There comes a time in every high-profile DOJ case when you know something absolutely batshit is about to go down. It starts with the entry of appearance by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward.
After a crazed gunman tried to shoot up the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Acting AG Todd Blanche tweeted out an indignant letter demanding that the National Trust for Historic Preservation drop its lawsuit to block Trump from building his tacky ballroom on the site of the former East Wing.
“Enough is enough. Your client should voluntarily dismiss this frivolous lawsuit today in light of last night’s assassination attempt on President Trump,” huffed Brett Shumate, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Division. “If your client does not dismiss the lawsuit by 9:00 AM on Monday, the government will move to dissolve the injunction and dismiss the case in light of last night’s extraordinary events. We will state your position as opposed if we do not hear back from you by 9:00 AM on Monday.”
It does not seem to have occurred to any of the brain geniuses at the DOJ that the injunction had already been stayed by the DC Circuit, thanks to the appeal of Judge Richard Leon’s order. (Or maybe they knew, and they decided to tweet nonsense anyway because Trump’s DOJ is a PR shop, not a law firm.) This appeal had, of course, divested the trial judge of authority to modify his own ruling, even if he were so inclined. And so the DOJ called in the guy willing to say just about anything to satisfy his boss.
On the same day he entered his appearance, Stan Woodward docketed a shockingly inappropriate document that strongly resembled a Truth Social post tapped out by a demented octogenarian. ATL’s Joe Patrice broke down the ungrammatical screed masquerading as a motion for indicative ruling. Shorn of its multiple references to “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME,” the howlergram was a request for Judge Leon to tell the DC Circuit that, if he did have jurisdiction over the matter, he would see the error of his ways and rule that Trump is entitled to build Mar-a-Lago on the Potomac without input from Congress.
As it turns out, the petition wasn’t just embarrassing. It was also mendacious, according to the Trust’s response filed yesterday.
“Defendants make multiple factual representations to the Court that the Defendants’ counsel know to be false,” wrote the plaintiffs’ lawyer Greg Craig, the former White House Counsel referred to by Woodward as “the lawyer for Barack Hussein Obama.”
What followed resembled a recurring Saturday Night Live skit from the 2010s that featured Fox and Friends Hosts bumbling through the news, followed by a lengthy correction reel informing watchers that “Haitian does not mean ‘half-Asian,’” and “Chef Boyardee is not the Vice President of Italy.”
No, the the National Trust was never “shown detailed plans and specifications of this knitted, unified, and cohesive structure by Top Officers and Leaders in both the Military and Secret Service.”
No, the Trust was not “asked by the United States Military not to bring this suit because of the Top Secret nature of the important facility being built.”
It is factually inaccurate to say that “Congress has never dictated or tampered with the zoning, permitting, or architectural aspects” of any White House project.
No, the Trust’s aesthetic standing isn’t based on a random woman “walking her dog in the vicinity of the White House.” In fact Alison Hoagland is the “former senior historian at the Historic American Buildings Survey of the National Park Service, the former Vice President of the D.C. Preservation League, the author of six books on American vernacular architecture, and a regular visitor to President’s Park.”
And, despite the histrionics of Woodward’s motion, construction has not been delayed at all, thanks to repeated stays by the trial and appellate courts.
Craig was not petty enough to point out that Woodward was also fudging the truth when he claimed that the ballroom is being “given FREE OF CHARGE AS A GIFT TO THE COUNTRY!” But we at ATL suffer from no such scruple: Republicans just added $1 billion to the bill to end the DHS shutdown, earmarking the funds for security improvements to the ballroom.
“All of this may be standard fare for a social media post. But in a federal court filing, it is neither appropriate nor permitted. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b); D.C. Rule of Professional Conduct 3.3(a)(1),” Craig wrote. “Nor was the filing submitted by a junior attorney: it was signed by three of the most senior attorneys at the Department of Justice (although notably, not by any attorneys who had appeared previously in this case).”
The motion ended with a request “that the Court decline to enter an indicative ruling, and grant any further relief it deems warranted.”
We have not lived a good enough life to see a court impose Rule 11 sanctions on the the top three lawyers at Trump’s DOJ. Although if there’s any jurist out-of-fucks enough to do it, it’s Judge Leon.
Fingers crossed!
Liz Dye produces the Law and Chaos Substack and podcast. You can subscribe by clicking the logo:
The post Trump DOJ Courts Rule 11 Sanctions In Ballroom Case appeared first on Above the Law.
