ONCE A CROOKED PIG, ALWAYS A PIG AND A CROOK

 

ALLISON GILL

 

Plaintiffs in the Alien Enemies Act Contempt Proceedings File a Blistering Response

The government wants to block testimony from a DOJ lawyer and whistleblower Erez Reuveni next week because they’re trying to protect Emil Bove. The plaintiffs respond.

Allison Gill

Dec 12, 2025

 

It’s a long and sordid saga that has led to Thursday’s late night filing by the plaintiffs in the J.G.G. case on Judge Boasberg’s docket. As you know, last March, the DOJ and DHS defied an order given by Judge Boasberg to turn the planes around that had been sent to El Salvador in the middle of the night under the Alien Enemies Act.

Judge Boasberg found probable cause of criminal contempt, which the government appealed to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel - two Trump judges and one Biden judge - vacated that contempt finding, with the dissenting judge pointing out that while the two Trump judges agreed to vacate, they did not agree on the reason.

The plaintiffs appealed en banc (to the full panel of the DC Circuit), which left Boasberg’s criminal contempt finding vacated, but mooted the three-judge panel’s finding because of the conflicting reasoning. That returned the issue to Judge Boasberg, who revived contempt proceedings by ordering DOJ to submit declarations from all individuals involved in the decision to defy his order to turn the planes around.

Despite there having been multiple people involved, DOJ submitted three spartan declarations - from Kristi Noem, Acting General Counsel for DHS Joseph Mazzara, and Todd Blanche - that raised more questions than they answered. Judge Boasberg said that they didn’t contain enough information for him to make a determination about whether to refer anyone to DOJ for criminal contempt, and ordered testimony from Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign and whistleblower/former DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni. (You’ll recall Reuveni was the guy who was in the meeting when Emil Bove told DOJ/OIL lawyers to tell the court to “fuck off.” He also provided insights into the Eric Adams quid pro quo, and the Abrego case.)

As you can imagine, DOJ really doesn’t want sworn testimony from Erez Reuveni or Drew Ensign because that could expose Emil Bove as having lied to congress when he denied telling DOJ lawyers to tell the court to “fuck off.”

Drew Ensign was the one they sent to Boasberg’s courtroom back in March when the order was given to turn the planes around, so he could also expose Bove - who is now a judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

So the DOJ filed a motion for Judge Boasberg to reconsider his order for testimony from Reuveni and Ensign, and in it they argue that Boasberg already made a probable cause determination for contempt, and that he has everything he needs and should just make his criminal referral to DOJ if that’s what he wants to do. Of course, DOJ wants Boasberg to refer the DOJ to the DOJ. Pam Bondi won’t investigate or charge contempt. They want to cover this whole thing up.

There is a power courts have to appoint their own special prosecutors for contempt, but based on a recent Supreme Court ruling in Donziger, it’s pretty apparent a majority of the justices would find that rule unconstitutional. DOJ knows that as well, so they’re not afraid of criminal contempt prosecution. They’re afraid of discovery in the process to determine probable cause that contempt occurred, because Boasberg conducts that inquiry - not the DOJ or special prosecutors under rules disfavored by the Supreme Court.

In their motion for reconsideration, DOJ argued that criminal contempt is for the DOJ to prosecute, not for the courts to determine. DOJ claims the judge has all the information he needs to make a referral to DOJ for criminal contempt, and he doesn’t need to determine intent or willfulness. And besides, an inquiry into the basis for the decision to let the planes continue to El Salvador would implicate the attorney-client privilege.

That brings us to the response filed tonight by the plaintiffs, and I know it’s late, but this is a really important response in an undeniably important proceeding - and I promise I will get some sleep. Please forgive any typos!

The plaintiff’s response hinges on the fact that the higher courts did vacate Boesberg’s initial probable cause determination, but the en banc court also ruled the three-judge panel’s split decision wasn’t a majority. According to the plaintiffs, that returned the contempt proceeding back to Boasberg to start anew. And as Boasberg said, the scant declarations filed by Noem, Mazaara, and Blanche aren’t enough for him to make a probable cause determination.

