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Must be easy to be a lawyer in Donald Trump’s DOJ. You you can be pretty instead of smart (or neither!) and don’t even have to read anything you file. All you have to do is follow the loyalist party line, claim ignorance to all else, and stand there hurr-durring while a judge upbraids you and a constitutional crisis rages in the background.
Such has been the case for Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign, who’s been trying to defend the Trump administration’s right to basically kidnap any immigrant on the street, call them a terrorist, and send them to rot in a foreign prison with no due process, and flagrantly defy a judge’s orders about it.
And turns out the administration’s maneuvering was even sketchier than it sounded at first. Trump signed his holy proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 after the people were snatched up, and at the very same time the removals were being challenged in court. OR DID HE? On Friday, Bone Spurs claimed that actually he didn’t: “I don’t know when it was signed, because I didn’t sign it,” and “other people handled it. But Marco Rubio’s done a great job.”
So, signed by autopen? It’s always projection with those guys. LOL, spokesclown Stephen Cheung was like, “President Trump was obviously referring to the original Alien Enemies Act that was signed back in 1798.” Obviously! Gosh, you reporters are so dumb. Now Poppy, let’s get you another Diet Coke and get you back in the Barcalounger.
Anyway, Friday the government and ACLU were back in court with Judge James Boasberg to rule on the DOJ’s request that Boasberg vacate his own two restraining orders that keep the Government from relying solely on Trump’s holy proclamation to remove the plaintiffs, or any other Venezuelan noncitizens in its custody. But instead of doing that, Boasberg tore them a new one, and today told them to go suck an egg and sit on a tack again, but in judge language.
First he remarked on the “disrespectful, intemperate language” of a sort he had “never seen from the United States,” before going into all of the many things wrong with the government’s argument.
For one, the plaintiffs vehemently deny being in any gang, in fact, some of them were asylum seekers who say they came to the US expressly to avoid the predations of said gang. And some of them were not even Venezuelan! We learned that El Salvador actually refused to accept some of them, because they were female and/or not Venezuelan. And though Trump has been hollering that they were all criminals, in court an ICE agent admitted that may did not have criminal records at all. That’s just how crafty they are as terrorists, evading the justice system like The Invisible Man, your honor!
Then there’s a problem with invoking war powers, because we are not at war, and even if we were, the Tren de Aragua gang is not a government. And also even if we were at war, the “alien enemies” would still be entitled to challenge their designation in court. Especially as the country they are being sent to is known for doing torture.
What’s more, if the government wanted to remove the individuals, there are legal ways to do that that do not involve shoving them onto planes in a hurry to get them to El Salvador before their removals could have a chance to be challenged in court, and Trump belatedly posting a proclamation that was “essentially signed in the dark.” Fumed the Judge, “the most reasonable inference is that it hustled people onto those planes in the hopes of evading an injunction or perhaps preventing them from requesting the habeas hearing to which the Government now acknowledges they are entitled.” And it also sure did not help the argument that everything was legal and cool when Secretary of State Bubbles Rubio tweet-emoji-cackled that the judge’s order came “Ooops… too late!”
Nobody tell Boasberg how Pammy Jo Bondi and Tom Homan have been saying over and over that they plan to continue to carry out the deportation flights anyway, and how Homan’s been slurring on TV that he doesn’t care what judges think.
Trump has responded to this very normally for him, which was to threaten Judge Boasberg with so much impeachment that even John Roberts clutched his pearls and said it was inappropriate. And then around midnight last night/this morning, he decided the judge should be DISBARRED. Or maybe Rambles McClownstick means Judge Merchan. Or both! Who knows!
He followed it up with some more TARIFFS for any country that buys oil from Venezuela.
President Donald J. Trump announced today that the United States of America will be putting what is known as a Secondary Tariff on the Country of Venezuela, for numerous reasons, including the fact that Venezuela has purposefully and deceitfully sent to the United States, undercover, tens of thousands of high level, and other, criminals, many of whom are murderers and people of a very violent nature. Among the gangs they sent to the United States, is Tren de Aragua, which has been given the designation of “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” We are in the process of returning them to Venezuela — It is a big task! In addition, Venezuela has been very hostile to the United States and the Freedoms which we espouse. Therefore, any Country that purchases Oil and/or Gas from Venezuela will be forced to pay a Tariff of 25% to the United States on any Trade they do with our Country. All documentation will be signed and registered, and the Tariff will take place on April 2nd, 2025, LIBERATION DAY IN AMERICA. Please let this notification serve to represent that the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol, and all other Law Enforcement Agencies within our Country have been so notified. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
So we shall be tariffing ourselves now, I guess? Also Venezuela’s largest market is China, which is already getting a 20 percent tariff; so will it now be a 55 percent tariff? Or has his goldfish brain already forgotten that he mashed out this screed?
Now greasy lickspittle Jim Jordan says he’s going to hold hearings next week on how Judge Boasberg was a FISA judge and therefore allowed James Comey to spy on Trump, or something, and rancid beef jerky stick Darrell Issa is fixing to introduce a bill to prevent district judges from issuing nationwide injunctions.
The government does seem to be following the order for now, or at least no more hurried secret flights to torture prison seem to have departed as far as we know. Venezuela has agreed to accept repatriation flights. And Judge Boasberg says if the government defies the order, there will be consequences! Though it is not clear yet what those would be, or even could be. It’s all unprecedented!
Another day, another Constitutional crisis.
OPEN THREAD!
[Mediaite / JGG et al v. Trump / Guardian / CNN]
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