A federal judge firmly swatted down a series of arguments from a Department of Justice attorney defending President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting the Jenner & Block LLP law firm at a hearing Monday, at one point uttering an exasperated “Give me a break!”
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Since the beginning of his second term, Trump has issued a series of executive orders targeting by name multiple BigLaw firms that represented prominent Democratic clients like Hillary Clinton, refused to represent him or other pro-MAGA causes, hired former federal prosecutors that investigated him, or worked on the criminal cases he was facing before he won re-election.
The president’s social media posts and executive orders often lambast these firms using language accusing them of being “dishonest” and a “dangerous” risk to national security. The sanctions he has sought to impose include stripping the security clearances of the firms’ attorneys and staff (critically important for certain types of federal legal cases), terminating contracts the firms had with federal agencies, barring the firms’ employees from federal buildings (again, a major obstacle for the lawyers to represent their clients), demanding firms abolish diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and programs, and threatening additional civil and criminal investigations against the firms.
Tag Archives: Sarah Rumpf
Mediaite: DOJ Attorneys Brutally Mocked for Accidentally Filing Letter Admitting Weaknesses of Case in Public Docket
Electronic case filing has been a fixture in the legal profession in this country for over two decades, saving litigants the time and expense of having to mail or hand-deliver their court pleadings. One absolutely crucial step, of course, is to make sure that the document you are filing with the court is the correct one, because once filed, whatever document you uploaded into the system will usually be automatically posted in the online public court docket.
Unfortunately for the attorneys at the Department of Justice who are working on the litigation regarding the Department of Transportation’s efforts to shut down the New York City Central Business District Tolling Program (“CBDTP”), someone seems to have badly flubbed this step and failed to double-check that the right document was being filed.
In February, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent a letter to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul voicing President Donald Trump’s objections to the CBDTP, which imposes stiff tolls on drivers using highly trafficked Manhattan streets, with the funds going to upgrade public mass transit programs. The tolls began on January 5, charging most drivers $9 to take roads in Manhattan below 60th Street, where many popular tourist destinations like the Empire State Building and Times Square are located. New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority filed a legal challenge seeking to keep the CBDTP in place.
Wednesday evening, a new letter showed up as item number 65 in the MTA vs. Duffy court docket, titled “LETTER addressed to Judge Lewis J. Liman from Dominika Tarczynska dated April 23, 2025 re: Administrative Record & April 20, 2025 Secretary Duffy Letter.”
What was actually filed, however, was an 11-page letter from Assistant U.S. Attorneys Tarczynska, David Farber, and Christine S. Poscablo addressed to Erin Hendrixson, the senior trial attorney at DOT regarding the case.
In the letter, the DOJ attorneys spell out multiple fundamental weaknesses with the federal government’s case, stating that there was “considerable litigation risk in defending” Secretary Duffy’s actions against the CBDTP, it was “unlikely that Judge Liman or further courts of review will accept the [federal government’s] argument that the CBDTP was not a statutorily authorized ‘value pricing’ pilot under the Value Pricing Pilot Program,” and “neither” of the DOT’s main defenses were “likely to convince the Court.”
Court watchers quickly pounced Wednesday evening after realizing what the DOJ had filed, mocking both the document mixup and the admissions that the federal government’s case was fundamentally flawed.
Sounds as though the Department of Justice is outsourcing their legal work to Three Stooges Law Offices PA!

Mediaite: FDA Staffers Dish on Unhinged Meeting With RFK Jr.: ‘The Deep State is Real’
A meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Food and Drug Administration was intended to be an introduction between Kennedy and the agency staffers he oversees, but his remarks were so shocking that several people walked out, according to a report by Politico on Friday.
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According to Politico, Kennedy delivered “largely off-the-cuff remarks” in a 40-minute meeting with FDA staffers Friday. Two employees who attended the meeting spoke anonymously to the reporters, who were provided with a transcript and audio of Kennedy’s comments.
“President Trump always talks about the Deep State, and the media, you know, disparages him and says that he’s paranoid,” Kennedy said. “But the Deep State is real. And it’s not, you know, just George Soros and Bill Gates and a bunch of nefarious individuals sitting together in a room and plotting the, you know, the destruction of humanity.”
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Kennedy also accused FDA staffers of being swayed by “agency capture” and acting as a “sock puppet” for the industries subject to their regulatory oversight. He referenced human mind control experiments like the CIA’s Project MKUltra and the Milgram experiment, which tested participants’ willingness to inflict what they were told were painful, possibly fatal, electric shocks to others if an authority figure ordered them to do so — as part of a discussion that Politico described as “an apparent effort to encourage FDA employees to stay true to their mission of making Americans healthier.”
These comments from the boss “alarmed and disheartened” FDA staffers and several of them walked out of the rooms where Kennedy’s speech was being aired, according to the sources who spoke to Politico.
