Judge writes Kari Lake ‘repeatedly thumbed her nose’ at legal requirements

Kari Lake“repeatedly thumbed her nose” at legal requirements as the Trump administration dismantled Voice of America.

A federal judge made that observation on Tuesday about the Donald Trump ally, when he ordered the setting aside of unlawful government actions at the agency, including the placement of more than 1,000 employees on administrative leave.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth’s ruling restoring some of the administration’s destruction follows his previous ruling explaining why Lake wasn’t lawfully overseeing the international broadcaster, which started as an effort to counter Nazi propaganda during World War II.

In his latest rulingthe Reagan-appointed judge wrote that Lake had said that she “has no opinion about which countries censor and repress their people — or even the basic question of which regions of the world qualify as significant, as would be required just tofeigncompliance” with the law.

Lamberth noted that Trump had issued an executive orderlast year to reduce the “bureaucracy.” The order directed several agencies, including the one overseeing Voice of America, to reduce their functions to the minimum required by law.

But, as the judge explained, the government proceeded to immediately wind the agency down to “skeletal operations,” including placing nearly all staff on paid administrative leave, before determining what its minimum legal obligations were.

The judge called out the government’s “arbitrary and capricious” actions and its “hasty, indiscriminate approach.”

Notably, in light of the war in Iranamong the failures listed by Lamberth is that Voice of America was unable to operate its service in that country at current staffing levels, despite it being legally required to do so.

The judge ordered thatall employees placed on leave pursuant to a government directive last year return to work by March 23.

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Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.