Summary
A federal judge criticized a Trump administration Justice Department lawyer who claimed they didn’t have to follow the judge’s oral order blocking deportations to El Salvador because it wasn’t in writing.
Judge Boasberg questioned why the administration ignored his directive to return immigrants to the US. The DOJ lawyer repeatedly refused to provide information about the deportations, citing “national security concerns.”
Frustrated, Boasberg ordered sworn declarations explaining what happened, quipping that he would issue a written order “since apparently my verbal orders don’t seem to carry much weight.”
Oh snap he GRILLED him!?!? Damn! Trump is going down!!! #RESIST
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Lol
‘You felt you could disregard it?’
Narrator: He did.
Are we still pretending this matters anymore?
Correct me if I’m wrong but what could the judge even do to these DoJ staff? Throw them in jail for a few days? Trump would just pardon them, wouldn’t he?
Public/private reprimand is the first step I think. The judge could also probably suspend their license, or possibly influence their getting disbarred if the lawyer fucks up enough. Probably couldn’t throw them in jail unless they were accused of a crime, but that would only be pardonable if it was a federal crime.
I’m sure they’ll cry “partisanship”, but put them in jail if relevant. I imagine at least some will be dissuaded by charges and prison even if they can count on a pardon. At least some will be kept out of politics after our four years of hell, even if they can count on a pardon. Even in the very worst case scenario where they get away with everything, legitimate charges will help cement the legacy as the most corrupt president ever.
Frustrated, Boasberg ordered sworn declarations explaining what happened, quipping that he would issue a written order “since apparently my verbal orders don’t seem to carry much weight.”
Written orders probably won’t carry any weight either since he probably can’t read even if he attempted to.
I’m waiting for people to connect the dots around my town. People’s rights begin with legislation and end with judicial decision. Being that the bill of rights is being overridden by the executive branch right now, judges have said so and the executive branch is saying they don’t care, it is fairly obvious the bill of rights no longer matters. So pick any amendment you like from the bill or rights, free speech, free press… Right the bear arms. Yup, gone. The conservatives nullified the right to bear arms and is cheering for it. By the time they think they should speak out about it, well they’ll maybe realize they already cheered for the loss of their freedom of speech. Oops
Show cause why I shouldn’t throw your ass in the klink. That’s what happens to the rest of us if we ignore a court order.
He can’t be charged with a crime while in office or for anything he does in office. So, that’s why.
so arrest everyone in the department that did it. EVERYONE. secretary of [thing], and everyone who might have so much as seen the command moving down the chain.
that’s what a law that wasn’t just an excuse to punish poor people would do.
or just fucking arrest him anyway, fuck it, if laws don’t mean things, laws don’t mean things. that includes his special protection.
but again, that would require the point of the law to be something other than punishing the poor.
I don’t disagree with you, but I think we both know how this will play out. Get ready to hide in the attic.
yeah. fuck my life. taking bets on how long I last before they kill me. ill have betting tables up in the morning.
Hmmm… what color are you? Could be a matter of months… (hopefully not)
I think I count as ‘swarthy’ and white depending on the century.
but also I’m visibly queer and very loud about lefty politics.
Hmm. Do you live in a blue state? I hope so. You might be able to blend. Can you—is this the fucking 90s?—“butch up” for the gestapo long enough to slip away? I’m having flashbacks of the Midwest.
For me, I’m a man married to a man. I’m on a list. I’m somewhat nervous about that, but I’m white like milk an own a lot of polos and chinos, so I will have some warning before the shit hits me. Fingers crossed.
I wonder how long I’ll survive as an Asian American…
Asian Americans are the smallest minority in the US, so that’s not looking good. I’m wondering if the so called “Model Minority” sterotype would help (I mean like East Asians, specifically).
Philly btw. Hopefully Shapiro isn’t fucking spineless like the rest of the dems (doubt), but like the federalism is really the only safeguard left.
Get armed and look up your local Ironfront or indivisible chapter. You are not alone, United we stand. Divided we fall.
Indigenous aren’t the smallest minority?
