(AFP) – A US federal judge has tossed out grand jury subpoenas issued by the Trump Justice Department to Democratic officials in Minnesota, calling them political retaliation. The subpoenas seeking state records were served on Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and other officials in January during a federal immigration crackdown in the northern state.
US District Judge Patrick Schiltz, an appointee of former Republican president George W. Bush, said the Justice Department “has struggled — without success — to identify a single plausible investigatory justification for the subpoenas.” The subpoenas were unconstitutional and intended 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,” the judge said.
“Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action… is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use the grand jury process,” Schiltz said in his June 17 order, which was unsealed on Monday. President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown in Minnesota was met with protests and resistance from the state’s Democratic leaders. Two American citizens were shot and killed by federal agents during protests in Minneapolis against immigration raids.
Walz, who was Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s running mate in 2024, welcomed the judge’s ruling, calling it a “victory for the rule of law and our democracy.” “A federal district judge found that the US Department of Justice’s investigation into me and other Minnesota elected officials was politically motivated, unconstitutional, and meritless,” the governor said.
Schiltz noted that the subpoenas were issued “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.” Since taking office for a second time, the Republican president has taken a number of punitive measures against perceived enemies. He has pushed for criminal cases against political opponents, purged government officials he deems disloyal, targeted law firms involved in past cases against him, and pulled federal funding from universities.
© 2024 AFP
