CNN’s Elliot Williams Flabbergasted By Trump DOJ Telling Judge His Oral Order Is Not Enforceable: ‘Never Seen An Argument Like That’
CNN legal analysis Elliot Williams, a former deputy assistant attorney general, poured cold water all over the Trump DOJ’s argument that a judges recent oral order to pause deportations didn’t carry as it wasn’t written down.
Jeff Zeleny first reported on the developments and noted it’s all, “A little unusual at the White House.”
“They are making clear that they are not essentially ignoring the judge’s order. They are drawing the distinction between that written order and the timing of it, as Katelyn was just talking about, versus a verbal order that the judge gave earlier,” Zeleny reported adding:
And in the White House briefing today, Karoline Leavitt said, ‘Verbal orders do not have as much a weight.’ That we’ll see what the judge says about that in the next hour My guess is he will not agree with that, but look the bottom line to all this politically speaking the White House, the president, they believe they’re on solid ground because he talked about this, he promised this and this is exactly what he’s doing.
But the bigger question is, is this the case that will end up at the Supreme Court? Is this the executive authority a case that will be a test ultimately or not? We shall see. But as of now, the White House is making clear, even though they don’t like the order, they are saying that they are not ignoring it, which, of course, that would sort of open the door to a constitutional crisis. And that is not what they say is happening.
Anchor Kasie Hunt then introduced her panel and turned to Williams first, “Elliot, we got to start with you because you got to this distinction that they are making between an oral instruction from the judge and the written order from the judge. Is there actually any merit to it?”
“I have never seen an argument like that made. If a judge says, you’re guilty, if it’s a bench trial, you’re guilty right then, regardless of whether the judge memorializes it in writing,” Williams noted, adding:
If the judge says, I hold you in contempt of court, if a judge says, I sentence you to 10 years in prison, all of those things have weight on the judge’s words. Now, of course, a written ruling has, it explains things and so on, but I’ve never seen– I’ve appeared in front of dozens of judges, clerked for two of them. When they say something, it has the weight of a ruling in court, full stop. So I’m curious to see what happens with this hearing and where they go at that point.
Watch above via CNN.
