The Trump DOJ Has Utterly Collapsed and It Ain’t Pretty
INSIDE: Patrick J. Schiltz ... Stephen Miller ... Mark Kelly
The Destruction: DOJ Edition
One of the intended consequences of President Trump’s politicization of the Justice Department is to leave behind a weakened, overwhelmed, decimated organization that simply can’t do its job.
They’re hollowing out the DOJ by purging nonpartisan career attorneys, making life intolerable for those who remain, and replacing them with loyalists sucks the capacity out of the organization. It can’t handle as many cases, isn’t capable of tackling ambitious ones, and the quality of the lawyering suffers in all cases.
This is all coming home to roost in a very visible way in Minnesota, where the lawless Operation Metro Surge has produced hundreds of habeas cases filed by wrongfully detained immigrants. The chief federal judge in Minnesota, speaking for an overwhelmed judiciary, has already publicly castigated the Trump administration for not preparing for the flood of cases that its mass deportation operation in the state was bound to generate. (Chris Geidner explains the ins and outs of why we’re seeing so many cases.)
Meanwhile, the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office has been crippled by mass resignations, including some of its most senior career attorneys. That has left the remaining DOJ attorneys in Minnesota inundated with more cases than they can keep up with. But I’m not sure that does justice to what’s been happening. It’s quite a bit worse than that.
The quality of lawyering has eroded to such a point that government lawyers have been unable to keep up with the court orders demanding that detainees be released. As a result, detainees have lingered in confinement even after courts have ordered their release.
Last week, as the Star Tribune first reported, Ana Voss, a career DOJer who was the chief of the civil division in the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office, submitted an astonishing court filing in which she admitted that her office had not followed a judicial order to release a detainee because they hadn’t seen the email.
“I did not timely read these orders,” Voss reportedly said in the court filing. “I understand that is inexcusable.”
But it doesn’t appear to be a case of incompetence or willful disregard. As Voss explained in the filing: “It has become apparent to me that I am not able to effectively triage and review every order which is not an acceptable practice for me or the United States.”
Voss is reported to have subsequently resigned.
Numerous reports have suggested that mass resignations in the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office are not due solely to the failure to investigate the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. My suspicion is that the hell-on-wheels inundation of immigration cases is another contributing factor.
More evidence of that emerged yesterday, when Julie Le, an attorney for the government, essentially melted down in court, as FOX9’s Paul Blume reported :
“I wish you would just hold me in contempt of court so I can get 24 hours of sleep,” Le said. “The system sucks, this job sucks, I am trying with every breath I have to get you what I need.”
As Joyce Vance notes, Le is not a regular assistant U.S. attorney but a “special” AUSA. She is reported to have been working as a DHS attorney before being detailed to the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office to help with the flood of immigration cases. Le had been assigned more than 88 cases since December.
It’s easy to see this as attorneys getting what they deserve for participating in a corrupted system, but remember it’s the detainees who are languishing despite courts ordering their release. I’ve seen defiant DOJ political appointees in court telling judges to shove it. Le does not appear to be one of those kinds of attorneys:
“I am here to make sure the agency understands how important it is to comply with court orders,” said Le, who became visibly emotional during the court hearing.
Le was removed from the U.S. Attorney’s Office after her courtroom remarks, NBC News reports.
When chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz said last week that the Trump administration had violated 96 court orders in 78 cases since Jan. 1 in Minnesota alone, I first thought this was another Trump administration gambit to defy the judicial branch. And it may be, but it’s not as direct as the confrontations in the Alien Enemies Act and Abrego Garcia cases.
As Princeton’s Deborah Pearlstein notes:
It seems increasingly clear the rampant noncompliance with court habeas orders happening in immigration cases now is not a problem of attorney ethics. It’s a symptom of structural, institutional collapse at the Department of Justice.
The Trump administration is tearing down U.S. Attorney’s offices and undermining Main Justice so that there simply aren’t the resources to even respond to the judicial branch. A burn it all down ethos. Catch me if you can.
