The Judge Who Won't Bend the Knee: Pakistani American Zia M. Faruqui's Lonely Stand Against Trump's Justice Department

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LEAD STORIES, POLITICS

The Judge Who Won’t Bend the Knee: Pakistani American Zia M. Faruqui’s Lonely Stand Against Trump’s Justice Department

BY NEWS DESK
OCTOBER 2, 2025

As federal prosecutors bring a wave of questionable cases under Trump's crime crackdown, one magistrate judge—a former prosecutor himself—is publicly calling out what he sees as the erosion of legal norms and justice.



In the ornate courtrooms of the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse, where the weight of federal justice has been dispensed for decades, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui has emerged as an unlikely—and increasingly vocal—critic of his former employer: the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

Week after week, as President Trump’s crime crackdown floods Washington’s federal courts with arrests made by National Guard troops and federal agents, Faruqui has watched with growing alarm as prosecutors bring cases he believes violate constitutional rights and abandon long-established legal principles. His response has been extraordinary: a series of scathing written orders and pointed courtroom remarks that accuse the Justice Department of breaking “decades-long norms and the rule of law.” … “There’s no credibility left,” Faruqui declared from the bench in early September, according to The Washington Post, as he upbraided prosecutors for their handling of the deluge of cases stemming from Trump’s local policing surge.

The most dramatic confrontation came Monday, September 30, when Faruqui pre-emptively refused to accept an indictment after learning that prosecutors had performed what he described as an “end run” around the normal course of justice, according to The New York Times. After failing to secure an indictment from a federal grand jury, prosecutors took federal charges to a local grand jury in Superior Court, which returned an indictment. … In a scathing order filed in Federal District Court, Faruqui wrote that he had never heard of such a thing, saying that what appeared to be grand jury forum shopping had broken “decades-long norms and the rule of law.” … “At a minimum, this is very unseemly,” Judge Faruqui wrote, according to the Times. “More than likely, it is unlawful.”

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