Fun at the Department of Justice

Just an abbreviated version of an article about an appointment and how Bondi gets it wrong.

In one of the more stupid episodes in an already stupid run of them, Pam Bondi gushed to social media the Trump administration would stand up to “politically minded” judges . . . and then fire Desiree Leigh Grace. Ms. Grace is the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.

Ms. Bondi made the move after the local district judges formally appointed Grace to the role of U.S. Attorney effective this weekend.

The only problem: Firing Grace has no impact on that decision. Oh, well, and the other problem is Bondi couldn’t fire Grace from the latter job if she wanted to. And the other, other problem is that none of this has anything to do with the judges anyway.

A bit of background . . . Pam can not fire Grace as note in a recent Slate article. “Bondi suggested that she fired Grace, but only the president can fire an interim U.S. attorney, so Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had to clarify that the termination came from Trump.”

Confused? Bondi sure is. But that’s par for the course with this Justice Department that keeps trying to solve constitutional Rubik’s Cubes by eating them.

Maybe they’re just too busy trying to cover up the Epstein client list to read the applicable statutes.

This all started last week, when cable news talking head Alina Habba, currently cosplaying as the interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, informed her staff that she suspected her tenure would soon end. Having been temporarily named to the job, Habba’s appointment would come to an end this week and her nomination for the permanent gig had stalled in the Senate. Because even then, the Republican-controlled body balked at the idea of putting a parking garage lawyer in charge of that office.

However . . .

When this happens, the law requires the district judges to pick the U.S. Attorney. Hoping to perform an end run around the Senate, the administration wanted the judges to appoint Habba. As Mark Joseph Stern notes in Slate, the administration has already relied on cooperative courts to assent to their picks on 11 occasions so far. The judges here . . . declined.

“Trump DOJ’s Keystone Kops Fire Alina Habba Replacement Without Realizing That Has Nothing to Do with It,” Above the Law