Latest news with #HumanSmuggling
CNN
a day ago
- Politics
- CNN
Abrego Garcia's lawyers urge judge to drop his criminal case, alleging ‘vindictive and selective prosecution'
Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia are asking the federal judge overseeing his criminal case to throw out the human smuggling charges he's facing, alleging the Justice Department singled him out for prosecution after he challenged his wrongful deportation to El Salvador earlier this year. The request made Tuesday to US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Nashville comes several days before Abrego Garcia is expected to be released from criminal custody pending his trial on the federal charges. The 35-page filing to Crenshaw accuses President Donald Trump's Justice Department of prosecuting the criminal case as retribution for Abrego Garcia's protracted legal fight against the government's deportation of him in mid-March. The Maryland father of three was wrongly deported in violation of an earlier court order that expressly forbade his removal to El Salvador. 'Mr. Abrego responded to the government's shocking, illegal conduct by filing a lawsuit. Rather than fix its mistake and return Mr. Abrego to the United States, the government fought back at every level of the federal court system,' his attorneys wrote in the filing. 'And at every level, Mr. Abrego won. This case results from the government's concerted effort to punish him for having the audacity to fight back, rather than accept a brutal injustice.' The lawyers are asking Crenshaw, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, to throw out the two criminal counts brought against him earlier this year based on their assertion that he's the subject of 'selective or vindictive prosecution.' 'Those motions are infrequently made and rarely succeed. But if there has ever been a case for dismissal on those grounds, this is that case. The government is attempting to use this case – and this Court – to punish Mr. Abrego for successfully fighting his unlawful removal. That is a constitutional violation of the most basic sort,' they wrote in court papers. 'The Indictment must be dismissed.' The filing points to statements made by various administration officials – from Trump to Attorney General Pam Bondi – to make the case that his prosecution is intended to justify 'officials' false claims that deporting him to El Salvador had been the right thing to do.' And it points out that the traffic stop that is at the center of the government's case against him occurred years earlier – a fact his lawyers claim 'is sufficient to establish discriminatory effect.' 'In total, it took the government 903 days after the traffic stop in this case – on November 30, 2022 – to obtain an indictment on May 21, 2025,' they wrote, adding that they couldn't find any similar case within the federal circuit that hears appeals arising from Tennessee and several other states. Abrego Garcia's trial is set to begin in January 2026. Last month, Crenshaw declined to undo a separate judge's decision to let Abrego Garcia remain free while he awaits trial. But he's remained behind bars after the magistrate judge in his case paused her release order for a month. That pause is expected to end later this week. Meanwhile, the federal judge in Maryland overseeing the case Abrego Garica and his family brought against officials to secure his return to the US from El Salvador has barred the administration from quickly deporting him again once he's released from criminal custody. That ruling from US District Judge Paula Xinis, also an Obama appointee, is meant to do two things: Restore Abrego Garcia to the immigration position he was in before his deportation in mid-March and ensure his due process rights aren't violated again should officials try to remove him from the US a second time.
CNN
a day ago
- Politics
- CNN
Abrego Garcia's lawyers urge judge to drop his criminal case, alleging ‘vindictive and selective prosecution'
Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia are asking the federal judge overseeing his criminal case to throw out the human smuggling charges he's facing, alleging the Justice Department singled him out for prosecution after he challenged his wrongful deportation to El Salvador earlier this year. The request made Tuesday to US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Nashville comes several days before Abrego Garcia is expected to be released from criminal custody pending his trial on the federal charges. The 35-page filing to Crenshaw accuses President Donald Trump's Justice Department of prosecuting the criminal case as retribution for Abrego Garcia's protracted legal fight against the government's deportation of him in mid-March. The Maryland father of three was wrongly deported in violation of an earlier court order that expressly forbade his removal to El Salvador. 'Mr. Abrego responded to the government's shocking, illegal conduct by filing a lawsuit. Rather than fix its mistake and return Mr. Abrego to the United States, the government fought back at every level of the federal court system,' his attorneys wrote in the filing. 'And at every level, Mr. Abrego won. This case results from the government's concerted effort to punish him for having the audacity to fight back, rather than accept a brutal injustice.' The lawyers are asking Crenshaw, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, to throw out the two criminal counts brought against him earlier this year based on their assertion that he's the subject of 'selective or vindictive prosecution.' 