Shifts at Justice Dept & Sanctuary Cities Challenged

This is Bloomberg Law with June Grossel from Bloomberg Radio.

As President Donald Trump's agenda faces growing pushback from the federal courts, top administration officials are openly questioning the judiciary's authority to serve as a check on the president. After a Manhattan federal judge blocked Elon Musk's efficiency team from accessing Treasury Department information, must call for impeaching the judge and Vice President JD. Vance, a graduate of Yale Law School, wrote on x that judges aren't allowed to control the

Well, we're going to see what happens.

We have a long way to go, and we're talking about fraud, waste, abuse, and when a president can't look for fraud and waste and abuse, we don't have a country anymore. So we're very disappointed, but with the judges that would make such a ruling, But we have a long way to go. We have to look, we have to find all of the fraud that's going on. We have tremendous fraud, tremendous waste, and tremendous abuse and theft.

Joining me is constitutional law. Professor David Souper of Georgetown Law JD. Vance said judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power fair enough, but he's often argued that presidents can and should ignore court orders they say infringe on their rightful executive powers, quoting Andrew Jackson, who said the Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it. I mean when the vice president and a Yell educated lawyer says that, is it concerning.

It certainly is worrying. And presidents and other high officials who have been engaged in illegal conduct have been saying that for over two hundred years. But it's no less disturbing when it happened. Of course, courts can't issue illegitimate orders, but the solution when they do that is to appeal them.

Trump has been stopped at least temporarily by about eight judges nine judges, and the theory is, well, he's testing the limits, so that this will go to the Supreme Court and expand his presidential authority. I mean, do you think it goes that far or it's just he's doing what he wants?

Oh, I think it does go that far. There's a few of these issues that are arguably separate, such as the birthright citizenship, where he's violating not a statute but the Constitution itself. But for the most part, he's going out of his way to violate statue that say how the federal government should operate, and in doing that, he's setting out the test case about whether any of these statutes find him at all. Some of the things he's trying to do, they are legal ways to do it,

What are some of the things he's done or one of the things he's done that he could have done legally.

He could have done a buyout under existing BIOT authority that requires an agency specific examination of how many people they want to leave and in what positions, but he didn't bother to use that authority. He did something completely illegal with this mass email that's likely to cause us to lose. Precisely, the federal workers we can't afford to lose.

So, turning to Attorney General Pam Bondi, she issued fourteen first day directives. So a new memo warns the Justice Department attorneys against refusing to advance it's legal arguments they disagree with.

Is this the way the.

Justice Department normally works, you know, you get an assignment and you argue the side that the Justice Department takes, or is this something different?

Well, lawyers are always required to act in the best interests that they're client, to the extent permitted by law and legal ethics, so it's not surprising that a lawyer might make an argument that if they were a judge they would rule against. That's ordinary. But the implication here is that lawyers might be required to make arguments that they regard as frivolous, and that is generally not allowed.

The Justice Department is supposed to be independent from the White House.

Is that always the case?

Though? Are there times when the Justice Department and the White House work closely together.

Well.

The Justice Department is part of the executive branch, and it is supposed to serve the nation's interests under the general guidance of the President. But it's always been understood that because they're dealing with law, and because the role of lawyers, particularly government lawyers, is very sensitive, the Justice Department has to be free to honor the law and to honor its obligations to only make legitimate arguments in court.

And I think it's already been happening in some of these cases where judges see the Justice Department's arguments as just frivolous. For example, in the cases over you mentioned birthright citizenship, where it seems to be pretty clear cut that Trump can't do that. So does the Justice Department risk losing credibility with the judiciary?

Yes, and I think that's already starting to have. Some of the arguments that have been put forward, not just in the birthright citizenship case, but in the funding freeze cases have been very strange, and the judges have commented on them. A judge in one of the funding freeze cases said that the government lawyers were claiming that the

In one of the memos on the first day, Bondi created a Weaponization Working Group, which strikes me as an ironic name to say the least she's targeting for investigation. There special counsel Jack Smith, New York ag Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Justice Department personnel who worked on January sixth, etc. Accusing them of improper investing, gative tactics, and unethical behavior going after an elected DA in Manhattan? Is that really the Justice Department's purview?

