‘Faster and smarter’: Legal analyst warns courts they can’t let Trump outplay them

MS NOW legal analyst Andrew Weissmann said President Donald Trump’s disregard for court orders has turned the nation’s justice system into a laughingstock.

“The Trump administration is making the courts look like fools,” he said.

With the midterm elections quickly approaching, Weissmann warned it is time for America’s judges to work “faster and smarter” before it’s too late.

“The administration, over and over again, is doing things unilaterally without permission and, at times, in violation of court orders,” the former Justice Department official explained.

According to an analysis from The Associated Press earlier this year, district court judges have found the second Trump administration violated or failed to follow federal court orders in at least 31 lawsuits and in more than 250 individual immigration cases.

When the court does intervene, sometimes it’s already too late, Weissmann said, pointing to the administration’s use of taxpayer dollars to run ads for the president. When a federal judge blocked that effort, it was only after nearly $22 million had already been spent.

“Tens of millions of people saw those ads, paid for by you and me,” he said.

Weissmann argued that Trump’s DOJ has effectively taken a “do now and ask questions later” approach to the law.

“The court only belatedly says, ‘Hey, don’t do that.’ But the damage is already done, and you can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” he said.

The former federal prosecutor said it was time for courts to be “faster and smarter” in responding to Trump’s blatantly illegal moves, and he cautioned against setting “a permission structure for this administration,” especially as the election approaches.

“What I am worried about is: The midterms are coming up, and is this going to be a government that goes ahead and seizes ballots with the idea that we can break the chain of custody, we can make it impossible to count votes? And maybe later a court will say, ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ but the damage will have been done,” he explained.

“There has to be a deterrent,” Weissmann warned. “And courts have to be faster and smarter to not get outplayed.”