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Liberia or Bust
I was in the federal courthouse in suburban Maryland for a hearing yesterday in the civil case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The case is deep in the procedural weeds at this point, but it continues to produce moments I’ve never seen in court.
The context is that the Trump administration is still trying to deport Abrego Garcia to Liberia, and U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has blocked his removal, which the Trump DOJ is currently appealing to the 4th Circuit.
Nothing was resolved in yesterday’s hearing, but Xinis took the opportunity to upbraid DOJ lawyers for misrepresentations it made about the case to the appeals court.
To take one example, Xinis said it was “sticking in my craw” that the Trump DOJ told the appeals court she had not made the requisite findings before issuing an injunction in the case. She demanded to know who wrote the filing that was submitted to the appeals court (it was a more junior attorney at the government table), at which point she read in open court from the transcript of the earlier hearing showing that she did make the required findings as she issued the injunction.
“It’s important to read,” she chided.
Then she turned to the more senior DOJ attorney: “It is not accurate to tell the 4th Circuit that I did not make findings. Do you disagree?”
“Based on what you just read,” he said, “you have made findings.”
Then why did you tell the 4th Circuit otherwise? she asked.
“I’m sure it was a mistake regarding where the appropriate responses were being looked for in the docket,” he said, in weak defense of his colleague. “It may be that that … was not looked at.”
Xinis remains particularly irritated that the Trump DOJ took it upon itself to decide she hadn’t ruled fast enough on one of its motions and therefore deemed it denied and appealed that denial. She walked through the many points in the case when DOJ either asked for more time, including to brief her on its motion, consented to delays, and voluntarily agreed not to remove Abrego Garcia, and she pressed the DOJ lawyers why they had not shared that context with the appeals court.
Then things got more awkward.
“On what authority can you dictate a court’s schedule on a motion like this?” Xinis asked.
After some hemming and hawing from the lead DOJ attorney, Xinis asked for a specific case that would allow the DOJ to deem its own motion denied. “Cite your best case,” she urged.
The DOJ attorney had nothing, at which point Xinis deftly distinguished the cases DOJ had cited in its notice of appeal.
Both DOJ lawyers in court yesterday were career employees, not the political appointees who previously took the lead in the case, and the kind of errors and omissions that Xinis focused on were different in kind and degree from the brazen defiance that the Trump administration exhibited in this case for most of the past 14 months.
But in a sign that the Trump DOJ is still playing fast and loose in the notorious case, it refused to say whether it would dismiss the criminal case against Abrego Garcia in order to remove him to Liberia. “It’s a fair question to ask what about the criminal indictment,” Xinis said, but the lead DOJ lawyer would not engage.
Whether intended or not, the hearing ended up being a chance for Xinis to preview for Abrego Garcia’s attorneys the arguments she would make to the appeals court, where briefing isn’t due until this summer.
Despite Court Order, Patel Disparages Abrego Garcia
In the kind of performative verbal combat that has become de rigueur for Trump officials in congressional hearings, Kash Patel disparaged Abrego Garcia as a “convicted gang-banging rapist” and a “felon” in possible violation of a court order in his criminal case.
Back in October, a district judge found that Trump administration officials had already “made extrajudicial statements that are troubling” and directed prosecutors to provide all DOJ and DHS employees with a copy of his court order reiterating the local rule against statements about “the prior criminal record … or the character or reputation of the accused.”
The judge warned at the time: “With knowledge of the Local Rule, any future statements that pose a clear and present danger to Abrego’s fair trial rights may subject the speaker to sanctions.”
Mass Deportation Watch
- The DHS inspector general has launched a probe into the $38 billion warehouse-to-detention program championed by former Secretary Kristi Noem, the Wall Street Journal reports.
- David Venturella, a former career ICE employee and private prison company executive, will be tapped as the new acting director of ICE.
- An exhaustive analysis by Politico shows that federal judges have ruled against the Trump administration’s unprecedented mandatory detention policy more than 10,000 times, which represents 90% of the habeas cases challenging the no-bond detentions.
- The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday became the latest appeals court to reject the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy, mirroring similar decisions by the 11th and 2nd circuits. The 5th and 8th circuits have upheld the policy, and the 7th Circuit deadlocked on it. The Supreme Court will ultimately have to resolve the circuit split.
The Corruption: IRS Edition
Trump DOJ officials are having internal discussions about settling President Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for leaking his tax information, which might include dropping any audits of him, his family, or his businesses.
What caught my eye is the suggestion in the the NYT story that they’re trying to settle the case before a federal judge weighs in on whether there’s a sufficient adversarial relationship between the parties to make it a legitimate lawsuit. The judge has ordered briefing on the matter by May 20. “White House and Justice Department officials have in recent days been exploring ways to potentially settle the suit before that deadline, according to the people,” the NYT reports.
Trump DOJ Watch
- The FBI has begun interviewing current and former CIA officers as part of the Trump-driven investigation into ex-CIA Director John Brennan’s role in an intelligence assessment that found Russia sought to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, NBC News reports.
- A team of FBI agents specifically put together to handle Trump’s retributive cases is being referred to internally as the “payback squad,” NOTUS reports.
- Former acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll, who is suing over his wrongful termination, recounts to Anderson Cooper some of the more bizarre moments of his brief tenure in the early days of Trump II:
Quote of the Day
“I’m unaware of anything like this, with this involvement of senior government officials, on this scale, trying to paint this false picture of the United States as a quote unquote Christian nation. Trump’s rhetoric in the past 18 months is how he’s ‘going to make America Christian again,’ that it’s his job to push religion. This is all part of that piece.”—Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, on the nine-hour-long prayer festival planned Sunday for the National Mall using some public funds for the America’s 250th birthday and expected to feature Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA)
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morning!
He left a note…
Morning it is!
Here’s a dried up White River in Arkansas. Lack of rain has made it as low as I’ve ever seen it.
World War Trump!
The honor and gallantry of our rank and file armed service members is wasted on our schmuck president.