Its not every day that a prominent Cabinet official is held in contempt of court. However, thats what happened on Friday, when federal judge Sallie Kim found Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in civil contempt of court, slapping her department with a $100,000 fine. Frankly, this decision is puzzling to the point of suggesting possible impropriety.

First, this same judge, Kim, callously and haphazardly touted the prospect of jailing Secretary DeVos at an earlier court date, despite the fact that its almost inconceivable that something like that would ever happen.

Heres how USA Today summed up that case:

The furor stems from a case involving the now-defunct Corinthian College, a for-profit college that closed in 2015. The U.S. Department of Education had been ordered to stop collecting on the federal loans of students who attended the school. But the department disclosed it had continued to garnish wages and seize tax returns of hundreds of borrowers. Others had erroneously paid money toward the loans when they didn't have to.

Heres the bottom line: The Department of Education made a mistake and failed to comply with the judges order. However, by Oct. 21, at least 99% of affected borrowers who had overpaid had been compensated, and this week theyve attempted to address every last situation. An Education Department official explained their efforts to remedy the problem in a video posted to Twitter.

Yet Judge Kim still chose to hold DeVos in contempt of court on Thursday, despite the department and secretary having already made clear, good-faith efforts to right the situation. This is baffling.

A cursory look at the judges past raises an eyebrow, for sure. Judge Kim was appointed by former President Barack Obama, and from 2013 to 2014, worked as a Title IX coordinator at Stanford University. Notably, Secretary DeVos has proposed numerous reforms to Title IX that run deeply against the grain of what most left-leaning university administrators support.

Lets be clear: Theres no smoking gun indicating that the judge has it in for Betsy DeVos. But its hard to imagine any other reason she would take such a drastic step against a prominent Trump official.

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Was the judge that held Betsy DeVos in contempt of court politically-motivated? - Washington Examiner