DOJ attorneys are trying to bully their way out of a requirement to provide a federal judge with details about whether they violated a court order blocking them from deporting hundreds of people without due process.
The Wednesday filing demands that District Judge James Boasberg, who is chief judge of the D.C. District Court, freeze a noon Wednesday deadline for the Trump administration to supply details about two planes that continued to travel to El Salvador on Saturday, removing deportees to that country after the judge directed the government to turn the planes around.
In making the argument in the Wednesday filing, Trump DOJ attorneys went out of their way to express disdain for Boasberg, calling his efforts “digressive micromanagement,” “unnecessary judicial fishing expeditions,” and an example of the court “continuing to beat a dead horse.” The motion reads like a hybrid of a professional wrestler and an attorney for an authoritarian government, replete with gratuitous suggestions that Boasberg doesn’t know what he’s doing and assertions that the President can be a dictator — so long as he can excuse his actions as necessary for national security or foreign policy.
But at its core, the Trump administration is trying to get out of providing Boasberg with what he wants: information about when the two planes took off, when they left U.S. airspace, when they landed overseas, how many people were deported solely on the basis of Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, and what time people on the planes were transferred out of U.S. custody.
“Continuing to beat a dead horse solely for the sake of prying from the Government legally immaterial facts and wholly within a sphere of core functions of the Executive Branch is both purposeless and frustrating to the consideration of the actual legal issues at stake in this case,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew C. Ensign wrote in the filing.
Ensign suggested that the government may invoke the state secrets privilege to avoid complying with the Boasberg’s order, saying in part that the court should delay the noon deadline in order to give the government time to avoid having to “hastily” evaluate whether to make that argument.
In other areas, the government repeats arguments that its made elsewhere in the Alien Enemies Act litigation: that because it has declared that the deportees supposedly belonged to a terrorist organization, the court has no power to review the matter. DOJ attorneys also restated their argument that because the planes may have been outside of U.S. airspace at the time of the order, Boasberg had lost his power over the aircraft. And, besides, the DOJ argued: the Trump administration has authority over national security and foreign policy matters that are “absolute and unreviewable.”
It’s a dictatorial argument, in this case made to defend the government from revealing that it likely violated a federal court order. The standoff marks a stunning example of Trump administration defiance of basic issues of Constitutional government.
Read the motion here:
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.” – Edward R. Murrow
Trump voters, this is on YOU!
Can anyone explain why judges aren’t jailing these lawyers when they pull stunts like this. The judges make clear rulings, and Trump’s lawyers insult them insteas. Susan Macdougal spent a year for criminal contempt. One of these shysters and this nonsense would stop.
And the former reality tv show host and convicted felon says …
Must be pretty bad if they’re this crazy to stop it being disclosed in camera. Like, contempt of court bad.
ETA:
She spent the maximum 18 months in jail for civil contempt for refusing to answer questions to a grand jury. Civil contempt is not subject to presidential pardon. Her criminal conviction was for Whitewater-related fraud, for which she received two years.
The motions read as if Steven Cheung is writing them.