On Friday, House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik requested an ethics investigation into a federal judge who has ruled in cases linked to Jan. 6 rioters and former President Trump.
Stefanik claimed that U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who is currently overseeing Trump ally Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial, engaged in “judicial misconduct” during a speech she gave last month. Stefanik called it a “highly inappropriate political speech.”
In the speech, Howell discussed the impact of “big lies” in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack and quoted historian Heather Cox Richardson’s book “Democracy Awakening” that “big lies are springboards for authoritarians.” The judge did not mention Trump by name.
“We are having a very surprising and downright troubling moment in this country when the very importance of facts is dismissed or ignored,” Howell said in the speech.
Watch the moment here:
Stefanik criticized the comments as “unbecoming of a federal judge” and suggested a connection between Howell’s comment on authoritarianism and Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
“Judge Howell’s speech is plainly inappropriate, consisting of partisan statements, election interference and improper extrajudicial statements while criminal cases are pending — all barred by Canon 2B,” Stefanik wrote, referencing a judicial ethics guide.
Last month, Stefanik filed a similar ethics complaint against Judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing Trump’s New York civil fraud trial, claiming he has shown “inappropriate bias and judicial intemperance” toward Trump.
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