The headline is missing the point and downplaying what’s going on here, this lawyer wasn’t expressing frustration, he didn’t raise his voice or make insulting remarks or anything like that. He was asked by the judge [paraphrased] “Why is your client breaking the law?” and replied [paraphrased] “I asked them that too. I guess they didn’t mean to do it?” but the Trump administration wanted him to either straight up lie and say they hadn’t broken the law or refuse to answer the judge’s questions and pretend the court didn’t have authority to ask them.
Not only is our executive branch breaking the law and ignoring court orders to follow the law, they’re throwing out any attorneys who won’t also break the law and ignore judges too.
I am not a lawyer, but I think that presenting the defendants’ case as written in their memorandum would not be lying, although I can see how doing so would make an honest man uncomfortable. Reuveni supported the morally right side when, in effect, he argued for the plaintiffs, but in doing so he failed to fulfill a lawyer’s obligation to zealously defend his client. If he wanted to do both, he should have declined to take the case in the first place (although presumably he would have been demoted or fired for that too).
With that said, a man can do the right thing now even when he could have done so earlier and didn’t (and doing so in court was certainly more dramatic than refusing to take the case would have been). I wouldn’t mind donating money to him the way that people of a different sort donated money to Daniel Penny.
I’m not sure how to reconcile my view with the principle that even the worst criminal defendants have the right to competent legal representation. I suppose I make an exception here because the federal government is never in danger of being railroaded.
Just more evidence that the “weaponized DOJ” was projection.
It always is.
You’ll be hard pressed to find lawyers who are both competent and willing to directly lie to a judge.
Why would this administration need competent lawyers, they’re playing the game with cheat codes and can’t lose
No dissent will be tolerated.
So much for free speech.
You can have all of the free speech you want, as long as it’s the right speech.
