Every sitting district judge in the Middle District of Tennessee has stepped off Senator Marsha Blackburn’s civil rights lawsuit against former Special Counsel Jack Smith, forcing the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to designate an outside judge to hear the case.
Chief Judge William L. Campbell, Jr. signed the one-page order on October 5, 2026, in Blackburn v. Smith. The order states, in full: “All District Judges of the Middle District of Tennessee have recused in this matter.
As such, a District Judge from outside the District will be designated by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. When the designation is made, the case will be reassigned.”
The court gave no reason. Why are these judges running for the hills?
NEW: Every federal judge in the Middle District of Tennessee has recused from Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s lawsuit against former Special Counsel Jack Smith. The Sixth Circuit will now designate an outside district judge to hear the case. https://t.co/cIV8vwNVuh
— SCOTUS Wire (@scotus_wire) October 5, 2026
Smith has already waived service. That waiver was filed the same morning the full-bench recusal order dropped.
The docket shows the judges did not all leave at once. An individual recusal order was entered on October 2. By Monday afternoon, Campbell certified that the entire district bench was out. The case now sits with the clerk until the Sixth Circuit picks a judge from somewhere else in the circuit.
As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Senator Blackburn (R-TN) dropped a massive lawsuit in late September demanding justice after it was revealed that Jack Smith’s out-of-control, partisan witch-hunt secretly obtained her private cell phone records from Verizon.
Smith and his team of far-left thugs didn’t just target President Trump, they obtained secret non-disclosure orders to hide the fact that they were spying on a sitting U.S. Senator, effectively stripping her of her constitutional Speech or Debate Clause protections.
“This lawsuit is solely about holding Mr. Smith accountable and ensuring that our nation’s justice system can never again be weaponized against the American people,” Blackburn told Fox News Digital.
“Through his Arctic Frost witch-hunt that targeted conservatives across America and even the president of the United States, Jack Smith perpetrated one of the worst abuses of government power in our nation’s history.”
All of this was done by a rogue operator who was never lawfully nominated by the President or confirmed by the U.S. Senate to wield such terrifying power.
When Smith’s goons went to a federal judge in D.C. to get the nondisclosure order, they reportedly concealed the fact that the subpoena targeted a Republican member of Congress. It is one of the most shocking abuses of power in American history.
Jim Hᴏft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
You can email Jim Hᴏft here, and read more of Jim Hᴏft’s articles here.
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