Judge Calls Trump DOJ’s Bluff On Todd Blanche’s Testimony

A lot has happened. Here are some of the things. This is the TPM Morning Memo.

Put up or shut up

A complicated dance is underway in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s criminal case following his allegation of vindictive prosecution by Trump’s DOJ, so let me first give you the broad strokes:

The bad news … We may not have the opportunity to hear live testimony from three top DOJ officials: Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Aakash Singh, and Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney James McHenry.

The good news… The judge may not need this testimony to rule that Abrego Garcia is the victim of vindictive prosecution and dismiss the case.

That’s the result of a new order from U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. of Nashville, in which he struck the Jan. 27 trial date from the calendar and instead scheduled a Jan. 28 evidentiary hearing on the vindictive indictment request.

It’s time for Trump’s DOJ to calm down or shut up, although Crenshaw put it more kindly than that.

That’s the simplest way to explain it. Now let me see if I can give you a more complete version without making you cross-eyed.

Crenshaw had already ruled in October that there was “a realistic likelihood of revenge” against Abrego Garcia. More importantly for our purposes, this decision created a presumption in Abrego Garcia’s favor that this was a vindictive prosecution and shifted the burden to the government to now rebut that presumption “with objective and official explanations” that it had a legitimate basis for charging Abrego Garcia, as Crenshaw explained in yesterday’s order.

If the government succeeds in rebutting the presumption of vindictive prosecution, then the burden shifts to Abrego Garcia to “prove that the proposed justification is a pretext and that actual revenge occurred,” Crenshaw ruled.

With that as a backdrop, here’s the kind of devious genius Crenshaw did.

Crenshaw decided to split the proceedings by holding the evidentiary hearing on January 28. only on the initial question of whether Trump’s DOJ can rebut the existing presumption in favor of Abrego Garcia that this is a vindictive prosecution. If Trump’s DOJ fails, it could very well mean the end of the criminal case, as dismissal is one of the remedies for vindictive prosecutions.

If Trump’s DOJ has its way, then the onus is on Abrego Garcia to show real vengeance. In that case, Crenshaw would then rule on the outstanding question of whether Blanche and other DOJ officials must comply with Abrego Garcia’s subpoena for their testimony. Currently, Trump’s DOJ has a pending motion to quash these subpoenas in what has been a raging battle over how much discovery in vindictive lawsuits Abrego Garcia is allowed to have.

(Most of this discovery dispute has been sealed, so our visibility on it has been very limited. But in a separate order this week, Crenshaw said he would unseal a crucial order he issued on Dec. 3 — but not until Dec. 30, presumably to give the administration time to ask an appeals court to keep the order sealed.)

Trump’s DOJ could try to get the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene before all this plays out as Crenshaw predicted, but by bifurcating proceedings it has reduced the risk of that happening as it pushes back decisions on some of the most sensitive and privilege-laden discovery issues.

For his part, Abrego Garcia argued that the evidence Trump’s DOJ plans to present to show this is not a vindictive prosecution — testimony from Homeland Security Investigations Supervisory Special Agent John VanWie of Baltimore, HSI Special Agent Rana Saoud of Nashville and maybe testimony from Acting Nashville U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire is insufficient to rebut the presumption and that Crenshaw should simply dismiss the case.

While we might relish the opportunity to see Trump’s top DOJ officials squirm on the witness stand, Crenshaw telegraphs a lot here about how he views this case. Of course, he has good practical reasons for ruling on the motion to quash. Why decide something you may not need to decide yet? But the gist of Crenshaw’s two orders this week suggests a judge who, after reviewing in his chambers more than 3,000 internal government documents in the case, is very open to vindictive indictment and very skeptical of Trump’s DOJ’s arguments against him.

BFD

President Trump does not have the right to deploy federalized National Guardsmen to enforce the law unless the regular armed forces are insufficient for the task, the Supreme Court ruled in a major ruling yesterday.

Monitoring mass deportations

• WaPo: ICE documents reveal plan to detain 80,000 immigrants in warehouses
• Reason: DHS says recording or tracking law enforcement “certainly sounds like obstruction of justice”

Judges threatened

NBC News:

Due to the various threats and intimidation, judges have had to adapt their daily lives, according to NBC News interviews with six sitting judges, as well as former judges and others familiar with the current threat landscape.

A judge has moved. Another had to freeze her credit cards after a security breach.

Other judges have taken steps to adapt to the changing landscape by upgrading their home security systems, changing the route they take to work and ensuring that their family members limit the personal information they post online, according to current and former judges.

Venezuela Watch

• New York Times: US steps up military buildup in Caribbean
• WSJ: US moves additional troops, special operations aircraft to Caribbean

Corruption: all day edition

• The Guardian: Thanks to Donald Trump, 2025 was a good year… for white-collar criminals
• WSJ: Lobbyists close to President Trump say their going rate for arguing for a pardon is $1 million, but some pardon applicants have proposed success fees as high as $6 million.
• New York Times: Hundreds of big post-election donors benefited from Trump’s return to power

Happy reading

WSJ: How Putin got his favorite US envoy: Come alone, no CIA

Quote of the day

Adam Serwer:

Neo-Nazi terrorist group steps up operations in the United States

The Guardian: “In the changing political climate of the second Trump administration, where the FBI has openly diverted its resources from investigating far-right extremists, the base appears free to organize and prepare for its stated goal of fomenting an armed insurrection against the US government. »

An eventful geological year

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of Kilauea’s current eruption, and it resumed overnight with the 39th episode of the lava outpouring sequence. Last night’s lava fountain reached a height of 1,400 feet before the episode ended after just under six hours.

I’m interested in this sort of thing primarily because I’m dazzled by the natural phenomenon, but I also have a deep need to keep time by some measure other than the frenetic pace of modern human life.

While we obsess over a white Christian nationalist presidency and the searing path of destruction its impulsiveness leaves behind, Kilauea has spent the last year gradually filling the gaping crater that the 2018 summit collapse left behind (this dataset does not include last night’s episode):

Outside the summit crater, wind-blown volcanic fragments have created a new geologic feature on the leeward edge of the crater rim: a 130-foot-tall tephra mound. The growth of the tephra mound has at times been spectacular. Individual eruptions added up to 25 feet of height to the tephra mound in just a few hours.

And no, this is not some clumsy meta-reflection about creation emerging from destruction. In politics, unlike geology, destruction is just destruction.

New Year’s plans?

Join me for the first Morning Memo live event, January 29 in Washington DC. We will have a panel discussion on the militarization of the DOJ, answer questions from the audience, and then mingle at a reception. Tickets are available here. I hope to see you there!

Happy Holidays!

Morning Memo will be on hiatus until January 5.

If current events require it, I may publish intermittent special editions for the holidays. But the plan is to resume when the news comes in the new year.

I’m making my first visit to my home state of Louisiana since 2014. I’m looking forward to renewing old relationships, exploring past haunts, and gorging on the cuisine we miss so much, all in 70-degree weather.

I wish you peace and joy this holiday season, however you celebrate it.

Any hot tips? A juicy scuttlebutt? Any interesting ideas? Let me know. For sensitive information, use encrypted methods here.