Traitor Watch - The 45 & 47 Thread

[Rhinox]

She's skating pretty close. Here's the statutes I found that she's charged under

Obstruction: "Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States, or the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress—Shall be..."

Concealment: "Whoever harbors or conceals any person for whose arrest a warrant or process has been issued under the provisions of any law of the United States, so as to prevent his discovery and arrest, after notice or knowledge of the fact that a warrant or process has been issued for the apprehension of such person, shall be..."

For concealment, I'd say it comes down to whether an Administrative Warrant qualifies as a "warrant" or "arrest" under the law. For obstruction...if these were otherwise open court proceedings, and she used her authority as a judge to refuse them entry, and then led the subject through another exit only accessible to judicial personnel...well, it's not getting dismissed on its face, absent some federal precedent I'm unfamiliar with.

She invited them to go through a different door than the one ICE was guarding. The guy went into the same hallway and outran them.
That's not on her, that's on them. Spend some time on the treadmill, boys.
As far as what you've presented, the statute. The argument I'd start with as a lawyer is the word "corruptly". I would then make the argument that showing the individual to a different door does not influence, obstruct, or impedes anything. He went into the same hallway where ICE was. Just down the hall. Obstruction won't stick.
In terms of concealment, a better argument could be made except that the chief judge had previously stated that administrative warrants are not to be pursued in the courthouse. As they are not judicial warrants and have no real weight of the justice system behind them, they can make and personally enforce that ruling.

This is a nothing case. And the big splashy arrest by Kash and his FBI team was done specifically to create an atmosphere of fear and tell even judges that they had better not get in Trump's way. Pure intimidation, nothing more.

But, like with tariffs, I bet if we see massive pushback instead of capitulation, Trump will blink first.

 

[Paladin]

Trump Has Now Deported Multiple U.S. Citizen Children With Cancer

Two families who had lived in the United States for years, including a child with cancer and a pregnant mother, were deported by ICE on Friday.

www.rollingstone.com

considering Donald's history with children they should be LUCKY to be further away from him.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Ameen and his family fled Iraq for Turkey in 2012. Part of Iraq’s Sunni minority, they came from a village in Anbar province, a region that had served as an epicenter for the Sunni insurgency against the U.S. occupation, the rise of al-Qaeda and ISIS, as well as the sectarian discrimination exhibited by the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.

Ameen and his family arrived in the United States in 2014 after a rigorous vetting process; [...]

The Trump administration called him a terrorist and held him up as an example of how dangerous people were using the refugee resettlement program to infiltrate the United States.

The administration argued that not only was Ameen a member of ISIS masquerading as a refugee, he was, in fact, a high-ranking leader in the extremist group who had led a hit squad to kill an Iraqi policeman, among other acts. The administration wanted Ameen, whose case was chronicled in The New Yorker last year, extradited to face trial in Iraq.

But then the government’s case collapsed.

[Judge] Brennan agreed in his decision with Ameen’s defense lawyers, who argued that he and his family fled Iraq in 2012 and on the date of the murder were 600 miles away, in Mersin, Turkey. They had just been told of their imminent resettlement in the United States.

The judge called that “obliterative alibi evidence” and blocked Ameen’s extradition, ordering that Ameen be “immediately released from custody.”

Instead, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents picked him up and restarted deportation proceedings.

link

For what it's worth the Biden administration also tried to deport this guy for some reason. "Nothing fundamentally will change" indeed.

But there is news! The new Trump administration finally agreed that this guy seems to have a valid fear of persecution, and they have dropped the attempt to deport him back to Iraq.

So they quietly put him on a plane to Rwanda.

the administration has opted to quietly send Iraqi national Omar Abdulsattar Ameen from the US to Rwanda, wherein Rwanda acts as a “third country.” But it remains unclear what legal processes allowed for this to happen.

The cable, sent today—April 22, 2025—confirms Ameen’s “relocation” has already happened.

link

It sounds like Rwanda has struck a similar deal to El Salvador's. For a fee, they'll accept anyone we send.

 

[Rhinox]

The breaking point is coming soon. When cooperation means nothing, then people have nothing to lose by acting out. Using unmarked, masked agents with no identifiers is asking for someone to decide to pull up.

