'Trump DOJ Uses State Secrets Claim To Stonewall Abrego Garcia'

[sop]

"Two Months And Counting...We’re coming up on two months since Kilmar Abrego Garcia was wrongfully removed from the United States, despite an immigration judge order barring it, and sent to a prison in El Salvador. Two months of incarceration for a deportation that the Trump administration admits was an error, and two months of stonewalling federal courts by the Trump administration, which refuses to try to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release despite a month-old Supreme Court order to do so."

"In a late night filing in federal court in Maryland, the Trump DOJ continued to tell the courts to pound sand, in so many words, rather than divulge the details of what it’s done and what it plans to do to facilitate his release. The Trump DOJ isn’t as explicit as that; it’s more slippery and it continues to argue that it has complied with all court orders. But the upshot of raising tenuous state secrets claims to thwart discovery in the case is to further stonewall and delay, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers argue:"

“'The fact that the Government has repeatedly publicized information—in congressional testimony, public interviews, and social media posts—about Abrego Garcia and its unwillingness to facilitate his return confirms that answering the requested discovery would not imperil national security. More likely, the Government’s assertion of state secrets is consistent with an effort to avoid judicial scrutiny of its actions.'"

"That last part is key...Unlike in normal discovery, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis is using this process to smoke out whether the administration should be held in contempt of court for repeatedly defying court orders. Stonewalling the discovery phase is part of the same overall pattern of contemptuous behavior, though the latest conduct is cloaked in enough of a veneer of an argument to probably avoid sanctions."

"The latest round of filings – including the declaration from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that is the basis for the state secrets claim – are either sealed or partly redacted so we still don’t have a complete view into the factual underpinnings for the invocation of the state secrets privilege. The seriousness of the state secrets privilege claim is colored by the administration’s belated invocation of it in the earlier Alien Enemies Act case in DC, where U.S. District Judge James Boasberg was incredulous that it could apply to those deportations."

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/trump-doj-uses-state-secrets-claim-to-stonewall-abrego-garcia

[bucolic_frolic]

1. There's something they want to keep secret, so much so that they're

willing to classify it as a state secret. As a kind of add-on, though, it seems more tenuous as a tactic.

Important connections at the top that they don't want to reveal. Conundrum.

[prodigitalson]

2. I think it is pure sadism

I think he gets off on it.