The more they let them act without any consequences for their actions shows us that the constitution means nothing nowadays. Throw him or the enablers in jail, but doing nothing means checks and balances are useless. I fear for the regular people. Power has gone to the fascists and oligarchs.
…nowadays?
And the “just following orders” folks?
I’m in the guillotine crowd, so I say “everyone,” but I’m not holding my breath there will be any.
So the second amendment is our only option?
Going to amuse me when the left picks up the 2nd amendment they have been talking shit about my whole life and use it for its intended purpose to kill a tyrant. This whole timeline makes my brain hurt
Unless you’ve got another option….
You guys are maybe being a little hasty… Many other members of the Trump administration can get forcibly hauled into court even if Trump has “immunity.”
Let me know when that happens.
And let me know when you second amendment types actually do something. 👍
You mean the people who wish death on people who are absolutely destroying humanity? Or, gun people? Because, I don’t own a gun. 🤷♂️
He shouldn’t be letting those attorneys leave the courtroom free men. Hold them in contempt and issue bench warrants for administration officials and anyone carrying out these illegal orders.
This is the only correct response, any other response means that the federal government does not in practice have checks and balances
It also forces Trump’s hand. Either publicly reveal, right now that he is an all-out dictator instead of slow-rolling it, or fold and lose any momentum he has.
If a violent revolution is needed to take him down, the sooner everyone knows about it, the better.
Yeah, slow nibbling at fascism is how the world got Hitler. Out the despot now.
So just to be clear, this is within the domain of “constitutional crisis” that the vast majority of Americans who graduated from high school will have certainly been taught about at some point. But precisely zero major news networks or newspapers are calling it as such.
Evidently a comically dismaying proportion of us unitedstatesians need to be told when our own fucking house is on fire. And even then, 30ish% of us will deny it as the flesh melts off their own bones.
What are you on about?
- https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/supreme-court-john-roberts-trump-constitutional-crisis-rcna196940
- https://time.com/7268948/deportation-surgeon-constitutional-crisis/
- https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-latest-deportation-venezuelans-sets-up-potential-constitutional-clash-2025-03-17/
- https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/17/politics/constitutional-crisis-courts-trump-executive-power-what-matters/index.html
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/politics/trump-constitutional-crisis.html
EDIT: Oh and just today…
You know what.
That’s sadder.
30% of us probably are okay with burning alive. It’s less work than living.
Throw. That. Lawyer. In. PRISON. There may be no way to enforce the law on Trump himself, but make lawyers afraid to do his dirty work.
Wouldn’t Trump just pardon them?
Make him do it. Make him do it over and over. New contempt charges every time one of these asshat lawyers refuses a lawful court order. Take up all of Trump’s time with having to continuously pardon his own lawyers.
It literally takes trump 20 seconds to tell an aid to start paperwork for a pardon.
After 8 years of watching the legal system completely and utterly fumble any semblance of justice against Trump, it is bizarre to see you hail legal action as the ultimate method of dismantling the Trump regime. Big “I think Mueller is still going to bring Trump down!” energy.
Nothing will change until the ruling class have fear in their hearts, and if the most obstructive and radical thing you can imagine is “waste trumps time by making him pardon an extra 15 people” also happens to be the prevalent mindset of other liberals, then yall are mega doomed.
Nothing will change until the ruling class have fear in their hearts, and if the most obstructive and radical thing you can imagine is “waste trumps time by making him pardon an extra 15 people” also happens to be the prevalent mindset of other liberals, then yall are mega doomed.
Did anyone say it was the only method on the table?
Fair enough. That was wrong of me to falsely insinuate.
However, I’d still posit that these sort of milquetoast strategies are so ineffective and distracting, that they ought to not be brought up at all since they defang otherwise radical people and distract from real solutions.
In other words, Trump and team would like nothing more than for the opposition to waste untold millions in legal fees (and weeks of prolonged court time) all to make him auto pen a document over the course of 15 minutes. These suggestions are worth less than nothing.
Nowhere did I say that was the “ultimate method.” Every single thing the orange asshole tries to do should be obstructed and interfered with in every way possible.
