2026-05-14T04:00:50.949Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
作者：德文·科尔
发布于 2026年5月14日，美国东部时间凌晨00:00
梅利莎·R·杜博斯法官。
美国联邦地区法院
过去一年间，芝加哥、明尼阿波利斯和华盛顿特区的法官曾试图就特朗普政府在法庭内外的可疑行为追究其责任，但他们的努力一再被上诉程序、蓄意阻挠及其他手段挫败。
但罗德岛州的联邦法院正采取全新举措：上周任命一名特别检察官，调查一名司法部高级律师在一桩移民案件中被指控的不当行为。
法律专家告诉CNN，这一举措似乎旨在让整个程序免受其他联邦法院所面临的强烈反对——那些法院在试图获取政府可能存在失误的基本信息，或确保遵守法院命令时，都遭遇过此类反对。
“这本质上就是为了追责。法官们会尽最大努力让这些案件相关各方都承担责任。而问责的第一道防线就是律师，”前联邦法官威廉·史密斯说道，他直到今年1月都在“海洋之州”罗德岛主持案件审理。“法官们不得不处理这种情况，真的极度令人沮丧。”
相关报道 法院命令华盛顿特区法官终止针对参与驱逐航班的特朗普官员的刑事藐视法庭调查 阅读时长：5分钟
“这种情况并不常见，”曾由前总统乔治·W·布什任命的史密斯在谈及此次特别检察官任命时表示，“但法院当然有权这么做。”
此举是行政部门与联邦司法部门之间紧张关系的最新导火索，这一关系自唐纳德·特朗普去年再次就职以来便持续紧张。特朗普及其助手经常抨击那些站在政府对立面的两党总统任命的法官。而美国各地法院多次警告称，当前的司法部已经破坏了“政府在法庭上秉持善意行事”这一长期以来的假设。
本杰明·格赖姆斯曾是司法部高级伦理官员，如今在哥伦比亚法学院任教。他表示，这一情况反映了一种更广泛的模式：政府律师肆意违反职业规则，削弱了公众对法律体系的信心。
“过去发生类似事件时，都属于个别例外，并未形成一系列可以轻易关联起来的事件轨迹，”他说，“而这正是如今的不同之处。”
司法部尚未回应CNN的置评请求。
针对此次任命，国土Security部的最高律师攻击了这场风波的核心法官，并对特别检察官调查的目的提出质疑。
国土安全部攻击法官，但司法部律师隐瞒关键细节
罗德岛州的局势尤其紧张，因为它引发了人们对司法部律师是否愿意规避其伦理义务的质疑——这些律师在法庭上代表关键政府机构履职。
在本案中，由前总统乔·拜登任命的美国联邦地区法官梅利莎·杜博斯于上月末下令官员们保释布莱恩·拉斐尔·戈麦斯。戈麦斯是非公民，因袭击和殴打罪名被捕，后被移交给移民官员关押等待驱逐出境。
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移民律师们对美国法律体系内的担忧发出警告
3:47 • 来源：CNN
移民律师们对美国法律体系内的担忧发出警告
3:47
在杜博斯下令释放戈麦斯数天后，国土安全部在一份新闻稿中抨击她是一名“激进的拜登派法官”，称其故意放走“一名暴力犯罪的非法外籍人士，此人在多米尼加共和国被通缉谋杀”。
问题恰恰出在这里：根据移民和海关执法局官员的指示，罗德岛州美国检察官办公室的一名高级律师在杜博斯考虑是否下令将戈麦斯从移民羁押中释放时，故意未向她披露一份多年前的凶杀案逮捕令信息。
这张来自国土安全部官网的截图显示了一则新闻稿，内容为美国联邦地区法官梅利莎·杜博斯是一名“激进的拜登派法官”，故意放走“一名暴力犯罪的非法外籍人士，此人在多米尼加共和国被通缉谋杀”。
美国国土安全部
这名律师是负责该办公室民事部门的凯文·博兰，他在提交给杜博斯的法庭文件中称，他不知道该信息已由该机构公开披露，而是依赖了他们的说法，即他“出于合法的执法原因无法披露”，因此无权向法院分享该信息。
“因此，杜博斯法官在批准保释申请时，并不掌握关于申请人的这一犯罪背景信息，”博兰写道，“我个人向杜博斯法官以及整个法院，为此次未披露所造成的后果，致以诚挚的歉意。”
根据CNN获取的庭审记录，在为期两天的上周庭审中，博兰承认，如果“我们当时做出了这项至关重要的披露，而我们没有做到”，杜博斯法官很可能不会下令释放戈麦斯。
道歉并未让法官满意。在庭审中，杜博斯表示，这一情况“性质恶劣”，足以对博兰启动纪律程序。
“必须解决的是对本法庭的坦诚与不坦诚问题，必须进行全面调查，以防此类事件再次发生，”杜博斯上周在法庭上表示，她指的是要求律师在法庭上保持诚实和透明的伦理规则。
法官还要求博兰努力让国土安全部撤下攻击她的新闻稿，博兰同意照做，但截至目前，该帖子仍未从该部门的官方网站移除。
