Relatives of President Trump ask a judge to give control to the White House on a large part of the system of federal courts.
In a little encouraged trial last week, America First Legal Foundation continued chief judge John Roberts and the head of the administrative office of the American courts
The case ostensibly proceeds as a FoIia trial, the group aligned by Trump seeking access to the judicial files. But, in doing so, he asked the courts to give in massive power to the White House: organizations that make judicial policy and manage the daily operations of the judiciary should be considered as independent agencies of the executive power, supports the trial, giving the president, under the theories of the conservative legal movement, the power to appoint and reject people to key roles.
Several legal researchers and TPM lawyers spoke with reacting to the costume with a mixture of disdain, disdain and laughter. Although the basic legal request is not valid, they said, the prosecution seems to be part of the struggle that the administration has launched and continued to degenerate against the courts in recent months: to ignore an order of the Supreme Court to facilitate the return of an wrongly enemies law, an aggressive criminal assertion against a state judge.
The executive power has tried to encroach on the power of the judiciary in other respects, which aroused a degree of unusual consternation and alarm for the administrative office normally put in the American courts. As the TPM has documented, DOGE has already caused trouble in court and sent mass emails to judges and other judicial employees requiring a list of their recent achievements. According to a recent report in the New York Times, federal judges expressed themselves that Trump could lead the service of American marshals – an executive branch agency responsible for protecting judges and taking judicial orders – to withdraw protection.
They are all facets of an increasing campaign to erode the independence of the judiciary, said experts at TPM. The trial demonstrates another component: relatives of the president also ask the courts to rule that they should be managed by the White House.
“It is like using an invalid legal pretension to taunt the judiciary,” said Anne Joseph O’Connell, professor at the Stanford University Law School, to TPM.
“Insofar as this trial has a value other than clicks, perhaps the underlying message is, we will let our imagination be unleashed,” TPM Peter, a constitutional scholarship holder in Nyu Law School, told TPM. “The Trump administration and the Maga community will let our imagination are unleashed in our attempts to find ways to make the life of the judicial miserable, insofar as you are pushing against Trump.”
A Foia of America first
The America First Legal Foundation filed the complaint on April 22.
He came after the group submitted a request in July 2024 to the United States judicial conference and the administrative office of the American courts asking “all the files referring or concerning (1) Clarence Thomas or (2) Samuel Alito” and all communications with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and the two Democrats led the investigators in which GA), the beginning of 2023. Donor money on the court, the long -term plan of the conservative legal movement to capture the high court and the alleged ethical violations of judges Thomas and Alito. The judicial conference, which is made up of superior federal judges and operates via a range of committees, establishes a policy for the judiciary.
Ethan V. Torrey, legal advisor to the Supreme Court, rejected the request in a letter in September 2024, according to an exhibition filed with the complaint.
Daniel Z. Epstein filed the request of the Foia and is listed as the main lawyer on the trial. Epstein is currently representing President Trump in his personal title in the trial against CBS during an interview of 60 minutes in October with Kamala Harris.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s long -standing assistant, founded America First Legal Foundation in April 2021, describing him as the “long -awaited response to aclu”. In the coming years, the group has succeeded in slowing down or blocking several Biden administration policies, often by depositing in the Amarillo courthouse in the North District of Texas, which is chaired by a judge who is notably receptive to conservative arguments. His priorities often correspond to those of Trump’s second term; He attacked diversity programs, protections for LGBT students, immigration and alleged “sensitivity” in American companies. Miller himself was a public engine in the most aggressive and most distant elements of the effort of the second Trump Administration of Bulldozer through civil freedoms in the name of increasing the deportation tempo.
America First Legal did not return the request for comments from TPM.
When the prosecution was filed in April, it received a small series of coverage focused on the foia element of the complaint.
Legal experts have suggested to TPM that the Foia piece is in a way a Trojan horse. The refusal of the request of the judicial conference and the administrative office of the request of the Foia plans to continue, and thus to ask a federal judge to declare that the two judicial organizations “are subject to the foia as independent agencies within the executive power”.
In terms of importance, a judge concluding that the main parts of the judiciary are independent agencies of the executive branch would eclude all the legal of Foia Material America could receive. The trial itself seems to recognize this. At one point, in the language channeling that of a protective racket, America first observed that “the federal courts are based on the executive power of the management and safety of the facilities. Federal judges, as tribunal officers, need resources to fulfill their constitutional obligations. ”
New extreme for an old theory
There is a level of irony here.
For years, conservative legal researchers have pushed the idea that power in the executive is unitary, granting the president the ability to exercise direct control over all federal officials who conclude federal law. He opens the door to a level of presidential power which was not seen before this administration and that the Supreme Court can ratify this term.
This trial asks the judiciary to extend this logic to its own operations, potentially dealing with a fatal blow to judicial independence.
This argument reaches a provocative peak with regard to the United States Judicial Conference. There, the chief judge of the Supreme Court can appoint members to the committees. The trial indicates that this means that Roberts can sometimes fall under the power of the president – for foia ends, of course.
“Consequently, if the chief judge actually has the power to appoint officers, he must act as agency chief, subjecting the judicial conference to the foia,” said the trial.
Melissa Murray, professor at Nyu Law, stressed that the prosecution raises a number of bizarre scenarios. If he goes to the Supreme Court, “should the chief judge reject himself?” She asked.
“It seems to prick the bear,” she added.
To date, the lawyers of Roberts and the director of the American courts have not appeared on the file. In other cases deposited against parties of the judiciary, the civil division of the Ministry of Justice appointed lawyers.
The Doj did not return a comment request. The administrative office of American courts refused to comment. The Supreme Court did not return to requests for comments either.
This does not necessarily mean that federal courts will soon start serving Trump’s steaks, or that Kid Rock will be called upon to provide filling sound during side bars.
Blake Emerson, professor at the UCLA law, described the demands of the pursuit of “bizarre” and said that if she succeeded in a way, she would grant control of the White House on “the means by which the judicial branch operates functionally”.
O’Connell, Stanford’s law professor, described it to TPM as an attempt to tell a story about “how much power they think that the executive should have” than a serious legal affirmation.
“There is no chance that it prevails,” she said.
Read the trial here:
