An Obama-appointed federal judge has handed Portland’s far-left political machine a major legal victory, denying the Trump Justice Department’s attempt to obtain police body-camera footage and internal records tied to allegations of anti-conservative viewpoint discrimination.
U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon rejected the Justice Department’s motion to compel Portland officials to turn over evidence connected to protests outside the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
Simon accused the DOJ of acting in “bad faith and with unclean hands” and claimed the department’s request appeared intended to intimidate the Portland Police Bureau.
“The Court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the United States has brought this motion in bad faith and with unclean hands,” Simon wrote in his July 24 opinion. He added that the purported reasons for the nearly 30 document requests were “pretext.”
The extraordinary ruling effectively shields Portland officials from having to comply with the DOJ’s 29 demands for body-camera footage, police reports, complaints, internal communications, and other records—at least through this motion under Portland’s longstanding police-reform settlement.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that Dhillon sent a scathing letter to Portland City Attorney Robert Taylor and Police Chief Bob Day following the controversial arrest of conservative journalist Nick Sortor.
Sortor was arrested outside Portland’s ICE facility in October 2025 after he said Antifa terrorists shoved him into a flower bed, damaged his camera, and threw punches at him.
Instead of arresting his attackers, Portland police handcuffed Sortor and charged him with disorderly conduct. The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office reportedly dropped the charge days later.
The DOJ was also investigating Portland police’s handling of the reported assault on conservative journalist Katie Daviscourt, who was struck in the face with a flagpole outside the ICE facility and left with a black eye.
In its October 3 letter, the Justice Department demanded:
- Unredacted body-camera footage involving Sortor’s arrest.
- Body-camera footage connected to the reported assault on Daviscourt.
- Incident reports, arrest reports, force reports, and after-action reviews.
- Complaints concerning the police response to both incidents.
- Internal communications concerning Portland’s zoning actions against the ICE facility.
- Communications containing directions to officers responding to demonstrations outside the facility.
Dhillon sent a second letter on October 29 containing 22 additional demands.
The DOJ argued that the records were necessary to determine whether Portland police had violated a provision of the city’s consent decree requiring the bureau to apply its policies uniformly and hold officers accountable.
But Simon refused to order Portland to comply.
The consent decree originated from a 2012 Justice Department lawsuit accusing Portland police of using unnecessary or excessive force against people suffering from mental illness or experiencing a mental-health crisis.
Simon declared that the case “has never been about viewpoint discrimination, or even any issues arising under the First Amendment.”
“If, as the United States then argued, claims that Portland Police Officers may have engaged in a pattern of excessive force against persons of color were ‘outside the scope’ of this lawsuit, it is difficult to accept the United States’ current assertion that alleged political viewpoint discrimination is within the scope of the current action,” Simon wrote.
However, the judge acknowledged that whether the DOJ possessed authority under the agreement to investigate potential viewpoint discrimination presented a “close question” of contract interpretation.
Rather than decide that question, Simon invoked the equitable doctrine of unclean hands and accused the Justice Department of pursuing the records for an improper purpose.
Simon pointed to the timing of the DOJ’s first demand letter, which was sent on October 3, 2025, the same day Judge Karin Immergut heard Oregon and Portland’s request to block President Trump’s National Guard deployment.
Two high-ranking Portland police officials had submitted declarations supporting Oregon and Portland in that separate lawsuit.
“To the Court, this reasonably appears to be a not-so-subtle signal from the United States Department of Justice to the Portland Police Bureau that if it continued to assist the plaintiffs in the case of Oregon v. Trump, the United States Department of Justice could make matters quite difficult, burdensome, and expensive for the Portland Police Bureau,” Simon claimed.
The Obama judge also seized on Dhillon’s social-media response after Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered a full investigation into Sortor’s arrest.
As The Gateway Pundit reported at the time, Dhillon wrote:
“Portland: It’s FO time. Buckle up.”
Simon characterized the post as a threat.
“That is neither language nor tone of a good faith investigation by the United States Department of Justice,” he wrote. “Instead, it exhibits all the hallmarks of a threat and attempted intimidation.”
Simon also cited Dhillon’s repost of a message stating that Judge Immergut “must be impeached,” calling that statement “threatening conduct” as well.
The optics surrounding Simon’s ruling are impossible to ignore.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that Simon recused himself from Oregon’s National Guard lawsuit after the Trump administration raised concerns about public comments made by his wife, Democrat Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici, opposing the troop deployment.
That National Guard lawsuit was subsequently assigned to Judge Immergut.
Simon nevertheless continued overseeing the separate Portland police consent-decree case and has now used Portland’s challenge to the National Guard deployment as a central reason for accusing the Trump DOJ of retaliation.
The ruling does not determine whether Portland police actually engaged in viewpoint discrimination. It does not exonerate the bureau over its handling of Sortor’s arrest or the reported assault on Daviscourt.
It only denies the Justice Department’s attempt to compel the records through the existing consent decree.
In other words, the allegations that Portland police treated conservative journalists differently from violent far-left agitators remain unanswered, while Portland keeps the records out of the DOJ’s hands.
For context, Michael H. Simon is the same judge who issued a temporary restraining order earlier this year barring federal officers from using tear gas, pepper balls, and other crowd-control munitions at Portland’s ICE facility, even as protesters escalate their attacks on federal agents and the facility.
Read Judge Simon’s complete order here.
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