Trump Goes 0-3
Yesterday was another extraordinary day on the political-legal front, with few commonalities among the three major rulings to knit them together into a coherent whole — except that the Trump administration consistently lost.
Trump’s losses came across a wide-range of purported assertions of executive power. He was blocked from:
interfering in California’s state-run federal elections;
firing career federal prosecutor Maurene Comey in disregard of civil service protections; and
disregarding Congress and federal law in pushing forward his personalist golf course project in D.C.
But set against those losses you still had corrupt new assertions of executive power:
interfering in Washington state’s midterm election; and
vindictively prosecuting Maurene Comey’s father, the former FBI director James Comey, for the third time.
You can see some connecting threads there, of course: the use of the Big Lie of noncitizen voting to undermine an election that Republicans are expected to lose badly, and the ongoing campaign of retribution against the Comey family for the supposed sins of the father.
It is also implicitly a story of the federal judiciary stiffening its spine, albeit unevenly, in the face of outrageous conduct by the Trump administration both in and out of court.
There’s a lot to unpack here, as the pace of Trump malfeasance quickens ahead of the election.
Harmonic Convergence of Trump Schemes
I do want to tie together two Trump schemes that have now become intertwined.
For months, I’ve been banging on here about President Trump’s scheme to circumvent the Senate, the Constitution, and federal law to install loyalists as the top federal prosecutors in blue states.
The scheme itself is lawless enough in its own right, but I’ve warned that it’s not an end unto itself, but a potential means to other bad acts, like targeting elected Dems.
Now we’re seeing at least one aspect of the end game coming into view: election interference.
Trump’s scheme to use the Big Lie of noncitizen voting to interfere in the midterm elections is being unspooled first in three districts that each have top federal prosecutors who were installed as part of Trump’s U.S. attorney scheme: the Central District of California and now the Eastern and Western Districts of Washington state.
Both Bill Essayli in Los Angeles and Pete Serrano in Spokane were installed as top prosecutors via a backdoor workaround that courts in other districts have already shot down as unlawful. Charles Neil Floyd in Seattle was installed after Trump fired court-appointed U.S. Attorney Roger Rogoff (who is suing over his termination), another Trump DOJ method that other courts have already invalidated. In addition to Rogoff’s lawsuit, litigation has already been underway challenging the appointment of Essayli.
Essayli has taken a high-profile public role in pushing the administration’s use of the pretext of noncitizen voting to interfere in the midterm elections. Serrano and Floyd followed suit yesterday with public fanfare. While the Big Lie scheme is being driven by top political appointees at Main Justice, all three prosecutors have made public pronouncements, and Essayli has facilitated arrests and prosecutions of alleged noncitizen voters.
It’s harder to imagine pulling off the scheme to interfere in the midterms with independent U.S. attorneys in place who came into office in the usual lawful ways: either Senate-confirmed after blue-slip approval from home state Democratic senators, or as career first assistant U.S. attorneys, or as federal court appointees.
The different lawful ways of installing a permanent or acting U.S. attorney speak to the checks and balances in place to preserve the separation of powers, pitting the legislative and judicial branches against the executive branch in a purposeful tension.
Trump has run roughshod over those checks and balances, and while the courts have repeatedly rejected his U.S. attorney scheme, they’ve been too slow to prevent the scheme from having real-world impacts on the election.
9th Circuit Blocks CA Election Interference
In a major early ruling, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump DOJ’s scheme to make California segregate and not count mail-in ballots from alleged noncitizen voters.
The 2-1 decision, which I write about at length here, found the Trump DOJ appeal to be premature and left the court without appellate jurisdiction to even hear it. But the dissent by a Trump appointee who reached the merits of the case prompted the two judges in the majority to file separate concurrences that said they would have ruled against the Trump DOJ had they had jurisdiction.
The two concurring opinions did two things: (i) laid out a map for the trial judge who is now considering the merits of the case what the appeals court panel will tolerate; and (ii) signaled to the Trump DOJ that it will be unlikely to prevail when the case returns to the 9th Circuit on the merits.
Notably, neither the Trump DOJ or any other judge on the 9th Circuit sought a rehearing last night of the panel’s decision. Unless the Trump DOJ goes to the Supreme Court next (and a clearly premature appeal would be a terrible posture from which to seek high court intervention), the case resumes today with an important hearing in front of U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who is in the somewhat unusual position of first taking up a case after it’s already been up on appeal.
