Judge rips DOJ for attempting to remove her from case challenging Trump's executive order on law firm

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CNN Politics

Published 5:55 PM EDT, Wed March 26, 2025


CNN — A federal judge sharply rejected a Trump administration request that she recuse herself from a case challenging an executive order targeting Democratic-tied law firm Perkins Coie, accusing the Justice Department of attacking the messenger because it could not attack the message.

“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,” District Judge Beryl Howell wrote on Wednesday. “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,” she added.

In its disqualification request, the Justice Department had made a variety of accusations about Howell’s conduct in other cases, as well as comments she made at a recent hearing in the law firm case, that the administration claimed amounted to a bias against President Donald Trump.

Howell’s defense of the role of the judiciary comes as Trump and his allies have gone beyond just criticizing rulings against his policies by going after the judges themselves. They have called for the impeachment of multiple judges, including Howell’s colleague at the DC federal courthouse, Chief Judge James Boasberg, who is overseeing a high-stakes deportation case.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/26/politics/beryl-howell-perkins-coie-trump/index.html

[Buddyzbuddy]

1. At what point can the ABA or any other jurisdictional bar begin to

attempt to go after the licenses of these lawyers. Not as vengeance but as removal of lawyers that are in violation(s) to the authority granted by these Bars.
I imagine it can be done at anytime and pardon power has no bearing on those proceedings? Am I wrong on point?

[TomSlick]

3. The first step would be for the judge to make an ethics complaint to the appropriate disciplinary body.

The ABA has no authority to disbar lawyers. The ABA is a voluntary organization to which lawyers are not required to belong. Each state has its own lawyer disciplinary body.

I would not expect any disciplinary body to act sua sponte - on its own motion. If a judge makes a complaint, the disciplinary body would investigate.

Making baseless motions that a judge recuse carry their own penalty - a pissed-off judge.

[Buddyzbuddy]

4. Thank you, TomSlick. That information is helpful.

[TomSlick]

2. Attacking a judge is a really dumb move.

Never - ever - make a motion that a judge recuse unless you have a basis with which an appellate court would agree.

The first rule of regicide applies: If you strike the king, you must kill him.

[yowzayowzayowza]

5. Good thing the Courts are open and the focus...

is on the Orange Turd.

[riversedge]

6. All judges should be publicly fighting back

[LetMyPeopleVote]

7. Deadline: Legal Blog-Trump doesn't 'come close' to winning judge's recusal in law firm targeting case

The DOJ’s motion was “rife with innuendo” but didn’t “come close to meeting the standard for disqualification,” Judge Howell wrote.

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-perkins-coie-judge-howell-recusal-rcna198341

When the Trump Justice Department moved to disqualify U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell from the Perkins Coie law firm case last week, I noted that there’s a high bar for such motions and that Howell would likely reject the attempt. She did so Wednesday, in a scathing ruling that said the government’s argument was “rife with innuendo” but that “none of the claims put forward come close to meeting the standard for disqualification.”

The DOJ filed the disqualification motion after Howell issued a temporary restraining order against one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting firms he doesn’t like. Litigation is set to continue on the Perkins Coie matter in Howell’s court in Washington, D.C., but after losing on the restraining order, the government wants a new judge. The disqualification motion argued that the Obama appointee “has repeatedly demonstrated partiality against and animus towards the President” in past cases as well as this one.

But Howell observed, citing Supreme Court precedent on recusals, that “mere disagreements with the prior legal rulings of this Court do not ‘constitute a valid basis’ for disqualification.”....

To be sure, trying to disqualify a judge in court is a legally permissible endeavor. But in calling a high-profile judge’s fairness toward the president into question based on rulings in politically potent cases, it inevitably straddles the political sphere. Indeed, responding to a line from the DOJ’s motion that stressed “the need to curtail ongoing improper encroachments of President Trump’s Executive Power playing out around the country,” Howell wrote that it “sounds like a talking point from a member of Congress rather than a legal brief from the United States Department of Justice.”

True enough. But the DOJ probably didn’t write that line to win Howell over. That doesn’t mean the motion was solely a “political” writing even if it was never going to succeed — at least not at the trial level. In fact, the administration has pressed several appeals to the Supreme Court in which it has adopted a similar framing of stubborn trial judges unduly impeding the Trump agenda. On the judicial front, then, the justices might be the DOJ’s ultimate audience — though, so far, even that audience hasn’t been too receptive to the administration’s efforts.