Federal judge blasts Trump admin's 'extravagant and unsupported theory' for hiding spending decisions from the public

Source: Law & Crime

Jul 21st, 2025, 12:57 pm


A veteran federal judge remembered for not simply taking the DOJ's word for it during President Donald Trump's first term — when the administration suddenly moved to dismiss a long-running criminal case against former National Security Advisor and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn — is now ordering the government to "stop violating the law!" on public disclosure of executive branch spending distribution decisions.

Senior U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan on Monday, in a 60-page decision, ripped the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for flouting congressional legislation signed into law by then-President Joe Biden in 2022 that required the executive to "publish its apportionment decisions on a publicly available online database within two days of the decision."

The so-called "Public Apportionment Database," Sullivan noted, was in use until March, "when, without notice," the Trump administration "took the database offline" under the notion that the underlying law was "an unconstitutional encroachment on the Executive Branch's decision-making authority."

Yet, the database came about as a consequence of Trump's Ukraine impeachment, which at its core had alleged the first Trump administration had illegally impounded congressionally appropriated military aid on the condition that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announce investigations into Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden ahead of the 2020 election. Trump was ultimately acquitted in the U.S. Senate, just as he was following his Jan. 6 impeachment.

Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/stop-violating-the-law-federal-judge-blasts-trump-admins-extravagant-and-unsupported-theory-for-hiding-spending-decisions-from-the-public/