Trump LOSES EMERGENCY SUPREME COURT CASE Tonight: "I LOST?!"
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00:00The judge is really trying to get at the issue here of whether his order was violated.
00:04So he asked the attorney for the Justice Department in the room today, who was in the room over
00:09the weekend when the judge issued that order from the bench saying to stop the planes.
00:14He asked that lawyer, what was your understanding of what I had said at that point?
00:19And the attorney said that he understood that the judge's order was binding and that it
00:23was effective immediately.
00:25So when he said it from the bench, because the Trump administration officials have suggested
00:29that maybe it wasn't official until it was a written order.
00:33So the judge wanted to get on record right then and there that the attorney in the room
00:37who relayed the conversation believed that the order was in effect the moment the judge
00:42said it from the bench.
00:44Now this lawyer had said that he couldn't share the details of what he discussed with
00:48his clients, the executive branch, because that was covered by attorney-client privilege.
00:53But the judge really trying to make sure that he has on record that the lawyer in the
00:57room was not mistaken and that he knew that the order was to stop the planes when the
01:01judge said it from the bench.
01:03Now the bulk of this hearing was also focused on what exactly the judge's role here could
01:08be because, you know, there's these issues of people being deported and the judge saying
01:12that this actually raises some serious policy implications.
01:15He said that it's incredibly troublesome, problematic and concerning the way that this
01:20is being applied under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, saying it is unprecedented and
01:26expanded use of this, and that if this is allowed to proceed, it could mean that the
01:31president could deport anyone from the country, even, say, a Chinese fisherman who is in the
01:37U.S. water.
01:38So, you know, trying to get at what the scope of what could entail here if individuals who
01:43are picked up are not able to challenge that.
01:46And that's a lot of what this focus was on, what would be the proper way for someone to
01:50say that they are not a member of this Venezuelan gang that was the basis for their removal.
01:55You know, the judge, though, really began the hearing focusing on his order and whether
02:00that was violated and also coming right back to that at the end of the hearing because
02:04he had said, he noted that the government, he said, was not being cooperative, but he
02:08said, I will get to the bottom of whether my order was violated, who ordered the violation
02:13of the order and what those consequences will be.
02:17So no decision here today on whether the judge is going to change the scope of this temporary
02:24order blocking the deportation, but he's certainly saying that he is not giving up his quest
02:28to find out whether his order was violated and who is behind that.
02:32Casey?
02:33All right.
02:34Cara Scannell for us.
02:35Cara, thanks very much for that reporting.
02:36Jamie Gangel and Elliot, I want your perspective as well, because you've worked inside the
02:41Justice Department.
02:42These are some pretty tough words from this judge, and I know you've got sources you've
02:45been talking to about about how this is all landing.
02:48So first of all, I'm not surprised that he said this today and not the lawyer, but as
02:53the daughter of a judge, let me tell you, those words translate into something that
02:59you can't even say on cable television.
03:03He is.
03:04He is furious.
03:05And talking to legal experts, I think we have to keep in mind that the judge was not just
03:11speaking about this case today.
03:16This is a message to the Trump administration, to the Trump DOJ, that this is not acceptable.
03:22Yeah.
03:23Elliot?
03:24You know, I think if we just step back, two things can be true at the same time.
03:28One is that there are people that we don't want in the United States, either as a matter
03:33of morals or as a matter of law.
03:35And two, that the methods for getting those people out of the country might be improper,
03:40right?
03:41And the only party who can answer that is the judge.
03:43And all the judge was doing and has been doing throughout this matter is trying to get to
03:47the bottom of, number one, who are the people that were on that plane?
03:51And number two, what are the means by which you sought to get them out of the country?
03:55Those are basic questions a judge ought to be asking.
03:57And the language the Justice Department used, accusing the judge of beating a dead horse
04:02and so on, which sounds like we would joke with each other and use that language in common
04:06parlance.
04:07You don't use that language when speaking to a judge.
04:09You could use it when criticizing.
04:10Well, you shouldn't.
04:11Well, you shouldn't.
04:12One ought not.
04:13Now, when criticizing another party or the strength of their arguments, certainly, you
04:17might see that kind of thing.
04:18But it was and has been a tone that is pretty remarkable in court, and the judge spoke unambiguously
04:25about it today.
