Left: Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz (U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota). Right: President Donald Trump listens during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, July 16, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
The chief judge of Minnesota's federal district court resoundingly smacked down the DOJ's grand jury subpoenas of former Vice President Kamala Harris' onetime running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, and other state and local officials as "forbidden."
Though the subpoenas were "risible," their punitive and "blatantly unlawful" issuance amid Operation Metro Surge was no laughing matter, wrote Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz in a June 17 order that has since been unsealed.
"The public has a very strong interest in learning of this abuse of the grand-jury process by the Department," the judge stated.
In his 29-page order, the George W. Bush-appointed jurist noted that the subpoenas of Walz's office, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey's office, Attorney General Keith Ellison's office and more, came after the state sued the government over Operation Metro Surge and the president lashed out online about the "lack of cooperation with federal immigration officials. Trump's officials publicly echoed his remarks.
The subpoenas for "extremely broad categories of records relating to federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota" were served on officials on Jan. 20, during the time period between the deadly DHS shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Schiltz observed.
"Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action — particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take — is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use the grand-jury process. The only question, then, is whether the challenged subpoenas were issued for one of these forbidden purposes," the judge said. "The Court has no doubt that they were."
The ruling, similar to one that quashed DOJ subpoenas of Trump's rival New York Attorney General Letitia James, used the government's "well-established" previous failures to reach the same result.
"And, of course, this campaign played out against the backdrop of the Trump administration's well-established history of using criminal investigations to retaliate against and pressure the President's political and personal adversaries," Schiltz continued, mocking the DOJ's "asserted investigatory purpose for the challenged subpoenas" as "risible."
"The fact that connections between the information sought in the subpoenas and any possible criminal violation range from extremely weak to nonexistent only adds to the overwhelming evidence that these subpoenas were not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce, and retaliate," he concluded.
Walz reacted by calling the ruling a "victory for the rule of law and our democracy."
https://x.com/GovTimWalz/status/2069093805232443731?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The DOJ has not yet signaled whether it will appeal.