U.S. District Judge James Boasberg keeps trying to do his job, and the Trump administration keeps trying to stop him.
Boasberg, of course, is the judge who ordered the administration to turn two planeloads full of deportees bound for a notorious prison in El Salvador around, an order the administration just straight-up ignored. Since then, Boasberg has been tireless in his efforts to determine precisely what led up to those flights on March 15 and to hold the administration accountable for defying his order.
For nearly nine months, we’ve all watched the administration engage in what can only be described as an escalating series of “Screw you, make me” behaviors.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, has tirelessly tried to hold the Trump administration to account.
First, of course, was what actually happened on March 15 itself. Boasberg ordered the administration to turn the planes already in the air around, but they didn’t. Screw you, make me.
After fired Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni came forward as a whistleblower, we learned that DOJ attorney Drew Ensign was lying when he told Boasberg he didn’t know if any planes were leaving that weekend. It turns out Reuveni was at the same meeting as Ensign when they were told that planes would take off no matter what. Screw you, make me.
Reuveni also revealed that then-senior DOJ official Emil Bove, a onetime criminal defense lawyer for President Donald Trump and now the proud owner of a lifetime seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals as thanks for his service, said the DOJ would need to consider telling the courts “Fuck you” and ignore court orders. That’s a literal “Screw you, make me.”
In the face of all these middle fingers, Boasberg has been trying to conduct contempt proceedings on the matter since April. After a long stallout where the District of Columbia Court of Appeals just sat on it, it’s finally in motion again.
Boasberg recently ordered the Trump administration to produce declarations and testimony as to exactly who decided to defy his order and continue the deportations. What was produced was, of course, screw you, make me.
After months of wrangling on this, administration officials have taken a new tack, now saying that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was personally responsible for ignoring his court order. So she submitted a cutesy little two-paragraph declaration that said that she made the decision to “continue to transfer the custody” of the deportees and that she did so after receiving privileged legal advice from DOJ lawyers.
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The only other declarations were from those DOJ lawyers, including another former Trump criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, all of which basically just say, “We gave privileged legal advice” and nothing more. Bove even descended from his perch to file a declaration saying he too was just chock-full of privileged advice that he gave to Blanche, who apparently then gave it to Noem.
These aren’t confessions, nor are they attempts to comply with Boasberg’s order. They are taunts that amount to “Screw you, make me.” The administration isn’t going to produce Noem to testify no matter what, and by wrapping her meager declaration in the doctrine of receiving privileged advice, they’re telling the court that they aren’t intending to ever reveal what happened.
Screw you, make me.
These declarations are also the exact opposite of what the administration has argued previously. First, it was that they didn’t think the order to turn the planes around was a court order because it was verbal. Then, it was that the court didn’t have jurisdiction because the planes were in international airspace. So hundreds of men, most of whom had no criminal record, were sent to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT detention center, court orders be damned.
Now, the administration is essentially saying that yes, it absolutely violated a court order and that decision was made at the highest level and is therefore privileged, and we’re not telling you anything else. Screw you, make me.
Boasberg, nonetheless, is going to keep trying. He’s ordered Ensign to testify in a contempt hearing on Dec. 16, and Boasberg is no dummy here. Ensign was not one of the people who allegedly advised Noem with all that privileged legal advice, but instead was before the court on March 15.
The judge also used his order to get in a well-founded and well-deserved jab at Noem and the game being played here.
“As this declaration does not provide enough information for the Court to determine whether her decision was a willful violation of the Court’s Order, the Court cannot at this juncture find probable cause that her actions constituted criminal contempt,” he wrote
And gosh, since he can’t determine that and wouldn’t want to be hasty in declaring the Homeland Security chief in criminal contempt, he has no choice but to hear witness testimony from Ensign and Reuveni about it.
The administration will no doubt be gearing up for another round of “Screw you, make me” here, and the problems for Boasberg are twofold.
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First, these are clearly people who have no problem lying under oath, so the demand for declarations and testimony doesn’t worry them. Second, any criminal contempt he could ever impose could just be wiped away by Trump or by a friendly Supreme Court.
But Boasberg is undaunted, bloodied but unbowed, and his tireless dedication in the face of all of that defiance is nothing less than admirable.
