Wisconsin’s Van Orden moves to impeach judge who blocked Musk from Treasury records

Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden has filed a resolution to impeach a federal judge who blocked members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from accessing sensitive U.S. Treasury records.

U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer issued a preliminary injunction blocking DOGE on Feb. 8 in response to a lawsuit filed by Democratic attorneys general, including Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul.

Engelmayer was appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama in 2011.

The lawsuit claimed DOGE cannot legally access Treasury records that include Social Security numbers and bank account details. 

In response to the injunction, Musk accused Engelmayer of being “a corrupt judge protecting corruption” in a post on his social media platform X.

“He needs to be impeached NOW!” Musk said on Feb. 9.

Heeding the call, Van Orden, a Republican from Prairie du Chien, introduced a bill Tuesday to begin the impeachment process, which accuses Engelmayer of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

“Paul Engelmayer, as a judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, engaged in judicial misconduct when he halted President Donald J. Trump’s Executive order establishing and implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency on purely political grounds, demonstrating clear bias and prejudice against the President and the 74,000,000 Americans who voted for him,” states Van Orden’s resolution.

Trump received about 77 million votes nationwide in 2024.

Van Orden’s resolution claims Engelmayer disregarded legal precedent in his ruling and ordered the injunction “in the middle of the night, which may have been done with the intent to influence the outcome of cases to favor certain parties.”

Van Orden did not respond to a request for comment for this story. In a post to X Thursday, he proclaimed, “The time for Judicial Activism is over.”

“The American people gave @realDonald Trump a mandate and no politician disguised as a jurist will interfere with it,” Van Orden said. 

Howard Schweber, an emeritus professor of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told WPR federal judges have lifetime appointments as a way to insulate themselves from political retribution.

“Impeachment for judges, just as for presidents, is not supposed to be a mechanism for getting rid of people you disagree with,” Schweber said.

He said there’s very little chance Engelmayer will be impeached, but it’s troubling to see a member of Congress “declaring that he feels no allegiance” to the U.S. Constitution as it relates to an independent judiciary.

“And of course, members of Congress take an oath to uphold the Constitution,” Schweber said. “So, this is really deeply disturbing.”

As of Thursday afternoon, no other House members had signed on to Van Orden’s resolution, which was referred to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary. Committee member U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Minocqua, did not respond to a request for comment on the resolution.

Congress is the only political body that can remove a sitting federal judge from office. As with presidents, the House must approve an article of impeachment by a simple majority. It’s then up to the U.S. Senate to convict, which requires a two-thirds majority. Republicans don’t have a two-thirds majority in the Senate, which means they’d need Democratic support for Engelmayer to be ousted.

Only 15 federal judges had been impeached as of 2017, according to the U.S. court system website. A summary shows many of the judges were impeached for charges of accepting bribes, perjury and abuse of power. The last two impeachments happened in 2009 and 2010.