Trump DOJ Colludes on Trump Appeal

All of a sudden the Justice Department wants to be involved in President Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS — and it’s gunning to get the judge who imposed sanctions on Trump’s attorneys removed from the case.

After sitting out the IRS case in any official way at the trial court, the Trump DOJ overnight jumped into the appeal of the case by Trump and his co-plaintiffs that challenges the sanctions imposed by U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams as punishment for the collusive lawsuit.

The Trump DOJ’s failure to defend the lawsuit — unlike it had in other similar lawsuits for illegal IRS leaks of taxpayer information — was the centerpiece of Judge Williams’ concerns that there was no true adversity between the parties. It’s why she appointed distinguished outside counsel to serve as friends of the court so that she would be able to hear something approximating “the other side” in the case. It was a major factor in her ultimate conclusion that the Trump plaintiffs and Trump administration defendants were all on the same side.

The new DOJ filing at the 11th Circuit was signed only by Trent McCotter, a political appointee only just installed as acting deputy attorney general this week after Todd Blanche was confirmed as attorney general. It was McCotter who earlier this week was upbraided by a federal judge in Brooklyn for his conduct in dropping a criminal fraud prosecution of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani.

While it’s been perfectly clear all along whose side the Trump DOJ has been on in the IRS lawsuit, the Justice Department was careful to keep some distance from the case in court. No government lawyer entered an appearance in the case. No responsive pleading to the Trump complaint was ever filed. No defense to the Trump lawsuit was ever mounted.

Judge Williams noted all of these irregularities in her order finding that the lawsuit was collusive and imposing sanctions on Trump’s personal lawyers, while referring top DOJ officials Blanche and Stanley Woodward for potential attorney discipline at the state level. It was one of her critical findings in her conclusion that the Trump lawsuit and the resulting “settlement” that created the “anti-weaponization” slush fund and unlawfully granted IRS immunity to the Trumps was bogus:

For the 109 days that this case was pending, no attorney representing the United States filed a notice of appearance or any document indicating the government’s position, interest, or awareness of this matter.

As recently as Aug. 1, Judge Williams threw another dart at the Trump DOJ for failing to defend the case. When Trump and his lawyers asked her to pause her sanctions order while they appealed, Williams asked the court-appointed amici to weigh in on the motion “in light of the fact that Defendants do not intend to appear or file a response.”

Now the Trump DOJ is actively colluding with Trump at the appeals court, but doing so even more openly and brazenly that it did in Judge Williams’ court.

McCotter has leaped in on the side of the Trump plaintiffs’ side in supporting their motion to pause the sanctions while their appeal proceeds. McCotter urges the appeals court to stay Judge Williams’ sanction order, argues that the Trump plaintiffs are “exceedingly likely” to win their appeal, and then rehashes many of the Trump team’s arguments for why Williams overreached.

But McCotter doesn’t stop there. He mounts a more aggressive attack on Judge Williams that the Trump plaintiffs did by seeking to have the appeals court reassign the case from Williams to a new judge, accusing her of “improper political motivation”; suggesting she timed her sanctions order to derail Blanche’s nomination as attorney general; and improbably accusing her of intentionally keeping Blanche and the DOJ from participating in the case (even though they had gone out of their way to avoid appearing in the case).

In arguing for Williams’ removal from the case, McCotter writes:

This Court need not conclude that the District Court’s actions were improperly motivated, but rather only that reasonable members of the public would view them that way. That standard has certainly been satisfied. This Court should order reassignment. To be sure, no remaining proceedings are needed or appropriate in the District Court: the Order should be stayed and ultimately vacated, and the District Court lost jurisdiction months ago. The District Court is the only one insistent on trying to keep the lower-court proceedings going, on the flimsiest of bases. But for precisely that reason, this Court should order reassignment.

