In the absence of evidence, the charges against Abrego Garcia look like ‘an abuse of power’
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, in an online press briefing, called the charges against his client “an abuse of power.”
“They’ll stop at nothing at all — even some of the most preposterous charges imaginable — just to avoid admitting that they made a mistake, which is what everyone knows happened in this case,” said attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg.
“Mr. Garcia is going to be vigorously defending the charges against him,” the attorney said.
The decision to pursue the indictment against Abrego Garcia led to the abrupt departure of Ben Schrader, a high-ranking federal prosecutor in Tennessee, sources briefed on Schrader’s decision told ABC News. Schrader’s resignation was prompted by concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons, the sources said.
We shall see whether those charges have any merit. Perhaps I am too cynical. But I suspect that if the Administration actually had strong evidence of extensive illegal activity by Abrego Garcia, they would have revealed it a long time ago, rather than keep on suffering legal and PR setbacks. The prosecution may be a face-saving maneuver. We shall see when it gets to court.
This is the second time in a week that Trump officials have relented on one of the cases in which federal judges ordered the government to bring back a deportee removed from the country without due process. A gay Guatemalan asylum seeker known in court documents as O.C.G., who was wrongly deported to Mexico, was allowed to return and pursue his protection claim on Wednesday. The Trump administration remains defiant elsewhere, however, holding a group of men from Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and other nations in a shipping container on a U.S. military base in Djibouti while it attempts to deport them to South Sudan.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney for Abrego Garcia, told me the administration’s decision to bring his client back is a sign that “they were playing games with the court all along.”
Standard legal procedure would entail filing criminal charges against an alleged perpetrator and convicting them prior to a deportation—not the other way around, as the Trump administration is now attempting, Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “Due process means the chance to defend yourself before you’re punished, not after,” he said. “This is an abuse of power, not justice. The government should put him on trial, yes—but in front of the same immigration judge who heard his case in 2019, which is the ordinary manner of doing things.” [Continue reading…]
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) cast doubt on the prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia upon his return to the U.S. following his mistaken deportation to El Salvador, claiming that “charges are not evidence.”
“These charges have to be regarded with a very hefty dose of skepticism, in light of the timing, and all of the attendant circumstances,” Blumenthal said during a Friday night appearance on CNN’s “The Source.“ “The administration has no right to bring charges simply as an offramp, or a face-saver. And now it’s going to have to, in effect, put up and shut up, put its evidence where its mouth is.”
“And I’ve heard again and again and again, as a prosecutor, as a United States attorney, federal prosecutor, as well as state attorney general, charges are not evidence,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “And so far, we’ve seen no evidence.” [Continue reading…]