After the Trump administration lost yet another court fight this week, his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, turned to a familiar complaint. “This is a judicial coup,” the Republican megadonor wrote by way of his social media platform. “We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people.”
As my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained soon after, Musk flubbed every relevant detail in his missive: It’s not a “coup” when the White House loses court fights; senators aren’t responsible for impeaching anyone; and the standard for removing a sitting judge from the bench is 67 votes, not 60.
But despite his lack of familiarity with the impeachment process, the billionaire has been pushing the idea of judicial impeachments with unnerving vigor in recent weeks. Indeed, NBC News noted Wednesday that Musk had posted online about judicial impeachments “17 times within the past 24 hours.”
What’s more, as The New York Times reported, he’s also putting his money where his tweets are.
Elon Musk has made the maximum allowable donation to Republican members of Congress who support impeaching federal judges who are impeding actions taken by President Trump, according to five people with knowledge of the matter. Mr. Musk has given what had been until recently the legal maximum hard-dollar donation — $6,600 — to the campaigns of seven Republicans who have either endorsed judicial impeachments or called for some form of ‘action’ in response to recent rulings against the Trump administration, including a weekend decision by Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court in Washington.
According to the report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, the beneficiaries of the campaign contributions include Republican Reps. Eli Crane of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin and Brandon Gill of Texas. Unexpectedly, Musk also donated to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who hasn’t explicitly endorsed impeaching any judges, but who did criticize a recent court ruling in the Alien Enemies Act case.
To be sure, the legal maximum for hard-dollar donations is rather modest — for someone of Musk’s wealth, $6,600 checks will not be missed — but there’s a broader political significance: The DOGE chief just sent an unsubtle signal to members of Congress that judicial impeachment advocates on Capitol Hill should expect to be rewarded by the biggest GOP megadonor of them all.
Politico also reported, “House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan said he plans to hold hearings on recent judicial rulings against the Trump administration’s agenda, after President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and conservatives have called for impeaching federal judges.”
The Ohio Republican told CNN, “We’re gonna hold hearings on this entire issue,” adding that he’s especially interested in “the 15 injunctions that have been done in an eight-week time frame.”
Of course, as we’ve discussed, that the White House has faced so many injunctions in so little time is less evidence of judicial bias and more evidence of an administration that keeps pushing the legal envelope in radical and unprecedented ways.
Nevertheless, Team Trump wants the idea of judicial impeachments to be taken seriously, and evidently the Jordan-led House Judiciary Committee is prepared to examine the issue in more detail.
There are, however, apparently some divisions among GOP lawmakers. In a separate report this week, Politico quoted one House Republican saying, “I do not support impeaching a sitting judge based solely on a decision with which I disagree.”
That the unnamed member didn’t want to be identified speaks volumes about the current state of the party.
