Today a federal judge ruled Abrego Garcia has made a credible claim for vindictive prosecution and is entitled to discovery on the question.
Abrego Garcia is the man illegally deported in March to the El Salvador torture camp. The DOJ admitted it was a mistake but was reluctant to bring him back. He quickly sued challenging his deportation. The United States Supreme Court, in a rare loss for the Trump Regime, agreed his due process rights had been violated and must be restored.
Notwithstanding the DOJ’s prior admission that he had been sent to El Salvador by mistake, high ranking figures in the DOJ and DHS, including Noem and Bondi, began publicly calling him a “violent criminal” and “terrorist” and “known gang member.”
Within days of the Supreme Court’s decision in favor of Abrego Garcia the DOJ reopened a long stale investigation related to a 2022 traffic stop. That investigation culminated in May with an indictment which served as pretext to return Abrego Garcia to face thinly supported charges of human trafficking.
Once again high ranking officials took to social media to make public statement prejudicial to the defendant. Kristi Noem posted on X that Abrego Garcia is “a known MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, and serial domestic abuser.” At press conference Attorney General Bondi announced during a press conference that Abrego would be found guilty, sentenced, and “returned to his home country of El Salvador.”
In terms of building the case for vindictive prosecution the judge found most telling:
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, linked Abrego’s criminal charges to Abrego’s civil lawsuit in Maryland. Strikingly, during a television interview Deputy Attorney General Blanche revealed that the government started “investigating” Abrego after “a judge in Maryland . . . questioned” the government’s decision, found that it “had no right to deport him,” and “accused the government of doing something wrong.”
Abrego Garcia claims he was vindictively prosecuted for exercising his Constitutional right to bring that lawsuit against his illegal deportation to El Salvador. Blanche’s comments quite directly support Abrego Garcia’s allegation. The judge found that all of this evidence establishes that Abrego Garcia has established a “realistic likelihood of vindictiveness” that entitles him to discovery on the question. He will now be able to submit interrogatories, requests for document production, and potentially compel depositions from the figures involved.
I have long been preaching that all these out of court statements by high ranking officials (including Trump) attacking defendants and targets of investigations undermine any potential prosecutions, even if those prosecutions are legitimate. If you are a MAGA who believes Abrego Garcia is the devil, you should be furious at the malicious incompetence of the Trump Regime Legal Clown Show that is undermining what you have convinced yourself is a legitimate prosecution.
