WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a March presidential memorandum to revoke the security clearance of prominent Washington attorney Mark Zaid, ruling that the order \u2014 which also targeted 14 other individuals \u2014 could not be applied to him.<\/p>\n
The decision marked the administration\u2019s second legal setback on Tuesday, after the Supreme Court declined to allow President Trump to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area, capping a first year in office in which Trump\u2019s efforts to impose a sweeping agenda and pursue retribution against political adversaries have been repeatedly slowed by the courts.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington granted Zaid\u2019s request for a preliminary injunction, after he sued the Trump administration in May over the revocation of his security clearance. Zaid\u2019s request called it an act of \u201cimproper political retribution\u201d that jeopardized his ability to continue representing clients in sensitive national security cases.<\/p>\n
The March presidential memorandum singled out Zaid and 14 other individuals who the White House asserted were unsuitable to retain their clearances because it was \u201cno longer in the national interest.\u201d The list included targets of Trump\u2019s fury from both the political and legal spheres, including former Deputy Atty. Gen. Lisa Monaco, New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James and former President Biden and members of his family.<\/p>\n
The action was part of a much broader retribution campaign that Trump has waged since returning to the White House, including directing specific Justice Department investigations against perceived adversaries and issuing sweeping executive orders targeting law firms over legal work he does not like.<\/p>\n
In August, the Trump administration said it was revoking the security clearances of 37 current and former national security officials. Ordering the revocation of clearances has been a favored retributive tactic that Trump has wielded \u2014 or at least tried to \u2014 against high-profile political figures, lawyers and intelligence officials in his second term. <\/p>\n
Zaid said in his lawsuit that he has represented clients across the political spectrum over nearly 35 years, including government officials, law enforcement and military officials and whistleblowers. In 2019, he represented an intelligence community whistleblower whose account of a conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky helped set the stage for the first of two impeachment cases against Trump in his first term.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis court joins the several others in this district that have enjoined the government from using the summary revocation of security clearances to penalize lawyers for representing people adverse to it,\u201d Ali wrote in his order. <\/p>\n
Ali emphasized that his order does not prevent the government from revoking or suspending Zaid\u2019s clearance for reasons independent of the presidential memorandum and through normal agency processes. The preliminary injunction does not go into effect until Jan. 13. <\/p>\n
Zaid said in a statement, \u201cThis is not just a victory for me, it\u2019s an indictment of the Trump administration\u2019s attempts to intimidate and silence the legal community, especially lawyers who represent people who dare to question or hold this government accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cappelletti writes for the Associated Press. AP reporter Eric Tucker contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a March presidential memorandum to revoke the security…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[58361,16047,48,52,51,1429,47,50,49,58364,9355,58365,6247,58362,58359,2214,1519,1695,58363,48522,58360],"class_list":{"0":"post-108549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-government-official","9":"tag-judge","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-headlines","12":"tag-la-news","13":"tag-lawyer","14":"tag-los-angeles","15":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","16":"tag-los-angeles-news","17":"tag-march-presidential-memorandum","18":"tag-order","19":"tag-political-adversary","20":"tag-request","21":"tag-revocation","22":"tag-security-clearance","23":"tag-supreme-court","24":"tag-trump","25":"tag-trump-administration","26":"tag-trump-effort","27":"tag-whistleblower","28":"tag-zaid"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}