Citing a “willful disregard,” Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has found probable cause that the Trump administration could be held in criminal contempt of court after officials defied his order to not remove Venezuelan migrants from the country based on a centuries-old wartime law.
Boasberg, first appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, on Wednesday “said he would launch proceedings to determine whether to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt,” The Washington Post reported.
Pointing to the “broader showdown between the Trump administration and the federal judiciary,” the Post reported that Boasberg “[said] the Trump administration’s actions on March 15, as the removal flights proceeded despite his order to the contrary, ‘demonstrate a willful disregard … sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.'”
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The judge wrote: “The Court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given Defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory.”
But Boasberg also offered the administration some options: essentially, file “a declaration explaining the steps they have taken and will take to do so,” or, file “declaration(s) identifying the individual(s) who, with knowledge of the Court’s classwide Temporary Restraining Order, made the decision not to halt the transfer of class members out of U.S. custody on March 15 and 16, 2025.”
Attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick explains that Boasberg ordered “them either to fix their mistake, or identify who made those decisions (presumably for further sanctions).”
“The Constitution,” Boasberg also wrote, citing previous rulings, “does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it. To permit such officials to freely ‘annul the judgments of the courts of the United States’ would not just ‘destroy the rights acquired under those judgments’; it would make ‘a solemn mockery’ of ‘the constitution itself.’
Watch CNN’s report below or at this link.