Recent embarrassing developments in the conservative legal sphere have generated a new wave of mockery and criticism.
At the Department of Justice, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, a motion was recently filed in the 6th District Court of Appeals. Normally the subject of the appeal would attract the most attention, but Bondi’s DOJ instead showed off a staggering level of incompetence at the most basic level.
The document that was filed contained egregious spelling errors—and not in regard to obscure legal phrases. Rather, it referred to the United States as “United Staes,” called voters “votors,” and misspelled “emergency” as “emeregency.”
The very first page of the document shows “voters” misspelled as “votors.”
It’s unclear how DOJ lawyers failed to notice these errors—which would have been flagged in their word processing programs—before sending along the document.
And on the other end of things, the pipeline of conservative legal minds is clearly not being filled with the best and brightest of applicants.
Liberty University, the right-wing, religious institution of choice among conservatives, was founded by the late Jerry Falwell and overseen for years by his scandal-plagued son, Jerry Falwell Jr. The Trump administration is now seeking job candidates from the school, and an email sent to students laid out the very low standards.
“The two most important requirements are you MUST be aligned politically with President Trump and his administration and you must be willing to work hard. Don’t be scared off by the transcript requirement. GPA is not a strong factor. If you meet those two requirements, you have a shot,” the email said.
Students from Liberty University, where President Donald Trump is searching for job candidates who “MUST be aligned politically.”
The “GPA is not a strong factor” statement certainly explains President Donald Trump’s constant struggles with installing competent U.S. attorneys. Turns out loyalty to Trump over the rule of law doesn’t produce the best candidates.
These new developments come just a few weeks after the Supreme Court’s conservative justices had a moment in the limelight. In their dissenting opinions in the ruling blocking Trump’s tariffs, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh went on at length to document their disapproval.
Similarly, at a slightly lower level in the federal court system, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon recently ordered a cover-up of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report on Trump’s mishandling of classified documents.
Cannon has used her court to advocate for Trump in precisely the way that the Liberty solicitation framed it: Loyalty to Trump over everything else.
Back in the early 2000s, the conservative legal world was roiled by the notorious torture memo authored by DOJ official John Yoo. Twenty years later, things have devolved into bad spelling and blatant loyalty oaths—though voicing support for torture surely isn’t too far off.
