Attorney General Todd Blanche moved to have nearly all of Minnesota’s federal district judges investigated, calling their comments to the press “overtly political” and a “flagrant violation” of ethics rules.
The Justice Department filed the misconduct complaint Wednesday with Chief Judge Steven Colloton of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Blanche said at a press conference announcing voter fraud charges.
The complaint targets U.S. District Judges Patrick Schiltz and John Tunheim, whose conduct it calls “particularly egregious,” along with unnamed colleagues who spoke to the New York Times about Operation Metro Surge, last winter’s immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis.
“This is a flagrant violation in the department’s view of the Code of Judicial Conduct,” Blanche told reporters.
“The comments are not only overtly political, itself a violation, but also concern matters pending before these judges or still in the appellate process, a separate violation,” he continued, adding that “at least one case is currently pending before the Supreme Court.”
“Public confidence in judicial impartiality cannot survive if judges, in disregard of their ethical obligations, pander to the press,” the complaint said, quoting a 2001 federal appeals court ruling.
Schiltz, the court’s former chief judge, sat for a 90-minute interview for the Times’ Sept. 17 article, according to the complaint.
Six other members of Minnesota’s federal bench also agreed to speak with the paper, the filing said, among them “six of the seven judges who held active status in Minnesota last winter.”
The complaint also cited the Times’ acknowledgment that it is “unusual for federal judges to give extensive interviews that reflect on periods when their rulings have made headlines.”
“[Y]ou have either anarchy or you have authoritarianism. You have Russia or you have China or you have North Korea,” Schiltz said of a country without the rule of law, according to the complaint.
“They weren’t arresting, in my view, people who were dangerous criminals on the street,” Tunheim told the Times.
Blanche also called the judges’ comments “blatantly false” and said filing the complaint “is not something that the department does typically.”
“[W]e have asked the Eighth Circuit to conduct an investigation, and in the meantime, that these judges recuse themselves from every case involving DHS, either criminal or civil in nature, because of the obvious bias they have shown in this article with the New York Times,” Blanche said. Recusal would bar the judges from hearing Homeland Security cases.
Answering reporters’ questions, Blanche said the judges were “showing bias” and that “we have no choice but to act.”
In a January order, Schiltz, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, found that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had violated court orders almost 100 times in 74 cases, Bloomberg Law reported.
The complaint stressed the Times’ report that the cases on Schiltz’s January list have “largely concluded,” adding emphasis to “largely.”
Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former personal defense lawyer, told a Federalist Society event in November 2025 that the fight against “activist judges” was “a war,” according to Bloomberg Law. He was deputy attorney general at the time.
The Justice Department filed a misconduct complaint last year against U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, accusing him of telling fellow judges the administration would trigger a constitutional crisis by disregarding court rulings, the Associated Press reported.
Jeffrey Sutton, chief judge of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, dismissed it in December 2025, saying the department never provided proof and that such comments, even if made, would not violate ethics rules, according to the AP.
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