“这篇帖子在传播虚假叙事，”法官在庭审中说道，“它会将人们置于危险之中，对司法安全构成威胁。但更重要的是，人们对我们日常工作存在根本性误解，这不仅无益，而且我认为实际上是危险的。”
在回应CNN对此事的问询时，国土安全部通过电子邮件发送了一篇由该部门总法律顾问詹姆斯·珀西瓦尔周二发表在《联邦党人》上的专栏文章链接。文章称，杜博斯试图追究博兰在本案中的所谓不当行为，本身就属于“司法不当”。
他辩称，责任不应由移民海关执法局承担，而应告知法官逮捕令的存在。在他看来，戈麦斯对其拘留提出的质疑本应由移民法官处理，而非联邦地区法院。
“由于法院缺乏审查戈麦斯羁押状态的合理依据，指望移民海关执法局准备好向法庭提交该信息，完全不合理，”他写道。
杜博斯上周表示，官员们可以重新羁押戈麦斯，并且必须在将他重新收押后的一周内为其安排保释听证会。但两天后，司法部告知她，移民海关执法局尚未找到戈麦斯。自此之后，法庭未收到任何更新消息。
特别检察官的调查能否奏效？
杜博斯于上周四将此事移交处理后，其所在地区的首席法官约翰·麦康奈尔任命尼基·库克斯为特别检察官，负责调查此事。麦康奈尔表示，库克斯有权调取文件和进行面谈，并将在完成审查后提交调查结果和建议报告。
这一程序最终可能导致的处罚严重程度不等，从博兰暂时或永久丧失在联邦法院执业的资格，到较轻的处罚，比如公开谴责或处以罚款。
“关键在于向律师界传递一个信息：无论你的政府客户要求你做什么，你都绝对有责任对法庭坦诚相待。这始终是我们的期望，”史密斯说，“仅仅启动调查——无论结果如何——法院都已经传递了这一信息。”
相关报道 特朗普欲将移民海关执法局更名为国家移民海关执法局，并非所有人都认同 阅读时长：4分钟
格赖姆斯表示，在经历过几届不同的总统政府后，他从未见过如此任命特别检察官来调查政府律师所谓的不当行为。
但他表示，库克斯的工作可能会遭到不愿向调查提供相关信息的部门阻挠。
“相关信息掌握在司法部的高墙之后，掌握在国土安全部的政府高墙之后，”格赖姆斯说，“这将是最大的问题，因为调查缺乏参与，将阻碍特别检察官确切得出结论的能力。”
前美国检察官迈克尔·摩尔也同意，政府可能会对特别检察官不屑一顾。但他补充道：“他们这么做将自担风险”，因为事件的部分细节已经通过法庭程序浮出水面。
“所以现在，他们陷入了这种境地：要么拒绝配合调查，要么借此机会说‘不，情况并非如此’，”他说。
其他地区的法官曾遭阻挠
在其他备受关注的案件中，法官们试图就政府的可疑决策寻求答案，或追究律师失误的责任，但法院常常中途受阻。
明尼苏达州的一名联邦法官今年2月裁定，因一名政府律师未遵守其在一桩移民案件中的命令，将其判为民事藐视法庭。如今，该藐视法庭判决正遭到上诉法院的强烈质疑。
去年，特朗普在芝加哥地区的移民突袭行动引发了联邦特工与抗议者之间的冲突。一名法官曾试图让一名顶尖边境巡逻官员每日出庭，以确保其麾下特工遵守她制定的行动限制令，但在司法部要求另一个上诉法院介入后，这一努力被推翻。
相关报道 这些海地移民为经济贡献近60亿美元，他们的命运掌握在最高法院手中 阅读时长：8分钟
美国第七巡回上诉法院当时表示，美国联邦地区法官萨拉·埃利斯要求格雷戈里·博维诺每日报到的命令，错误地将地区法院塑造成了“博维诺局长活动的监督者”，侵犯了行政部门的人事管理决策权。
相关报道 消息人士：顶尖边境巡逻官员格雷戈里·博维诺计划退休 阅读时长：2分钟
而在华盛顿特区，詹姆斯·博阿斯伯格法官一年多来一直在试图调查，在他面前审理的一桩高风险移民案件中，是谁做出了某些决定。该案件导致数十名移民被飞往萨尔瓦多的一所巨型监狱，尽管他曾下令暂时暂停驱逐航班。
司法部多次上诉，导致博阿斯伯格无法传唤现任和前任部门官员到他的法庭上，就此事宣誓作证，而他原本计划推进刑事藐视法庭调查。官员们将此描述为一名别有用心的法官的“钓鱼式调查”。
“我当然打算查明当天到底发生了什么，”博阿斯伯格去年宣布重启程序时表示，“这件事搁置已久，我认为正义要求我迅速推进此事。”
但不久之后，他的计划再次被美国哥伦比亚特区巡回上诉法院叫停。
在罗德岛州的这起事件中，史密斯指出，通过任命特别检察官，法院受益于“与调查保持一步之遥，因此不会被指责其结论带有偏见”。
“这位法官——在某种程度上整个法院——都算是这些毫无根据的攻击的受害者，”史密斯说，“如果不考虑他们遭到攻击这一事实，法官们就更难评估律师的行为，否则评估结果可能会被认为存在偏向。”
Holding DOJ to account has been ‘extremely frustrating’ for judges. A Rhode Island court is taking a fresh approach
