patrick.net

The Trump Effect is crashing into the Trump Lawfare. Yesterday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution somberly ran a sorrowful story headlined, “Appeals court cancels hearing in Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump.” ...

The top two layers are the two federal cases, which are being specially prosecuted by Jack Smith, an odious little demon who Supreme Court Justice Thomas opined was illegally appointed. The captive media has reported both of Smith’s cases must be closed or dismissed before Trump takes office, pursuant to a DOJ policy precluding prosecution of the department’s own boss (the President).

Passing deeper, into the third circle, where greedy, conflicted judges are tormented for eternity, we discover wispy-haired, antique Judge Engoran, who soaked Trump for a then-unpayable, historic $500 million fine — for writing the wrong value on his loan application, even though the bank testified it didn’t care. After Judge Engoran scheduled a hearing to liquidate Trump’s New York properties, Trump took his social media company public, to raise the cash to pay the massive bond. (No billionaires bailed Trump out; it happened during the long, dark night of the grim Second Act.)

Anyway, just over a month ago, the New York Court of Appeals held oral arguments on Trump’s appeal of the massive verdict, and most of the appellate judges seemed stiffly skeptical of the record-setting fine, and of the state’s creative interpretation of the law. Most observers, regardless of politics, expect Trump’s fine to be miniaturized if not completely overturned.

Moving deeper still, we discover Judge Juan Merchan, whose New York jury convicted President Trump of hiring an accountant who wrote “legal fees” on checks paid to Trump’s lawyer. Judge Merchan has twice rescheduled Trump’s sentencing hearing, now facing the hideous prospect of sentencing a sitting President to jail — which simply won’t work — or even worse, not sentencing him to jail. ...

Fani Willis, the plump county prosecutor who took orders from Biden’s White House and used the case as her personal bank account, generously spread Fulton County money around to her pals, and hired unqualified married men to work under her at the DA’s office, if you know what I mean.

Trump’s appeal sprang from the trial judge’s denial of his motion to remove Fani Willis and her office as the case’s prosecutors, basically since she’s a hopeless train wreck. If removed, the case would be reassigned to a different Georgia county, and would almost certainly be immediately dismissed. So, returning at last to the Journal-Constitution’s sad story, yesterday, the appeals court, without any prompting issued a one-sentence order canceling the already-scheduled oral arguments without explanation. ...

All the Trump cases are rapidly unraveling. But we will never forget them.

Leftists wept bitterly yesterday as the New York Times ran a story headlined, “Jack Smith Moves to Dismiss Charges Against Trump in Election and Documents Cases.”

“After careful consideration,” Prosecutor Smith’s carefully drafted motions to dismiss carefully explained, “the Department has determined that (DOJ’s internal) opinions concerning the Constitution's prohibition on federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting President apply to this situation and that as a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.”

Ka-boom.

I’ll bet they “carefully considered” it, desperately but unsuccessfully searching for some kind of loophole. Either way, DC Judge Chutkan has already dismissed her case, leaving only the 11th Circuit in Atlanta to dismiss Smith’s appeal against Trump. I expect to see that dismissal today.

The Times article correctly noted that Trump had promised to fire Prosecutor Smith “within two seconds” of taking office, and has suggested, perhaps strongly, he’ll initiate investigations of the various federal prosecutions. For their sakes, I sure hope everything is squeaky clean.

Remember, if they didn’t do anything wrong, they don’t have anything to worry about! And also, no one is above the law! ...

The truth is that the Democrats conducted a vast poli-sci experiment by crossing all kinds of invisible political red lines, such as prosecuting former presidents under flimsy legal theories, and they found out the hard way that kind of thing can boomerang on you.

And all of this candidate history-making occurred over the quilted backdrop of not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six criminal cases filed against President Trump, plus a handful of civil lawsuits thrown in, all designed by Democrats to thwart the GOP’s political chances. (It never occurred to anyone that the dozen or so legal proceedings were all brought by radical progressives and not a single one filed by a Republican.)

But over the second half of the year, every single criminal case against Trump imploded, was dismissed, or was indefinitely stayed. It is all over. As for the civil cases, they are either resolved or on appeal. But no longer do they pose any serious threat; all are now relegated to nuisance status. Meanwhile, after all that, late in the year, Trump began winning his own cases. Just this month ABC forked over $15 million for defamation.

Given how thin and how creative the cases against Trump were, many of us were optimistic. But nobody would have predicted this kind of radical and complete turnaround in Trump’s legal fortunes, all in one year, and all resolving before the elections.

https://nitter.poast.org/listen_2learn/status/1879643890577547696#m

But, we also had conclusive evidence against many other federal workers, like celebrity villain Lois Lerner and her team of career IRS staff who helped her. They were all just delighted to illegally spin the wheels of power to the “grind” setting and levigate legions of innocent Tea Partiers.