'Those motions are infrequently made and rarely succeed. But if there has ever been a case for dismissal on those grounds, this is that case. The government is attempting to use this case – and this Court – to punish Mr. Abrego for successfully fighting his unlawful removal. That is a constitutional violation of the most basic sort,' they wrote in court papers. 'The Indictment must be dismissed.' The filing points to statements made by various administration officials – from Trump to Attorney General Pam Bondi – to make the case that his prosecution is intended to justify 'officials' false claims that deporting him to El Salvador had been the right thing to do.' And it points out that the traffic stop that is at the center of the government's case against him occurred years earlier – a fact his lawyers claim 'is sufficient to establish discriminatory effect.' 'In total, it took the government 903 days after the traffic stop in this case – on November 30, 2022 – to obtain an indictment on May 21, 2025,' they wrote, adding that they couldn't find any similar case within the federal circuit that hears appeals arising from Tennessee and several other states. Abrego Garcia's trial is set to begin in January 2026. Last month, Crenshaw declined to undo a separate judge's decision to let Abrego Garcia remain free while he awaits trial. But he's remained behind bars after the magistrate judge in his case paused her release order for a month. That pause is expected to end later this week. Meanwhile, the federal judge in Maryland overseeing the case Abrego Garica and his family brought against officials to secure his return to the US from El Salvador has barred the administration from quickly deporting him again once he's released from criminal custody. That ruling from US District Judge Paula Xinis, also an Obama appointee, is meant to do two things: Restore Abrego Garcia to the immigration position he was in before his deportation in mid-March and ensure his due process rights aren't violated again should officials try to remove him from the US a second time.
CNN
a day ago
- Politics
- CNN
Abrego Garcia's lawyers urge judge to drop his criminal case, alleging ‘vindictive and selective prosecution'
South AmericaFacebookTweetLink Follow Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia are asking the federal judge overseeing his criminal case to throw out the human smuggling charges he's facing, alleging the Justice Department singled him out for prosecution after he challenged his wrongful deportation to El Salvador earlier this year. The request made Tuesday to US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Nashville comes several days before Abrego Garcia is expected to be released from criminal custody pending his trial on the federal charges. The 35-page filing to Crenshaw accuses President Donald Trump's Justice Department of prosecuting the criminal case as retribution for Abrego Garcia's protracted legal fight against the government's deportation of him in mid-March. The Maryland father of three was wrongly deported in violation of an earlier court order that expressly forbade his removal to El Salvador. 'Mr. Abrego responded to the government's shocking, illegal conduct by filing a lawsuit. Rather than fix its mistake and return Mr. Abrego to the United States, the government fought back at every level of the federal court system,' his attorneys wrote in the filing. 'And at every level, Mr. Abrego won. This case results from the government's concerted effort to punish him for having the audacity to fight back, rather than accept a brutal injustice.' The lawyers are asking Crenshaw, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, to throw out the two criminal counts brought against him earlier this year based on their assertion that he's the subject of 'selective or vindictive prosecution.' 'Those motions are infrequently made and rarely succeed. But if there has ever been a case for dismissal on those grounds, this is that case. The government is attempting to use this case – and this Court – to punish Mr. Abrego for successfully fighting his unlawful removal. That is a constitutional violation of the most basic sort,' they wrote in court papers. 'The Indictment must be dismissed.' The filing points to statements made by various administration officials – from Trump to Attorney General Pam Bondi – to make the case that his prosecution is intended to justify 'officials' false claims that deporting him to El Salvador had been the right thing to do.' And it points out that the traffic stop that is at the center of the government's case against him occurred years earlier – a fact his lawyers claim 'is sufficient to establish discriminatory effect.' 'In total, it took the government 903 days after the traffic stop in this case – on November 30, 2022 – to obtain an indictment on May 21, 2025,' they wrote, adding that they couldn't find any similar case within the federal circuit that hears appeals arising from Tennessee and several other states. Abrego Garcia's trial is set to begin in January 2026. Last month, Crenshaw declined to undo a separate judge's decision to let Abrego Garcia remain free while he awaits trial. But he's remained behind bars after the magistrate judge in his case paused her release order for a month. That pause is expected to end later this week. Meanwhile, the federal judge in Maryland overseeing the case Abrego Garica and his family brought against officials to secure his return to the US from El Salvador has barred the administration from quickly deporting him again once he's released from criminal custody. That ruling from US District Judge Paula Xinis, also an Obama appointee, is meant to do two things: Restore Abrego Garcia to the immigration position he was in before his deportation in mid-March and ensure his due process rights aren't violated again should officials try to remove him from the US a second time.