Because of the way this case has proceeded, it’s not even clear that the government is a party to the appeal since it never participated in the case. The appeals court has styled the case as Donald Trump, et al v. Thirty-Five Former Federal Judges, with no mention of the original federal government defendants (the IRS and the Treasury Department). Reinforcing the weirdness, McCotter’s unusual filing is styled as “Defendants’ Response to Appellant’s Time-Sensitive Motion for a Stay,” but it’s docketed as an “Amicus Brief as of right or by consent of the parties filed by R. Trent McCotter for Internal Revenue Service and Department of Treasury.”

But the precise legal permutations aren’t the point here. It’s the No. 2 political appointee at DOJ, with no backing from career attorneys, aggressively jumping to President Trump’s defense in a case whose central dispute is the finding of collusion between the Justice Department and the president — and doing so after carefully sitting out the early rounds of the case at the trial court to make the travesty look slightly less obviously bad. Now the Trump DOJ has dropped any pretense.

Mass Deportation Watch

• Illinois: An ICE agent pleaded guilty to a state misdemeanor battery charge for throwing a protestor to the ground while off duty during Operation Midway Blitz. He was sentenced to a year of court supervision.
• Worldwide: Trump’s detention archipelago spans 35 countries, including far-flung places like Eswatini, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Ghana, Palau, Uzbekistan and Moldova

Ukraine Beats US in Military Exercise

Having mastered modern drone warfare, Ukraine has run circles around the U.S., U.K., and Sweden in recent military training exercises in Europe, the WSJ reports.

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Letters of Marque???

Back in June, The Guardian had a confounding story about drone attacks on Ecuadorian fishing boats for which the Trump administration disclaimed any responsibility. Given the administration’s eagerness to distribute and promote snuff films of its strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, its denial can’t be dismissed out of hand.

Now comes the NYT with a follow-up story with quite a few tantalizing new details and the suggestion — though unproven — that private military contractors, perhaps operating under letters of marque from the administration, may be carrying out the strikes.

In its main advance of the Guardian story, the NYT tracks the movement of a maritime patrol plane based at a military base in El Salvador and registered to a company that lists its address as a private mailbox in a UPS store in Richmond, Virginia. Flight data reviewed by the newspaper showed the plane “flew in the direction of” three Ecuadorian fishing boats in the days before they were attacked . One boat was lost at sea in January, with eight crew still missing and presumed dead.

Air traffic control recordings captured the pilots speaking English with American accents. Fisherman who survived one of the two strikes in March recount being targeted by English-speaking “gringos” wearing matching uniforms with American flag patches who rescued (or captured, depending on your perspective) them and eventually turned them over to Salvadoran authorities.

Unlike the sophisticated drones used in the well-publicized strikes by the Pentagon, the weapons used to attack the Ecuadorian fishing boats have been crude drones fitted with explosives, according to survivors’ accounts.

The real eye-opener in the story is the NYT seriously entertaining the notion that the Trump administration may have issued letters of marque to modern-day privateers who are responsible for the strikes:

The letters, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions, were circulated among various agencies for their input in May and were supposed to complement the Pentagon’s boat strike campaign in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea.

Discussions around letters of marque seemed to stall around June, and the Pentagon would not say whether any have been issued. When asked about the attacks on the fishing boats, it said, “We have no knowledge of, nor were U.S. Southern Command forces involved in, the incidents described.”

On this basis, the NYT sought comment about the Ecuadorian strikes from Erik Prince, of Blackwater fame. “[N]either Erik Prince nor any entities affiliated with him have any relation to these events,” a Prince spokesperson said.

First at TPM: Abrego Garcia Wins a Point on Appeal

This is a small development, but it’s not been previously reported. Yesterday, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals granted Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss one aspect of the Trump DOJ’s appeal of his case.

The reason it’s worth noting is because of what the Trump DOJ had tried to do: impose its own deadline on U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis for her to rule on two of its pending motions in the case. If she didn’t rule by the DOJ’s own deadline, it would deem the motions constructively denied and appealed this. Xinis took umbrage at the Trump DOJ trying to set her court’s schedule, but DOJ appealed anyway on the basis her not ruling fast enough for its liking.

