Judge Issues Contempt Threat To Trump Officials

A federal judge is losing patience with the Trump administration after he learned that they likely violated court orders by sending a planeload of immigrants to the country of Sudan – even though NONE of the immigrants originally came from that country. The judge said that this “looks like contempt,” but has not gone as far as to actually file contempt charges against anyone just yet. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.

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

Lawyers for the Trump administration received a dressing down, we will call it from a federal judge this week by the name of Brian Murphy. After it was brought to Judge Murphy's attention that the Trump administration had sent a plane load of migrants to South Sudan, a country where none of the people on this migrant flight actually came from. There were no Sudanese people on that flight. None of them came from Sudan to the United States and then got called and had to be sent back. Nope. They were shipping Vietnamese people. They were shipping Asian people, and they were shipping Hispanic people to a country, a continent that they've never even set foot in to disappear them so that nobody knows where they went. Now the Trump administration has in fact been ordered by previous courts to no longer send people to countries where they did not originate from.

In other words, this administration is under strict court orders, multiple court orders, to not send people to countries that they are not from. That's not how deportation works. That's how CIA black sites work. That's how disappearing people works. But it's not how the immigration system in the United States is legally supposed to work. So this judge was and the judge was asking the administration lawyers like, well, what happened to this person? And they said, well, actually, that person was, uh, we, we took them off the flight. And uh, they, they, they got on a different flight to a different place. Like, well, where the judge said like, well, we, we can't tell you 'cause that's classified.

It's not though, where you deport somebody is not classified. That that's not something that's like, no, this is a high level security clearance. You can't know where we sent Mr. Johnson back to why Yes we can. These are criminal records here in the United States. These are supposed to be pretty much wide open and yet you're telling us it's classified. Well, don't worry 'cause the judge didn't buy it either. The judge said, based on what I've been told, this seems like it may be contempt. He added that government officials, perhaps even including the pilots of the aircraft, could be sanctioned criminally. And that is what actually me off just as much as the actual story itself. A criminal contempt charge for anyone in this, in, uh, administration coming from a federal judge. So it's a federal offense, a criminal contempt charge can immediately be pardoned by Donald Trump, therefore, not enforceable at all. For those who may

Not know, there are two types of contempt that a judge can find somebody in. First is criminal. What you did is illegal. I am gonna hit you with criminal charges. Now you're gonna be arrested and go through a trial. Potential prison, yada, yada. Trump can pardon people if they're charged on the federal level with criminal contempt. So the judge threatening any official from the Trump administration with criminal contempt basically means, Hey, Trump, be ready to pardon these people so they don't get in trouble. That's what'll happen. The second kind of contempt is civil contempt, which is not pardonable. Civil contempt means that the judge could say, you know what? I'm gonna fine you $500,000. I'm going to bankrupt you with these fines that Trump can't do anything about. Or more cleverly, the judge can say, fine, you know what? I'm freezing your assets. And the judge also has limited ability, but ability, nevertheless, to do that for government departments that defy court orders, that's enforceable and Trump can't do a thing about it.