European Pressphoto Agency The bombing suspects' father, Anzor Tsarnaev, left, who plans to travel to the U.S., and mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, center, at a news conference Thursday in Makhachkala, a city in the Russian republic of Dagestan. 
 
 A federal judge decided to advise Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of his Miranda rights, even though investigators apparently still wanted to question him further under a public-safety exception. 
 
 The judge's move, made on Monday in the hospital where Mr. Tsarnaev was recovering, has prompted some Republican lawmakers to press the Justice Department as to why it didn't make a stronger bid to resist the judge's plans. 
 
 Those lawmakers say Mr. Tsarnaev's interrogation should have continued without him being advised of his right to remain silent, because they say agents should have had more time to determine if there were other undetected bombs or plotters. After being read his rights, the suspect stopped talking to investigators, officials said. 
 
 "There will be more instances like this, and we will need to have a much better understanding about what is appropriate," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R., Mich.) said in an interview Thursday. "We have a long-standing tradition that the judiciary does not interfere with investigations. This sets a very dangerous precedent." 
 
 Enlarge Image Close AP Police guard the entrance to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center on April 20, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being treated. 
 
 Investigators are invoking the "public safety exception" in their questioning of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev before advising him of his rights. Will using it now make things more difficult for prosecutors later? WSJ's Jason Bellini has "The Short Answer." Image: Associated Press/ Bob Leonard 
 
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 Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said Thursday, "The rules of criminal procedure require the court to advise the defendant of his right to silence and his right to counsel during the initial appearance.'' Mr. Boyd said Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler made it clear on Sunday, after the first sealed charges were filed in her court against Mr. Tsarnaev, 19 years old, that the hearing would be held the following day. 
 
 Federal rules require that defendants appear before a judge without unnecessary delay—usually defined as within one business day. 
 
 Judge Bowler convened the brief, makeshift court hearing in the hospital room about 16 hours after the complaint was filed. Her reading of the Miranda warning came as part of the formal presentation of charges to the suspect, an act that would normally take place in court. 
 
 Judge Bowler was the first government official to advise Mr. Tsarnaev of his right to remain silent after his capture Friday night, officials briefed on the matter said. 
 
 The judge first told the Justice Department on Saturday that she intended to read Mr. Tsarnaev his rights on Monday, according to people briefed on the discussions. One U.S. official said the judge cited the intense television coverage of the capture as one reason for initiating the criminal prosecution. 
 
 Through a court clerk, the judge declined to comment. 
 
 Under a 1984 Supreme Court ruling, a public-safety exception allows investigators to question suspects for an unspecified period without giving them a Miranda warning. The exception is designed to give law-enforcement officials time to determine if there are other threats to public safety. 
 
 It will ultimately be up to a court to decide which, if any, of the statements Mr. Tsarnaev made before he got the warning could be admissible evidence for the prosecution. 
 
 Andrew Arena, the former head of the Detroit office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation when it handled the case of the plane "underwear bomber'' in 2009, said he thought the Boston case was handled properly. 
 
 "When you bring the judge into it, that's what's going to happen. They don't work for the Justice Department, they don't work for Capitol Hill, they are going to do what they are legally obligated to do,'' said Mr. Arena. "I think [investigators] got what they were going to get out of him, anyway.'' 
 
 The legal treatment of Mr. Tsarnaev will revive a debate over how terrorist suspects should be interrogated and treated, a charged topic. 
 
 Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who tried to blow up the plane landing in Detroit, was read his Miranda rights shortly after his arrest, setting off a political furor. He initially stopped cooperating with investigators but later resumed. 
 
 Mr. Rogers said Justice officials should have pushed back on the judge's plans, citing the unique circumstance that additional bombs could still be in play. He wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder late Wednesday to register his concerns. 
 
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 "What I find shocking is that the judiciary proactively inserted itself into this circumstance and the Justice Department so readily acquiesced to the circumstance," he said. "The court doing this proactively, they may have jeopardized our ability to get public-safety information." 
 