In principle, there can be violations taken by district attorneys. Some of the actions in the Civil Rights era were against people using government powers to perpetuate illegal racist subjugations. So the fact that someone is a state attorney general or a district attorney doesn't make them waterproof. But in this case, the strong implication is is that this is payback or prosecuting or investigating per boss President Trump. And if the Justice Department is seen as making decisions based

We've talked about this with reference to Supreme Court justices. But at her confirmation hearing, she said there will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice. Here's Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat, questioning her, and I'm questioning you right about whether you will enforce an enemy's list that he announced publicly on television.

Oh, Senator, I'm sorry.

There will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice.

And here she's on day one. She's targeting the people who are and have been on Trump's enemies list. So I wonder what is the point of those confirmation hearings.

The point is what you've just demonstrated, to have the acknowledge the illegitimacy of this action. There's nothing that Congress can do any hearing to stop someone who's determined to violate the law to do so, but they can have them acknowledge up the front that what they're on a plating doing it is impompable.

I think it's a.

Couple of dozen prosecutors who worked on January sixth cases have already been fired. Is there any recourse for them if they think that their firing was based on the position that they took the assignment they were given.

Certainly there's a strong principle of due process if the the Preme Court is articulated many times that one must be told what the law is and given a chance to conform one's behavior. Applying while retroactively is inherently improper. These are people who were given assignments by their lawfully designated bosses to conduct investigations, and they're now being criticized for doing something that's perfectly legal when they did it.

President Trump has outright said he's going to fire the FBI agents who are involved, so I guess they have some evidence there of his intent. So the Department of Justice has signaled that it's going to use criminal investigations to root out DEI practices in the private sector.

That's according to one of the.

Executive orders that Trump issued, and then the DOJ memo calls for specific steps to take within weeks.

I don't even know what to say about that.

I mean, criminal investigations for DEI policies.

Well, it's quite remarkable. I can see why they keep using the initials, because that's saying, we're criminally investing in you for inclusion. We're criminally investing in you for equity. Inclusion and equity tend to be the things that the law supports, So they're using DEI as a cartoon villain rather than looking at what's actually involved in EI programs are enormously varied, and it's hard to imagine many of them engaging in any criminal activity any more than any

Whenever you're charged or complaint is filed against you, it's a hassle, it's expensive, et cetera. But does this seem like something that a judge would dismiss, you know, on a summary judgment motion or even before.

Judges generally like to give the prosecution a chance to be heard, but in a situation like this, when there's so much evidence that the criminal law will be misused, the President and other senior officials essentially admitting that I think judges may feel that the fairest thing to do is dismiss these cases immediately and not force people who are following legitimate workers to go through the sort of burden.

Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show, more on those Bondy memos and the attack on sanctuary cities.

I'm June Grosse. When you're listening to Bloomberg.

New Attorney General Pam Bondi has unveiled a series of directives designed to overhaul a justice department President Trump claims is biased against conservatives. The directives roll back by deministration policies and align the Justice Department with the priorities of a White House determined to exert control over federal law enforcement and purge agencies of career employees it views as disloyal.

Well, that's very remarkable irony that they would think about doing this because conservative justices on the Supreme Court held that the federal government has no right through dragoons stayed in local governments, into carrying out its policies. That's a fundamental tenant of federalism, and mister Trump and other conservatives have championed federalism, and this is suggesting that state and local governments are just sidekicks of the federal government. That's not constitutional.

She's reinstating the death penalty, that's been done before.

There's nothing illegal about.

That right now.

So she's also calling for an October seventh task force seeking justice for victims of the attacking. The ongoing threat posed by HAMAS and its affiliates is that in the purview of the Attorney General, it sounds like it's foreign affairs.

It sounds like foreign affairs to me. On some matters. There can be cooperation between Justice and state Justice and defense, Justice and CIA. So it's certainly that there could be something to investigate there. I'm not privy to what intelligence they might have. If they don't have more than is publicly known, i'd be worried about a fishing trip, but maybe they do have more.

What they're doing is they're moving.

They're reassigning attorneys within the Justice Department to immigration. So for example, they're reassigning environmental lawyers and antitrust lawyers to this sanctuary cities working group. Well, pulling resources from other areas and concentrating on immigration come at the expense of the department's other priorities like terrorism and white collar crime. Oh, certainly.

And lawyers develop specialties, develop expertise in my areas of expertise. I like to think I'm a good lawyer, but I can name you twenty areas where I would be completely incompetent. I don't practice in those areas. That's true of any lawyer. So this is a good way of wasting valuable resources and letting important laws go ignored while pursuing cases that likely have no merit. Based on what we're publicly aware.

