Obama-appointed U.S. District Chief Judge James E. Boasberg, long criticized as a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge,” gave the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and its UCLA Voting Rights Project allies tightly restricted access to the Trump Department of Justice’s list of more than 20,000 people federal investigators flagged as likely noncitizens who received mail ballots in California.
The court order was crystal clear: the data was for standing arguments only. Plaintiffs could not disclose names and could not use the information for broader political or media attacks on the government’s election-integrity efforts.
That restriction lasted roughly 24 hours.
On Friday, October 30, Boasberg ordered the DOJ to turn over the list by 5 p.m. so CHIRLA could check whether any of its members appeared on it for purposes of standing in their lawsuit seeking to block the administration’s actions.
By Saturday, CHIRLA’s experts, UCLA political scientist Matt Barreto and data scientist Michael Rios, had filed a supplemental declaration.
Their analysis claimed that roughly 42% of the names (about 8,880 out of 20,930) did not appear on California’s current voter file, that at least 22 people on the list were likely naturalized U.S. citizens, and that thousands more citizens may have been flagged.
They went further, extrapolating to statewide impacts and criticizing the list’s methodology, completeness, missing fields, and potential false positives on a scale that reached hundreds of thousands of naturalized citizens.
The filing highlighted these broader findings rather than limiting itself to whether specific CHIRLA members or the named plaintiff had standing.
Those conclusions quickly appeared in media reports from the Associated Press, Democracy Docket, and others, generating headlines that portrayed the DOJ list as riddled with errors and a threat to eligible voters.
On Sunday, November 1, the Justice Department filed a pointed response. DOJ attorneys argued that the experts’ work, particularly paragraphs opining on the list’s overall accuracy, completeness, errors, and statewide effects, had “nothing to do with the group’s legal standing” and violated Boasberg’s October 30 Minute Order, according to investigative reporter Jennifer Van Laar.
They described the report as “political grandstanding about alleged inaccuracies that purportedly impact California voters generally,” with “no relevance to whether the particular plaintiffs in this case have standing.”
The government asked the court to strike the offending portions of the expert declaration, order CHIRLA to show cause why it did not violate the order, impose civil sanctions (including the possibility of dismissing the complaint), and consider referring the matter to the Department of Justice for investigation into possible criminal contempt of court under 18 U.S.C. § 401. DOJ further requested that plaintiffs certify compliance with the non-disclosure restrictions and identify any communications with third parties or the media about the restricted material.
“Plaintiffs’ choice to use the list for purposes other than to establish their standing appears calculated to stir up media criticism, unfairly prejudicing the government, and countermanding this Court’s express limitations.”
Boasberg ordered CHIRLA to respond to the motion by 9 a.m. Monday, November 2. A UCLA Voting Rights Project spokesman told reporters that “Plaintiffs’ counsel and their experts fully complied with the Court’s orders,” but the DOJ filing makes clear the government views the broader analysis and its rapid appearance in the press as a direct breach.
The post Activist Judge Boasberg’s Order Blows Up on CHIRLA — Immigrant Rights Group Faces Sanctions and Possible Criminal Contempt After Experts Abused Restricted Access to DOJ’s 20,000 Noncitizen Voter List appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.