President Donald Trump and Judge Ana Reyes have exchanged heated words for months, with the former described the latter as a “crazed lunatic” when she questions his explanations for destroying public property to renovate a golf course asking “rather a lot of coincidence.” Now a new report reveals how Reyes’ fellow judges are backing her — and how she uses Pac-Man to de-stress.
“Judge Ana Reyes of the US District Court for the District of Columbia is the latest judge to find herself in the crosshairs of an administration that’s escalated tensions with the federal judiciary and targeted individual judges who’ve ruled against its agenda,” reported Bloomberg’s Suzanne Monk on Thursday.
She later added, “The judge’s refusal to tolerate perceived missteps by the Justice Department are part and parcel with her approach on the bench, where she’s known to be direct with litigants and quick to criticize shoddy courtroom behavior.”
“There’s no BS about her,” Xiao Wang, a University of Virginia law professor who worked with Reyes in private practice, told Monk. “She will try to get to the point. She doesn’t want to waste anyone’s time.”
Wang added, “You don’t get to join the executive committee at Williams & Connolly without being a fantastic lawyer.” Wang was not alone in feeling so positively about Reyes, who he described as a “mentor.”
“If a judge has a spark of temper in the face of the kind of intransigence and lack of a type of traditional respect shown to judges and which they deserve, then — what was it that Harry Truman said?” Paul Grimm, a retired North Carolina federal judge, told Monk. “”‘If you can’t take the heat, then get out of the kitchen.’”
Monk elaborated on Reyes background.
“Born in Uruguay and raised in Louisville, Reyes was the first Latina and first openly gay judge on the Washington federal trial court,” Monk wrote. “She previously spent more than two decades at Williams & Connolly, where she co-chaired the international disputes practice group and served on its executive committee. She also handled pro bono immigration cases while at the firm.”
Monk added, “She keeps an arcade machine, which plays Pac-Man, in her chambers. Reyes suggested during a recent hearing in the golf course case that a Department of Interior official could use it while others testified.”
Earlier this week, Reyes was particularly scathing when denouncing Trump’s behavior in terms of the legal proceedings around his allegedly illegal renovations of the East Potomac Golf Course.
“For months, the Court has declined Plaintiffs’ repeated requests to restrain the Government’s activities at East Potomac Golf Course. Time and again, it has credited Government counsel’s representations and refused to presume bad faith. The Government now seeks to disqualify the Court for bias,” Reyes wrote when scolding the administration. “That is a serious charge. The Court answers it. With the record.”
Reyes went on, “Within minutes of the first hearing in this litigation, the Court praised Government counsel for filing ‘one of the more exceptional government briefs I have seen in three years on the bench.’ The ‘writing was spectacular’ and ‘the analysis was spot on.’ Later to the same counsel: ‘[Y]ou know I have an immense amount of respect for you. I think at every single hearing I have said that I think you’re doing an excellent job.'”