This
weekend
Chad
Mizelle,
the
(former?)
chief
of
staff
at
the
Justice
Department,
invited
anyone
with
a
bar
card
to
hit
him
up
on
Twitter
if
they
want
to
be
a
federal
prosecutor.
All
you
have
to
do
is
“support
President
Trump”
and
his
“anti-crime
agenda.”
The
least
weird
thing
about
this
is
that
Mizelle
(theoretically?)
left
the
DOJ
last
year
to
become
general
counsel
at
the
Department
of
Homeland
Security.
Kristi
Noem’s
crackpot
legal
memos
aren’t
gonna
write
themselves!
Serving
as
a
federal
prosecutor
was
once
a
prestigious
position,
open
only
to
high
achievers
with
strong
academic
and
professional
records.
Now
the
agency’s
reputation
is
in
shambles,
it’s
bleeding
experienced
lawyers,
and
they’re
so
desperate
for
bodies
they’re
begging
randos
to
slide
into
their
DMs.
And
it
shows!
Putting
the
nation’s
prosecutorial
apparatus
in
the
hands
of
a
bunch
of
meme-brained
hacks
has
produced
some
spectacularly
bad
lawyering
in
the
past
year.
In
one
episode,
the
DOJ
filed
a
judicial
misconduct
complaint
against
Chief
Judge
James
Boasberg
of
the
US
District
Court
in
DC
over
comments
he
made
in
March
at
a
closed-door
meeting
of
the
Judicial
Conference.
“Judge Boasberg
attempted
to
improperly
influence
Chief
Justice
Roberts
and
roughly
two
dozen
other
federal
judges
by
straying
from
the
traditional
topics
to
express
his
belief
that
the
Trump
Administration
would
‘disregard
rulings
of
federal
courts’
and
trigger
‘a
constitutional
crisis,’”
huffed
Mizelle,
who
hand-delivered
the
nastygram
to
Chief
Judge
Sri
Srinivasan
of
the
DC
Circuit.
The
DOJ
insisted
that
Judge
Boasberg
had
violated
his
ethical
obligation
of
impartiality
and
demanded
that
he
be
removed
from
all
cases
involving
the
Trump
administration.
Of
course,
the
administration
has
disregarded
hundreds
of
rulings
of
federal
courts
since
then
—
96
in
January
alone,
just
in
the
District
of
Minnesota.
But
the
only
evidence
offered
by
the
DOJ
of
Boasberg
intimidating
poor,
defenseless
Chief
Justice
Roberts
was
a
footnote
referring
to
“Attachment
A
at
16,”
which
appears
to
be
a
summary
of
the
comments
recorded
by
an
attendee.
The
complaint
slipped
to
reporters
in
July
contained
no
such
attachment,
and
for
good
reason.
As
Law
and
Chaos
was
first
to
report,
“Attachment
A”
was
never
there
at
all,
and
the
government
ignored
Judge
Srinivasan’s
request
to
hand
it
over.
In
July,
my
website
filed
a
FOIA
request
and
then
a
lawsuit
with
the
help
of
National
Security
Counselors’
Kel
McClanahan.
The
DOJ’s
Office
of
Information
Policy
(OIP)
first
insisted
that
it
needed
more
time
because
our
request
for
a
single
document
was
“complex.”
Then
they
simply
denied
it,
claiming
that
“Attachment
A”
is
a
judicial
record,
not
an
executive
one,
and
thus
not
subject
to
FOIA.
In
the
meantime,
the
actual
ethics
complaint
was
working
its
way
through
the
judicial
system,
alongside
a
similar
one
lodged
by
the
Center
to
Advance
Security
in
America,
a
rightwing
astroturf
group.
The
wingnut
welfare
dudebros
based
their
complaint
on
a
story
at
The
Federalist
by
the
OG
agent
of
agitprop,
Margot
Cleveland,
who
first
reported
Judge
Boasberg’s
supposed
perfidy
— but
at
least
they
didn’t
fake
an
attachment.
Judge
Srinivasan
promptly
picked
up
the
two
flaming
sacks
of
dogshit
that
had
been
dropped
on
his
doorstep
—
metaphorically,
of
course!
—
and
handed
them
off
to
Chief
Justice
Roberts.
That’s
how
they
wound
up
dumped
on
Chief
Judge
Jeffrey
Sutton
of
the
Sixth
Circuit,
who
dutifully
held
his
nose
and
dumped
cold
water
on
the
putrid
flames.
“One
does
not
lightly
launch
a
misconduct
investigation
based
on
vague
allegations
premised
on
an
anonymous
source
in
a
news
article,”
Judge
Sutton
scoffed
at
the
conservative
turf-surfers.
