{"id":108114,"date":"2025-02-10T17:02:55","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T01:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/02\/10\/judge-told-trump-and-musk-to-follow-the-law-for-a-week-theyre-calling-it-tyranny\/"},"modified":"2025-02-10T17:02:55","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T01:02:55","slug":"judge-told-trump-and-musk-to-follow-the-law-for-a-week-theyre-calling-it-tyranny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/02\/10\/judge-told-trump-and-musk-to-follow-the-law-for-a-week-theyre-calling-it-tyranny\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Told Trump And Musk To Follow The Law For A Week. They\u2019re Calling It Tyranny."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Is this a tyranny? (Photo by Apu Gomes\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Judge Paul Engelmayer issued a Saturday temporary restraining order<\/a> blocking Elon Musk\u2019s band of teen tech bro interns from siphoning Treasury Department data onto private hard drives next to their BitTorrent Hobbit porn. Anyone taking the time to actually READ the opinion would see that it momentarily halts turning over the personally identifiable data of U.S. citizens to anyone who has not \u201cpassed all background checks and security clearances and taken all information security training called for in federal statutes and Treasury Department regulations\u201d and ordered any such person who has already copied that data to delete it pending the full hearing on February 14.<\/p>\n

The government has already moved to kill the TRO arguing that it\u2019s a violation of Article II to require the executive branch to wait LESS THAN A WEEK to make sure it\u2019s not operating in violation of multiple explicit statutes and regulations. <\/p>\n

Normally, requiring security clearances to look at secure data wouldn\u2019t be controversial. But it\u2019s 2025 and half the country already adjusted their schemas to accept hoarding nuclear codes by a toilet, so there\u2019s a population already primed to get BIG MAD that the judiciary might not give our social security numbers to teenagers who\u2019ve already lost jobs for being cybersecurity risks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

A corrupt judge protecting corruption. <\/p>\n

He needs to be impeached NOW! https:\/\/t.co\/zgnwZuOz2Y<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Somehow \u201cA corrupt judge protecting corruption\u201d \u2014 a message with almost 190,000 likes \u2014 is not<\/em> about the Supreme Court\u2019s refusing to enact ANY enforceable ethics code<\/a> while members gobble up under-the-table luxury gifts from the rich. What a time to be alive!<\/p>\n

To Beck\u2019s point, it\u2019s not so much that the Treasury Secretary cannot access any data, it\u2019s that they cannot hand that data over to someone else on a whim. This is a function of the Privacy Act of 1974, which stated in relevant part that an agency can give access to its records \u201cto those officers and employees of the agency\u2026who have a need for the record in the performance of their duties.\u201d The Tax Reform Act of 1976 says more or less the same thing about Treasury data. As you might guess from the dates, the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Tax Reform Act of 1976 exist because Richard Nixon liked using data collected for innocent purposes by one agency to illegally harass his various \u201cenemies.\u201d As for the claim that the Secretary can\u2019t even get this specific<\/em> data, there are regulations in place designed to prevent government employees including the Secretary from having access to certain data \u2014 like non-truncated SSNs. <\/p>\n

Which is all to say an unelected Ketamine-head<\/a> with deep ties to China and random, unvetted teens cannot just be handed access to everyone\u2019s unfiltered financial data in the ordinary course. There are procedures laid out for the administration to get around these provisions\u2026 Trump and Musk have done none of them. That they\u2019re melting down<\/em> over the prospect of having to actually comply with the law until at least Friday tells you all you need to know about their intentions here.<\/p>\n

Yale Law grad JD Vance did his part to justify the school\u2019s impending downgrade in the U.S. News rankings<\/a> by offering a batshit take on constitutional order. <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal.<\/p>\n

If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. <\/p>\n

Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.<\/p>\n

\u2014 JD Vance (@JDVance) February 9, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

By God, that\u2019s Andrew Jackson\u2019s music!<\/p>\n

The apocryphal author of \u201cJohn Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it,\u201d has come back stronger than a 90s trend. <\/p>\n

In what reads like an LSAT logic puzzle response worthy of the Correspondence College of Tampa Law School rather than Yale, Vance says the courts can\u2019t dictate military operations or micromanage prosecutorial discretion \u2014 two instances without explicit relevant statutes \u2014 to conclude that therefore courts can\u2019t control executive power. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s Q.E.D. for morons.<\/p>\n

Consistency is the hobgoblin of good faith actors, but it\u2019s noteworthy that Vance and his supporters had a very different take<\/a> when, say, Biden ordered Treasury to forgive various fees and interest payments on student loans. Not only was that an exercise of \u201cthe executive\u2019s legitimate power,\u201d but \u2014 unlike Trump\u2019s order that violates<\/em> multiple privacy laws \u2014 Biden actually had statutory support for that move. Yet, Republicans relished using the courts to rein in Biden\u2019s authority over the Treasury. To this day, they\u2019ll show up screaming that Biden \u201cignored the Supreme Court\u201d when he launched later, more minor debt forgiveness programs even though those were so much more minor because Biden used different laws to authorize them and the courts never objected to those.<\/p>\n

