One Judge Is Causing One President More Than One Problem

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

20 December 18

Judge Emmet Sullivan, presiding.

ederal Judge Emmet Sullivan is...still on the case. From NBC News:

Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington ruled the harsher Justice Department policies ordered by former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions were "arbitrary, capricious and in violation of the immigration laws."Because "it is the will of Congress — not the whims of the Executive—that determines the standard for expedited removal, the Court finds that those policies are unlawful," Sullivan wrote in his 107-page decision.

He permanently blocked the government "from continuing to apply those policies and from removing plaintiffs who are currently in the United States without first providing credible fear determinations consistent with the immigration laws," and ordered the feds "to return to the United States the plaintiffs who were unlawfully deported and to provide them with new credible fear determinations consistent with the immigration laws."

As it happens, Judge Sullivan was all over the administration*'s asylum policies long before Tuesday, when he got famous by taking three feet of skin off Michael Flynn's tail assembly. Famously, last August, when told by government lawyers that a mother and her daughter who had come here seeking asylum were already on their way back to their home country, Sullivan told the lawyers, "Turn that plane around and bring those people back to the United States."

And, not for nothing, but, if the suit gets that far, it is Judge Sullivan who is presiding over the lawsuit brought by Democratic congresscritters that accuses the president* of violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. Sooner or later, god willing, the president* may have to appear before Judge Sullivan, either as a witness or a defendant. I would pay top-dollar for a ticket to that.