Benchslaps, Federal Judges

'Do You Hear Me?' Judge Benchslaps State Department Over Hillary Clinton-Related Documents

"Have it by next week. Have it by next week when we have our hearing. Do you hear me?"

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Judge Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is not someone you want to annoy. He revels in his status as a federal judge, and he won’t hesitate to dispense brutal benchslaps to lawyers whose responses don’t satisfy him.

Here’s a report on Judge Leon’s latest handiwork, courtesy of Josh Gerstein of Politico:

A federal judge is lashing out at the State Department for delaying for years in providing responses to Associated Press Freedom of Information Act requests seeking records about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s schedules and her top staffers.

At a contentious hearing last week, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon demanded explanations for why some of the AP’s [Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)] requests received no reply for four years or more before the wire service filed suit in March….

DOJ lawyers Lisa Ann Olson and Marcia Berman said the agency was prioritizing the public release of the 55,000 pages of [Hillary Clinton-related emails in response to another judge’s order requiring monthly releases of those records.

However, Leon accused Olson of responding with “convoluted gobbledygook” when she insisted that the State Department’s processing of those emails would satisfy the AP’s request for records about Clinton Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin’s transition to a special part-time position at State.

Is “convoluted gobbledygook” better or worse than “pure applesauce”? (Also, what kind of “gobbledygook” is not “convoluted”?)

A transcript of the hearing suggests Leon grew angry when Olson said she had no estimate of how many State Department documents were responsive to the request about Abedin’s employment.

“Have it by next week. Have it by next week when we have our hearing. Do you hear me?” the judge snapped.

Federal court is not a Verizon commercial. Things aren’t going well when the judge asks, “Do you hear me?”

A lawyer for the AP, Jay Ward Brown, told Leon that the wire service was trying to find out what Abedin did during her time as a “special government employee.” However, the judge was also curious about what Abedin does currently.

“Where is she now, this Huma person? … Did you Google her? … Have you done LinkedIn?” asked Leon. “You’ve got to check out on the social-media scene to see what she’s doing.”

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I wouldn’t be surprised if “this Huma person” keeps a low profile on social media. It didn’t work out so well for her husband, Anthony Weiner.

It’s no fun to get benchslapped by Judge Leon, but in fairness to the DOJ lawyers, perhaps his tirades should be taken with a grain of salt. As Josh Gerstein of Politico notes, Judge Leon is “an often-irascible George W. Bush appointee” — so his anger toward the State Department lawyers might reflect his own short temper or antipathy toward the Obama Administration.

Sometimes a benchslap says less about the lawyer receiving it and more about the judge dispensing it.

Judge slams State Department over Hillary Clinton-related records
[Under the Radar / Politico]

Earlier: Benchslap Of The Day: Just. Produce. The Documents!

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