Justice Department appeals the dismissal; the President says the judge is a 'disgrace.'

The Justice Department filed its appeal at 8:42 on Tuesday morning. The appeal challenges the dismissal on the grounds that the application of 28 U.S.C. § 546(c) by the district court was, in the Department’s view, “overly mechanical.” That is a phrase you use when the rule is plain and you would rather not apply it.

The President, twenty minutes after the appeal was filed, posted on his social network that Judge Cameron McGowan Currie was “a disgrace,” “a Biden judge,” and “a fraud.”

Buddy. Judge Currie was appointed by Reagan. In 1994. Then by Clinton, in 1994, to the federal bench, after the elder Bush nominated her and lost the election. Then she took senior status under Obama. Currie has sat on the federal bench for thirty-one years. The first president whose judicial nomination listed her was a Republican. The administration whose lawyers are now calling her appointment “Biden” is the same administration whose Justice Department is now appealing her ruling. The brief calls her judge. The Truth Social post calls her a fraud. The two voices are coming out of the same office, on the same day, on the same case.

I have run a casino floor. There is a thing in casino law. When you are arguing with the gaming commission, you do not, on your way out of the meeting, post a video of yourself flipping the gaming commission off. You do not, on the way back in, ask the same gaming commission to please reconsider. The two activities are inconsistent. The casino loses both arguments. The casino’s license, eventually, gets revoked.

The Department’s appeal is a normal motion. The President’s post is not a normal post. The President is undermining his own appellate brief in real time, on a public network, with his own lawyers reading along. By the afternoon, the talking-heads on cable were reading the social-media post out loud while reading the brief out loud, and the brief was the loser of that comparison every time.

The statute remains six pages. The clock remains a clock. Halligan remains, for all of November, a person who was charging crimes for two months past the cap.

I’m arguing with the television again. The television is reading the statute this time.