Chief Justice John Roberts \u2014 the human shrug emoji overseeing the collapse of judicial credibility \u2014 used last year\u2019s annual report to bemoan the idea that the government should ignore court orders<\/a>. At the time, Roberts mostly meant liberals arguing that Trump judges in far-flung, single courthouse districts shouldn\u2019t be able to issue nationwide injunctions (and no one really argued for ignoring court orders as much as demanding reforms to the assignment process). Now that the administration he midwifed back into being is in charge, we\u2019ll see how long his indignation over assaults on legitimacy last.<\/p>\n

But one thing about the missive Roberts put out a month and a half ago rings true. Roberts struck back at critics of \u201cunelected politicians in robes\u201d by smugly pointing out that judges \u201ctypically speak only through their decisions\u201d a callback to Justice Coney Barrett\u2019s admonishing that critics need to \u201cread the opinion<\/a>.\u201d These protestations may be disingenuous coming from judges who relish issuing orders without written opinions, but entirely correct that the most damning takedowns of shoddy, politically motivated court decisions are those grounded in the text of an opinion.<\/p>\n

Were Musk, Vance, and any of the other trolls attacking Judge Engelmayer to actually read the opinion, they\u2019d find a textbook example of a legitimate TRO. The complaint alleges a massive security breach in progress, there are explicit statutes backing up these claims, the order preserves the status quo and prevents the irreparable harm of anyone from turning around and intentionally or unintentionally letting personally identifiable data fall into criminal hands while waiting for both sides to fully and fairly argue the case in LESS THAN A WEEK.<\/p>\n

James Ho invented out of the ether a concept of spiritual damages to assert an irreparable harm that \u201cthe earthly reward of monetary damages<\/a>\u201d couldn\u2019t overcome if airline workers had to wait until the case was over to continue spreading COVID on planes. Judge Engelmayer said, here are multiple statutes dating back 50 years on this precise question and if you\u2019re right you can go back to gathering this data next week but if you\u2019re wrong everyone\u2019s SSN is going to be on the dark web<\/em>. <\/p>\n

They are not the same.<\/p>\n

But these folks aren\u2019t really concerned about this<\/em> case. If they thought they had a winnable argument on the merits they wouldn\u2019t be so mad at the TEMPORARY order. That\u2019s why they aren\u2019t arguing whether the administration is following the law, but whether laws even apply to the administration in the first place. <\/p>\n

To this end, Vance retweeted Professor Adrian Vermeule \u2014 Harvard\u2019s resident medievalist cosplaying as a constitutional theorist \u2014 to further frame Englemayer\u2019s order as an illegitimate \u201cinterference\u201d with executive power.<\/p>\n

\"\"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What a journey Vermeule\u2019s been on from getting actively trolled by the MAGA crowd for failing to embrace Musk<\/a> to declaring it a \u201clegitimate act[] of state\u201d to give Musk full access to everyone\u2019s SSN.<\/p>\n

For most constitutional scholars, \u201cseparation of powers\u201d is about the system of \u201cchecks and balances\u201d that prevent one branch from doing whatever it wants. There may be internal functions that don\u2019t provide the judicial branch oversight, but the power to ignore duly passed and signed legislation is the heart of the judiciary\u2019s role. <\/p>\n

But this is the Andrew Jackson world of 2025. Or maybe the right figure is a bit more recent than Jackson\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Who had Carl Schmitt on their 2025 Constitutional Bingo Card? <\/p>\n

It will shock you not at all to learn that Schmitt\u2019s philosophy that legality exists only when it serves the will of the sovereign achieved a good deal of popularity in early 20th century Germany. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s cliche to compare contemporary regimes to the Nazis, of course. But, um, one of the administration\u2019s cheerleaders thinks that \u201cany aspiration to eliminate the Schmittian elements of our administrative law\u201d \u2014 the rules and regulations governing the executive \u2014 \u201cis utopian.\u201d <\/p>\n

The idea that Chevron<\/em> deference had to go and also that any judicial oversight of \u201cinternal\u201d agency action \u2014 extended for the purposes of Musk to include disseminating our tax records to randos without security clearances \u2014 amounts to an attack on the Constitution pretty much sums up Schmitt\u2019s worldview.<\/p>\n

