A federal judge in San Francisco ordered the Trump administration to rehire thousands of federal employees in six federal agencies who had been terminated since President Trump’s inauguration. Ruling from the bench, 79-year-old Clinton appointee Judge William Alsup castigated the administration.
“You will not bring the people in here to be cross-examined. You’re afraid to do so because you know cross examination would reveal the truth,” the judge said to a DOJ attorney during a hearing Thursday. “I tend to doubt that you’re telling me the truth. … I’m tired of seeing you stonewall on trying to get at the truth.”
Alsup also said the administration attempted to circumvent federal laws on reducing the workforce by attributing the firings to “performance” when that was not in fact the case. The judge called the move “a gimmick.”
“It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” Alsup said.
This is pretty much the kind of unhinged statement the Trump administration has gotten used to hearing from power-drunk federal judges.
The case involved thousands of federal workers holding probationary or term appointments in the Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs departments. Alsup ruled that the Office of Personnel Management had no authority to order the terminations, even when acting on behalf of the president, and that the departments could only terminate these employees by following the Reduction in Force Act, though the law does not seem to apply to the situation at hand.
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