The Guardian
23-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Justice department reportedly told Trump in May that his name is in Epstein files
Update: Date: 2025-07-23T20:17:45.000Z Title: Pam Bondi Content: Wall Street Journal reports that attorney general told the president his name appears multiple times in the Epstein files US judge rejects Trump administration's bid to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts Robert Mackey (now); Lucy Campbell, Maya Yang, Fran Lawther and Charlie Moloney (earlier) Wed 23 Jul 2025 22.17 CEST First published on Wed 23 Jul 2025 13.14 CEST From 9.18pm CEST 21:18 'When justice department officials reviewed what attorney general called a 'truckload' of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered that Donald Trump's name appeared multiple times,' the Wall Street Journal is reporting, citing senior administration officials. I'll bring you more on this as we get it. Updated at 9.32pm CEST 10.17pm CEST 22:17 Maya Yang A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Kilmar Ábrego García must be released from jail as he awaits trial on human smuggling charges. The decision from judge Waverly Crenshaw means that Donald Trump's administration can potentially attempt to deport the Maryland father of two to his native El Salvador or a third country for a second time. Crenshaw, sitting in Nashville, agreed with an earlier decision by a magistrate judge, concluding that prosecutors had not provided enough evidence to show Ábrego is either a danger to the public or a flight risk. The judge said in his decision that the government 'fails to show by a preponderance of the evidence – let alone clear and convincing evidence – that Abrego is such a danger to others or the community that such concerns cannot be mitigated by conditions of release'. Despite the bail ruling, Ábrego is not expected to walk free. His legal team has requested a 30-day delay in implementing the decision, opting to keep him in criminal detention while they consider next steps. Meanwhile, in a separate courtroom in Maryland, US district judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing a civil case Ábrego filed, issued a 72-hour freeze on any further attempts by the Trump administration to deport him. Xinis ruled that Ábrego must be returned to Maryland on an order of supervision. 10.02pm CEST 22:02 The House oversight committee has officially subpoenaed Ghislaine Maxwell for a deposition to occur at the Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee on 11 August. 'The facts and circumstances surrounding both your and Mr Epstein's cases have received immense public interest and scrutiny,' Republican chairman James Comer, of Kentucky, wrote, addressing Maxwell. 'While the justice department undertakes efforts to uncover and publicly disclose additional information related to your and Mr Epstein's cases, it is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government's enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of you and Mr Epstein.' An oversight subcommittee voted yesterday to subpoena Maxwell, the imprisoned sex trafficker who was a close associate of the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, to testify amid a political firestorm over the Trump administration's decision not to release its remaining Epstein files. 9.40pm CEST 21:40 'This is another fake news story, just like the previous story by the Wall Street Journal,' White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement in response to the WSJ's report that the justice department informed Donald Trump in May about his name being in the Epstein files. 9.28pm CEST 21:28 In the WSJ's report (paywall), according to the officials, attorney general and her deputy informed the president at a meeting in the White House in May that his name was in the Epstein files, along with many other high-profile figures. 'The meeting set the stage for the high-profile review to come to an end,' the WSJ reports. The publication notes that being mentioned in the documents is not a sign of wrongdoing: The officials said it was a routine briefing that covered a number of topics and that Trump's appearance in the documents wasn't the focus. They told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, some of the officials said. One of the officials familiar with the documents said they contain hundreds of other names. They also told Trump that senior justice department officials didn't plan to release any more documents related to the investigation of the convicted sex offender because the material contained child pornography and victims' personal information, the officials said. Trump said at the meeting he would defer to the justice department's decision to not release any further files. Trump denied last week in response to a journalist's question that Bondi had told him that his name was in the files. Updated at 9.59pm CEST 9.18pm CEST 21:18 'When justice department officials reviewed what attorney general called a 'truckload' of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered that Donald Trump's name appeared multiple times,' the Wall Street Journal is reporting, citing senior administration officials. I'll bring you more on this as we get it. Updated at 9.32pm CEST 9.05pm CEST 21:05 US district judge Robin Rosenberg wrote that the court's 'hands are tied' and said the government had not requested the grand jury's findings for use in a judicial proceeding, pointing out that district courts in the US are largely prohibited from unsealing grand jury testimony except in very narrow circumstances. 