Tea Party Patriots Action has filed an ethics complaint against federal Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who approved the warrant allowing the FBI to raid former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, this month.
The complaint — filed with the Judicial Council for the 11th Circuit — alleges that Reinhart has a bias against the 45th president and therefore should have recused himself from the case.
“Judge Reinhart has a conflict of interest and a pattern and history of hostility to President Trump,” the document says.
The complaint lists multiple issues that prove Reinhart’s anti-Trump bias, according to TPPA.
They include social media posts by Reinhart, the judge’s recusal in another case involving Trump and Hillary Clinton in which he cited a “conflict of interest,” and past campaign contributions to former President Barack Obama.
The TPPA complaint contains an article from The Daily Wire, which included Reinart’s response to a 2017 tweet from Trump regarding the late Democratic Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, who had announced he would not be attending Trump’s inauguration.
Lewis said the Republican was not the legitimate president due to alleged Russian interference in the election.
“Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk — no action or results. Sad,” Trump tweeted at the time.
Should Reinhart be removed?
According to The Daily Wire, Reinhart wrote in a Facebook post regarding Trump’s tweet, “I generally ignore the President-elect’s tweets, but not this one. John Lewis arguably has done more to ‘make America great’ than any living citizen.”
“Thank you, Robert Reich, for saying what many of us feel, ‘John Lewis is the conscience of America. Donald Trump doesn’t have the moral stature to kiss John Lewis’s feet,’” Reinhart wrote. “Or, as Joseph Welch said to Joseph McCarthy, ‘At long last, have you left no sense of decency?’”
Concerning past donations, Reinhart gave $1,000 to Obama’s campaign and $1,000 to the Obama Victory Fund supporting his candidacy in 2008, according to Open Secrets.
TPPA’s complaint also points to Reinhart’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein.
“Judge Reinhart has a history of ethical issues, the most noteworthy being his resignation from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Miami on Jan. 1, 2008, and the very next day representing as counsel for employees of the late Jeffrey Epstein, who was under investigation by that same prosecutor’s office at the time of Reinhart’s employment and departure,” the filing says.
An ethics complaint was filed against Reinhart at the time in which “former colleagues at the US Attorney’s office stated their belief that Judge Reinhart was privy to confidential information regarding the prosecution’s case against Epstein,” according to TPPA.
The TPPA complaint concludes, “Judge Reinhart should be disciplined and removed as a federal magistrate because of his failure to meet the standards of ethical conduct and character necessary for the public to have confidence in the nonpartisan role of a judge in a matter of this extreme public interest.”
In a Wednesday news release, Jenny Beth Martin, honorary chairman of TPPA, said, “Judge Reinhart acted unethically in approving the warrant to search President Trump’s residence.”
.@JennyBethM: “Judge Reinhart acted unethically in approving the warrant to search President Trump’s residence…The entire episode…threatens the principle of ‘equal justice under law’ and the confidence of the American people in an unbiased judiciary.”https://t.co/CEHaML1YHu
— Tea Party Patriots (@TPPatriots) August 24, 2022
“Judge Reinhart is a Democrat who donated to former President Obama. The judge publicly denigrated former President Trump in social media posts. Just two months ago, he recused himself from a lawsuit involving President Trump in his suit against Hillary Clinton, citing a ‘conflict of interest,’” she added.
“The entire episode involving the search of former President Trump’s home threatens the principle of ‘equal justice under law’ and the confidence of the American people in an unbiased judiciary,” Martin said.
A version of this article originally appeared on Patriot Project.
