Judge spurns Trump administration request to recuse from law firm case

By Andrew Goudsward

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. judge declined on Wednesday to step aside from a lawsuit challenging Donald Trump’s order targeting law firm Perkins Coie after his administration accused her of bias in this and other cases involving the Republican president.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said a Trump administration filing seeking her recusal was “rife with innuendo” and does not “come close to meeting the standard for disqualification.”

“This strategy is designed to impugn the integrity of the federal judicial system and blame any loss on the decision-maker rather than fallacies in the substantive legal arguments presented,” Howell wrote.

Howell, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, this month temporarily blocked Trump’s administration from enforcing much of his order seeking to prevent Perkins Coie from doing business with federal contractors and blocking its lawyers from accessing government officials.

The order targeted the firm over its prior work for the campaign of Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 presidential election rival.

After that ruling, the Justice Department asked Howell to recuse from the case, alleging what it called a pattern of hostility toward Trump in court rulings and hearings.

The department’s filing cited Howell’s prior remarks in cases against Trump supporters arising from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and her handling of disputes related to federal investigations of him after his first term in office.

Howell noted that prior court decisions are generally not a basis for a judge to recuse from a case.

Howell used her 21-page ruling on Wednesday to offer a defense of the federal judiciary, which has come under sustained criticism from Trump and his allies for decisions blocking actions by his administration.

Howell said the Trump administration’s criticism “reflects a grave misapprehension of our constitutional order.”

“Adjudicating whether an Executive Branch exercise of power is legal, or not, is actually the job of the federal courts, and not of the President or the Department of Justice,” Howell wrote.

Howell is set to decide in the coming weeks whether to extend her judicial block on Trump’s order against Perkins Coie.

(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by Will Dunham)