NEW YORK — Federal attorneys admitted the Donald Trump Transportation Department’s legal theories for shutting down New York’s congestion toll don’t hold much water in a mysteriously filed memo that popped up on the docket of the MTA’s suit against the administration Wednesday night.

Formally listed as a letter from lead attorney for the government Dominika Tarczynska to Judge Lewis Liman — who is overseeing the case in Manhattan federal court — introducing a document into evidence, what the feds posted instead was an 11-page internal memo to the Department of Transportation, dated April 11, explaining gaping holes in their case and legal strategy.

“There is considerable litigation risk in defending [U.S. DOT Secretary Sean Duffy’s] February 19, 2025 decision [to attempt to revoke congestion pricing authorization] against [the MTA’s] claims … that the decision was contrary to law, pretextual, procedurally arbitrary and capricious, and violated due process,” wrote three of the assistant U.S. Attorneys tasked with doing just that.

“… it is unlikely that Judge Liman or further courts of review will accept the argument that [congestion pricing] was not a statutorily authorized ‘value pricing’ pilot under [the relevant law],” the memo continues.

Signed by Tarczynska as well as assistant U.S. attorneys David Farber and Christine Poscablo, the memo goes on to suggest that the feds “may, however, be able to properly terminate” congestion pricing by proposing to do so “as a matter of changed agency priorities rather than arguing [that congestion pricing] was not statutorily authorized in the first instance.”

For nearly three months, Duffy has argued — in a series of strongly worded letters and angry tweets — that he can summarily revoke an authorization given by the Biden administration that allowed New York State to toll drivers entering Midtown or lower Manhattan on federally funded roads, and use the revenues to fund MTA transit projects.

The argument has become one of the most prominent flash points in the Trump regime’s efforts to bigfoot state authorities.

In Duffy’s most recent threat, however, a subtle change in tone reflects the strategy outlined in the memo posted Wednesday.

As previously reported by the Daily News, Duffy last week set his third in a line of seemingly toothless deadlines for New York to end the toll.

In his letter to Gov. Hochul announcing the deadline, Duffy acknowledged that the relevant federal law allows tolls “to be used for transit projects,” but said “it is unconscionable as a matter of policy that highway users are being forced to bail out the MTA transit system.”

The post comes as the SDNY, known for bringing major white-collar crime and terrorism cases, has seen a leadership crisis in recent months following Trump’s second return to power — cycling through five U.S. attorneys since December.

Weeks after Trump was elected, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, who aggressively pursued public corruption during his tenure, stepped down. Trump replaced Williams’ successor, Edward Kim, during his first day in office with Danielle Sassoon, who quit just two weeks later rather than obeying an order from the president’s new second-in-command at the Justice Department to drop the corruption case against Mayor Adams.

Sassoon was replaced by her deputy, Matthew Podolosky. Last week, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer said he would seek to block the nomination of Trump’s pick for the prestigious role, former Securities and Exchange Commission chief Jay Clayton. On Tuesday, Trump found a workaround by placing Clayton in the job in an interim capacity.

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