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Engelmayer is the first judge ever to grant a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the president of the United States that also forbids a cabinet secretary from accessing his own records without giving these parties an opportunity to respond. He offered zero analysis of his constitutional authority to make such a radical ruling, the federal rule governing injunctions and temporary restraining orders, or why he is enabling fraud and grift by blocking access to records that show who got government money and for what. //
The situation is actually worse than that. Here’s the timeline of the court filings. All these initial documents were filed by New York Special Trial Counsel Colleen Faherty. //
1:04 a.m. — Faherty e-mailed four items — the complaint, the legal memorandum, her prior affirmation, and the order granting the TRO — to two government lawyers, only one of whom had been a recipient of her 7:32 p.m. email.
1:14 a.m. — The complaint was refiled with the deficiency corrected. Note that a properly filed complaint was not filed until more than a half-hour after Judge Engelmayer had already entered his order. //
The accelerated timeline is simply incredible, especially in view of the voluminous materials that any diligent judge would analyze to render a proper opinion. And I mean “incredible” in its literal sense of “not to be believed.”
The last documents filed in support of the request for a TRO were at 10:13 and 10:15 p.m. These included the legal memorandum with its citation to 54 court opinions. Did Engelmayer read these? Not a chance. Did he read any of them? If he did, you can’t tell it from his order, other than one citation from him to a single case that had no resemblance to the case before him. //
Even if Engelmayer had received and began to study these materials immediately after he had them all, he spent less than two-and-one-half hours reviewing and analyzing the materials presented to him before entering his order at 12:39 a.m.
That’s not even counting the time it would have taken Engelmeyer to write his order. If he took only a half-hour to do that, he spent less than two hours to peruse the voluminous record and then begin to write his order. He could not possibly have considered more than a small fraction of the cited cases and other authorities in that time. It raises the question of how much of this order was AI-generated.
President Trump summarily dismissed 17 agency inspectors general Friday night in a move that caught official Washington by surprise.
The inspectors general were dismissed via emails from the White House Presidential Personnel Office, with no notice sent to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who have pledged bipartisan support for the watchdogs, in advance of the firings, the person said. The emails gave no substantive explanation for the dismissals, with at least one citing “changing priorities” for the move, the person added. //
I'm sure this is heading to court, and it is a good bet that the Supreme Court will eventually decide that Congress can't put that kind of leash on the president's ability to fire a presidential appointee.
This move is curious. If it isn't simply an impulsive act, the Trump White House may be using this court case to audition arguments that can be used on another Congressional "permission" case, like a challenge to the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. //
NavyVet
7 hours ago
If IGs "are supposed to root out fraud, waste, abuse, and lawbreaking" they were an abysmal failure during Biden's term. Fraud, waste, abuse, and lawbreaking were rampant and they did nothing of note to stop it.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a statement. “President Trump is dismantling checks on his power and paving the way for widespread corruption.”
Oh, that's rich. After four years of the brazen fraud, waste, abuse, and lawbreaking of the Biden Crime Family, and his entire "administration", she wants to claim it's Trump? Classic!
It wasnt me NavyVet
6 hours ago
IG's need to be their own Department.
An IG can't start a prosecution. They have to go to the DOJ. The DOJ requires the FBI to also investigate.
So no real prosecutions can happen to the DOJ or the FBI.
They need their own prosecutors and able to empanel their own Grand Juries.
It's already difficult enough with Qualified Immunity and the Thin Blue Line.
Musicman
6 hours ago
The whole idea of an inspector general is constitutionally suspect. Whose job is it to investigate malfeasance by the executive branch? Congress! The reason IG’s have been created is a combination of the failure of Congress and the refusal by executive offices to provide evidence requested, sometimes even subpoenaed, by Congress. And the refusal of the DOJ to enforce Congressional subpoenas, and punish those who disobey them.
We don’t need IG’s, we need Congress to do it’s job and have the power to appoint investigators who have unfettered access to Executive Branch materials, computer systems and documents so that no Administration of either Party can stonewall investigations.
A scathing new report claims that the Biden administration's Department of Education's (ED) enforcement actions were focused at least 70 percent on Christian and career-based schools, even though they represent less than 10 percent of the students in the nation. This uncovers an unseen campaign that persisted over the administration's term and can hardly be seen as impartial.
