Trump administration invokes state-secrets privilege in Kilmar Abrego Garcia case [View all]
Source: CBS News
The Trump administration appears to have invoked the state-secrets privilege to withhold information in the case involving the mistaken removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador and any efforts by the Trump administration to return him to the United States.
The administration's assertion of the privilege was revealed in an order from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, which asked lawyers for Abrego Garcia and the Justice Department to file additional legal papers about the administration's "invocations of privilege, principally the state secrets and deliberative process privileges."
Xinis gave the two sides until Monday to submit the filings "addressing the legal and factual bases for the invocation of those privileges," including a request from Abrego Garcia's lawyers for the court to conduct a review of "the withheld documents." The judge also set a hearing for May 16 at the courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The Justice Department had indicated last month that it would invoke certain privileges to protect information regarding Abrego Garcia's removal from the U.S., citing in a filing the attorney-client privilege, state secrets privilege and certain executive privileges.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-invokes-state-secrets-privilege-kilmar-abrego-garcia-case/
Trump is pulling out all the stops to not bring Garcia back to the US, and no doubt will continue to refuse to comply with court orders.
The "Law and Order" party indeed.