Make him do it. Make him do it over and over. New contempt charges every time one of these asshat lawyers refuses a lawful court order. Take up all of Trump’s time with having to continuously pardon his own lawyers.
This would be at best a minor inconvenience that Trump would just sign with the auto-pen that he’s going after Biden for using.
And we’ve seen literally dozens of Trump’s high-profile lawyers watch their careers end in disgrace once Trump no longer has a use for them. And for every one that crashes and burns, there seems to be two more willing to take his place. Especially now that Trump is immune from prosecution, making it much less risky for them.
The point isn’t really to inconvenience him though. It’s to cede no ground without documented abuse of power.
Absolutely. Make them show outright that they are using authoritarian tactics. Make it known to all that they’re fascists and that they don’t care about democratic principles or the rule of law.
Make every Trump voters uncomfortable and understand they voted to end this democratic republic.
He can’t pardon a disbarment, though!
No. You go through the bar and remove their license.
I don’t think he can. Courts have the power to hold people until they comply with a court order.
Technically so does congress although it’s never done.
US Marshalls, however, are a real thing and work for the judiciary.
Edit: ugh, they are responsible for carrying out what the judiciary needs, but it’s still part of the executive (DoJ).
I was holding hope for the US Marshalls taking action without the AG calling on them based on what they represent, but they have been helping the Trump with his illegal takeovers of DOGE even assisting with breaking and entering… So it’s probably unlikely they will do anything to assist with reigning in the president.
See elsewhere in the comments on this post. The judge can effectively deputize someone other than a Marshall if necessary.
Make Attorneys Get Attorneys.
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Throw everyone who implemented it in prison. Trump may have made himself an untouchable dictator but just himself.
Remember that loyalty only goes one way, unless it’s in trumps personal interest such as profiting from it. Make him go on record as either pardoning the criminals or dropping them
What about all the hardcore criminals he sent out, should we bring them all back and release them?
Of course not. The normal justice system applies; assuming they are legitimately suspected of a crime, they are held until they can be given a fair trial and their fate determined by just means. That’s how the system works to punish the guilty and exonerate the innocent. Your assumption that these are all “hardcore criminals” is a media product; how has this been determined? It has not. The only just way to determine it is with a trial.
And even if found guilty and justly imprisoned after due process, that doesn’t mean they can legally be deported. If they’re legally in the country then they’re legally in the country
“A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.”
- Alexander Hamilton
Removed by mod
The US is in a constitutional crisis with situations like this, and so many people just don’t seem to care or want to acknowledge that it’s at that point.
I think the seeds for this were sown in the post 9/11 secret court system, in which the US govt authorized itself to break national and international law.
Even in that case, they claimed there was due process. It may not have been public or aboveboard but they claimed due process. Maybe there was, we can’t tell because it was secret. Worst case scenario, they pretended.
No one even pretends anymore.
This is even worse, I’m just pointing out that in legal terms the US has been heating this particular frog for quite a while now.
A federal judge criticized a Trump administration Justice Department lawyer
If this is the only consequence of having done it- I’d say they didn’t think they could, they knew they could.
Note Rubio saying they aren’t going to stop, when explicitly told to by a judge. That’s called sedition last I knew.
And if there’s no one willing to stop them, it may as well be legal.
people would be willing if they could ever get the message out.
He didn’t feel he could disregard it.
He successfully disregarded it.
‘You felt you could disregard it?’
Well, given that they disregarded it and are now standing before you arguing that they had the right to disregard it, I think it’s safe to say that yes, they felt they could disregard it. And given that the migrants were deported anyway, your orders were not only completely ignored, but were also being openly mocked on Twitter by Marco Rubio, and they will receive no punishment for doing so, I think it’s safe to say that they were right.
Frustrated, Boasberg ordered sworn declarations explaining what happened, quipping that he would issue a written order “since apparently my verbal orders don’t seem to carry much weight.”
He’s about to find out that his written orders carry even less. Remember, the Supreme Court ruled that he can’t even be questioned about official acts, much less investigated. Trump could go on his Twitter knock-off tomorrow and tell this guy to go fuck himself with a chainsaw and there’s fuck-all this judge can do about it.
