Kevin Seefried of Delaware, a supporter of President Donald Trump, carries a Confederate battle flag on the second floor of the U.S. Capitol near the entrance to the Senate after breaching security defenses, in Washington in January 2021 (REUTERS)
President Donald Trump desperately wants to protect one of the people who helped him try to overturn the 2020 election — but the January 6er in question was just assigned a judge who has already shown little patience for Trump.
“On Thursday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia took up the case stylized as U.S.A. v. Fox, named for the D.C. Bar's lead disciplinary counsel, Hamilton P. Fox,” Law and Crime reported on Thursday. “In the lawsuit, the Trump administration seeks to void and enjoin any and all disciplinary actions taken against former U.S. Department of Justice lawyer Jeffrey Clark who was recently disbarred in Washington, D.C., over his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election to favor President Donald Trump.”
But the case was assigned at random using an automated selection process, which sent it to the Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, who despite being appointed by a fellow Republican president (George W. Bush), has been hostile to Trump in the past.
“In the District of Columbia, the general assignment rule is that ‘cases shall be assigned to judges of this Court selected at random,’” Law and Crime explained. “And that random assignment has already rankled some allies of the White House.”
Judge Leon previously locked antlers with the Trump administration when he ruled repeatedly against the legality of Trump's demolition of the White House’s East Wing in order to build a ballroom. In his decision, Leon reiterated that no president has the right to unilaterally make major changes to the White House, as it is public property. Instead Leon ordered Trump to halt the construction on the grounds that Congress had not authorized it, and rejected all of the administration’s arguments that the lack of legislative authorization should not matter.
As of April, political analyst Robert Reich noted the judge had ruled against the president literally dozens of times.
“This marks, by my calculation, the 89th time since the start of Trump’s second term that a federal judge has ruled that he cannot simply do whatever he wants; his actions must be authorized by Congress,” Reich wrote.
It does not help thatJeffrey Clark also has had a tempestuous relationship with Washington DC’s legal authorities. When Trump attempted to promote the election denier in December 2020 to replace Attorney General William Barr — who he had fired for refusing to back his claim the election was stolen — the assistant attorney general overseeing the Civil Rights Division threatened to resign, with the rest of the Justice Department saying they would follow. Because of the threat of mass resignations, Trump ultimately decided to not promote Clark. Upon being reelected in 2024, however, the section’s roughly 30 career lawyers subsequently either resigned or were reassigned after being told their focus was changing from protecting voting rights to enforcing Trump’s election denial-based executive order.
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