SAYONARA

Trump’s DOT Sidelines Lawyers Who Made Huge Courtroom Mistake

DOJ lawyers had accidentally revealed their doubts about the Trump administration’s legal case to halt New York City’s congestion pricing program.

President Donald Trump’s Department of Transportation swiftly replaced federal lawyers who had accidentally filed a private memo on Wednesday revealing their lack of confidence in Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s legal case to end New York City’s congestion pricing program. In the memo, which has since been deleted from the docket, Justice Department lawyers suggested Duffy was “using shaky rationale to end the tolling plan” and that the case was “exceedingly likely” to fail. A DOT spokeswoman on Thursday slammed the blunder as “legal malpractice” and questioned whether the lawyers were “incompetent” or if it had been an “attempt to resist” the administration’s priorities. The case has reportedly been taken out of the hands of the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office and transferred to the Justice Department’s civil division in D.C. The gaffe came as President Donald Trump seeks to squash New York City’s new congestion pricing program, which charges most drivers $9 to enter parts of Manhattan in order to raise funds for the region’s mass transit system and reduce pollution and congestion.