Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. When we left off last week, the Trump Justice Department was making its final plea to dismiss Eric Adams' criminal case without prejudice — meaning, the Republican administration was still pushing for the option to revive the Democrat's corruption indictment in the future (hence the quid pro quo allegations, which both sides have denied). Heading into this weekend, we're awaiting U.S. District Judge Dale Ho's ruling on the matter, which could come anytime.
The Trump DOJ pushed the president's version of "law and order" on other dockets. In doing so, the government continued its abnormal streak of top officials appearing at hearings to advance Donald Trump's goals. Last month, it was Emil Bove's New York appearance at the Adams hearing. This week, Attorney General Pam Bondi's chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, was in a Washington, D.C., courtroom defending Trump's executive order that sought to take various actions against law firm Perkins Coie for its Democratic-aligned work.
"It sends little chills down my spine," U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said of Trump's directive, against which she issued a temporary restraining order. "This may be amusing in 'Alice in Wonderland' where the Queen of Hearts yells, 'Off with their heads!' at annoying subjects and announces a sentence before a verdict," the Obama appointee said. "But this cannot be the reality we are living under."
Howell wasn't the only district judge disturbed by the government's behavior this week. U.S. District Judge William Alsup called it "a sad day when our government would fire some good employee, and say it was based on performance, when they know good and well, that's a lie." Ordering several federal departments to rehire employees, the Clinton appointee in California said the government tried to frustrate his "ability to get at the truth of what happened here." Alsup's preliminary ruling was one of two big ones against Trump's mass firings, with another from Obama appointee James Bredar in Maryland.
Pardons made news on several fronts — including, somehow, in a Mel Gibson-related situation. DOJ pardon attorney Liz Oyer, a Biden appointee, said she was fired after refusing to help restore the Trump-allied actor's gun rights, which he lost after his 2011 domestic violence conviction. Separately, Trump pardoned Brian Kelsey, a Republican former lawmaker from Tennessee, who was two weeks into a 21-month campaign finance fraud sentence. Decrying the "weaponized Biden DOJ" that prosecuted him, Kelsey reportedly said his clemency request likely resonated with the president, whom he called "victim No. 1" of political persecution.
And how far does Trump's blanket Jan. 6 pardon go? We got new answers to that open question, which has been raised by defendants testing the extent to which the clemency covers actions beyond that day at the Capitol in 2021. In one case, U.S. District Judge Thomas Varlan in Tennessee said Trump's pardon doesn't cover Edward Kelley's 2022 plot to kill federal agents who investigated him. In another case — in which the DOJ sided with the defendant after initially opposing him — Trump appointee Dabney Friedrich said the pardon didn't cover Dan Wilson's Kentucky firearms conviction.
"President Trump alone has the constitutional authority to pardon Wilson for all of his crimes," Friedrich wrote. "He still may do so. But this Court cannot — it is duty bound to enforce the Presidential Pardon as written."
Will Trump redeploy his pardon Sharpie to clean up any unfinished Jan. 6 business? If the Trump DOJ thought the pardon should apply to Wilson, then the defendant and anyone else in similar situations might have some reason to hope. But judges unwilling to do that work for them means they're at the president's mercy once again.
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