Using Bob Dylan Lyrics, Judge Seems To Inch Closer To Win For DOGE In Africa Agency Case
The federal judge presiding over DOGE's takeover of the U.S. African Development Foundation cut to the core of the case Wednesday: If the board president wasn't properly appointed, he loses his standing and the case collapses.
Determining the validity of his appointment, though, requires sifting through the alleged incompetence of the Trump administration. Lawyers for the plaintiff and ex-member who says he was properly appointed president, Ward Brehm, argue the other board members were never properly fired because they weren't given any notice.
If the board members weren't ever legally fired, they still had their posts and could rightfully appoint Brehm as the board's president, giving him standing to bring the lawsuit. If they were properly fired, their vote to appoint Brehm was meaningless and the case dissolves.
That created some factual confusion when the DC United States Attorney's Office attached the termination emails the administration sent, which the members said they never received. But per Brehm's filings, the administration had just made up the email addresses and sent the messages, hoping for the best — including one that misspelled the member's name, and a Gmail account for a board member who says she's never had one.
Those granular details may now determine the future of the case.
Judge Richard Leon expressed musically inflected skepticism Wednesday that the board members really hadn't gotten the news that they were being terminated, whether or not they got the emails.
'You know, Bob Dylan once had a lyric in one of his songs: 'You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,'' Leon quoted.
He incredulously asked whether there was a 'serious question' of the President's intent to fire the members.
'This case can be resolved simply by finding that Mr. Brehm was never appointed president of the foundation to begin with,' Assistant U.S. Attorney John Bardo, on behalf of the Trump administration, said.
'No standing,' underscored Leon.
The judge poked Bardo, saying that the plaintiffs said that Supreme Court precedent demands adequate notice.
'If the notice was adequate — you're saying the notice was adequate — then the…other members of the board were no longer on the board and couldn't appoint Mr. Brehm as the president,' Leon said to Bardo. 'If he wasn't the president, he wouldn't have standing to challenge his own situation as well as Mr. Marocco's,' he added of Trump's alleged acting USADF president.
'Basically they picked the wrong plaintiff,' Leon said. 'There are other people they could have picked who might have had standing.'
Leon said he couldn't give the lawyers a timeline on which to expect his opinion, nodding to the flood of DOGE and other administration-related lawsuits that have inundated the DC federal courts.
'We're a little busy around here these days,' he said.
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