What government does for anyone, it must do for everyone or it must do for no one. That's a pretty good, basic principle of good government; sadly, it's not always handled that way, and a bureaucrat with a political agenda can hurt a lot of people.
Case in point: On Friday we reported on the case of a FEMA supervisor who, in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton's damaging pass across Florida, ordered aid workers to bypass homes bearing Trump signs or flags. This was called a "best practice.". //
We can now report that the supervisor in question has been "removed from the role." //
This is an unforgivable breach of trust. In any disaster recovery operation like this, bypassing any citizens because of their political affiliation should be dealt with more harshly than just "removing them" from the role - dismissal would be indicated, right? //
[James Comer] "FEMA admits this happened but doesn’t say if the bureaucrat responsible has been fired," the House Oversight Committee wrote on X. "Democrats relentlessly defend the rules that insulate unelected bureaucrats from accountability and make it nearly impossible to fire bad employees. This is why we need President Trump’s reforms to make bureaucrats accountable." //
SWA ct
13 minutes ago
A DEI hire, she needs more than a reassignment. A nice term In Federal Prison is a good place to start. And all the ones that obeyed her illegal orders need to be fired.
Something as big, complex, and interactive as a major city, if it is going to be livable, requires predictability and control. The citizens of our cities have to know that every morning they will be able to go to work unimpeded, to do their jobs, to go home again; they have to know that their children are safe walking or riding the bus to school, that they can go to a store without worrying about a flash mob showing up to loot the place. //
And while I am and always will be an advocate of minimal government, this is one of the government's few truly legitimate roles: To protect the liberty and property of the citizens. In that, the government of these cities has failed. //
the blame can only be placed on the elected officials in those cities, the ones who make policy - and, yes, on the voters who elected them.
In 1919, in his poem "The Second Coming," W.B. Yeats wrote:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
I wish I could say that these political prosecutions won’t increase. But they likely will. Authoritarians on the left are becoming even more brazen in their efforts to use the criminal justice system against political opponents.
The objective is clear: They seek to cow the public into abiding by their political views. With the threat of government force, they want to compel people to either embrace their political philosophy, or at least shut up about it. Dissent will increasingly become less tolerated if these officials are allowed to continue weaponizing the government.
they were released on their own recognizance, which means police have nothing to arrest them on, on the assumption – which they have to operate on – that they’ll be back for their [March 4] court date.”
“The chances of that happening when four people get on a bus with false names and head for the city that literally you can cross the street into the Mexican border is probably unlikely,” he added. //
This is what "criminal justice reform" and defund the police have brought us – get-out-of-jail-free cards for criminals in cities like the Big Apple, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The phrase, “do the crime, serve the time” seems like a distant memory. Now it’s more like, “do the deed, get quickly freed.” //
Weminuche45
21 minutes ago
anarcho-tyranny:
The law is powerless to help you, but it can still harm you.
In simple terms, anarcho-tyranny is when the state stops upholding its end of the social contract and uses its monopoly on violence for its own ends.
Fujitsu software bugs that helped send innocent postal employees to prison in the UK were known "right from the very start of deployment," a Fujitsu executive told a public inquiry today.
"All the bugs and errors have been known at one level or not, for many, many years. Right from the very start of deployment of the system, there were bugs and errors and defects, which were well-known to all parties," said Paul Patterson, co-CEO of Fujitsu's European division.
That goes back to 1999, when the Horizon software system was installed in post offices by Fujitsu subsidiary International Computers Limited. From 1999 to 2015, Fujitsu's faulty accounting software aided in the prosecution and conviction of more than 900 sub-postmasters and postmistresses who were accused of theft or fraud when the software wrongly made it appear that money was missing from their branches.
Some innocent people went to prison, while others were forced to make payments to the UK Post Office to cover the supposed shortfalls. So far, "only 93 convictions have been overturned and thousands of people are still waiting for compensation settlements," a BBC report said. //
A Financial Times article said that the public inquiry "heard in December last year that the Post Office's lawyers had rewritten Fujitsu witness statements."
The FT article also said the Post Office, which used prosecution powers available to private corporations in the UK, obtained 700 of the 900 convictions. The other convictions came in cases brought by Scottish prosecutors. The scandal may lead to reforms of the private prosecution system that lets organizations take people to court.