DOJ lawyers warned they ‘can lose their Bar licenses’ by ‘irritated’ judges’

Legal analyst Michael Popok, who runs the “Legal AF” Substack, flagged that one of the Justice Department’s prosecutors should tread carefully after being dragged into his courtroom and shamed to his face.

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On Thursday, the New York Times faced off against the Justice Department in a court case over President Donald Trump’s demand to identify the source of a leak of a report about his Qatari plane that wasn’t up to par.

Trump was forced to take the old Air Force One plane from Turkey to the U.K. after the NATO summit because there were concerns that the gifted plane hadn’t been fully retrofitted with the necessities requirements to protect the commander in chief. MS NOW reporter Carol Leonnig reported that Trump was “embarrassed” about the ordeal. In a press conference, he told the reporters he was letting U.S. soldiers at international bases look at the plane.

As Trump raged, his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and FBI Director Kash Patel started their own investigation to figure out who leaked the story about the plane flub to the Times. Thus far, not only have reporters been subpoenaed by a grand jury investigation, family members of the reporters have too. Cabinet officials were required to turn over their phones to Patel and Wiles so they could look for the leaker.

The Times fought the subpoenas in court, and the DOJ was already on thin ice after a filing in which it had promised to pause subpoenas for two weeks to show prosecutors took “particular investigative steps.”

All of it came to a head in a hearing on Thursday that boiled over into the DOJ being scolded by a federal judge in New York.

Legal reporters Adam Klasfeld and Matthew Russell Lee were in the courtroom as Judge Arun Subramanian wagged a finger at the DOJ. Popok said that at one point the judge “tore the Department of Justice and the Southern District of New York a new one.”

“He particularly was harsh on a lawyer for the Department of Justice the Southern District of New York, who he brought into the room,” said Popok. “In other words, he was sitting out in the galley. He brought him into the well of the courtroom and had him explain why he went to a second judge, not named Judge Subramanian, and then had that judge sign for search warrants without telling the judge that there were reporters on the other side.”

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As Popok explained, “That’s a no-no. It’s called lying and not being candid with the tribunal. You can lose your Var license as a result.”

To make matters worse, Popok said the hearing revealed a flub by Todd Blanche, Trump’s attorney general nominee.

There are special rules that apply when the DOJ is going after the news media, legal analyst Lisa Rubin explained. One of those includes taking all reasonable steps to obtain the information it seeks before issuing a subpoena. But under this Times probe, that didn’t happen. Further, the subpoenas must be approved at the highest level, and in this case that means Blanche.

So, Judge Subramanian asked Sean Buckley, chief counsel to the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, if Blanche had signed off on these subpoenas, and Buckley answered that he had, exposing Blanche to another legal scandal.

In the end, Popok explained that the DOJ agreed that they should withdraw their subpoenas ” because they violate the law.” The judge said the alternative was that he could quash them and further embarrass Blanche.

The Associated Press went so far as to call the ordeal a “remarkable back and forth between a visibly irritated Judge Arun Subramanian and government attorneys. They come at a time when the Trump administration is vigorously going after news organizations whose reporting and coverage it doesn’t like — and also trying to crack down on leaks inside the government.”