‘Well-Established History’ of Retribution
U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz, a President George W. Bush appointee, threw out Trump DOJ grand jury subpoenas aimed at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz from January, finding in a ruling unsealed Monday that there was “no doubt” that the subpoenas were issued to retaliate against Walz.
“Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action — particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take — is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use [of] the grand-jury process,” Schiltz wrote in the 29-page ruling dated last Wednesday and unsealed on Monday.
Schiltz’s ruling throws out six grand jury subpoenas that sought records from Walz, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her and officials in Ramsey and Hennepin counties. They were part of a DOJ investigation into the administration’s immigration enforcement assault in Minnesota at the time — and whether Walz and other officials supposedly impeded federal law enforcement activity. In his ruling, Schiltz said it was clear, “beyond resasonable dispute,” that the purpose of the subpoenas was to “coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration law and to harass and retaliate against them for failing to do so.”
Walz — and the state of Minnesota generally — has been a target of Trump’s retribution campaign for months. Trump initially descended on Minneapolis in December only after right-wing MAGA influencers began spreading baseless conspiracy theories about legitimate social services fraud investigations underway in Minnesota.
After U.S. citizens and undocumented immigrants were killed during immigration enforcement activities in the state — which the Trump administration dubbed ICE’s Operation Metro Surge — and public opinion turned against the deadly mass deportation campaign there, Trump targeted Minnesota, and Walz, in other ways, including freezing $259 million in Medicaid funding for Minnesota.
Operation Metro Surge was one of several instances in the first year of Trump’s second term in which he flooded blue states and cities with members of the National Guard, and later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to flex his power over elected Democrats.
Schiltz appeared to agree with that broader assessment of Trump’s retaliatory actions in Minnesota.
“And, of course, this campaign played out against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s well-established history of using criminal investigations to retaliate against and pressure the President’s political and personal adversaries,” he wrote.
Schiltz also cited the Tenth Amendment’s “anti-commandeering” rule, which blocks the federal government from forcing states to enforce federal laws.
“This is as true in the context of immigration enforcement as it is in the context of other federal regulatory programs,” he said.
Judge Blocks DHS From Using Immigration Database to Purge Voters
A federal judge in Washington, D.C. blocked the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security from using a database that tracks the immigration status of more than 26 million people from being used to purge voter registration rolls.
The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit challenging Trump’s March 25 executive order that directed DHS to ignore federal privacy laws and transform the Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system into a citizenship tracker database to be used by local and state election officials to check citizenship status and purge voter rolls. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan railed against the Trump administration’s actions:
The League of Women Voters led a lawsuit challenging the changes to the SAVE system last year. Per Democracy Docket:
Trump’s order directed DHS to overhaul SAVE, taking a database of the immigration status of roughly 26.5 million people and turning it into a citizenship-checking system with access to the personal information of most Americans. The upgrades allowed for bulk searches using partial social security numbers and made the database freely available to state and local election officials.
The League of Women Voters led a coalition of voting and privacy advocates in challenging the changes to SAVE last year, suing DHS, the Social Security Administration (SSA) and other federal actors. While Sooknanan declined to issue a stay last November, she granted a summary judgment Monday, saying that the modification of the SAVE system violated the Social Security Act’s prohibition on disclosing social security numbers, various provisions of the 1974 Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
Very Brave
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is continuing his Trump (and Ken Paxton) shit-talking tour post-primary loss in a new interview with Semafor out this morning. Cornyn, of course, is only feeling chatty now that Trump helped end his career in the Senate by endorsing Paxton in the Republican primary runoff for Cornyn’s seat. Cornyn suggested that Paxton’s victory may open up a potential flip in Texas and said Trump seems to “revel in chaos.” The key quotes:
“I don’t know how Paxton raises the money he’s going to need to run against Talarico — who’s got unlimited resources — in the next four and a half months,” Cornyn said. “And while Talarico is definitely a weirdo, you know, take your pick.”
And:
“The president seems to revel in chaos, which is so different from any other leader that I’ve ever seen. I don’t know about you, but I like to minimize the chaos in my life,” Cornyn added. “He just seems to revel in it. We’ve seen even recent evidence of it on the DNI.”
While this is all very lame and useless now that he’s a lame duck, Cornyn’s newfound passion for leveraging his waning days of power to secure funding for Texas — and also force acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to, at the very least, divulge more information about how Trump’s cartoonishly corrupt (and, for now, defunct) slush fund came about — remain interesting. More on the Blanche Drama here.
In Case You Missed It
Sarah Posner is the author of Morning Memo this week while David Kurtz takes a vacation: The Reflecting Pool as a Reflection of Trump’s Corruption and Tin-Potism
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Who would have thought that a felon whose next career opportunity be the head of a large and powerful organization would direct that organization to do unlawful acts?
Nicely written, Nicole. Thank you!
Cornyn hasn’t said anything particularly harsh nor taken any actions that might thwart the administration. This is nothing more than whiny sour grapes from what amounts to the Texas male version of Susan Collins.
In other words, Paxton is also a weirdo.
Calling someone a weirdo for being Christian is a bit too on the nose for Texas hypocrisy.