Tag Archives: Pam Bondi

Straight Arrow News: DOJ whistleblower says Trump appointee ordered defiance of courts

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“They’re putting attorneys who have dedicated themselves to public service in the impossible position of fealty to the President or fealty to the Constitution – candor to the courts or keeping your head low and lying if asked to do so,” Reuveni told The New Yorker. “That is not what the Department of Justice that I worked in was about. That’s not why I went to the Department of Justice and stayed there for fifteen years.” 

Shortly after three planes filled with alleged Tren de Aragua gang members took off for an El Salvador supermax prison in March, a judge issued a verbal order with a simple instruction to government lawyers:  turn the planes around. The planes, however, continued to El Salvador. 

Now, a whistleblower says a top Department of Justice (DOJ) official authorized disregarding the judge’s order, telling his staff they might have to tell the courts “f- you” in immigration cases.

The official was Principal Associate Attorney General Emil Bove, whom President Donald Trump nominated to be a federal judge. Leaked emails and texts from whistleblower and former DOJ lawyer Erez Reuveni, released during the week of July 7, came days before a Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Bove’s nomination to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If the committee approves, Bove’s nomination will advance to the full Senate.

At Bove’s direction, “the Department of Justice is thumbing its nose at the courts, and putting Justice Department attorneys in an impossible position where they have to choose between loyalty to the agenda of the president and their duty to the court,” Reuveni told The New York Times.

Bove is perceived by some as a controversial choice for the lifetime position. He served on Trump’s defense team in the state and federal indictments filed after Trump’s first term in the White House.

In 2024, after Trump appointed him acting deputy attorney general, Bove ignited controversy over his firing of federal prosecutors involved in cases involving the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol and over his role in dismissing corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Early this year, the federal government was using an arcane 18th-century wartime law – the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – to remove the alleged gang members from the United States without court hearings. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of the District of Columbia ruled the removals violated the men’s right to due process, setting up the conflict with the DOJ.

The leaker’s emails and texts suggest Bove advised DOJ attorneys that it was okay to deplane the prisoners in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. 

The messages also cite Bove’s instruction for lawyers to consider saying “f- you” to the courts.

 When Reuveni asked DOJ and Department of Homeland Security officials if they would honor the judge’s order to stop the planes to El Salvador, he received vague responses or none at all.

While the email and text correspondence allude to Bove’s instruction, none of the messages appear to have come directly from Bove himself. The official whistleblower complaint was filed on June 24.

Bove denies giving that instruction. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month, Bove said he “never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order.”

The leak prompted outrage from both sides of the political spectrum. Some say deporting people without trial to a supermax prison in El Salvador violates due process rights and a  DOJ lawyer telling other lawyers to ignore a court order should put him in contempt of court. 

However, Attorney General Pam Bondi – who served as one of Trump’s defense attorneys during his first Senate impeachment trial in 2020 – responded on X, saying there was no court order to defy. 

“As Mr. Bove testified and as the Department has made clear, there was no court order to defy, as we successfully argued to the DC Circuit when seeking a stay, when they stayed Judge Boasberg’s lawless order. And no one was ever asked to defy a court order,” the attorney general wrote Thursday, July 10, when the emails and texts were released. 

Bondi was referring to the DOJ’s immediate emergency appeal to the D.C. Circuit of Appeals requesting a stay of Boasberg’s temporary restraining order. The DOJ did not turn the planes around, arguing that a verbal order by the lower court is not binding and that the planes had already left U.S. airspace.

On March 26, the DOJ lost its appeal, with the D.C. Circuit voting 2-1 to uphold Boasberg’s ruling. The DOJ appealed again, this time to the Supreme Court, arguing that the lower courts had interfered with national security and overreached on executive immigration power. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the DOJ, 6-3, and lifted the lower court’s injunction on April 9.

Bondi accused the whistleblower Reuveni of spreading lies. She said on X that this is “another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts.” 

“This ‘whistleblower’ signed 3 briefs defending DOJ’s position in this matter and his subsequent revisionist account arose only after he was fired because he violated his ethical duties to the department,” Bondi wrote.

Reuveni worked at the DOJ for 15 years, mostly in the Office of Immigration and Litigation. Bondi fired Reuveni in April for failing to “zealously advocate” for the United States in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was accidentally deported to the El Salvador prison and whose return the Supreme Court eventually ordered.

