The big news coming out of yesterday’s hearing in federal court in Baltimore was that more than 100 asylum seekers have been wrongfully deported in violation of a court-approved settlement agreement involving unaccompanied minors.
I happened to be the only journalist in attendance at the evidentiary hearing in front of U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, who thankfully denied an uncontested last-minute request to seal the hearing. My full write-up is here.
My interest in this case has frankly less to do with the immigration issues at stake, though they’re undoubtedly important in their own right, and more to do with that fact that this case is an important front in the ongoing battle between the Trump executive branch and judicial branch.
The case — awkwardly styled as J.O.P. v. Department of Homeland Security — is one of the “facilitate” cases, a progeny of the Abrego Garcia wrongful deportation case. In the early stages of the case, Judge Gallagher closely modeled U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’ handling of the Abrego Garcia case, which was blessed by the Supreme Court. As in that other Maryland case, wrongful deportations in violations of court orders have been followed by stonewalling from the Trump administration.
Since then, the J.O.P. case has evolved away (at least for now) from the narrower issue of “facilitating” the return of wrongfully deported people to a broader inquiry into why the wrongful deportations continue to happen, to the tune of somewhere in the “low 100s” of people out of a class of litigants that numbers, by the government’s estimate, between 70,000 and 75,000 people. But one thing remains the same: The Trump administration continues to use the Justice Department to stonewall federal judges by producing witnesses who can’t competently testify on the issues before the court.
That would have been the main news coming out of yesterday’s hearing, where a frustrated judge continued to call out the administration for not giving her witnesses who could testify based on their personal knowledge about what happened that led to deportations in violation of the settlement agreement.
We’re back at it again today, after a stern order from Gallagher for the government to do better today. I’m heading into court now. Stay tuned.
‘Go Big and Go Loud’
Our old friend Aakash Singh, a top official in Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office who made an important cameo in the Abrego Garcia criminal case, is back in a well-reported NYT story on the Trump administration’s targeting of anti-ICE protestors:
In a conference call in late January, the official, Aakash Singh, laid out the department’s basis for prosecuting demonstrators: National Security Presidential Memo 7, a sweeping directive issued by President Trump last September. It expanded the definition of domestic terrorism to include not only violent crimes like assault, but also relatively minor ones, like revealing the personal details of agents or getting in the way of immigration enforcement.
Mr. Singh said that “coordinators” in U.S. attorneys’ offices responsible for charging protesters under NSPM-7 should be “hounding” federal agents to make cases, according to people familiar with his remarks. He also suggested that the department wanted headlines along with indictments, promising that officials in Washington would be “blasting out” prosecutors’ work.
“Go big,” Mr. Singh said, “and go loud.”
The Retribution: Trump DOJ Edition
- Axios: Former FBI Director James Comey has been subpoenaed in the mother of all investigate the investigators retributions down in South Florida.
- NYT: Two anonymous former FBI agents who were fired for their work on the Jan. 6 investigation of Trump are suing over their wrongful terminations, claiming they were targets of “political retribution.”
Utterly Insane
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything as tortured, corrupt, and upside down as President Trump’s attempt to save his own political skin by lifting sanctions on Iran so that it can sell its oil and stabilize energy prices while simultaneously conducting a war against Iran.
Since I was in court most of the day yesterday, I don’t have a fine-grained read on how this new development is playing in the public sphere. But this is truly one of the most eye-popping things I’ve seen in the Trump II presidency.
Shoring up your adversary in an armed conflict you initiated in a desperate attempt to mitigate the consequences of your elective war may forever stand as the paramount example of Donald Trump putting his personal and political interests above the national interest.
Trump’s election year self-bailout is bolstering a key economic lifeline for Iran — while inevitably boosting its war-fighting capabilities — while U.S. service members are actively in harm’s way in the air and at sea. Anything to drive down gas prices ahead of the midterm elections.
Latest from the Middle East …
- WSJ: U.S. War Planes and Helicopters Kick Off Battle to Reopen Hormuz
- In the face of overwhelming evidence, President Trump backtracked from his wild claims that Israel had attacked Iran’s South Pars Gas Field without his knowledge.
- The WSJ charts the critical energy assets hit in the Middle East conflict, including most recently a major Kuwaiti oil refinery
For Your Climate Change Radar …
In what could be the seminal challenge to President Trump’s attempt to wreck U.S. climate policy, a coalition of states and cities has sued to reinstate the EPA’s endangerment finding on greenhouse gas emissions.
Judge Blocks RFK Jr’s Anti-Trans Finding
U.S. District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai of Oregon blocked HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s December declaration that providers of gender-affirming care for minors “do not meet professionally recognized standards.”
The Corruption: Trump Coin Edition
I don’t want to lose sight of the fundamental lawlessness of putting Trump’s visage on a U.S. coin, but it also represents a pristine illustration of the absurdism that a personalist regime fosters.
Just take a look at the abject devotion of the Trump-appointed members of U.S. Commission of Fine Arts as they talk about their very special big boy’s need to have the biggest coin … at least the 3 inches that is the current largest coin, via the AP:
Some commissioners noted Trump’s fondness for big things as they advocated for the largest size coin. …
“I think the president likes big things,” said Commissioner James McCrery II, who was the architect on Trump’s design proposal for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom addition to the White House.
[Commissioner Chamberlain] Harris told McCrery she agreed with him. She works in the White House as a special assistant to the president and deputy director of the Oval Office.
“I think the larger the better. The largest of that circulation, I think, would be his preference,” Harris said, speaking of Trump.
Stay Tuned Later Today!
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