JOSH GERSTEIN and KYLE CHENEY , Politico; Justice Department files ethics complaint against Minnesota federal judges
"The Justice Department has filed a formal complaint against nearly all of the federal district court judges in Minnesota, alleging that they violated the judicial ethics code by speaking out about the impact of the Trump administration’s immigration-enforcement surge on their court...
The complaint contends that former Chief District Judge Patrick Schiltz, Judge John Tunheim and other “anonymous district judges” from Minnesota who spoke to The New York Times for an article published earlier this month expressed bias against the government.
DOJ contends that the judges’ remarks about agencies involved in the federal immigration surge there breached the ethics rules preventing judges from commenting on matters still before the courts or likely to wind up there...
In a statement Wednesday, Schiltz defended his actions.
“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,” Schiltzsaid “Indeed, in February of this year, the Committee on Codes of Conduct issued an advisory opinion to emphasize 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.”
A court spokesperson responded on behalf of Tunheim, echoing Schiltz’sstatement that the comments were permitted under federal rules for judges."
