Judge rips DOJ for attempting to remove her from case challenging Trump’s executive order on law firm

A federal judge sharply rejected a Trump administration request that she recuse herself from a case challenging an executive order targeting Democratic-tied law firm Perkins Coie, accusing the Justice Department of attacking the messenger because it could not attack the message.

A federal judge sharply rejected a Trump administration request that she recuse herself from a case challenging an executive order targeting Democratic-tied law firm Perkins Coie, accusing the Justice Department of attacking the messenger because it could not attack the message. “When the U.S. Department of Justice engages in this rhetorical strategy of ad hominem attack, the stakes become much larger than only the reputation of the targeted federal judge,” District Judge Beryl Howell wrote on Wednesday. “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 added. In its disqualification request, the Justice Department had made a variety of accusations about Howell’s conduct in other cases, as well as comments she made at a recent hearing in the law firm case, that the administration claimed amounted to a bias against President Donald Trump. Howell’s defense of the role of the judiciary comes as Trump and his allies have gone beyond just criticizing rulings against his policies by going after the judges themselves. They have called for the impeachment of multiple judges, including Howell’s colleague at the DC federal courthouse, Chief Judge James Boasberg, who is overseeing a high-stakes deportation case. Trump in a social media post earlier this month called Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic, a troublemaker and agitator.” The rhetoric prompted Chief Justice John Roberts to issue an extraordinary rebuke of the impeachment calls. Both Howell and Boasberg were appointed by President Barack Obama.