Incredible incompetence plagues the Trump administration

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has once again tripped over the basics of litigation in its relentless quest for state voter registration records, blowing a deadline to properly serve Washington’s secretary of state with its lawsuit.

In a filing Monday, Eric Neff, the acting chief of the DOJ’s Voting Section, said miscommunication with local U.S. attorneys led to the complaint being sent to the wrong addresses. Neff said he then mistook a separate court order in the case — demanding to know why Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs had not yet been properly served — as an extension of the service deadline.

Neff begged the court to forgive his mistake. “The United States acknowledges that it should have filed a motion for extension of time from this Court and requested additional time to serve Defendant,” Neff wrote. “Counsel apologizes to the Court for not having sought a timely extension.”

  Democracy Docket

I guess that's a start.

“We would expect the U.S. Department of Justice to know how to properly file a lawsuit in federal court,” Hobbs’ office told Democracy Docket. “We would also expect them to follow official procedures of serving the complaint prior to reaching out to media outlets, considering the important nature of voter data.”

Surely they DO know. This isn't the first time they've missed a deadline in a case.

The DOJ appeared to make a similar error in its lawsuit against Massachusetts.* Despite this, Neff averred “under penalty of perjury” in a declaration to the Washington district court accompanying Monday’s filing that “[m]y Section has successfully served all other lawsuits of this nature in all other jurisdictions successfully.”

They know. They lie.

After Attorney General Pam Bondi took office, career DOJ attorneys fled by the hundreds and upwards of 75% left the Civil Rights Division as it shifted its focus from protecting voting rights to attacking them.

Last year, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said she welcomed the exodus of experienced attorneys, and has repeatedly advertised openings at the office on social media posts and urging inexperienced, but ideologically aligned, lawyers to apply.

Neff was one of those new hires. [...] Before the DOJ, Neff was a Los Angeles County prosecutor who brought flawed charges based on a conspiracy theory pushed by election deniers. That mistake ended up costing L.A. taxpayers $5 million in a settlement.

Was there no vetting? Actually, it's possible that since the experts in every agency have been fired, perhaps they simply look at loyalty oaths for new hires.

“The United States instituted multiple related actions across the country and is coordinating these actions out of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Voting Section,” [Neff] wrote. “Litigating in multiple jurisdictions presents unique challenges to navigate each District’s local rules and varying service requirements in each state.”

Does that fit under the rubric of "ignorance of the law is no excuse?" Sorry your boss fired everybody who knew, but, too bad.

Election law experts have questioned the strategy behind filing dozens of nearly identical lawsuits, some in jurisdictions with adverse case law.

[...]

So far, the DOJ’s machine gun litigation strategy hasn’t been working. To date, three courts have ruled against the DOJ on the merits; the agency is now appealing all three. Another court in Georgia dismissed the case without prejudice because the DOJ filed in the wrong jurisdiction — they made the same mistake in California, but the judge there decided to rule against the DOJ on the merits.

Those are hardly the only legal errors. The DOJ’s filings have been riddled with typos, miscited statutes, and included undeleted drafting notes. The agency spent months emailing the wrong address in Oklahoma to demand voter rolls, and they sent demand letters to the wrong state officials in Rhode Island and Wisconsin.

And we can't forget the filings they've made using AI in which nonexistent cases are cited.

[W]hile the mistake is unlikely to doom the DOJ’s case, it is embarrassing.

And the delays this filing fault has already caused could frustrate the raison d’etre for the DOJ’s demands for state’s unredacted voter rolls — forcing election officials to purge their voter rolls ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

So, they win even if they don't know what they're doing?

All together now...

One more time. (But probably not the last.) There is no such thing as mass voter fraud.

link  (Blogger is being strange, and I can't attach a link to a photo without going to some trouble.  Hopefully this will clear up soon.)

This claim has been debunked over and over again. Trump's own commission on election integrity in 2018 found no evidence of widespread fraud.  (And most of the cases I've read about have been tied to the GOP.) 

My guess is Trump thought Harmeet Dhillon could be counted upon to lie, or tamper with data.  Surely he'll have to find a third person before 2028.

Trump 2.0 - the worst of the worst

 

Instead of investigating the murderer of Renee Good...

 DOJ is investigating Renee Good's wife.

The prosecutors walked because Trump’s DOJ refused to investigate what may be one of the most serious excessive-force killings by a federal agent in decades.

[...]

When career officials resign en masse, they’re sounding an alarm. They’re telling us the rule of law is being bent to protect power—and to shield a brutal immigration enforcement regime from scrutiny.

