With Calvinball the order of the day at One First Street, it’s a relief to the see the Justice Department’s bad faith shenanigans get spanked in court. And it’s especially gratifying when the judge delivering that spanking is one of Trump’s own appointees. So Judge Thomas Cullen benchslapping the Justice Department for its preposterous lawsuit against all the federal judges in Maryland is an exceptionally delightful read.

The verdict: Dismissed. And God help ya at the Fourth Circuit, PAM.

Bad faith

After the Trump administration openly defied Chief Judge James Boasberg’s order to “turn the planes around” and not deport any alien detainees to CECOT in El Salvador, DHS embarked on a nationwide shell game. Detainees like Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk were arrested in blue states and rapidly transferred to far flung detention centers, mostly in the Fifth Circuit, in a blatant attempt to deprive local courts of jurisdiction over habeas claims. Worse still, DHS refused to commit to any delay in deporting immigrants with pending habeas petition, despite this(!) Supreme Court ordering the government to give detainees “reasonable” time to contest their deportation.

And so Chief Judge George Russell III of the District of Maryland, where DHS snatched up Kilmar Abrego Garcia and summarily deported him to the one country on earth where it was illegal to send him, took steps to proactively block the government from evading the jurisdiction of the federal court in Maryland.

In a May 28 standing order, Judge Russell noted that the “recent influx of habeas petitions concerning alien detainees purportedly subject to improper and imminent removal from the United States that have been filed after normal court hours and on weekends and holidays has created scheduling difficulties and resulted in hurried and frustrating hearings in that obtaining clear and concrete information about the location and status of the petitioners is elusive.” Pursuant to the All Writs Act, which allows courts to take all necessary action to preserve their jurisdiction over a pending case, he enjoined the government from deporting any immigrant for two full business days after the filing of a habeas petition. This would obviate the problem of the government immediately whisking immigrants out of the country before a judge could adjudicate their habeas claims, as it would have succeeded in doing in the Western District of Texas without the 1 am intervention of this(!) Supreme Court.

After which Attorney General Pam Bondi lost her shit.

“The American people elected President Trump to carry out his policy agenda: this pattern of judicial overreach undermines the democratic process and cannot be allowed to stand,” she fulminated.

And then she did something even crazier: She sued every federal judge in the state of Maryland, even including the ones on senior status.

Bad law

The complaint characterized Judge Russell’s order as a part of a pattern of insolence by trial court judges, who “have used and abused their equitable powers to interfere with the prerogatives of the Executive Branch to an unprecedented degree.” The DOJ whined that courts have no right to issue equitable relief without a live case before them to adjudicate, and they demanded injunctive relief to block the standing order.

Because every single judge in Maryland — including those on senior status — was a named defendant, the Fourth Circuit reassigned the case to Judge Thomas Cullen, a Trump appointee to the Western District of Virginia. And so Judge Cullen had to schlep up to Baltimore from Roanoke to hear this dumb turkey in person.

At a hearing on August 13, he seemed dubious of the DOJ’s right to sue judges.

“I think you probably picked up on the fact that I have some skepticism,” he warned DOJ lawyer Elizabeth Themins Hedges.

But the order that he released on August 26 makes it clear that he was a lot more than skeptical.

You are bad, and you should feel bad, PAM!

Judge Cullen took the Trump administration to task for its full-blown assault on the independence of the judiciary.

“The coordinate branches together form the government of the United States of America, and together they are the sovereign in this Nation,” he notes, reminding the Justice Department that “the executive branch is not the sole sovereign in the United States of America.”

He excoriates the DOJ and its leadership for their constant, inappropriate attacks on the judiciary as a whole and on individual federal judges:

Indeed, over the past several months, principal officers of the Executive (and their spokespersons) have described federal district judges across the country as “left-wing,” “liberal,” “activists,” “radical,” “politically minded,” “rogue,” “unhinged,” “outrageous, overzealous, [and] unconstitutional,” “[c]rooked,” and worse. Although some tension between the coordinate branches of government is a hallmark of our constitutional system, this concerted effort by the Executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it is both unprecedented and unfortunate.

And he lambasted the executive branch for carelessly initiating a battle with the judicial branch which could easily escalate into a massive constitutional crisis.

“If the case were to survive a motion to dismiss, the parties—the individual judicial defendants and principal officers of the Executive, including the Secretary of Homeland Security and the United States Attorney General—would potentially be required to sit for depositions and produce documents, including emails and other internal communications, relevant to the issuance of the standing orders and the actual reasons for filing suit,” he railed. “These discovery demands, in turn, would almost certainly trigger claims of privilege— executive, judicial, deliberative-process, and the like—and invariably compound this constitutional standoff into epic proportions.”

GTFO

Judge Cullen found that the judges were immune from suit, the president had no standing to sue, and “the Executive fails to identify a legitimate cause of action that allows it to bring this lawsuit.” But other than that … bang up job, fellas!

He dismissed the case without reaching the gravamen of the complaint, although he did note that the Fourth Circuit has its own standing order imposing an automatic two-week stay of removal upon notice of appeal, compared to which “the District of Maryland’s recent stopgap measure appears considerably more modest.”

Judge Cullen also expressed astonishment that the DOJ didn’t do the normal thing and just challenge the 48-hour order in a relevant case, rather than declare war on Maryland’s judiciary.

“But as events over the past several months have revealed, these are not normal times— at least regarding the interplay between the Executive and this coordinate branch of government,” he wrote. “It’s no surprise that the Executive chose a different, and more confrontational, path entirely.”

And perhaps it’s no surprise that this abnormal regime immediately noticed an appeal to the Fourth Circuit. That court has not been particularly friendly to the DOJ of late. Even Judge Wilkinson gave it the back of his hand when it demanded a get-out-of-discovery-free card in the Abrego Garcia case. But the Supreme Court has been lighting trial judges on fire for sport of late so … might as well give it a go, right?

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