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      Much of Smartmatic Case Against Fox News Can Proceed, Judge Rules

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      The $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News by the election technology company Smartmatic can move forward, a New York judge ruled on Tuesday. But the judge tossed out Smartmatic’s defamation claims against the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro and a network guest, Sidney Powell.Smartmatic sued Rupert Murdoch’s cable news networks last year, along with several Fox hosts and guests. The lawsuit accused them of damaging the company by promoting a false narrative about the 2020 election: that Smartmatic and other voting systems companies tried to rig the race against President Donald J. Trump. Smartmatic later expanded its legal battle against disinformation to the right-wing media outlets Newsmax and One America News Network.On Tuesday, Justice David B. Cohen of State Supreme Court in Manhattan said in a 61-page ruling that, “at a minimum, Fox News turned a blind eye to a litany of outrageous claims about plaintiffs, unprecedented in the history of American elections, so inherently improbable that it evinced a reckless disregard for the truth.”He added, “At this nascent stage of the litigation, this court finds that plaintiffs have pleaded facts sufficient to allow a jury to infer that Fox News acted with actual malice.”He also declined to dismiss Smartmatic claims against Maria Bartiromo, the Fox Business star, and Lou Dobbs, whose Fox Business show was a frequent clearinghouse for baseless theories of electoral fraud in the weeks after Mr. Trump’s defeat. Fox canceled Mr. Dobbs’s program last year, one day after Smartmatic sued.Citing a legal technicality, Justice Cohen dismissed most of Smartmatic’s defamation claims against Rudolph W. Giuliani, who, appearing on Fox News as a legal representative for Mr. Trump, said the technology company had “tried-and-true methods for fixing elections,” among other false assertions. Even so, Justice Cohen said there was “substantial” evidence that Mr. Giuliani “acted with actual malice insofar as he evinced a reckless disregard for the truth” and ruled that Smartmatic could try again. The judge allowed another part of Smartmatic’s defamation case against Mr. Giuliani to go forward.Fox News vowed a swift appeal.“While we are gratified that Judge Cohen dismissed Smartmatic’s claims against Jeanine Pirro at this early stage, we still plan to appeal the ruling immediately,” the network said in a statement. The network added that it would “continue to litigate these baseless claims by filing a counterclaim for fees and costs” under New York’s anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) statute, which is meant to quickly set aside lawsuits that may be intended to chill free speech.Fox News said it would do so “to prevent the full-blown assault on the First Amendment which stands in stark contrast to the highest tradition of American journalism.”In dismissing the claim against Ms. Pirro, Justice Cohen said that while she had asserted on her show that Democrats “stole votes,” she had not specifically blamed Smartmatic’s software.A spokesman for Smartmatic did not reply to a request for comment.Fox News is also battling a related $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, which has accused the channel of advancing lies that devastated its reputation and business. A Delaware judge rejected an attempt by Fox News to dismiss Dominion’s lawsuit in December. More

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      Democrats Win Early Victory in Court Fight Over District Maps

