Summary
Federal Judge Amir Ali sharply criticized the Trump administration during a Tuesday hearing for failing to comply with his 12-day-old restraining order to unfreeze USAID contract funding.
“I don’t know why I can’t get a straight answer from you,” the judge demanded, asking if funds had been unfrozen. The government lawyer responded: “I’m not in a position to answer that.”
Ali ordered USAID to pay all invoices for work performed before February 13 by midnight tomorrow and required the administration to identify officials who can testify under oath about compliance disputes.
That’s contempt and a president can’t pardon you for that. You’d be at risk for 179 days in county and huge fines that also cannot be pardoned and it goes to judicial tribunal for appeal.
You continue to think Trump cares about the rule of law.
He’ll demand the lawyer’s release. Judge will say no. He’ll sue. At most, we’ll get some appelate ruling that says he’s not going to dismiss the contempt charge, but he is going to let the laywer walk free while the case proceeds. It’ll go up to the Supreme Court where they’ll just rule that contempt charges are pardonable, then it’ll all go away. Have you not been paying attention for the past month? The guy does not care about the rule of law, the Supreme Court already ruled that he doesn’t have to, and Congress isn’t going to do a damn thing about it.
These people weren’t willing to hold Trump to account when he was a private citizen? WTF makes you think they’re going to do anything to him while he’s POTUS? This isn’t the only judge that has been trying to push back on Trump’s bullshit. But the only thing they’ve managed to do so far is to reissue their court orders while adding the legalese equivalent of “pretty please”. Show me where these judges are threatening actual consequences for these actions and somebody actually willing to enforce them. Because all I’ve seen is a bunch of judges making empty threats, Trump saying “Fuck you, and what are you going to do about it”, and a whole bunch of people with a whole lot of nothing for answers.
I don’t actually. I think the judiciary is quite capable of killing a presidency let alone a president.
Appeals courts have exactly zero to do with contempt the only ones who can deal with that are other judges. Again it has nothing to do with the guy and everything to do with other branches of government fighting to keep their power so they aren’t expendable.
And yet you’re knowingly basing crazy arguments of ignorance from empty words.