'Letting him get away with murder': How Trump turned the DOJ into his personal law firm
NOTUS reports President Donald Trump has remade the U.S. Dept. of Justice in his own image, and that image is: "Delay, obstruct, confuse."
Justice Department attorneys have adopted the same litigation strategies Trump’s defense team often used when battling tax charges, sexual abuse and stolen classified documents cases. Currently, for example, the DOJ is “ignoring federal judges, claiming privileges to refuse turning over records and toying with the clock to disrupt the normal pattern of court cases” — all straight from the playbook Trump’s personal defense team used between Trump’s first and second presidencies.
“We know that Trump views the DOJ as his lawyers,” George Washington University Law School professor emeritus Catherine J. Ross told NOTUS. “And it almost seems as if the client is telling them, ‘Do what I did in the civil cases and earlier criminal cases: delay, obstruct, confuse, be obtuse, appeal every little possibility and just stall forever.’ That’s the strategy.”
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The new strategy coincides with Trump hiring two personal lawyers to man the Justice Department, including deputy attorney general Todd Blanche and principal associate deputy attorney general Emil Bove.
Judges are now having to adapt to these unfamiliar new stances. This week U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis chided the DOJ for refusing to hand over documents proving the administration was following Supreme Court orders to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from a Salvadoran prison. Suddenly judges are having to tell the attorneys of a 150-year-old agency not to “mischaracterize” a Supreme Court’s order.
“For weeks, defendants have sought refuge behind vague and unsubstantiated assertions of privilege, using them as a shield to obstruct discovery and evade compliance with this court’s orders. Defendants have known, at least since last week, that this court requires specific legal and factual showings to support any claim of privilege. Yet they have continued to rely on boilerplate assertions,” she wrote.
What administration lawyers are delivering in lieu of court-mandated updates are snide comments, say critics.
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“Please refer to my prior declarations for the foundation of my personal knowledge,” Department of Homeland Security acting general counsel Joseph N. Mazzara wrote in response to Xinis’ demand for updates on Garecia’s return, “There are no further updates.”
“The judges are letting Trump get away with murder,” said Pamela Keith, a lawyer who represents current FBI agents and support personnel in their effort to stop the DOJ from retaliating against them over their work in the aftermath of Jan. 6. “The judges are going to extremes to give the DOJ chances to explain the inexplicable. And this is just more indication of how successful the Trump team has been at perverting our legal system.”
Read the full NOTUS story here.
