“Courtroom Hug Gets Miami Judge DQ’d From Trump Library Case” —
- “A Miami-Dade state court judge is disqualified from overseeing further proceedings in the legal battle over a local college’s decision to donate its land for a Trump Presidential Library. An appellate panel found the judge showed bias toward the plaintiff by giving him a hug after a hearing, and seemingly thanking him for filing the suit. But some of the lawyers involved in the litigation say the judge’s removal from the case is unfair to her.”
- “The ruling from Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal takes Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Mavel Ruiz off plaintiff Marvin Dunn’s lawsuit against the Miami-Dade College Board of Trustees.”
- “Dunn sued after the trustees voted last year to donate a 2.6-acre property worth at least $67 million as the site of a planned presidential library for Donald Trump. Dunn, a local historian and one-time Miami mayoral candidate, alleged the board’s vote was not properly advertised under Florida’s public records laws.”
- “Ruiz initially blocked the land transfer, and set a trial date for August 2026. She ultimately dismissed Dunn’s suit with prejudice in January, but not before denying a motion by defense counsel to get her to step down from the case.”
- “According to defense counsel, the judge’s alleged actions at a December hearing showed bias toward Dunn.”
- “According to the transcript of the hearing included in the motion to disqualify Ruiz, the judge compared Dunn’s case to one filed ‘years ago,’ by a ‘gentleman’ who was a ‘pillar of the community’ that had sued a governmental agency that he ‘did not believe … was doing the right thing for the citizens of this community.’”
- “‘He [the plaintiff in that case] put his money where his mouth is. He came in second. He was not successful in that action, but in the order, this court wrote how important a member of this community is when they are willing to put themselves, their money and their home on the line for the better good. And that’s what you [Dunn] did, sir,’ Ruiz said. ‘It’s my understanding that you mortgaged your house to pay for the stiff bond that this court imposed on you and you did it. And I thank you.’”
- “After the hearing, Ruiz allegedly descended from the bench to shake hands and ‘exchange pleasantries’ with attorneys on both sides before she ‘briefly hugged’ Dunn, according to Dunn’s sworn declaration included in court records.”
- “Dunn’s attorneys, Andres Rivero of Rivero Mestre and Richard E. Brodsky of The Brodsky Law Firm, argued in a March filing that Ruiz’s ultimate dismissal with prejudice showed she was not biased toward their client, and claimed the embrace in question followed warm greetings to both parties and came at a point when the judge ‘obviously’ believed the case was over.”
- “But the per curiam panel opinion, signed by Judge Ivan F. Fernandez, Judge Thomas Logue and Judge Monica Gordo, held the evidence of bias was ‘legally sufficient to create in a reasonably prudent person a well-founded fear that they would not receive a fair hearing before the judge.’”
- “The appellate court also found Ruiz should not hear Dunn’s motion for reconsideration of her January dismissal.”
- “Meanwhile, Jesus M. Suarez, partner at Continental and attorney for the college, said ‘the trial court should have recused itself in the first instance.’”
- “Judicial ethics bar Ruiz from commenting on open cases, the court’s spokesperson, Eunice Sigler, noted.”
- “Ruiz is one of only two incumbent state court judges in South Florida who has drawn a challenger this election cycle.”
“Judge Who Laid the Groundwork for Trump’s Supreme Court Battle Used to Work for Him” —
- “The appellate judge whose dissent laid the groundwork for a Supreme Court intervention in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against President Donald Trump worked in the White House in 2019, when Trump made the defamatory comments. It’s an apparent conflict of interest that’s made even more relevant given the judge’s forceful defense of Trump’s actions at the time.”
- “Judge Steven Menashi, who authored the dissent, didn’t recuse himself from the case — nor does it appear in the court record that he ever revealed his proximity to Trump at the time. But his actions could result in the case being thrown out or even put taxpayers on the hook for the $83 million granted to Carroll following a 2024 civil trial in which Trump was found liable for defamation for denying that he sexually assaulted her.”
- “Carroll scored a temporary victory in her long-running fight against Trump on Wednesday, when a federal appeals court in New York said it would not reconsider one of two defamation cases against Trump. However, a lone Trump-appointed judge penned a dissent that could breathe new life into Trump’s side — without acknowledging his own time in the Trump White House.”
- “Menashi was a special assistant and associate counsel to the president in June 2019, when the administration put out a statement saying that Carroll was merely ‘trying to sell a new book’ and when Trump told a reporter on the White House lawn that ‘it’s a total false accusation and I don’t know anything about her.’ Jurors in Manhattan considered those two statements when they concluded Trump acted with malice and awarded Carroll a massive sum.”
- “The timing means that Menashi — who has been guarded about his interactions with Trump and whatever legal advice he gave the president — was working for the defendant in the case during the exact moment that led to the successful lawsuit.”
- “On Wednesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals refused Trump’s request to have the entire bench reconsider a smaller panel’s decision last year to uphold the massive punitive damages against Trump. That smaller panel had accused the president of ‘extraordinary and unprecedented conduct’ in his June 2019 statements against Carroll, supporting the view that he wasn’t shielded by presidential power when he did so.”
- “However, the decision also came with Menashi’s vociferous 54-page dissent, which planted the seeds for the Supreme Court to weigh in.”
- “In it, he criticized what he called ‘unauthorized damages, duplicative compensatory damages, and a grossly excessive monetary figure for a defamation claim.’ He also highlighted what he called ‘several errors’ in the case that made it ‘obvious that the president was acting within the scope of his office when responding to reporters at the White House.’”
- “Menashi also disagreed that Trump should be held personally liable in the case. Menashi wrote that it ‘made no sense’ for judges to block then-Attorney General Pam Bondi’s attempt to remove Trump and name the U.S. government as the defendant under provisions in the Westfall Act, which protects government employees from lawsuits while on the job — though the trial judge considered those arguments at length and even had appellate courts in New York and Washington, D.C. weigh in.”
- “But most importantly, he gave Trump’s lawyers the key phrase they need to get the Supreme Court’s attention, writing that the appellate’s support of Carroll ‘created a circuit split.’”
- “‘The Supreme Court may want to consider whether that is how the Westfall Act applies to the president,’ Menashi wrote.”
- “When Menashi was nominated to the bench in 2019, CNN surfaced editorials from his days as a columnist for the conservative New York Sun, in which he attacked feminists, gay rights groups and diversity efforts. He was lambasted by critics as ‘one of Trump’s most radical picks’ and accused of authoring ‘Trump’s worst policies for immigrants and women.’”
- “But Menashi refused to detail his work for the Trump administration, rebuffing questions from then-Sen. Dianne Feinstein about his interactions with White House aide Stephen Miller and declining to say whether he had anything to do with the administration’s policy that separated migrant families and children at the U.S.-Mexico border.”
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