Of of the things that she's planning or at least she's written memos about. Is there one area that you think that is most concerning.

Well, it's the theme. The theme is politicizing the Justice Department to pursue a particular political agenda. Once we do that, then the Justice Department is going to lose something permanently. Whoever the next president is will not have a Justice Department that is trusted by the courts the way it's tradiginally has been.

Some of these orders that he's handed down, let's use birthright citizenship, because that's so obviously a problem illegal. Whatever is he getting legal advice on these from the White House Counsel's Office.

Or Justice Department.

It seems like they're so disconnected some of them from basic legal concepts.

I think piece are written by the people behind Project twenty twenty five, and those people have an extremely ambitious, radical agenda of overturning the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances has guided this country since its founding. That's the legal advice is behind all of this. The rest of what they're doing is hard to take seriously. You read references to cases in their memos. You go look up to the case and it says the opposite.

With the law is do you think that the Supreme Court will be receptive to Trump's efforts?

I don't.

The implication of this is that he's not governed by the law and that the courts have no power over him. That turns Supreme Court justice into a very modest, relatively insignificant figure. And I don't think that these justices are willing to give up their constitutional role and become figureheads. I think they want to decide cases based on the law and president the Trump's theories here are so radical that they would great we limit the rule of law of this country.

Thank you so much, David. I always enjoy our conversations. That's Professor David super of Georgetown Law. Turning down to immigration. The Justice Department is suing the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago over their sanctuary city policies. The lawsuit accuses them of obstructing the enforcement of immigration laws as ice and federal agents are ramping up their search for undocumented immigrants to be deported. Here's borders our Tom Homan.

I would love to rest a bad guy in the city or county jail, but in sanaturist cities. We don't have access, so they're going to release a public safety threat back into the community, which I think is foolish. Puts a community at risk, puts our officers at risk, and puts the alien at risk.

But Legal Learned, the deputy director of the Immigrant Rights Project for the American Civil Liberties Union, says only federal authorities can enforce these raids.

I think the states will have very very strong arguments that they don't need to cooperate.

They can obstruct, but they don't need to cooperate it.

Joining me is a Laura Mukherjee, a professor at Columbia Law School and director of the school's Immigrants Rights Clinic ILERA. Will you start by explaining what a sanctuary city or state is.

A sanctuary city or a sanctuary state isn't defined in the law in any way. It just means that a jurisdiction may have some policies that restrict a degree of cooperation between local law enforcement officers and the federal government. Ice there is a broad range of policies that different sanctuary jurisdictions have, so it's not a uniform term.

Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the Justice Department to identify local governments with policies that impede immigration enforcement, and to take action where appropriate. The first lawsuit filed by the Justice Department is against Illinois and Chicago and elected officials there, including the governor and mayor. Tell us what the administration's allegations are.

The Trump administration is alleging violations of the supremacy Clause. They're saying that local Chicago laws, a Cook County ordinance, and an Illinois state law preempt federal law. They also the Trump administration also alleges unlawful discrimination against the federal government and the unlawful regulation of the federal government and

So this state law was first passed in twenty seventeen, have there been a tax on it before?

In the first Trump administration, the Trump administration signed an executive order that is virtually identical to the one that is currently at issue now that the president signed in his first days in office and in the first Trump administration, multiple federal courts deemed that the executive order from that time was unconstitutionally broad, unconstitutionally coercive against local jurisdictions, and that was en joined, meaning blocked by the federal courts from taking effect.

Does it seem likely that the same thing will happen with this or have they added anything to their lawsuit to their argument?

I anticipate that the Trump Department of Justice will not be successful in their litigation in Chicago. It's also worth noting that on February seventh, San Francisco, Santa Clara, King County in Washington, Portland, and New Haven also filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California Federal District Court there alleging that the Sanctuary Jurisdiction executive Order, which would block sanctuary jurisdictions from receiving billions of dollars in federal funding,

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signs an executive order calling for federal funds to be cut off for any local government with sanctuary policies, and Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo calling for the Justice Department to start enforcing the order. Ellra tell us about that memo.

That memo is in tandem with the executive order, and these localities have sued to stop that executive order and that February fifth Department of Justice memo from going into effect. It's notable that the February fifth Department of Justice memo threatens the termination of funding to local jurisdictions and threatens both civil and criminal prosecution for law enforcement officers and other officials in the sanctuary jurisdiction.

