Judge James Boasberg tried to physically turn Trump's deportation planes around mid-air.
Now Natalie Winters has documents raising a very different question about what Boasberg was doing while he ran the FISA court.
What she found in nine years of official program records is already pushing Republicans toward the word impeachment.
Judge Boasberg Opened America's Secret Spy Court to a CCP-Funded Chinese Program Six Times
Conservatives already had a thick file on U.S. District Chief Judge James Boasberg before this week.
He blocked Trump's 2025 deportation flights, ordered planes carrying Venezuelan gang members back before they could land, then launched contempt proceedings against the administration for defying him.
The DC Circuit eventually shut that down, with the majority calling his contempt inquiry a "clear abuse of discretion."
Before that, Boasberg presided over Trump grand jury proceedings, ruled on executive privilege disputes during the Jack Smith investigation, and consistently positioned himself at the center of every major legal battle aimed at the Trump agenda.
Republicans filed impeachment articles.
Trump called him a "radical left lunatic."
Winters' documents ask a question his rulings cannot answer: who was he letting inside the building.
Those records show Boasberg is listed as a "9X Host" on the official annual records of the US-Asia Institute's Szymanski Rule of Law program – a Chinese law student exchange that funneled Beijing nationals into direct contact with American judges and officials.
The years: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, and 2024.
Six of those nine sessions landed inside Boasberg's tenure on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court – the secret tribunal that reviews the government's most sensitive applications for surveillance and intelligence searches on American soil.
One of those sessions was 2020, when Boasberg was not just a FISA court member.
He was its presiding judge.
The program's own recruiting material – a 2023 flyer published by China's Tsinghua University – confirms the exchange was underwritten by the China-United States Exchange Foundation, known as CUSEF.
House China Committee Chairman John Moolenaar identified CUSEF in a November 2025 letter as an instrument of CCP political warfare, warning that organizations like it help Beijing "identify foreigners who the party could exploit."
The Senate Intelligence Committee called it "a united front-linked organization that advances Chinese Communist Party interests."
CUSEF is a registered foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Its founder, Tung Chee-hwa, occupied a senior position inside the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 2005 to 2023 – the body Beijing uses to run its influence operations abroad.
The program itself was co-founded in 2008 by J. Matthew Szymanski and Sun Chao, who at the time was serving as the Communist Party secretary of Shanghai's Minhang District.
The Tsinghua flyer Winters unearthed promised Chinese applicants "exclusive conversations with influential actors" across American government, law, and business, along with access to proceedings "few are ever able to witness firsthand."
Boasberg was a host that year.
There is a photograph.
https://twitter.com/nataliegwinters/status/2100652201584591069
A program overview shows Boasberg seated at a courtroom's judicial dais with five Chinese fellows standing beside and behind him – captioned as a 2015 session, one year into his FISA tenure.
William Burns – whom Democrats celebrated when Biden nominated him to run the CIA – told the Senate Intelligence Committee at his 2021 confirmation hearing that he had already ended the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's relationship with CUSEF after taking over as its president.
"We were increasingly worried about the expansion of Chinese influence operations," Burns said.
Just two years later, Boasberg was on the host list for a Washington program carrying CUSEF's name and logo in its own recruitment material.
Boasberg Then Blocked the Pentagon From Flagging WuXi AppTec as a Chinese Military Company
The Chinese connections do not stop at the exchange program.
In August 2026, Boasberg issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Pentagon from enforcing its designation of WuXi AppTec as a Chinese military-linked company.
The Pentagon had added WuXi to the list under the National Defense Authorization Act – a designation with direct implications for federal contracting under the BIOSECURE Act, which restricts American agencies from doing business with specific Chinese biotech firms.
Boasberg stopped all of it.
Rudy Giuliani said publicly that Boasberg could face impeachment over that ruling.
Set that next to everything else in Boasberg's anti-Trump record – and the picture that emerges is not complicated.
The judge who spent years reading America's most classified FISA warrants was simultaneously welcoming Chinese nationals from a CUSEF-backed program nine times.
Then he shielded a Chinese biotech firm from Pentagon accountability.
Congressional investigators now have a precise starting question: what exactly did the CCP-backed Chinese fellows see inside Boasberg's courtroom during those six years he was presiding over the nation's most secret intelligence tribunal?
That question is not going away – and the documents Winters published mean Boasberg can no longer pretend it is.
Sources:
- Natalie Winters, "Judge Boasberg Was a Nine-Time Host for Chinese Exchange Backed by CCP 'Political Warfare' Group," Substack, September 17, 2026.
- Staff, "Report: Trump-Hostile Judge Hosted Alleged Chinese Spy Front's CCP Program 9 Times," BizPac Review, September 19, 2026.
- Staff, "Report: Judge Boasberg Hosted CCP-Funded Legal Exchange Nine Times," World Tribune, September 20, 2026.
- Staff, "Rudy Giuliani Says Judge Boasberg Could Face Impeachment Over Chinese Biotech Company Ruling," Washington Times, August 14, 2026.
- Anders Hagstrom, "Appeals Court Dismisses DOJ Misconduct Complaint Against Federal Judge," Fox News, February 2, 2026.