In other words, since 2013 we’d realized there were literal criminals inside government, empowered by progressive protectors, who were outright destroying people’s lives and insidiously making things immeasurably difficult for the rest of us. They’d hide in the regulatory bushes, and just after we played slip-n-slide on a hot Saturday afternoon, they’d figuratively spring out and declare the leftover puddles in the lawn to be protected wetlands.

We waited breathlessly for all the swamp-draining to start, but nobody ever got fired. Trump 1.0 was a great disillusionment. Worse, whenever President Trump wasn’t looking, the swamp thumbed its reptilian nose and made faces at us. This happened a lot, because the President was often distracted by all the lawfare and impeachments and Democrats otherwise clowning around like idiots.

We expected sackings, at least at the Cincinnati IRS office where Lois Lerner’s squad of partisans unleashed bureaucratic hell on their fellow Americans. But we got inaction. Our long-deferred expectations dissolved into disappointment. ...

But we weren’t just disappointed about Lois. Granted, it is maddening that she is living on a Greek Island somewhere enjoying her generous, federal defined-benefits retirement plan, which we are paying for, and given what we’ve been learning lately, we are also paying for her taxpayer-funded security detail and probably a government-funded personal shopper.

It’s been too long; Lois has escaped the net. The remaining issue is this: What about the so-called nonpartisan, apolitical, career IRS personnel who did Lois’ dirty work? What about them? In 2013, the Inspector General found the IRS officials had broken the law. But no charges were ever brought. No federal employee was ever reported to have been fired.

Lois Lerner and her crew of ‘nonpartisan’ civil servants weaponized the IRS against conservatives, sabotaging core, First Amendment-protected political participation, all thinly disguised as bureaucratic red tape. And what happened? Nothing. No one got fired. No one got charged. No one even lost their pension.

Nothing changed to ensure it couldn’t happen again.

Absurdly, as you read this, the same staff at the same Cincinnati office still process conservative tax-exempt applications. But don’t worry—they got an hour of mandatory ethics PowerPoint training! With a multiple-choice quiz at the end.

But now we have Trump 2.0. And finally! at long last! oh, glorious day! Trump 2.0 has started out the way that we’d originally hoped Trump 1.0 would begin. A great gurgling noise is coming from Washington, DC, and the swamp creatures are getting louder and louder. The reckoning has begun, and nobody cares anymore about all the tired, absurd claims about how “apolitical” the civil service is.

Want to know the main reason why conservatives have zero sympathy for pajama-wearing federal workers being ordered back to the office five days a week? I can answer in two words: Lois Lerner.

Scott Jennings ends the careers of every Democrat on the CNN panel, by nailing the issue about activist judges illegally interfering with the Trump presidency.

He starts with Gretchen Carlson who clearly wants “individual judges who hate Donald Trump to tie him up for four years.”

Chris Sununu interjects and leaves the Dems speechless when he brings up the issue of “judge shopping.”

Then Jennings owns Alencia Johnson and Ellie Honig on how Joe Biden repeatedly defied the Supreme Court on student loan debt “cancellation.”

The hypocrisy of Democrats saying leaders should listen to judges is astounding. Especially after Pennsylvania blatantly defied the Supreme Court when it came to elections.

The best is at the end where Abby Phillip condescendingly tells Jennings “let me explain it to you a little more slowly.” Jennings lets her have it after that.

Ultimately, Jennings is right that activist judges don’t get to “compel the executive branch” to spend tax dollars specifically how they see fit.

If there’s a major policy issue, take it to the Supreme Court. Otherwise, these district judges need to be ignored. They’re nothing but unhinged lunatics with EDS, TDS, and DDS.

https://x.com/Bubblebathgirl/status/1889312721176265130

However, there is one element of the activist left that still poses a significant threat to the Donald Trump and his agenda, and that is lawfare. Many of the same elements of our system of justice that were used to harass, bankrupt, and even try to jail President Trump in years past are still in place and are already being weaponized against MAGA right now.

Here are several activist judges who are trying to take control of the government for the Deep State as we speak.

Judge Angel Kelley, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, nominated by President Joe Biden

Yesterday, Kelley granted a restraining order against National Institute of Health (NIH) funding cuts. The Trump administration had moved to capped indirect costs, i.e. reimbursements for “overhead” expenses on university research, at 15 percent. This is fundamental to the Trump administration’s agenda of slashing waste, but it was met with strong pushback from the universities. Judge Kelley immediately stepped in on their behalf. ...