This is all a concerted effort to delegitimize the judiciary so that Trumpworld can justify ignoring court orders outright. There are already indications that the White House has ignored other court orders<\/a> slapped on them up until now. They\u2019ve already<\/a> taken Wite-Out to white out the Fourteenth Amendment. Deploying the military for domestic law enforcement is openly on the table<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Building a quasi-legalistic rationale for dictatorial powers is existential for this administration.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Headshot\"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The post Judge Told Trump And Musk To Follow The Law For A Week. They\u2019re Calling It Tyranny.<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Is this a tyranny? (Photo by Apu Gomes\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Judge Paul Engelmayer issued a Saturday temporary restraining order<\/a> blocking Elon Musk\u2019s band of teen tech bro interns from siphoning Treasury Department data onto private hard drives next to their BitTorrent Hobbit porn. Anyone taking the time to actually READ the opinion would see that it momentarily halts turning over the personally identifiable data of U.S. citizens to anyone who has not \u201cpassed all background checks and security clearances and taken all information security training called for in federal statutes and Treasury Department regulations\u201d and ordered any such person who has already copied that data to delete it pending the full hearing on February 14.<\/p>\n

The government has already moved to kill the TRO arguing that it\u2019s a violation of Article II to require the executive branch to wait LESS THAN A WEEK to make sure it\u2019s not operating in violation of multiple explicit statutes and regulations. <\/p>\n

Normally, requiring security clearances to look at secure data wouldn\u2019t be controversial. But it\u2019s 2025 and half the country already adjusted their schemas to accept hoarding nuclear codes by a toilet, so there\u2019s a population already primed to get BIG MAD that the judiciary might not give our social security numbers to teenagers who\u2019ve already lost jobs for being cybersecurity risks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Somehow \u201cA corrupt judge protecting corruption\u201d \u2014 a message with almost 190,000 likes \u2014 is not<\/em> about the Supreme Court\u2019s refusing to enact ANY enforceable ethics code<\/a> while members gobble up under-the-table luxury gifts from the rich. What a time to be alive!<\/p>\n

To Beck\u2019s point, it\u2019s not so much that the Treasury Secretary cannot access any data, it\u2019s that they cannot hand that data over to someone else on a whim. This is a function of the Privacy Act of 1974, which stated in relevant part that an agency can give access to its records \u201cto those officers and employees of the agency\u2026who have a need for the record in the performance of their duties.\u201d The Tax Reform Act of 1976 says more or less the same thing about Treasury data. As you might guess from the dates, the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Tax Reform Act of 1976 exist because Richard Nixon liked using data collected for innocent purposes by one agency to illegally harass his various \u201cenemies.\u201d As for the claim that the Secretary can\u2019t even get this specific<\/em> data, there are regulations in place designed to prevent government employees including the Secretary from having access to certain data \u2014 like non-truncated SSNs. <\/p>\n

Which is all to say an unelected Ketamine-head<\/a> with deep ties to China and random, unvetted teens cannot just be handed access to everyone\u2019s unfiltered financial data in the ordinary course. There are procedures laid out for the administration to get around these provisions\u2026 Trump and Musk have done none of them. That they\u2019re melting down<\/em> over the prospect of having to actually comply with the law until at least Friday tells you all you need to know about their intentions here.<\/p>\n

Yale Law grad JD Vance did his part to justify the school\u2019s impending downgrade in the U.S. News rankings<\/a> by offering a batshit take on constitutional order. <\/p>\n

By God, that\u2019s Andrew Jackson\u2019s music!<\/p>\n

The apocryphal author of \u201cJohn Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it,\u201d has come back stronger than a 90s trend. <\/p>\n

In what reads like an LSAT logic puzzle response worthy of the Correspondence College of Tampa Law School rather than Yale, Vance says the courts can\u2019t dictate military operations or micromanage prosecutorial discretion \u2014 two instances without explicit relevant statutes \u2014 to conclude that therefore courts can\u2019t control executive power. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s Q.E.D. for morons.<\/p>\n

Consistency is the hobgoblin of good faith actors, but it\u2019s noteworthy that Vance and his supporters had a very different take<\/a> when, say, Biden ordered Treasury to forgive various fees and interest payments on student loans. Not only was that an exercise of \u201cthe executive\u2019s legitimate power,\u201d but \u2014 unlike Trump\u2019s order that violates<\/em> multiple privacy laws \u2014 Biden actually had statutory support for that move. Yet, Republicans relished using the courts to rein in Biden\u2019s authority over the Treasury. To this day, they\u2019ll show up screaming that Biden \u201cignored the Supreme Court\u201d when he launched later, more minor debt forgiveness programs even though those were so much more minor because Biden used different laws to authorize them and the courts never objected to those.<\/p>\n

Chief Justice John Roberts \u2014 the human shrug emoji overseeing the collapse of judicial credibility \u2014 used last year\u2019s annual report to bemoan the idea that the government should ignore court orders<\/a>. At the time, Roberts mostly meant liberals arguing that Trump judges in far-flung, single courthouse districts shouldn\u2019t be able to issue nationwide injunctions (and no one really argued for ignoring court orders as much as demanding reforms to the assignment process). Now that the administration he midwifed back into being is in charge, we\u2019ll see how long his indignation over assaults on legitimacy last.<\/p>\n