So, the DOJ asking Boasberg to cancel testimony and just make the DOJ referral is ridiculous. The court has the power to get to the bottom of what happened so it has the requisite information to make a referral in the first place. That’s why testimony, additional declarations as determined by the court, and an inquiry into willfulness and state of mind are necessary.

The declarations by the government didn’t answer any of the basic questions needed to make a probable cause determination. And as far as the privileges invoked go: they’re pierced by the government declaring it would use an advice of counsel defense at trial. Further, a party waives privilege by “plac[ing] otherwise privileged matters in controversy.”

Additionally, there’s the crime/fraud exception, and the fact that DOJ lawyers are entitled to disclose client confidences to respond to charges of wrongdoing against them (the self defense exception.)

Further, attorney-client privilege doesn’t preclude government lawyers from disclosing information related to possible criminal wrongdoing. In fact, they’re duty-bound to report it because DOJ lawyers’ clients are The People. In fact, that they tried to invoke it shows a gross misunderstanding of the role of government attorneys.

The government also actually disclosed some of the legal advice in a November 25th filing: “email from then-Acting Assistant Attorney General Yaakov Roth that Mr. Bove had advised DHS that “the deplaning of the flights that had departed US airspace prior [to] the court’s minute order was permissible under the law and the court’s order.” By revealing some of that legal advice, they effectively waived attorney-client privilege

Besides, attorney-client privilege doesn’t prevent a witness from taking the stand. To do it properly, they’d have to take the stand and assert the privilege to each individual question.

And anyhow, the court can impose a broad range of sanctions besides criminal contempt referrals, and it has the authority to investigate bad faith conduct. For example, DOJ argues that Boasberg can only make a criminal contempt referral because civil contempt is no longer available since SCOTUS vacated his initial TRO to turn the planes around. But the government ignores that civil compensatory contempt may be sought where an order has lapsed but was not beyond the Court’s authority - which is true in this case.

For all these reasons, I think the plaintiffs make a good argument to continue the contempt proceedings and for Judge Boasberg to deny the government’s motion for reconsideration and move ahead with testimony from Ensign and Reuveni.

The government asked the court to rule on their motion to reconsider by December 12th, so we’ll see if Boasberg does what I think he’ll do and deny their motion. You can read the plaintiffs’ full response here, along with all the questions they believe need to be resolved in these proceedings.

Thanks for reading! All my content is free, but if you have the means to support my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber!

~AG

Miles Taylor

 

The president just published a "blacklist" of reporters — one giant leap toward autocracy.

Don't be fooled by the Christmas theme and the happy music. Trump's "Naughty List" puts him in the company of the Soviets and the Nazis.

Miles Taylor Dec 12

Last night, the White House published a video of a laughing Santa Claus entering a home and unfurling a parchment scroll. The music and vibe are festive. But the prop Santa holds is not. It’s a list of journalists and media outlets singled out by the President of the United States — a blacklist.

Throughout history, regimes on the march toward autocracy have relied on ritual humiliation of the press long before they relied on prisons. The press is criticized and branded as an “enemy of the people.” Trump has long done that, and now he’s taking the next step. He’s naming the specific reporters and outlets he deems disloyal, knowing that as long as a large portion of the public accepts that framing, everything that follows becomes easier.

And trust me, more will follow.

In the Soviet Union, this process was bureaucratic and quite relentless. Journalists who deviated from the party line were placed on watchlists, denied access to government buildings, stripped of credentials (sound familiar?), and eventually, as it all escalated, erased from public life altogether. Their names circulated quietly at first, then openly, until exclusion became normal and expected if they took positions that were contrary to the regime. The “list” was the initial warning shot; later, some were actually shot.