Bondi and other Trump administration officials have fired many DOJ and FBI employees, saying the administration has broad constitutional power to do so. 

“They’re putting attorneys who have dedicated themselves to public service in the impossible position of fealty to the President or fealty to the Constitution – candor to the courts or keeping your head low and lying if asked to do so,” Reuveni told The New Yorker. “That is not what the Department of Justice that I worked in was about. That’s not why I went to the Department of Justice and stayed there for fifteen years.” 

DOJ whistleblower says Trump appointee ordered defiance of courts
A Trump judicial nominee told DOJ lawyers to ignore court orders to return planes carrying alleged gang members, a whistleblower claims.

https://san.com/cc/doj-whistleblower-says-trump-appointee-ordered-defiance-of-courts

Rolling Stone: Pam [Bimbo #3] Bondi Fires Top DOJ Ethics Adviser

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Pam “Bimbo #3” Bondi don’t need no stinkin’ ethics!!!

Attorney General Pam [Bimbo #3] Bondi – who has been purging the Justice Department of anyone tied to the Jan. 6 prosecutions as well as the prosecutions of President Donald Trump – fired the lawyer personally advising her and the department’s thousands of employees on ethics, Bloomberg reported Sunday. 

Joseph Tirrell, who began his career in the Navy and spent almost two decades in the federal government, was fired last Friday via a brief letter from [Bimbo #3] Bondi, who gave no reason for the termination. The same day, Bondi fired 20 DOJ employees who were involved in prosecuting Trump. She has also recently fired employees related to the prosecutions of the Jan. 6 riots on the Capitol. Tirrell had advised Special Counsel Jack Smith on ethics related to the prosecution of Trump, Bloomberg reported.

“My public service is not over, and my career as a Federal civil servant is not finished,” Tirrell wrote on LinkedIn on Monday. “I took the oath at 18 as a Midshipman to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ I have taken that oath at least five more times since then. That oath did not come with the caveat that I need only support the Constitution when it is easy or convenient.” 

“I believe in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,'” he wrote. “I also believe that Edmund Burke is right and that ‘the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.'”

Tirrell was responsible for advising Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and other DOJ leaders on financial disclosures, conflicts of interest, gifts, and recusals. He also helped guide the 117,000 Justice Department employees on ethics rules. He previously served as an ethics attorney at the FBI.

He reportedly approved Jack Smith’s $140,000 in free legal fees from a major Washington, D.C., law firm. In February, [Bimbo #3] Bondi instructed a working group to investigate “Weaponization by Special Counsel Jack Smith and his staff who spent more than $50 million targeting President Trump.” Smith resigned in January. 

[Bimbo #3] Bondi has been under fire for possible ethics violations. Earlier this month, the Miami Herald reported that the DOJ dropped its investigation into pharmaceutical company Pfizer’s potential foreign corruption violations. Bondi was previously an outside legal counsel for Pfizer. 

Trump has also taken aim at ethics in his administration. Earlier this year, he ordered the Justice Department to pause investigations into foreign bribery cases, although the investigations eventually resumed. The Trump Organization, the president’s family business empire, fired its ethics attorney after they represented Harvard in a suit against the government for freezing its federal funding. 

“The rules don’t exist anymore,” another fired DOJ official, Patty Hartman, told CBS News last week. 

Hartman, previously a top public affairs specialist at the FBI and federal prosecutors’ offices, had worked on press releases related to prosecutions of the Jan. 6 riots. The Justice Department began purging employees who worked on these prosecutions as soon as Trump took office. Trump issued a mass pardon for all 1,500 defendants hours after he was sworn in, including some of the most violent offenders. 

Hartman was fired last Monday and warned that there were more firings to come. Three other employees tied to the prosecutions of Jan. 6 have been fired in the past month, CBS News reported.

“There used to be a line, used to be a very distinct separation between the White House and the Department of Justice, because one should not interfere with the work of the other,” Hartman told CBS News. “That line is very definitely gone.”

“We appear to be driving straight into an abyss that holds no memory of what democracy is, was, or should be,” the now-former DOJ official added on social media.

Pam Bondi Fires Top DOJ Ethics Adviser
Attorney General Pam Bondi fired a top ethics lawyer at the Justice Department amid a purge of anyone connected to the Jan. 6 or Trump prosecutions.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/pam-bondi-fires-top-doj-ethics-lawyer-1235384777

Reuters: Two-thirds of the DOJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit

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The U.S. Justice Department unit charged with defending against legal challenges to signature Trump administration policies – such as restricting birthright citizenship and slashing funding to Harvard University – has lost nearly two-thirds of its staff, according to a list seen by Reuters.

