Yesterday, in my monthly State of Democracy report I wrote at length about the growing risk that the administration would willfully violate a court order, be held in contempt of court and trigger a constitutional crisis. Things have become much graver since then.
As I noted yesterday, “last week, a federal judge ordered the Department of Justice to produce a specific federal employee to testify in a pending case. Rather than comply, the lawyers from the Department filed a brief stating that they did not think the witness was necessary — and that the witness would not appear.”
This weekend the judge in that case issued a written order in which he took the government to task over this stunt, saying that it had acted “in violation of this Court’s order.” Nevertheless, the judge noted that it “did not impose sanctions at the time.”
Meanwhile, on Friday evening, a federal judge in Boston ordered the government not to deport a Brown University professor who was being held in custody. She was nevertheless put on a flight to Paris. On Sunday the court issued a stern order demanding an explanation by this morning as to whether the government “willfully disobeyed the Order by sending her out of the United States.”
The most serious situation is playing out in federal court in Washington D.C…