In Nazi Germany, the progression was faster and more theatrical, like the Trump administration’s approach. The regime published lists of “un-German” writers and journalists, accusing them of poisoning the nation’s soul. News outlets were threatened with closure and then later shut down. Editors were harassed out of their jobs, and books were burned. This was that era’s “crowd-sourced” violence. But long before folks were sent to the camps and the gallows, there were these catalogs of enemies and the public humiliation of them.

Here we are.

The White House is on a similar path. That’s not exaggeration or heedless historical comparison, meant to accuse Trump of being a “Nazi” to score political points. The man who is our current president — and the people around him — have a stated and demonstrated desire to subvert the free press in this country. The comparison isn’t just fair, it’s urgently necessary. They’re avowedly hostile toward the tenants of the First Amendment. And if we see it as anything less, we’ll be deemed fools of history.

The “Christmas” video is appalling, yes. But it rounds out a larger picture as we reach the end of Trump’s first year back in power.

Pair it with the fact that Trump’s team has been threatening virtually every major media outlet… suing networks that report about the president unfavorably… teasing the possibility of broadcast license revocations…. yelling at and demeaning journalists who ask questions the president doesn’t want to hear… stripping reporters of their credentials at the White House and Pentagon… stripping journalists’ legal protections to make it easier to investigate and prosecute them… orchestrating the sale of media networks to friendly allies to shut down reporting Trump doesn’t like… shutting down U.S.-funded media organizations that report truthfully… replacing U.S. broadcasting programs abroad with pro-Trump propaganda outlets… and so on.

Once you do that, it’s so unmistakably, obviously, glaringly apparent that the president is heading down the autocratic path. You cannot look the other way. Donald Trump and the White House are waging a Censorship War on the free press, and far too many Americans are lulled into laughter because the ghouls at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave pair it with a Michael Bublé song.

I want you to remember something: authoritarian power does not announce itself with midnight arrests at the start. Too many Americans have this image of World War II movies where the people are subjugated when men in fatigues start kicking down their doors. In reality, the subjugation happens way, way before that. And it begins just like we’re seeing here. Despots train citizens to laugh along. When the state names journalists publicly and invites the audience to enjoy their degradation, it’s rehearsing a new moral order and preparing for the next phase.

As we reported the other month, U.S. journalists and top media outlets are preparing for the possibility of raids and prosecutions. That’s an extraordinary sentence to write. But here’s the background context:

Reporters at major news outlets and independent media tell [us] they believe the Trump administration is preparing to ramp up efforts to expose their sources.

The shift comes in response to new threats from President Trump and his allies, as well as a policy change at the Justice Department that cleared the way for aggressive pursuit of both whistleblowers and the journalists they speak to…

After taking office, Attorney General Bondi quietly revoked policies that provided extra protection for members of the press — a move legal experts say clears the path for subpoenas, surveillance, and compelled testimony from reporters — with the threat of jail time.

Such tools had been severely restricted under the Biden administration following revelations that Trump’s DOJ had secretly seized the records of members of Congress, their staff, and multiple journalists in prior investigations.

I’d love to be wrong about this. I won’t be. The Trump administration is almost certainly monitoring some journalists’ communications and conducting “leak investigations” that are not yet known publicly. Just ask Barbara Starr about her experience. That will seem tame compared to what’s coming.

It bears reminding that democracies depend on a free press not because journalists are virtuous, but because power itself is not. The press exists to irritate authority, by design. We want our reporters to expose what leaders would rather conceal and to ask questions that make the powerful uncomfortable. For doing this, they shouldn’t be added to a blacklist; they should invited into the pantheon of free-speech defenders.

History does not repeat itself exactly. We know that. But it sure as hell rhymes with unsettling precision. In every regime that slid from democracy into authoritarianism, there was a moment when the targeting of journalists became a form of entertainment and when citizens were encouraged to enjoy the spectacle — or when they could just avert their eyes at the childish naming and shaming.

In the United States, that moment is right now. But don’t avert your eyes. Because what comes next is something we can never condone and never permit. A president who publishes a blacklist of reporters is not making a silly Christmas “joke.” He’s testing how far he can go, preparing to crack down, and seeing how many people will smile while he does it.