Senior Judge Amy Berman Jackson, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, nominated by President Barack Obama

Jackson recently made news by temporarily reinstated the fired head of the Office of the Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger, a Biden appointee. She is known as a clear partisan with a long history of attacking Trump and his Republican allies. She presided over the Russian collusion case and multiple January 6 U.S. Capitol riot cases, where she built a reputation for opining on her judicial philosophy for an hour or more even during “procedural courtroom check-ins,” according to CNN. ...

Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, nominated by President Barack Obama

A Democrat donor, McConnell is attempting to block another spending freeze from Trump and is even taking the extreme approach of threatening administration officials with criminal charges if it is not reversed.

But McConnell is more than just a typical Democrat, he’s a committed activist, as the Daily Caller reported:

While he was in private practice as an attorney until 2009, McConnell donated hundreds of thousands to Democratic campaigns and political action committees, including 2008 presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama, according to Federal Election Commission records. He also donated over $8,000 to Democratic Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s 2006 senate campaign.

He not only worked at the ACLU, but he was on the board of directors for the Rhode Island branch of Planned Parenthood for four years. ...

Senior Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, nominated by President Bill Clinton

Kollar-Kotelly boldly stood against Trump’s efforts to cut government excess by blocking DOGE from “obtaining access to certain Treasury Department payment records,” which handles an estimated 90 percent of federal payments.

The judge is known for having sentenced seven pro-life activists to federal prison in a particularly cruel fashion. The husband of activist Paula “Paulette” Harlow, 77, whom Kollar-Kotelly sentenced to prison, was thoroughly rebuked by the judge when he emphasized that his wife was dying and plead for mercy and leniency. In response, Kollar-Kotelly suggested that Harlow “make every effort to stay alive” as part of the “tenets of your religion.”

Nasty. ...

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, nominated by President Barack Obama

Engelmayer blocked DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department payment system. In his ruling, Engelmayer forbade all political appointees including the Treasury Secretary(!) from accessing Department of Treasury data. ...

Senior Judge George O’Toole Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, nominated by President Bill Clinton

O’Toole has already tried to buck Trump two to significant ways.

First, he blocked Trump’s federal government employee buyout even after 65,000 federal workers had already taken the offer. This prolonged a pause on the deferred resignation program.

He also temporarily blocked the transfer of trans women (aka biological males) to men’s prisons. This ruling rebuffs part of Trump’s “two sexes” executive order from taking full effect. This also prolongs “trans” prisoners’ access to “gender-affirming care.”

Chief Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales, of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, nominated by President Barack Obama

Gonzales made headlines by blocking the deportations of Venezuelan criminals to Guantanamo Bay. ...

The pattern is clear: these are political operatives using the judicial system to pass de facto legislation that blocks elements of the Trump agenda. Maybe some of this will get overturned, but it gums up with works and undermines the agenda of the democratically elected president.

Though the players are largely unfamiliar to the general public, they are performing essentially the same function as the Lisa Monacos, Jack Smiths, and Alvin Braggs of the world.

Senior Judge Amy Berman Jackson, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, nominated by President Barack Obama

Jackson recently made news by temporarily reinstated the fired head of the Office of the Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger, a Biden appointee.

CNN ran a remarkable story yesterday headlined, “Judge Chutkan rejects call from Democratic AGs for temporary restraining order blocking DOGE’s access to federal data.” Chutkan is the same DC Circuit judge who gave the J6ers such a hard time and was reversed by the Supreme Court. So you know that if she couldn’t find support for a TRO it was pretty bad. It was another I told you so moment.




Lawyers for 18 blue states had asked Chutkan to temporarily restrain Musk and DOGE from accessing government information systems... They also wanted the judge to block Musk and DOGE from firing any employees at those agencies.

But Chutkan ruled the states hadn’t shown “that they will suffer imminent, irreparable harm absent a temporary restraining order.” Regular readers will recall imminent, irreparable harm is one of the hardest elements to prove to get a TRO. So, that was good news. But it got much better.

Judge Chutkan—no friend to Trump—couldn’t find a way to justify a temporary restraining order. That means their legal case was embarrassingly weak—so weak that even the judge who handed down some of the harshest J6 sentences wouldn’t touch it. What did Judge Chutkan see? ...

They’ve been chasing the wrong person the whole time. The billionaire they love to hate —nobody elected Elon Musk!— is just a special consultant to the White House. But if you go back and read and listen to Musk carefully, you’ll find that, while he may have hinted at authority, he never actually claimed it. ...

Since Elon wasn’t confirmed by the Senate, they thought they had him dead to rights. But ‘advisors’ don’t wield significant authority. Thus, the Appointments Clause doesn’t apply—and the plaintiffs just lost their big constitutional argument.