Sixty-nine of the roughly 110 lawyers in the Federal Programs Branch have voluntarily left the unit since President Donald Trump’s election in November or have announced plans to leave, according to the list compiled by former Justice Department lawyers and reviewed by Reuters.

The tally has not been previously reported. Using court records and LinkedIn accounts, Reuters was able to verify the departure of all but four names on the list. 

Reuters spoke to four former lawyers in the unit and three other people familiar with the departures who said some staffers had grown demoralized and exhausted defending an onslaught of lawsuits against Trump’s administration.

“Many of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system,” said one lawyer who left the unit during Trump’s second term. “How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?”

Critics have accused the Trump administration of flouting the law in its aggressive use of executive power, including by retaliating against perceived enemies and dismantling agencies created by Congress.

The Trump administration has broadly defended its actions as within the legal bounds of presidential power and has won several early victories at the Supreme Court. A White House spokesperson told Reuters that Trump’s actions were legal, and declined to comment on the departures.

“Any sanctimonious career bureaucrat expressing faux outrage over the President’s policies while sitting idly by during the rank weaponization by the previous administration has no grounds to stand on,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement. 

The seven lawyers who spoke with Reuters cited a punishing workload and the need to defend policies that some felt were not legally justifiable among the key reasons for the wave of departures. 

Three of them said some career lawyers feared they would be pressured to misrepresent facts or legal issues in court, a violation of ethics rules that could lead to professional sanctions.

All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal dynamics and avoid retaliation. 

A Justice Department spokesperson said lawyers in the unit are fighting an “unprecedented number of lawsuits” against Trump’s agenda.

“The Department has defeated many of these lawsuits all the way up to the Supreme Court and will continue to defend the President’s agenda to keep Americans safe,” the spokesperson said. The Justice Department did not comment on the departures of career lawyers or morale in the section.

Some turnover in the Federal Programs Branch is common between presidential administrations, but the seven sources described the number of people quitting as highly unusual. 

Reuters was unable to find comparative figures for previous administrations. However, two former attorneys in the unit and two others familiar with its work said the scale of departures is far greater than during Trump’s first term and Joe Biden’s administration.

Heading for the Exit

The exits include at least 10 of the section’s 23 supervisors, experienced litigators who in many cases served across presidential administrations, according to two of the lawyers.

A spokesperson said the Justice Department is hiring to keep pace with staffing levels during the Biden Administration. They did not provide further details.

In its broad overhaul of the Justice Department, the Trump administration has fired or sidelined dozens of lawyers who specialize in prosecuting national security and corruption cases and publicly encouraged departures from the Civil Rights Division. 

But the Federal Programs Branch, which defends challenges to White House and federal agency policies in federal trial courts, remains critical to its agenda. 

The unit is fighting to sustain actions of the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency formerly overseen by Elon Musk; Trump’s order restricting birthright citizenship and his attempt to freeze $2.5 billion in funding to Harvard University.

“We’ve never had an administration pushing the legal envelope so quickly, so aggressively and across such a broad range of government policies and programs,” said Peter Keisler, who led the Justice Department’s Civil Division under Republican President George W. Bush.

“The demands are intensifying at the same time that the ranks of lawyers there to defend these cases are dramatically thinning.”

The departures have left the Justice Department scrambling to fill vacancies. More than a dozen lawyers have been temporarily reassigned to the section from other parts of the DOJ and it has been exempted from the federal government hiring freeze, according to two former lawyers in the unit.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not comment on the personnel moves.

Justice Department leadership has also brought in about 15 political appointees to help defend civil cases, an unusually high number. 

The new attorneys, many of whom have a record defending conservative causes, have been more comfortable pressing legal boundaries, according to two former lawyers in the unit. 

“They have to be willing to advocate on behalf of their clients and not fear the political fallout,” said Mike Davis, the head of the Article III Project, a pro-Trump legal advocacy group, referring to the role of DOJ lawyers in defending the administration’s policies.

People who have worked in the section expect the Federal Programs Branch to play an important role in the Trump administration’s attempts to capitalize on a Supreme Court ruling limiting the ability of judges to block its policies nationwide. 

