Federal Judge Lays Into DOJ For Lying And Cheating In Support Of Trump’s Anti-Trans Agenda

Puerile, vindictive, and hateful is no way to run a government. That's how Trump is running his, however. And that means his DOJ cannot possibly hope to stay on the good side of judges, not when it's actively engaged in appeasing an autocratic megalomaniac and his enablers.

The lawyers currently staffing the DOJ cannot be excused for their actions. They have been called out time and time again for eroding the trust the DOJ has earned over the years by engaging in vindictive prosecutions, arguing in favor of blatant rights violations, and otherwise pursuing the corrupted version of lawfare that is the hallmark of this administration.

There are only two options at this point, considering the thousands of adverse rulings Trump's DOJ has racked up. Either the remaining prosecutors are no more honorable or ethical than the man in the White House, or they're so bereft of morals and ethics that it means nothing to sacrifice what's left of these traits on the altar of MAGA.

Here's more from the DOJ that's nothing more than a blunt force object of oppression, completely beholden to this American version of fascism. To understand what has lead to a federal judge ripping into the DOJ (something that's now as common as the administration pretending it's fine to be openly racist again), you have to backtrack a little. Chris Geidner, a.k.a. Law Dork, has the background:

The Trump administration is apparently shifting tactics to advance its stated policy to reduce or eliminate gender-related care to minors by using the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Northern District of Texas to try and get invasive information from medical providers about transgender minor patients obtaining gender-affirming medical care.

The apparent shift came after more than a half-dozen federal judges across the nation have blocked the effort to obtain patient information through administrative subpoenas; following a hearing in multistate litigation against the Trump administration's anti-trans policies; and in the midst of a sprawling dispute over the Justice Department's effort to enforce one of the administrative subpoenas - issued last year against Rhode Island Hospital - in the same district in Texas.

Why is the DOJ using a Texas court to enforce a subpoena issued to a Rhode Island hospital? The answer is obvious. This is forum shopping by the administration, hoping to find courts more disposed to harming trans people than those found on the East Coast. If nothing else, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court tends to be receptive of the DOJ's advances now that Trump's in charge, which means the rare adverse ruling might be immediately reversed or stayed once it's appealed.

That didn't work here, however. The case got sent to the proper jurisdiction. And, upon arrival, it has found an extremely unreceptive audience in the form of Judge Mary McElroy, who ended up with the case currently being deliberately and deceptively handled by the DOJ.

Judge McElroy wastes no time attacking the DOJ for its behavior and actions in furtherance of Trump's hateful anti-trans agenda. These are the opening two paragraphs of her ruling [PDF], copy-pasted here verbatim:

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ") possesses immense prosecutorial authority and discretion. As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors, when wielding this awesome power against a state, a company, or certainly against vulnerable children, will play fair and be honest with its counterparts and the judiciary.

DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case. It has misrepresented and withheld information to both this Court and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas (the Texas court"). It did so in an obvious effort to shield it's recent investigative tactics-previously rejected by every other court to review them-from this Court's review, in favor of a distant forum that DOJ deems friendly to its political positions. Its representatives have, under oath, misrepresented salient facts. It has misled the parties with whom it was negotiating in Rhode Island, who have now been placed in an untenable and unprecedented procedural position. And when its attorneys came to this Court to explain their
conduct, the senior attorney-who was present at many of the events that took place in this case-sat silently by as his counterpart, a junior attorney who has been practicing law for approximately six months and had no relevant information, was forced to answer questions about DOJ's blatant disregard for the proper course of negotiations.

The bold sentences are stinging. But even the last sentence is damning. It says the DOJ attorney with the most experience refused to defend the government's positions in what appears to be an act of abject cowardice. Instead, the senior attorney sent a junior attorney with less than six months experience to face the justifiable wrath of the court.

Underneath everything here is the ugly truth of the case: the DOJ is demanding hospitals turn over the names, social security numbers, addresses, clinical histories, and family information of any minors seeking gender-affirming care. The government should not have this information because it's clear it intends to harm both the minors and their care providers for reasons it can't actually justify under existing law.

