Justice Department lawyers face skeptical judges upset by 'shoddy work'
Justice Department lawyers defending the Trump administration’s policies are encountering mounting criticism and frustration from federal judges, a sign of deepening tension between the executive branch and courts weighing its aggressive uses of power.
In recent hearings and rulings, judges appointed by presidents of both parties have criticized the statements and behavior of administration officials, accusing them of defying court orders, submitting flimsy evidence, providing inadequate answers to questions and even acting like toddlers.
The cases involve lawsuits challenging everything from President Donald Trump’s push to increase deportations to his efforts to punish law firms. Most are in the early stages of litigation. But the judicial pushback suggests a break from the goodwill courts have traditionally shown toward assertions by government lawyers.
The “deference that judges would give to attorneys from Main Justice is evaporating,” said John E. Jones III, a former federal judge in Pennsylvania appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush. Justice Department lawyers, he added, have “lost a fair measure of their credibility.”
At a hearing in D.C. last week about law firms, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates seemed unimpressed by some of the Justice Department lawyer’s answers, responding at one point: “Oh, give me a break.”
U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell was similarly skeptical Friday as she ruled Trump’s actions against a different law firm were unconstitutional, writing that Justice Department lawyer Richard Lawson, “when asked, was unable to fill in basic details” about the sanctions.
In Virginia, a judge scoffed at evidence the government offered in an immigration case in March to claim one couple were members of a violent gang. “I expect more from the government than this kind of very shoddy work,” U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema told the Justice Department lawyer, adding that if it were a criminal case, “I’d throw you out of my chambers.”
The government then detained the couple in Texas and sought to deport them based on the same set of allegations. U.S. District Judge David Briones in El Paso ordered their immediate release, writing of the government: “This court takes clear offense to respondents wasting judicial resources.”
When U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in D.C. issued an order in April pausing parts of Trump’s executive order overhauling voting and election systems, she chided government lawyers for claims in court that she said did not match the facts.
“This exchange does not reflect the diligence the Court expects from any litigant,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her opinion, “let alone the United States Department of Justice.”
Since Trump took office, more than 200 lawsuits have been filed challenging his initiatives, and judges have entered more than 100 orders temporarily blocking or pausing those actions. Trump and his allies have called for some of the judges to be impeached and removed from the bench, castigating judges who ruled against them as “activists” and “liberals” overstepping their authority.
“We’re not being treated fairly by all judges,” Trump told ABC News in an interview aired last week. He has previously accused those who ruled against him of being “radical left lunatics” and part of a “rigged system.”
But the pushback from the bench has come from judges appointed by Republican as well as Democratic presidents—including by Trump himself—suggesting the issue is more about the Justice Department’s evidence and court arguments than judicial activism.
U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty, who Trump appointed, wrote in April that he was scheduling a hearing to investigate his “strong suspicion” that the administration had deported a 2-year-old “U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”
Lawyers from the agency at times admitted they did not have answers to basic questions, including details on Trump’s sanctions on some law firms or the deals he struck with others who were hoping to avoid punishment.
This is not the first time Trump and his emissaries have run afoul of the courts. Between presidential terms, Trump faced four criminal cases—including one in which he was convicted by a jury on 34 counts of falsifying business records—and civil litigation.
Judges in those cases held Trump in contempt, asked his attorneys to control him, threatened to throw him out of court for defying orders to be quiet and warned he could be jailed if his behavior did not improve.
Since Trump returned to the White House, some of the sharpest criticisms of his administration’s actions have come in cases focused on its immigration agenda.
U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg in D.C. last month took the rare step of launching criminal contempt proceedings after saying probable cause existed to suggest administration officials willfully disregarded an order he issued in March halting Alien Enemies Act deportation flights. (An appeals court has temporarily paused those contempt proceedings.) Trump has criticized Boasberg multiple times on social media, describing him as a “troublemaker and an agitator.”
In Maryland, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has been sparring for weeks with Justice Department lawyers over what she described as their failure to implement her order to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego García, the Maryland man whom authorities have acknowledged they mistakenly deported to El Salvador.
During an early hearing in the case, Xinis voiced disappointment that the Justice Department’s lawyer, Erez Reuveni, could not clearly explain why the administration couldn’t just ask for Abrego García’s return—a frustration Reuveni told the judge he shared.
“The first thing I did when I got this case on my desk is ask my clients the same question,” he told her.
Reuveni was later fired by the department.
Since then, Xinis, appearing increasingly exasperated in her rulings, has accused the department of “obstructing” efforts to return Abrego García and offering “specious” arguments in court.
“Defendants have failed to respond in good faith, and their refusal to do so can only be viewed as willful and intentional noncompliance,” she wrote in a recent order. “That ends now.”
Skepticism from the bench also has been striking in the four cases dealing with Trump’s sanctions on law firms, most of which have been blocked for now.
The Justice Department has defended Trump’s orders, saying they were not meant as punishments. Judges have temporarily blocked most of his sanctions for the four law firms that sued. During a recent hearing, U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan in D.C. called Trump’s actions targeting firms “a shocking abuse of power.”
Howell, in the same courthouse, expressed irritation last month over the administration’s response to an order she issued in the case brought by the firm Perkins Coie.
She had told Attorney General Pam Bondi and Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to issue guidance to federal agencies about the case. In their memo doing so, Bondi and Vought called her order “erroneous” and insulted the law firm.
Howell criticized those remarks as a temper tantrum from top officials and said they were “worthy of a 3-year-old.”
Jones, the former federal judge, said lower-court judges, restrained by judicial codes of conduct, have limited opportunities to respond to the administration’s criticisms. They cannot simply share their perspectives by summoning reporters to a news conference, he said.
“But you can through your writings and your rulings express certain points to the public,” Jones said. “And increasingly judges are doing that.”
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