The Trump Administration could be sanctioned by a federal judge at the end of this week after the lawyers of the Department of Justice informed a federal judge on Tuesday night that they will not put an administration official at the height of the jury testimonies.
The American district judge Charles Alsup had tried to make the interim chief of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Charles Ezell, testifies on Thursday about the mass dismissal of the test employees.
But the Department of Justice said Tuesday that they would not make Ezell be available for the testimony.
When Ezell is not available, the lawyers of the Department of Justice also withdrew their affidavit, a measure that Judge Charles Alsup suggested would greatly increase the probabilities that the Trump administration loses the case, which implies the legality of dismissing thousands of evidence.
“The live testimony of Mr. Ezell is not necessary, as an objective issue, because the documentary evidence and existing information show that OPM is not addressing the agencies that terminate the test employees,” said the DAJ lawyers.
A group of federal unions alleged that Ezell lied in an affidavit that his office did not order the dismissal of evidence depending on “performance or misconduct”, which led Judge Alsup to order Ezell to testify in person and under oath in San Francisco on Thursday.
The Trump administration tried to withdraw the order, arguing in a presentation on Monday that the testimony raises “fundamental constitutional concerns.”
A view shows the logo of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), after the test staff at the OPM was fired at a telephone conference and was given less than an hour to leave the building, outside OPM in Washington, DC, on February 13, 2025.
Tierney L. Cross/Reuters
Judge Alsup on Monday night denied his request to cancel the hearing.
“The problem here is that the interim director Ezell presented an affidavit in support of the position of the defendant, but now he refuses to seem questioned or deposed,” Judge Alsup wrote in an order on Monday night.
The plaintiffs claim that on February 13, Ezell convened a phone call with the heads of federal agencies to direct them to cancel thousands of federal employees and “falsely affirm that the terminations are for performance reasons.”
In a sworn statement last month, Ezell denied having directed the terminations based on performance reasons, instead of arguing that OPM only issued guidance to individual agencies about the need for trial workers to “demonstrate why it is of public interest” so that the government continues to use them.
“OPM did not order the agencies to terminate any particular test employee based on performance or misconduct, and did not create a ‘mass termination program’, as described by the plaintiffs in this matter,” Ezell wrote.
The groups that challenge the shots in court say it was a lie, and Judge Alsup seemed inclined to agree during a judicial hearing last month.
“How could you suddenly amputate much of the workforce during the night? It is so irregular and so generalized and so aberrant for the history of our country,” Judge Alsup said. “How could all that happen with every agency that decides on their own to do something so aberrational?”
“I don’t think so,” said the judge. “I think OPM directed them or ordered to do so in that phone call. That is the way the evidence points out.”
Accusations about mass shots occur when the Trump administration faces greater scrutiny about the role of the government efficiency department to reduce the size of the federal government. During a cabinet meeting last week, Trump told the heads of federal agencies that they are in charge of cutting their own departments, instead of Elon Musk and Doge.
