Foundation of Sand

Judge Boasberg has announced that he’ll begin criminal contempt proceedings against some folks in the Trump Administration. Boasberg has announced that he’ll appoint someone to prosecute the contempt charge if the DoJ declines. The part he left out is that Trump can pardon criminal contempt charges, and he most certainly will.

Here’s a good backgrounder from Democracy Docket (Mark Elias’ site) on the limits of contempt charges and what happens if Marshals go rogue. The author, David Noll, concentrates on civil contempt because criminal contempt is pardonable, civil probably is not (again, that won’t stop Trump from trying). He argues that the courts can appoint their own law enforcers to go after those who are cited with civil contempt.

The issue underlying every one of these judicial moves to bring Trump’s lawless DoJ to justice is that we can’t rely on our police forces.

For example, as commenter Sepideh M noted in the last post, some ICE agents smashed the window of a car and dragged out the occupants. They may have gotten the wrong person. So, another proposal floating around (link via Steve M) is for states to arrest ICE agents on kidnapping charges. Since many of these abductions have occurred in blue states, the reasoning goes, the blue state AGs can order those arrests.

Again, this relies on cops, and residing in a blue state doesn’t make cops less Trumpy. Some of them might do it, who knows, but I think city mayors, AGs and governors are going to be reluctant to force a showdown between them and their police forces.

I’m not intending to be a doomer here — I want to look at things clearly. I thought it was a good idea for Sen Von Hollen to go to El Salvador, and unsurprisingly, the Salvadorans wouldn’t let him meet with his constituent Kilmar Abrego García. There’s no sin in trying once and failing, especially with this bunch. Now, if there’s going to be a CODEL, they should try to make a different kind of stink, or push harder.

I think the Garcia imprisonment, and the abduction of people off the streets after smashing windows, are politically bad for Trump, in addition to being morally and legally wrong. So let’s keep pushing in every way possible, expect some defeats, and realize this is a war, not one battle.