Federal judges are increasingly calling out lawyers representing President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice in rulings that suggest the entire post-Watergate legal system is under threat.
Since Trump returned to office, federal judges have blasted the administration for making questionable legal arguments, filing dishonest testimony, and failing to comply with court orders.
Some of those problems originated with the federal departments represented by the DOJ’s lawyers, including the notoriously unreliable Department of Homeland Security, The New York Times reported.
But over the past several weeks, the judicial rebukes have become even harsher as some judges have begun criticizing the DOJ’s lawyers and holding them personally responsible for making false statements to the court, according to the Times.
In mid-May, Judge Mary McElroy of Rhode Island, a Trump appointee, ripped into the DOJ for its “appalling” and “reckless” lack of candor in a case involving gender-affirming healthcare for minors, writing that the DOJ had “proven unworthy” of the trust that Americans place in federal prosecutors.
In her ruling, she wrote that the Rhode Island court shared the sentiment expressed by other federal courts that the government can no longer be taken at its word.
A week later in Chicago, Judge April Perry, a Joe Biden appointee, dismissed a case against four anti-ICE protesters after the prosecution tried to cover up its own grand jury misconduct, and admonished the DOJ for failing to uphold justice.
“I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing,” she told a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney. “That trust has been broken.”
And in a May 22 ruling in Tennessee, Judge Waverly Crenshaw, a Barack Obama appointee, dismissed criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported last year to a megaprison in El Salvador, and torched the DOJ’s dishonesty in the case.
Crenshaw wrote that the case “sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power” and rejected the prosecutor’s claim that he alone was the one who decided to indict Abrego Garcia on human trafficking charges over a 2022 traffic stop.
Emails showed that DOJ leadership in Washington told prosecutor Robert McGuire that the case was a “top priority” and sent him information about new witnesses identified by the Department of Homeland Security.
The rise in judges questioning the so-called “presumption of regularity,” including the longtime assumption that the court can take DOJ lawyers at their word, threatens the federal judiciary’s ability to operate smoothly, legal insiders told the Times.
After the Watergate scandal, the DOJ adopted new rules saying department lawyers should be held to higher standards because the entire executive branch’s reputation rests on their shoulders.
Those standards were unofficially articulated by the late Judge Patricia Wald as “the five Cs”—or the duties of competence, credibility, civility, consistency, and candor.
“You can’t hide the ball,” Harvard Law School professor and former DOJ official Andrew Mergen told the Times.
Judges accusing government lawyers of dishonesty is “such an extraordinarily awful look for the Justice Department,” he added.
In a statement, a Justice Department spokesperson told the Times that “any attack on the professionalism or integrity of DOJ attorneys is outrageous and unjustified.”
“The department will continue to vigorously advance and defend President Trump’s agenda in federal court with the utmost respect for the institution and rule of law,” spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre said.
The Daily Beast has also reached out for comment.
