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One thing that is becoming increasingly clear as President Trump’s second term grinds on is that the lower courts have had enough and aren’t interested in entertaining the administration’s persistent lawlessness.
In a truly remarkable setback for the Department of Justice, the chief judge of the United States District Court in Minnesota, Patrick Schiltz, quashed six grand jury subpoenas targeting state and local elected officials, saying they “were not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce, and retaliate.”
The DOJ’s attempt to force Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and both the Ramsey and Hennepin County Boards of Commissioners to provide vast amounts of documents relating to immigration enforcement could not have failed more miserably.
Judge Schiltz’s order is low-key furious, a masterclass in politely simmering rage, unspooling the myriad ways the administration laid siege to Minnesota and how those subpoenas fit in. But before digging into Schiltz’s recap of Operation Metro Surge, a little bit of a detour is required in order to understand how rarely this happens.
The law is not on DOJ’s side
When it comes to grand jury subpoenas, the government enjoys a remarkable amount of deference from the courts. Those subpoenas are presumed to be reasonable, and a party challenging them has the burden of overcoming that presumption of regularity. Additionally, unlike search warrants, grand jury subpoenas don’t require a showing of probable cause.
Because of this, it’s very hard to get out from under a grand jury subpoena. Courts can quash them if “compliance would be unreasonable or oppressive.” This usually involves an overbroad demand, where the government asks for tons of records that have no meaningful relevance to the case. Courts can also quash a subpoena if the “dominant” purpose of it is improper. Investigations initiated out of malice or with the intent to harass fall into this category.
You will probably not be surprised to learn that these subpoenas managed to run afoul of both of these.
But the evidence showing 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” was so strong that the court quashed the subpoenas for that reason alone.
It’s tough to remember that in the beginning, Operation Metro Surge was ostensibly about stopping fraud at daycare centers, an explanation that made so little sense that the administration didn’t even bother to keep up the fiction for very long. After the state filed a lawsuit challenging Operation Metro Surge on January 12, Trump went on social media the next day and threatened to cut off all federal funding to Minnesota and other sanctuary states, making clear what this was really all about.
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