“Stripped
of
its
conclusory
accusations,
this
attack
comes
down
to
a
critique
of
the
judge’s
rulings
on
the
merits”
he
warned.
“But
complainants,
to
repeat,
may
not
use
the
judicial-misconduct
process
to
relitigate
the
results
of
hearings
and
investigations.”
Naturally
the
dudebros
appealed,
racing
to
the
Daily
Caller
to
collect
their
earned
media
winnings.
Judge
Sutton
also
dismissed
the
DOJ’s
complaint,
confirming
Law
and
Chaos’s
reporting:
The
Department
identified
one
source
of
evidence,
Attachment
A,
for
the
judge’s
statement
and
for
the
setting
in
which
it
occurred.
The
complaint,
however,
did
not
include
the
attachment.
The
D.C.
Circuit
contacted
the
Department
about
the
missing
attachment
and
explained
that,
if
it
failed
to
submit
the
attachment,
the
circuit
would
consider
the
complaint
as
submitted.
The
Department
did
not
supply
the
attachment.
He
added
that,
even
if
the
government’s
characterization
of
Boasberg’s
comments
was
accurate,
“a
judge’s
expression
of
anxiety
about
executive-branch
compliance
with
judicial
orders,
whether
rightly
feared
or
not,
is
not
so
far
afield
from
customary
topics
at
these
meetings—judicial
independence,
judicial
security,
and
inter-branch
relations—as
to
violate
the
Codes
of
Judicial
Conduct.”
And,
not
for
nothing,
but
judicial
councils
“do
not
have
authority
to
reassign
specific
cases
to
other
judges.”
If
the
DOJ
wants
Boasberg
out,
the
appropriate
remedy
is
to
file
a
motion
for
recusal,
not
to
tweet
out
a
press
release
disguised
as
a
misconduct
complaint.
(As
they
bloody
well
ought
to
know.)
Thus
endeth
the
DOJ’s
big
takedown
of
Judge
Boasberg.
But
that’s
not
the
end
of
the
matter,
since
we
at
Law
and
Chaos
are
still
trying
to
kick
loose
“Attachment
A.”
The
DOJ’s
motion
to
dismiss
warns
darkly
that
“If
the
Court
accepts
Plaintiff’s
novel
conclusion
that
Attachment
A
is
an
‘agency
record,’
then
FOIA
would
be
transformed
from
a
tool
to
shed
light
on
the
activities,
operations,
and
structure
of
federal
executive
branch
agencies
into
a
device
to
circumvent
the
independence
of
the
judiciary
and
its
ability
to
safeguard
its
confidential
information.”
Vanessa
Brinkmann,
senior
counsel
at
OIP,
attests
that
the
Administrative
Office
of
United
States
Courts
“conveyed
to
OIP,
in
no
uncertain
terms,
the
Federal
Judiciary’s
strenuous
objection
to
the
Department’s
release
of
‘Attachment
A.’”
Gosh,
you
wouldn’t
want
those
nasty
podcasters
pawing
through
your
emails,
would
you,
Judge
Abelson?
But
we’re
not
asking
the
judiciary
for
anything.
We’re
asking
the
Justice
Department
to
turn
over
a
document
Attorney
General
Bondi
herself
trumpeted
as
proof
of
judicial
misconduct.
And
her
office
is
working
overtime
to
hide
where
it
got
this
supposedly
smoking
gun.
Brinkmann
pinky
swears
that
“Searches
conducted
of
DOJ
leadership
office
officials’
Departmental
email
accounts
using
e-discovery
software
revealed
no
electronic
trail
indicating
transmission
of
‘Attachment
A’
into
the
Department,
nor
has
OIP’s
point
of
contact
within
OAG
been
able
to
identify
how
‘Attachment
A’
was
received
by
the
Department.”
Shocker!
The
Signalgate
administration
has
no
record
of
receiving
this
document
and
won’t
say
where
it
came
from.
It
just
spontaneously
appeared
on
DOJ’s
servers!
But
Chad
Mizelle
certainly
knows
how
it
fell
into
his
hands
…
or
his
DMs.
Someone
in
the
judicial
branch
leaked
this
to
the
Trump
administration,
which
weaponized
it
to
attack
a
sitting
federal
judge.
Understandably,
the
judiciary
would
like
to
mitigate
the
fallout
by
ensuring
that
those
confidential
minutes
never
see
the
light
of
day.
But
that’s
not
the
law.
Chad
Mizelle
and
Pam
Bondi
and
Margot
Cleveland
and
God
knows
who
else
got
to
see
those
records,
and
so
should
everyone
else.
Oh,
and
PS,
Mizelle’s
wife
is
a
sitting
federal
judge
in
the
Middle
District
of
Florida.
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more
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Law
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