Nothing is going to slow down my coverage of the most pressing legal news.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia scored his first victory on Friday in his ongoing battle to topple his criminal case on the grounds of vindictive prosecution.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw ordered an evidentiary hearing into the question, finding that Abrego “carried his burden of demonstrating some evidence that the prosecution against him may be vindictive.”
In a video analysis of his 16-page opinion, my former MSNBC colleague and I break down why Fox host Laura Ingraham’s interview with Todd Blanche on the day of Abrego’s arrest may have handed the defense the most potent piece of evidence to dismiss the case.
“Strikingly, during a television interview Deputy Attorney General Blanche revealed that the government started ‘investigating’ Abrego after ‘a judge in Maryland . . . questioned’ the government’s decision, found that it ‘had no right to deport him,’ and ‘accus[ed] [the government] of doing something wrong,’” Judge Crenshaw noted in his 16-page opinion.
That Fox interview became a central piece of evidence for Abrego’s defense to establish that prosecutors brought the case because Abrego successfully fought for his release from an El Salvador prison.
“Deputy Attorney General Blanche’s remarkable statements could directly establish that the motivations for Abrego’s criminal charges stem from his exercise of his constitutional and statutory rights to bring suit against the Executive Official Defendants, rather than a genuine desire to prosecute him for alleged criminal misconduct,” Crenshaw added.
Abrego faces smuggling charges in the Middle District of Tennessee, which is within the jurisdiction of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Quoting a precedent from the appellate court, Judge Crenshaw wrote that the clearest evidence of vindictive prosecution would be “actual confession by the prosecutor.”
Watch the full video at the top of this story, and read the full opinion here.
Note: To those expressing concerns, I am wearing a sling in this video because I am recovering from a shoulder injury. Rest assured: This newsletter still isn’t pulling any punches.
