Tag: reichlin-melnick

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‘Making up new rules’: Legal experts mock Trump DOJ over ‘fatally flawed’ move

On Monday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) submitted a filing in the cases of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James defending the appointment of interim U. S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan. But multiple attorneys, professors and journalists are blasting the DOJ in what they view as a last-ditch attempt to keep Halligan in her role. Reuters reporter Brad Heath posted to Bluesky on Monday that Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed to have “retroactively appointed former Trump attorney Lindsey Halligan as a ‘special attorney’ for DOJ and has ‘ratified’ all of her actions to date, including her presentations to the grand juries that indicted Trump’s foes.” Legal journalist Chris Geidner posted the DOJ filing and the appointment while quipping that Bondi “dressed up as a lawyer on Halloween. Evidently, time travel is now one of the Trump administration’s powers,” Columbia University history professor Karl Jacoby wrote. In a post to his X account, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick tweeted that while he is not a lawyer and doesn’t know the intricacies of the judicial system, he still had “no clue how Pam Bondi can legally go back in time and appoint Halligan to a position as of six weeks ago.”Harper’s Magazine contributing editor Scott Horton wrote: “Realizing that the appointment of Lindsey Halligan is fatally flawed, Pam Bondi engages in some quick steps to try to salvage things. Will it work? It shouldn’t, actually.”Questions over the legality of Halligan’s appointment have continued to linger since she was installed to replace former interim U. S. Attorney Erik Siebert who was forced out of the role after declining to bring charges against Comey and James. Conservative attorney George Conway argued last month that Halligan’s appointment was not lawful according to the federal statute that governs U. S. attorney vacancies, and that her indictments of Comey and James should be thrown out.”We really need to talk about ‘ratification,'” wrote lawyer Cathy Gellis on Bluesky. This administration keeps thinking it can take garbage decisions made with no authority and somehow retroactively clean them up . this is not how anything can possibly work. At some point the courts really need to start holding the DOJ in contempt. With real consequences,” neuroscientist Kevin Wright wrote.”As long we’re making up new rules and powers for ourselves, I hereby retroactively unappoint Bondi and deratify everything she’s done in office,” comics writer Greg Pak posted. Click here to read the DOJ’s filing in full.

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‘Utter lie!’ Elon Musk’s wild immigration claim flattened by legal expert

A prominent immigration expert tore into tech billionaire Elon Musk on Friday for pushing a blatant falsehood that U. S. social assistance benefits are designed to attract illegal immigrants into the country. Musk, who previously helped President Donald Trump run the Department of Government Efficiency task force to fire huge swathes of the federal workforce, made the comments to celebrity podcaster Joe Rogan in a recent interview, during which he made an eyebrow-raising claim about the real issue at the heart of the federal government shutdown.”The reason you have the standoff is because if the hundreds of billions of dollars to create a financial incentive to have this giant magnet to attract illegals from every part of Earth to these states if that is turned off, the illegals will leave,” said Musk. “Because they’re no longer being paid to come to the United States and stay here.”None of that is true, senior American Immigration Council fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick posted to Musk’s X platform.”This is just an utter lie,” said Reichlin-Melnick. “Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program]. I have talked to many, many migrants over the years. Not a single one zero, zip, nada has said they came to get benefits. The entire idea is absurd. People are not DYING IN THE DESERT for SNAP.”Absent an end to the shutdown, SNAP is expected to hit a funding cliff over the weekend, terminating food assistance for millions of low-income families across the country. The Trump administration has so far refused to commit to releasing emergency funds to continue the program, although at the end of the week, two federal judges commanded him to do so.

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