Trump Keeps Illegally Appointing Unqualified US Attorneys Even as Courts Keep Swatting Them

The central goal of Donald Trump’s second term in office is to bypass the legislative branch entirely, figuring out how to govern without Congress. One way he is doing this is a concerted attempt to bypass the Senate confirmation process for his appointees, particularly those in the Department of Justice, where he wants pliant lackeys to persecute his opponents.

Trump had one of his DOJ appointments in New York ruled unlawful, but when a panel of judges appointed a replacement, Trump fired him. Now another judge has ruled that after Trump's pick for the U.S. Attorney's office in New Jersey was disqualified as an unlawful appointment, Trump illegally installed her successors as well.

The Washington Post reports:

A federal judge upended the leadership of New Jersey’s U.S. attorney’s office again Monday, ruling for the second time in less than a year that the Trump administration had illegally sought to bypass Congress and install its own picks to head the prominent prosecutorial outpost.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann said that a trio of Justice Department lawyers who have been leading the office since late last year had been unlawfully serving in their positions. Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed them after Brann disqualified Alina Habba, President Donald Trump’s previous choice for U.S. attorney in the state, in August amid similar questions over the legality of her appointment. …

Typically, U.S. attorneys, who have broad authority to oversee all federal criminal and civil cases in their districts, are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate. But Trump, facing pushback over some nominees, has adopted several legally questionable tactics to keep his unconfirmed picks serving in their roles. …

Across the country, courts have disqualified a half-dozen of Trump’s picks to lead U.S. attorney’s offices on an interim or acting basis, finding that each had served well beyond the statutorily defined limits of their temporary appointments or were never legally appointed in the first place.

The power to initiate federal prosecutions is easily abused, since the resources of the federal government are so vast that even if a defendant is acquitted, he is already punished by the process itself. This is why the president’s appointments are supposed to be constrained by federal law—an inconvenience only to a president who craves the latitude to abuse his power.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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