But one thing about the missive Roberts put out a month and a half ago rings true. Roberts struck back at critics of \u201cunelected politicians in robes\u201d by smugly pointing out that judges \u201ctypically speak only through their decisions\u201d a callback to Justice Coney Barrett\u2019s admonishing that critics need to \u201cread the opinion<\/a>.\u201d These protestations may be disingenuous coming from judges who relish issuing orders without written opinions, but entirely correct that the most damning takedowns of shoddy, politically motivated court decisions are those grounded in the text of an opinion.<\/p>\n

Were Musk, Vance, and any of the other trolls attacking Judge Engelmayer to actually read the opinion, they\u2019d find a textbook example of a legitimate TRO. The complaint alleges a massive security breach in progress, there are explicit statutes backing up these claims, the order preserves the status quo and prevents the irreparable harm of anyone from turning around and intentionally or unintentionally letting personally identifiable data fall into criminal hands while waiting for both sides to fully and fairly argue the case in LESS THAN A WEEK.<\/p>\n

James Ho invented out of the ether a concept of spiritual damages to assert an irreparable harm that \u201cthe earthly reward of monetary damages<\/a>\u201d couldn\u2019t overcome if airline workers had to wait until the case was over to continue spreading COVID on planes. Judge Engelmayer said, here are multiple statutes dating back 50 years on this precise question and if you\u2019re right you can go back to gathering this data next week but if you\u2019re wrong everyone\u2019s SSN is going to be on the dark web<\/em>. <\/p>\n

They are not the same.<\/p>\n

But these folks aren\u2019t really concerned about this<\/em> case. If they thought they had a winnable argument on the merits they wouldn\u2019t be so mad at the TEMPORARY order. That\u2019s why they aren\u2019t arguing whether the administration is following the law, but whether laws even apply to the administration in the first place. <\/p>\n

To this end, Vance retweeted Professor Adrian Vermeule \u2014 Harvard\u2019s resident medievalist cosplaying as a constitutional theorist \u2014 to further frame Englemayer\u2019s order as an illegitimate \u201cinterference\u201d with executive power.<\/p>\n

\"\"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What a journey Vermeule\u2019s been on from getting actively trolled by the MAGA crowd for failing to embrace Musk<\/a> to declaring it a \u201clegitimate act[] of state\u201d to give Musk full access to everyone\u2019s SSN.<\/p>\n

For most constitutional scholars, \u201cseparation of powers\u201d is about the system of \u201cchecks and balances\u201d that prevent one branch from doing whatever it wants. There may be internal functions that don\u2019t provide the judicial branch oversight, but the power to ignore duly passed and signed legislation is the heart of the judiciary\u2019s role. <\/p>\n

But this is the Andrew Jackson world of 2025. Or maybe the right figure is a bit more recent than Jackson\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Who had Carl Schmitt on their 2025 Constitutional Bingo Card? <\/p>\n

It will shock you not at all to learn that Schmitt\u2019s philosophy that legality exists only when it serves the will of the sovereign achieved a good deal of popularity in early 20th century Germany. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s cliche to compare contemporary regimes to the Nazis, of course. But, um, one of the administration\u2019s cheerleaders thinks that \u201cany aspiration to eliminate the Schmittian elements of our administrative law\u201d \u2014 the rules and regulations governing the executive \u2014 \u201cis utopian.\u201d <\/p>\n

The idea that Chevron<\/em> deference had to go and also that any judicial oversight of \u201cinternal\u201d agency action \u2014 extended for the purposes of Musk to include disseminating our tax records to randos without security clearances \u2014 amounts to an attack on the Constitution pretty much sums up Schmitt\u2019s worldview.<\/p>\n

This is all a concerted effort to delegitimize the judiciary so that Trumpworld can justify ignoring court orders outright. There are already indications that the White House has ignored other court orders<\/a> slapped on them up until now. They\u2019ve already<\/a> taken Wite-Out to white out the Fourteenth Amendment. Deploying the military for domestic law enforcement is openly on the table<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Building a quasi-legalistic rationale for dictatorial powers is existential for this administration.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Headshot\"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

1<\/strong> 2<\/a>Next \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is this a tyranny? (Photo by Apu Gomes\/Getty Images) Judge Paul Engelmayer issued a Saturday temporary restraining order blocking Elon Musk\u2019s band of teen tech bro interns from siphoning Treasury Department data onto private hard drives next to their BitTorrent Hobbit porn. Anyone taking the time to actually READ the opinion would see that it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":108115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Headshot-300x200-Qe9pb4.jpeg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}