Attorney General Todd Blanche filed a misconduct complaint Wednesday against nearly all of Minnesota’s federal district judges, accusing them of making “overtly political” comments to the press and committing a “flagrant violation” of judicial ethics rules.
The Justice Department submitted the complaint to Chief Judge Steven Colloton of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Blanche announced the move at a press conference focused on voter fraud charges.
Judges Patrick Schiltz and John Tunheim Named in Complaint
The filing singles out U.S. District Judges Patrick Schiltz and John Tunheim, whose conduct it describes as “particularly egregious,” along with unnamed colleagues who spoke to the New York Times about Operation Metro Surge, last winter’s immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis. Schiltz, the court’s former chief judge, sat for a 90-minute interview for the Times’ September 17 article. Six other members of Minnesota’s federal bench also agreed to speak with the paper, including “six of the seven judges who held active status in Minnesota last winter,” according to the filing.
“This is a flagrant violation in the department’s view of the Code of Judicial Conduct,” Blanche told reporters. The comments are not only overtly political, itself a violation, but also concern matters pending before these judges or still in the appellate process, a separate violation,” he continued, adding that “at least one case is currently pending before the Supreme Court.”
The complaint quoted Schiltz as saying, in reference to a country without the rule of law, “you have either anarchy or you have authoritarianism. You have Russia or you have China or you have North Korea.” Tunheim was quoted telling the Times, “They weren’t arresting, in my view, people who were dangerous criminals on the street.” Blanche called those comments “blatantly false.” You can read more about the Minnesota judges misconduct complaint and the broader context of the filing in the original reporting.
Recusal Demand and What Comes Next
Beyond the investigation request, Blanche asked the 8th Circuit to require the judges to recuse themselves from every case involving the Department of Homeland Security, whether criminal or civil. We have asked the Eighth Circuit to conduct an investigation, and in the meantime, that these judges recuse themselves from every case involving DHS,” Blanche said, citing “the obvious bias they have shown in this article with the New York Times.
Schiltz, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, had previously found in a January order that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement violated court orders nearly 100 times across 74 cases. The complaint stressed that the cases on Schiltz’s January list have “largely concluded,” adding its own emphasis to that word.
This is not the first time the Justice Department has pursued a sitting federal judge this way. The department filed a similar misconduct complaint last year against U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, but Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed it in December 2025, saying the department never provided proof and that the alleged comments would not have violated ethics rules regardless. Blanche acknowledged that filing such a complaint “is not something that the department does typically,” but said “we have no choice but to act.”