04:26He's trying to get facts that will allow him to make that determination.
04:30And the government is stonewalling, which is a little bit difficult to understand since
04:35so much of this is clearly not a matter of state secrets.
04:39For instance, the fact that Trump invoked the Alien Act or the fact that these planes
04:43took off and landed, which the government itself paraded around on social media.
04:49So although normally when state secrets are involved, courts don't inquire too deeply
04:54beyond the fact of the invocation.
04:56Here it's entirely appropriate.
04:59And what this attestation from the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, does is it's
05:05minimal compliance with the court's order.
05:07Todd Blanche has simply said, I'm aware and I've been involved in these conversations
05:12at the cabinet level.
05:14Look, I think it's appropriate for the cabinet to take its time to determine whether or not
05:19to invoke state secrets, which is a common law doctrine that prevents courts from inquiring
05:25into military secrets that could damage our national security.
05:29On the other hand, the government is flirting with violating the judge's order.
05:33And he has plenty of possibilities for contempt proceedings against the government if he finally
05:39loses his patience with them.
05:41So tell us more about that, because we've seen Judge Boasberg repeatedly ask for more
05:44information and not get it.
05:46Realistically, what more can he do or other judges do in a case like this?
05:51Right.
05:52So I guess the most strident possibility here, Ana, would be to go after the government for
05:58some form of criminal contempt.
06:00And although we might normally say, well, that can't happen since the Justice Department
06:05is the prosecution, there's actually a provision in the federal rules of criminal procedure
06:10that lets the judge appoint a private prosecutor if the government isn't willing, which they
06:15almost certainly would not be willing in this situation.
06:19There's some precedent for that to happen.
06:22I've been involved in a matter in my district many years ago during the Bush administration
06:27where a judge actually did that and permitted a prosecution for contempt to move forward
06:33in that case against a private party, not the government.
06:36But there's there's good indication from courts in the District of Columbia that you can take
06:41sanctions against the government, including jailing government officials or requiring
06:46them to pay damages personally if a contempt prosecution is successful.
06:51Julia, there's still this big question about whether the people who were deported were
06:56even who the government says they were.
06:59They've been called gang members and terrorists.
07:01We haven't heard back from him since that filing from Blanche.
07:04And of course, yes, Blanche was just underscoring what the field office director, the acting
07:08field office director for ICE was saying, is that they're having cabinet level meetings
07:13to decide whether they're going to guard these answers as state secrets.
07:16We should point out that they did provide some answers, but they just weren't satisfactory
07:21and they didn't answer all of the questions that Boasberg posed.
07:24He's trying to understand if they violated his order, the verbal order he gave to turn
07:29the planes around.
07:30The only answer they've given so far is that the third plane, the one that took off at
07:34725 p.m. or after that, that was not in violation because those immigrants weren't deported
07:41under the Alien Enemies Act.
07:42But they have not yet explained if there were planes in the air that should have been turned
07:46around, although we should say in court they said that they interpreted his written order
07:51to supersede his verbal order.
07:53And the written order, which was much more succinct, did not include did not include
07:58commands to turn those planes around in the air, Alex.
08:00OK, and one argument the administration is making, Julia, to not turn them around is
08:04once they reached international airspace, that they wouldn't necessarily have been able
08:09to comply with the federal judge's orders.
08:11Is that right?
08:12That's right.
08:13That's one of the arguments made.
08:14But, of course, you could say, look, it was still well within the power of the United
08:18States to comply with the order by turning the planes around, really up and to the point
08:22that those people are handed over to El Salvadoran authorities on the tarmac.
08:27Of course, we've heard them say in and they saying that the order in the written docket
08:33is the one that they are going to follow rather than the verbal one.
08:36But as far as when these people left the custody or the power of the United States government,
08:41it wouldn't have been until they were handed over to those people on the tarmac that could
08:44have even taken off again, theoretically.
08:46Yeah, yeah.
08:47So, Harry, were to go this far, what would it mean to hold an administration in contempt?
08:53I mean, could we actually see someone hauled off the jail, even a cabinet member?
08:58Well, yes, although that would be after things escalate.
09:02It's really important, Alex, to underscore there are two different things going on here.
09:07There is the question whether it was lawful in the first instance.
