Lying, Cheating Administration Has Its Ass Handed To It By Judge Overseeing BS Charges Against ICE Protesters
from the holy-fuck dept
There are many (negative) things this Trump administration is known for. It’s a long list and I would encourage everyone to add as many negative things to that list.
His DOJ is specifically known for vengeful prosecutions of those who dare to oppose the guy who thinks he’s a king. The nation’s top law enforcement entity has been stripped of talent and experience by repeated purges. It has since been (partially) stocked with people more known for their loyalty to Trump than their legal acumen.
All of this is on the public record. And perhaps nothing is more damning than the combined efforts of two federal judges who are handling the administration’s bullshit prosecution of a half-dozen protesters.
Everything about this is a work of art — one inadvertently commissioned by Trump’s DOJ and its remaining collection of lying lawyers. Here’s a useful summary, via CBS News:
U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros said during a Thursday afternoon hearing that the decision to dismiss charges was due to improper handling of the grand jury proceedings by the lead prosecutor in the case. A rare federal trial for misdemeanor charges that had been scheduled to begin next week was canceled, after prosecutors agreed to dismiss the charges with prejudice, meaning they cannot be refiled.
Boutros announced the decision to dismiss the remaining charges in court following a closed-door meeting over redacted grand jury transcripts. He told U.S. District Judge April Perry he was unaware until recently of the alleged misconduct, including a prosecutor meeting with a grand juror outside proceedings and other jurors who disagreed with the case being dismissed and prevented from participating. Boutros did not dispute the allegations, saying the conduct was upsetting and the reason the case was being dismissed.
If you’re not intimately familiar with the US legal process (and let’s hope for your sake that you aren’t), this is some wild shit. Some seriously unlawful shit went down as Trump prosecutors tried to convince grand jurors to give them an indictment they hadn’t actually earned.
The transcript [PDF] of the hearing in front of US federal judge April Perry has been released. It’s pretty much just 60 pages of the government being taken behind the proverbial woodshed. It is fucking harsh. And for good reason. It shows the government engaged in a lot of shady, possibly-illegal stuff in hopes of securing at least a federal misdemeanor charge against the four suspects who hadn’t already been excused for a lack of evidence.
It starts here, with this, as the judge weighs whether further sealing of the grand jury deliberations is warranted:
Although I am not going to prejudge the issue without a hearing, I will say that I was incredibly shocked by the redactions that were made. I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. Attorneys who appeared before the grand jury. I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.
Just in case the context doesn’t make it clear, this is not the court congratulating the DOJ for being the best at law-type stuff it has ever seen. It’s the other thing: a court excoriating the DOJ for doing shady shit the likes of which it has never seen.
The list begins:
First, improper prosecutorial vouching to the grand jurors, with the AUSA putting her personal credibility and trustworthiness on the line in support of the charges.
This may not sound like a big deal. It actually is. Here’s a former federal prosecutor (who some of you might be familiar with) explaining why “vouching” is considered off limits by serious prosecutors who actually consider themselves to be in the business of justice.
To quote the embed verbatim:
“Vouching” is when a prosecutor asks a grand jury or jury to just trust them rather than rely on evidence: “I am a federal prosecutor, I have had this job for twenty years, and you can rely on me when I say there is additional strong evidence that shows they are guilty,” that sort of thing.
So, this is the government being this guy, except that federal charges are involved:
Moving on:
Second, improper prosecutorial communications of a substantive nature with the grand jurors outside of the grand jury room.
Do what now? I mean, what the actual fuck? Grand juries are swathed in secrecy, and we kind of are cool with this because… well, SHIT LIKE THIS IS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN.
Moving on… again:
And, third, the prosecutor excusing grand jurors who disagreed with the government’s case from the deliberations process.
So, that’s how this works now? Has it always been this way? Can the government further stack the grand jury deck simply by booting anyone who doesn’t seem inclined to buy what the government is selling? Maybe this is just the way the government always does these things, but this is the first time I’ve seen a court not only mention it, but directly go after a federal prosecutor for trying to cover up the government’s grand jury min/maxing.
