Although Monday’s top story is Judge Cameron McGowan Currie’s dismissal of indictments against James Comey and Letitia James, the Trump Administration again lost its plan for expedited removals of individuals arrested by ICE.
Why were the indictments tossed?
It wasn’t because of grand jury misconduct. Instead, Judge Currie ruled as invalid Donald Trump’s appointment of interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan.
According to Currie, “all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment” including the indictments against Comey and James “were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside.”
In what can only be described as comeuppance, the judge found the appointment invalid based on the ruling in the classified documents case against Trump.
In that case, Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the charges against Trump after finding Special Counsel Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed, in part because he too was not Senate confirmed. Trump had pleaded not guilty to taking classified documents from the White House and resisting the government’s attempts to retrieve the materials.
Ever since Trump announced his plan for deporting immigrants, the Administration has sought to do so in an expedited manner that does not afford the accused a court hearing.
The Trump Department of Justice appealed a lower court ruling that blocked expedited removals.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined to lift that block (2-1) today.
The judges also chastised the administration for using a process that fails to alert migrants, the majority of whom have been in the U.S. for more than two years, that their longevity in the U.S. could exclude them from the expedited process.
“It simply leaves it to the detained individual to spontaneously and affirmatively prove two years of continuous residence,” the judges wrote.
Additional arguments are slated for next month.
These setbacks are part of the 500+ legal challenges to Administration policies tracked by Just Security. Only nine have been closed or dismissed in favor of the Trump Administration.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com