By Staff Reporter |
Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh (AZ-08) has initiated the process to impeach a dual citizen judge appointed by former President Joe Biden for abuse of judicial authority.
Hamadeh filed a resolution that would remove D.C. District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, a dual citizen of the United States and Trinidad and Tobago.
The congressman filed the articles of impeachment in response to Sooknanan’s recent ruling in League of Women Voters v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security to halt a federal program creating a centralized database of citizen information collecting existent agency data on citizenship status and Social Security numbers in order to prevent noncitizen voter fraud in federal elections.
In a press release, Hamadeh contended Sooknanan had gone beyond the limited powers of the judiciary by imposing desired policy outcomes.
“This is a blatant and unlawful subversion of the President’s executive authority and a direct assault on election integrity,” said Hamadeh. “Judges who weaponize their bench to interfere with the President’s constitutional duties must be held accountable.”
The database was an intended expansion of the preexisting Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, an online service administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services enabling federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal agencies to check immigration and citizenship status.
Under the expanded SAVE program, the system would include records of natural-born citizens, provide access to Social Security Administration (SSA) records, and permit bulk searches of system records.
The program expansion was designed as the vehicle to satisfy President Donald Trump’s March 2025 executive order to improve citizenship verification for federal elections.
The SAVE program has existed in some form since the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. In fiscal year 2025, the program processed nearly 200 million cases.
Sooknanan ruled that the intended expansion of the SAVE program into a centralized federal database violated three federal laws: the Social Security Act for SSA record-sharing, the Privacy Act for non-consensual disclosure of certain personal information, and the Administrative Procedure Act for “arbitrary and capricious” agency actions.
The impeachment resolution accused Sooknanan of judicial overreach: “substituting the judgment of a single unelected judge for that of the duly elected Executive Branch.”
Sooknanan rose up to her appointment as a district judge following a stand she allegedly took against the first Trump administration, publicized by The New York Times. Sooknanan reportedly took her stand in November 2020 after the law firm she worked for at the time, Jones Day, took on Trump as a client for one of the 2020 election lawsuits, just months after she made partner. Sooknanan left the firm shortly after Biden was sworn in as president. In August 2022, The New York Times ran its article.
The New York Times appears to have given Sooknanan a special feature within its reporting. However, Sooknanan wasn’t identified as a source.
Yet, Sooknanan was the only partner identified by name and quoted from what was likely intended to be a private, internal videoconference call for Jones Day partners addressing the firm’s involvement with Trump. Sooknanan was also given a brief blurb summarizing her background and career accomplishments.
“Sparkle Sooknanan, one of the firm’s young stars, also spoke up. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, she had set out to New York at age 16, paid her way through college and law school and landed clerkships for federal judges, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor,” stated The New York Times article. “Sooknanan had become a Jones Day partner earlier in the year at age 36. Now, on the call, her voice trembled as she denounced the firm’s work in Pennsylvania. ‘This lawsuit was brought for no other reason than to deprive poor people of the right to vote,’ she said.”
Shortly after Biden took office in January 2021, Sooknanan left Jones Day to become deputy associate attorney general in Biden’s Department of Justice.
By August 2022, someone had provided the broad details of that fateful 2020 Jones Day videoconference call to the biggest paper in the nation, with just one direct quote reportedly made by, as it would turn out, an aspiring district judge allegedly willing to denounce her former employer for working with Trump.
Between her prior clerkship with liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor and her major media feature portraying her as a young, diverse, foreign-born lawyer willing to push back against Trump and cut ties with those allied with him, it appears Sooknanan may have been intentionally positioned as Biden’s ideal pick to take over a district court vacancy. Biden announced his intent to nominate Sooknanan to the D.C. District Court in February 2024.
During her confirmation hearing before the Senate, Sooknanan denied making those featured remarks in The New York Times.
“Those were not my words. I do not know who provided that quote to the reporter,” said Sooknanan.
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