opm Archives - Home Safety Tech Pros

Trump admin says agency head will defy order to testify

homesafetytechpros — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 09:39:57 +0000

FILE — President Donald Trump throws pens used to sign executive orders to the crowd during an indoor Presidential Inauguration parade event in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025 (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File).

The Trump administration on Tuesday told a federal judge that an administrative agency head intends to defy a court order in an ongoing lawsuit over the mass-firing of thousands of government workers.

In the underlying litigation, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and other labor unions accuse the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) of embarking upon an “illegal program” that ordered several federal agencies to fire employees via “standardized notices of termination, drafted by OPM, that falsely state that the terminations are for performance reasons.”

To date, U.S. District Judge William Alsup, a Bill Clinton appointee, has echoed the plaintiffs by calling the firings “illegal.” In a February order, the court said OPM has no authority over other agencies’ staffing. And, in a series of later rulings, the court ordered OPM acting Director Charles Ezell to testify under oath over his attested-to claims about the layoff directive — threatening sanctions for noncompliance.

Now, the government says there is no way Ezell will be testifying. Simultaneously, the U.S. Department of Justice moved to rescind Ezell’s declaration on which the order to testify was based.

“Defendants inform the Court that they do not intend to produce any live witnesses as part of their hearing presentation and intend to rest on their legal arguments for why a preliminary injunction should not issue,” the government’s motion reads. “As part of this presentation, Defendants are withdrawing the declaration of Acting Office of Personnel Management and will not be presenting Mr. Ezell at the hearing.”

The hearing in question is slated for Thursday afternoon.

In an order issued on March 10, Alsup rejected the government’s request to cancel the evidentiary hearing. The judge also rejected a request to keep Ezell from testifying and previewed a road map for sanction should Ezell decline to testify.

“The Court’s order that he appear or be deposed will not be vacated, nor will the hearing on March 13,” the judge wrote. “If Ezell does not appear in violation of that order, then the Court will have to decide the sanction, including whether or not to strike or limit his sworn declaration.”

Now that the Ezell declaration has been withdrawn, the upshot of the government’s forthcoming defiance of the court order is unclear. If, for example, the sanction foreseen by the court is limited to the declaration, the impact could be minimal to nil.

The court’s previous order threatening sanctions notes that the government’s position has little daylight between Ezell’s declaration.

“The problem here is that Acting Director Ezell submitted a sworn declaration in support of defendants’ position, but now refuses to appear to be cross examined, or to be deposed (despite, it should be added, government counsel’s embrace of that very idea during the TRO hearing),” Alsup mused.

Ezell and OPM, for their part, maintain that they did not actually direct any agencies to fire anyone — but merely told agencies to review their probationary workers and make determinations about whether to continue their employment based on need.

And, to hear the government tell it, the rescission of the declaration more or less makes the prospect of Ezell testifying a moot point.

“Because the Court’s stated purpose of bringing Mr. Ezell to the hearing was to obtain testimony from him regarding the contentions made in his declaration, Defendants therefore submit that his presence is no longer necessary at any hearing given that this declaration is now withdrawn,” the DOJ filing reads.

Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.

The government insists procedure in the case so far has taken a wrong turn.

The plaintiffs, in their original lawsuit, filed some of their claims under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which is the statute governing most litigation against administrative agencies.

In APA cases, the government says, expedited discovery is disfavored unless there is a clear need “to plug holes in the administrative record.” That, the DOJ argues, is not the case here.

“Thus, until such time as Defendants have submitted an administrative record, and until such time as Plaintiffs raise any issues with that administrative record, any kind of testimony or discovery on Plaintiffs’ APA claims is inappropriate,” the government’s motion goes on. “Moreover, testimony at this preliminary stage is generally disfavored by the Ninth Circuit.”

Source link

The post Trump admin says agency head will defy order to testify appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

OPM director must testify in Trump mass firings case: Judge

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 16:47:48 +0000

President Donald Trump at a press conference at the White House in Washington on Feb. 27, 2025 (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Sipa USA; via AP Images)

A federal judge in California has ordered the Trump administration to produce Charles Ezell, the acting director of the Office of Personnel and Management, for testimony in the ongoing OPM mass firings case, just days after the Justice Department allegedly claimed Ezell wouldn’t be made available to testify — or face his wrath in court.