I really am not trying to advocate violence. But more and more I am not seeing anything other than serious violence coming. People are going to do and the second an ICE agent dies we are going full martial law and then the real killing will begin.

 

[Xaaron]

Welp, time to watch V for Vendetta again...

 

[abates]

Radley Balko (@radleybalko.bsky.social)

Vance's Easter visit to Rome clogged its streets with a 40-vehicle entourage. He also demanded the Coliseum be closed so he and his family could tour it alone. Tourists who properly booked slots in advance got screwed. He's apparently the first to make that demand. Then he didn't bother to show...

bsky.app

JD Vance, what a git.

 

[NovaSaber]

Meeting him really might've been what caused the Pope's stroke.

 

[Dekafox]

One last rush of ships to get in before the de minimis changes, it looks like:

Wish I could see the historical data here. Site is https://www.vesselfinder.com/ for reference

 

[Axaday]

Meeting him really might've been what caused the Pope's stroke.

My grandmother died of a stroke that night following a family Christmas gathering and I am halfway convinced that on some level her body said "That was great and there won't be another day that great for quite a while". Grandpa had just died a few months before.

I can certainly see a Pope meeting JD Vance and thinking "My goodness, THIS is where things are going? I've got better places to be"

 

[KidTDragon]

'We're citizens!': Oklahoma City family traumatized after ICE raids home, but they weren't suspects

 

[Axaday]

I hope this wakes Oklahoma up a little.

 

[Axaday]

I actually don't know the answer to this question, though asking it correctly implies that I have a suspicion. It seems like an awful lot of videos I see lately of Trump getting caught by reporters he says "I don't know, this is the first I'm hearing about this" Is that normal? Does the President usually have someone along to tell them about anything reporters are going to ask about at the same time the reporters are finding out about it?

 

[The Mighty Mollusk]

Either he's lying to dodge accountability, or his minions are going off script and he actually doesn't know about it. Both are terrible in different ways, but I think the second may be worse.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

It's the latter, and it's deliberate. The current strategy is to get things done before a judge can hear about it. So Trump just sets the direction, and even he doesn't need to hear what the plan is or how and when it's happening until it's already too late for a court to undo.

 

[Axaday]

Well, I mean even about like a school shooting or something. It seems like he finds out about everything from a reporter. Maybe I didn't use to have the access, but I wonder if maybe he has said he doesn't want people hanging around telling him stuff. Maybe it is because he wants someone else to write an answer for him. Maybe it isn't really that odd because reporters are always hearing news and they go straight to get a soundbyte.

 

[The Mighty Mollusk]

Oh, that one's easy. He doesn't know because he doesn't care.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Honestly, I probably don't know about the latest school shooting either. By the time I could look it up there will probably be another one. They last 5 minutes in the news now.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Trumps plausible deniability is literally his MO. If he doesn't know, he's not liable when it goes south cause it was illegal, immoral, inhumane, or dumb enough to make the people who think the first three are perfectly fine call him out for it.

 

[NovaSaber]

Trump Laid Off Nearly All the Federal Workers Who Investigate Firefighter Deaths

The cuts, which are part of Trump’s slashing of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, will also halt a first-of-its-kind study of the causes of thousands of firefighters’ cancer cases.

www.propublica.org

When a firefighter dies in the line of duty, a small team of federal health workers is often called on to pinpoint what went wrong and identify how to avoid similar accidents in the future.

That’s what happened after two firefighters died in California in 2020 while searching for an elderly woman in a burning library. It happened in 2023 when a Navy firefighter died in Maryland after a floor collapsed in a burning home. And it happened last year in Georgia when a career battalion chief died after a semitrailer truck exploded.

But President Donald Trump’s administration has taken steps to fire nearly all of the Department of Health and Human Services employees responsible for conducting those reviews.

 

[Rhinox]

Trumps plausible deniability is literally his MO. If he doesn't know, he's not liable when it goes south cause it was illegal, immoral, inhumane, or dumb enough to make the people who think the first three are perfectly fine call him out for it.

Exactly. This has been his go-to, basic legal strategy from day one. Plausible deniability. It can make some lower level legal jive go away and it provides an excellent ground to build a larger defense if one is needed.
This is nothing but strategy. The irony is, with his fading mental condition, it will probably be more true than false more and more.