Trump DOJ Colludes on Trump Appeal
All of a sudden the Justice Department wants to be involved in President Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS — and it’s gunning to get the judge who imposed sanctions on Trump’s attorneys removed from the case.
After sitting out the IRS case in any official way at the trial court, the Trump DOJ overnight jumped into the appeal of the case by Trump and his co-plaintiffs that challenges the sanctions imposed by U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams as punishment for the collusive lawsuit.
The Trump DOJ’s failure to defend the lawsuit — unlike it had in other similar lawsuits for illegal IRS leaks of taxpayer information — was the centerpiece of Judge Williams’ concerns that there was no true adversity between the parties. It’s why she appointed distinguished outside counsel to serve as friends of the court so that she would be able to hear something approximating “the other side” in the case. It was a major factor in her ultimate conclusion that the Trump plaintiffs and Trump administration defendants were all on the same side.
The new DOJ filing at the 11th Circuit was signed only by Trent McCotter, a political appointee only just installed as acting deputy attorney general this week after Todd Blanche was confirmed as attorney general. It was McCotter who earlier this week was upbraided by a federal judge in Brooklyn for his conduct in dropping a criminal fraud prosecution of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani.
While it’s been perfectly clear all along whose side the Trump DOJ has been on in the IRS lawsuit, the Justice Department was careful to keep some distance from the case in court. No government lawyer entered an appearance in the case. No responsive pleading to the Trump complaint was ever filed. No defense to the Trump lawsuit was ever mounted.
Judge Williams noted all of these irregularities in her order finding that the lawsuit was collusive and imposing sanctions on Trump’s personal lawyers, while referring top DOJ officials Blanche and Stanley Woodward for potential attorney discipline at the state level. It was one of her critical findings in her conclusion that the Trump lawsuit and the resulting “settlement” that created the “anti-weaponization” slush fund and unlawfully granted IRS immunity to the Trumps was bogus:
For the 109 days that this case was pending, no attorney representing the United States filed a notice of appearance or any document indicating the government’s position, interest, or awareness of this matter.
As recently as Aug. 1, Judge Williams threw another dart at the Trump DOJ for failing to defend the case. When Trump and his lawyers asked her to pause her sanctions order while they appealed, Williams asked the court-appointed amici to weigh in on the motion “in light of the fact that Defendants do not intend to appear or file a response.”
Now the Trump DOJ is actively colluding with Trump at the appeals court, but doing so even more openly and brazenly that it did in Judge Williams’ court.
McCotter has leaped in on the side of the Trump plaintiffs’ side in supporting their motion to pause the sanctions while their appeal proceeds. McCotter urges the appeals court to stay Judge Williams’ sanction order, argues that the Trump plaintiffs are “exceedingly likely” to win their appeal, and then rehashes many of the Trump team’s arguments for why Williams overreached.
But McCotter doesn’t stop there. He mounts a more aggressive attack on Judge Williams that the Trump plaintiffs did by seeking to have the appeals court reassign the case from Williams to a new judge, accusing her of “improper political motivation”; suggesting she timed her sanctions order to derail Blanche’s nomination as attorney general; and improbably accusing her of intentionally keeping Blanche and the DOJ from participating in the case (even though they had gone out of their way to avoid appearing in the case).
In arguing for Williams’ removal from the case, McCotter writes:
This Court need not conclude that the District Court’s actions were improperly motivated, but rather only that reasonable members of the public would view them that way. That standard has certainly been satisfied. This Court should order reassignment. To be sure, no remaining proceedings are needed or appropriate in the District Court: the Order should be stayed and ultimately vacated, and the District Court lost jurisdiction months ago. The District Court is the only one insistent on trying to keep the lower-court proceedings going, on the flimsiest of bases. But for precisely that reason, this Court should order reassignment.
Because of the way this case has proceeded, it’s not even clear that the government is a party to the appeal since it never participated in the case. The appeals court has styled the case as Donald Trump, et al v. Thirty-Five Former Federal Judges, with no mention of the original federal government defendants (the IRS and the Treasury Department). Reinforcing the weirdness, McCotter’s unusual filing is styled as “Defendants’ Response to Appellant’s Time-Sensitive Motion for a Stay,” but it’s docketed as an “Amicus Brief as of right or by consent of the parties filed by R. Trent McCotter for Internal Revenue Service and Department of Treasury.”
But the precise legal permutations aren’t the point here. It’s the No. 2 political appointee at DOJ, with no backing from career attorneys, aggressively jumping to President Trump’s defense in a case whose central dispute is the finding of collusion between the Justice Department and the president — and doing so after carefully sitting out the early rounds of the case at the trial court to make the travesty look slightly less obviously bad. Now the Trump DOJ has dropped any pretense.
Mass Deportation Watch
Illinois: An ICE agent pleaded guilty to a state misdemeanor battery charge for throwing a protestor to the ground while off duty during Operation Midway Blitz. He was sentenced to a year of court supervision.
Worldwide: Trump’s detention archipelago spans 35 countries, including far-flung places like Eswatini, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Ghana, Palau, Uzbekistan and Moldova
Ukraine Beats US in Military Exercise
Having mastered modern drone warfare, Ukraine has run circles around the U.S., U.K., and Sweden in recent military training exercises in Europe, the WSJ reports.
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Thank you for the link on drones. Our DOD/DOW puts too much emphasis on testosterone and not enough on intelligent use of strategy. IMHO
Es tan triste leer a lo que llegó el poder judicial tanto en tu país como en el mío, la Argentina de Milei y Trump, digo así, porque no tenemos que olvidar que sin la ayuda de Trump, Milei no hubiese ganado las legislativas en segunda vuelta, el año pasado. Pero te decía, qué triste lo de los poderes judiciales tan corruptos, tan "injustos", ya que son la base que sostienen la reparación de los ciudadanos. Sin justicia no hay descanso. La moral flaquea, la decadencia avanza y así, los ciudadanos de mi país, por ejemplo, a veces optan por el único camino en el que son libres, el suicidio. Sabías que en Argentina, el índice de los suicidios ya sobrepasó al de los homicidios? Sí, en Argentina se suicida más gente que la que es asesinada. Triste ¿no?, pero creo que más allá de la economía como vínculo con esto, la gran causa de los males es la falta de justicia o la justicia corrupta: no hay quién nos respalde. Esa sensación que nos daba nuestro padre o madre, nuestros abuelos y abuelas, de que si hacíamos las cosas mal, nos iban a dar un castigo, se relajó. Así, ahora no hay ningún poder judicial que nos garantice eso, aunque el que haga las cosas mal sea el mismísimo presidente. Te acordás cuando éramos chicos y nos preguntaban qué queríamos ser? La respuesta de querer ser presidente era tan común como bombero, médico, veterinario o astronauta...Eso es lo triste. Nos quitaron la confianza y eso tarda en sanar. Gracias por el posteo, y por leerme si es que lo has hecho. Gracias.