I hope you will be the reason he fails.

Trump's fake 'pardon'

 

Trump's fake 'pardon' gives false hope to MAGA hero — now she must finish the rest of her prison sentence

Tina Peters stays in prison, Trump gets a headline, and the Constitution once again refuses to bend to a MAGA fantasy.

UnPresidented Dec 12

In yet another episode of The President Who Thinks the Constitution Is Optional, Donald Trump announced Thursday night that he has issued a presidential pardon to former Colorado elections clerk and MAGA folk hero Tina Peters — a woman convicted of state felonies, which, minor detail, the president has absolutely no authority to pardon.

But why let the law get in the way of a good headline?

---

Peters, currently serving a nine-year sentence for breaking into her own voting machines to “prove” the 2020 election was stolen, became a martyr in the election-denial universe after a Colorado jury convicted her of tampering, conspiracy, identity theft and other crimes stemming from a harebrained scheme that exposed sensitive election software to the internet. She wasn’t exactly an unknown figure, she was a full-blown symbol of the MAGA “stop the steal” crusade.

Trump, ever eager to reward loyalty regardless of legality, declared on Truth Social that Peters was the victim of “corrupt Democrats” and that he was granting her a “full pardon” for her efforts to “expose voter fraud” — fraud that, for the millionth time, does not exist anywhere outside the imaginations of Trump, his most sycophantic supporters, and the merch tables at CPAC.

There is, however, one tiny, pesky, stubborn obstacle to Trump’s hero moment: the United States Constitution. The president can only pardon federal crimes. Peters was prosecuted by the State of Colorado, making Trump’s pardon about as legally effective as pardoning your neighbor’s cat.

Colorado officials quickly swatted away Trump’s announcement like the constitutional non-event it is. Attorney General Phil Weiser called it an “act of intimidation”, reminding Trump — and, apparently, a significant portion of his base — that presidential clemency “has no bearing whatsoever” on a state sentence. Translation: Thanks for the press release, but she’s not going anywhere.

Even Peters’s supporters seemed momentarily stunned when they realized Trump cannot simply magic-state-convicted felons out of prison. Still, some in MAGA world are already fantasizing about taking this to court in hopes of expanding presidential pardons to state crimes. Constitutional law scholars responded with the approximate enthusiasm of someone being handed a time-share brochure.

Critics note that Trump’s move isn’t about freeing Peters — because he can’t — but about signaling to his loyalists that he’s willing to use the presidency as a shield for anyone who goes to bat for his election conspiracy theories. It’s performative grievance politics dressed up as governance. A legal nullity packaged as salvation. A pardon-shaped balloon filled entirely with hot air.

And the irony? Even if Trump truly wanted to free Peters, he can’t. The Founders anticipated a lot of presidential nonsense, and this week they were proven right yet again.

KRUGMAN Donald Trump, Security Threat

 

