Ex-prosecutor loves judge’s smackdown of Trump: ‘Let’s peopel connect the dots’
A federal judge accused the president of enacting an executive order he declared an "unconstitutional abuse of Donald Trump's power." One of the lawyers targeted in the order is celebrating the ruling, saying he "loves" the judge's smackdown.
Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Friday as the news broke, former partner Andrew Weissmann smiled as he spoke about the judge's decision to stop the Trump order targeting the law firm Jenner & Block. Weissmann worked for the firm until 2011. More recently, Weissmann worked as one of the prosecutors on special counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Trump and Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign.
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"What I love about this breaking news is that it allows people to connect the dots," Weissmann said. "Retaliatory actions that's alleged with respect to what the administration has done with respect to Harvard preliminarily enjoined" due to the First Amendment. "The same day, you have a federal judge in D.C. — a very well-respected judge permanently enjoining again, and what is the main ground? First Amendment violation."
Weissmann predicted, "You're going to see this over and over again."
He argued, "It's really important for people to see this not as isolated, but this is remarkable. The United States government repeatedly being found to have violated the First Amendment in really significant ways in attacking ... a series of major law firms and Harvard University."
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Judge smacks down Trump in retribution case
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, a Republican appointee, permanently blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting the law firm Jenner & Block, finding the retribution unconstitutional.
The order, issued Friday afternoon, alleged that Trump was trying “to chill legal representation the administration doesn’t like, thereby insulating the Executive Branch from the judicial check fundamental to the separation of powers."
Trump targeted the law firm, citing lawyer Andrew Weissmann, a top prosecutor who worked on special counsel Robert Mueller's team that investigated Trump and his connections to Russia in the 2016 election. Weissmann hadn't worked for the firm since 2011 and has been teaching at New York University Law School.
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The executive order attempted to kill any government contracts with the firm and block any of the firm's lawyers from accessing federal buildings like courthouses.
Jenner & Block isn't the only firm Trump targeted. He's gone after several, and nine of them struck a deal with him to give nearly $1 billion in free legal services to allied Trump causes.
This is the second time a court has struck down Trump's target of a law firm. The others involved include Perkins Coie, WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey, all of which filed suits in federal court. Judges in all four cases have issued temporary blocks to enforce the executive orders.
‘Who’s going to milk the cows?’ Dairy farmers hit by Trump’s deportations
Dairy farmers who voted for President Donald Trump are worried there will be no one around to milk the cows now that the administration is cracking down on "otherwise law-abiding immigrants in the country illegally," The Boston Globe reported.
Farmers in Vermont told the Globe they voted for Trump because they liked his tough talk on quelling immigration and closing the border. Things are different now that ICE is coming for their workers.
“All the dairy farmers who voted for Trump were under the impression they weren’t going to come on farms and take our guys,” one farmer said. “It’s happening more than we’d like. It’s scaring the farming community and we’re like, ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen.’”
According to the report, "Farm owners and workers alike in this agricultural region near the Canadian border have been on edge in the month since U.S. Border Patrol officers detained eight Mexican men on Vermont’s largest dairy operation, Pleasant Valley Farms."
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The report said that four of the men taken into custody have since been deported.
"Federal immigration authorities say they are not targeting Vermont’s $3.6 billion dairy industry, which is responsible for 63 percent of the milk produced in New England," the report said. "But the recent arrests are prompting some in the sector to wonder how it would survive without its undocumented labor force."
The report quoted Vermont's Secretary of Agriculture as saying, "I think our farmers are concerned about the well-being of their workers. That’s foremost. They’re also concerned if (the workforce) was to go away, who’s going to do the work? Who’s going to milk the cows?”
Read The Boston Globe article here.
