Furious US judges are lashing out at Trump as he ‘puts democracy in danger’

Across the US, judges are fuming. The source of their ire: Donald Trump and his administration. In frank, unapologetic and sometimes openly angry language, the American judiciary is pushing back at what it says is undemocratic and dangerous behaviour by Trump, his agents and federal prosecutors. And in the lead-up to next month’s midterm elections, those accusations have escalated dramatically. Shorts On Wednesday Judge David Carter, in California’s district court, accused Trump of acting like “a sovereign”. The Trump administration, via the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been seeking an emergency court order to segregate about 20,000 potential ballots in the midterm elections, which it claimed were sent to “likely noncitizens”. In a blistering 26-page ruling rejecting the suit Carter said the case was “about the right of every American citizen to vote in a free and fair election”. “Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election,sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional electionsprocedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,” Carter wrote. “In bringing this lawsuit, the Executive would have this Court believe that it reigns as a sole sovereign. “If [the government’s] last-minute request for relief were granted, either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process. Over 20,000 registered Californians would potentially lose the right that generations of Americans have fought to preserve.” A judge in a court in California dismissed a Justice Department’s lawsuit that sought to block California from counting mail ballots (Photo by REUTERS/Daniel Cole) Carter said it wasn’t an isolated case: the DOJ has filed at least 31 lawsuits in federal district courts across the country seeking to decide who can or cannot vote according to its own lists of eligible voters. “The DOJ’s actions are indicative of a broad, ongoing pattern of attempted election interference by federal officials,” the judge said. He also ordered the DOJ to stop threatening officials who do not comply with its wishes. “Constitutional rights and our democracy are at stake,” he wrote. “If the Executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger.” The DOJ, in a statement, said it was “following the facts and the law, not anyone’s political timetable.” ‘A sideshow on top of a sideshow’ On Tuesday a federal judge scolded the DOJ for mishandling a criminal case against two former FBI officials, regarding their investigation of a laptop linked to Hunter Biden, the son of former president Joe Biden. An agent confessed in court that FBI director Kash Patel ordered the case to be launched after a July speech from Trump rehashing old complaints about election interference. “I had concerns that this would be political,” the agent testified. Magistrate Zia Faruqui rejected an amended criminal complaint filed by the DOJ, which had not been signed off by a judge to confirm there was “probable cause” to believe a crime had been committed. The Trump administration is still trying to launch prosecutions over an old complaint about Hunter Biden (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) “Everything is a little sideshow on top of a sideshow,” Faruqui complained. The DOJ is also accused of political motivations for making a fresh attempt to prosecute former FBI director James Comey, as well as a former White House staffer who testified against Trump at an investigation into the Capitol Hill riot in January 2021, both this week. ‘Running amok, unchecked’ One of Donald Trump’s favourite pastimes is building golf courses, but his plan to bulldoze a public course in Washington DC and replace it with a carbon copy of one of his resorts has met stiff resistance from conservationists. Ana Reyes, a district court judge in DC, has been overseeing the case, and rounded on the government when it started cutting down trees on the course while it was still being litigated. She was especially bemused by government lawyers insisting there was no official plan or decision to remodel the course, despite the president’s repeated social media posts on the subject that conclusively confirmed it was happening. In a quixotic ruling on Monday, Reyes’ frustration boiled over. “Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not tobelieve the sitting President,” her written decision began. “And yet, here we are.This started as a case about golf. That good walk spoiled. But it has become much more.” Much of her 70-page ruling concerned the separation of powers between the courts and the government, in which she asserted her power to check Trump’s overreach – accusing the administration of trying to “shield itself from accountability”. “As the Founders intended and as early Supreme Court precedent confirms, the executive branch may not act free from any judicial oversight,” she said. “The separation of powers is not a talismanic incantation that permits the Executive to run amok, unchecked.” Hundreds of trees were cut down on a DC golf course despite a judge ordering no action on the historic site (Photo by Mehmet Eser/Anadolu via Getty Images) She concluded: “The Court earlier stated, ‘I am not the Lorax. I do not speak for the trees.’ The Courtstill does not speak for the trees. It speaks only for the rule of law.” The judgement drew the attention of Trump, who responded on social media that the government will hold Reyes herself “fully responsible for anybody who is hurt, or killed, on this very dangerous, dilapidated, and unsightly Golf Course. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”. ‘Unworthy… unsettling… blatantly unlawful’ Under pressure from the administration, prosecutors are starting to cut corners or even lie, judges claim. In July ProPublica published a review of hundreds of cases in which judges have criticised the actions of federal prosecutors since Trump’s re-election. They found that, increasingly, judges could not rely on a legal principle called “the presumption of regularity”: the assumption that the government has done its job properly and in good faith. “Judges simply don’t believe the representations that are being made by United States attorneys, assistant United States attorneys and the like,” former federal judge John E. Jones told ProPublica. “We’ve never seen anything close to this.” Examples found by ProPublica include: In May, district court judge Mary McElroy, presiding over a dispute over a DOJ investigation into gender-affirming care, said the Department of Justice “has proven unworthy of this trust at every point… it has misrepresented and withheld information [and] its representatives have, under oath, misrepresented salient facts”. She quashed a DOJ subpoena that was “issued for an improper purpose in bad faith” and added “the discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of federal prosecutors and DOJ’s tactics in this case is unsettling”. In January, district court judge Irene Berger ordered the release of a detainee arrested, without a warrant, by ICE at a traffic stop. Prosecutors tried to justify the arrest by alleging the detainee had a 2009 conviction for drug possession. The judge pointed out they would have been four years old in 2009. Berger wrote: “the presumption of regularity and integrity previously and routinely afforded to the Executive branch and the United States Attorney’s Office has been undeniably eroded in this jurisdiction and across the country, and this Court will no longer blindly accept statements of fact from [them]”. In June, district judge Patrick Schiltz quashed a series of DOJ sobpoenas aimed at Democrat governor Tim Walz and several of his allies after they pushed back at ICE actions in Minnesota. In his ruling, Schiltz said “the subpoenas were issued as part of an unconstitutional effort to coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration laws and to harass and retaliate against them for failing to do so”. He added: “Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action – particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take – is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use of the grand-jury process.” A similar review, by CNN, found 77 rulings by dozens of federal judges who described the government’s actions using language such as: “squalid,” “irrational,” and “shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.” The most common criticism was abuse of power by the government.