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      A judge’s stance was good news for Democrats, who drew the maps that Republicans say are gerrymandered, but the case will proceed.A New York State judge indicated on Thursday that he would allow this year’s midterm elections to proceed using the state’s newly drawn district lines that heavily favor Democrats — rebuffing Republican requests to delay the election process while he considers whether the maps are an unconstitutional gerrymander.In a preliminary hearing in Steuben County Supreme Court, Justice Patrick F. McAllister, a Republican, said that even if he ultimately ruled that the maps were unconstitutional, it was “highly unlikely” that replacements could be ratified in a timely manner ahead of primaries in June and Election Day in November. That, in turn, would risk leaving the state without proper representation in Congress.“I do not intend at this time to suspend the election process,” the judge said. “I believe the more prudent course would be to allow the current election process to proceed and then, if necessary, allow an election process next year if new maps need to be drawn.”Justice McAllister’s conclusion delivered a sharp setback to state Republicans, who sued last month to try to stop the new congressional and State Senate lines drafted by the Democrat-controlled State Legislature from taking effect this year. The Republicans believe their party is well positioned to retake control of the House of Representatives in November, but every seat could count.The fresh New York boundaries would make that harder, giving Democrats an advantage in 22 of the state’s 26 congressional districts, while potentially cutting the current number of Republican House members from New York in half and effectively eating into gains won by redistricting measures in other states. Analysts have suggested the new State Senate lines could be just as favorable to Democrats, helping the party maintain its supermajority in Albany.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.New York: Democrats’ aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional map is one of the most consequential in the nation.Legal Battles: A North Carolina court’s ruling to reject a G.O.P.-drawn map and substitute its own version further cemented the rising importance of state courts in redistricting fights.Legal analysts who study redistricting said that Justice McAllister or an appeals court could still conceivably rethink his approach, but a court-ordered delay to this year’s elections was an increasingly unlikely scenario, now that candidates have begun collecting petitions to get on the June primary ballot.“If I were a candidate, I think the smart bet is that the maps we have today are the maps that are going to be used in November,” said Michael Li, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “There doesn’t seem to be the will to change them for this cycle.”Still, Republicans left the hearing room in Bath, N.Y., on Thursday with some reasons for optimism.Justice McAllister rejected motions to dismiss the case and indicated that he was open to arguments that the maps had violated language added to the New York Constitution in 2014 that barred mapmakers from drawing lines to benefit one political party or candidate.The judge also ordered Democrats to hand over a raft of documents by March 12 that might shed light on how the Democratic drafters settled on the lines, and he told both sides to appear a few days later to argue over the merits of the Republicans’ challenge.“The important thing here is that the court rejected all of the efforts by the State Legislature and the attorney general to dismiss the case,” said John J. Faso, a former congressman from New York who is serving as a spokesman for the Republican challengers — a group of New York residents backed by deep-pocketed national Republican groups.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Judge Says States Can Investigate WinRed’s Fund-Raising Tactics

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      The Republican digital donation platform is facing inquiries from four state attorneys general into its use of prechecked boxes to withdraw donations automatically.A federal judge in Minnesota on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by WinRed, a company that processes online donations for Republicans, that sought to block state attorneys general from investigating fund-raising tactics that have triggered complaints of fraud.The attorneys general from four states — New York, Minnesota, Maryland and Connecticut — first sent letters to WinRed last April, asking for documents after a New York Times investigation revealed the company’s use of prechecked boxes to automatically enroll donors in recurring contribution programs. The boxes resulted in a surge in demands for refunds from supporters of former President Donald J. Trump.WinRed declined to provide the documents and instead went to federal court to argue that federal law should pre-empt any state-level consumer investigations. Chief Judge John R. Tunheim of the U.S. District Court in Minnesota ruled against the company on Wednesday.Judge Tunheim dismissed WinRed’s attempt to stop the attorneys general investigating outside Minnesota, ruling that he did not have jurisdiction. He ruled in favor of the Minnesota attorney general, Keith Ellison, writing that federal law would not pre-empt a state inquiry.“The court has confirmed an important principle that has nothing to do with politics: State attorneys general can use the laws and investigatory tools of their states to protect the consumers of their states from harm, deception, and abuse,” Mr. Ellison said.Judge Tunheim also denied a request to block a subpoena from the attorneys general, which was issued last July 16, shortly after WinRed went to federal court, according to the ruling issued on Wednesday.“WinRed will appeal,” the company said in an emailed statement.WinRed has argued that the attorneys general, all Democrats, are politically motivated. However, the four also sent a similar request for documents last year to ActBlue, the leading Democratic donation-processing platform. ActBlue said on Wednesday that it had also received a subpoena and that it had shared the requested information.After the ruling Wednesday, Attorney General Brian Frosh of Maryland urged WinRed to cooperate with the inquiry.“Now that its case has been dismissed, it is our hope that WinRed moves from a strategy of attack, attack, attack and cooperates in the investigation of allegations that it deceived consumers around the nation,” he said in a statement.New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, said, “It’s their responsibility to be honest and transparent with their services, and it’s the responsibility of the states to fight back against deceptive behavior in all its forms.”In the fall of 2020, the Trump campaign used prechecked boxes to get a donor’s permission to withdraw extra donations every week — then obscured that fact below extra text unrelated to the additional withdrawals. In the following weeks and months, demands for refunds increased sharply as supporters said they were duped into unwitting contributions.All told, the Trump operation, working with the Republican Party, refunded more than 10 percent of every dollar raised through WinRed in the 2020 campaign — a rate more than four times that of the Democrat Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s operation.The bipartisan Federal Election Commission voted unanimously last year to recommend that Congress outlaw the practice of prechecked recurring donation boxes. Legislation has since been introduced in both the House and the Senate.Kitty Bennett contributed research. More