Oh, and there’s so much more if you’re that sort of sadist. Ken White’s Bluesky thread hits a lot of the highlights. Multiple news agencies make the most of some cherry-picked lowlights.
But even without those audiovisual aids, you can see for yourself how this administration operates when it’s trying to punish people for disagreeing with it. Since it knows that law doesn’t support the charges, it will lie, cheat, and steal to get the grand jury “votes” it needs to silence dissent. The courts are already aware of this. But it’s on the public to convert this outrage to votes to prevent the further enshitification of what’s left of this Republic.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, broadview six, chicago, dhs, doj, free speech, ice
Comments on “Lying, Cheating Administration Has Its Ass Handed To It By Judge Overseeing BS Charges Against ICE Protesters”
…but, as far as I can tell, only verbally harsh. This government doesn’t seem particularly bothered by such things.
Maybe we’ll have yet another Trump attorney disbarred. They’re just another category of “disposable person” to the people in power, and the people in power have so far escaped any kind of real punishment. The supply of stooges with law licenses is not running out quickly enough; the judges need to move beyond mere dismissal and disbarment.
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“pour encourager les autres” works in our favor as well. Attorneys in the DOJ getting disbarred WILL be noticed by their fellows.
Working at the DOJ for a paycheck today is poor return on investment if you are tarred for the rest of what would have been your career.
The DOJ is ALREADY having problems staffing its immigration cases – they’re importing JAG staff from the military (with greater or lesser effectiveness). That’s already shorting the military of people it needs, and that well ain’t endless.
The next step might be calling in their markers with Paul, Weiss and so on. And those firms (despite having no discernable backbone) may well tell Trump to pound sand for exactly the disbarment issue.
Get a rep as a stinker of a client, and like magic you get shunned.
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Giuliani got disbarred around age 80, so I’m thinking there wasn’t much of a career left anyway. Young lawyers could always pivot into lobbying or something. The punishment is not nothing; but, for actual crimes such as perjury, we should expect more.
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A part of me is positively excited for the prospect of a major government official (or even the president himself~) being forced to show up to trial and defend themselves pro se because they cannot find a qualified lawyer willing to do the unethical or illegal things they demand.
I’m not against bad people having lawyers. The right to counsel is a sacred hill that should be defended, but you have a right to waive your rights, and some of these meatheads strike me as exactly the sort of idiots that would choose that.
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Were they really unable to get legal representation, they might use that to get off on appeal. However, most of “the unethical or illegal things they demand” would apply for suits they’re initiating, not defending. If they were to reject defense lawyers, as you hypothesize, that’d be something else.
Defending against this senseless prosecution can be very expensive. The government gets its revenge even when they lose. It’s time to change the law so that a judge can award attorney’s fees in a case where the prosecution exhibits clear malice (or fabricated evidence). This happens far too often, often in obscure cases that are never publicized, and it amounts to punishment of the innocent.
“And, third, the prosecutor excusing grand jurors who disagreed with the government’s case from the deliberations process.”
This shows that NAZIs need to collaborate for their ethnic cleansing. They can’t just county on citizens to agree with them anymore based on the demographics of their ethnic cleansing.
Even white people are sick of white people’s shit.
You are being too kind
Dismissing those grand jurors who are not buying into the prosecution is not even trying to convince them.
Why were their asses handed back to them? The prosecuting attorneys need their asses thrown in jail.
Judges that fail to refer attorneys for prosecution and fail to complete the mandatory reporting of misconduct need to be reported for their own misconduct.
Disbar immediately!
Crooked attorneys like this need to lose legal privileges before they leave the court session!
I don’t get why the Trump administration should give the slightest toss about losing this one
Where are the consequences for these attorneys for this conspiracy of trying to falsely convict and imprison an innocent man for political revenge?
