President Donald Trump's Justice Department has requested more time to find answers requested by U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg about the weekend flights sending migrants to, as PBS characterized, a "mega-prison" in El Salvador. Some legal analysts are pointing out the tone of the filing from the DOJ, and wondering if it is intentionally poking the bear.
Freelance writer Joshua J. Friedman pointed out the "emergency motion" attempts to avoid "a noon deadline to provide more info to Judge Boasberg, in private, about deportation flights that appear to have violated the court's orders."
"If this filing doesn’t bring Judge Boasberg’s indulgence to a close, I’m going to start feeling uneasy," said appellate lawyer and former prosecutor Matthew Stiegler.
New York lawyer and writer Luppe B. Luppen, a.k.a. @nycsouthpaw, called it, "one of the pissiest documents I’ve ever read. An achievement in insolence."
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He also mocked a sentence in the filing, asking, "How harassed and sleep-deprived do you have to be to file a sentence like this?"
The excerpt reads: "Accordingly, Defendants seek a stay of this Court's order today requiring the production of specific information ex parte tomorrow in under 24 hours, at noon today."
A former CIA attorney, who goes by "Secrets and Laws," noted another excerpt in which the DOJ appears to attack the judge for micromanaging their operations.
The filing says, "Whether the Executive Branch deliberately violated a court order is a 'picayune dispute over the micromanagement of immaterial factfinding.'"
"This is one of the most remarkable passages I've ever seen in a DOJ brief," the attorney continued. The excerpt says, "the world will end if we tell the former head of the FISA Court, in an ex parte classified setting, about flight details that Marco Rubio already disclosed in a tweet."
In another excerpt, the CIA legal expert continues, "This might be the second most remarkable passage I've ever seen in a DOJ brief: we think the Chief Judge of the District Court for the District of Columbia, who oversees sensitive grand jury matters & was former head of the FISA court, will unilaterally disclose classified information to the public."
"All that said, since DOJ is threatening to invoke the state secrets privilege, Boasberg should give them some time to consider that. It's a complicated consideration that appellate courts will be sensitive to, even if meritless here. The other excuses from DOJ are total BS though," the attorney said.
"While I'm not in the weeds on this case, these flight details do seem more relevant to potential contempt rather than the legal merits, and I think it's okay for the court to take a little longer on that piece of the litigation (but not too long). Boasberg should give them a week or so," they closed.
National security lawyer Bradley P. Moss recalled, "During [special counsel Jack] Smith's legal struggles in Florida with Judge [Aileen] Cannon I frequently pushed back on punditry demands that Smith try to get her removed. I thought it was pointless and would likely fail, which would only piss the judge off more. Trump's DOJ is desperately trying to prove me right."