09:10You just heard the president say we wouldn't want to make mistakes by like deporting people
09:15who aren't even in this group.
09:16I think that's right.
09:18And the way you determine that is as always with a court.
09:21You also the statute says it has to be an invasion basically of our shores by a foreign
09:27country.
09:28There doesn't seem a very good fit at all.
09:31That's the sort of thing that will be taken up today in Boasberg's court.
09:36But he is not he's letting them go on the question.
09:40I said things very firmly in an emergency order Saturday.
09:44Did you violate them or not?
09:45And the administration has said every different thing every day, including now, oh, it's picky
09:52you.
09:53Let it go, Judge.
09:54Boasberg wants to know.
09:56And he's doing us all really sort of a favor.
09:58He is fleshing them out to understand, are you violating orders here and now?
10:03Are you just playing kind of cute?
10:06The judiciary needs to know that.
10:08And indeed, they do.
10:10So all this stuff, you're exactly right.
10:13And Julie is exactly right.
10:14Nothing new from Blanche today.
10:16He's given them three or four chances.
10:18And this is just information about, you know, when did the planes take off?
10:22Things they've been public about.
10:24And now the latest is, well, maybe it's a state secret.
10:27OK.
10:28Is that what you're saying?
10:29Maybe we didn't have authority in international.
10:32That's bogus, by the way.
10:33They did.
10:34But is that what you're saying?
10:35I want to know because I want to know if you violated my order and I am not letting this
10:40go.
10:41All right.
10:42So the judge wants to go after Jeff.
10:44But if we focus on the hearing later today on the merits of the case, what defense has
10:49the White House laid out in last weekend's presidential proclamation invoking the Alien
10:54Enemies Act in the first place?
10:57Well, to start, I think they're still they're still figuring out what they want to say about
11:02that because the judge has been drilling them on them and whether or not that they can use
11:07the Alien Enemies Act because it's not something that's normally used when it's not wartime.
11:12So that's the administration has indicated that there are high level discussions about
11:17that cabinet level discussions about that.
11:20And I think that's some of that is still TBD.
11:23I also want to kind of step back and talk about the politics of all of this, including
11:27to your question, the arguments that they've laid out.
11:30They're speaking not only to the audience of the judge, which, of course, is really
11:34important because he is that's the court that they're appearing before, but also to the
11:39audience of the American public and Trump supporters who are cheering on any action
11:44that this president is taking to to fulfill a campaign promise to remove people out of
11:50the country that he says have committed these crimes.
11:53And he was just referring to that in the Oval Office as well.
11:56I also thought, quite interestingly, that he acknowledges that they don't want to make
11:59mistakes that indicates that maybe they have.
12:02I mean, what you're seeing here is Trump taking a loss and that Supreme Court move by Justice
12:08Roberts is playing a big role.
12:11Not only has Trump lost Supreme Court cases before, he's going to continue to lose them.
12:15Not not enough of them, but more more than a few.
12:19He might even lose more than half of his Supreme Court cases going forward.
12:22But Justice, we talked about this a couple of days ago, came out and said, you're not
12:26allowed to threaten judges, Donald.
12:29You and your movement are not allowed to threaten people.
12:32The response to you losing a case in the structure that ends in the Supreme Court is
12:38not to threaten people, but to keep appealing.
12:41And if you lose it, the Supreme Court, I mean, that's kind of that.
12:44It is what it is.
12:45I mean, you can even get around that by proposing a constitutional amendment there.
12:49You can go above the Supreme Court.
12:51You can amend the Constitution.
12:54This idea that the only thing you can do is threaten people is insane.
12:59And I don't think it's a coincidence because whether the judges beneath him are Democrats
13:05or Republicans or what have you, when the chief justice of the Supreme Court speaks,
13:11judges down the line listen.
13:14And when they when he came out and said, and again, it's not enough and I'm not going to
13:18call, you know, a George W. Bush appointed judge a hero.
13:23Right.
13:24But when he came out and he said that Donald was acting on inappropriately, that probably
13:32gave a lot of judges more courage to stand up to Trump and to stand up to his cronies
13:37and say, you can't do this.
13:40You're acting like a nut job.
13:42And what some experts are suggesting is judges are saying, we can't lock you up, Donald,
13:47but we can lock up a lot of your cronies.
13:50Beware.