Its lawyers are expected to seek to narrow prior court rulings and also defend against an anticipated rise in class action lawsuits challenging government policies. 

Lawyers in the unit are opposing two attempts by advocacy organizations to establish a nationwide class of people to challenge Trump’s order on birthright citizenship. A judge granted one request on Thursday.

Facing Pressure

Four former Justice Department lawyers told Reuters some attorneys in the Federal Programs Branch left over policy differences with Trump, but many had served in the first Trump administration and viewed their role as defending the government regardless of the party in power. 

The four lawyers who left said they feared Trump administration policies to dismantle certain federal agencies and claw back funding appeared to violate the U.S. Constitution or were enacted without following processes that were more defensible in court.

Government lawyers often walked into court with little information from the White House and federal agencies about the actions they were defending, the four lawyers said.

The White House and DOJ did not comment when asked about communications on cases.

Attorney General Pam Bondi in February threatened disciplinary action against government lawyers who did not vigorously advocate for Trump’s agenda. The memo to Justice Department employees warned career lawyers they could not “substitute personal political views or judgments for those that prevailed in the election.”

Four of the lawyers Reuters spoke with said there was a widespread concern that attorneys would be forced to make arguments that could violate attorney ethics rules, or refuse assignments and risk being fired. 

Those fears grew when Justice Department leadership fired a former supervisor in the Office of Immigration Litigation, a separate Civil Division unit, accusing him of failing to forcefully defend the administration’s position in the case of Kilmar Abrego, the man wrongly deported to El Salvador.

The supervisor, Erez Reuveni, filed a whistleblower complaint, made public last month, alleging he faced pressure from administration officials to make unsupported legal arguments and adopt strained interpretations of rulings in three immigration cases.

Justice Department officials have publicly disputed the claims, casting him as disgruntled. A senior official, Emil Bove, told a Senate panel that he never advised defying courts.

Career lawyers were also uncomfortable defending Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms, according to two former Justice Department lawyers and a third person familiar with the matter.

A longtime ally of Bondi who defended all four law firm cases argued they were a lawful exercise of presidential power. Judges ultimately struck down all four orders as violating the Constitution. The Trump administration has indicated it will appeal at least one case.

Not everybody wants to continue hanging out with a bunch of losers!

Two-thirds of the DOJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit
Seven lawyers who spoke with Reuters cited a punishing workload and the need to defend policies that some felt were not legally justifiable among the key reasons for the wave of departures.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/two-thirds-doj-unit-defending-trump-policies-court-have-quit-2025-07-14

Newsweek: Pam Bondi’s DOJ to make Ghislaine Maxwell decision after Epstein backlash

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Pam Bondi’s leadership of the Department of Justice may come under further Jeffrey Epstein-related scrutiny over an appeal by Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.

The British socialite, and former friend of Prince Andrew, was sentenced to 20 years in jail in June 2022 for her role in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, but has appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Trump administration’s response to that case is due July 14 at a particularly pressured time for Bondi, who as attorney general leads the DOJ.

Why It Matters

Bondi has facing severe criticism from within President Donald Trump‘s MAGA base after a report by the DOJ and FBI last week stated there was no Epstein client list and no evidence the New York financier blackmailed prominent public figures.

This has sparked accusations of a cover-up as Bondi appeared to suggest in February the alleged document was sitting on her desk. The White House later sought to clarify that she was referring to Epstein files more generally.

Newsweek has contacted the DOJ for comment by email out of office hours.

What to Know

Epstein is thought to have abused hundreds of girls and was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges when he died in his jail cell in 2019.

The case has long featured allegations that he forced his victims to have sex with his powerful friends, but none have ever been charged. Bill Clinton and Donald Trump have been linked to Epstein but both men, and Prince Andrew, strenuously deny knowledge of his crimes.

Trump administration figures suggested new details and even new cases would emerge after a review ordered by the President into the Epstein files this year.

However, a memo by the DOJ and FBI last week indicated there would be no new cases and stated there was no evidence of a blackmail plot by Epstein.

“This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list.’ There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions,” said the memo.

“We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

This sparked furious responses from MAGA commentators and tears from alt-right radio host Alex Jones, exerting extra pressure on the DOJ, run by Bondi as attorney general, over how to handle Ghislaine Maxwell’s appeal following her criminal conviction for sex trafficking.

