Biden Judge Who Blocked Trump’s DEI Orders Worked For Law Firm Stacked With Democrat Partisans
With their preelection lawfare against Donald Trump having suffered an embarrassing defeat at the 2024 ballot box, leftists have taken to weaponizing the judiciary to stop the president from enacting the agenda the American people voted for. From essentially the moment he was sworn in, Trump and his administration have been bombarded with frivolous lawsuits from these anti-democracy activists, culminating in what can only be described as “Democrat Lawfare 2.0.”
Essential to this strategy has been leftists’ focus on filing complaints in jurisdictions where they’re likely to get a quick and favorable ruling from a left-wing judge. Case in point: District Court Judge Adam Abelson.
On Feb. 21, Abelson, who serves on the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, issued a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration at the request of several left-wing organizations and the city of Baltimore. The order prohibited enforcement of provisions included in directives signed by Trump. These provisions effectively terminated federal grants and contracts for DEI-related programs and prevented federal contractors/grantees from operating “any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti discrimination laws.”
As The Federalist previously reported, “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI, is a poisonous left-wing framework that dismisses merit and instead discriminates based on characteristics such as skin color and sex.
In his ruling, Abelson argued that the plaintiffs showed “they are likely to prove” the challenged provisions “are unconstitutionally vague on their face.” He additionally claimed such policies likely violate the First Amendment, contending they represent “viewpoint discrimination.”
Abelson subsequently denied the Trump administration’s request to stay the Feb. 21 injunction on March 3, and on Monday, took his judicial activism a step further by seemingly expanding the scope of his initial injunction. As The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland noted, Abelson “‘clarifie[d]’ [his] injunction, to provide it applies to all federal agencies — not merely the ones that were actually sued” in plaintiffs’ initial lawsuit.
While Abelson’s actions fall in lockstep with other Democrat-appointed judges greenlighting leftists’ lawfare against the Trump administration, an inquisition into his background shows there’s more to the Biden appointee than meets the eye. From donating to Biden’s campaign to working for a law firm stacked with Democrat partisans and attorneys who partook in the DOJ’s anti-Trump lawfare, Abelson’s history is riddled with cases of left-wing activism that would make judges like Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blush.
Who Is Adam Abelson?
It doesn’t take much digging to find examples of Abelson displaying his fealty to leftist causes.
Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show that nearly four years prior to his September 2024 Senate confirmation, Abelson donated $350 to Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign and $110 to ActBlue. The latter is a Democrat-aligned fundraising platform that is the subject of congressional and state investigations over allegations that it allowed unlawful monies to fund left-wing political causes.
But donating to Democrat campaigns is only one facet of Abelson’s left-wing antics in the years preceding his confirmation.
As noted in his district court bio, prior to attending law school, the Ohio native served as a research fellow for Human Rights Watch and the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Santiago, Chile. As noted by the Capital Research Center’s InfluenceWatch, the former is “a left-of-center nonprofit” that’s received funding from other “left-of-center” organizations such as the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and George Soros‘ Open Society Foundations.
Abelson also served as chair of the American Bar Association’s Working Group on Building Public Trust in the American Justice System. According to its website, the project was initially created as a task force in 2016 to “determin[e] the role that bar associations might play in restoring the public’s trust” in the justice system amid the “increasing racial tensions, retaliatory violence against police officers, and a growing sense of public distrust in our nation’s justice system.”
As The Federalist’s Joy Pullmann recently reported, the ABA notoriously “advocates for and engages in unlawful racial and sexual discrimination and is a highly partisan actor on behalf of the Democrat Party and other anti-Constitution activists.” The organization, Pullmann added, “affects the U.S. lawyer pipeline and licensing system, accrediting law schools, rating judges, and weaponizing lawyer discipline.”
Abelson has additionally served as the vice chair for the Maryland-based Job Opportunities Task Force, which seeks to “develop and advocate policies and programs to increase the skills, job opportunities, and incomes of low wage workers and job seekers in Maryland.” On its website, the organization lists “inclusion” as one of its core values, which it aims to foster “through the application and promotion of a racial equity lens in every facet of life, particularly the workplace.”
The group is financially supported by grants from several left-wing organizations, such as the Abell Foundation and Open Society Institute-Baltimore, a branch of Soros’ aforementioned Open Society Foundations.
Zuckerman Spaeder: House of Democrat Horrors
Abelson’s partisan history doesn’t stop there. The Biden appointee also boasts notable ties to a little-known law firm called Zuckerman Spaeder LLP.
A May 2024 Zuckerman Spaeder press release reveals that Abelson served as a partner at the firm for 11 years (2012-2023), during which he “represented clients in complex civil litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government investigations.” This work included serving on the Zuckerman Spaeder team that represented lawyer and former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig, who was indicted by the Justice Department (DOJ) in April 2019 on charges of “making false statements and concealing material information about his activities on behalf of Ukraine” from federal authorities.
The case “stemmed” from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into nonexistent collusion between Trump and Russia during the 2016 election, according to Fox News. Craig was ultimately found “not guilty” by a jury in September 2019.
Most alarming about Abelson’s ties to Zuckerman Spaeder, however, is that the firm is stacked with Democrat partisans.
According to OpenSecrets, nearly all of the 2024 political donations made by Zuckerman Spaeder employees went to Democrat candidates, with none going to Republican ones. Similar trends were also evident in the 2022 cycle, in which 98.45 percent of firm employee political donations to federal candidates went to Democrats and only 1.55 percent went to a single Republican.
A more detailed look at Zuckerman Spaeder’s roster of lawyers further confirms the firm is anything but “nonpartisan.”
Zuckerman Spaeder LLP is chaired by Caroline Judge Mehta, a Harvard Law School grad who also serves as a member of the firm’s DEI Committee. FEC records show that Mehta previously donated to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and the campaigns of former Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and Rep. Larry Kissell, D-N.C.
Most recently, Zuckerman Spaeder LLP announced that former DOJ attorneys David M. Rody and Aaron S.J. Zelinsky had joined the firm as partners.
Rody — who has a history of donating to Democrat candidates and causes — rejoined the DOJ in 2022 after a stint in the private sector to work on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents prosecution against Trump. Smith and Rody’s lawfare went down in flames last year when Judge Aileen Cannon tossed the charges after ruling that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, Zelinsky was one of several bad actors to partake in Mueller’s special counsel investigation into baseless allegations of collusion between Trump and Moscow. In its presser announcing his partnership with the firm, Zuckerman Spaeder bragged that Zelinsky “led the Special Counsel Office’s investigation and prosecution of Roger Stone and George Papadopoulos.”
Speaking of the Russia collusion hoax, it’s worth mentioning that Abelson’s former employer is also partnered with Aitan D. Goelman, who last year secured a $1.2 million settlement with the Biden DOJ on behalf of former FBI agent Peter Strzok.
Instrumental in facilitating the FBI’s baseless get-Trump inquiry, Strzok was fired in 2018 after his texts with fellow agent Lisa Page became public. In a series of summer 2016 messages, the two then-FBI employees discussed the use of an “insurance policy” if Trump were to be elected later that year.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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