A Bush-Appointed Judge Just Torched Trump’s DOJ Subpoenas Against Tim Walz — and Gavin Newsom Could Not Stop Cheering.

On June 22, 2026, the chief federal judge in Minnesota threw out six grand-jury subpoenas the Trump Justice Department had aimed at Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) and a row of other Minnesota Democrats — and he did not do it quietly. In a 29-page order, U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz wrote that there was “no doubt” the subpoenas were issued not to investigate a crime but to “harass, coerce, and retaliate” against officials who had refused to help the administration run its immigration crackdown.

The detail conservatives will note first: Schiltz is a George W. Bush appointee, not a Democratic judge. The detail Democrats seized on: a Republican-appointed jurist had just called a Republican administration’s use of the grand jury “blatantly unlawful.” California Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA), himself a frequent Trump antagonist, celebrated within hours.

This is the rare accountability story that cuts against the grain of this site’s usual beat — the official under scrutiny here was a Democrat, the judge ruled in his favor, and the conduct the court condemned was a Republican DOJ’s. We cover it the way we cover everything: with the receipts. The ruling, the underlying operation, the subpoenas, and the reactions are all on the record. Here is what actually happened.

• 6 subpoenas — grand-jury subpoenas issued Jan. 20, 2026 to the offices of Gov. Walz, AG Keith Ellison, the Minneapolis and St. Paul mayors, and two county boards — all quashed · Source: NBC News; KSTP
• 29 pages — the length of Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz's order tossing every subpoena · Source: NBC News; CNN
• “Blatantly unlawful” — Schiltz's words for using the grand jury 'to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action' · Source: NBC News; Courthouse News
• ~3,000 agents — the peak federal deployment in 'Operation Metro Surge,' the Dec. 2025–Feb. 2026 ICE operation the officials had sued to stop · Source: DHS; Wikipedia
• Bush appointee — Judge Schiltz was nominated by President George W. Bush — a Republican-appointed judge ruling against a Republican DOJ · Source: NOTUS; RedState

On Monday, June 22, 2026, U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz, the chief judge of the District of Minnesota and a 2006 nominee of President George W. Bush, granted the Minnesota officials’ motions to quash and tossed all six DOJ grand-jury subpoenas. He held that the “dominant purpose” of the subpoenas was “to coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration law and to harass and retaliate against them” for opposing the administration. The grand jury, he wrote, cannot be turned into a tool for that.

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“Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action — particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take — is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use of the grand-jury process.”

U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz, in his June 22, 2026 order quashing the subpoenas

Schiltz did not stop at the purpose. He found the government had “struggled — without success — to identify a single plausible investigatory justification for the subpoenas,” and that “the connections between the information sought in the subpoenas and any possible criminal violation range from extremely weak to nonexistent.” That gap, he wrote, “only adds to the overwhelming evidence that these subpoenas were not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce, and retaliate.”

The Justice Department served the six grand-jury subpoenas on January 20, 2026. They went to the office of Governor Tim Walz (D-MN); Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D-MN); Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D); St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her (D); and the boards of commissioners of Hennepin County and Ramsey County. According to the reporting, the subpoenas sought an expansive sweep of internal documents and communications — records the government said could show “possible violations of federal criminal laws” during the immigration operation.

What the judge found striking was the mismatch between that breadth and any identifiable offense. ABC News described the subpoenas as “extraordinarily broad,” and Schiltz’s order treated the sheer scope as evidence of motive: a genuine criminal probe targets specific conduct, while these reached for nearly everything the officials had said and written about a federal operation they were publicly and legally fighting. The officials had already sued to stop that operation; the subpoenas, the judge concluded, were the administration’s answer to being sued.

None of this happened in a vacuum. The subpoenas grew out of Operation Metro Surge, the large-scale immigration enforcement push the Department of Homeland Security launched in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area beginning in December 2025. DHS called it the largest immigration operation it had ever carried out; at its peak roughly 3,000 federal agents were deployed, and the department announced it had marked 3,000 arrests by mid-January. The State of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul sued in federal court to end the operation. The DOJ’s subpoenas followed.

