Thread by @ProfMJCleveland

🚨Hearing on Show Cause ended. Below was play-by-play. My thoughts follow. Judge is going to find government in contempt and continue this farce. In this hearing Judge came off as the most biased and unkeeled he has yet. Two examples: 1/

https://twitter.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1907867183960478105

2/ While the hearing was on whether Trump Administration violates his orders, Judge wanted to frame rushing to avoid order being entered as problem for him. It's not: Judge can't hold someone in contempt b/c they went to great lengths to avoid being in contempt by rushing things.

3/ Relatedly Judge wanted to stress that point by saying "rush" caused a mistake of someone on plane who shouldn't have been. BUT as DOJ pointed out, he was on third plane where removals were under other removal procedures & it had nothing to do with Alien Enemies Act.

4/ Judge nonetheless continued to hit that point 2 more times even after proven factually wrong. Judge spent entire hearing asking questions irrelevant to whether the order was violated. Why the proclamation wasn't immediately made public is irrelevant to that question.

5/ Hearing focused instead on who violated order, instead of whether there was a violation of order. I truly thought the Judge would realize he can't hold Trump Administration for not turning planes around & would write a scathing opinion and end it.

6/ After today's hearing, I predict he's not only going to find probable cause for contempt but start demanding testimony by folks named by DOJ attorney, which is going to raise executive privilege, attorney client privilege and a whole host of other issue.

7/ And bottom line is it was a legal assessment: An injunction can't be "oral" and a written injunction barring "removal" doesn't require "unremoval" once already removed.

8/ At the last hearing, I was impressed by Judge Boasberg's professionalism. Today, I found his irrelevant questions outrageous and his down-talking to the public listening in offensive.

9/9 He clearly wants to pit Article III against Article II and that is unfortunate.