By Devan Cole, CNN
(CNN) — Judges in Chicago, Minneapolis and Washington, DC, have tried to hold the Trump administration accountable for questionable actions inside and outside of court over the past year, but their efforts have been repeatedly stymied through the appeals process, stonewalling and other tactics.
But the federal bench in Rhode Island is taking a fresh approach, naming a special counsel last week to investigate a senior Justice Department attorney’s alleged misconduct in an immigration case.
Legal experts tell CNN the move appears designed to insulate the process from the kind of fierce opposition other federal courts have faced when attempting to gather basic information about possible missteps by the government or ensure compliance with court orders.
“It’s really all about accountability. The judges are going to try their darndest to hold everyone involved in these cases accountable. And the first line of accountability is the lawyers,” said former federal Judge William Smith, who, until January, presided over cases in The Ocean State. “It’s just extremely frustrating for the judges to have to deal with this.”
“It’s not common,” Smith, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, said of the special counsel appointment. “But it’s certainly something that the court has the authority to do.”
The move is the latest flashpoint in a fraught relationship between the Executive Branch and the federal judiciary that’s existed since President Donald Trump returned to office last year. Trump and his aides have frequently attacked judges appointed by presidents from both parties who have sided against the administration. And courts around the US have repeatedly warned that the current Justice Department has jeopardized the long-held assumption that it’s acting in good faith in court.
Benjamin Grimes, a former senior ethics official at the Justice Department who now teaches at Columbia Law School, said the situation speaks to a broader pattern of government lawyers playing fast and loose with professional rules in a way that undermines public confidence in the legal system.
“When something like this has happened in the past, it’s been an outlier. It’s not been emblematic of a series of data points that can be easily connected,” he said. “That’s what’s different.”
The Justice Department has not responded to a request for comment from CNN.
In response to the appointment, the top lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security attacked the judge at the center of the fracas and called into question the purpose of the special counsel probe.
DHS attacks judge, but DOJ attorney withheld key details
The situation in Rhode Island has been especially tense as it’s raised questions about the apparent willingness of DOJ attorneys to shun their ethical obligations in their representation of key government agencies in court.
In the case at hand, US District Judge Melissa DuBose, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ordered officials late last month to release on bond Bryan Rafael Gomez, a noncitizen who had been arrested on assault and battery charges and later turned over to immigration officials to be detained pending deportation.
Days after DuBose ordered officials to release Gomez, who is from the Dominican Republic, the Department of Homeland Security slammed her in a press release as an “activist Biden judge” who knowingly let free “a violent criminal illegal alien who is wanted for murder in the Dominican Republic.”
Therein lied the problem: Following guidance from officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a