Greetings one and all. Since Eric Holder became the United States Attorney General back in 2009, the Department of Justice has descended into a level of lawlessness and unethical behavior not seen in living memory.
It started when Holder ignored and then broomed a case against the Black Panthers for voter intimidation that had already been settled. Then he moved into gun running with Operation Fast and Furious. He also obstructed congressional oversight and ignored the courts as often as he could get away with it. Congress finally held him in Contempt, the first Attorney general to ever have that dishonor.
Holder eventually stepped down and Loretta Lynch was confirmed as his replacement. While she hasn’t been quite as bad as Holder, her administration hasn’t been without it’s issues. Finally, in a major case against the Obama Regime’s abuse of power, a judge has finally had enough of the antics of the DoJ’s lawyers. Here are some of the details from the Washington Examiner:
A federal judge has ordered annual ethics classes for Justice Department attorneys as a punishment for being “intentionally deceptive” during litigation over President Obama’s executive immigration orders.
“Such conduct is certainly not worthy of any department whose name includes the word ‘Justice,'” U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen wrote in a withering order released Thursday.
As I worked on this post, I’ve started looking at the order issued by Judge Hanen. To say he is angry would be a serious understatement. Here’s the opening of the order and it sets the tone of the entire document:
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
An exchange between two characters from a recent popular film exemplifies what this case is, and has been, about:
FBI Agent Hoffman:
Don’t go Boy Scout on me. We don’t have a rulebook
here.
Attorney James Donovan:
You’re Agent Hoffman, yeah?
FBI Agent Hoffman:
Yeah.
Attorney James Donovan:
German extraction?
FBI Agent Hoffman:
Yeah, so?
Attorney James Donovan:
My name’s Donovan, Irish, both sides, mother and father. I’m Irish, you’re German, but what makes us both Americans? Just one thing . . . the rulebook.
We call it the Constitution and we agree to the rules and that’s what makes us Americans. It’s all that makes us Americans, so don’t tell me there’s no rulebook.
Reading through the order, I found it to be easily understood rather then the normal load of legalistic horse manure we usually get from the legal system. I take this to mean that Judge Hanen is so angry that he wanted to make sure that anyone who read this order would have no problem understanding it. As to what set him off? Basically, the DoJ lawyers lied to him.
Justice Department attorneys misled the court about when the Department of Homeland Security would begin implementing President Obama’s executive order granting “deferred action” to illegal immigrants whose children are citizens. In doing so, they tricked the 26 states who filed a lawsuit into “foregoing a request for a temporary restraining order,” according to the judge.
As we’ve seen, The Obama Regime has essentially opened the borders to every illegal alien in the world. All border controls have all but ended. The states that are suing Obama want the borders locked down and the illegals sent back since they and their citizens are the ones paying the costs, both in treasure, (Taxes to cover the schools, medical, housing, etc), as well in blood, (Murders rapes, robberies etc). Since the DoJ lawyers lied to the judge saying that Obama’s amnesty was on hold, the states didn’t ask for a restraining order.
The facts of the deception are not in doubt, Hanen emphasized. “[DOJ] has now admitted making statements that clearly did not match the facts,” he said in the May 19 opinion, first noted by the National Law Journal. “It has admitted that the lawyers who made these statements had knowledge of the truth when they made these misstatements … This court would be remiss if it left such unseemly and unprofessional conduct unaddressed.”
And what did Judge Hanen do to address this conduct?
As punishment, Justice Department attorneys who wish to appear in any state or federal court within the 26 states that brought the lawsuit have to undergo annual ethics training. “At a minimum, this course (or courses) shall total at least three hours of ethics training per year,” he wrote.
Personally, I would have contacted the Bar associations and see that these lawyers were at least suspended for a while if not outright disbarred. The Judge also could have canned the entire case presented by these unethical scum, but didn’t.
In another case, such “egregious conduct” would lead him to strike the government’s pleadings, but Hanen decided not to take that step because the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case in April.
“The national importance of the outcome of this litigation outweighs the benefits to be gained by implementing the ultimate sanction,” Hanen wrote. “Striking the government’s pleadings would not only be unfair to the litigants, but also unfair, and perhaps even disrespectful, to the Supreme Court as it would deprive that Court of the ability to thrash out the legal issues in this case.”
I suspect that if the case hadn’t been heard by the Supreme Court, Judge Hanen would have struck the government’s pleadings. I have a suspicion that the Justices are fully aware of what the DoJ lawyers did and it won’t help their case at all. While I’m not up on how these things work, I would assume that the Justices could kill the whole thing. As it is, Obama’s contempt for the rule of law and the constitution has been slammed several times by the USSC.
Hanen seemed to lament that he couldn’t disbar the attorneys involved, but he barred the out-of-state attorneys from enjoying the right to practice law in Texas.
“The court does not have the power to disbar the counsel in this case, but it does have the power to revoke the pro hac vice status of out-of-state lawyers who act unethically in court,” he wrote. “By a separate sealed order that it is simultaneously issuing, that is being done.”
Game, Set, match as they say. Again, I don’t have a clue on how all this works, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Judge Hanen doesn’t send out some letters to the State Bar Associations of these lawyers recommending severe disciplinary measures. As it is, I would think that the Attorney General for the Trump Administration, whoever that may be, will be doing a lot of spring cleaning in the Halls of the Department of InJustice in 2017.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
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