Trump-appointed judge handed case that could make Epstein Files public

Date set in lawsuit over Speaker Johnson’s refusal to seat Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva

The lawsuit over Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to swear in a recently elected Democrat has been assigned to a hardline conservative judge who was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term.

Trevor McFadden will oversee Mayes v. USA, a lawsuit filed by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes against the US House of Representatives over Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva.

“Free and fair elections are the foundation of our democracy,” said Grijalva. “When those aren’t honoured, it’s anti-democratic and it’s silencing the voices of southern Arizona by denying them full representation and access to services from their member of Congress.”

Grijalva won a special election on September 23, and flew to Washington, DC to be sworn in shortly after. Johnson has given a number of excuses not to swear her in in a transparent attempt to use her seat as a political pawn in the battle over the government shutdown.

But Grijalva and others believe the real reason has little to do with the federal budget: once seated, Grijalva would provide the final vote needed to force the release of the Epstein Files, something Trump has ordered Johnson not to let happen.

It’s part of a larger cover-up by the president to keep his old friend Epstein’s sordid history private, so Johnson appears to be executing the best strategy he could think of: shut down the House, ignore Grijalva, and hope she goes away.

But she’s not.

Grijalva has put constant pressure on Johnson, and after a month of delay, Grijalva and Mayes filed a lawsuit against the House, alleging that to prevent her from being sworn in, Johnson is denying Arizonans’ their constitutional right to representation.

“By blocking Adelita Grijalva from taking her rightful oath of office, he is subjecting Arizona’s seventh Congressional district to taxation without representation,” said Mayes. “I will not allow Arizonans to be silenced or treated as second-class citizens in their own democracy.”

And now, whether or not she will be able to represent the people of Arizona is in the hands of District Court Judge Trevor McFadden.

Here’s a brief overview of who McFadden is, and how he’s ruled on issues relating to Trump in the past:

McFadden joined the far-right legal group the Federalist Society when he was 25, and worked on and off at the Department of Justice. He donated $1,000 to Trump’s campaign in 2016, volunteered to help vet cabinet members in 2017, and was appointed to be a federal judge by Trump later that year.

In 2018, he set a precedent of not recusing himself from Trump-related cases by taking on a libel lawsuit between BuzzFeed News and a Russian oligarch named in the Steele Dossier. McFadden said he could be impartial and that he’d never even met the president — despite having vetted Trump’s cabinet.

In 2019, McFadden ruled in favor of Trump’s attempt to declare a national emergency so he could spend $6 billion to build a border wall. A month after the January 6, 2021, insurrection, he gave one insurrectionist whose case he was assigned permission to travel out of the country while on trial. After she was convicted, he removed the probation condition that would have prohibited her from owning a firearm.

McFadden became so disillusioned with how January 6 insurrectionists were being treated in court that he began issuing them acquittals.

In 2021, however, he sided with Congress and gave them permission to obtain Trump’s tax returns, and in April of this year, he ordered the White House to restore briefing room access to the Associated Press, which had been revoked after they refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

The first court date in Mayes v. USA is October 30th at 10 a.m.

The full Epstein Files are required by law to be released to the public no later than Friday, December 19.

This post first appeared in Below The Beltway, a COURIER Substack by Camaron Stevenson.

Image credit: U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden walks outside the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Court House on April 16, 2025 in Washington, DC. McFadden, appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump, has recently sided with the Associated Press, ordering the White House to reinstate their access to presidential coverage. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)