U.S. District Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz threw out subpoenas against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other officials regarding immigration.
“This course of events- in and of itself-establishes beyond reasonable dispute that the subpoenas were a part of a broader campaign to coerce state and local officials in Minnesota to assist the Trump administration in its enforcement of immigration laws,” wrote Schiltz. “And, of course, this campaign played out against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s well-established history of using criminal investigations to retaliate against and pressure the President’s political and personal adversaries.”
President Donald Trump and his administration initiated Operation Metro Surge, an initiative to enforce immigration laws in major Minnesota cities. It placed over 3,000 agents in the state.
We all know how that turned out. The situation descended into chaos, leading Trump to oust Kristi Noem as DHS secretary and to appoint Border Czar Tom Homan.
Prosecutors issued six subpoenas for records from the offices of Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and the boards of commissioners in Hennepin and Ramsey counties.
Schiltz said the court only needed to address one reason to reject the subpoenas: “the moving parties’ contention that the subpoenas were issued as part of an unconstitutional effort to coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration laws and to harass and retaliate against them for failing to do so.”
Schiltz determined that Trump used his powers to target Walz and others.
“Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action-particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take-is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use the grand-jury process,” wrote Schiltz.
The judge came to this conclusion because “the evidence that the challenged subpoenas were issued for unlawful reasons is overwhelming.”
Schiltz also pointed out the DHS could not “identify a single plausible investigatory justification for the subpoenas.”
In fact, the judge found that the subpoenas were “extraordinarily broad” and sought to compel the officials to hand over “constitutionally protected conduct.”
“The fact that connections between the information sought in the subpoenas and any possible criminal violation range from extremely weak to nonexistent only adds to the overwhelming evidence that these subpoenas were not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce, and retaliate,” said Schiltz.
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