Reuters Legal

LIVE: US Democrats hold hearing on Trump team's legal tactics Democratic U.S. Senator Adam Schiff and U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin lead a hearing over the Trump administration's treatment of the Justice Department and law firms who act in cases disliked by the Republican president. #Trump #DonaldTrump #Hearing #Legal #Democrats #Senate #Reuters #News #Live Keep up with the latest news from around the world: https://www.reuters.com/

The DOJ sent armed U.S. Marshals to deliver a letter warning a fired career pardon attorney about testifying to congressional Democrats, her lawyer said in a letter seen by Reuters on April 7. 'This highly unusual step of directing armed law enforcement officers to the home of a former DOJ employee who has engaged in no misconduct, let alone criminal conduct, simply to deliver a letter, is both unprecedented and completely inappropriate,' Michael Bromwich, a lawyer representing fired pardon attorney Liz Oyer, wrote to the DOJ. The Marshals were called off on April 4 only after Oyer acknowledged having received the letter once she had located it in a secondary email that she had not been using to communicate with the department's human resources officials, Bromwich wrote. Read more: https://reut.rs/4lre2J8

A federal appeals court blocked U.S. President Donald Trump from removing Democratic members from two federal labor boards on April 7, setting aside its earlier ruling. The decision by the D.C. Circuit further complicates a pair of cases that are emerging as key tests of Trump's efforts to bring federal agencies meant to be independent from the White House under his control. The full D.C. Circuit in a 7-4 decision set aside a three-judge panel's March ruling that paused lower court decisions blocking Trump from removing Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board. The decision puts back in place two judges' decisions that upheld federal laws barring the president from removing members of the labor boards at will. Read the full story to find out more: https://reut.rs/42me9wu 

A federal prosecutor in Boston who investigated the compounding pharmacy behind a deadly 2012 U.S. fungal meningitis outbreak and more recently prosecuted consulting firm McKinsey for its role in the opioid epidemic has joined law firm WilmerHale. Amanda Page Masselam Strachan is joining the firm's Boston office as a partner after a more than 17-year stint at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Massachusetts, where she pursued major healthcare fraud prosecutions and rose to become the chief of the office's criminal division. Her move came at a politically sensitive moment for WilmerHale, after Republican U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order restricting the firm's access to the federal government. While other law firms in Trump's crosshairs have cut deals to avoid such orders, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr chose to sue and on March 28, convinced a judge to largely block the order's enforcement. Read more: https://reut.rs/421KpGw #legal #legalnews #lawfirm #lawfirms #DonaldTrump

The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily halted a judge's order requiring President Donald Trump's administration to return by the end of the day a Salvadoran man who the government has acknowledged was deported in error to El Salvador https://reut.rs/3G9NN9C  

Democratic lawmakers are pressing six major U.S. law firms to explain their dealings with President Donald Trump after four of them offered concessions to his administration to avoid punishing executive orders.   U.S. Senator Richard Blumental of Connecticut and Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland criticized the deals that Milbank; Paul Weiss; Skadden Arps; and Willkie Farr made with Trump in the lawmakers' April 6 letters to those firms.   Blumenthal and Raskin also sent letters to the chairs of Kirkland & Ellis and Sullivan & Cromwell, seeking more information about their 'roles in facilitating the administration's unlawful coercion of other law firms.'   Subscribe to The Afternoon Docket for more: https://reut.rs/4iQvdSd

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on April 6 a DOJ attorney had been placed on leave after he failed to vigorously defend the government's handling of a man erroneously deported to El Salvador in what a U.S. judge called a 'wholly lawless' detention. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis had ordered that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who lived in the U.S. legally with a work permit, be returned to Maryland despite the DOJ's position that it cannot return him from a sovereign nation. At a court hearing on April 4, DOJ lawyer Erez Reuveni struggled to answer questions from the judge about the circumstances of Abrego Garcia's deportation. Read more: https://reut.rs/4j5sDZ8

President Donald Trump asked SCOTUS on April 7 to temporarily halt a judge's order requiring his administration to return by the end of the day a Salvadoran man who the government has acknowledged was erroneously deported to El Salvador. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis on April 4 ordered the administration to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia by the end of April 7, in response to a lawsuit filed by the man and his family. A lower federal appeals court — the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th Circuit — declined on April 7 to freeze the judge's order. Xinis found that the U.S. government had no lawful authority to detain and deport Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who lived in Maryland legally with a work permit, and ordered his return by 11:59 p.m. on April 7. He was deported on March 15. Read more: https://reut.rs/4iRwxEG

While thousands of workers have been fired in the overhaul throughout the work week, Friday nights have become some of the most nerve-racking times for civil servants.   Mass firings have taken place on seven of the 10 Fridays that Trump has been in office since being sworn in on January 20, affecting hundreds of government workers, a Reuters review of the pattern of dismissals found.   April 4 marked his 11th Friday in office, but it was not immediately clear if he would fire any more government workers after nightfall.   The majority of these bureaucrats include people Trump has deemed opponents or potential impediments to his agenda. The frequency and scale of the Friday night layoffs are unprecedented, say legal experts and historians.   Subscribe to The Daily Docket: reut.rs/4bYtR5B

A divided federal appeals court set aside a court order that had blocked the government downsizing team created by U.S. President Donald Trump and led by Elon Musk from seizing sensitive data from the Treasury Department, Education Department and Office of Personnel Management https://reut.rs/3XNjc7X