A standoff between a federal judge in Rhode Island and the Homeland Security Department wound down on Tuesday with no penalties for a Justice Department lawyer caught between the court and the Trump administration.
Judge Melissa R. DuBose had asked a special counsel in May to investigate whether the lawyer had violated his professional obligations by withholding information from her about a migrant who appeared in her courtroom, a development that represented a significant escalation in tensions between the judiciary and the Trump administration.
On Tuesday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island announced that it had accepted the special counsel’s conclusion that there should not be serious penalties levied against the lawyer, Kevin Bolan, who is the head of the civil division in the Rhode Island U.S. attorney’s office. However, after digesting the report, the court released an official statement describing a deliberate effort to discredit Judge DuBose by concealing information from her and criticized the Department of Homeland Security for making “false statements” about the matter.
Appearing before Judge DuBose, Mr. Bolan failed to disclose that an undocumented man whose case she was considering was wanted for homicide in the Dominican Republic. Unaware of the international allegation, Judge DuBose ordered the migrant, Bryan Rafael Gomez, released on bond in April after he was arrested for assault and then turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation proceedings.
At that point, the Homeland Security Department publicly attacked her as an “activist Biden judge” who released a “wanted murderer back into American communities.”
Mr. Bolan had previously apologized for his role in the incident, telling the court he was instructed not to mention the murder warrant by the department, ostensibly for meaningful law enforcement reasons.
After learning of the foreign charges, Judge DuBose ordered that Mr. Gomez be rearrested. However, he did not report to ICE as ordered and has remained missing.
After Judge DuBose requested that the incident be formally investigated, the court appointed Niki Kuckes, a law professor at Roger Williams University and a former clerk of Antonin Scalia, to conduct the inquiry.
In a statement on Tuesday, the court called the events “troubling” and said they “raised the question whether ICE deliberately manipulated the case briefing on the Gomez petition to set up Judge DuBose to release Mr. Gomez so that it could make a false attack against her.”
A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment on Mr. Bolan’s case.
Asked to comment on the special counsel’s conclusions, a homeland security spokesperson declined but instead pointed to an opinion column written by the department’s top lawyer and published in the conservative publication The Federalist in May. The column by James Percival, the department’s general counsel, conceded no errors in the case and instead accused Judge DuBose of overstepping her authority. It did not address claims that the department deliberately failed to disclose what it knew about Mr. Gomez’s record.
In a letter to Mr. Bolan closing the disciplinary inquiry on Tuesday, Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. wrote that the episode was a “grave” and “serious” failure. He noted that “the special counsel found sufficient evidence that your conduct violated the duty of candor owed to the court.”
But he added that it appeared likely that Mr. Bolan had been similarly manipulated by others to tee up the release of Mr. Gomez.
“While your error was serious, countervailing factors are also present,” Judge McConnell wrote. “The special counsel’s investigation found, and the court agrees, that there is no reason to conclude that you were part of a scheme to deceive the court, or that you acted in bad faith or for personal gain.”
In its statement, the court largely faulted the Homeland Security Department, which it noted has kept the news release attacking Judge Dubose online despite multiple requests from the judge and the court that it be taken down.
“False statements by government officials, as exemplified in ICE’s April 30 press release, are unacceptable — they undermine public trust in government; impair judicial decision-making; interfere with the rule of law, and as we have seen, have real-world consequences,” the statement said.
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