Trump Invokes States Secret Privilege In Attempt To Screw Over Judge

The Trump administration has decided to use a crafty tool at their disposal in order to circumvent Judge James Boasberg’s order to turn over all information about migrant deportation flights. The administration has now invoked “States Secrets”, claiming that the information about the flights is effectively off limits to anyone not in the executive branch because it contains sensitive information. This still may not be enough, as the order from the judge came BEFORE the declaration, and timing is everything in this case. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The Trump administration thinks that they have found a clever way to get around Judge James Berg's order that they must turn over all of the information about those migrant flights that the judge had ordered them to turn around in the air, but they didn't. Um, and now the Trump administration doesn't want to turn over that info to the judge. So they have decided this week that they're officially invoking state's secrets. It is a state secret. When these flights left where they were, when the order was issued, uh, what was going on, who was on 'em? You can't know anything, judge, because again, uh, that's state secrets, dude. You know, it's a national security issue. If we were to tell you a federal judge, uh, what, what was going on on these flights, and it's by the way, such a major national security issue that we didn't think to do it until Tuesday of this week, actually may have been Monday evening, I think, but either way, we let it marinate out there for eight days before we decided to actually declare it a state secret.

Yeah. Seems very national security risky to me, right? No, the administration thinks they're clever and they think that they have now backed Judge James Boberg into a corner, which they have in fact not done. Here's the thing, the administration in their order not order, but in their response that they had filed again Monday evening, invoking state secrets, they also claimed to the judge that, Hey, judge, by the time you gave the order to send the planes back, the planes had already landed. You know, uh, we couldn't do anything. Oh, shucks, except that the timing doesn't match because the judge gave the verbal order to turn the planes around, which is 100% legally binding, but they're not going based on that. They instead are going based on the time that he signed the written order, but at the second his verbal order came out, that order became enforceable by the courts. And at that moment, the flights were still in the air and easily could have been turned back around and come to the United States. Let me read you this. In its filing, the Trump administration again asserted that it complied with Berg's written order filed at 7:27 PM Eastern Daylight time on March 15th. But Boberg gave an oral order that day at approximately 6:45 PM that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States. Both oral and written orders are binding.

So y'all got a time problem on your hands here. You did not invoke state secrets until eight to nine days

After the initial order from the judge. Now, I don't know necessarily if that invoking it, you know, a week later does affect it, but what I do know is that y'all still defied the order and you're fighting tooth and nail to release any information about these flights because you know that it's going to embarrass you. And you know that it is going to prove to the American public that this is in fact a lawless administration that doesn't give a about what the judges say, which of course is what members of the administration have said. They've said, we don't care about the judges' orders, so if you don't care about 'em, why are y'all jumping through hoops to try to make it to where you don't have to comply with the orders? If you don't care, don't comply. So a very interesting situation. We will call it developing in this case. It is certainly not the end of it, it is just the beginning.