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The operation was bitterly contested on the ground. Two U.S. citizens — Renée Good and Alex Pretti — were killed in incidents involving federal agents during the surge, touching off weeks of protests across the Twin Cities. Federal prosecutors, for their part, charged a group of people with conspiracy to impede agents during the crackdown. Border czar Tom Homan announced the operation would wind down in February 2026. Walz, who has emerged as one of the loudest critics of the administration’s immigration tactics, said the surge left Minnesota with “deep damage” and “generational trauma.” That mutual hostility is the context the judge said the subpoenas have to be read against.

The ruling was barely public before California Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) turned it into a national talking point. Newsom, who has spent the year trading blows with the Trump administration over its deployments in his own state, posted that “a federal court just confirmed what everyone already knew: Trump’s DOJ is illegally using the machinery of government to target his political enemies with bogus investigations,” calling it “not justice” but “corruption” that “must end.” Conservative outlets noted the irony of a Democratic governor celebrating a ruling by a Republican appointee — and pressed the obvious counter-question.

That counter-question is a fair one to put on the record. The same Democrats now praising Judge Schiltz’s warning against weaponizing the grand jury were, in many cases, silent or supportive when critics raised parallel concerns about prosecutions during the prior administration. A consistent principle — that criminal process should never be aimed at political adversaries — only means something if it is applied regardless of who holds the Justice Department. Schiltz’s order, notably, framed his concern in exactly those neutral terms: the rule he laid down protects officials of any party from a DOJ of any party.

“A federal court just confirmed what everyone already knew: Trump's DOJ is illegally using the machinery of government to target his political enemies with bogus investigations. That's not justice. It's corruption. It must end.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), reacting to the ruling, June 22, 2026

The Justice Department’s position has not vanished simply because the subpoenas did. The department maintained that obstruction of a federal immigration operation is a legitimate subject for a criminal inquiry, and a DOJ spokesperson said the department “takes the unlawful obstruction of federal law enforcement operations extremely seriously and will continue to act in full compliance with the law to investigate these matters.” The administration is not without a factual hook: federal prosecutors did charge a group of people with conspiracy to impede agents during Operation Metro Surge, and those cases are proceeding. Defendants in any pending case are presumed innocent unless and until convicted.

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But Schiltz’s ruling drew a line the government could not cross: there is a difference between charging individuals who allegedly physically obstructed agents and serving sweeping document subpoenas on the elected officials who merely opposed the operation in public and in court. The first is law enforcement; the second, the judge held, was an attempt to punish lawful political opposition. It is also worth being precise about what the ruling did not do. Walz, Ellison, Frey, and Her were never charged with a crime, and the order does not clear anyone of anything — it simply forbids the government from using these particular subpoenas. The DOJ may appeal, and the underlying obstruction prosecutions continue.

Most of what this site documents is Democratic governance failure. This story is an honest exception, and we are not going to pretend otherwise: a Democratic governor was on the receiving end of federal process, a court ruled the process abusive, and the administration in the wrong was a Republican one. The principle Judge Schiltz protected — that prosecutors must not aim the grand jury at political enemies — is one this site has insisted on when the shoe was on the other foot, in our coverage of DOJ conduct under the prior administration. It is not a principle we get to abandon when our preferred party would benefit.

There is a second, sharper point worth keeping. The substantive fight over Operation Metro Surge — whether a sanctuary-state posture obstructs lawful federal enforcement, whether 3,000 agents in the Twin Cities was proportionate, whether the two civilian deaths were justified — remains genuinely contested, and this ruling settles none of it. What it settles is narrower and, in its way, more important: even a government convinced it is right cannot use the criminal-justice machinery to bully the officials who disagree with it. That holds for Trump’s DOJ in Minnesota. It would hold just as much for a Democratic DOJ in Texas or Florida.

A Bush-appointed chief judge looked at six grand-jury subpoenas, found no plausible crime behind them, and called the effort “blatantly unlawful.” Walz claimed vindication; Newsom threw a victory party; the DOJ insisted it was protecting law enforcement and may yet appeal. All of that is real and on the record. The durable lesson for a site built on holding power accountable is the one Schiltz wrote into his order: the grand jury is not a weapon for punishing political opponents, no matter who controls it. The day that principle becomes partisan — cheered when it shields our side, ignored when it shields theirs — is the day it stops protecting anyone. We’ll track any appeal, the ongoing obstruction prosecutions, and whether the standard holds the next time the parties switch places.

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