The Trump Administration Is Using The 'State Secrets Privilege' Just As It Was Intended
President Donald Trump’s administration invoked the “state secrets privilege” to prevent a United States court from reviewing the abduction of immigrants, mostly Venezuelans, who were flown to El Salvador and Honduras.
A number of explainers related to the Venezuelan migrants case have been written about the state secrets privilege. One in particular from CNN suggested that Trump had broken with “past practice.” Most of them gloss over or omit similarities between this case and the 1953 case known as U.S. v. Reynolds, which established the state secrets privilege.
The fact is, despite Trump’s assertion of executive power and the denials of due process, officials are employing the state secrets privilege just as officials have for decades—to perpetuate government deception and fraud and to shield agencies and their officials from accountability.
On March 15, Trump officials removed 261 people from the U.S. while attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union were pursuing an effort in court to halt their removal. The Trump administration said 137 of them were “deported” under the Alien Enemies Act because they were allegedly part of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of the D.C. Circuit barred the Trump administration from invoking the Alien Enemies Act and ordered officials to turn the flights around. When they failed to return the immigrants, he demanded information related to the flights.
On March 24, the Justice Department (DOJ) officially invoked the state secrets privilege [PDF].“The Court has all of the facts it needs to address the compliance issues before it. Further intrusions on the Executive Branch would present dangerous and wholly unwarranted separation-of-powers harms with respect to diplomatic and national security concerns that the Court lacks competence to address.”
“Accordingly, the states secrets privilege forecloses further demands for details that have no place in this matter,” Attorney General Pam Bondi and other top DOJ officials added.
Declarations by Bondi [PDF], Secretary of State Marco Rubio [PDF], and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem [PDF] rejected the court’s request for information on the “time the planes took off and from where,” the “time the planes left U.S. airspace,” the “time the planes landed, where they landed, and whether they made more than one stop,” when the individuals were transferred out of U.S. custody, and how many individuals were aboard the flights.
Often the U.S. government provides a summary of the information at issue to help demonstrate to the court that disclosure would jeopardize national security or foreign policy interests. Yet like the Reynolds case, Bondi and the DOJ flatly refused to show the court any of the supposed secrets.
Read the full article at The Dissenter
"Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer in Washington, D.C. “who has litigated state secrets privilege cases,” told CNN "
From Dissenter portion but noteworthy.. Mark Zaid is not a good guy no whistleblowers should use him since he has burned sources.. check w John Kiriakou for details of Zaid dirtbaggery.