{"id":488,"date":"2025-10-14T02:48:33","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T02:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/488\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T02:48:33","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T02:48:33","slug":"lauded-ny-public-defender-leaving-job-to-fight-trump-admin-on-immigration-first-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/488\/","title":{"rendered":"Lauded NY public defender leaving job to fight Trump admin on immigration, First Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"

After 23 years on defense, veteran Federal Defenders<\/a> lawyer Deirdre von Dornum is itching to play offense.<\/p>\n

The longtime public defender \u2014 known as a smiling legal gladiator who\u2019s won rare acquittals in a federal system where prosecutors prevail at trial 90% of the time \u2014 is making the move to the Manhattan-based law firm Sher Tremonte<\/a> to fight the Trump administration over immigration and First Amendment cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t sit still and watch President Trump and his DOJ intimidate protesters, professors, prosecutors with ethics, even judges carrying out their constitutional duties. If there is one thing I\u2019m good at, it\u2019s getting in the government\u2019s way,\u201d von Dornum tells the Daily News.<\/p>\n

\u201cI intend to use that skill to ensure dissent is not silenced.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AttorneyAttorney Deirdre von Dornum is pictured outside Brooklyn Federal Court in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (Theodore Parisienne \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

The 56-year-old litigator is joining Sher Tremonte, a litigation boutique firm, that, most recently, represented the plaintiffs<\/a> in a case challenging the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to deport noncitizen college students and faculty, like Columbia University grad student Mahmoud Khalil, who take part in pro-Palestinian protests.<\/p>\n

Massachusetts Federal Judge William Young ruled for the students and faculty last month in a blistering opinion<\/a> that blasted Trump for ignoring the law and the Constitution.<\/a><\/p>\n

Von Dornum said she hopes to pursue similar cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m making [the move] so I have more freedom to take on cases against the administration, not just do reactive criminal cases,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Von Dornum, a Columbia\u00a0 Law School graduate who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, served as the Federal Defenders attorney in charge of the Eastern District of New York, recently stepping down from that top spot to represent clients full time.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s so well regarded in her field that Julianna Margulies shadowed her for several days<\/a> to prepare for her defense attorney character on \u201cThe Good Wife.\u201d<\/p>\n

Julianna Margulies attends a private screening of \u2018Millers In Marriage\u2019 hosted by ROAR Forward and Esquire at Lincoln Center on February 20, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Santiago Felipe\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing more unsettling to a lawyer than a smiling adversary, and Deirdre has hard-earned confidence, intelligence and experience behind her smile,\u201d said former Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme. \u201cShe has a genuine enthusiasm for litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Von Dornum led the charge against horrific conditions at the MDC Brooklyn jail, pressing federal Bureau of Prisons officials during an eight-day blackout<\/a> in the dead of winter 2019, after a flood of complaints about no heat, noxious fumes and no electricity. Jail officials kept suspending legal visits and claiming that the lights and heat were still on,<\/a> leading a federal judge in Brooklyn to send von Dornum into the jail to see for herself what was going on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat started our MDC litigation was just a flat-out lie of, \u2018The lights are on, the heat is on.\u2019 And we were standing there in the freezing cold<\/a> and dark,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Von Dornum was also part of the team that challenged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev\u2019s death sentence, and considers the ruling to overturn the sentence one of her career highlights. Though the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence in 2022, Tsarnaev\u2019s fate remains up in the air<\/a> after an appeals court ordered a probe into claims of jury bias last year.<\/p>\n

She credits Ginsburg\u2019s lessons about attention to legal detail as what led to her first breakthrough in the appeals process, when she noticed skipped numbers on the docket.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw the power not just of strong beliefs, but of making really careful legal judgments and writing really tightly so that it can\u2019t be undone,\u201d von Dornum said of Ginsburg. \u201cI was really amazed by her ability to go piece by piece, so that it could never be changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nicole Argentieri, a former assistant Brooklyn U.S. attorney and former U.S. deputy assistant attorney general, said von Dornum is also willing to build relationships with prosecutors and federal agents, despite sitting at the defense table.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though there were times we were [adversaries] and she was tough, she was very practical and willing to work through issues where we could. She picks the fights that matter, not every fight,\u201d Argentieri said.<\/p>\n

One of those fights was the trial of Thomas Welnicki, 75, who was accused of threatening to kill President Trump in a series of rambling phone calls to the Secret Service in 2021.<\/p>\n

In an argument that included lyrics from the John Lennon song, \u201cImagine,\u201d von Dornum said\u00a0 Welnicki wasn\u2019t making actual threats \u2014 he was simply sad, drunk and lonely while cooped up in his Queens apartment during the pandemic and the Secret Service were the ones to take his calls.<\/p>\n

The jury acquitted Welnicki,<\/a> who three years later calls von Dornum \u201can angel\u201d and a \u201cwarrior woman.\u201d Welnicki, who goes by the nickname Knicky Knightrow, stays in touch with her, sending her classic rock playlists.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s a very strong advocate for the rights in a courtroom of people who are accused of crimes, as it should be,\u201d Welnicki tells The News. \u201cShe has a passion for truth, honesty, justice and the American way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally Published: October 12, 2025 at 1:44 PM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After 23 years on defense, veteran Federal Defenders lawyer Deirdre von Dornum is itching to play offense. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[98,85,267,75,9,24,264,10,12,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-488","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-brooklyn","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-manhattan","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-new-york-county","15":"tag-new-york-news","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-queens","19":"tag-queens-headlines","20":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}