Trump Refuses To Tell Judge Consultants on Trans Military Ban

By: Paul Goldberg, Staff Writer

After U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman (pictured right), in Washington State gave the Trump administration until 8 p.m. on Thursday March 22, to identify who the parties were that Trump consulted with over his “Transgender Military Ban“, DOJ attorneys have refused to give the names of the consultants and instead, filed a brief claiming that the President has the right under executive privilege to keep the names under seal.

The DOJ’s brief states that “The principle of executive privilege lets the president keep certain information confidential if doing so is in the public interest.”

“Defendants respectfully disagree and adhere to their position that judicial deference to executive decisions about the composition of the military is not dependent upon judicial review of the deliberative process that preceded the decisions at issue,” the document states. “In addition, defendants do not waive any executive privileges simply by arguing for judicial deference to the President’s military decisions.” states the brief filed by the DOJ.

This is yet another attempt at lawyers for the Trump administration to try and cover yet another lie put forth by the 45th president of the United States Donald J. Trump.

In fact back in 2017 when Trump used his twitter account to announce his ban on Transgenders in the military back in July 2017, his excuse was that he had consulted with the Generals and Military experts however no one could find one single military analyst or general who backed Trump’s lie.

To show that once again Trump was lying, his own Defense Secretary James Mattis blindsided with his tweet while he was on vacation and couldn’t believe what he was reading! Even General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed that he had not had any meetings with the president regarding Transgender military personnel.

Lambda Legal issued a statement to the press after the latest move made by the Trump administration which clearly shows that they never had any justification to launch the so called transgender ban on the military.

“This is yet more proof that when it comes to justifying this ban, the government doesn’t have the goods.” said Tara Borelli, counsel for Lambda Legal’s Southern Regional Office. “The government has said that it simply will not provide information about the process that led to the president’s Twitter ban. As the government well understands, this means that it will not be able to rely on that information to help defend the ban, which exposes a fatal flaw in their position: There is no justification for this discrimination. The government isn’t willing to pull back the curtain, because there’s nothing behind it.” It’s “yet one more reason for the court to permanently enjoin the ban,” said Borelli.

While defense Secretary Mattis has recommended that there should not be a ban on transgender personnel, there could be some restrictions put in place. As soon as president Trump makes his announcement on this issue, we will bring it to you.