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      Iraq Confirms Election Gains for Muqtada al-Sadr

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      A court certified October’s parliamentary vote that gave Muqtada al-Sadr’s party a plurality of seats, clearing a path for a government to be formed.Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court on Monday upheld the results of the country’s October parliamentary elections, resolving a dispute that had stalled the formation of a new government as Iran-backed Shiite Muslim militias contested gains by a rival Shiite political bloc.The court certified the victory of Muqtada al-Sadr, the influential Shiite cleric who is regarded as a possible ally, if a wary one, for the United States in Iraq. His party won 73 of the 329 seats in Parliament, more than any other and up from 54 in 2018. It handily beat an alliance of Iran-aligned militias led by the Fatah coalition.For Fatah and its allies, Mr. al-Sadr’s victory upset the traditional balance of the Shiite powers that have dominated Iraqi politics since the fall of Saddam Hussein almost 20 years ago and threatened to dent Iranian influence in Parliament. Mr. al-Sadr — an Iraqi nationalist whose forces once battled the Americans but who is now viewed as more hostile to Iran — is poised to play a strong role not only in Parliament but also in choosing the next prime minister.Mr. al-Sadr thanked the court, the election commission and the Iraqi people in a Twitter post on Monday and called for “the formation of a government of national majority that is neither Eastern nor Western.” Earlier he visited the shrine of Imam Ali in the city of Najaf, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, to offer thanks.Fatah filed the lawsuit challenging the results and alleging election fraud after it won 17 seats, little more than a third of its previous total. But on Monday, it accepted the court’s ruling.“We abide by the decision of the Federal Court despite our deep and firm belief that the electoral process was marred by a lot of fraud and manipulation,” said Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of Fatah, citing “concern for Iraq’s security and political stability and our belief in the political process and its democratic path.”Tension had clouded the legal process, delaying the announcement of the ruling, which was originally set for earlier this month. The dispute had raised the possibility that Fatah and its allies would unleash violence to force a result they wanted, and militia members gathered outside the court on Monday morning ahead of the ruling, chanting against the current prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi.But they withdrew by early afternoon, and there were no reports of violence.Supporters of Iraqi Shiite parties that disputed the election results gathered outside Iraq’s Supreme Court on Monday in Baghdad before it ratified the results.Ahmed Saad/ReutersMr. al-Kadhimi survived a drone strike on his home early last month after Iraqi security forces clashed with militia members who were protesting the election results outside the Green Zone, where the American embassy is. A deputy commander of one Iran-backed militia was killed.In a speech addressed to the losing political parties on Nov. 18, Mr. al-Sadr warned them against the “ruin of the democratic process in Iraq” and called on them to dissolve their militias and hand over their weapons to the Iraqi national army.With his huge popular following and powerful militia, which he deployed to entrap American forces in brutal street fighting in the mid-2000s, Mr. al-Sadr was once such an opponent of the Americans in Iraq that the United States ordered him killed. It later decided not to do so.But Mr. al-Sadr has come to oppose Iranian meddling in Iraq, and he signaled in a speech after the election that foreign embassies were welcome so long as they did not interfere in Iraq’s affairs.Now that the election results have been certified, factions representing Iraq’s Kurdish and Sunni Muslim minorities, which have been waiting for the outcome to negotiate or form alliances that could be part of the new government, can plunge into the fray. A majority of Iraqis are Shiite.Iraqi military forces were deployed following a drone attack on Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s residence in Baghdad on Nov. 7.Thaier Al-Sudani/ReutersPolitical analysts said they believe the Sadrists won big partly by taking advantage of a new electoral law that limited the traditional power of larger parties and made room for new faces by increasing the number of electoral districts. The Sadrist organization studied the electoral map closely, making sure to field candidates that would not end up running against each other.But they were not the only beneficiaries: Independent candidates coming out of Iraq’s anti-government protest movement, which flooded the streets in late 2019 as Iraqis mobilized against their deeply corrupt and sectarian political system, also won a handful of seats.Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the United Nations envoy to Iraq, praised the parliamentary elections as “generally peaceful” and well-run.“Elections and their outcomes can provoke strong feelings,” she said. “If such feelings and debates give way to undemocratic impulses — such as disinformation, baseless accusations, intimidation, threats of violence or worse — then sooner or later, the door is opened to acts that are simply intolerable.”Despite the affirmation, the elections, the fifth since Saddam Hussein’s fall in 2003, saw a record-low turnout of 41 percent that reflected Iraqis’ intense frustration with their leaders. 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      Fox News’ Request to Dismiss Dominion’s Defamation Suit Is Rejected

