By The Epoch Times | Created at 2026-09-30 19:48:43 | Updated at 2026-09-30 21:53:00
2 hours ago
Attorney General of the United States Todd Blanche speaks at Day 1 of the 2026 Republican National Committee Midterm Convention in Dallas on Sept. 9, 2026. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times
U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sept. 30 that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a judicial misconduct complaint against federal judges in Minnesota who granted interviews to The New York Times about the immigration enforcement surge there.
The DOJ argues that giving the interviews to the newspaper was partisan and unethical. The complaint, filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, called the behavior of the judges “particularly egregious.” The department asked the court to appoint a special committee “to investigate this misconduct.” The complaint, which targets all but one active District of Minnesota judge, was signed by DOJ senior officials Trent McCotter and Stanley Woodward.
The fact that the judges spoke with the media is a “clear violation of their ethical duties,” Blanche said at a press conference, criticizing them for commenting on active cases.
Blanche recounted that U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz said in a 90-minute interview that the Trump administration had a “disregard for court orders.” According to Blanche, Schiltz said this “disregard clogged his courthouse to a near standstill, contributing to rising tensions” among protesters in Minneapolis.
Blanche said the judge told the newspaper that most, if not all, of the noncompliance arose from incompetence, rather than conscious decisions to defy the court, and that in the judge’s opinion, “the lack of resources led to a result that should have been anticipated, and that threatened the foundations of the legal system.”
The “overtly political” comments by Schiltz and the other judges in the article constitute “a flagrant violation, in the department’s view, of the code of judicial conduct,” Blanche said.
There is an “obvious bias” against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and immigration authorities in Minnesota, he said. Blanche said the DOJ asked the Eighth Circuit to investigate and, in the meantime, that the judges recuse themselves from all cases involving DHS.
“The comments aren’t even true and [are] blatantly false,” Blanche said.
The complaint comes after an article was published on Sept. 17 that featured a series of interviews with seven Minnesota judges.
It’s unusual for federal judges to sit for wide-ranging media interviews dealing with their rulings and the impact of those rulings. The high-profile enforcement surge in the Twin Cities ran from December 2025 to the middle of February 2026.
Schiltz denied wrongdoing.
“As legal-ethics experts have confirmed, I was acting well within the ethical rules that apply to federal judges in speaking to the New York Times,” the judge told The Epoch Times.
Schiltz said that in February, the Committee on Codes of Conduct issued an advisory opinion emphasizing that federal judges may “speak and write on core judiciary matters such as advocacy for the rule of law and judicial independence.”
“That is exactly what I did,” he added.