2026-05-14T04:00:50.949Z / CNN
By Devan Cole
PUBLISHED May 14, 2026, 12:00 AM ET
Judge Melissa R. DuBose.
US District Court
Judges in Chicago, Minneapolis and Washington, DC, have tried to hold the Trump administration accountable for questionable actions inside and outside of court over the past year, but their efforts have been repeatedly stymied through the appeals process, stonewalling and other tactics.
But the federal bench in Rhode Island is taking a fresh approach, naming a special counsel last week to investigate a senior Justice Department attorney’s alleged misconduct in an immigration case.
Legal experts tell CNN the move appears designed to insulate the process from the kind of fierce opposition other federal courts have faced when attempting to gather basic information about possible missteps by the government or ensure compliance with court orders.
“It’s really all about accountability. The judges are going to try their darndest to hold everyone involved in these cases accountable. And the first line of accountability is the lawyers,” said former federal Judge William Smith, who, until January, presided over cases in The Ocean State. “It’s just extremely frustrating for the judges to have to deal with this.”
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“It’s not common,” Smith, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, said of the special counsel appointment. “But it’s certainly something that the court has the authority to do.”
The move is the latest flashpoint in a fraught relationship between the Executive Branch and the federal judiciary that’s existed since President Donald Trump returned to office last year. Trump and his aides have frequently attacked judges appointed by presidents from both parties who have sided against the administration. And courts around the US have repeatedly warned that the current Justice Department has jeopardized the long-held assumption that it’s acting in good faith in court.
