Trump ruled to have flouted the law more than a dozen times since taking office: report
Federal judges have ruled that the current administration has defied the law in more than a dozen cases, including three major rulings this week, in the short time since Trump has taken office, according to reporting in The Washington Post.
Senior political reporter Aaron Blake wrote, “The total works out to one such finding about every four days,” that the administration was found to have “either has violated the law or has probably done so.”
The findings are for a variety of cases, including “Trump’s efforts to freeze federal funding, fire federal workers, restrict diversity efforts, overturn birthright citizenship and, most recently, limit transgender rights and deport certain immigrants without legal review.”
Blake clarified that most of the judges found that the administration “likely violated the law — a temporary but necessary finding needed to halt the administration’s actions while the fuller cases proceed.”
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He continued, “But even in many of those cases, the judges didn’t seem to regard that question as a difficult one. Some have cast the actions as blatantly illegal and suggested that the administration made no real effort to justify them.”
Many of the judges have resorted to castigating the Department of Justice attorneys for their arguments, as well.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup “delivered a furious rebuke” to attorneys in March, condemning “the terminations of thousands of probationary workers as a ‘sham’ designed to circumvent the law, accused the Justice Department of filing a bogus declaration, and declared in open court that he felt ‘misled’ by dishonest government lawyers,” according to Slate.
And, just this week, Judge James Boasberg said he was “incredulous” that DOJ lawyers wouldn’t answer his questions about the administration allegedly ignoring his ruling to return a plane full of Venezuelan deportees to the United States.
“So when I said directly turn the plane around, you read it because my written order was pithier, this could be disregarded? That’s a heck of a stretch,” Boasberg chided.
Trump has slammed the “rogue judges” he claimed are trying to strip him of his executive powers.