8.41pm CEST 20:41 The ruling mentioned in my last post stems from federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein in Florida in 2005 and 2007, according to court documents. It doesn't affect two other pending requests by the Department of Justice that seek to obtain transcripts of grand jury proceedings related to later federal investigations of Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, in New York, both of which led to separate criminal indictments. Yesterday, the New York federal court said it would like to 'expeditiously' resolve the Trump administration's request, but it could not do so due to a number of missing submissions. The Trump administration filed the petitions to unseal transcripts of the grand jury proceedings last week. It followed days of mounting pressure and criticism across the political spectrum over the DoJ's decision not to release any further investigative evidence about Epstein despite many earlier promises that it would be released. Updated at 9.33pm CEST 8.13pm CEST 20:13 A US judge has denied a justice department bid to unseal grand jury transcripts related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in South Florida, the first ruling in a series of attempts by Donald Trump's administration to release more information on the case. Reuters reports that US district judge Robin Rosenberg found that the justice department's request in Florida did not fall into any of the exceptions to rules requiring grand jury material be kept secret. Updated at 9.33pm CEST 8.00pm CEST 20:00 The new photos and videos published by CNN have emerged today in a context of ever-rising frustration in Trump's White House over its inability to make the Epstein story go away. Per Politico: Donald Trump is angry. His team is exasperated. The Republican-controlled House is in near rebellion. Trump and his closest allies thought they'd spend the summer taking a victory lap, having coaxed Congress into passing the megabill, bullied foreign governments into a slew of new trade arrangements, convinced Nato allies to spend billions more on collective defense and pressed world leaders to bow to various other demands from Doha to The Hague. Instead, questions surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, who was found dead in his jail cell by suicide nearly six years ago, are overshadowing almost everything else.' 'POTUS is clearly furious,' a person close to the White House told Politico. 'It's the first time I've seen them sort of paralyzed.' A senior White House official said the president is frustrated with his staff's inability to tamp down conspiracy theories they once spread and by the wall of media coverage that started when attorney general released information from the Epstein case that was already in the public domain. 'He feels there are way bigger stories that deserve attention,' the senior White House official said. The frustration stems, in part, from an understanding that this is 'a vulnerability,' said a White House ally. Trump has famously had his finger on the pulse of the Republican base for more than a decade but has, for now, lost the ability to dominate the narrative. That threatens to undermine the momentum and sense of invincibility the GOP felt at the beginning of the month when they were getting ready to boast about a slew of new tax cuts and border funding as their opening pitch to voters ahead of the 2026 midterms. Updated at 8.17pm CEST 7.49pm CEST 19:49 Anna Betts Newly uncovered photos and video footage published by CNN show more links between the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, including Epstein's attendance at Trump's wedding to Marla Maples at the Plaza hotel in New York in 1993. The media organization said on Wednesday that Epstein's attendance at the wedding ceremony was not widely known. CNN also published footage from 1999 of Trump and Epstein attending a Victoria's Secret fashion event in New York, where they are seen talking and laughing alongside Trump's future wife, Melania Trump. The outlet noted that the newly published material pre-dates any of Epstein's known legal troubles. CNN also published photos of Trump and Epstein at the 1993 opening of the Harley-Davidson Cafe in New York, where Trump is seen with his arm around two of his children, Eric and Ivanka, while Epstein stands beside them. When asked for comment by CNN on the newly unearthed videos and photos, Trump reportedly responded: 'You've got to be kidding me.' He then reportedly called CNN 'fake news' and hung up the phone. Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said in a statement to CNN that the videos and photos were 'nothing more than out-of-context frame grabs of innocuous videos and pictures of widely attended events to disgustingly infer something nefarious'. 'The fact is that the President kicked him out of his club for being a creep,' Cheung added. 'This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.' 7.33pm CEST 19:33 Anna Betts The Trump administration's Department of Education announced on Wednesday that it has opened national-origin discrimination investigations into five US universities over what it described as 'alleged exclusionary scholarships referencing foreign-born students'. According to the announcement, the department's office for civil rights has opened investigations into the University of Louisville, the University of Nebraska Omaha, the University of Miami, the University of Michigan and Western Michigan University. The department said that the investigations will determine whether these universities are granting scholarships exclusively to students who are recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, who came to the US as children, or who are undocumented 'in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964's (Title VI) prohibition against national origin discrimination'. The investigation stems from complaints submitted by the Legal Insurrection Foundation's Equal Protection Project, a conservative legal group. The group alleges in the complaints that certain scholarships at these schools are limited to students with Daca status or who are undocumented, which they argue is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 'and its implementing regulations by illegally discriminating against students based on their national origin'. For the full story, click here:
