The Justice Department tried to convince a judge in Maryland to go along with the major shake-up of its census case legal team in a court filing Wednesday that explained that the new attorneys it’s bringing in “already have begun working on the case.”
Of course it won’t delay anything. The whole point here is to fail as quickly as possible after getting some nonsensical pretense justification for the question being added to the Census into the court record in writing, which they hope the four racists and Uncle Tom on the SCOTUS will pretend is good enough.
Your Honor, please let us change our entire team because we screwed up so much before that we need to start over again fresh. You see, Your Honor, we want to make a totally different argument this time around, and the old team just couldn’t bear the shame and humiliation of completely contradicting themselves, but we found other people who are willing to take a crack at it. We think we can get them up to speed in about a day. Honest. Please just give us another chance. We promise to be good. Thank you Your Honor.
Are you suggesting Justice Thomas isn’t also racist? Because by all objective evidence, he appears to be quite biased against racial minorities.
Also, DOJ to Court: The check’s in the mail, I gave at the office, and…
The court should believe the DOJ this time. After all, it is not like the DOJ lied about the events of the case, conspired with Commerce, and obstructed (hid) evidence. Or justified a SCOTUS hearing based on now unimportant deadlines, or…
I think you know what I meant. Would it help if I had said “white supremacists” instead for the other four?
“Defendants do not anticipate seeking any extensions based on the substitution of new counsel, will diligently work to ensure that the substitution of counsel does not prejudice plaintiffs in any way, and intend to respond to Plaintiffs’ discovery on the Court-ordered schedule” the Justice Department said.
Yes, we will have our pleadings and filings and motions in order and presented by July 15th. We promise. No backsies, really. We honor stated deadlines. They are sacrosanct. Just look at the history of this case…
So, Barr is saying to the judge:
“You have no say over DOJ staffing decisions”
How do the Dems respond to that?
Shoulder shrug.
Jerry Nadler will look into this. In September. Or thereabouts.
What do “the Dems” have to do with this court case and why should they “respond to that”?
His authority over which attorneys are responsible for a case stops at the door to the courthouse. They filed appearances. That means they are counsel for the party for whom they filed an appearance until the court says otherwise, and it would be Barr interfering with the constitutional authority of the judicial branch and a violation of the separation of powers, not vice versa, were he to be permitted to dictate to the courts which attorneys it must accept as having appeared or withdrawn or rightfully representing the gov’t in any particular matter.
This is authoritarian lawlessness incarnate. They’ve made their moves to completely moot the House and turn the Senate into nothing but a judicial appointment rubber stamp machine. Now, they’re going to start whittling away at the judiciary.
Talk is cheap.
This dispute is really a sideshow. Indeed, it’s a sideshow from a sideshow. The first sideshow is that the DOJ legal team could not make arguments with a straight or near-straight face. In law there’s a phrase for this: The words do not lie in his mouth. (That’s lie like in lie down. Not as in false.)
The next time a Republican bemoans “big government”, laugh in their face, and tell them they should switch to the Democratic Party.
Nothing coming out of this Justice Department is believable. Everything the Justice Deparment says, must be assumed to be a lie until proven otherwise.
And those attorneys must live up to their ethical responsibilities or face professional discipline from the Bar. They also bear obligations to be truthful and candid to the Court and to make only good faith arguments that are supported by law. Apparently they can’t do so in this case. The appropriate thing to do would be to concede the case. Let’s see if that happens.
All five attorneys attempted to withdraw from the case. The court refused. Two of them quit their DoJ jobs, and the court let those two withdraw.
There are no longer any ethical responsibilities. The concept has been rendered moot.