Ghislaine Maxwell’s Appeal

Maxwell’s lawyers argue she should never have been put on trial due to a plea deal between Jeffrey Epstein and Florida prosecutors in 2008.

A filing by her team, seen by Newsweek, reads: “Despite the existence of a non-prosecution agreement promising in plain language that the United States would not prosecute any co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein, the United States in fact prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell as a co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein.

“Only because the United States did so in the Second Circuit and not elsewhere, her motion to dismiss the indictment was denied, her trial proceeded, and she is now serving a 20-year sentence.

“In light of the disparity in how the circuit courts interpret the enforceability of a promise made by the ‘United States,’ Maxwell’s motion to dismiss would have been granted if she had been charged in at least four other circuits (plus the Eleventh, where Epstein’s agreement was entered into).

“This inconsistency in the law by which the same promise by the United States means different things in different places should be addressed by this Court.”

D. John Sauer, Donald Trump’s pick for Solicitor General, has already twice applied to extend the deadline for the administration’s response to Maxwell’s appeal, leading to the current July 14 deadline.

A letter from Sauer to the court, seen by Newsweek, read: “The government’s response is now due, after one extension, on June 13, 2025.

“We respectfully request, under Rule 30.4 of the Rules of this Court, a further extension of time to and including July 14, 2025, within which to file the government’s response.

“This extension is necessary because the attorneys with principal responsibility for

preparation of the government’s response have been heavily engaged with the press of previously assigned matters with proximate due dates.”

What People Are Saying

Conservative media personality Megyn Kelly was among those to heap pressure on Bondi over backlash during an appearance at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit over the weekend. “It’s starting to create a real hornet’s nest within the administration and I’ve got to be honest I blame Pam Bondi. I’ll tell you why: incompetence,” she said.

“She is the reason that things are unravelling around this story right now, that virtually all the Republican Party cares about. It’s also true that [FBI Deputy Director] Dan Bongino and [FBI Director] Kash Patel had questions about Epstein before they took office before they went to the FBI,” she continued.

“But once they joined the FBI they said nothing. They kept their mouths shut about Epstein. You have not seen them, except for one joint appearace with Dan and Kash on Fox, running all over the media looking for attention on this, yes, clickbaity story.

“Who have you seen?” Kelly asked. “Pam Bondi. She has never missed an opportunity to go on television and dangle sweet nothings that might be coming your way, try to lead you to believe that she’s got it, it’s on her desk, it’s coming, ‘tomorrow you’re going to see something on Epstein.'”

Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday: “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’ They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein. For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again.”

What Happens Next

The Government will now either file its reply, which should lay out how it intends to contest the case, or seek a third extension. Either way, there should be a filing to the Supreme Court case outlining which option has been chosen.

There must be many more besides Prince Andrew who took advantage of Epstein’s many underage victims. The must ALL be exposed.

Pam Bondi’s DOJ to make Ghislaine Maxwell decision after Epstein backlash
Ghislaine Maxwell filed a Supreme Court appeal arguing she should be covered by Jeffrey Epstein’s controversial plea deal.

https://www.newsweek.com/pam-bondi-doj-ghislaine-maxwell-jeffrey-epstein-files-2098469

Raw Story: Texas GOP poised to sink Trump DOJ’s plan to ‘screw over Democrats’: report

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The Trump administration’s efforts to make Texas a less competitive state in the midterm elections could be sunk by the state’s Republican party, according to a report by Democracy Docket.

At issue is a request from Trump’s Department of Justice for Texas state officials to redraw their congressional map. The request came in a letter sent by Attorney General Pam Bondi shortly after the deadly flood that killed more than 100 people in central Texas last week.

In the letter, dated July 7, Bondi says four congressional districts in Texas are unconstitutional because they were drawn using “race-based considerations.” Three Democrats currently hold seats in the contested districts: Rep. Al Green, Rep. Sylvia Garcia, and Rep. Mark Veasey. The fourth district is currently vacant, but was formerly held by Rep. Sylvester Turner before he died in March.

However, court testimony obtained by Democracy Docket shows DOJ’s underlying premise for redrawing the districts is false. Republican State Sen. Joan Huffman, who worked on the state’s 2021 redistricting effort, told a court on July 10 that he drew the congressional maps “blind to race.”

Voting rights lawyer Mark Elias said Sunday on Democracy Docket’s YouTube channel that this admission could completely upend Texas’s efforts to “screw over Democrats” in the upcoming 2026 primary election.