[...]

Renee Good is dead. Video evidence contradicts ICE’s story about her death. But, instead of doing what the Justice Department has always done, sending in the Civil Rights Division, Trump’s administration slammed the door shut on the case.

  The New Republic

If I remember correctly, they already hollowed out the Civil Rights Division.

Meanwhile, Trump’s FBI has begun digging into Good’s past, apparently attempting to smear her name while shutting local Minnesota authorities out of the investigation.

This is not a judgment call. This is a cover-up.

It's a "fuck you" to us all.

Donald Trump and JD Vance rushed to defend the shooter. Kristi Noem called Good’s interaction with police "domestic terrorism." And DOJ leadership told its own civil rights prosecutors: Stand down. Don’t go to the scene. Don’t ask questions.

[...]

This is how authoritarian systems work: first the violence, then the insulation of the perpetrators, then the silencing of anyone who objects.

The stunning resignations on Monday of four senior career officials from the Criminal Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division confirm that DOJ has gone profoundly off the rails in its handling of what increasingly appears to be one of the gravest federal excessive-force cases in decades.

The resignations reportedly had multiple causes, but the central one was the sidelining of the Criminal Section from the investigation of the January 7 fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross.

[...]

[L]eadership of the Civil Rights Division, under Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, informed the Criminal Section that it would not be investigating the case at all—a spectacular departure from past practice. Multiple career prosecutors offered to go to the scene but were told not to.

[...]

Calling this shooting into question would not merely implicate one agent; it would threaten the legitimacy of a brute-force enforcement regime that is Trump’s pride and joy. And it would come at a moment when the president is reportedly already furious with Attorney General Pam Bondi and senior immigration officials over perceived softness and setbacks.

[...]

Federal authorities reversed an initial plan for a joint investigation with Minnesota officials, shifting the probe to exclusive FBI control and cutting off the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from evidence and access. State officials—including Attorney General Keith Ellison and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty—have said publicly that this move hamstrung their ability to conduct an independent investigation.

Minnesota responded Monday with a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and senior federal officials, seeking to block the massive immigration enforcement surge in the Twin Cities. The complaint characterizes the deployment of more than 2,000 armed agents as an “invasion” and alleges unlawful tactics—warrantless stops and arrests in sensitive locations, racial profiling, and unconstitutional conduct that has disrupted daily life and eroded public safety. It further asserts that the campaign bears no genuine connection to its stated goals and instead reflects a retaliatory pattern of federal action aimed at Minnesota because of its political leadership and demographics.

  Harry Litman @ New Republic

Fuck your civil rights

 Unless you're Christofascist.

Trump 2.0 - Civil Rights

The Justice Department has ordered an immediate halt to all new civil rights cases or investigations — and signaled that it might back out of Biden-era agreements with police departments that engaged in discrimination or violence.

[...]

The first of two short memos sent by Chad Mizelle, the chief of staff at the department, ordered a “litigation freeze” at the department’s Civil Rights Division to decide whether Trump appointees want “to initiate any new cases,” according to a screenshot of the document viewed by The New York Times.

Mr. Mizelle also barred lawyers working for the division from filing “motions to intervene, agreed-upon remands, amicus briefs or statements of interest,” unless they receive the approval of senior Trump appointees.

[...]

Perhaps more significant, a second memo ordered a similar freeze on department activity involving so-called consent decrees — agreements hashed out with local governments intended to address flawed police practices, or bias based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and disabilities.

[...]

Mr. Trump, who has moved quickly to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion programs, accused the Justice Department under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. of hampering the police, even though nearly all of the law enforcement agencies investigated have admitted fault and many have embraced reforms.

[...]

The president has selected Harmeet K. Dhillon, a conservative lawyer from California, to run the Civil Rights Division, one of the most important, and politically polarizing, units in the department. Ms. Dhillon, who will be responsible for voting rights cases if confirmed by the Senate, was a top figure in the state Republican Party, where she supported Mr. Trump’s false claims of voter fraud.

  NYT

Trump signed an executive order revoking the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, which was signed by Lyndon Johnson in 1965 and has remained in effect for 60 years. It prohibits discrimination against protected classes in employment by any contractor who does business with the federal government. At least it did for the last 60 years.

  Meidas Touch

Another unsurprising nomination

Prediction:  They won't.

Also...

And it's being reported that Kari Lake is in consideration for ambassador to Mexico.

The best people.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.