This is an adapted excerpt from the Nov. 26 episode of “Morning Joe.”
In a new court filing, Justice Department lawyers revealed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was the Trump official who made the final decision to continue deportation flights to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador in March, despite an order from a federal judge to turn the planes around.
The revelation came after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg resumed his criminal contempt inquiry into whether the Trump administration violated his orders to halt the deportation flights. According to the filing, Noem made the decision to continue the flights after receiving legal advice from Donald Trump’s Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and former top Justice Department official Emil Bove, who now serves as a federal judge.
Bove’s conduct had previously come in for criticism after a whistleblower accused the Trump appointee of advising his subordinates that they would need to consider ignoring court orders to carry out the president’s mass deportation policies.
Now, these officials will likely run into a few problems, the first of which is that they’re dealing with Boasberg, one of the most respected conservative jurists in Washington, D.C. The Trump administration won’t be able to paint him as some left-wing radical on a witch hunt.
That’s certainly not going to work in Washington among conservatives, and it’s not going to work if this case makes it all the way up to the Supreme Court. The court’s conservative justices know who Boasberg is. They knew him well before they ever dealt with Trump.
Second, whether it’s Noem, Blanche or Bove, I hope there are people around these officials who can explain to them what happened to those in the first Trump administration who thought they were above the law.
Just look at what happened to Jenna Ellis, one of Trump’s former personal attorneys, who was part of the president’s legal team as he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. After Ellis pleaded guilty in Georgia for making false statements regarding the election, her law license in Colorado was suspended for three years.
Ellis wasn’t the only one. Rudy Giuliani and Kenneth Chesebro, who also advised Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 election, were both disbarred for their conduct.
Officials in Trump’s second term should consider these cautionary tales: There are consequences for carrying out Trump’s agenda with total disregard for the law.
If history is any indication, legally and politically speaking, this won’t end well.
Allison Detzel contributed.
Former Rep. Joe Scarborough, R-Fla., is co-host of MS NOW's "Morning Joe" alongside Mika Brzezinski — a show that Time magazine calls "revolutionary." In addition to his career in television, Joe is a two-time New York Times best-selling author. His most recent book is "The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Republicans Once Mastered Politics — and Can Again."