Department of Justice says major Trump administrator officials won’t testify

The Justice Department told federal judges Tuesday that the acting head of the Office of Personnel Management will not testify at the hearing later this week, a major case challenging the government’s efforts to challenge the federal workforce after the judge rejected the Justice Department’s request to cancel the hearing.

Justice Department lawyers said they are withdrawing a statement he filed last month as the sole evidence in the case to avoid acting OPM director Charles Ezell testifying at a hearing in San Francisco on Thursday.

They wrote in court documents: “As the purpose of Mr. Ezel, presented by the court, was to obtain testimony from his declaration, the defendant therefore, given that the statement has now been withdrawn, his presence is no longer required at any hearing.”

Ezell’s statement said OPM did not “guid” other agencies to terminate probation employees, a central issue in cases raised by unions and others. However, the judge in the case repeatedly stated that in order for the statement to remain in the record, the plaintiff’s attorney would need to have the opportunity to cross-examine Ezell.

The department’s decision to withdraw the statement comes a day after U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup rejected the government’s request to cancel the hearing, who had previously said he would not do it – and revoked the subpoena to Ezell and revoked the status of other officials or testimony from other officials this week.

Last month, Alsup ordered Ezell to appear at the hearing. But on Monday, the Justice Department lawyer representing the government took an unusual step to ask the judge to cancel the hearing.

“The problem here is that Acting Director Ezell filed a pledge declaration in support of the defendant’s position, but now seems to refuse to cross-examination or be removed (although, it should be added that this is the embrace of the government lawyers at the TRO hearing),” Alsup, Alsup, in the federal court of San Francisco, in San Francisco, in the two-stage stage.

This situation is the first effort of the government to formally prevent its officials from providing affidavit. The case is an important thing, testing the Trump administration’s ability to cut federal workforce policies through its central governing body. The judge in the case previously said it was illegal for OPM to guide the agency to reduce the number of federal civil servants shooting on a large scale based on its performance.

The Justice Department argued, among other things, forced Ezel to testify that “the major separation concern will be raised at the early stages of the lawsuit,” and claimed that he had “little proof value” for the core issues in the case: whether his agency ordered others to hire employees.

“At the very bottom of the spectrum, justice, party resources and the interests of judicial economy cannot be stolen by forcing the acting head of the executive body to testify in this posture, and therefore there is no guarantee of the creation of constitutional disputes among branches; nor do they guarantee a comprehensive evidence hearing on existing records,” they wrote in court documents.

Justice Department lawyers told ALSUP they are willing to convert the temporary restraining order issued by the judge last month into a preliminary injunction to “allow a more orderly settlement of claims and defenses filed in this lawsuit.”

Such a move would also allow the preliminary injunction to appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal. ALSUP’s interim order last month required OPM to notify certain federal agencies that it has no authority to order the dismissal of employees, meaning those who have been in office for about a year or less.

The ILO lawyer quickly withdrew the government’s Monday request after it was filed, and wrote in his own document that the government’s potential testimony against Ezere created a crisis as Alsup said for the first time that he needed to attend the hearing.

“The government cannot rely on its own delay to argue that it lacks time to prepare for this hearing,” they wrote. “There should also be allowed to allow whether the hearing should continue, and the court made it clear that it was necessary to resolve the factual disputes injected by the government itself.”

This story and title have been updated with other developments.

CNN’s Katelyn Polantz contributed to the report.

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