“Oh, what a tangled web they have weaved,” Elias said.

Experts have long considered Texas one of the worst gerrymandered states for congressional elections. The Gerrymandering Project, a nonpartisan nonprofit that identifies loopholes in state voting maps, gave Texas an “F” for its congressional election map because it creates a “significant Republican advantage.”

The efforts to make Texas less competitive also come at a time when Republicans are seeking to protect their slim majority in the House of Representatives. Over the last week, Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) and Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) both announced their retirement, which could complicate the Republicans’ ability to pass any legislation ahead of the midterms.

Texas GOP poised to sink Trump DOJ’s plan to ‘screw over Democrats’: report

https://www.rawstory.com/gop-2673149328

Showbiz 411: Trump Epstein Fake Out: Says He Might Revoke Rosie O’Donnell’s Citizenship (Which He Knows He Can’t Do)

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There’s nothing to quote, it’s all in the title. Our pathetic King Donald is making a royal ass of himself in front of 340 million Americans and assorted billions elsewhere.

Trump Epstein Fake Out: Says He Might Revoke Rosie O’Donnell’s Citizenship (Which He Knows He Can’t Do) – Showbiz411
Trump is falling apart over Jeffrey Epstein. The presidency is falling apart as the FBI’s quacky leaders Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are threatening to quit over Pam Bondi’s announcement that no Epstein files exist. They existed a short time ago, of course, when binders were waved around reading “Epstein Files.” MAGA is furious because […]
Trump Epstein Fake Out: Says He Might Revoke Rosie O’Donnell’s Citizenship (Which He Knows He Can’t Do)

AOL: US Justice fires several more employees from Jack Smith’s team, sources say

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U.S. Attorney General Pam [Bimbo #3] Bondi on Friday fired several more Justice Department employees who worked for Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate President Donald Trump’s retention of classified records and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to five people familiar with the matter.

About 20 lawyers, support staff and U.S. Marshals who worked on Smith’s probe were terminated, according to one of the sources.

At least two of the people fired were prosecutors who most recently worked in other U.S. Attorneys’ offices in Florida and North Carolina, three of the sources told Reuters.

The Justice Department since January has been dismissing employees who worked on matters involving Trump or his supporters, citing Trump’s executive powers under the U.S. Constitution.

A spokesperson for Smith did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Fourteen attorneys who worked on Smith’s team were fired on January 27 because of work on cases against Trump, becoming some of the department’s earliest employees who were dismissed. Department leadership told those attorneys in termination letters that they could not be trusted to carry out Trump’s agenda because of their work on Smith’s probe.

Including the people fired on Friday, at least 37 people who worked on Smith’s team have been terminated since Trump took office on January 20.

The Justice Department in recent months has also fired people who handled casework involving defendants who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to block Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.

In late June, three prosecutors, one of whom had worked on cases involving the Proud Boys, were fired. Earlier this month, [Bimbo #3] Bondi also fired a career veteran of the department who served as a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington.

In late January, the Justice Department also fired probationary prosecutors who had worked on January 6 cases.

Smith brought two criminal cases against Trump in 2023, accusing him of illegally retaining national security documents and plotting to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Both were dropped before Trump returned to office.

The politicization of the Department of Justice into a machine of revenge for King Donald and his cronies continues unabated.

US Justice fires several more employees from Jack Smith’s team, sources say
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday fired several more Justice Department employees who worked for Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate President Donald Trump’s retention of classified records and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to five people familiar with the matter. About 20 lawyers, support staff and U.S. Marshals who worked on Smith’s probe were terminated, according to one of the sources. The Justice Department since January has been dismis

https://www.aol.com/news/us-justice-fires-nine-more-021501413.html

Raw Story: DOJ lawyer ‘put his foot in his mouth’ in front of ‘righteously indignant’ judge

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The Justice Department’s lawyer “put his foot in his mouth the minute he started and never seemed to get it out” in a recent hearing, according to a former prosecutor.

Ex-federal prosecutor Joyce Vance highlighted a high-profile case in which, as the Washington Post put it, “a federal judge in Maryland sharply rebuked a Justice Department attorney” after “an immigration official could not answer basic questions about the Trump administration’s plans to deport Kilmar Abrego García if he is released pending trial on federal human-smuggling charges against him in Tennessee.”

