The worst attorney general in America strikes again
Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.
Welcome to another week of the justice system being, well, not great! At least this week, we can mix things up a bit.
Of course, there’s no way a week could go by without more news about interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan. But we’ve also got a couple trips to state courts this time around, with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton continuing to be racist and awful, and Washington state dropping some really dystopian surveillance-state stuff on us all.
Your weekly Lindsey Halligan update: Not great for Lindsey
Lindsey Halligan—everyone’s favorite insurance lawyer turned defense attorney for President Donald Trump turned Smithsonian Institution anti-woke scold turned interim United States attorney turned surprise texting pal—is extremely busy fending off so, so many motions. That’s the fallout when you agree to be the vessel for Trump’s retribution efforts. But what if Halligan had even more to worry about?
Enter the request from watchdog group Campaign for Accountability that both the Florida and Virginia state bars investigate Halligan for, well, everything.
Fam, is it good when the bar complaint about your behavior runs 17 pages? And has, like, multiple subheadings? We’ve got the so-called investigations of both former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. We’ve got the Comey and James grand jury proceedings and indictments. Do we have the unsolicited texts to Lawfare’s Anna Bower? Hell yeah we do.
The complaint alleges that Halligan likely violated an ethics rule about making false statements of fact or law to a tribunal, given that it looks like she just might have had a wee bit of trouble telling the truth to the grand juries in both her big cases. That weird unsolicited text exchange with Bower? Well, that one might violate the rule against lawyers making extrajudicial statements that could interfere with the fairness of a jury trial.
There’s an ethics rule specific to prosecutors that bars them from filing a case if they know it lacks probable cause. To be fair, it might not be that Halligan willingly violated that rule. After all, it could be that she has no idea what probable cause actually requires.
That brings us to the allegation that’s got to sting the most here: that Halligan may have violated the rule requiring a lawyer to provide competent representation and to have “the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.”
Man, it has to feel rough when a bar complaint about you runs down your paper-thin resume as evidence that you are so out of your depth that perhaps a state bar should sanction you.
Ken Paxton continues to be the worst
When Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is not abusing the power of his office by suing the makers of Tylenol, he is abusing the power of his office by trying to shut down a nonprofit that works to increase civic participation and voting by Latinos.
And now the group is fighting back. Jolt Initiative sued Paxton to try to stop him from revoking their nonprofit charter.
Paxton’s efforts are a transparent effort to suppress the Latino vote by deliberately conflating voter registration drives with illegally registering noncitizens to vote. Now, Paxton’s filing against Jolt didn’t actually allege that they registered noncitizens to vote. No, it’s that holding voter registration drives near DMV locations “illuminates its unlawful motive.”
Huh? Well, since citizens can register to vote at the DMV, having voter drives near the DMV, of course, means you are trying to register noncitizens. No, really, that’s Paxton’s argument.
Paxton’s stretching here because let’s face it, the only way he and his pals will continue to hold power in Texas is by suppressing the vote.
Only the best people
In 2020, during his first term, Trump tapped Joshua Kindred for a lifetime seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska. Kindred’s lifetime seat turned out to be pretty short, though, as he quit after an investigation alleged that he had an “inappropriately sexualized relationship” with a law clerk, created a hostile work environment for clerks that featured abusive sexual conduct and sexual harassment, sent vulgar texts about his sex life, and then lied about everything to the chief judge.
Last year, the U.S. Judicial Conference even referred Kindred to Congress for potential impeachment—even though he resigned—saying his behavior was so reprehensible that Congress should review it.
And now, not only does Kindred not have his judge job, but also he is also no longer allowed to practice law in Alaska. The state Supreme Court disbarred him, dropping a 67-page decision detailing his malfeasance. Really a top-notch judicial pick you got there, Trump.
The 8th Circuit gets somehow even suckier
In its quest to become a rubber stamp for conservatives, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit overturned a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that had found that Home Depot unlawfully terminated someone for having “BLM”—as in “Black Lives Matter”—on their work apron. Home Depot allowed people to personalize their aprons but allegedly told the employee, a person of color, they had to remove it since the company’s policy said that work aprons were not an appropriate place for religious beliefs, causes, or political messages. Home Depot also helpfully explained that if they had to let someone have “BLM” on a work apron, they would also have to allow swastikas.
Okaaaaaay.
In overturning the NLRB’s ruling, the 8th Circuit panel managed to completely eclipse the racism of Home Depot with some breathtaking racism of their own. You see, there were special circumstances here, according to the panel. This Home Depot store is in New Brighton, Minnesota, and the court determined that the “conditions” facing the store “gave rise to legitimate safety concerns.”
What concerns? Well, you see, George Floyd’s murder. No, really:
The activity in dispute was not a display at a random location in the United States; it was not at a normal moment in time; and it was not a generic message for equal rights or employee protection. [The employee’s] BLM message was broadcast only a few miles from the site of George Floyd’s murder.
“A few miles” is doing a lot of work here. New Brighton is a suburb of Minneapolis that abuts the opposite end of the city from where Floyd was murdered. It’s several miles away … by freeway.
This must have been during the unrest, then, right?
Nope. The judges decided that an employee wearing “BLM” on their uniform in February 2021—months after Floyd’s murder and the subsequent protests—was “a clear risk to customer and employee safety,” and that the slogan reasonably threatened the security of the workplace.
Just come out and say that you are going to let companies be racist. It would save us all a bunch of time.
Flock data is a public record, and that is not great!
A few months ago, you might have heard about Texas deputies reportedly using Flock Safety, an automated license-plate reader, to track down someone who had allegedly had a self-managed abortion as part of a “death investigation” and possible prosecution.
Sure, the deputies said they were just trying to find her to check on her welfare, and that’s why they reportedly conducted a nationwide search of over 83,000 Flock cameras and reviewed her text messages about the abortion.
So, what could be worse than cops tapping into a giant network of surveillance cameras whenever they feel like it? Glad you asked.
How about if, at least in Washington state, everything from those Flock cameras are public records and therefore can be requested by anyone? Why should law enforcement have all the fun of using a dystopian surveillance tool to track people? Better to just throw open the doors to every bad actor!
And speaking of bad actors. Eight Washington state law enforcement agencies had already shared access to their Flock networks directly with U.S. Border Patrol.
So, a private company built a vast network of surveillance cameras. Which police have access to. And maybe in some places, anyone does. And maybe in other places, Border Patrol does as well. This surveillance state sucks.