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      A judge on Thursday rejected an attempt by the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News Media to dismiss a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems over the network’s coverage of the company’s role in the 2020 presidential election.In the ruling, Judge Eric M. Davis of the Superior Court of Delaware, where Fox is incorporated, wrote that he had denied Fox News Media’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit because it was “reasonably conceivable that Dominion has a claim for defamation.”Dominion, an election technology company, sued Fox News Media in March, accusing it of advancing lies that devastated its reputation and business. More than two dozen states, including several carried by former President Donald J. Trump, made use of Dominion, a Denver company founded in 2002, in last year’s election.Along with another vote tabulating company, Smartmatic, Dominion was at the center of a baseless pro-Trump conspiracy theory about rigged voting machines that gave the election to President Biden. The false claims were promoted by the president and his advisers, including Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who appeared on Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network.In May, Fox filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that Dominion’s lawsuit threatened the news media’s First Amendment right to chronicle and assess newsworthy claims.Recent Developments at Fox NewsJan. 6 Texts: Three Fox News hosts texted Mark Meadows during the Jan. 6 riot urging him to tell Donald Trump to try to stop it.Chris Wallace Departs: The anchor’s announcement that he was leaving Fox News for CNN came as right-wing hosts have increasingly set the channel’s agenda.Contributors Quit: Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes quit the network in protest over Tucker Carlson’s “Patriot Purge” special.In his ruling, Judge Davis disputed the arguments put forth by Fox, including that its employees were reporting in a neutral manner on statements made by advisers of the then-president and that claims made on its channels were opinion, and thus constituted protected speech.The judge wrote that he was not persuaded by Fox’s “neutral reportage” and “opinion” arguments. He added that the company either “knew its statements about Dominion’s role in election fraud were false” or that it “had a high degree of awareness that the statements were false.”Judge Davis also noted that Dominion had objected in writing to Fox’s coverage, seemingly to no avail. The allegations made by Dominion in its complaint, he wrote, “support the reasonable inference that Fox intended to keep Dominion’s side of the story out of the narrative.”A Dominion spokeswoman said in a statement: “We are pleased to see this process moving forward to hold Fox accountable.”In a statement on Thursday, a Fox spokeswoman said, “We remain committed to defending against this baseless lawsuit and its all-out assault on the First Amendment.”The 52-page ruling included examples of statements made on shows hosted by Maria Bartiromo, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs, whose Fox Business Network program was canceled in February.The judge wrote that those hosts had provided platforms to people who were spreading the false narrative of election fraud involving Dominion and that the hosts’ own statements sometimes lent weight to the baseless claims. Also figuring in the court’s decision to allow the case to go forward was the fact that other Fox journalists had publicly stated the claims of widespread vote fraud were false.“The nearby presence of dissenting colleagues thus further suggests Fox, through personnel like Mr. Dobbs, was knowing or reckless in reporting the claims,” Judge Davis wrote.Barring a successful appeal of the ruling, Dominion now has the power to compel Fox to produce internal documents related to the issues raised in the suit and to have its employees testify in deposition.Don Herzog, who teaches First Amendment and defamation law at the University of Michigan, said in an interview that Fox faced a decision: It could settle, which might be seen as an admission of wrongdoing, or it could go through the discovery process, which could eventually make its internal communications public.Timothy Zick, a professor at William & Mary Law School who specializes in First Amendment law, said that Fox would be more incentivized to settle the suit than it previously was. “The danger for them is that a lot of embarrassing email correspondence and other documents will come out, if they don’t settle the case,” he said. Mr. Zick added that Dominion might not be willing to settle.The prospect of the publication of Fox’s internal communications concerning its coverage of the 2020 election follows the recent disclosure of text messages sent by its hosts to Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final White House chief of staff, during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. On their shows this week, the hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham vociferously defended the messages, which made vivid the close relationship between the network and Mr. Trump’s administration. Mr. Hannity and Ms. Ingraham said that nothing in their text messages differed from their public statements.Fox faces another high-stakes legal battle over its election coverage because of a defamation lawsuit filed in February by Smartmatic.The day after Smartmatic filed its suit, Fox Business Network abruptly canceled “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” Mr. Dobbs, a loyal supporter of Mr. Trump, was the host of the channel’s most-watched show.In its suit, Smartmatic cited a false claim made by Ms. Powell on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that Hugo Chávez, the former president of Venezuela, had a hand in the creation of Smartmatic technology, designing it so that the votes it processed could be changed undetected. (Mr. Chávez, who died in 2013, did not have anything to do with Smartmatic.) Mr. Dobbs had also referred to the supposed vote conspiracy as “cyber Pearl Harbor,” borrowing a phrase that had been used by Ms. Powell. More

