I Have the Full Transcript of Yesterday's Hearing in Illinois v. Trump and It is Very Revealing!

As you all know, yesterday Judge April Perry, of the Northern District of Illinois District Court, held a hearing on the State of Illinois’ and City of Chicago’s request for an emergency TRO to halt Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops from Texas, as well as deployment of the Illinois National Guard. I have the transcript (and so do you if you’re a Notes from the Front member), and it is *very* illuminating.

As you also know if you’ve been playing along at home, Judge Perry did not issue a TRO, but she *did* tell the administration that they would be well-advised to not take any action before the next hearing, which is set for Thursday.

In fact, throughout yesterday’s hearing Judge Perry teases out the things about which she has concerns, especially with respect to the things for which the administration’s lawyers *have no answers* (and there are a lot of them, and they are things for which they *should* have answers, and should have had them ready at that). Yes, the Texas NG are on their way, no they probably won’t be ‘deployed’ before Thursday but he doesn’t really know, he doesn’t really know where they will be, he doesn’t really know...anything.

I believe that what she is doing is carefully laying a foundation and giving the administration enough rope to hang themselves during the upcoming hearing on Thursday. This includes giving the administration a deadline of tomorrow night to get their responses in before the Thursday morning hearing and, much more unusually, telling the plaintiffs (Illinois and Chicago) that if the administration tries any - and I quote - “nonsense” between now and Thursday morning, the plaintiff should, and here again I quote, “feel free to supplement your filings and we can change the oral argument on Thursday into an evidentiary hearing.” (Meaning that instead of it being just about the TRO, the plaintiffs will be allowed to submit more evidence for the Court’s consideration if the administration does anything untoward between now and the Thursday hearing, and in fact the Court is *encouraging* the plaintiffs to do so .)

But also, the way that a request for a TRO usually works is that the party making the request submits the request along with some supporting documents, and *upon submission*, right then and there when they file the paperwork with the Court, they are assigned a hearing date for the TRO - usually a date that is within a day or two because there is an understanding that you wouldn’t be filing for a TRO (i.e. an emergency injunction), unless it were, well, an emergency.

So often the first that the other party hears about this is when they are served with the TRO paperwork *along with the notice of hearing*. In other words “Hey you’re being sued, and also you have a hearing tomorrow.” So they have zero time to put together a response before the hearing, and so the Court is *only getting one side of the story* other than what the defendant’s lawyers are able to say during the hearing itself. This is why TROs expire quickly, and why a fuller hearing is calendared for before the TRO expires.

(True story: When I was in private practice I had an opposing counsel file for a TRO at the last minute on a Friday, and the hearing was set for first thing the following Monday. My client was served with the TRO and hearing information on Saturday morning, the other attorney *never imagining* that my client would be able to reach me - let alone would I be able to put together a response - over the weekend. But, you see, what that attorney didn’t know was that even waaaay back then (mid-90s) all of my clients communicated with me by email. So on Saturday morning I was sitting outside Starbucks, with my HP-Jornada cabled to my Ricochet cellular modem, checking my email, when I got the frantic email from my client that he had been served with a TRO. So I was able to prepare a full response that weekend, and showed up bright and shiny at the Court Monday morning, fully prepared. We won.)

Anyways, in this particular case, as you will see in the transcript, Illinois filed more than *500 pages* of documents with their request for a TRO. Not only did the administration not have time to read through all of it, let alone prepare a response to it, but even *Judge Perry* had not had time to read through it all - after all the complaint with all of the 500+ pages had only been filed with the Court *that morning!*

So as I said, I believe that the judge is laying careful groundwork, and was not wrong to not grant the TRO. These are cases of monumental historic significance, she has to get it right, both because, well, it needs to be right, and also because she already knows that whatever she does it’s going to get appealed.

As you are reading the transcript, pay special attention to the lawyers, and the caliber of their arguments and presentation. I think that you’ll be amused, bemused, and even delighted.

As compared to the administration’s lawyers (welcome back, Mr. Hamilton, you really should have been more prepared, *especially* after the roasting that Judge Immergut gave you during the Oregon v. Trump TRO hearing), Mr. Wells from the Illinois Attorney General’s office was *incredibly* well-prepared, and polished. I believe you will be quite impressed with him (I encourage you to read the entire transcript, it’s only 13 pages long).

Notes from the Front members, here is the transcript. ⬇️

*To protect myself I don’t share the documents I find publicly, I make them available privately to Notes from the Front members. If you’re not a member you can join here ⬇️ and get instant access to these documents and all of the other documents and benefits of membership including our private chat - it’s $5 a month and it’s totally fine to join and then immediately cancel if you only want certain documents.