Doj Skewers Judge As It Seeks To Quash Contempt Proceedings

The Trump administration’s showdown with Judge James Boasberg escalated further on Friday, as the Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to block the judge from holding a hearing next week to determine whether the administration deliberately defied his orders.

The months-long clash began in March, when Boasberg ordered officials to halt a series of deportation flights, which were not halted. The Justice Department on Friday also asked to have Boasberg removed from that case altogether.

Boasberg “is engaged in a pattern of retaliation and harassment, and has developed too strong a bias to preside over this matter impartially,” DOJ lawyers wrote in an emergency petition filed with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The judge’s planned hearing on whether officials intentionally violated his orders “portends a circus that threatens the separation of powers and the attorney-client privilege alike,” DOJ attorneys said.

“The forthcoming hearing has every appearance of an endless fishing expedition aimed at an ever-widening list of witnesses and prolonged testimony. That spectacle is not a genuine effort to uncover any relevant facts,” DOJ lawyers wrote, complaining that Boasberg is “doggedly pursuing an idiosyncratic and misguided inquiry.”

The fight stems from an order Boasberg issued in March after President Donald Trump invoked a two-century-old law, the Alien Enemies Act, to try to rapidly deport more than 130 alleged gang members to a notorious, high-security prison in El Salvador.

During a hearing held by videoconference, Boasberg gave an oral order that the deportees not be unloaded and that the planes be turned around, if necessary. But the flights continued and the men were led from the planes to the Salvadoran prison in shackles in an operation choreographed for TV cameras.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a recent court filing that she made the decision to carry on with the controversial deportations, based on legal advice from lawyers at DOJ and her department. Boasberg is working to determine whether Noem’s decision amounted to criminal defiance of his order.

Boasberg’s March order angered many Trump supporters, and the president himself, who joined calls for the judge’s impeachment.

Almost immediately, Boasberg began pressing DOJ lawyers for answers about who was informed about his order and who decided to disregard it. At a hearing in April, the judge began a process that could lead to officials being charged with criminal contempt of court.

The D.C. Circuit put a stop to that specific process, but was divided over what Boasberg could do next.

Boasberg, an Obama appointee, said the appeals court ruling did not preclude him taking further action and he set a hearing, to begin Monday, with witnesses who could describe how the administration responded to his March 15 order.

The judge ordered two witnesses to testify: Erez Reuveni, a former senior immigration attorney at DOJ, who was fired in April by Attorney General Pam Bondi; and Drew Ensign, a deputy assistant attorney general who handled the initial proceedings in the lawsuit brought on behalf of the deportees.

Reuveni later filed a formal whistleblower disclosure accusing a top DOJ official, Emil Bove, of crudely urging defiance of court orders. Bove, who has since been confirmed as a judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, denied the thrust of Reuveni’s claims but was vague about some specifics.

In filings attempting to stave off next week’s hearing, the Justice Department emphasized that Noem’s decision was made after consultations with Bove, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and DHS counsel Joseph Mazzara. Bove and Blanche indicated in declarations to the court that their advice to Noem was “privileged.” Boasberg described their statements as “cursory.”

The Justice Department has argued that a written docket entry Boasberg issued after his oral order superseded that order, and that the written order only applied to potential deportees still in U.S. territory or airspace. DOJ has also argued that even if its interpretation of the orders is wrong, they were not clear enough to allow anyone to be charged with criminal contempt.

On Friday, Boasberg also turned down last-ditch requests DOJ made to him to cancel or postpone next week’s hearing.

“This inquiry is not some academic exercise. Approximately 137 men were spirited out of this country without a hearing and placed in a high-security prison in El Salvador, where many suffered abuse and possible torture, despite this Court’s order that they should not

be disembarked,” Boasberg wrote. “The question the Court must now answer is whether this occurred via contumacious conduct by Government officials.”