Ha.

DETROIT — A federal judge has admonished Attorney General John Ashcroft for violating a court order by making remarks about defendants in the nation’s first major terror trial after Sept. 11.

U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen said Ashcroft’s statements could have compromised defendants’ rights to a fair trial, but that the violations did not warrant contempt charges or require Ashcroft to appear in the Detroit court to explain himself.

“The attorney general’s office exhibited a distressing lack of care in issuing potentially prejudicial statements about this case,” Rosen wrote in an opinion released Tuesday.

Watch out, Your Honor…you may be trading those robes for an orange jumpsuit.