Benjamin Grimes, a former senior ethics official at the Justice Department who now teaches at Columbia Law School, said the situation speaks to a broader pattern of government lawyers playing fast and loose with professional rules in a way that undermines public confidence in the legal system.
“When something like this has happened in the past, it’s been an outlier. It’s not been emblematic of a series of data points that can be easily connected,” he said. “That’s what’s different.”
The Justice Department has not responded to a request for comment from CNN.
In response to the appointment, the top lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security attacked the judge at the center of the fracas and called into question the purpose of the special counsel probe.
DHS attacks judge, but DOJ attorney withheld key details
The situation in Rhode Island has been especially tense as it’s raised questions about the apparent willingness of DOJ attorneys to shun their ethical obligations in their representation of key government agencies in court.
In the case at hand, US District Judge Melissa DuBose, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ordered officials late last month to release on bond Bryan Rafael Gomez, a noncitizen who had been arrested on assault and battery charges and later turned over to immigration officials to be detained pending deportation.
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Immigration attorneys are raising alarms about concerns within the U.S. legal system
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Immigration attorneys are raising alarms about concerns within the U.S. legal system
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Days after DuBose ordered officials to release Gomez, who is from the Dominican Republic, the Department of Homeland Security slammed her in a press release as an “activist Biden judge” who knowingly let free “a violent criminal illegal alien who is wanted for murder in the Dominican Republic.”
Therein lied the problem: Following guidance from officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a senior lawyer in the US Attorney’s Office in Rhode Island had deliberately withheld from DuBose information about a years-old homicide arrest warrant as she considered whether to order Gomez’s release from immigration custody.
This screengrab from the Department of Homeland Security website shows a press release about shares a press release US District Judge Melissa DuBose, an “activist Biden judge” who knowingly let free “a violent criminal illegal alien who is wanted for murder in the Dominican Republic.”
US Department of Homeland Security
The lawyer, Kevin Bolan, who oversees the office’s Civil Division, told DuBose in court papers that he wasn’t aware that the information had already been publicly disclosed by the agency and that he instead relied on their representation that he wasn’t authorized to share it with the court because “a legitimate law enforcement reason prevented disclosure.”
“Judge DuBose, therefore, lacked that information about the petitioner’s criminal background when she granted the petition,” Bolan wrote. “I sincerely apologize to Judge DuBose, personally, and to the entire court for the consequences of this lack of disclosure.”
In a two-day court hearing last week, according to a transcript obtained by CNN, Bolan acknowledged that DuBose likely would not have ordered Gomez’s release “had we made this very important disclosure, which we failed to do.”
The apology didn’t satisfy the judge. At the hearing, DuBose said the situation was “egregious enough” to warrant disciplinary proceedings against Bolan.
“It’s the candor and the lack of candor to this court that has to be addressed, and it has to be fully investigated so we don’t have anything like this happen again,” DuBose said in court last week, referring to ethical rules mandating that attorneys be honest and transparent in court.
The judge also demanded Bolan work to get DHS to take down the press release attacking her, which he agreed to do, though to date the post has not been removed from the department’s official website.
“As this particular post is out there it’s setting a false narrative,” the judge said during the hearing. “It puts people at risk, it’s a threat to judicial security. But, more importantly, there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is that we’re doing every day and it’s not helpful. And again, I would argue that it’s actually dangerous.”
Responding to inquiries from CNN about the matter, DHS emailed a link to an op-ed published Tuesday in The Federalist by James Percival, the department’s general counsel, that said DuBose was engaging in “judicial misconduct” through her efforts to hold Bolan accountable for his alleged misconduct in the case.
He argued that the onus should not have been on ICE to inform her of the arrest warrant because, in his view, Gomez’s underlying challenge to his detention should have been handled by an immigration judge, not a federal district court.
