Judge Boots DOJ Prosecutor From Courtroom, Demands To Know Who’s Actually Calling The Shots

from the benched-by-the-bench dept

This judge ain’t fucking around. Earlier this month, we covered New Jersey federal judge Zahid Qurashi’s response to the actions of Trump’s DOJ, which begins with lots of illegal appointments of prosecutors and runs right through these prosecutors’ inability to defend the administration’s actions.

To wit:

The Government’s handling of Petitioner’s detention is emblematic of its approach to immigration enforcement in this state. On the merits, its detentions are illegal. The Government knows this. Its reliance on Section 1225 has been roundly rejected.

And:

Sadly, the well-deserved credibility once attached to that distinguished Office is now a presumption that “has been sadly eroded.” The Government’s continued actions after being called to task can now only be deemed intentional.

Courts have been flooded with immigration cases and vindictive prosecutions targeting Trump’s enemies. They’re fighting back, but even a massive consensus seems incapable of slowing Trump’s roll.

This case — brought to our attention by Owen Barcala — involves the sort of serious crimes the administration has put on the back burner so it can flood the immigration enforcement zone. While the administration focuses on ejecting all non-white foreigners from this country while claiming they’re simply seeking out the “worst of worst,” the (alleged) worst of the worst are pretty much being ignored.

Thanks to the massive amount of turnover at the DOJ, there are not a whole lot of qualified prosecutors left to do the government’s (increasingly) dirty work. In New Jersey, (illegal) appointee Alina Habba (a former Trump PAC spokesperson/advisor) has already voluntarily stepped down, proving she’s more capable of reading the writing on the wall than her former employer.

In her place, Mark Coyne (in a made-up position meant to shield him from being booted for being illegally appointed) has stepped up to wrap up a child pornography prosecution. It’s not going well for Coyne, as the New York Times reports:

A federal judge threw a top prosecutor from the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office out of his courtroom during a sentencing hearing this week and demanded that the office’s leadership testify about who had authority over their actions, according to court documents.

The rapid sequence of events on Monday in the courtroom of Judge Zahid N. Quraishi was the latest indication of growing tensions between the Justice Department and the federal judiciary in New Jersey. It came during the scheduled sentencing of a man who last year agreed to plead guilty to possession of child pornography.

The hearing did not go as prosecutors had planned. Judge Quraishi grew frustrated with the office’s head of appeals, Mark Coyne, who had not formally disclosed that he would appear, and fiercely interrogated a more junior prosecutor about whether the former interim U.S. attorney, Alina Habba, still had some role in operating the office.

Judge Qurashi referenced an order issued by federal judge Matthew Brann earlier this month, which declared the three-prosecutor hydra cobbled together by Pam Bondi to be a trio of unlawfully elevated prosecutors. That decision made the court’s displeasure explicit, using emphasis in the ruling to point out that the Trump administration cared more about who was running the New Jersey prosecutors’ office, rather than whether it was legally capable of running at all.

There are plenty of wonderfully quotable moments in the transcript of the hearing that ended with the government’s prosecutor being removed from the proceedings by the court.

It starts like this:

THE COURT: Mr. Coyne, did you file a notice of appearance in this case?
MR. COYNE: I did not.
THE COURT: Are you here for moral support? Because you’re not going to speak.
MR. COYNE: I would ask —
THE COURT: No.
MR. COYNE: — that the Court allow me to speak.
THE COURT: Nope. That’s not the representation made by the Government.

And then the court continues to riddle his body with bullets:

THE COURT: I’m not going to hear from you, Mr. Coyne. If you want to sit there for moral support or hand Mr. Rosenblum Post-its or whisper in his ear, I’ll let you do that as supervisor.

You’d think a corpse would keep its mouth shut. But Mr. Coyne apparently didn’t realize he was already dead.

The judge asked whether or not the three people Judge Brann had ruled were appointed unlawfully were still running the NJ US Attorney’s office. Mr. Rosenblum claimed he only knew what he’d been told by Mark Coyne, which apparently was nothing more than to shut up and claim ignorance. Unsatisfied with these non-answers and dodgy quasi-denials, Judge Quraishi pressed Rosenblum hard enough that Coyne — who had been directly ordered to sit this one out — felt compelled to respond:

THE COURT: What role does Alina Habba have currently in operating your office?
MR. ROSENBLUM: None that I’m aware of.
THE COURT: None that you’re aware of.
MR. ROSENBLUM: None.
THE COURT: All right. So she could be operating the office.
MR. COYNE: She is not.
MR. ROSENBLUM: She’s not.
MR. COYNE: She is not.
THE COURT: Sit down, Mr. Coyne. If you speak again, I’m going to have you removed. I already told you not to speak.
MR. COYNE: Your Honor —
THE COURT: You didn’t file a notice of appearance. You don’t get to blindside the Court and do whatever it is you guys want to do. So if you continue to speak, you can leave.
MR. COYNE: Your Honor —
THE COURT: Sit down.
MR. COYNE: — if —
THE COURT: Sit down.
MR. COYNE: If a notice of appeal–
THE COURT: Sit down.
MR. COYNE: -is entered–
THE COURT: I’m directing the court security officers to remove Mr. Coyne.

And with that, Mr. Coyne exits the court. Voluntarily, according to the transcript, but only voluntarily in the sense that court officers didn’t have to physically restrain him and remove him from the court.

But it’s not like the DOJ prosecutor left in the court room gets to skate by just by being less of an ass that Mark Coyne. Judge Quraishi refers to the order from Judge Brann from earlier in the month — one that specifically warned that if the DOJ kept the same “triumvirate” of illegally appointed US attorneys in that office, that it did so at its own peril.

The closing of the transcript says what so many federal judges think, but have also said in hearings and on the record in rulings and orders: the Trump DOJ has managed to completely destroy the reputation of the Department of Justice, despite having controlled it fully for barely over a year.

THE COURT: Here is your risk. This is your risk.

So your authority to operate is while [Judge Brann] has stayed the opinion, when he says literally on the last page, you don’t even have to go through all of this. All you have to do is turn to the back and it says “If the government chooses to leave the triumvirate in place, it does so at its own risk.”

What you’ve told me today, what your representation is, which I don’t believe by the way. I won’t believe it until you testify. That is what happened to the credibility of your office.Generations of U.S. Attorneys had built the goodwill of that office for your generation to destroy within a year.

This damnation isn’t unique. The DOJ is painting itself into a corner all over the nation. Hundreds of judges are no longer willing to take the government at its word. And that gives the government a handful of choices, none of which could be considered “wins.” The DOJ is going to have to dump prosecutions. Or it’s going to have to send its top prosecutors to testify under oath in court (which is way different than simply submitting sworn declarations). Or it’s going to have to go back to respecting the law, starting with the ousting of every illegally appointed US attorney.

The final option, however, isn’t generally considered viable, but it’s the one the administration is most likely to put in motion: ignoring every entity that opposes it while simultaneously telling Americans whose rights it’s trampling that this is the only way to make America great again.

Filed Under: alina habba, doj, mark coyne, new jersey, pam bondi, trump administration, zahid quraishi