Federal Judges Have Absolutely Had It With The Trump Administration, DOJ

Legal Issues

from the gtfo-with-this-bullshit dept

Maybe this won’t actually mean anything when all is said and done. Maybe what we’re seeing here is the last dying breaths of a democracy as its current owners sell it off for parts and consolidate their power. But maybe it’s the other thing: the checks and balances putting down as much damaging stuff on the permanent record that it may head off the collapse of the republic and provide plenty of warning for those who follow in their footsteps.

Even if it seems a bit useless in the face of the authoritarian endgame the Trump administration is actively pursuing, it’s still worth saying. And it’s still worth reading.

The sort of thing detailed below is novel. It’s something that has been directly — and deliberately — provoked by the Trump administration’s statements and actions. For the most part, courts have shown the government a great deal of deference, doing things like referring to outright lies as “misrepresentations” or “inconsistencies in testimony.” And the government has likewise shown deference to the courts, responding to losses by stating they respectfully disagree with these decisions.

None of that remains now. The Trump administration has sued the federal courts of an entire state and responded to losses by making personal attacks against judges, when not actually trying to get judges removed from their positions permanently.

Having witnessed this incredibly speedy erosion of respect for not just courts, but the rule of law and the Constitution that governs everything in between, judges are firing back in court, making it exceedingly clear they no longer trust Trump or the federal government he controls to engage honestly with the rest of the system of checks and balances.

Some absolutely scathing quotes from judges are included in this report by Alan Feuer for the New York Times, which also contains more concerning statements about the ongoing disintegration of the norms that have helped govern this nation since its inception.

But let’s get to the good, righteously furious stuff, because that’s what we all need to hear once in a while when everything else seems so aggressively shitty that we’re starting to explore dual-citizenship options.

In June, for instance, an order was unsealed in Federal District Court in Washington showing Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui ripping into prosecutors after they tried to convince him that he needed to be “highly deferential” to their request to keep sealed a search warrant in an ordinary criminal case.

“Blind deference to the government?” Judge Faruqui wrote. “That is no longer a thing. Trust that has been earned over generations has been lost in weeks.”

That’s how trust works. Several administrations and their DOJs have gone up and down the trust scale, but not until now has an administration seemingly made a deliberate effort to set fire to the decades of trust established by the government not being actively evil or shamelessly lying to judges. And that’s not even including multiple whistleblowers reporting that DOJ lawyers had been told to say “fuck you” to the courts if they delivered decisions or injunctions Trump’s administration didn’t feel like following.

The government no longer has the benefit of a doubt when defending itself against lawsuits.

In a similar fashion, a federal judge on Long Island refused last month to take the department’s word after prosecutors asked her to dismiss an indictment against Vladimir Arévalo Chávez, a leader of the violent street gang MS-13, in preparation for sending him back to El Salvador.

Instead of simply accepting the government’s assertion that the case against Mr. Arévalo Chávez needed to be tossed out because of “national security” concerns, the judge, Joan M. Azrack, ordered the government to tell her more about the politics behind the case. By that, she was referring to a deal reached between the Trump administration and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador to hold immigrants deported from the United States in a Salvadoran prison in exchange for the return of MS-13 leaders in U.S. custody.

It’s only going to get worse for this administration, at least in terms of what judges are willing to say in published opinions. But it will be worse at every level up to that point, which is something this administration seems unable to recognize. It will no longer be given the “presumption of regularity,” a concept that assumes both the court and the executive branch are acting in good faith.

This administration never acts in good faith. Judges — including Trump appointees — already recognize this. Now they’re going further, pointing it out in public hearings and in public documents, presumably in hope of making sure Americans — even those who support Trump — know exactly how eagerly this particular government is willing to lie, cheat, and otherwise destroy the system that has made the United States the leader of the Free World for nearly 250 years. This isn’t judicial activism, no matter how often Trump claims otherwise. (That’s what the Supreme Court is for.) This is nothing more than the government getting every bit of disrespect it has earned over the past six months.

Filed Under: contempt of court, doj, federal courts, ice, kash patel, mass deportation, pam bondi, rights violations, trump administration