Trump has moved to impeach a federal judge who blocked a team set up by the president and spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk from accessing US Treasury Department systems responsible for trillions of dollars in payments. Congressman Derrick Van Orden on Tuesday filed a resolution in the House of Representatives seeking to have US District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan removed from office following calls by Musk and several conservative lawmakers for judges to be impeached after stymieing key parts of Trump\u2019s agenda.
\nVan Orden\u2019s resolution accused the judge of judicial misconduct and abuse of power.
\nIn order to be removed from office, the House must pass by a simple majority vote an article of impeachment accusing Engelmayer of a crime and then the Senate must then vote by at least a two-thirds majority to convict the judge. Republicans control both chambers of Congress but do not have a two-thirds majority in the Senate. Engelmayer, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, drew Musk\u2019s scorn after temporarily blocking Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from accessing Treasury Department systems in a lawsuit brought by 19 Democratic state attorneys general. That decision and rulings by other judges have prompted Trump, Musk and their conservative allies to sharply criticize judges who have ruled against the Republican president\u2019s policies, fueling concerns about whether his administration will abide by judicial rulings.
\nVan Orden and Engelmayer did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Judges rarely speak publicly about matters concerning pending litigation.
\nTrump has put Musk, the world\u2019s wealthiest person, in charge of his efforts to downsize and overhaul the federal government. Musk has called for a \u201cwave of judicial impeachments.\u201d Two conservative lawmakers have announced plans to introduce articles of impeachment against US District Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island, who blocked Trump\u2019s administration from freezing federal funding, as well as Engelmayer.
\nVan Orden, whose reelection bid last year received Trump\u2019s endorsement, was the first member of Congress to formally do so, accusing Engelmayer in his resolution of committing high crimes and misdemeanors. He is the resolution\u2019s sole sponsor.
\nVan Orden in his resolution accused Engelmayer of ruling against DOGE and Trump \u201con purely political grounds, demonstrating clear bias and prejudice against the president and the 74,000,000 Americans who voted for him.\u201d
\nMarin Levy, a Duke University School of Law professor who studies the federal judiciary, said impeachment under the US Constitution is supposed to be reserved for serious misconduct, not disappointment with court decisions, which can be appealed.
\n\u201cArticles of impeachment filed against judges who are simply performing their constitutional role represent an attempt to politicize the judiciary and quite frankly to intimidate judges,\u201d Levy said.
\nImpeachments of federal judges are rare: Only 15 have ever been impeached in US history, and only eight have been convicted by the Senate, most recently in 2010. Such impeachments in modern history have typically related to criminal or bribery offenses.
\nRepublicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, meaning some Democrats would need to vote for impeachment in order to remove the judge from the bench. US Chief Justice John Roberts in a year-end report issued on December 31 defending the judiciary\u2019s independence described a threat by an unnamed elected official to impeach a judge over her decisions as a regrettable example of \u201crecent attempts to intimidate judges.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Republican ally of Donald Trump has moved to impeach a federal judge who blocked a team set up by the president and spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk from accessing US Treasury Department systems responsible for trillions of dollars in payments. Congressman Derrick Van Orden on Tuesday filed a resolution in the House of Representatives …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77347,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77330\/revisions\/77347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}