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      Judge Rejects Trump’s Bid to Keep Papers Secret in Jan. 6 Inquiry

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      But a Trump lawyer has signaled an intent to appeal the ruling, which raises novel issues about an ex-president’s executive privilege powers.WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Tuesday night rejected a bid by former President Donald J. Trump to keep secret papers about his actions and conversations leading up to and during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters.In a 39-page ruling, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held that Congress’s constitutional oversight powers to obtain the information prevailed over Mr. Trump’s residual secrecy powers — especially because the incumbent, President Biden, agreed that lawmakers investigating the Jan. 6 riot should see the files.Mr. Trump “does not acknowledge the deference owed to the incumbent president’s judgment. His position that he may override the express will of the executive branch appears to be premised on the notion that his executive power ‘exists in perpetuity,’” Judge Chutkan wrote. “But presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not president.”Mr. Trump retained the right to assert that his records were privileged, she added, but Mr. Biden was not obliged to honor that assertion. The incumbent president, she said, is better situated to protect executive branch interests, and Mr. Trump “no longer remains subject to political checks against potential abuse of that power.”The ruling does not necessarily mean that the National Archives will turn over the materials to the House committee investigating Jan. 6 any time soon. The case raises novel issues about the scope and limits of a former president’s executive privilege authority, and it is likely that it will ultimately be resolved by the Supreme Court.In a posting on Twitter, Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said the case was destined to be appealed. He said Mr. Trump was committed to defending the right of past presidents — as well as present and future ones — to assert executive privilege and “will be seeing this process through.”The Jan. 6 committee has demanded that the National Archives and Records Administration turn over detailed records about Mr. Trump’s every movement and meeting on the day of the assault, when Mr. Trump led a “Stop the Steal” rally and his supporters then sacked the Capitol in an attempt to block Congress from certifying Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory.Mr. Trump — who pursued a strategy of stonewalling all congressional oversight subpoenas while in office, running out the clock on such efforts before the 2020 election — has instructed his former subordinates to defy subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee and filed a lawsuit seeking to block the National Archives from turning over files from his White House.Last week, Judge Chutkan, a 2014 Obama appointee, had signaled skepticism about Mr. Trump’s legal arguments. Mr. Trump’s lawyer asserted that his residual executive privilege powers meant the courts should block Congress from subpoenaing the files, notwithstanding Mr. Biden’s decision not to assert executive privilege over them in light of the circumstances.Mr. Trump’s lawyer had argued that the public interest would be served by letting Mr. Trump keep the documents secret to preserve executive branch prerogatives. But Judge Chutkan wrote that his arguments did not “hold water” in light of Mr. Biden’s support for making them public and Congress’s need to investigate the attack without undue delays.Congress and the Biden administration, she noted, “contend that discovering and coming to terms with the causes underlying the Jan. 6 attack is a matter of unsurpassed public importance because such information relates to our core democratic institutions and the public’s confidence in them. The court agrees.”Earlier this week, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Jesse R. Binnall, demonstrated an intent to keep going by asking Judge Chutkan to impose an emergency injunction on the National Archives barring it from turning over the records while he appealed the matter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.Understand the Supreme Court’s Momentous TermCard 1 of 5The Texas abortion law. More

