Trump DOJ Gives Federal Judges a Big New Eff You
INSIDE: John A. Sarcone III ... Jeanine Pirro ... Pam Bondi
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
‘You Are Fired, Donald Kinsella’
The Trump administration’s effort to bypass Senate confirmation for some blue state U.S. attorneys is not nearly over.
After its bids to appoint Lindsey Halligan, Alina Habba, and others were rejected by federal courts as unlawful and invalid, the administration is now escalating its slow-rolling confrontation with the judicial branch over the limits of its statutory powers.
With a tone and flourish that suggested he was auditioning for “The Apprentice,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche immediately fired an interim U.S. attorney who had just been sworn in yesterday by the federal judges in the Northern District of New York.
The pattern is probably familiar to you by now.
Last year, the Trump administration tried an elaborate workaround in the district to bypass the Senate and local judges and retain control over who can appoint interim U.S. attorneys indefinitely. After the controversial John A. Sarcone III’s initial term as interim U.S. attorney expired by statute in July, the federal judges in the district declined to extend his term.
The Trump DOJ made Sarcone (who had no prior experience as a prosecutor) a “special attorney” and contended that gave him all the powers of a U.S. attorney. But a federal judge last month rejected that workaround as invalid, in a challenge brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Still, the judge stopped short of removing Sarcone, and he limped along in the purported role until his 210-day term under a different statute expired this month.
At that point, the judges went ahead and exercised their statutory powers to appoint an interim U.S. attorney until the Senate confirms someone to the permanent position, naming Donald T. Kinsella, 79, who has had a long legal career that included a stint as chief of the criminal division in that U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Kinsella was sworn in yesterday in a private ceremony, the NYT reports, but within hours Blanche purported to fire him:
“Reached by phone on Wednesday evening, Mr. Kinsella said that he did not yet know whether the White House email carried the force of law,” the NYT reports. “He said he would discuss the matter with the district judges in the morning and go from there.”
It’s not the first time this has happened. In New Jersey last July, the federal judges appointed Desiree Leigh Grace as interim U.S. attorney when Habba’s initial 120-day term ended. But she was promptly fired by Attorney General Pam Bondi. “This Department of Justice does not tolerate rogue judges — especially when they threaten the President’s core Article II powers,” Bondi posted on X at the time.
The judges didn’t challenge the firing of Grace, a career federal prosecutor, and she is now in private practice, according to her LinkedIn profile. Instead, Habba continued to serve even after an outside judge ruled in August that her appointment was invalid past the initial 120 days. That decision was upheld on appeal in December, at which point Habba finally stepped down.
But that didn’t stop Bondi. She named three people to jointly run the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office rather than concede the appointment power to federal judges. That arrangement is currently being challenged in court.
In the Eastern District of Virginia, the judges similarly let Halligan’s term expire even after her appointment was invalidated by an outside judge, suggesting they wanted to avoid a direct confrontation with the executive branch. Since then, they have been advertising for the interim position but have not announced their appointment and the vacancy remains.
The statutory scheme is clearly intended to put a use-it-or-lose-it constraint on the president: either nominate someone who can win Senate approval or lose your appointment power to federal judges. While the Trump administration’s challenge to the statutory arrangement doesn’t really impinge on the judicial branch’s constitutional role, it is a direct challenge to the Senate’s powers of advise and consent under the Constitution.
I’m not sure what the Supreme Court will ultimately say about this, but its unitary executive priors suggest it will want to preserve the president’s powers. What’s striking, though, is that Trump’s conduct in appointing people without prosecutorial experience and who are personally and politically beholden to him — Halligan was a White House aide and former personal attorney to Trump — is precisely why the power to appoint interim U.S. attorneys indefinitely was delegated to judges. Trump is proving the point in a way that makes the risks not merely hypothetical.
As of this morning, Sarcone is listed as the first assistant U.S. attorney on the office’s website.
Pirro Won ZERO Grand Jurors
The politicized attempt to indict six sitting Democratic members of Congress was not only rejected by a D.C. federal grand jury, but U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s case was unanimously rejected by grand jurors, NBC News reports.
To secure an indictment, Pirro needed the votes of 12 grand jurors out of the 16-23 that typically make up a grand jury. She got zero.
Dance Photographer Presented the Case
Pirro picked a former state prosecutor with whom she had worked decades ago in Westchester County, New York, to present the case against congressional Democrats to the grand jury. Steven Vandervelden had no prior federal prosecution experience before being hired by Pirro last year.
As Bloomberg reports, Vandervelden maintains an active business as what he describes as a “fine-art dance, fitness, and portrait photographer.”
“In a brief phone interview Wednesday, he confirmed he is the same Vandervelden who posted an update to his studio’s Instagram account several hours earlier,” Bloomberg snarkily noted.
Pirro gave Bloomberg a statement for the ages in defense of Vandervelden (emphasis mine):
Steven Vandervelden is one of the best prosecutors and best investigators that I have worked with in well over three decades in the criminal justice system. Any attempt to undercut his expertise is nothing more than an effort to detract from his excellent prosecutorial record to which few can compare. And by the way, everybody has a hobby.
The other Pirro hand on the case was Carlton Davis, who has minimal experience as a federal prosecutor.
Ron Swanson Walks Amongst Us
One of the White House-hired election conspiracists identified in the FBI affidavit to obtain a search warrant for the Fulton County election spent a couple of hours on the phone with TPM’s Hunter Walker shortly after the affidavit was unsealed.
What emerges from the interview with Clay Parikh is a man drawn to apocalyptic theology and obsessed with Deep State conspiracies who watches too much TV. In addition to treating “Parks and Rec” character Ron Swanson as a personal hero, Parikh seems to take NBC’s “The Blacklist” quite literally.
These are the people to whom Trump is delegating the vast powers of the state to carry out his retribution campaign against everyone he holds responsible for having lost the 2020 election.
The Retribution: Supermax Edition
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from sending to Supermax 20 prisoners whose death sentences were commuted by President Biden.
U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly of D.C., said federal regulations provide only two bases for sending inmates to the infamous prison in Florence, Colorado, and it was obvious that President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi had predetermined that the men would be transferred there. Trump had promised that the former death row inmates would be treated has harshly as possible.
“[I]t is likely that the process provided to Plaintiffs was an empty exercise to approve an outcome that was decided before it even began, thereby contravening their due process
rights,” Kelly, a Trump appointee, ruled.
CBP Shoots Laser at Party Balloon
The absurdity that is the Trump II presidency was on full display with the abrupt closure of the main airport for El Paso, the 69th largest metro area in the country.
The initial reports about what happened and why were confused, and the Trump administration is still maintaining what is now an apparent fiction: That it was defending against a drone attack from across the border in Mexico.
What really happened, according to the most reliable reports, is that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth agreed to lend to DHS the military’s anti-drone high-energy laser and Custom and Border Patrol used it to shoot down … a “party balloon.” That recklessness apparently alarmed the FAA — which was not alerted to the deployment of the laser — because of the risk of cowboy laser shooters from CBP accidentally targeting civilian aircraft.
It’s comic mishap that would made Dr. Strangelove blush.
Not Worth Anyone’s Time
Televised congressional hearings lost their civic utility a long time ago, but the Trump administration has introduced a reality TV element that makes them actively damaging and distorting:
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
Yeah, Wednesday’s EPSTEIN’s didn’t even rise to the level of disgraceful—not just Bondi but the Republican Congress-things.
But I digress. The point I actually want to make is just a reminder: Give the protege of mobsters absolute power and watch how he has no interest in obeying the law.
You can’t fight in here! This is the war room!