The Trump Administration’s Absurd Obsession With Secrecy

INSIDE: Maurene Comey ... Pam Bondi ... Gavin Newsom

(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

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Straight From The Authoritarian Playbook

One of the defining elements of the Trump DOJ’s boundless first few months has been the extravagant and absurd claims to secrecy it has made in court. The sheer volume of secrecy claims and the clear overreach by the Trump DOJ in making them is creating persistent downward pressure on the presumption of openness and transparency.

In the original Alien Enemies Act case, the Trump DOJ wildly asserted a state secrets privilege, even suggesting for a time that judges weren’t entitled to see the disputed information. In some of the other “facilitate” cases arising from wrongful deportations, the Trump DOJ has tried to cloak the administration’s operational and diplomatic efforts in various arcane and unsupported privileges, mostly to stonewall judges and plaintiffs, but secrecy remains the default.

For the most part, the claims have been taken up and adjudicated in the normal course of court business and judges have managed to trim the administration’s sails quite a bit. But some choice examples from recent days suggest that rather than merely an overly aggressive legal strategy by an outmanned and desperate Justice Department, the administration is dipping into the authoritarian playbook, where secrecy is a key tool, both as sword and shield.

Overarching claims of secrecy have come up repeatedly in the ongoing trial in Massachusetts over the administration’s targeting of pro-Palestinian international students for deportation. Courthouse News Service offers a good rundown of some of the more preposterous privilege claims the Trump DOJ has made during trial, including for the police report of Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest and for the membership of the President’s Homeland Security Council.

The membership is secret? the judge asked incredulously.

“I would not say that it is secret, your honor,” a DOJ attorney replied. “I would say that it is privileged.”

The membership was in fact already posted online, opposing counsel noted.

But openly claiming privileges – no matter how tenuous – in court seems quaint and old-fashioned compared to keeping the names of ICE lawyers secret during immigration proceedings. It’s the equivalent of immigration enforcement officers use face masks to conceal their identities, but it’s happening in immigration courts, The Intercept reports.

“We’re not really doing names publicly,” said Judge ShaSha Xu — after stating her own name and those of the immigrants and their lawyers. It was the first of two separate instances The Intercept identified in which judges chose to withhold the identities of the attorneys representing the Trump administration’s deportation regime.

Immigration courts are part of the executive branch, not the judicial branch. One immigration judge told The Intercept that the decision not to publicly reveal ICE lawyers by name was not a blanket policy but was up to individual judges.

Obsessive secrecy, indiscriminate assertions of inapt privileges, concealment of the public’s business from public is a reflexive reaction to bad facts, unwelcome scrutiny, and accountability.

Trump DOJ Fires Comey’s Daughter

Career DOJ prosecutor Maurene Comey was fired late Wednesday from her job in the Southern District of New York. No reason was given for her termination, which didn’t originate with interim U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, Politico reports, suggesting it came from Main Justice.

Among the potential motives for the Trump administration to fire her:

(a) She’s James Comey’s daughter.

(b) She helped prosecute Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

(c) All of the above.

As Morning Memo noted earlier this week, the right-wing backlash against Attorney General Pam Bondi for spraying cold water on the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy hype machine makes her even more dangerous because she’s trying to prove her MAGA bona fides. How much, or even if, that came into play here is unclear.

Maurene Comey, who was most recently involed in the high-profile prosecution of Sean “Diddy” Combs, was reportedly escorted out of the building last evening by her colleagues in a show of solidarity.

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Follow The Money

TPM’s Hunter Walker: Contracts Show Millions of Dollars and Diverted Disaster Resources Were Used to Build DeSantis’ ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

Trump Admin Resumes Third Country Removals

With clearance from the Supreme Court, the Trump administration has resumed deporting undocumented immigrants to third countries rather than their countries of origin.

A quick word on the extreme practice of depositing people in countries with which they have no prior connection: I learned in court last week in the Abrego Garcia case that prior to the Trump II administration only about 1.6% of removals involved third countries. It was apparently used sparingly and in select cases. It was not an avenue for mass deportations.

Will Dems Counter Texas Redistricting?

Democrats are eying a mid-decade redistricting gambit in California to offset any loses they suffer in the GOP’s planned redistricting in Texas. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is talking it up, but California law makes it a much more difficult lift with a much less certain outcome.

Senate Ratifies Cuts To Foreign Aid And Public Broadcasting

In a late-night session, the GOP Senate passed approved a rescission package for the first time since 1999, ratifying $9 billion in cancelled spending by Trump administration for foreign aid ($7.9 billion) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting ($1.1 billion). The vote was 51-48 along party lines. Sens. Susan Collins (ME) and Lisa Murkowski (AK) were the only two GOP senators to defect. The bill now goes to the House, which has a Friday deadline to pass it.

Politics Over Science, Part 826

Trump administration political appointees are overriding career scientists at NIH in making key decisions on medical research methods, the WaPo reports.

Have Questions?

I’ll be answering reader questions tomorrow in a special bonus edition of Morning Memo.

DOJ weaponization? Trump’s threat to the independent judiciary? The Abrego Garcia case? Any of a thousand other Trump II depredations?

Drop your questions in advance in the comments section of this post on Substack (not TPM proper).

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