A second federal judge won’t let Justice Department lawyers swap out in the renewed census fight, in yet another blow to the Trump administration over the citizenship question fight.
The “court cannot fathom how it would be possible, at this juncture, for a wholesale change in Defendants’ representation not to have some impact on the orderly resolution of these proceedings,” Judge George Hazel wrote Wednesday.
“Defendants must realize that a change in counsel does not create a clean slate for a party to proceed as if prior representations made to the Court were not in fact made,” added the Maryland-based Hazel. “A new DOJ team will need to be prepared to address these, and other, previous representations made by the withdrawing attorneys at the appropriate juncture.”
Tuesday, a federal judge in New York blocked the move to swap legal teams by the Justice Department calling their reasoning “deficient.”
Hazel did say that the Justice Department can try again to swap out the lawyers in the future, but would have to provide more detail about how the transition will go smoothly.