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      Judge Declines, For Now, to Block Parts of Georgia Voting Law

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      A federal judge let parts of Georgia’s sweeping voting law stand on Wednesday, declining to block them from taking effect a week before runoff elections for state legislative seats.In his order, Judge J. P. Boulee of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia said he was basing his decision on the imminence of the July 13 elections and not the merits of the case.“The court certainly appreciates the gravity of the First and Fourteenth Amendment harms plaintiffs have alleged,” Judge Boulee wrote, but “concerns in this case with respect to the July 13, 2021 runoff elections, including the risk of disrupting the administration of an ongoing election, outweigh the alleged harm to plaintiffs at this time.”He continued, “The Court reserves judgment regarding the propriety of relief as to future elections and will issue a separate order on this question at a later date.”The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, celebrated the decision, saying in a statement: “This is just another in the line of frivolous lawsuits against Georgia’s election law based on misinformation and lies. We will continue to meet them and beat them in court.”The lawsuit was filed by the Coalition for Good Governance, a nonprofit group whose stated mission is to protect election security and transparency. It challenges several provisions in the Georgia law, S.B. 202, including one that shortened the time frame for requesting absentee ballots and others that banned people from photographing ballots or intentionally observing a voter’s choices.The suit argues that the provisions create an unconstitutional burden for voters and violate the rights of citizens and journalists to share information about elections.“Of course we are disappointed that the unconstitutional measures in S.B. 202 will control” the July 13 runoffs, “with all the dangers they bring to the integrity and transparency of that election,” Marilyn R. Marks, the coalition’s executive director, said on Wednesday. “We are concerned about the voter confusion that will no doubt occur with these little-known rapid changes to the rules.”Ms. Marks said she hoped the court would block the provisions for subsequent elections.The Coalition for Good Governance lawsuit is separate from a Justice Department lawsuit filed last month, which argues that the Georgia law intentionally discriminates against Black voters. More

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      Judge Says Barr Misled on How His Justice Dept. Viewed Trump’s Actions

