Republican judge to Trump aide: You're abusing your power

U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he holds a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 30, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

One of President Donald Trump’s top officials was scolded by a judge from his own party for allegedly abusing his power to target the president’s perceived political enemies.

“U.S. Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee who recently faced criticism for her line of questioning during arguments over Hegseth's disciplinary action against Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.” harshly criticized Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for designating AI company Anthropic as a “supply-chain risk” based on seemingly tenuous evidence, reported Law and Crime’s Matt Naham on Tuesday. Henderson added that “for the life of me” she could not discover "any evidence of maliciousness" to justify Hegseth’s actions against Anthropic.

"I see no evidence of the fact that the word sabotage, maliciously, manipulates, and so forth require a bad actor,” Henderson said. “I see no evidence of that. I don't see that the department has in any way supported its determination that there is a supply-chain risk with Anthropic, much less a significant supply-chain risk. Is there some evidence that I haven't found that you're a bad actor?"

The government’s lawyer paused, then insisted that the Trump administration has provided enough evidence to demonstrate Anthropic’s AI model Claude “cannot safely or reliably be used for autonomous lethal warfare and mass surveillance of Americans."

Henderson replied, "To me, this is just a spectacular overreach by the department.”

Prior to this exchange, Trump’s lawyers described any procedural errors in the Defense Department’s case against Anthropic as harmless, asking the court to defend to Hegseth’s “considered national security judgment.” Anthropic’s attorneys, by contrast, argued that Anthropic is being mischaracterized as posing a supply-chain risk as “textbook retaliation” because they refused to comply with administration requests they deemed unethical.

"The Secretary's brief confirms that this is a supply-chain risk designation in search of a justification,” Anthropic’s filing said to the court.” The Secretary purported to blacklist Anthropic as a threat to national security based in significant part on the factual assertion that Anthropic possesses an 'operational veto' over Claude after it is deployed in the Department's classified systems—a demonstrably false premise that he now abandons. Instead, the Secretary falls back to a different justification. He now claims that his 'true concern' is that Anthropic in the future will surreptitiously encode model limitations 'before' Claude's 'deployment' that the Department's testing might not catch."

In addition to criticizing the administration’s actions against Anthropic, Henderson also criticized it in a previous hearing for arguing that Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) deserves to be prosecuted for criticizing Trump’s policies. In addition to being denounced by the court, the administration’s targeting of Kelly has been denounced by military veterans as infringing on their right to free speech.

“The defense secretary first targeted Kelly because he was one of the Senate Democrats who recorded a video reminding service members that they can disobey unlawful orders, and Hegseth declared that he was reducing Kelly’s rank and military pension,” Lt. Col. Rachel E. VanLandingham (ret.) wrote for MS NOW on Sunday. “However, Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia temporarily enjoined the Pentagon from doing so.”

VanLandingham added that “alarmingly, Hegseth’s new attempt to mute his nemesis Kelly is part of the Pentagon’s larger effort to muzzle all of us military retirees, especially those with legislative power.” She argued that if it succeeds, “this is quite dangerous. If the Pentagon can shut down a sitting senator, then it can shut down all of us.”

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