With minimal comment, the appeals court granted Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss this part of the DOJ appeal because it lacked jurisdiction since there was no final order from Xinis to be appealed.

In a period when appeals court judges have not always had the back of district judges confronting Trump administration lawlessness, this is one exception.

Mass Deportation Watch

• ICE plans to outfit officers with special gloves called Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter (G.L.O.V.E.) that can deliver painful electric shocks intended to gain compliance from combative individuals, the AP reports.
• Virginia: An ICE agent brandished a weapon at a U.S. citizen while falsely claiming she had tried to run over federal agents in her vehicle, the woman’s videos show. In response, DHS fell back on its usual refrain, claiming she “attempted to harm officers by weaponizing her vehicle against them—all in an attempt to help illegal aliens get away.”
• Texas: Bulldozing underway within Big Bend National Park for border wall construction.
• Illinois: A batch of 10 criminal complaints against federal agents stemming from Operation Midway Blitz were filed this week with Chicago police.

MUST READ: Trump’s New Census Scheme

TPM’s Layla A. Jones and Josh Kovensky: A New Draft Rule for the Census Seeks Sweeping Changes to How Political Power Is Allocated

TL;DR: John Light has the key takeaways from the TPM exclusive.

2026 Midterms: Generational Change

Rep. John Larson (D-CT), 78, who has served in the House since 1999, lost his re-election bid in the Democratic primary to former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, 47.

“Bronin’s win makes Larson the seventh Democratic House incumbent to lose reelection this year; six lost to younger challengers,” the WaPo notes.

Trump DOJ Watch: Jeanine Pirro Edition

• Reflecting Pool: The White House is pressing the Justice Department to bring a new misdemeanor case against David Hearn on bogus charges of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool, the WSJ reports, even though D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro already dismissed the original case against Hearn and told a court that it wasn’t vandalism but a botched job by the pool-lining contractor.
• D.C. Special Grand Jury: In an unusual move, Pirro has empaneled a special grand jury to be overseen by one of her own loyalists, Steven Vandervelden, the WaPo reports. It is unclear what the new special grand jury will be investigating, but the ability of a special grand jury (unlike a regular grand jury) to issue a report at the conclusion of its investigation means it could be used as a tool to “name and shame” Trump foes, offering a way to placate the president in instances where there’s insufficient evidence to bring a criminal case.

Trump Contests Sanctions in IRS Case

President Trump, two of his sons, his business, and his lawyers have asked the 11th Circuit to block the sanctions imposed by the judge who oversaw his collusive lawsuit against the IRS, which spawned the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund and the unlawful grant of IRS immunity.

In a scathing overnight filing, the Trump-related parties savaged U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams of Miami for sloppiness, haste, legal error, and exceeding her sanctions power:

The Sanctions Order was riddled with multiple errors. It materially misquoted Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., misidentified both the court and dissenting judge in Keepseagle v. Perdue, used the wrong docket number for Jackson v. United States, gave the wrong citation for Trump v. Clinton, cited the syllabus rather than the majority opinion in Seila Law, misidentified a Wall Street Journal author and URL, and repeatedly mangled case names, government titles, and source attributions.

They are seeking to put the sanctions order on hold while their appeal proceeds.

$900 Million and Counting

WaPo:

The Trump administration plans to spend at least $900 million for construction projects on the White House grounds, a significantly larger price tag than has been previously reported and one that would be covered primarily by taxpayers, according to records reviewed by The Washington Post.

Instead of securing money directly from Congress, the records show, the administration has pieced together funding from other agencies and private donors and directed it to a little-known account that typically holds a few million dollars for routine maintenance of the executive mansion.

Unpacking the Air Force One Debacle

Garrett Graff, the preeminent reporter on continuity of government, calls Trump’s secret flight out of Turkey “a Russian nesting doll of scandal, one that exposes at least five levels of scandal, ranging from foreign influence to corruption to national security compromises to inappropriate geopolitical gambles.”

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