A federal judge has declined a request by the Trump administration that she remove herself from overseeing a lawsuit challenging an executive action targeting Perkins Coie, accusing the Department of Justice (DOJ) of attacking her character in an effort to undermine the integrity of the judicial system.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote in a March 26 ruling that a Trump administration filing seeking her recusal was “rife with innuendo” and that none of the claims it put forward “come close to meeting the standard for disqualification.”
“Though this adage is commonplace, and the tactic overused, it is called to mind by defendants’ pending motion to disqualify this Court: ‘When you can’t attack the message, attack the messenger,’” Howell wrote.
It suspends any active security clearances held by individuals at the firm, pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.
Perkins Coie was hired by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee in 2016.
According to the presidential action issued by Trump, the law firm has engaged in “dishonest and dangerous activity” that has affected the United States “for decades.”
Roughly a week after Trump’s executive action was first issued, Howell temporarily blocked the administration from enforcing much of it, finding that the law firm was likely to win its lawsuit.
“This Court has not kept its disdain for President Trump secret,” Chad Mizelle, acting associate attorney general at the DOJ, wrote in a motion seeking her disqualification. “It has voiced its thoughts loudly—both inside and outside the courtroom.”
Speaking inside the court, Mizelle also pointed to former special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump, during which, he said, Howell found “reason to believe that the former President would ‘flee from prosecution.’”
The judge also “pierced attorney-client privilege, ordering President Trump’s attorney to testify before a D.C. grand jury” investigating his alleged retention of classified documents in the South Florida case, he said.
Mizelle noted that Howell also previously rejected Trump’s view that the indictments against individuals involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol were a “national injustice” and called his supporters “sore losers.”
In her 21-page ruling, Howell wrote that when the DOJ “engages in this rhetorical strategy of ad hominem attack, the stakes become much larger than only the reputation of the targeted federal judge.”
“This strategy is designed to impugn the integrity of the federal judicial system and blame any loss on the decision-maker rather than fallacies in the substantive legal arguments presented,” she wrote.
The judge said she welcomed the Trump administration’s opportunity “to set the record straight, because facts matter.”
“Every litigating party deserves a fair and impartial hearing to determine both what the material facts are and how the law best applies to those facts,” she wrote. “That fundamental promise, however, does not entitle any party—not even those with the power and prestige of the President of the United States or a federal agency—to demand adherence to their own version of the facts and preferred legal outcome.
“The clear absence of any legitimate basis for disqualification requires denial” of the DOJ’s request that she recuse herself from the case, the judge said.
Howell is set to decide in the coming weeks whether to extend her block on Trump’s order against Perkins Coie.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Perkins Coie for comment.