This is kind of insane to witness unfold in real time. These fossils don’t understand that they’ve been stripped from their institutional powers. They are literally not able to understand what’s happening even if it’s totally transparent to anyone watching.
Oh brother…
No, he can be questioned about official acts. The wording is that the judiciary decides what is an official act, so if they decide it is, he cannot be punished criminally for what is otherwise a criminal act. The Supreme Court did a bunch of power grabs for itself and effectively declared that Congress couldn’t do squat other than impeachment against the president and the only check on the president’s power was whether the judiciary agreed with him.
Now Trump’s attacking the judiciary and has made the chief justice have to make a statement that his challenges to his legitimacy will not stand, so I would expect to see a bunch of cases go against Trump just as a judiciary show of force, much like his citizenship emergency challenge where they told him to fuck off and they’d slow walk his case.
Trump could have ended democracy quite easily if he wasn’t in such a damn hurry to get shit done and snubbing all of the power brokers that he needs to implement his plans is forcing a bunch of needless shit. When the economy is fully in shambles in a few months and the ad spend slows down for media companies, I’d expect them to pounce on how much shit he fucked up. It’s wild seeing WSJ realizing the problem that’s coming down the pipeline and the Murdoch rag shitting on him in the editorials rather than WaPo.
If something… Unfortunate… Were to happen to Roberts, I guarantee that the rest of the justices would rule in Trump’s favor for the rest of his term with a wide-eyed “fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck” smile plastered on their faces the entire time
It was disregarded because it was a vocal demand when the criminals were already halfway to their destination. If we allowed a federal judge to say “wait, don’t do that!” and express vocally their outrage, to the POTUS every time they disagreed, there would be no point in having a person voted as President.
It was disregarded because it was a vocal demand when the criminals were already halfway to their destination. If we allowed a federal judge to say “wait, don’t do that!” and express vocally their outrage, to the POTUS every time they disagreed, there would be no point in having a person voted as President
You do realize this happens all the time, right? Death row inmates can be granted clemency literally while they’re strapped to the gurney. It’s literally a case of the judge, governor, POTUS, whoever saying “WAIT, DON’T DO THAT!”. And yes, this includes the judge verbally giving instructions and holding off the proceedings until a written order can be drafted.
There was nothing stopping them from turning that plane around.
The whole point of judiciary is to resolve damages and it’s actually really important that they can issue orders quickly to prevent “irreversible damages”, courts use injunctions all the time even before coming to any kind of decision in order to give time for due process to happen. Especially when there is possibility of harm coming to an individual.
Since when is a judge’s verbal order not legally binding?
They feel that they can ignore it because they can ignore it. Stop letting them!
How do they do that? Their enforcers work for Trump.
They can deputize citizens to carry out the orders too
Then if the deputies fail you start sheriffizing people.
Sheriffs are usually elected, not appointed. It’s one of the big reasons decriminalization is so difficult; No elected cop wants to look soft on crime, because their opponents can use it against them in smear campaigns during the next election.
Nah, you just start deputizing more effective people. Like ex special forces
Wahoo it’s-a me Luigi
The US Marshalls don’t, I thought.
US Marshals are under DoJ.
*Marshals
You’re right, thank you.
Well considering Republicans control every branch of government, they’re assuming they can and will get away with it. Even if this goes up to SCOTUS, the conservative justices will let them do what they want. One of them will “dissent” though to try to make it seem like they don’t agree. They’re probably behind closed doors playing rock, paper, scissors to see who “dissents” each time a hot button topic gets up to them.
Also didn’t the Supreme Court just rule that you can’t charge the president for crimes made in their official capacity? He can just say it was in his official capacity to ignore the orders so tough titties.
That doesn’t mean his actions would stand, it just means he can’t be prosecuted for it.
If he fires someone and it’s ruled illegal, they get their job back or some very large settlement.
Deported people would be able to return etc.
His written orders won’t do anything either. Who knew the constitution can be so easily ripped to shreds by simply ignoring it.
This should have been fixed in the 1800s when Andrew Jackson defied the Supreme Court, but it was ignored and here we are
