California Attorney General Rob Bonta admits that the state spent millions of dollars fighting President Donald Trump’s policy agenda in court, but claims that he saved billions of dollars in doing so.
The Los Angeles Times reported Monday:
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Monday that his office has spent more than $5 million fighting the Trump administration in court over the last six months, but saved the state nearly $170 billion.
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Bonta’s calculations are based on a mountain of litigation his office has filed against the administration since President Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, including 37 lawsuits — many alongside other liberal-led states — and 47 amicus briefs backing other litigants’ lawsuits against the administration.
The vast majority of the savings Bonta claimed were the result of one particular lawsuit, in which California and other states successfully challenged a Trump administration effort to freeze trillions of dollars in federal funding to the states — including what Bonta said was $168 billion for California alone.
However, the San Francisco Chronicle notes, the “victory dance” that Bonta is performing, as well as his accounting calculations, may be premature. The Supreme Court has yet to rule in many key cases — and California has much worse chances when it is not taking on the president in liberal judicial jurisdictions.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed $50 million in spending on legal actions against the Trump administration — even while asking Trump for $40 billion in new spending after the Los Angeles wildfires in January.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
