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“The Department of Justice has now admitted making statements that clearly did not match the facts,” Hanen stated in his May 19 order. “It has admitted that the lawyers who made these statements had knowledge of the truth when they made these misstatements…. “These misrepresentations were made on multiple occasions starting with the very first hearing this Court held,” he continued. “This Court would be remiss if it left such unseemly and unprofessional conduct unaddressed.” On Dec. 3, 2014, Texas and 25 other states asked Hanen for a preliminary injunction blocking Obama administration executive actions on immigration, which sought to confer “lawful presence” on more than 4.3 million illegal aliens who applied under the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) and Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programs without congressional approval.
According to court records, DOJ lawyers assured Hanen in January 2015 that “no action would be taken on any of those applications”. But “at the very time counsel told the Court and opposing counsel that no action was taking place, over 100,000 three-year deferred action renewals were being processed using the 2014 DHS Directive,” Hanen wrote. “Whether it was one person or one hundred thousand persons, the magnitude does not change a lawyer’s ethical obligations... (1) tell the truth; (2) do not mislead the Court; and (3) do not allow the Court to be misled,” the judged noted. “The Government’s lawyers failed on all three fronts.” “Counsel’s conduct in this case was not only unethical, but a failure to comply with federal law,” he added.
Hanen ordered that “any attorney employed at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. who appears, or seeks to appear, in a court (state or federal) in any of the 26 Plaintiff States annually attend a legal ethics course” for the next five years. He further instructed Attorney General Loretta Lynch to come up with “a comprehensive plan to prevent this unethical conduct from ever occurring again.” “The Court does not have the power to disbar the counsel in this case, but it does have the power to revoke the pro hac vice [“this time only”] status of out-of-state lawyers who act unethically in court. By a separate sealed order that it is simultaneously issuing, that is being done,” Hanen continued.
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Ah yes, Trump will solve the California Drought by simply declaring that it does not exist. What a genius.We all love Trump!!
