{"id":3137,"date":"2026-05-03T23:57:51","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T23:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=3137"},"modified":"2026-05-03T23:57:51","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T23:57:51","slug":"us-justice-department-can-use-military-lawyers-to-prosecute-civilians-judge-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=3137","title":{"rendered":"US Justice Department can use military lawyers to prosecute civilians, judge rules"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Nate Raymond<\/p>\n

May 1 (Reuters) – The Trump administration’s assignment of military lawyers to help the Department of Justice prosecute civilians for offenses unrelated to the \u200cmilitary does not violate federal law, a Minnesota judge ruled on Friday.<\/p>\n

U.S. Magistrate \u200cJudge Shannon Elkins in Minneapolis reached that conclusion in a closely watched case in which a defendant challenged the \u200blawfulness of being prosecuted by a lawyer from the armed services.<\/p>\n

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Paul Johnson, a Minnesota resident, was charged with assaulting a Customs and Border Protection agent in January as President Donald Trump’s administration pursued an aggressive immigration enforcement surge in his state.<\/p>\n

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During the surge, the Defense Department \u200cassigned lawyers belonging to the Judge Advocate \u2060General’s Corps to assist the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, after it had sent JAGs to help prosecute crime in Washington, D.C., and \u2060Tennessee.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for Johnson argued that the use of JAG lawyers to prosecute civilians in cases without a military nexus violated the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law that generally forbids the military \u200bfrom taking \u200bpart in civilian law enforcement, as well as \u200bDepartment of Defense regulations.<\/p>\n

He sought to \u200chave the military lawyer removed from his case, a cause that garnered national attention after 11 former JAG lawyers filed a brief supporting him that argued “the government has crossed a perilous line.”<\/p>\n

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But Elkins sided with the government in finding that Congress had through two other laws created exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act that give the U.S. attorney general the \u200cauthority to appoint JAG lawyers to prosecute civilians \u200bas special assistant U.S. attorneys.<\/p>\n

“If Congress passes statutes giving \u200bthe Department of Justice the authority \u200bto appoint active military personnel as SAUSAs to prosecute civilians, that is \u200cthe law,” she wrote.<\/p>\n

She said that while \u200bDefense Department regulations recognize \u200bit would be “ill-advised” for JAG lawyers to prosecute civilians in cases unrelated to the military, those regulations do not give her the power to disqualify a military \u200blawyer from Johnson’s case.<\/p>\n

Kevin Riach, \u200ca lawyer for Johnson, said he plans to appeal. Representatives for the U.S. \u200bAttorney’s Office in Minnesota did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

(Reporting by \u200bNate Raymond in Boston; Editing by William Mallard)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nate Raymond May 1 (Reuters) – The Trump administration’s assignment of military lawyers to help the Department<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,7,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law","category-news","category-us"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3139,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137\/revisions\/3139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}