There comes a time in every high-profile DOJ case when you know something absolutely batshit is about to go down. It starts with the entry of appearance by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward.
After a crazed gunman tried to shoot up the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Acting AG Todd Blanche tweeted out an indignant letter demanding that the National Trust for Historic Preservation drop its lawsuit to block Trump from on the site of the former East Wing.
“Enough is enough. Your client should voluntarily dismiss this frivolous lawsuit today in light of last night’s assassination attempt on President Trump,” huffed Brett Shumate, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Division. “If your client does not dismiss the lawsuit by 9:00 AM on Monday, the government will move to dissolve the injunction and dismiss the case in light of last night’s extraordinary events. We will state your position as opposed if we do not hear back from you by 9:00 AM on Monday.”
It does not seem to have occurred to any of the brain geniuses at the DOJ that the injunction had already been stayed by the DC Circuit, thanks to the appeal of Judge Richard Leon’s order. (Or maybe they knew, and they decided to tweet nonsense anyway because Trump’s DOJ is a PR shop, not a law firm.) This appeal had, of course, divested the trial judge of authority to modify his own ruling, even if he were so inclined. And so the DOJ called in the guy willing to say just about anything to satisfy his boss.
On the same day he entered his appearance, Stan Woodward docketed a shockingly inappropriate document that strongly resembled a Truth Social post tapped out by a demented octogenarian. ATL’s Joe Patrice the ungrammatical screed masquerading as a motion for indicative ruling. Shorn of its multiple references to “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME,” the howlergram was a request for Judge Leon to tell the DC Circuit that, if he did have jurisdiction over the matter, he would see the error of his ways and rule that Trump is entitled to build Mar-a-Lago on the Potomac without input from Congress.
As it turns out, the petition wasn’t just embarrassing. It was also mendacious, according to the Trust’s response filed yesterday.
“Defendants make multiple factual representations to the Court that the Defendants’ counsel know to be false,” wrote the plaintiffs’ lawyer Greg Craig, the former White House Counsel referred to by Woodward as “the lawyer for Barack Hussein Obama.”
What followed resembled a recurring Saturday Night Live skit from the 2010s that featured Fox and Friends Hosts bumbling through the news, followed by a lengthy correction reel informing watchers that “Haitian does not mean ‘half-Asian,’” and “Chef Boyardee is not the Vice President of Italy.”
No, the the National Trust was never “shown detailed plans and specifications of this knitted, unified, and cohesive structure by Top Officers and Leaders in both the Military and Secret Service.”
No, the Trust was not “asked by the United States Military not to bring this suit because of the Top Secret nature of the important facility being built.”
It is factually inaccurate to say that “Congress has never dictated or tampered with the zoning, permitting, or architectural aspects” of any White House project.
No, the Trust’s aesthetic standing isn’t based on a random woman “walking her dog in the vicinity of the White House.” In fact Alison Hoagland is the “former senior historian at the Historic American Buildings Survey of the National Park Service, the former Vice President of the D.C. Preservation League, the author of six books on American vernacular architecture, and a regular visitor to President’s Park.”
And, despite the histrionics of Woodward’s motion, construction has not been delayed at all, thanks to repeated stays by the trial and appellate courts.
Craig was not petty enough to point out that Woodward was also fudging the truth when he claimed that the ballroom is being “given FREE OF CHARGE AS A GIFT TO THE COUNTRY!” But we at ATL suffer from no such scruple: Republicans just added $1 billion to the bill to end the DHS shutdown, earmarking the funds for security improvements to the ballroom.
“All of this may be standard fare for a social media post. But in a federal court filing, it is neither appropriate nor permitted. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b); D.C. Rule of Professional Conduct 3.3(a)(1),” Craig wrote. “Nor was the filing submitted by a junior attorney: it was signed by three of the most senior attorneys at the Department of Justice (although notably, not by any attorneys who had appeared previously in this case).”
The motion ended with a request “that the Court decline to enter an indicative ruling, and grant any further relief it deems warranted.”
We have not lived a good enough life to see a court impose Rule 11 sanctions on the the top three lawyers at Trump’s DOJ. Although if there’s any jurist out-of-fucks enough to do it, it’s Judge Leon.
Fingers crossed!
Liz Dye produces the Law and Chaos Substack and podcast. You can subscribe by clicking the logo:
