Alaska’s U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski says she fully supports a judicial panel’s recommendation to impeach Joshua Kindred, who abruptly resigned from a lifetime appointment to the U.S. District Court of Alaska this summer over a litany of scummy behavior.
Kindred, once a rising star in conservative circles, was appointed by President Donald Trump in what was seen as a major win for resource development and other issues that come through the U.S. District Court in Alaska. He resigned in July as a report detailing inappropriate sexual encounters, hostile workplace and other inappropriate behavior since he was appointed in 2019.
The recommendation comes from the Judicial Conference, the policymaking body of the U.S. Court system, and will go to the U.S. House for a potential vote. A majority vote would send it to the Senate, where a trial would be held, and a two-thirds vote would be needed to convict.
If it does, Murkowski left little doubt over how she’d vote.
“I am in complete agreement with the Judicial Conference of the United States and their recommendation that former U.S. District Judge Josh Kindred be considered for impeachment,” she said in a statement posted to Twitter. “We must send a message that there is zero tolerance for this reprehensible behavior in our judicial system or any workplace in this country.”
Kindred would be just the 16th judge in the country’s history to be impeached by the House since 1804, according to the Federal Judicial Center. He would join other judges impeached over drunkenness on the bench (which has happened more than once), corruption, perjury and sexual assault.
To legal scholars, it’s a statement by a court system that has been rocked by its own ethical transgressions on the U.S. Supreme Court.
“It matters to the public, and it matters as a pronouncement of unacceptable behavior on the part of judges,” said Stephen Gillers, a judicial ethics expert at New York University Law School, told The Washington Post. “It’s the equivalent of saying, ‘We have no tolerance for this kind of behavior.’”
Gillers added that the congressional process should “should not be partisan,” arguing that no one stands to win anything from impeding the proceedings.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
