Federal Judge Quashes Subpoenas To Minnesota Officials

Back in January, we reported that President Donald Trump’s thoroughly MAGA-netized Justice Department issued subpoenas to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and at least three other Minnesota officials, whom the federal government had accused of obstructing its agenda to be cruel and reckless with brown people’s lives and call it immigration reform.

OK, I made that last part up, but that’s essentially what ICE and them did in the Twin Cities.

Well, on Monday, a federal judge told Trump’s stooges in the DOJ that they can’t force state officials to take part in their MAGA messiah’s immigration crackdown, and that they are only building onto their reputations for being tools that our lawfare-happy president uses to retaliate against his many political rivals.

From the Washington Post:

Minnesota’s chief federal judge, Patrick J. Schiltz, determined that the Justice Department issued the subpoenas to coerce officials in the state to take specific actions around immigration enforcement. Walz, Frey and other state and local officials received subpoenas which, while not identical, broadly sought records relating to federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota.

“The Department has struggled — without success — to identify a single plausible investigatory justification for the subpoenas,” Schiltz wrote.

The Justice Department issued the subpoenas in January as President Donald Trump and other federal officials alleged that the Democratic leaders were impeding federal law enforcement officers’ abilities to do their jobs in the state. The subpoenas were issued amid a bitter political battle between the Trump administration and state officials following the fatal shooting of protester Renée Good in Minneapolis by an immigration officer earlier that month. That shooting happened amid a surge of federal immigration officers in the state ordered by Trump.

As we previously reported, Ellison suggested at the time that Trump was likely being retaliatory because his office had recently filed a lawsuit against his administration, accusing it of wrongly excluding local officials, including himself, Walz and Frey, from taking part in the investigation into what many people saw as the extrajudicial execution of  Renee Nicole Good by a federal agent.

“Everything about this is highly irregular, especially the fact that this comes shortly after my office sued the Trump Administration to challenge their illegal actions within Minnesota,” Ellison said. “Let’s be clear about why this is happening: Donald Trump is coming after the people of Minnesota, and I’m standing in his way. I will not be intimidated, and I will not stop working to protect Minnesotans from Trump’s campaign of retaliation and revenge.”

Judge Schiltz, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, appeared to largely agree.

“This course of events — in and of itself — establishes beyond reasonable dispute that the subpoenas were a part of a broader campaign to coerce state and local officials in Minnesota to assist the Trump administration in its enforcement of immigration laws,” Schiltz wrote in his ruling. “And, of course, this campaign played out against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s well-established history of using criminal investigations to retaliate against and pressure the President’s political and personal adversaries.”

A Bush-appointed federal judge is now telling the president he is transparently a corrupt, tantrum-prone, octogenarian toddler, swinging his lawfare stick at anyone he can find to bully with it, and that he needs to be put on permanent time out.

OK, I made a lot of that up, but that’s essentially what he said.

SEE ALSO:

DOJ Accuses Democratic Leaders In Minnesota Of Obstructing ICE

DOJ Arrests Black Woman Organizer Of Anti-ICE Church Protest