Federal judge accuses three senior law enforcement officials of criminal obstruction

[Nevilledog]

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/judge-accuses-senior-law-enforcement-officials-of-crimes-in-covid-dispute/2021/06/14/87238c92-cd30-11eb-8014-2f3926ca24d9_story.html


A federal judge leveled criminal contempt charges Monday against senior federal law enforcement officials in a long-simmering standoff in South Dakota over the judge’s insistence that he needs to know whether deputies guarding his courtroom have been vaccinated against the coronavirus.

U.S. District Judge Charles Kornmann, who sits in Aberdeen, tore into the U.S. Marshals Service for nearly an hour over their reaction to his decision at a hearing last month to question the deputy marshal in attendance about whether she had been vaccinated.

The deputy marshal, according to the judge, refused to answer the question, at which point he ordered her out of his courtroom. The marshals, in turn, took three of the defendants scheduled for hearings that day out of the courthouse. That infuriated the judge, who describes that act as a “kidnapping” that obstructed the work of the court.

“This was such an outrageous thing to do,” the judge said at a hearing Monday, during which he spent nearly an hour laying out his rationale for accusing the three Marshals Service officials of criminal contempt and obstruction. “Nothing like this that we could find has ever been done in this country. If it is the marshals’ position that they can override court orders, they are badly mistaken.”

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