BREAKING: Abrego Garcia Prevails on Vindictive Prosecution Claim

A federal judge in Nashville has dismissed the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, ruling that he was the victim of vindictive prosecution by the Trump Justice Department.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr. found that the Trump DOJ failed to overcome the presumption of vindictiveness despite a day-long evidentiary hearing in Feburary during which federal prosecutor Robert McGuire took the stand.

In ruling in favor of Abrego Garcia, Crenshaw points the finger squarely at acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was the deputy attorney general when the criminal investigation was opened: “Blanche started the investigation to implicate Abrego. He did so to justify the Executive Branch’s decision to remove him to El Salvador.”

In a statement following the dismissal, Abrego Garcia’s lead criminal attorney Sean Hecker said:

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a victim of a politicized, vindictive White House and its lawyers at what used to be an independent Justice Department.  We are so pleased that he is a free man. Justifiably so. As this Administration continually chips away at our democracy, we remain grateful for an independent judiciary that will dispassionately apply binding precedent to the facts.

The dismissal of the criminal case is another dramatic turn in a central saga of the Trump II presidency: The unlawful removal of Abrego Garcia to prison in El Salvador despite an immigration judge’s order barring his deportation there and the refusal of the Trump administration to abide by court orders, including the Supreme Court, to facilitate his return.

Ultimately, the Trump administration did bring Abrego Garcia back, but only after obtaining an indictment against him on human smuggling charges that arose from an investigation that was conspicuously re-opened after he had prevailed in his civil case.

After Abrego Garcia was freed from pre-trial detention in Tennessee in August, he was quickly re-detained by ICE and held until U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland granted his release in December. She had previously barred the administration from deporting him without prior notice. Over the ensuing months, the Trump administration has continued to try to deport Abrego Garcia but this time to various third countries in Africa, most recently Liberia.

Abrego Garcia has for months told Xinis that he is willing to go to Costa Rica, and Costa Rica has publicly said it is willing to accept him and give him asylum there. But the administration has refused to accept option.

So long as the criminal case was hanging over him and the conditions of his pre-trial release barred him from leaving the country, Abrego Garcia was unable to go to Costa Rica on his own. In dismissing the case, Judge Crenshaw also ended the conditions of Abrego Garcia’s pre-trial release, which may open the door for him to go to Costa Rica finally and bring an end to his 14-month saga that has received international attention and opprobrium.

The procedural path to dismissing the case was not straightforward. Judge Crenshaw originally found in December that Abrego Garcia had established a presumption of vindictive prosecution, a high bar which few criminal defendants ever manage to clear. That ruling shifted the burden to the government to establish that it was a legitimate prosecution. The evidentiary hearing in February was the government’s chance to rebut the presumption, but it failed to do so.

Under the law, Crenshaw ruled, he was not required to inquire further: “While the Court finds insufficient evidence of actual vindictiveness, the Court concludes that the Government has failed to rebut the presumption of vindictiveness.”