Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.
Wasn’t it a delight to see Elon Musk face-plant in his attempt to buy a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat? It has to irk Musk that there’s an election he couldn’t buy, even after being allowed to try to bribe Wisconsin voters with cold hard cash.
Musk’s humiliation shouldn’t stop there, though. Just because Musk’s preferred candidate didn’t prevail shouldn’t insulate him from criminal prosecution in the state.
Before the election, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul brought a lawsuit against Musk, asking the court for an emergency injunction. After the Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s denial of that injunction, Musk was allowed to continue his blatant vote buying.
The important thing here is that Kaul’s lawsuit was civil, not criminal. The goal was to stop Musk from handing out money so he couldn’t continue to try to influence the election. Although that request for emergency relief was unsuccessful, that isn’t the same thing as a ruling that Musk broke no laws.
Wisconsin election law classifies giving someone anything of value to induce them to vote or not to vote as election bribery. A violation is a Class 1 felony. There’s no reason not to pursue criminal charges. Musk is going to keep doing this until he’s stopped. He did it in Pennsylvania with no consequences, although he now faces a lawsuit over his failure to pay a canvasser $20,000 for all the petition signatures—at $100 a pop—he obtained.
Musk bought the presidential election. Federal courts are either cowed by Donald Trump or in thrall to him. But that’s not the case with state courts. And since Musk failed to tip the Wisconsin Supreme Court back to conservative control, it isn’t a situation where he might be convicted at a lower court but the state’s highest court would come through and do him a solid. Anyone who wasn’t Musk couldn’t get away with this, and he shouldn’t either.
Habeas games: Heads the administration wins, tails immigrants lose
The Trump administration has admitted it mistakenly deported someone to Venezuela but now claims it has no power to get him back because he’s outside the jurisdiction of the United States. It’s all thanks to this One Weird Habeas Trick.
The government is arguing the only way Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia could obtain relief from being illegally deported is to file a writ of habeas corpus. That’s the traditional way for immigrants to fight being unlawfully detained by the government—a much nicer way of saying “illegally imprisoned.” At the same time, the government is arguing that no United States court could now hear Garcia’s habeas claim, even if he had filed one, because Garcia is no longer in United States custody.
If it looks like a catch-22, and walks like a catch-22, it’s a catch-22. Let’s say an unlawfully detained immigrant challenges their detention by filing a habeas claim while still stateside. Then, let’s say the government does exactly what it did when it ignored U.S. Judge James Boasberg’s order in a different immigration case and sends that immigrant to El Salvador illegally anyway while the case is pending.
Then, according to the government, even if they acknowledge that person shouldn’t have been deported and even if they acknowledge that person had a habeas claim pending, it doesn’t matter. The right to pursue that habeas claim vanishes because the immigrant isn’t here any longer.
There’s no way to read this bit of cynical subterfuge as anything but an assertion by the government that it can disappear whoever it wants, and there is no real recourse once it does so. Trump has made clear he thinks he can act like a king, and what’s more king-like than being able to banish someone?
Late Friday, a lower court declined to entertain the administration’s novel legal theory that disappearing Garcia in error, without due process, should just be treated as an unfortunate event that sadly cannot be fixed.
Instead, U.S. Judge Paula Xinis ordered the government to return Garcia no later than April 7, at 11:59 PM. The big question now, of course, is whether the Trump administration will defy the court’s order anyway.
A federal judge is cool with DOGE straight-up stealing a building
Apparently, demolishing the U.S. Institute for Peace’s work wasn’t enough, so the Department of Government Efficency took their building too. And thanks to how they did it, a federal judge won’t stop it.
Earlier this week, Judge Beryl Howell declined to block the government from just taking the USIP building and sliding possession of it over to the Government Services Administration. Yes, even though USIP is not an agency, but is instead a private, nonprofit corporation created and funded directly by Congress. And yes, this is even though USIP’s building is worth $500 million.
The judge’s decision was partly based on the fact that the government had already transferred the building and everything in it last weekend, before the court hearing. So, Howell concluded, nothing was left to transfer, so any relief requested by the USIP plaintiffs was moot.
So the government has gotten away with what feels a lot like robbery by force. Really, really terrific system we’ve got here.
Big Law watch: Who bent the knee this week?
It’s getting hard to keep track of which law firms have agreed to pay off the president in the hopes he will leave them alone.
Last week, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom agreed to give the administration $100 million in pro bono work so that he wouldn’t target the firm with an executive order.
Apparently, Skadden has now set the going rate. This week, the law firm Milbank gave Trump another $100 million in free legal services and the now-customary promises to axe diversity efforts. The firm was likely in Trump’s crosshairs for hiring Neal Katyal, a big Trump critic and an acting solicitor general under President Barack Obama.
Willkie, Farr & Gallagher also raced to give the administration money. Worried they’d be targeted over hiring Doug Emhoff, the husband of former Vice President Kamala Harris, Willkie also cut basically the same deal as Skadden and Milbank. It’s all complying in advance and it’s all terrible and it’s not going to stop.