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“I am thoroughly unamused right now,” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said to Justice Department lawyers on Oct. 12. “I do not know how I could have made it any plainer.”
She was referring to the Trump administration’s seeming efforts to bulldoze — both metaphorically and literally — its way toward remaking a public golf course in Washington, D.C. The story may seem relatively inconsequential — a single patch of land. But it shows just how much contempt President Donald Trump and those in his employ have for the idea that rules or laws ought to apply to them.
As any lawyer will testify, judges really don’t like it when lawyers lie to them, attempt to deceive them or defy their orders. Yet that is what lawyers working for the Trump administration have done in case after case, including this one. And Judge Reyes was furious. |