It depends on the city, but are we talking hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in federal aid to these cities?

Collectively billions of dollars in federal aid to these cities.

So they've also in Trump's executive order vowed to go after local law enforcement officials who don't cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Did they do that in the last administration.

This threat to pursue both civil and criminal prosecution of local law enforcement agents and local officials who do not cooperate with the federal government on immigration enforcement is new. It is also unconstitutional. It clearly violates the Tenth Amendment and violates a longstanding principle of constitutional law, which is called anti commandeering. The federal government cannot commandeer cannot force localities and states to carry out federal priorities.

There was a memo allowing ICE to go into sensitive locations like churches and schools and hospitals.

Has I stillne that ICE has rescinded the sensitive Locations memo, which previously stopped ICE from carrying out immigration enforcement in locations such as schools, hospitals, places of worship, and public demonstrations. As far as we know at this time, there have been no immigration enforcement operations in schools nationwide, and in the first Trump administration there was very limited immigration enforcement

New York City, because of possible ice raids at schools, some immigrant families are keeping their kids at home, and the schools chancellor came out and said that the policy at city public schools hasn't changed and basically that a warrant is needed. Quote, we unequivocally stand with all children in our city, regardless of immigration status. But it seems like there's fear no matter what the government says.

The Trump administration has created a pervasive sense of fear among immigrant communities nationwide. It is not surprising that after the recision of the Sensitive Locations memo, the number of children attending our public schools has gone down. And it's important to reiterate that there have been to date no immigration enforcement actions carried out in public schools, and families should continue to send their children to school.

There's a dispute in New York City about New York City sanctuary status because of the actions of the mayor, Eric Adams. He wrote a memo to general councils for all agencies directing employees.

To ask officers ICE officers.

For their name and badge number. A warrant or subpoena and call their agencies. Council quote, but if you reasonably feel threatened or feel for your safety, you should give the officer the information they've asked for or let them enter the site. And critics say that's a violation of New York sanctuary law.

Yes, the wording of that memo is problematic, and it has left city officials without clearer guidance on how to proceed.

About the ICE raids. How are they proceeding? Some of them have been highly publicized. The one in New York where they arrested just one hundred I think people, was highly publicized because the new Secretary of Homeland Security went on the raid. How are they carrying them out across the country? Is it by the book?

It is unclear how these ICE raids are being carried out. In the first weeks of the Trump administration, ICE was releasing data on how many individuals were being arrested in ICE rays. It appears that about half of those individuals who were arrested did not have criminal convictions and were

On Sunday, a judge issued a temporary restraining order against three Venezuelans being sent to Guantanamo. Do you think that's sending migrants to Guantanamo is going to be upheld by the courts.

There are serious legal questions about whether the Trump administration has the authority to send individuals to Guantanamo Bay. What is clear is that the Trump administration is trying to instill fear in immigrant communities nationwide and let people know that the United States of America is no longer a safe haven for immigrants, for migrants, for asylum seekers and others. And that message is being broadcast around the world.

And what is the situation right now at the southern border.

So the Trump administration has issued executive orders that purport to close the southern border completely to asylum seekers and other migrants by declaring that there is an invasion at the border, although if you look at the data crossing there a four year low, so the data doesn't support that there is an invasion, and earlier this month, a number of immigrants rights organizations filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality and the legality of those executive orders, saying that

Thanks so much for joining me today. E Laura.

That's Laura Muokerjee, a professor at Columbia Law School and director of the school's Immigrant Rights Clinic. In other legal news, today, a federal judge in Boston temporarily blocked enforcement of a federal employee buy at offer by President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency. Federal Judge Georgie O'Toole Junior says the order will remain in effect until he issues a ruling. Attorney Elena Goldstein with the Democracy Forward Foundation argued for the plaintiffs in the case.

We are pleased that today at the court continued his injunction from last week, continuing to enjoin OPM and defendants from implementing the fork in the Road directive. The so called.

Buyout the deferred resignation program has been spearheaded by Elon Musk, who's serving as Trump's top advisor for reducing federal spending. Under the plan, employees can stop working and get paid until September thirtieth. Democrats and union leaders have said workers shouldn't accept the deferred resignation program because it wasn't authorized by Congress, raising the risk that they won't get paid. And that's it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show.