Presumption of Irregularity
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s elaborate attempts to bypass Senate confirmation and federal judges in appointing U.S. attorneys blew up in spectacular fashion Monday in a sentencing hearing in a child pornography case.
A federal judge in New Jersey absolutely let rip in the hearing, first reported by the New York Times, over the leaderless U.S. Attorney’s Office there. After an outside-the-district federal judge ruled that Alina Habba’s appointment as interim U.S. attorney was legally invalid, Bondi named a trio of prosecutors to lead the office. The same outside judge ruled last week that the workaround was also invalid, but gave the administration a chance to appeal the ruling. But in the meantime, the outside judge warned, federal criminal cases across the entire state remained in jeopardy because of Bondi’s machinations.
The threat to the sanctity of real live criminal cases seemed to most raise the ire of U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi, a Biden appointee who happens to be the first Muslim federal judge. Monday’s hearing culminated with the judge:
- ordering the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s head of appeals to leave his courtroom under threat of being removed since he wasn’t an attorney of record in the case;
- summoning the trio of prosecutors to appear at a future hearing to testify about their roles (he later agreed to a Trump DOJ request to delay the followup hearing until May);
- raising the possibility in the hearing that Habba, who now supervises U.S. attorneys as a senior adviser to Bondi, was still running the office from the shadows (Habba denies this claim).
The transcript from the highly charged sentencing hearing is worth a look. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read. Quraishi, himself a former prosecutor in the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office, set the tone with hapless line prosecutor Daniel Rosenblum from the outset:
Further provoking Quraishi’s ire was the fact that the Trump DOJ apparently botched the child porn case by entering into a plea agreement with the defendant before it had finished gathering evidence from his phone.:
When new child porn images were discovered by investigators, DOJ was already locked into a plea deal that was seeking a sentence range of less than one-third of the advisory range, the judge said — although he got the prosecutor to admit that plea deal applied to charges related to only one minor and the newly discovered images showed different children.
What most stood out from the hearing transcript — aside from the blistering tone — was the judge’s linking of Bondi’s unlawful workarounds on U.S. attorneys with the risk to criminal cases, a point he returned to and for which Rosenblum was poorly positioned to answer. In summoning the trio of office leaders to testify, the judge warned he might seek further testimony from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Habba.
Quraishi closed the hearing with a final admonishment for the U.S. Attorney’s Office: “You have lost the confidence and the trust of this court. You have lost the confidence and the trust of the New Jersey legal community, and you are losing the trust and confidence of the public.”
Correction: The original version of this item misidentified the assistant U.S. attorney thrown out of court as one of the trio of leaders of the USAO. It was the office’s head of appeals, who is not one of the trio.
Joe Kent Has ‘Reasons’ for Iran War Oppo
With DNI Tulsi Gabbard set to testify to Congress today, her Senate-confirmed right-wing deputy Joe Kent took the opportunity to resign over the Iran war while waving his hands about … the Jews.
There’s no “enemy of my enemy is my friend” analysis involved here when the motivating factor for opposing Trump’s foreign misadventure isn’t anti-interventionism but antisemitism.
Mullin’s Day in the Hot Seat
Today’s confirmation hearing for Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) as DHS secretary is a good opportunity to review what a strange dude he is, despite all the encomiums from fellow senators:
- TPM’s Hunter Walker: The ‘Cinematic’ And ‘Fantastical’ Life Of Trump’s DHS Pick
- WaPo: DHS pick Mullin boasts of ‘special assignments’ abroad but offers few details
2026 Ephemera
Despite claiming just a few days ago that he would make an endorsement in the Texas Senate GOP primary runoff and looking poised to back incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), President Trump let the deadline for withdrawing from the race pass without backing anyone, which has to be counted as a victory for state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX).
Don’t Be Fooled
Brian Beutler on the Trump White House’s fake makeover:
What they seem to want, in other words, is to freeze their progress in place, dialing back the braggadocio, in the hope that voters sense the atmospheric differences between March 2025 and March 2026 and assume the worst is behind them.
In other words, they are hoping to salvage power through a change in rhetorical emphasis, without substantively backtracking. Their dog-and-pony approach is clearest in two realms of policy that held Trump’s coalition together: immigration and wellness pseudoscience. MAGA and MAHA.
‘A Hallmark Production in Bad Faith’
In a stinging ruling that found the Trump administration’s attempted shuttering of the Voice of America to be unlawful, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth of D.C. ordered more than 1,000 VOA employees back to work.
The VOA staff must be brought back by March 23 and international broadcasting must be resumed, Lamberth ordered.
The VOA saga has dragged out for a year. At its center has been Kari Lake, the Arizona election denialist installed to shut down government broadcasters. Lamberth had had enough: “The defendants’ persistent omission and withholding of key information in this case has been a Hallmark production in bad faith.”
Judge Edges Closer to Ballroom Decision
U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon of D.C. grilled Trump DOJ lawyers over the President’s vanity ballroom project in a hearing Tuesday. Leon didn’t buy the analogies the administration offered to previous modifications and alterations made to the White House over the years, rejecting them as not being of the same scale as the demolition of the East Wing and replacement with a monstrously out-of-proportion ballroom.
Leon had previously ruled that below-ground construction could continue while the case played out, then dismissed the challenge to the construction on procedural grounds. He allowed the challengers to refile and now faces an April deadline, when above-ground construction is scheduled to commence. Leon said he plans to rule by the end of March.
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