'Take better care': Judge reminds blundering Trump lawyers how to count

Judges often must step in to correct attorneys on issues of court procedure and protocol. It’s likely more frequent when the attorney is young and inexperienced.

But President Donald Trump’s federal attorneys — or at least what’s left of them — are a cut above.

Politico reporter Josh Gerstein made note of U.S. District Court Judge Laura Provinzino’s Friday schooling of U.S. Dept. of Agriculture attorneys’ surprising snafu.

Last December, the state of Minnesota sued the Trump administration over its demand that the state interview in person more than 100,000 households — constituting approximately 191,000 people — that receive SNAP benefits to verify their eligibility for the program. The Trump administration threatened to cut off Minnesota’s SNAP funding and disqualify it from SNAP altogether unless Minnesota complies with the impossible demands, which AG Keith Ellison argues are “prohibited under federal law.”

In April, USDA lawyers moved to dismiss Minnesota’s amended complaint, but one mistake in the federal filing was so grievous the judge had to step in with a basic law school education.

“The USDA’s opening memorandum was 45 pages long and used 11,769 words,” Judge Provinzino pointed out. But under law, she said “no brief may exceed 12,000 words.” Worse, other laws dictate that if a party intends to file both an opening brief and reply brief, the combined briefs may not exceed 12,000 words.

“Since the USDA’s opening brief was 11,769 words, it left itself only 231 words for a reply,” the judge pointed out.

Federal attorneys realized their blunder after filing and returned with a clean up request that the judge grant them and additional 5,769 additional words for its reply brief. Federal attorneys pleaded that “an extension is necessary because Minnesota’s responsive brief raised issues to which the USDA ought to have a right to fully respond.”

Ellison’s office objected to the request, arguing that granting this would give the USDA “significantly more words than Minnesota was provided,” and that Minnesota had to make “hard choices” to meet its own word count requirement. The USDA, his office argued, does not deserve additional words “simply because it chose not to do the same.”

This is not Team Trump’s first example of courtroom cringe. Trumps field of lawyers are catching plenty of criticism these days for their lack of experience as Trump’s department prizes MAGA credentials over knowledge or knack. Worse, after so many attorney’s fled Trump’s politicized DOJ and agencies, departments have been scrambling to hire noobs to fill the vacated ranks — leaving plenty of ignorance for legal flubs, snafus and courtroom goofs.

Provinzino refused to grant USDA lawyers their 6,000-word request, instead allotting them half that amount.

She tapered her generosity with harsh finger-wagging, however: “It is simply implausible that the USDA did not anticipate filing a reply brief in this case. It nevertheless chose to leave itself only 231 words to do so. … [T]he USDA chose to wait until after Minnesota had already filed its responsive brief that — by Minnesota’s admission — required Minnesota to cut arguments it would have made with more words.”

“To put it bluntly, the USDA should take better care to make its case efficiently,” the judge chided.