California Case Gets Even Wackier
Ahead of today’s hearing in Los Angeles, the Trump DOJ filed new declarations overnight. Two things jump out, and they’re both doozies:
The Trump DOJ filed a declaration in support of its case from none other than Clint Curtis, the top election official in Shasta County who offered a job in his office to Big Lie aficionado Tina Peters after she was released from prison in Colorado. Peters declined the job. Curtis, who was defeated for reelection in June by someone he fired, claims that based on his knowledge of county election systems Los Angeles County can easily segregate alleged noncitizen ballots as the Trump DOJ is demanding.
In the course of challenging Los Angeles County’s preliminary analysis of the DOJ’s list of alleged noncitizen voter, a DHS official’s declaration appears to concede that one of the voters on the DOJ list turned out to be deceased and that four others “might have a claim to U.S. citizenship.”
Meanwhile, in Alaska …
The Trump DOJ’s attempt to block the certification of the U.S. Senate election in Alaska sits in a different bucket than the Big Lie of noncitizen voting. This is an opportunistic effort to salvage a seat based on the potential confusion around two candidates names, one of whom is the incumbent Republican — but it has the usual hallmarks of Trump DOJ lawlessness and sloppiness.
Among the developments:
The state of Alaska defendants have responded to the DOJ’s lawsuit for the first time and are opposing it. They filed a motion to dismiss.
Chief Judge Sharon L. Gleason (Obama) granted a motion to expedite her ruling on whether to allow Alaskans for Mary, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and other third parties to intervene in the case. She set a briefing schedule on that motion and, in the event she allows them to intervene, on the intervenor’s motions to dismiss.
In her order, Judge Gleason put enough spin on the ball to suggest she’s skeptical of the DOJ’s case. Among the clues she dropped, Judge Gleason noted that the general election ballot layout is the same as the one used in the primary and then wryly remarked: “The Court is unaware of any legal challenge as to how either candidate was listed on the primary ballot.”
Judge Gleason also offered up this accurate but hardly neutral description of how we got here: “After Alaskans had already begun casting their ballots for the November 2026 election—and nearly four months after the Alaska Supreme Court directed the Division of Elections to include Daniel J. Sullivan on the ballot for the upcoming United States Senate election—the United States initiated this action on October 22, 2026.”
The Biggest Pre-Election Concern
Rick Hasen and Shelby Wayment:
There is a dangerous possibility that the California and Alaska lawsuits may be precursors for a search warrant to seize ballots. The federal government has relied on debunked claims of voter fraud in past ballot seizures, like in Fulton County. Given DOJ’s recent track record, the lack of evidence of any actual crime in Alaska or California may not deter the federal government in seeking a warrant.
Trump Offers $1M for Voter Fraud Tips
President Trump, in a social media post: “Anybody reporting Voter Fraud in the past Elections, or the upcoming 2026 Midterm Election, will be paid $1,000,000 upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the Fraud!”
Quote of the Day
“This is the first time ever that we have had to engage in scenario planning to safeguard against potential federal interference in elections. It seems like the federal government is now adversarial to the states.”—Shenna Bellows (D), Maine secretary of state
Comey Vindictively Prosecuted Again
The Trump DOJ has filed newly unsealed charges against former FBI Director James Comey in what may be the most obviously corrupt way yet. Normally, this would be a story I’d spend all day unpacking. But alas here we are.
Wrongfully Fired Maurene Comey Wins
In a case with big implications for civil service protections and for President Trump’s unlawful purge of the Justice Department, U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman of Manhattan ruled in favor of fired career federal prosecutor Maurene Comey in her wrongful termination lawsuit against the DOJ. Another case we could spend all day unpacking. Suffice to say that there’s a lot here that will be tested on appeal. Stay tuned …
A Wild Ruling on Trump’s Golf Course Plan
Most of the headlines are focused on U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes of D.C. blocking the Trump administration from cutting down any more trees on the East Potomac Golf Course, but the underlying issues are quite a bit more important than tree removal.
Reyes’ ruling in the case also sets the stage for possible sanctions against the administration and in particular against Trump DOJ attorneys for their conduct in the case, including possibly misleading the court.
If you have a few extra moments today, the first 6 1/2 pages of Reyes ruling are a tour de force that provide a very good sense of how off the rails things have gotten.
News? Tips? Feedback? Please let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
Well, the DOJ rodeo has indeed come to WA, following the CA/NV et al script about "non-citizen" voting, yadda-yadda. But in this case, rather than proclaiming "thousands" of illegal votes, the WA US Attorney is "only" demanding full info on 400 "suspected" non-citizen voters, apparently centered in the '90s, and saying that "some" have become naturalized citizens since then.
More pre-election stunts and trumpy bullshit, which will be laughed out of court...fortunately for us voters in WA, we ALL vote by mail, so fuck these jerk-offs.
Bravo Judge Reyes. And a belated huzzah for " We don’t live in Schrödinger’s
golf course."