‘Breathtaking in its audacity’: Trump’s conflict with judges has escalated to new heights

Judge James Boasberg – who ruled Wednesday that the administration showed “willful disregard” for his mid-March order halting deportation flights amid dispute over the legality of the removals – is the first judge to find “probable cause” of criminal contempt.

Judge James Boasberg – who ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration showed “willful disregard” for his mid-March order halting deportation flights amid dispute over the legality of the removals – is the first judge to find “probable cause exists” to hold administration officials in criminal contempt. But the legal fight over whether federal officials defied Boasberg’s orders is playing out on a larger tapestry of administration scorn and recalcitrance towards the judges that have curtailed President Donald Trump’s agenda, with the tone set at the top by Trump himself. Trump officials have launched personal attacks against Boasberg and other judges on social media and in public appearances. Government lawyers have claimed ignorance when asked basic questions about the facts underlying legal disputes. And faced with rulings pausing Trump policies, the administration has expressed a remarkable disdain for judicial authority in the guidance its offered agencies for following those judges’ commands. “It’s breathtaking in its audacity and lack of decorum,” said retired Judge John Jones III, a George W. Bush appointee who served on a federal court in Pennsylvania. “It’s unlike anything I have ever seen from the Justice Department and, really, in fact, any lawyers who practice in federal court.” The administration’s cavalier attitude has been front and center in the case concerning the mistaken deportation of a migrant in Maryland to a super-prison in El Salvador. Those proceedings reached a new level of intensity after the Supreme Court last week left mostly intact an order from the district judge requiring the Trump administration to “facilitate” the migrant’s return to the United States. At a Tuesday hearing before US District Judge Paula Xinis, DOJ attorney Drew Ensign tried to challenge how she was interpreting the Supreme Court’s instructions and indicated that the administration would appeal any order she issued broadly defining the term “facilitate,” the key verb the Supreme Court embraced in its order last week.