CNN anchor Brianna Keilar was stunned after a federal judge scolded the Trump administration in a scorching new ruling on Monday.
Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota blocked the Justice Department’s efforts to subpoena Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and other Democratic officials in an immigration enforcement probe, CNN reported. Walz, who has publicly criticized President Donald Trump, was targeted by the DOJ along with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her. County officials in Ramsey and Hennepin counties were also issued subpoenas.
“That is quite a lashing,” Keilar said, responding to the judge’s ruling.
CNN correspondent Katelyn Polantz described the opinion — and what made it stand out.
“I don’t know if I’ve seen an opinion take on the Justice Department in this way before from a federal judge saying just explicitly that they believe that the Justice Department was using its authority for political means in exactly the wrong, unlawful way,” Polantz said.
The subpoenas from former Attorney General Pam Bondi came following weeks of unrest and protest in Minnesota after two people — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — were killed amid aggressive ICE raids in Minneapolis. In the letters, Bondi told local officials that they needed to support ICE, Polantz said.
“It was a retribution and a reckoning day that was coming for people in Minnesota that didn’t support the federal government,” Polantz explained. “What the Justice Department said at that time was that people like Walz, Frey, they were going to be investigated for impeding federal law enforcement. But this federal judge, Patrick Schiltz, in Minnesota, he finds that that is totally not what the Justice Department was doing.”
“He says that the way they brought forth this criminal investigation into Walz’s office, the mayor’s offices, the attorney general’s office in Minnesota,” she added. “It was blatantly unlawful and unethical use of the grand jury process. He says that there was no doubt that these were grand jury subpoenas for documents that were meant to harass and coerce these local officials, and that there was no plausible investigative justification. The unlawful reasons here were overwhelming, quite a shock to see it on paper from a judge in this federal case saying, ‘these guys, these grand jury subpoenas, they’re not going to survive.’”
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