That's why it went forum shopping in Texas. And that's why it deliberately withheld information from those challenging the subpoena and, indeed, the court itself.

The DOJ won't play fair because if it does, it can't hope to win. That much is clear, and is stated clearly by Judge McElroy. Here's just one of several footnotes detailing the DOJ's dishonesty.

It is well established that counsel are responsible for working in a cooperative, rather than an adversarial manner, and to confer in good faith when negotiating the parameters of a subpoena. The parties had done so up until DOJ's about face on April 30, when it repaired to the Texas court and presented RIH with a fait-accompli motion to enforce (after it had submitted it), followed a few hours later by an order granting that motion. The Child Advocate learned of the subpoena and motion that targeted its children's private information by a DOJ press release the next day.

Here's more on that, from the body of the order:

This representation that the communication with RIH had ceased as of February 4, 2026, was clearly misleading, if not utterly false. At the hearing on this Motion, DOJ's attorney attempted to justify the glaring omission by saying that the February 4, 2026 email was the last such" communication. This is patently untrue because, just the day before filing the declaration containing this representation the attorneys for RIH had sent an email in response to DOJ's request for a conference to discuss the terms provided in the February 4th email. This reckless disregard for the duty of candor owed to a federal court is appalling.

Leading the charge in lying to the court was none other than Lisa Hsiao, who currently serves as the head of the DOJ's Enforcement and Affirmative Litigation" office.

Ms. Hsiao also represented that requests regarding patient-level clinical practices and drug safety" (Requests 11-15) were necessary because without this information, DOJ cannot fully determine the scope of the violations, identify patterns of misbranding or fraudulent billing, or assess whether the conduct was undertaken with intent to defraud or mislead, as required for felony liability under 21 U.S.C. 333(a)(2)." But Ms. Hsiao neglected to inform the Texas court that DOJ had agreed to anonymized data in several other jurisdictions. Her assertion that DOJ needed this information was therefore, at best, deceptive, if not intentionally and knowingly false.

There's a footnote attached to this paragraph that shows this a pattern and practice of Ms. Hsiao when it comes to trying to destroy the lives of transgender minors.

This is not the first time Ms. Hsiao and her subordinates have, in their crusade to obtain transgender children's medical records, acted in ways that appear to deviate from the norms of professional conduct expected of attorneys representing the United States.

The order notes that the DOJ's forum shopping in Texas (despite seeking records from an entity located in Rhode Island on behalf of an investigation instigated in Washington D.C.) worked.... right up until it didn't. The district court granted the government's request to enforce the subpoena following an ex parte submission by the DOJ that cut RIH out of the loop. And the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court refused to stay this enforcement order pending appeal with a one-sentence denial.

In the end, the DOJ loses. The Rhode Island court quashes the administrative subpoena (i.e., self-issued) because it seeks information that is protected by state law and the US Constitution itself. It does not have the jurisdiction to block the Texas court's enforcement order, but that ultimately doesn't matter because the subpoena is no longer usable.

In signing off on the decision, the judge again points out this iteration of the DOJ is an embarrassment to every iteration that came before it.

[T]he discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of federal prosecutors and DOJ's tactics in this case is unsettling. The Court cannot help but share the sentiment that [t]he presumption of regularity that has previously been extended to [DOJ] that it could be taken at its word-with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes-no longer holds." United States v. Oregon, No. 6:25-CV-01666-MTK, 2026 WL 318402, at *11 (D. Or. Feb. 5, 2026). It is regrettable that this is now the case.

Without a doubt, Trump's DOJ will continue to shit all over the presumption of regulatory, overseen by equally evil people who will oversee those too spineless or devoid of morality to refuse to do Donald's dirty work. But even if the DOJ manages to avoid being laughed out of court every time it engages in a case, it will never be able to erase the blighted legacy it's leaving behind.