Trump’s agenda faces courtroom setbacks as Justice Department lawyers struggle to win over judges

WASHINGTON AP To understand the Justice Department s struggles in representing President Donald Trump s positions in court look no further than a quick succession of losses last week that dealt a setback to the administration s agenda In orders spanning different courthouses judges blocked a White House plan to add a proof-of-citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form ruled the Republican administration violated a settlement agreement by deporting a man to El Salvador and halted directives that threatened to cut federal funding for general schools with diversity equity and inclusion programs That s on top of arguments in which two judges expressed misgivings to a Justice Department lawyer about the legality of Trump executive orders targeting major law firms and a department lawyer s accidental filing of an internal memo in court questioning the Trump administration s legal strategy to kill Manhattan s congestion toll a blunder the Transportation Department called legal malpractice According to an Associated Press tally Trump executive actions have been partially or fully blocked by the courts around times while they re in effect in nearly cases Dozens of others are pending The Trump administration s effort to reshape American civil society including a crackdown on illegal immigration and downsizing of the federal governing body is encountering resistance from judges across a broad spectrum of philosophical leanings as lawyers for the Justice Department in particular cases have strained to answer straightforward questions from judges about the basis or rationale for a particular guidelines or about the mechanics of its implementation In at least one instance a administration lawyer who became openly exasperated in court at the lack of information he d been given from the administration was soon after fired by the Justice Department Experienced career Justice Department lawyers are leaving Compounding the complication is an ongoing exodus from the department of experienced career lawyers accustomed to representing the federal executive in court Selected of the key arguments in latest weeks have been handled by lawyers newly hired into political rather than career positions at the department Justice Department leadership has in new months hired lawyers with conservative credentials from law firms in Washington and with past experience at state and local establishment agencies but not necessarily federal experience This is quite rare if not unprecedented reported Boston College law professor Kent Greenfield I can t think of another instance in which the Justice Department has lost so countless cases in a short period of time and the reason they re losing is because they re wrong and obviously wrong Trump allies want to impeach the judges Trump administration executives including Attorney General Pam Bondi have attributed the losses to what they call activist judges bent on impeding his agenda Several White House allies have called for impeaching judges with adviser Elon Musk describing it as a judicial coup But that belies the reality that various of the majority of blistering rebukes of Justice Department arguments have come from conservative judges like J Harvie Wilkinson III an appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan who disclosed in an April opinion that the idea the establishment could not return to the U S a man it had deported to El Salvador was shocking not only to judges but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear Jonathan Turley a George Washington University law professor cautioned against making too much so soon in the administration of its legal track record The Supreme Court with its conservative - majority including three Trump appointees has yet to weigh in on the vast majority of the cases This Department of Justice will continue to defend President Trump s agenda in court and we remain confident that we will ultimately prevail Justice Department spokesperson Chad Gilmartin noted in an email The Trump administration has also succeeded in chosen cases in beating back legal challenges and chosen early defeats at the trial court level have been subsequently overturned by a federal appeals court such as when a panel cleared the way for the administration to fire thousands of probationary workers in spite of a judge s earlier opinion In another scenario the Supreme Court overturned a lower judge s order that had blocked the administration from using an th-century wartime law to deport Venezuelan expatriates though the court noted they must get a chance to challenge their removals before they re taken from the United States The Supreme Court also not long ago granted the Trump administration s plea to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in educator training money while a lawsuit continues There s over District Court judges any one of which can issue limited or national injunctions Turley noted The rulings may be significant he added but there s a great deal of runway between a U S district court and the United States Supreme Court Judges push Justice Department lawyers to explain The challenges however were laid bare in a Washington courtroom just last week when Richard Lawson a newly minted deputy associate attorney general repeatedly struggled to provide what a judge explained was basic information about one in a series of executive orders targeting a major law firm with punishing sanctions including the suspension of attorney prevention clearances So you don t know whether the firm or the individuals whose safety clearances were suspended have been given any notice about the timing of the review who the decision-maker is the information that s being reviewed as part of this review whether they re going to have an ability to see that information comment on the information correct the information object to the information U S District Judge Beryl Howell demanded pointedly You can t tell me anything about that I can t speak to that Your Honor replied Lawson who years before of late joining the Justice Department had worked with Bondi in the Florida attorney general s office and was also a lawyer at a pro-Trump think tank called the America First Framework Institute Lawson fared no better weeks earlier when pushed to explain the administration s national measure rationale for punishing a different law firm Jenner Block because one of its former partners Andrew Weissmann had years earlier been a prosecutor on the gang of special counsel Robert Mueller that investigated Trump during his first term You re not going to really tell me that having someone employed four years ago poses selected kind of national assurance threat sought U S District John Bates an appointee of George W Bush a Republican Not per se no replied Lawson In another development Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly scolded the Justice Department in court papers last week over what she described as the contradiction between statements made in court by one of its lawyers and the facts on the ground While the judge did not contend that the lawyer intentionally misrepresented the facts the appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton added The Court must remark that this exchange does not reflect the level of diligence the Court expects from any litigant let alone the United States Department of Justice Stuart Gerson who led the Justice Department s civil division under Republican President George H W Bush and later served briefly as acting attorney general revealed it appeared the Trump administration was sending lawyers into court without adequate information and instructions I sympathize greatly with these folks who are arguing specific of the cases who are just parroting what they ve been communicated to say without being able to answer questions about their ramifications the what-ifs and the background information Gerson commented Follow the AP s coverage of the U S Department of Justice at https apnews com hub us-department-of-justice Source