Left: Donald Trump speaks at the annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, DC, in June 2024 (Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP). Right: U.S. District Judge James Boasberg (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia).
President Donald Trump‘s Justice Department admonished a federal judge on Wednesday for his grilling of a DOJ lawyer over deportation flights and whether they violated an order he gave over the weekend, scolding him for “continuing to beat a dead horse” with “purposeless and frustrating” questions that the DOJ blasts as a “digressive micromanagement” of “immaterial fact-finding.”
“The Court has now spent more time trying to ferret out information about the Government’s flight schedules and relations with foreign countries than it did in investigating the facts before certifying the class action in this case,” DOJ lawyers chastised in a motion to stay a Tuesday order handed down by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg that required the Trump administration to provide more information about the deportations and flights in question after it refused to do so at hearings this week, citing “national security concerns.”
“That observation reflects how upside-down this case has become, as digressive micromanagement has outweighed consideration of the case’s legal issues,” the DOJ said. “Disclosure of the information sought could implicate the affairs of United States allies and their cooperation with the United States Government in fighting terrorist organizations. Such disclosure would unquestionably create serious repercussions for the Executive Branch’s ability to conduct foreign affairs. The prospect of hasty and wholly unnecessary disclosure of this information, which these continued proceedings have made manifest, would have a chilling effect on the willingness of other nations to cooperate with the United States.”
Describing how the department believes Boasberg’s fact-finding tactics have gotten out of hand, the DOJ added: “The distraction of the specific facts surrounding the movements of an airplane has derailed this case long enough and should end until the Circuit Court has had a chance to weigh in.”
Boasberg responded Wednesday by giving the government an extension and saying the DOJ should have just told him all this when he asked Monday at the first fact-finding hearing; DOJ lawyers said they were unable to do so because they didn’t have specifics at the time.
“The Government’s Motion is the first time it has suggested that disclosing the information requested by the Court could amount to the release of state secrets,” Boasberg said in an order giving the DOJ until Thursday to provide the requested flight information or to “invoke the state-secrets doctrine and explain the basis for such invocation,” the judge stated. “To date, in fact, the Government has made no claim that the information at issue is even classified,” Boasberg added. “Classification is generally considered to be less protective than the state-secrets privilege. It thus appears to be an uncommon occurrence for the disclosure of unclassified information to threaten state secrets.”
The Trump administration has been accused of willfully flouting the court’s Saturday order enjoining the government from removing more than 100 individuals from the country as it’s being sued for unlawfully doing so. Deputy Associate Attorney General Abhishek Kambli admitted Monday that the administration did not comply with Boasberg’s oral order that he issued during a Saturday hearing, during which he instructed the DOJ to return the immigrants to the United States. That order, however, was not included in the written order he issued shortly after the hearing ended Saturday evening.
The Trump administration has asserted that it fully complied with the court’s written order and has even implored the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to remove Boasberg, a Barack Obama appointee, from the case for making DOJ lawyers defend the administration’s actions in an “open, public hearing.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts on Tuesday issued a public statement rebuking those publicly calling for judges to be impeached over disagreements with their rulings after President Trump called for Boasberg’s impeachment on social media.
“I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do,” the president wrote. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY.”
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On Wednesday, Trump’s DOJ said in its motion that Boasberg “has no basis to intrude into the conduct of foreign affairs by the government” and it believes a more “deliberative and respectful approach is warranted.” The motion pointed to arguments made in filings and at hearings about the Trump administration’s alleged compliance with Boasberg’s written order and why his verbal order issued Saturday was not recognized.
“Plaintiffs have not explained why they need any of the requested information to raise whatever compliance arguments they intend to make either,” the DOJ said. “In short, the Plaintiffs and the Court are seeking information about a past event to which the Government has already spoken and which has no salience to the Plaintiffs’ claims. Continuing to beat a dead horse solely for the sake of prying from the Government legally immaterial facts and wholly within a sphere of core functions of the Executive Branch is both purposeless and frustrating to the consideration of the actual legal issues at stake in this case. This consideration also warrants a stay.”
On Monday, Kambli and the DOJ repeatedly refused to answer questions about details of the deportations, citing “national security concerns” that prevented him from providing information about what happened — but admitting that he had no idea why. Boasberg ordered him to respond by noon Tuesday with more info about the flights and an explanation for why certain facts couldn’t be shared. The DOJ complied, but only provided times and statements saying it lawfully followed Boasberg’s written order.
“Those are operational issues, and I am not at liberty to provide — or authorized to provide — any information on how many planes left,” Kambli said Monday. “The information that I am authorized to provide is that no planes took off from the United States after the written order came through, and the other information that I can relay is that the two planes that the plaintiffs cite in their filing, the timing of whether it was during the verbal order or the written order does not have any material bearing based on the timeline that they’ve given.”
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The entire controversy stems from a Saturday morning lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of several pseudonymous Venezuelan men seeking to bar President Trump from going through with his stated plan to deport the men using the obscure measure. Boasberg granted the plaintiffs’ request, barring the government from invoking the AEA to remove individuals for 14 days and holding a Saturday evening hearing on the matter.
During the hearing, DOJ attorneys told the court that two planes had already departed carrying individuals to Honduras and El Salvador. Boasberg at about 6:45 p.m. on Saturday issued an oral order that “unambiguously directed the government to turn around any planes carrying individuals being removed pursuant to the AEA Proclamation,” plaintiffs wrote in Monday’s filing. Boasberg’s brief written order, which was issued at about 7:25 p.m. on Saturday, did not include the same directive ordering the planes to return to the country. The Trump administration allegedly allowed the planes to land and the individuals were handed over to the custody of other nations.
“The Government respects this Court and has complied with its request to present the Government’s position on the legality of the Court’s TRO and the Government’s compliance with that TRO,” the DOJ said Wednesday. “The Government now asks the Court to accord it the same respect as a coequal branch by staying its order until the important issues raised by this case are considered by the circuit court.”
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Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.
