Has The Supreme Court Had Enough Of The Trump Administration’s Excuses?

Over the Easter weekend, the Supreme Court issued a remarkable order in the wee hours of Saturday morning blocking President that the administration “facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”

But government lawyers have repeatedly refused to comply with District Judge Paula Xinis’ orders to answer specific questions about Abrego Garcia in daily status updates, varyingly claiming different privileges to withhold information or that the president cannot disclose diplomatic negotiations to the court.

The Trump administration failed to note, or perhaps did not even know, that Abrego Garcia had been moved from CECOT to another detention facility in El Salvador. It refused to provide documents on Monday in response to questions from Abrego Garcia’s lawyers that were ordered by the court. And it has repeatedly misrepresented what the Supreme Court ordered it to do.

In a joint status report to Xinis’ court filed on Monday, the administration misquoted the Supreme Court’s decision ordering the facilitation of “Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador,” instead quoting it as requiring the administration to “take all available steps to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia to the United State [sic].” That latter quote, including the misspelling of United States, does not appear anywhere in the Supreme Court decision.

The administration further states that it does not need to provide answers to court-ordered interrogatories from Abrego Garcia’s lawyers because they are “based on the false premise that the United States can or has been ordered to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador.” But that is exactly what the Supreme Court ordered.

Xinis called out this falsehood in an order requiring the administration to fully comply with the ordered discovery on Tuesday.

“Defendants—and their counsel—well know that the falsehood lies not in any supposed ‘premise,’ but in their continued mischaracterization of the Supreme Court’s Order,” Xinis wrote.

She added that the administration’s entire reasoning to not comply represented “a willful and bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations.”

This all shows a willful disregard for the authority of the Supreme Court and the lower courts. The administration has been itching for a fight with the courts since Trump took office. The justices’ intervention in the Bluebonnet case on Saturday is the first indication that they may join that fight and assert the judiciary’s equal role as a branch of government.