It was pure political aikido—using the enemy’s own momentum against them. They built an entire legal argument around a fundamental mistake. Trump’s team let the media and the blue states chase Musk around, and then ripped the rug out at the last second.

Jackson recently made news by temporarily reinstated the fired head of the Office of the Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger, a Biden appointee.

CBS 60-Minutes’ Gaslighter-in-Chief Scott Pelley was at it again Sunday night trying to put over the story that Donald Trump had unfairly cashiered a broad swathe of federal agency Inspectors General — whose job it is to investigate crime, mischief, and administrative malfeasance. In the spotlight sat one Hampton Dellinger, Special Counsel to the independent Office of Special Counsel, who just resigned after a court battle over his firing weeks ago.

Do you have any idea what a laugh riot that is? Dellinger’s job was to protect whistleblowers and enforce the Hatch Act (against public employees engaging in partisan political activities). Would you say he did a great job protecting FBI whistleblowers who testified before Congress last year — say, FBI agents Marcus Allen, Garret O’Boyle, and Steve Friend? They were suspended without pay, not allowed to seek other employment, lost homes, were financially wrecked, and hung out to dry by then-FBI boss Christopher Wray. Was Hampton Dellinger heard to make a peep about that? (Nope.) So much for protecting whistleblowers.

You can state categorically that thousands of federal employees have been engaged in what they call “the Resistance” since the first Trump administration. They openly advertise themselves as the Resistance. The Resistance is simply and purely Democratic Party activism. How is that not a violation of the Hatch Act? Hampton Dellinger did not notice any of it. Maybe that’s why he got fired, ya think?

For decades, the Supreme Court has delicately danced around the issue of universal injunctions, but has never definitively cabined their scope. The conservative justices, particularly Thomas and Gorsuch, have often signaled deep skepticism of district courts wielding nationwide policy-shaping power, particularly when those injunctions are weaponized against the executive branch.

I expect several key themes to emerge from the Supreme Court’s analysis of this appeal. First, is the Separation of Powers issue. Universal injunctions effectively let unelected district judges act like super-legislators overriding executive action without check. That’s a direct challenge to the constitutional balance of powers.

Second, the issue of Judicial Overreach versus Proper Relief. Traditionally, injunctions should only apply to specific, named plaintiffs, not hypothetical or future parties. The Supreme Court will likely reaffirm this strict standard, and reject the notion that district courts can possibly grant relief applying to the entire country—or beyond.

Finally, the Forum-Shopping Problem. The Trump team’s brief hammers on the coordinated lawfare of cherry-picking liberal courts to engineer politically motivated injunctions. The Supreme Court may even set new limits that could prevent a handful of progressive district judges from effectively governing the entire nation from the bench.

Trump Administration Deports Hundreds of Migrants, Despite Judge's Order Stopping Removal

The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador despite a federal judge’s order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members

The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador despite a federal judge's order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg issued an order Saturday evening blocking the deportations but lawyers told him there were already two planes with migrants in the air — one headed for El Salvador, the other for Honduras. Boasberg verbally ordered the planes be turned around, but they apparently were not and he did not include the directive in his written order.

“Oopsie…Too late,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, a Trump ally who agreed to house about 300 migrants for a year at a cost of $6 million in his country’s prisons, wrote on the social media site X above an article about Boasberg’s ruling. That post was recirculated by White House communications director Steven Cheung.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who negotiated an earlier deal with Bukele to house migrants, posted on the site: “We sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars.”

The migrants were deported after Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times in U.S. history.

The law, invoked during World Wars I and II and the War of 1812, requires a president to declare the United States is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under immigration or criminal laws. It was last used to justify the detention of Japanese-American civilians during World War II.

The ACLU, which filed the lawsuit that led to Boasberg's temporary restraining order on deportations, said it was asking the government whether the removals to El Salvador were in defiance of the court.

"This morning, we asked the government to assure the Court that its order was not violated and are waiting to hear, as well as trying to do our own investigation,” ACLU’s lead lawyer, Lee Gelernt, said in a statement Sunday.

Venezuela’s government in a statement Sunday rejected the use of Trump’s declaration of the law, characterizing it as evocative of “the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horror of the Nazi concentration camps.”

Tren de Aragua originated in an infamously lawless prison in the central state of Aragua and accompanied an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living conditions after their nation’s economy came undone last decade.

Trump Administration Deports Hundreds of Migrants, Despite Judge's Order Stopping Removal

The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador despite a federal judge’s order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members

@LokiJulianus • Mar 15

Current legal theory: the President can blow people up half a world away
without review, but he can't put some Venezuelans on an airplane without a
judge signing off on it.

LokiJulianus • Mar 15

Current legal theory: the President can blow people up half a world away
without review, but he can't put some Venezuelans on an airplane without a
judge signing off on it.