The Savagery Is the Point
It’s difficult to convey the full scope of the Trump administration’s misdeeds in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but let’s give it a shot.
You know the broad contours of the story already. The administration illegally removed Abrego Garcia from his home in Maryland to El Salvador, where he was thrown in prison for months. Despite the Supreme Court ordering that the administration facilitate his return, the executive branch dragged its feet for weeks. When the administration did finally return him to the United States (without notice to his lawyers or the judge in the case), it did so only to lock him up again on criminal charges that had been secretly filed in Tennessee.
It’s what’s happened since then that has become more difficult to convey because it’s not been clear what exactly the administration’s end game is here. You might have thought the endgame was the criminal case in Tennessee: Win a conviction then deport him either before or after he served his sentence here. Nope, as it turned out.
It’s become apparent now that the administration is not driven by a desire for any particular outcome, but for whatever outcome among the available choices inflicts maximum pain and suffering on Abrego Garcia.
If that sounds overstated, let me quickly walk you through the administration’s threat to deport Abrego Garcia to a third country because it’s the best example of the bobbing and weaving that’s marked the administration’s ungrounded approach to the case.
At first glance, you might think that the third country removal is the story now. Hasn’t the man suffered enough without being sent to a country on the African continent with which he has no ties, where it’s unclear if he’ll again be incarcerated without being charged, and where the assurances are shaky at best that he won’t simply be forward on to El Salvador? You might be inclined to follow the ins and outs of that story, with the ultimate question being whether the administration succeeds in shipping him off to Africa. But as it turned out you’d have been wrong.
Once the Trump administration had Abrego Garcia in custody again in Maryland in his immigration case (after he’d been ordered released from custody in Tennessee while his trial was pending), it made little effort to find a third country willing to accept him. His lawyers suspected that the administration was content to just hold him indefinitely and so forced the issue by moving to secure a court order to release him. In a hearing earlier this month before U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland, she sussed out that almost nothing had been done by the administration to find a third country and what had been done had been undertaken immediately before the hearing in anticipation of having to answer for its conduct.
So now your inclination might be to track whether Abrego Garcia wins by securing his release rather than being subject to indefinite detention by a foot-dragging Trump administration. Wrong again!
Facing the prospect of a potentially adverse ruling from Xinis, the administration declared on Friday that it had found a third country for Abrego Garcia. Liberia, take a bow. Xinis summoned the parties for another hearing yesterday, where the administration said it’s preparing to remove him to Liberia by as soon as Oct. 31. I should mention here that Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have told Xinis he is willing to accept removal to Costa Rica. To Xinis’ puzzlement, the administration has not accepted that option.
The administration’s shifting priorities reflect not some grand plan or strategy, but at each juncture choosing the option before it that most torments Abrego Garcia. It’s really the only explanation that accounts for the meandering series of positions by the administration. But there’s one other wild card in the mix.
Abrego Garcia still faces criminal trial in Tennessee on the human smuggling charges the administration whipped up. So far, he’s convinced a judge — not that hard on the facts I’ve already laid out here — that he’s established a prima facie case of vindictive prosecution by the Trump DOJ. That shifts the burden to the administration to establish that it undertook the prosecution on a legitimate basis. Importantly, it also opened the door for Abrego Garcia to conduct discovery on how the administration handled his case.
The administration is fighting like hell to head off that discovery, which includes a subpoena of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and other high-ranking DOJ officials. The judge in the criminal case has set two days of hearings on Nov. 4-5 for all the pretrial motions, including the vindictive prosecution claim. Witness testimony is expected. The Trump DOJ moved yesterday to quash the subpoena in the hopes of preventing testimony from Blanche and others. Meanwhile, the judge in the criminal case smacked the administration yesterday for its “exaggerated if not simply inaccurate” out-of-court statements about Abrego Garcia
So you can see now the added advantage to the administration of resuming the third country removal plan, whether it’s Liberia or somewhere else (it’s likely the Abrego Garcia will formally express in a hearing today a fear of being sent to Liberia which will trigger additional delays). They’ll be happy to avoid further scrutiny of their conduct in the criminal case even it means effectively dropping the case by deporting him.
The criminal case, third country removal, and prolonged detention are all just tools the Trump administration is using to savage Abrego Garcia. The savagery is the point.
Coverup?
A Homeland Security Investigations officer accompanying local police fired his gun into a car during a traffic stop in DC earlier this month, but the police report of the incident contained no mention of shots being fired. All charges against the unarmed Black man who was stopped were dismissed after a judge concluded there was insufficient evidence that he tried to flee, his lawyers told the WaPo. The man was uninjured in the incident but spent three nights in jail before the charges were dismissed.
Former DOJers Side With Comey
In an amicus brief, more than 100 former DOJ officials urged a federal judge to dismiss the criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey, arguing that it is vindictive.
Ball Now in Trump DOJ’s Court
Former Special Counsel Jack Smith sent a letter to the Trump Justice Department asking for access to his old files and seeking guidance as to what he can say in testimony that Hill Republicans are demanding that he provide.
Mass Preemptive Pardons Alert
Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith, a former DOJ official under Bush II, anticipates that President Trump will issue mass preemptive pardons toward the end of his term, especially if a Democrat were to succeed him:
[O]ne can be absolutely certain that Trump will issue preemptive pardons at or near the end of his second term, probably on an enormous scale—especially since … he will anticipate that a Democratic administration may have little reason to respect Trump OLC opinions in deciding whether to prosecute Trump officials. Pardons blunt this possibility. I expect Trump to issue hundreds and possibly thousands of preemptive pardons to everyone in his administration who may conceivably be subject to future investigation or prosecution, especially if a Democrat wins the presidential election in November 2028.
Trump Appeals Hush Money Conviction
President Trump filed an appeal of his conviction in the Stormy Daniels hush money case, in which he was sentenced to no punishment, in hopes of having the convicted felon tag removed from his biography.
Paul Manafort Is Still at it
Kenneth Vogel traces Paul Manafort’s “unlikely full-circle journey from high-flying global fixer to federal inmate and back.”
A Race to Beat Midterms Clock
Red states are salivating over the prospect of the Roberts Court eviscerating what’s left of the Voting Rights Act, and some of them are beginning to plan for redrawing their congressional districts maps if the Supreme Court rules in time for the 2026 midterms, Politico reports.
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