Keep an Eye on This One …
U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson of Minneapolis ordered the pretrial release of two immigrants accused of assaulting an ICE agent who shot one of the men in an incident last month. But the men did not make it out of the courthouse before they were re-detained, by ICE, the Star Tribune reports.
Attorneys for Alfredo Aljorna and Julio Sosa-Celis were quickly back in court, filing a habeas petition seeking their release from ICE custody. Last night, chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz ordered the Trump administration not to remove the men from Minnesota and, if they already had, then to return them to Minnesota immediately.
Not to get overlooked: At the pretrial hearing, the mens’ attorneys introduced into evidence photos of the shooting scene that suggest the ICE agent shot through a closed door and undermine the government’s account what happened.
Quote of the Day
“In the last few weeks, our family took some consolation thinking that perhaps Nee’s death would bring about change in our country. And it has not.”—Luke Ganger, brother of Renee Good
Judge Protects Anti-ICE Protesters
U.S. District Judge Michael Simon issued a temporary restraining order barring federal agents from using tear gas and other crowd-control weapons against peaceful protesters and journalists outside an ICE facility in Portland, Oregon.
In his order, Simon was harshly critical of the Trump administration:
“the repeated shooting and teargassing of nonviolent protesters at the Portland ICE Building will likely keep recurring … Defendants’ violence is in no way isolated.”
“statements made by DHS officials and senior federal executives show that the culture of the agency and its employees is to celebrate violent responses over fair and diplomatic ones.”
“Rather than reprimanding DHS violence against protesters, senior officials have publicly condoned it.”
“There are clear instances of excessive force, including a use of force incident recorded by ICE’s own cameras and deemed “inappropriate” and “not reasonable” by a Federal Protective Service (“FPS”) Deputy Regional Director. Yet, the agents involved were not put on leave and do not appear to have been held accountable in any way.”
Villain-in-Chief: Stephen Miller
Whenever President Trump puts on a performative display of hyper-aggressive dominance, Stephen Miller can be found lurking in the background egging him on, the WSJ documents.
Forget the Dog Whistles, Just Pure Racism
President Trump’s call for nationalizing voting in America is fundamentally racist, and in case you missed the dog whistle from two days ago, he said it loud and clear yesterday:
Take a look at Detroit…take a look at Philadelphia, take a look at Atlanta. The federal government should not allow that. The federal government should get involved. These are agents of the federal government to count the vote. If they can’t count the vote legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.
Trump offered no evidence, just pure racist invective.
IMPORTANT
New reporting from TPM’s Josh Kovensky: In a dramatic departure from how DOJ historically used the federal material support for terrorism statute, it is upgrading what would have been routine prosecutions into terrorism cases when they involve people President Trump has cast as his political enemies.
Trump DOJ Watch: NJ Edition
The Trump administration’s reported top choice to succeed Alina Habba as U.S. attorney in New Jersey is Trump DOJ official Jordan Fox, 30, five years out of law school with no experience as a prosecutor.
President Trump is persisting in seeking an interim U.S. attorney rather than a permanent one so that he doesn’t have to submit to the Senate’s blue-slip process, in which the state’s two Democratic senators effectively have veto power over his selection. But that leaves the federal judges in the state to make the selection, so Fox is making calls to try to drum up their support.
Headline of the Day
TPM’s Kate Riga reports from federal court in D.C. on Judge Richard Leon’s deep skepticism about the legality of the Trump Pentagon’s retribution crusade against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ).
Our Strange Defeat
Felicia Kornbluh revisits the work of French historian Marc Bloch, executed by the Nazis in 1944, to grapple with the question of why mainstream institutions fell so easily to Trumpism.
Thank you for this excellent post on all things legal. Comprehensive coverage. 😊
"When chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz said last week that the Trump administration had violated 96 court orders in 78 cases since Jan. 1 in Minnesota alone, I first thought this was another Trump administration gambit to defy the judicial branch. "
Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."