“Because the court lacked any plausible basis to review Mr. Gomez’s custody status, it was entirely unreasonable to expect ICE to be prepared to present that information to the court,” he wrote.
DuBose said last week that officials could re-detain Gomez and that they must give him a bond hearing within a week of taking him back into custody. But two days later DOJ told her that ICE had not yet located him. No update has been given to the court since then.
Will a special counsel work?
Responding to DuBose’s referral last Thursday, the top judge in her district, John McConnell, appointed Niki Kuckes as special counsel to handle an investigation into the matter. McConnell said Kuckes has authority to request documents and conduct interviews and will submit a report of her findings and recommendations after she completes her review.
The process could eventually result in a punishment as significant as Bolan temporarily or permanently losing his ability to practice in federal court or a much lighter penalty, like a public reprimand or the imposition of fines.
“What’s critical is sending a message to the bar that regardless of what your government client is telling you to do, you have an absolute responsibility of being candid with the court. And that will always be expected,” Smith said. “Just by initiating the investigation – regardless of what the outcome is – that message has been sent by the court.”
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Grimes said that over the course of several different presidential administrations he had never seen such a special counsel appointment to investigate alleged misconduct by a government attorney.
But Kuckes, he said, may find her work thwarted by a department that is unwilling to hand over information relevant to her probe.
“The relevant information is behind the wall of the DOJ, behind the wall of the government at DHS,” Grimes said. “And that’s going to be the big problem because a lack of participation in the investigation is going to stymie the special counsel’s ability to reach any conclusion with certainty.”
Former US Attorney Michael Moore agreed that the administration could simply thumb its nose at the special counsel. But, he added, “they would be doing it at their own peril” since some of the details of what unfolded have already emerged through court proceedings.
“So now, that’s the story they’re stuck with because they refuse to cooperate with the investigation or this is their chance to say, ‘No, that’s not the case,’” he said.
Judges have been halted elsewhere
In other high-profile cases in which judges have tried to get answers about questionable decision-making from the administration or hold lawyers accountable for missteps, courts have often been stopped in their tracks.
A federal judge in Minnesota who decided in February to hold a government attorney in civil contempt for failing to comply with her orders in an immigration case is having her contempt order vigorously challenged before an appeals court.
Last year, as Trump’s immigration blitz in the Chicago area led to clashes between federal agents and protesters, a judge’s effort to get a top Border Patrol official to appear before her daily to ensure compliance with restrictions she placed on how agents under his command can operate was upended after the Justice Department asked a different appeals court to intervene.
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The 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals said at the time that US District Judge Sara Ellis’ order requiring Gregory Bovino’ s daily check-ins wrongly set the district court up as “a supervisor of Chief Bovino’s activities, intruding into personnel management decisions of the Executive Branch.”
Related article Top Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino plans to retire, sources say 2 min read
And in Washington, DC, Judge James Boasberg has for more than a year attempted to undertake an investigation into who made certain decisions in a high-stakes immigration case before him that resulted in scores of immigrants being flown to a mega-prison in El Salvador despite his orders temporarily halting the deportation flights.
Repeated appeals from DOJ have resulted in Boasberg being unable to summon current and former department officials to his courtroom to answer questions about the matter under oath as he sought to move ahead with a criminal contempt inquiry, which officials have cast as a fishing expedition by a judge with an axe to grind.
“I certainly intend to find out what happened on that day,” Boasberg said last year as he announced plans to restart the proceedings. “This has been sitting for a long time and I believe that justice requires me to move promptly on this.”
But soon thereafter, his plans were again shut down by the US DC Circuit Court Appeals.
In the Rhode Island matter, Smith noted that by using a special counsel, the court has the benefit of being “one step away from that investigation so that it can’t be accused of sort of infecting its conclusion with bias.”
“The judge – and to some degree the court – are sort of the victims of these unfounded attacks,” Smith said. “It’s more difficult for them to do sort of an evaluation of the attorney’s conduct without the potential of that looking like it’s been tainted by the fact that they’ve been attacked.”