Civil contempt trial may be in store for Trump admin as judge's anger grows: legal expert

Federal judges continue to grow increasingly frustrated with the government as it continues to defy court orders. It's something that could result in a civil contempt charge, one legal analyst warned Tuesday.

Speaking on MSNBC, legal expert Lisa Rubin brought up scathing comments in the Voice of America case after a judge said his rulings were violated.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth accused the Trump administration of falsifying their plans to gut VOA in previous hearings. He accused the government of disrespecting defendants and even threatened a civil contempt hearing after the government wasted time and resources.

The case was decided in April, but the government has dragged its feet, said Rubin. The government never disputed that it had a statutory obligation to meet the program mandates. It never appealed the ruling.

So, there "could be" a civil contempt hearing, Rubin said, "because they've had contempt for the government's orders to provide additional information, as well as comply with that April order, ordering them to restore certain programming. He hasfound that in a variety ofdifferent ways, they've notonly failed to do that, butthey've taken opposite actions."

An example, she said, was stripping VOA staff of their civil service protections, which would "allow them to move forward with reductions in force that are contrary to being able to restore that programming."

She recalled a footnote in the case in which Lamberth blasted the director, Kari Lake, writing that her "brazen disinterest in theunambiguous statutoryobligations implicates hercompetence to implement thepresident's directives in amanner consistent withfundamental tenets ofadministrative law."

Rubin said that it's a nice way of saying, "you don't have the foggiest idea what you're doing. And that's a real problem under the law."