Judge accuses Trump administration of trying to undermine judiciary

Old_Joe

Following are edited excerpts from a current NPR report:

A federal judge on Thursday rejected the Justice Department's bid to remove her from a case challenging one of President Trump's executive orders, accusing the department of attacking her as part of broader campaign to try to undermine the judicial system.

The order from U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, nominated to serve on the federal bench during the Obama administration, denies the department's effort to disqualify her from the lawsuit over Trump's order punishing the prominent law firm Perkins Coie. Earlier this month, Howell said the order likely violated the constitution and temporarily blocked enforcement of it.

The Justice Department responded by accusing Howell, a judge at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, of repeatedly demonstrating "animus" toward Trump, and filed a motion seeking to disqualify her. Howell's order is a notable instance of a federal judge vocally pushing back against attempts to discredit the federal judiciary, and comes as judges who have ruled against the Trump administration this year are confronting a wave of threats.

"When the U.S. Department of Justice engages in this rhetorical strategy of ad hominem attack, the stakes become much larger than only the reputation of the targeted federal judge," Howell wrote in her order Thursday. "This strategy is designed to impugn the integrity of the federal judicial system and blame any loss on the decision-maker rather than fallacies in the substantive legal arguments presented."

In her order Thursday, Howell said-

• No judicial ruling exists in a vacuum, and that every litigating party deserves a fair and impartial hearing.

• "That fundamental promise, however, does not entitle any party — not even those with the power and prestige of the president of the United States or a federal agency — to demand adherence to their own version of the facts and preferred legal outcome".

• Fact finding, she stressed, is the role of the courts, and she slammed the Justice Department's assertion about "the need to curtail ongoing improper encroachments of President Trump's Executive Power playing out around the country."

• "This line, which sounds like a talking point from a member of Congress rather than a legal brief from the United States Department of Justice, has no citation to any legal authority for the simple reason that the notion expressed reflects a grave misapprehension of our constitutional order".

• "Adjudicating whether an Executive Branch exercise of power is legal, or not, is actually the job of the federal courts, and not of the President or the Department of Justice, though vigorous and rigorous defense of executive actions is both expected and helpful to the courts in resolving legal issues".

Crash

+1.

JD_co

"Howell's order is a notable instance of a federal judge vocally pushing back against attempts to discredit the federal judiciary, and comes as judges who have ruled against the Trump administration this year are confronting a wave of threats."

Good for Judge Beryl Howell and good for us! Some semblance of a push-back. SOMEBODY has to stand up to the bully, and it sure can't be easy to do (just easy for me to type).