Subpoena Piñata

The Trump Justice Department’s subpoena armada isn’t going well. Judges aren’t just rejecting the subpoenas, they’re using the Department’s shoddy lawyering and lawlessness to force withdrawals. Government subpoenas are not getting quashed, they’re getting squashed. Here’s the latest example from the NYT (Gift Article): U.S. Withdraws Subpoenas Issued to New York Times Journalists. “Either we can quash the subpoenas, or you could withdraw the subpoenas,’ the judge told Sean Buckley, a top official in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, who was speaking on behalf of the government. Judge Subramanian then grilled the prosecutors for the vast majority of the hourlong hearing, his demeanor at times resembling a teacher scolding his pupils. He asked few questions of The Times’s lawyers; at one point, he even apologized to one of them and promised time to respond to some of the government’s statements.” That wasn’t the administration’s only judicial pullback this week. There was also one that resulted in a headline that could only possibly exist in 2026 (or maybe 1936). Trump Administration Drops Subpoena Demanding List of Jews From Penn. Part of this story is good; judges and courts are standing up to frivolous, dangerous, or just plain insane subpoenas. But the existence of these subpoenas in the first place is a stark and dark reminder of how completely Trump has turned the Justice Department into a lawless retribution machine. Bringing charges against James Comey for taking photos of some seashells on the beach is (probably) too crazy to result in a conviction. But the fact that the case wasn’t considered too crazy to be surfaced in the first place is further evidence of how many officials have fully lost the courage of their convictions. If you think the jury is still out on that last point, consider how close the Senate is to confirming Trump’s personal lawyer as Attorney General.