In the Maryland hearing this week, “Judge Paula Xinis heard testimony from a witness she had directed the government to present, and it turned out that the testimony failed to answer some of the very basic questions she has about the case,” according to Vance. She said they were questions such as, “What do you plan to do with Mr. Abrego Garcia if he’s released, and in what country, other than El Salvador, where the government is currently prohibited from sending him, might you dump him?”

Vance went on to ridicule the DOJ’s position in the case.

“The government is taking a ridiculous posture, saying that unless and until he’s released from criminal custody in the Tennessee case, they aren’t making any plans at all—they just have some vague ideas about the possibilities,” she wrote. “Given that this is the same government we now know from the Erez Reuveni whistleblower case doesn’t feel compelled to comply with courts that rule against Donald Trump’s desired course of action, it’s easy to understand why the Judge was skeptical of the government, telling their lawyers she could no longer presume they were acting in good faith at one point. The presumption of regularity entitles the government to an assumption by the court that its actions are valid and in accordance with the law, placing a burden on any party challenging it to prove otherwise.”

Vance highlighted Xinis’ comment to the DOJ lawyer: “You have taken the presumption of regularity and you’ve destroyed it in my view.”

“The government acted like everything was business as usual and this was just an ordinary case. But this Judge understands that it is not. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers made such a modest request, functional due process, just a couple of days’ notice before their client is dropped in a hellhole like South Sudan,” she wrote. “The government’s lawyer put his foot in his mouth the minute he started and never seemed to get it out. For starters, the Judge had asked yesterday for basic paperwork, the detainer that ICE was using to hold Abrego Garcia. But it took them until midway through the hearing to provide it to her. That’s an inexcusable failure on the government’s part that fairly shouts disrespect to the court.”

The analyst continued:

“The government told Judge Xinis they can either deport Abrego Garcia to a third country of their choice or reopen withholding proceedings… But the government wouldn’t commit to either option or even hint at its thinking.”

She added, “The Judge was righteously indignant that the government wouldn’t say what it wants to do, maintaining the fiction that some randomly assigned desk officer will decide what happens on the fly if Abrego Garcia is returned to their custody, just like they would in any normal case. It’s ridiculous. The government is saying ‘f— you’ to the courts over and over again, and the courts seem to be getting the message.”

DOJ lawyer ‘put his foot in his mouth’ in front of ‘righteously indignant’ judge

https://www.rawstory.com/doj-lawyer-foot-in-mouth

TAG 24 News: Trump administration loses it over ICEBlock app: “Sure looks like obstruction of justice!”

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On Monday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi [Bimbo #2] Noem shared an X post that included a clip from a CNN segment about the ICEBlock app, which creator Joshua Aaron told the network was created not to target agents, but rather to allow users to “avoid them altogether.”

“This sure looks like obstruction of justice,” [Bimbo #2] Noem wrote in her post.

It’s no different than holding up a sign that says “speed trap ahead” or “roadblock in half a mile” — it’s constitutionally protected free speech.

And when your Gestapo goons are snatching people off the streets based on their skin color, it’s a matter of self-preservation and self-defense. We are not lemmings.

“Our brave ICE law enforcement face a 500% increase in assaults against them,” she went on to claim, without providing evidence.

Who the fuck cares what happens to masked Gestapo thugs indiscriminately snatching brown people (including U.S. citizens) off the streets to meet their arrest quotas? Fuck ’em!

Trump administration loses it over ICEBlock app: “Sure looks like obstruction of justice!”

https://www.tag24.com/politics/politicians/donald-trump/trump-administration-loses-it-over-iceblock-app-3399542

Daily Beast: Trump Declares War on Los Angeles Following ICE Protests

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The Trump administration has sued the City of Los Angeles for discriminating against federal immigration officers.

President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit Monday against Los Angeles, its mayor Karen Bass, and the Los Angeles City Council for “illegal” sanctuary city policies that it says “deliberately impede federal immigration officers’ ability to carry out their responsibilities.”

Two reasons why the feds will lose this one:

    1. Masked Gestapo pigs are not a protected class under the discrimination laws.

    2. The Tenth Amendent does not permit the federal government to order the states to do the feds’ bidding.

    Trump Declares War on Los Angeles Following ICE Protests
    The lawsuit claimed that the city discriminated against federal immigration officers using sanctuary city policies.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-declares-war-on-los-angeles-following-ice-protests