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      Judge Amy Berman Jackson said in a ruling that the misleading statements were similar to others that William P. Barr, the former attorney general, had made about the Mueller investigation.A federal judge in Washington accused the Justice Department under Attorney General William P. Barr of misleading her and Congress about advice he had received from top department officials on whether President Donald J. Trump should have been charged with obstructing the Russia investigation and ordered that a related memo be released.Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the United States District Court in Washington said in a ruling late Monday that the Justice Department’s obfuscation appeared to be part of a pattern in which top officials like Mr. Barr were untruthful to Congress and the public about the investigation.The department had argued that the memo was exempt from public records laws because it consisted of private advice from lawyers whom Mr. Barr had relied on to make the call on prosecuting Mr. Trump. But Judge Jackson, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2011, ruled that the memo contained strategic advice, and that Mr. Barr and his aides already understood what his decision would be.“The fact that he would not be prosecuted was a given,” Judge Jackson wrote of Mr. Trump.She also singled out Mr. Barr for how he had spun the investigation’s findings in a letter summarizing the 448-page report before it was released, which allowed Mr. Trump to claim he had been exonerated.“The attorney general’s characterization of what he’d hardly had time to skim, much less study closely, prompted an immediate reaction, as politicians and pundits took to their microphones and Twitter feeds to decry what they feared was an attempt to hide the ball,” Judge Jackson wrote.Her rebuke shed new light on Mr. Barr’s decision not to prosecute Mr. Trump. She also wrote that although the department portrayed the advice memo as a legal document protected by attorney-client privilege, it was done in concert with Mr. Barr’s publicly released summary, “written by the very same people at the very same time.”A spokeswoman for Mr. Barr did not return an email seeking comment. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.Judge Jackson said that the government had until May 17 to decide whether it planned to appeal her ruling, a decision that will be made by a Justice Department run by Biden appointees.The ruling came in a lawsuit by a government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, asking that the Justice Department be ordered to turn over a range of documents related to how top law enforcement officials cleared Mr. Trump of wrongdoing.At issue is how Mr. Barr handled the end of the Mueller investigation and the release of its findings to the public. In March 2019, the office of the special counsel overseeing the inquiry, Robert S. Mueller III, delivered its report to the Justice Department. In a highly unusual decision, Mr. Mueller declined to make a determination about whether Mr. Trump had illegally obstructed justice.That opened the door for Mr. Barr to take control of the investigation. Two days after receiving the report, Mr. Barr sent a four-page letter to Congress saying that Mr. Trump would not be charged with obstructing justice and summarizing the report. Mr. Mueller’s team believed that Mr. Barr’s characterization of the document was misleading and privately urged him to release more of their findings, but Mr. Barr refused.About a month later, around the time that the report was released to the public, Mr. Barr testified to Congress that he had made the decision not to charge Mr. Trump “in consultation with the Office of Legal Counsel and other department lawyers,” and that the decision to clear the president of wrongdoing had been left to Mr. Barr because Mr. Mueller had made no determination about whether Mr. Trump broke the law.Judge Jackson said in the ruling that Mr. Barr had been disingenuous in those assertions, adding that it had not been left to him to make the decision about the prosecution.She also said that in the litigation between the government and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the Justice Department under Mr. Barr had claimed that the memo, written by his top officials, had been about legal advice he had relied on to make the decision and should be shielded from the public.Under federal law, the Justice Department can claim that such advice should be shielded because it is “deliberative” and the possibility of releasing it could keep advisers from giving their unvarnished counsel because they fear it may become public someday.But instead, Judge Jackson wrote, Mr. Barr and his aides had already decided not to bring charges against Mr. Trump. She reprimanded the department for portraying the memo as part of deliberations over whether to prosecute the president. She noted that she had been allowed to read the full memo before making her decision, over the objections of the Justice Department, and that it revealed that “excised portions belie the notion that it fell to the attorney general to make a prosecution decision or that any such decision was on the table at any time.”The department “has been disingenuous to this court with respect to the existence of a decision-making process that should be shielded by the deliberative process privilege,” Judge Jackson wrote.She oversaw the trial of Mr. Trump’s longtime adviser Roger J. Stone Jr. and one of the cases against Mr. Trump’s onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Although Mr. Trump has publicly attacked Judge Jackson, legal experts say she operated as an unbiased arbiter during the Russia investigation.In late March, the judge similarly called into question the credibility of the Trump-era government’s description of documents in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by The New York Times for certain White House budget office emails related to Mr. Trump’s freeze on military aid to Ukraine, which led to his first impeachment.The Justice Department argued that the emails were exempt from disclosure and filed sworn affidavits about their contents by lawyers for the Office of Management and Budget during the Trump administration. But Judge Jackson insisted on reading the emails for herself and wrote that “the court discovered that there were obvious differences between the affiants’ description of the nature and subject matter of the documents, and the documents themselves.”Charlie Savage More