Beats me unless I read the article wrong since there seem to be no consequences for the ringleaders?
The only consequences I can see is no other country in the world can possibly place any honest faith in the USA judicial system
You’re a nation of corrupt crooks with your law a joke.
And your executive is openly laughing at and mocking your own courts when they complain about the perversion of the rule of law in the USA
They’ll just come up with another bullshit reason to persecute Kilmar Garcia by next Tuesday
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The think most likely to rile Trump is to call him a loser. High profile results like do that.
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Every loss in court is a loss in credibility for the DOJ—especially when they try to cheat their way to a victory. That means fewer courts will be willing to take the DOJ’s word as credible on its face and fewer lawyers will be willing to work for a DOJ where they’ll be asked to do this kind of bullshit. An understaffed, overworked DOJ willing to potentially violate the law is a DOJ that isn’t going to rack up the wins that Trump wants. Every loss is more sand in the gears of the MAGA revenge tour. With or without sanctions, that has to count for something.
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It’s also a DOJ that, in a subsequent administration, won’t be trusted to deal with the corruption of this one, allowing all the rodents currently in charge to get away with everything.
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That is why the next Democrat presidential nominee needs to promise that they’ll find a way to purge the Trump influence out of as much of the government as possible. Purging the DOJ, stacking SCOTUS, tearing down anything with Trump’s name and face on it—all of it needs to be the promise of the next Democrat to be president because anything less will be as much of a failure from the get-go as Joe Biden was.
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To do that, the next Democrat is going to need to de facto regulate association.
What else do you call punishing people for holding certain political views other than ‘association regulation’.
Anyway, thanks for agreeing with me that the government DOES need to regulate ‘freedoms’ granted in the amendments and perhaps make the amendments less permissible.
Though I really appreciate the right to not self incriminate. That’s one that I don’t think needs to be adjusted.
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I call it “denazification”. The Germans did a good job of it after World War II. We didn’t do a good enough job of it after the Civil War, and it’s part of the reason we’re in this shitty mess to begin with.
Hey, so, I didn’t do that. And I’ll thank you to not shove words down my throat that didn’t first come from it. I swear, some people have an unreasonable amount of trouble understanding the word “no”…
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You agree with me that ‘Freedom of association’ needs tempering and adjustment so it’s not total freedom of association. I’m not shoving any words into your mouth.
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Three things, for clarity.
Have I made myself clear enough for you, or will you once more try shoving words down my throat that didn’t first come from it?
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You are the only one talking about freedom of association here, a concept you don’t seem to grasp what it actually means. It’s a very simple concept: A group of citizens are willing and allowed to associate with each other without the government interfering.
An administration removing people from government positions has zero to do with freedom of association, but if we go with your “argument” it means an administration has no control over who works in the government.
That you somehow think how administration hire or remove personnel is regulating association is somehow both ridiculous and stupid.
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Removing people from jobs over political associations is in fact a pretty fraught area of employment law and anti-discrimination practices.
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I would hope you wouldn’t have a problem with the government removing from their positions people whose loyalties lie with Donald Trump instead of the government or the people of the United States—people like, say, the assholes who decided that investigating E. Jean Carroll at the behest of her vengeful rapist was a good idea.
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Not at all. But I think, if your position is that it is legally straightforward to do so, there may be surprises.
Then again, I am less versed in American law than Canadian, so perhaps the general U.S. privileging of employers will come in handy here.
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Isn’t it funny how it happens after every election and a new administration is installed?
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Not, I believe, on the scale either necessary or proposed here. As I recall there was (and is, since the purge is still going on) legal pushback over Mr. Trump’s attempts to oust everyone he hates from his regime.
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I understand what would cause you to suggest that, but I have to disagree. We should have deeper values than “eliminate anything Trump-related”, which would basically just prey on and reinforce the “A vs. B” rhetoric that gave us Trump in the first place. The next person should have some principles, beyond “at least I’m not Trump”.
