The Trump Department of Justice’s stonewalling with a judge keeps backfiring with each new filing, according to a legal expert.
Michael Popok, a legal analyst, said during an episode of All Rise News that the DOJ’s refusal to kill Trump’s $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund isn’t swaying Judge Leonie Brinkema from the Eastern District of Virginia.
In early June, Brinkema blocked the anti-weaponization fund, which critics have called a slush fund amid worries it would pay Trump allies, after doubting the administration’s claims that it was truly dead. She then gave the DOJ until June 19 to file a declaration swearing it wouldn’t move forward with the fund under penalty of perjury or the lawsuit challenging the fund would continue.
“Her order was quite simple,” Popok said before summing up Brinkema’s order. “‘You want me to go away? You want my jurisdiction to evaporate? You want me to stop providing oversight over the Jan 6 slush fund…you file those [declarations] with the parties involved, and I’ll go away.’”
DOJ lawyer Andrew Block filed on June 19, arguing that the declaration would be unnecessary because Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told lawmakers he would not move forward with the fund. Brinkema “was not too pleased that the Department of Justice, given two choices, came up with a third choice about how to respond to her order,” Popok explained.
“Leave it to them to create something that makes it worse for them by telling the judge, ‘I don’t have to do it, and you can’t make me,’” Popok said. “Is that the framework for most of their filings? I don’t have to do it, and you can’t make me?”
According to Popok, the DOJ’s refusal is starting to backfire as Brinkema issued a new four-page order on Wednesday that gives the DOJ until July 17 to file its answer to the lawsuit. Brinkema’s order also scheduled the discovery process for the lawsuit to begin on June 22.
“The more you protest, the more you prove my point,” Popok said, summarizing Brinkema’s point. “The more you tell me you don’t want to put it under penalty of perjury, the more I’m convinced that you are a reluctant party.”
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