Republican lawmaker seeks US judge's impeachment over foreign aid ruling

By Nate Raymond

Feb 27 (Reuters) - A Republican lawmaker on Thursday moved to have a judge impeached for ordering President Donald Trump's administration to lift a freeze of nearly all foreign aid, bringing to three the number of judges facing long-shot bids by conservative U.S. House of Representatives members to have them removed from the bench.

Republican U.S. Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee filed the resolution seeking to have U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington impeached a day after U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts paused the judge's order requiring the Republican president's administration to pay foreign aid funds to contractors and grant recipients.

Ogles' impeachment measure argues Ali, an appointee of Trump's Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors when he "without merit marginalized the President's Article II authority, which vests the power to conduct foreign policy in the President of the United States."

"This patent violation of Constitutional precedent — which necessarily precludes an explanation based on ignorance of the supreme law of the land — is entirely inconsistent with serving the United States as a district court judge," the resolution said.

Ali did not respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. Constitution provides that the grounds for impeachment are treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

To remove a judge from office, the House must pass articles of impeachment by a simple majority vote and then the Senate must vote by at least a two-thirds majority to convict the judge. Republicans control both chambers of Congress but do not have a two-thirds majority in the Senate.

Despite facing unlikely odds of success, a small group of House Republicans including Ogles have joined with Trump's billionaire ally Elon Musk in calling for judges who block the president's policies in court to be impeached.

Impeachment resolutions have been filed in recent days against two other judges who have ruled against Trump and the Musk-championed government cost-cutting team known as the Department of Government Efficiency, U.S. District Judges Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan and John Bates in Washington.

Democratic lawmakers, law professors and some legal organizations have decried the effort to impeach judges over rulings adverse to Trump's agenda as inappropriate and an attack on the judiciary's independence.

But the Republican lawmakers appear unbowed: On Wednesday night, Ogles hosted an "impeachathon" event on his YouTube show with U.S. Representatives Eli Crane and Andrew Clyde about their efforts to have removed "woke activist judges who are literally working against the president of the United States."

He displayed a poster of 11 judges they were focused on, all of whom have issued decisions that have at least temporarily blocked Trump initiatives.

The impeachment resolutions introduced so far have been referred to the House Judiciary Committee, which has not taken any action on them.

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