Good Friday morning! Welcome back to Trump Watch, your end-of-week guide to Trump and the law. I'm at the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, D.C., this morning, where Paul Manafort's lawyers and special counsel prosecutors will gather before U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson to discuss a plea deal. Stay tuned for what comes out of the 11 a.m. hearing.

In the meantime, Attorney General Jeff Sessions railed against nationwide injunctions this week, once again proving to be the tip of the spear in the Trump administration's criticism of the courts that issue them. Plus, one advocacy group that really wants to get its hands on Trump's tax returns is trying to get the D.C. Circuit to revive its FOIA suit against the IRS.

Thanks very much for reading. What's happening in your world? Got any stories you think are undercovered? I'm all ears: [email protected]. You can also follow me on Twitter.

Sessions Jabs At Judges

 

Jeff Sessions renewed his battle cry Thursday against courts issuing nationwide injunctions, touching on a controversial legal issue that might be ripening for SCOTUS review. Sessions spoke in Kansas City to roll out new “litigation guidelines” for DOJ litigators defending Trump administration policies in court.

➤➤ Key quotes below, but you can read his speech here and the DOJ memo here. But the attorney general also took fresh swipes at what he described as “activist” judges using injunctions to block enforcement of the president's executive policies. “Sometimes we have faced impassioned judges that have attacked the motives of our attorneys, our client agencies and the attorney general himself—me,” he said.

“We've even had judges recalling a presidential stump speech made two years ago to psychoanalyze a lawfully drafted order,” Sessions said, lambasting the federal judges who blocked Trump's first travel ban from taking effect last year, citing Trump's words at a 2015 campaign rally.

Sessions spared the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from his acerbic words. In June, the en banc court partially stayed a nationwide injunction on the DOJ's grant-funding conditions for so-called sanctuary cities, scaling the order down to only apply in Chicago.

Federal courts have blocked Trump actions through nationwide injunctions 25 timeswithin the last two years, Sessions said, though he also played up the fact that judges blocked Obama administration policies (including on deferred action) through such injunctions, too. This isn't a political issue, Sessions stressed.

Sessions doubled down on a combative approach to these “unconstitutional orders.” “We're going to fight them all the way to the Supreme Court,” he vowed.

Tax Returns in Court

 

Trump broke a precedent set by all presidents since Richard Nixon when he refused to release his tax returns. Trump has cited an IRS audit to keep those records away from public view, for now.

That refusal has spurred litigation seeking those documents, including a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Centeragainst the IRS. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in D.C. tossed the suit, ruling EPIC never got consent from Trump, or a congressional committee, for the documents' disclosure.

Well, EPIC was back in court Thursday, this time to persuade a three-judge panel to revive its lawsuit. They say Trump's past remarks—accusing the IRS of unfairly targeting him in audits, for example—permit the IRS to “correct the record” and bypass requirements to get Trump's consent.

A Justice Department lawyer yesterday sought to persuade the court that the lawsuit was properly dismissed because EPIC never “perfected” its records request. But Circuit Judge Patricia Millett wasn't thrilled with the idea that the IRS attempted to place the burden on record requesters to demonstrate why their requests overrode FOIA exemptions. She suggested it was actually on the government to show when an exemption applied.

Depending on how the appeals court rules, it could reboot EPIC's case, though that does not mean the IRS would have to hand over Trump's tax returns. A reminder, of course, that plaintiffs in other lawsuits against Trump—those related to the Constitution's emoluments clauses—are also eyeing his tax records. So, stay tuned.

➤➤ For those who might be interested, you can listen to audio from Thursday'sargument in EPIC v. IRS here.

This Week in Trump Watch

…And what I'm watching for next week.

SIXTH CIRCUIT SAVE—The president got a big win in the courts this week after a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit tossed a claim by a group of Trump campaign protesters who said Trump, as a presidential candidate, had incited violence against them by encouraging his supporters to physically remove them from a 2016 rally in Kentucky. “Get 'em out of here,” Trump had said. Trump's comments are protected by the First Amendment, a majority on the panel found on Tuesday.

“Trump's words may arguably have had a tendency to encourage unlawful use of force, but they did not specifically advocate for listeners to take unlawful action and are therefore protected,” Tuesday's opinion read. More from Tony Mauro here.

BUTINA'S LAWYER—A federal judge imposed a gag order Monday in the case involving alleged Russian agent Maria Butina. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan of Washington, D.C., issued the order after Butina's attorney, Robert Driscoll of McGlinchey Stafford, continued to publicly comment on the case in the media, failing to heed Chutkan's warnings in an earlier court hearing to not do so.

The judge also said she was “dismayed” by a misstep from U.S. prosecutors, who last Friday had to walk back their allegations that Butina had offered to exchange sex for a job. Here's what C. Ryan Barber, who was inside Chutkan's courtroom on Monday, reported.

Gavel Tracker

 

Oops! Last week we mistyped that there were 60 total confirmations, instead of the correct figure: 68. We're still at 68 confirmations this Friday. I'm sorry for the error.

And thanks for checking out our Gavel Tracker. How do we count up these numbers? The count on Article III pending nominations is the sum of all of Trump's nominees to Article III courts, including the U.S. Court of International Trade. Our court-by-court breakdown, however, only looks at Supreme Court, appellate, and district court nominees. Additionally: Our figure for pending nominations includes nominations for future vacancies, as well as existing vacancies.