 Mr. Rogers, a former FBI agent, said because of the severity of the threat and the suspect's poor health, investigators didn't have sufficient time to question him. Among the information investigators were still seeking was whether others were involved in the attacks and whether there were additional explosives hidden somewhere, he said. 
 
 New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Thursday that the Boston bombing suspects "spontaneously" decided to use their remaining explosives to attack New York's Times Square. WSJ Greater New York reporter Tamer El-Ghobashy joins The News Hub. (Photo: AP) 
 
 The FBI was aware Judge Bowler was planning to go to the hospital Monday and was "not happy about it," he said. "They believed they needed more time. This is not a good way to stop another bomb from going off." 
 
 An FBI spokesman declined to comment. 
 
 The revelation about the judge's role came late Wednesday at a briefing before the House Intelligence Committee. One lawmaker in the meeting asked FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce why the FBI didn't raise objections, according to another U.S. official. Mr. Joyce said in essence it wasn't the FBI's role to object to such a determination, the official said. 
 
 The answer surprised many of the lawmakers, the official said. "The whole tenor in the room changed," the official said. 
 
 Michael McCaul (R., Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a video interview on WSJ.com that the initial interrogation left much unknown. "The level of sophistication of these devices…leads a lot of us to believe there was some sort of training done by others," Mr. McCaul said. "I find it a bit astounding that people right out of the box are saying there's no foreign connection whatsoever, when the fact is the FBI has just begun their investigation." 
 
 When Tamerlan Tsarnaev sought his roots in Russia's North Caucasus last year, he arrived in a provincial capital where clan wars had matured into a haven for Islamist jihadists. Paul Sonne takes a closer look at Tamerlan's six-month trip. Photo: AP. 
 
 Separately on Thursday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Mr. Tsarnaev told interrogators that he and his brother, Tamerlan, had "spontaneously'' decided during a late-night crime spree last week to travel to Times Square to detonate the remainder of their explosives. But then, Tamerlan, 26, was killed in a firefight with police. 
 
 Authorities had previously said the two suspects had planned to go to New York to "party,'' based on statements the suspect made in his hospital bed late Saturday night. The following night, according to officials, he said that the brothers came up with the idea to drive to New York and detonate a half-dozen remaining homemade bombs. On Wednesday, federal counterterrorism officials notified the New York Police Department of Mr. Tsarnaev's statement. 
 
 New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the brothers had one pressure-cooker bomb in their possession at the time, similar to the two used in the Boston blasts that killed three people and left more than 200 injured. The five remaining explosives were pipe bombs, Mr. Kelly said. 
 
 Write to Devlin Barrett at devlin.barrett@wsj.com, Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com and Tamer El-Ghobashy at tamer.el-ghobashy@wsj.com 
 
 A version of this article appeared April 26, 2013, on page A6 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Judge Made Call to Advise Suspect of Rights. ||||| NBC's Michael Isikoff reports on what a source, inside the hospital room with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is telling him about Tsarnaev's interaction with investigators. NBC analyst Roger Cressey also joins to discuss what authorities are now saying about the Tsarnaev brothers' possible plans for an attack on New York City. 
 
 A badly wounded but awake Dzhokhar Tsarnaev showed little signs of fear or remorse during his hospital room court hearing earlier this week and his heart monitor didn’t register a blip when he was told he was facing the death penalty in the Boston Marathon bombing case, according to a source familiar with the events inside the hospital room when he was read his rights. 
 
 Tsarnaev’s face was splotched and swollen, his left hand was bandaged, and he was unable to talk during the brief court hearing presided over by U.S. Judge Marianne Bowler on Monday afternoon. 
 
 The surviving bombing suspect mouthed rather than said the word “no” when asked if he could afford a lawyer and nodded in the affirmative when asked if he understood his rights. 
 