Donald Trump, Security Threat The call is coming from inside the White House Paul Krugman Dec 12 To update Samuel Johnson, these days national security is the last refuge of a scoundrel. According to Donald Trump, anything he doesn’t like is a threat to national security. Question his clearly illegal tariffs? You’re a dark and sinister force trying to undermine America. When the New York Times reported on signs that age may be taking a toll on Trump’s stamina, he denounced the reporting as “seditious, maybe even treasonous.” But some of America’s allies — and many of us here at home — are becoming increasingly open about saying that the real danger is coming from inside the White House: Trump himself has become the biggest security threat facing the U.S. and, indeed, all the world’s democracies. On Wednesday a new report from Denmark’s military intelligence service contained the most explicit statement of the growing alarm. It pointed out that, under Donald Trump, America is no longer acting like a friendly partner: The United States uses economic power, including threats of high tariffs, to enforce its will, and no longer rules out the use of military force, even against allies. Without a doubt, Denmark’s concerns have been heightened by Trump’s repeated assertions that he wants to “get” Greenland, which is a Danish territory. In August the Danish government summoned the head of the U.S. embassy to protest about “covert influence operations” in Greenland undertaken by Americans with ties to Trump. However, Denmark is certainly not alone in raising concerns and acting on them. Several of America’s closest traditional allies, including Canada and the UK, have reportedly acted to limit intelligence-sharing with the U.S. One cited concern is the risk of being complicit in unlawful acts or war crimes arising from the deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean. Sotto voce, it’s also clear that the Canadians and the Europeans are alarmed by the presence of Putin sympathizers and conspiracy theorists like Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, in sensitive positions within the Trump administration. After hearing the leaked tape of Steve Witkoff’s fawning and borderline treasonous conversation with Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser – in which Witkoff coached him on how to manipulate Trump -- who would want to share sensitive information with this American president? More broadly, in a world of growing geopolitical conflict, it has become increasingly clear whose side the Trump administration is on — the side of Trump’s personal interests, grudges and biases. Trump’s new National Security Strategy, released last week, made this dynamic clear. There was no condemnation of Russian aggression against Ukraine and hardly any mention of the US rivalry with China. Yet it lambasted Europe and openly supported right-wing extremist parties that are trying to undermine European democracy. Trump’s proposed “peace plan” for Ukraine not only reads like a Russian wish list, but it also uses some odd phrasing and syntax suggesting that it was translated from a Russian original. Moreover, the Wall Street Journal reports that the plan includes a number of undisclosed appendices that would unlock frozen Russian assets and bring Russia’s economy “in from the cold,” effectively ending the sanctions Putin has faced since he invaded Ukraine. As odious as Witkoff’s actions were, they revealed the truth of the matter: Trump’s foreign policy is not about securing the safety and well-being of the United States. It’s about playing to Trump’s ego, about appealing to his incessant psychodrama of domination and sycophancy. Anyone who believes otherwise is living in La-La-Land. This betrayal of America’s security interests extends to Trump’s international economic policy and his clear misuse of tariff laws. Under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, a president is given considerable discretion to impose tariffs to protect industries deemed crucial to national security. And national security tariffs are legal under international law. The Trump administration has, however, made a mockery of Section 232, using it to justify tariffs on many goods that have no conceivable relationship to national security. In October, for example, Trump imposed Section 232 tariffs on upholstered furniture and kitchen cabinets. In Trump’s mind America would be put at great risk if it were dependent on foreign suppliers of new sofas in the midst of an international conflict. Even as he imposes 50 percent tariffs to limit the menace of Chinese kitchen cabinets, Trump has decided to allow China to buy the advanced Nvidia semiconductor chips that power many AI models. Bear in mind that the U.S. lead in cutting-edge technology is one of our few advantages in geopolitical competition with China, and this gift to the Chinese has been strongly criticized by every genuine national security expert that I know. (Our other big advantage used to be that we had so many strong allies, but Trump has ended that.) Yet Trump is now, for a modest fee, letting the Chinese have access to our most advanced semiconductors. As the Wall Street Journal — not exactly a left-wing rag — put it, The Indians struck a better deal when they sold Manhattan to the Dutch. Why would the President give away one of America’s chief technological advantages to an adversary and its chief economic competitor? But the answer is simple: Trump doesn’t care at all about national security, or for that matter America’s national interests. Instead, it’s all about him: reportedly Trump took the decision to allow the Chinese to have the advanced Nvidia chips after personal lobbying by Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia. Clearly Chinese exporters of furniture and kitchen cabinetry need to get coached by Steve Witkoff. Just to be clear, I am not a free trade purist. I am not saying national security should be ignored or underplayed when setting economic policy. On the contrary, in a world in which China is arguably the world’s leading superpower, in which Putin feels free to launch a war of conquest on Europe’s doorstep, national security considerations are critically important. In fact, it’s arguable that the twin threats from China and Russia have rendered the US far more vulnerable than at any other period in our lifetimes. Yet the biggest threats to U.S. national security aren’t coming from Beijing or Moscow. They’re coming straight out of the Oval Office.