“If Ezell does not appear in violation of that order, then the Court will have to decide the sanction, including whether or not to strike or limit his sworn declaration,” warned U.S. District Judge William Alsup in a Monday order.

Ezell, appointed by Trump to be acting director after he took office in January, is accused of unlawfully firing thousands of government workers still in the probationary period of their employment. The judge had previously ordered Ezell to appear in court on Thursday to testify, but the plaintiffs suing the OPM — five labor unions and five nonprofit organizations — said in court filings last week that they believed DOJ’s Civil Division was not going to let Ezell take the stand. On Monday, those fears came to fruition as DOJ lawyers filed a motion to vacate the upcoming evidentiary hearing and preclude Ezell’s testimony.

Alsup said in his ruling that he sided against the request to have Ezell skate testimony because he had already submitted a sworn declaration supporting the defendants’ position. The government argued in its motion that “the March 13 evidentiary hearing and any depositions are unnecessary in light of OPM’s compliance with the TRO and [their] willingness to convert the Court’s TRO into a preliminary injunction.” But Alsup, a Bill Clinton appointee, pointed out how things have changed since he first granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) last month halting any additional firings.

“The problem is that plaintiffs seek broader relief than was provided by the TRO now in place,” the judge explained. “So, even if the Court must rule based solely on the record submitted during the TRO proceeding, it will do so, on or shortly after the March 13 hearing.”

In their Monday motion, DOJ lawyers urged the court to let Ezell avoid testifying because doing so would “inappropriately intrude on the workings of a coordinate branch of government and pose avoidable and unnecessary separation-of-powers concerns.” Alsup said he felt this argument fell short, too.

The mass firings case was brought forward last month by the labor unions and nonprofit organizations, which filed a 34-page complaint accusing Ezell of ordering federal agencies across the country to terminate thousands of employees “by sending them standardized notices of termination, drafted by OPM, that falsely state that the terminations are for performance reasons.” Plaintiffs argue that Congress, not OPM, is what controls federal employment and that the legislature had already determined that each agency is responsible for managing and terminating employees.

“OPM lacks the constitutional, statutory, or regulatory authority to order federal agencies to terminate employees in this fashion that Congress has authorized those agencies to hire and manage, and certainly has no authority to require agencies to perpetrate a massive fraud on the federal workforce by lying about federal workers’ ‘performance,’ to detriment of those workers, their families, and all those in the public and private sectors who rely upon those workers for important services,” the complaint states.

On Monday, DOJ lawyers claimed it was “good cause” that ultimately supported their request to vacate the evidentiary hearing and stop Ezell from testifying.

“OPM has already substantially complied with the Court’s TRO by promptly updating its guidance to agencies, thus obviating the necessity (or at minimum reducing the value) of any evidentiary hearing, and thereby also eliminating the need for the discovery Plaintiffs seek in connection with that hearing,” the DOJ said in its motion. “At the same time, Defendants’ willingness to stipulate to conversion of the TRO into a preliminary injunction further eliminates any need for or benefit from such a hearing — and, at minimum, eliminates any need to proceed on a highly expedited timetable.”

A Texas native who lived in Georgia before moving to Washington to work for Trump, Ezell is described in recent articles by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the evangelical news outlet byFaith as a data analytics expert who previously worked for OPM as a “lead data architect” and “branch chief” for its data and analytics department. It’s unclear how he came across Trump’s radar, according to the Journal-Constitution, with even Ezell himself being surprised by the job offer.

“A few months ago, I got a call from one of the president’s advisors. I assumed it was a headhunter trying to recruit me back to the private sector which happens somewhat regularly,” Ezell told byFaith. “I took the call which led to a series of meetings with representatives from the president’s administration. All the sudden, I was offered the opportunity to serve as the acting director of OPM. I humbly accepted the opportunity to serve America and the president in this way.”

Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.

Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.

Source link

The post OPM director must testify in Trump mass firings case: Judge appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.