 But Tsarnaev appeared to fully follow the proceeding, the source said. The most telling moment, the source said, came early on when, after Tsarnaev was informed of the two charges against him, the judge asked prosecutor William Weinreb to spell out the possible penalties he was facing. 
 
 “Your honor, the maximum penalty is death,” Weinreb said, according to a public transcript of the proceeding. 
 
 Tsarnaev showed no reaction — nor did his heart monitor register any change, the source said. “There was no blip at all,” said the source. 
 
 But heart monitors don’t always register emotional responses — and there is no way to tell what impact medications Tsarmaev may have been given had, according to medical experts. 
 
 There have also been conflicting reports about Tsarnaev’s mental state in the days after his capture. “Over the weekend, he’s in and out of lucidity,” Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell” show on Thursday. “He’s got — he’s on medication, he’s talking, but he’s not talking, he’s unconscious, he’s going for medical procedures.” 
 
 But those present at the bedside court hearing were convinced that Tsarnaev was fully cognizant of the circumstances he was facing, the source said. Judge Bowler agreed. “I find the defendant is alert, mentally competent and lucid,” she said, according to the transcript. “He is aware of the nature of the proceedings.” 
 
 Handout / FBI via Reuters Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, has been charged in the Boston Marathon bombing. 
 
 The court proceeding erupted as a source of controversy Thursday when Rogers charged that Judge Bowler had interfered with FBI questioning of Tsarnaev – and that the Justice Department failed to object — when she ordered that Tsarnaev be read his rights on Monday, a day after he was charged in a then-sealed complaint at 6:47 p.m. Sunday. 
 
 FBI agents were questioning Tsarnaev — and getting his responses in writing — under a “public safety exception” that allows agents to obtain information from criminal suspects for 48 hours without reading them their constitutional rights informing them they have the right to remain silent and a right to a lawyer. The information that agents got — including the disclosure Thursday that Tsarnaev and his brother had talked about driving to Times Square to set off more bombs — came during those sessions over the weekend. 
 
 But Rogers said Thursday that FBI agents “weren’t quite finished with him” when Bowler directed that the court hearing take place that Monday. “To have the court affirmatively push their way in, is — A) I think it's wrong, and B) we should have given the FBI the time that they needed.” Justice Department officials “have a lot of explaining to do.” 
 
 Bowler, asked by NBC News about Rogers’ charges in her federal courtroom in Boston Thursday, replied: “The court does not comment.” 
 
 A federal law enforcement official disputed Rogers’ account, telling NBC News that FBI agents had already left the hospital room and wrapped up their questioning before the court hearing took place mid-day Monday. In a statement emailed to reporters Thursday, Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said that, after the criminal complaint was filed, the rules of criminal procedure required the judge to advice the defendant of his rights. 
 
 “The prosecutors and FBI agents in Boston were advised of the scheduled initial appearance in advance of its occurrence,” he said. 
 
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– Dzhokhar Tsarnaev may have been badly wounded, with his face swollen, hand bandaged, and throat too injured to talk, but the young bomber apparently showed no signs of fear or regret during his hospital room court hearing Monday, reports NBC News. And when told the maximum penalty he was facing was death, Tsarnaev had no reaction: The heart monitor he was hooked up to registered "no blip at all," says a source. Experts, however, caution that emotional responses aren't always picked up by such monitors, and note that he may have been medicated at the time. Meanwhile, the judge who conducted that hearing, Marianne Bowler, has been harshly criticized ever since it was revealed she informed Tsarnaev of his Miranda rights during the Monday hearing; right after that he stopped talking to investigators. "We have a long-standing tradition that the judiciary does not interfere with investigations. This sets a very dangerous precedent," said House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers, who thinks the Justice Department should have intervened and forced a delay. Sources say Bowler told the DOJ on Saturday that she planned to read Tsarnaev his rights two days later, and a DOJ rep indicated that her actions were appropriate, reports the Wall Street Journal. "The rules of criminal procedure require the court to advise the defendant of his right to silence and his right to counsel during the initial appearance.''