A federal judge said Tuesday that she was referring a Trump administration lawyer to face an investigation into potential misconduct for withholding key information from her about a case.
The lawyer, Kevin M. Bolan, leads the civil division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Rhode Island. In court filings and during a hearing on Monday, Mr. Bolan acknowledged that he had failed to disclose important information to the judge about an immigrant who had been arrested and had petitioned for release. Mr. Bolan has apologized, but Judge Melissa R. DuBose said that the court still needed to get to the bottom of the omission.
“It’s the candor and the lack of candor to this court that has to be addressed,” she said. “And it has to be fully investigated, so we don’t have anything like this happen again.”
The judge said the referral would be made under the court’s local rules that govern disciplinary proceedings against attorneys. Cases can be heard by a single judge or all active judges, with punishments ranging from private reprimands or fines to disbarment. At an earlier hearing on Monday, Judge DuBose also discussed the possibility of sanctioning Mr. Bolan’s client, the Department of Homeland Security.
Natalie Baldassarre, a Justice Department spokeswoman, referred questions about the handling of the case to D.H.S., which did not immediately respond.
The dispute arose after the Department of Homeland Security last month publicly attacked Judge DuBose for ordering the migrant released from custody, despite what officials said was a murder charge that he still faces in the Dominican Republic. But the judge did not know about the international charge, and Mr. Bolan has said that before her ruling, D.H.S. had instructed him not to inform her about it.
The migrant, Bryan Rafael Gomez, was arrested by police in Worcester, Mass., on April 4 and charged with assault and battery. He was released on bail and turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In a court filing, Mr. Bolan said he learned of the foreign murder charge but, after consulting with D.H.S., believed that “a legitimate law enforcement reason” meant he could not share information about it with Judge DuBose.
After Judge DuBose ordered Mr. Gomez’s release on April 28, D.H.S. went on the attack, deploying what has become a well-established playbook used by the Trump administration to single out judges who rule against its policies. Officials strongly suggested Judge DuBose had knowingly released someone accused of murder.
“An activist judge appointed by Joe Biden released this wanted murderer back into American communities,” Lauren Bis, an acting assistant secretary of homeland security, previously said in a statement. On social media, the department called Judge DuBose’s ruling “insanity” and amplified a Fox News report warning that “this accused killer is back out in the streets.”
Many of the judges attacked by the administration in similar ways have reported receiving waves of violent threats. In court on Monday, Judge DuBose called the Homeland Security Department statement “dangerous.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Bolan said that senior officials in the Rhode Island U.S. Attorney’s Office had made “a very firm, very direct request that the website be taken down” but acknowledged that the statement remained on the D.H.S. website. It remained live as of Tuesday afternoon. Judge DuBose said that taking it down was a “very basic decent act” and that she would continue to consider measures to prompt D.H.S. to do so.
Asked about Judge DuBose’s anger on Monday, the department’s media office responded by resending a copy of the disputed release, which Mr. Bolan has said was “not true.”
In a declaration filed with the court, a D.H.S. official confirmed that Mr. Bolan had been instructed to neither confirm nor deny the overseas charges to Judge DuBose. The official wrote that the direction was “consistent with ICE policy and practices” because such a notification would require “authorization” from the government of the Dominican Republic.
According to the declaration, the Dominican Republic provided the authorization but only after Judge DuBose ordered Mr. Gomez’s release, on the same day the department posted its attack on her.
The instruction to Mr. Bolan came even though the department posted a release a week before Mr. Gomez’s case reached Judge DuBose’s courtroom that said there was “an arrest warrant” in Mr. Gomez’s name “for homicide.”
In court on Monday, Melanie Shapiro, a lawyer representing Mr. Gomez, disputed that there was clear evidence of a murder charge against her client. She said that the two-page Spanish-language warrant filed with the U.S. court referred to a statute prohibiting “manslaughter” as well as a firearm statute, but not murder.
Ms. Shapiro’s court filings also dispute the state assault charge against Mr. Gomez, stating that he was arrested on the basis of “unsubstantiated allegations.” In its own filings, D.H.S. says that other than the assault charge, it has no evidence “of any actual or alleged criminal conduct” by Mr. Gomez inside the United States since he arrived “in approximately 2022.”
Also Tuesday, Judge DuBose ordered that Mr. Gomez, who has been living in Massachusetts since she ordered his release, be detained again before a bond hearing, to be held within seven days. The government had asked to reconsider her earlier release order on the basis that Mr. Gomez “presents a risk to public safety.”
“I cannot be motivated by my feelings about how this process played out,” Judge DuBose said. “If I were to have all this information at the beginning, which decision would this court make?”
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