The Trump DOJ Has Utterly Collapsed and It Ain’t Pretty

A lot has happened. Here are some of the things. This is the TPM Morning Memo.

Destruction: DOJ Edition

One of the intended consequences of President Trump’s politicization of the Justice Department is to leave behind a weakened, overwhelmed, and decimated organization that simply cannot do its job.

They are gutting the Justice Department by purging nonpartisan career lawyers, making life intolerable for those who remain, and replacing them with loyalists, stripping the organization of its capacity. It cannot handle as many cases, is not capable of tackling ambitious cases and the quality of legal services suffers in all cases.

All of this is playing out most visibly in Minnesota, where the lawless Operation Metro Surge has resulted in hundreds of habeas lawsuits filed by illegally detained immigrants. Minnesota’s chief federal judge, speaking on behalf of an overwhelmed court system, has already publicly lambasted the Trump administration for failing to prepare for the flood of cases its mass deportation operation in the state was bound to generate. (Chris Geidner explains the ins and outs of why we see so many cases.)

Meanwhile, the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota has been crippled by mass resignations, including those of some of its most senior attorneys. This has left the remaining Minnesota DOJ attorneys inundated with more cases than they can handle. But I’m not sure that does justice to what’s happening. It’s much worse than that.

The quality of legal services deteriorated to the point where government lawyers were unable to comply with court orders demanding the release of detainees. As a result, detainees remain in detention even after courts order their release.

Last week, as the Star Tribune first reported, Ana Voss, a career DOJ official who was chief of the civil division of the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota, filed a stunning court filing in which she admitted that her office failed to follow a court order to release a detainee because it did not see the email.

“I did not read these orders in time,” Voss allegedly said in the court filing. “I understand this is inexcusable.”

But this does not appear to be a case of incompetence or willful disregard. As Voss explained in the filing: “It has become apparent to me that I am unable to effectively triage and review each order, which is not an acceptable practice to me or to the United States.” »

Voss subsequently resigned.

Multiple reports suggest that mass resignations within the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office are not due solely to the failure to investigate the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. I suspect the infernal flood of immigration files is another contributing factor.

More evidence of this emerged yesterday, when government attorney Julie Le broke down in court, as FOX9’s Paul Blume reported:

“I would like you to hold me in contempt of court so I can sleep for 24 hours,” Le said. “The system sucks, this job sucks, I’m trying with every breath to give you what I need.”

As Joyce Vance notes, Le is not a regular Assistant U.S. Attorney but a “special” AUSA. She reportedly worked as a DHS attorney before being assigned to the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota to help handle the flood of immigration cases. The had been entrusted with more than 88 files since December.

It’s easy to see lawyers as getting what they deserve for participating in a corrupt system, but remember that it’s the inmates who are languishing despite court orders for their release. I’ve seen provocative DOJ politicians in court telling judges to push back. The does not seem to be one of these types of lawyers:

“I’m here to make sure the agency understands how important it is to comply with court orders,” a visibly emotional Le said during the hearing.

Le was removed from the U.S. attorney’s office after his courtroom remarks, NBC News reports.

When Chief Justice Patrick J. Schiltz said last week that the Trump administration had violated 96 court orders in 78 cases since Jan. 1 in Minnesota alone, I initially thought it was another Trump administration strategy to challenge the judiciary. That may be the case, but it’s not as direct as the confrontations in the Alien Enemies Act and Abrego Garcia cases.

As Princeton’s Deborah Pearlstein notes:

It seems increasingly clear that widespread failure to comply with court habeas orders in immigration cases is no longer a lawyer ethics problem. It is a symptom of a structural and institutional collapse at the Department of Justice.

The Trump administration is destroying U.S. Attorney’s offices and undermining the core justice system, so there are simply no more resources to respond to the judiciary. A philosophy of burning everything. Catch me if you can.

Keep an eye out for this one…

U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson in Minneapolis ordered the pretrial release of two immigrants accused of assaulting an ICE agent who shot one of the men during an incident last month. But the men did not leave the courthouse before being arrested again by ICE, the Star Tribune reported.

Lawyers for Alfredo Aljorna and Julio Sosa-Celis were quickly back in court, filing a habeas petition seeking their release from ICE custody. Last night, Chief Justice Patrick J. Schiltz ordered the Trump administration not to deport the men from Minnesota and, if they had already done so, to immediately return them to Minnesota.

Not to be overlooked: At the preliminary hearing, the men’s lawyers presented as evidence photos from the shooting scene that suggest the ICE agent fired through a closed door and undermine the government’s account of what happened.

Quote of the day

“Over the past few weeks, our family has comforted ourselves with the thought that maybe Nee’s death would bring change to our country. And it hasn’t.” – Luke Ganger, brother of Renee Good

Judge protects anti-ICE protesters

U.S. District Judge Michael Simon issued a temporary restraining order barring federal agents from using tear gas and other crowd control weapons against peaceful protesters and journalists outside ICE facilities in Portland, Oregon.

In his order, Simon harshly criticized the Trump administration:

• “The repeated shootings and tear gassing of nonviolent protesters at the Portland ICE Building will likely continue to recur… Defendants’ violence is by no means isolated.”
• “Statements made by DHS officials and senior federal leaders show that the culture of the agency and its employees is to favor violent responses over just and diplomatic responses. »
• “Rather than reprimanding DHS violence against protesters, senior officials publicly condoned it. »
• “There are clear instances of excessive force, including a use-of-force incident captured by ICE’s own cameras and deemed ‘inappropriate’ and ‘not reasonable’ by a Deputy Regional Director of the Federal Protective Service (“FPS”). Yet the officers involved were not placed on leave and do not appear to have been held accountable in any way.”

Chief Villain: Stephen Miller

Every time President Trump makes a performative display of hyper-aggressive dominance, Stephen Miller lurks in the background cheering him on, the WSJ documents.

Forget the dog whistles, just pure racism

President Trump’s call to nationalize voting in America is fundamentally racist, and in case you didn’t hear the whistle two days ago, he said it loud and clear yesterday:

Take a look at Detroit…take a look at Philadelphia, take a look at Atlanta. The federal government should not allow this. The federal government should get involved. Federal government agents count the votes. If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then someone else should take over.

Trump presented no evidence, just pure racist invective.

IMPORTANT

New reporting from TPM’s Josh Kovensky: In a stark departure from how the DOJ has historically used the federal material support for terrorism statute, it is turning what would have been routine prosecutions into terrorism cases when they involve people President Trump has designated as his political enemies.

Trump DOJ Watch: NJ Edition

The Trump administration’s first choice to succeed Alina Habba as U.S. attorney in New Jersey is Trump DOJ official Jordan Fox, 30, a five-year law school graduate with no experience as a prosecutor.

President Trump persists in seeking an acting U.S. Attorney rather than a permanent one, so as not to have to go through the Senate opt-out process, in which the state’s two Democratic senators effectively have a veto over his selection. But that leaves it up to the state’s federal judges to make the selection, which is why Fox is making appeals to try to get their support.

Headline of the day

TPM’s Kate Riga reports from federal court in Washington on Judge Richard Leon’s deep skepticism about the legality of the Trump Pentagon’s retaliatory crusade against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ).

Our strange defeat

Felicia Kornbluh revisits the work of French historian Marc Bloch, executed by the Nazis in 1944, to question why mainstream institutions fell so easily to Trumpism.

Any hot tips? A juicy scuttlebutt? Any interesting ideas? Let me know. For sensitive information, use encrypted methods here.