Biden—and the legislators, who have the more important role—should have sought to limit the power and abuse-potential of the office of the president, for Biden and for whoever holds it in the future. Every instance of abuse by Trump’s people is a lesson we’ve learned the hard way, and the lesson is not (just) “Trumpism sucks”. Fix the root cause. And, sure, prosecute anyone who aided and abetted it, but not because of their party affiliation.
Remember why the position is called “President” and why some people thought the title to be unreasonably modest. Make it once-again unappealing for power-seeking assholes.
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So, hey, when the Nazis were ousted after the death of Adolf Hitler and the end of World War II, the German government destroyed every last bit of Nazi iconography on government buildings, arrested and tried Nazis (or let The Hague handle it), and basically did everything possible to “de-Nazify” Germany. I’m arguing that after Trump is gone, the United States will need to “de-Trump” the U.S. government because Trump is a fascist. Leaving in positions of power anyone more loyal to him than to the government or the people of the United States is a direct threat to the government and the people of the United States. Leaving his name and his mark upon the country—e.g., the ballroom, the planned arch—would only embolden the next fascist who (rightfully) thinks they can be a better, smarter Trump. The Supreme Court should be stacked to counteract the clearly partisan, clearly loyalist Justices who decided that loyalty to Trump is more important that prior precedent, the Constitution, and the high court’s institutional credibility. Basically every executive order from Trump needs to be rescinded and everything DOGE did to the federal government needs to be reversed. There must be a reckoning after Trump that helps prevent another one from getting into office.
When the Civil War ended, the U.S. government didn’t do nearly enough to punish the traitors that were the Confederacy. It allowed the South to basically fuck over Reconstruction and deny Black people their civil rights for decades. We can’t make that mistake again. Even if it’s “weaponizing the government”, it should be weaponized to punish the frauds and grifters who will have wrecked this country for more than a decade, then strengthen the guardrails of democracy so that the next motherfucker who wants to be a Trumpian godking won’t be able to pull even a tenth of the shit that Trump has done.
And yes, this will also necessitate some non-partisan reforms that will also affect Democrats—like, say, banning members of Congress and their staffers from trading stocks or being active on speculation markets. But that should be a sacrifice anyone in power would be willing to make if they’re less worried about their bank accounts and more worried about keeping this country intact. We’ve seen the depths of corruption into which Trump has allowed the government to sink. Any post-Trump reckoning has to deal with those problems no matter who benefits from those problems going unsolved. It’s the only way we’re going to get out of this shit.
If any of that is a problem for you, feel free to say so. But I’m firmly of the mind that there can’t be any half-measures (or Biden-esque sitting-on-hands bullshit) when dealing with the post-Trump era. Donald Trump doesn’t deserve to be honored by this country in any way. He deserves to have his eventual grave turned into the busiest public toilet in the world.
Sounds like the DOJ is no longer legitimate.
Profanity
I agree with you but your message would be better delivered to me without all the profanity.
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If you can’t stand a little fuckin’ profanity, get you a goddamn wordfilter that erases all that shit and replaces it with “heck” and “malarkey” and whatever other ’50s sitcom replacements for profanity that your silly ass can think of. 🙃
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“And if you don’t like the swearing that this motherfucker forced from me
And reckon it shows moral or intellectual paucity
Then fuck you, motherfucker, this is language one employs
When one is fucking cross about fuckers fucking boys!”
-Tim Minchin, ‘The Pope Song’
If I were a career criminal and member of organized crime who found himself in the highest office in the land, I would consider it my job to delegitimize the justice system and make criminal activity for myself and my cronies easier and safer from that point on. I might even arrange a slush fund to further compensate the ones unfortunate enough to get caught.
Congress must impeach AND remove Todd Blanche
His destruction of standards at DOJ is making my late idealistic lawyer father roll in his grave. The corruption is blatant enough that a few Republican lame ducks and some not running again until ’28 or ’30 might add up to 2/3 of the Senate.
*Lying, cheating regime, thank you.