My 100th Post: Notes From Underground (#11)

The Story of How We Can Practically Prove Trump Defied a Supreme Court Order

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my 100th post. I can’t go any further without first thanking my 217 free and/or paid subscribers.

And just wanted to give a special shout-out to 2 free subscribers in particular: former United States Representative Les AuCoin (D; from 1975-1993; see his blog here) and Phillips Payson O’Brien, a historian and professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

(The latter provides some especially excellent commentary on the war on Ukraine. Check it out!)

Thanks to the both of them for their support!

Okay, time for the main event…

In my previous posts, we have talked a good deal about Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Essentially, he was a man deported without due process to a gulag in El Salvador. Shortly after his deportation, the Trump Administration admitted to a court that they sent him to El Salvador in an “administrative error.”

In other words, whoops, we accidentally sent a random man to one of the worst prisons in the world. Whoops-a-daisy!

By the way, these are the same types of “minor mistakes” that led the Trump Administration to deport many others—including a gay hairdresser and makeup artist from Venezuela seeking asylum—to an El Salvador prison notorious for its human rights abuses. Not to mention a place supposedly set aside for the worst of the worst MS-13 gang members.

But I digress. The Administration also said American courts “lacked the jurisdiction” to have Kilmar Abrego Garcia released, and there was nothing the Administration could do to correct the error.

Remember that last part. It will be important later.

Eventually, a lower federal court ordered the Administration to “broker the return” of Kilmar Abrego Garcia with El Salvador and its dictator, Nayib Bukele. The Supreme Court heard the case and similarly ordered Trump to “facilitate” that return. In April.

On the one hand, the Administration claimed it simply could not bring Kilmar back because it was powerless to do so. On the other, people like Attorney General Pam Bondi bragged on TV that he “is not coming back to our country. . . . There is no situation ever where he was going to stay in this country. None, none” (this is a direct quotation from a Fox News report).

So, who’s lying?

Apparently, everyone involved. Kilmar Abrego Garcia did return to this country in June, a mere days after the first Musk-Trump brawl—to be put on trial to face “American justice.” Meanwhile, what about Bukele? Well, as he put it after releasing Kilmar, “of course [El Salvador] wouldn’t refuse” the Trump Administration’s request.

Convenient timing. Especially considering that they apparently started the investigation against him in April, indicted him on May 21, and then seemed to sit on the charges until June 6.

But wait a second here, you might ask. Didn’t the Administration say it was powerless to get El Salvador to release Mr. Abrego-Garcia? That it had no control over what prisoners Bukele decided to keep in his country?

Here’s where things get interesting. Shortly before the Supreme Court issued its order, the United Nations apparently tried to hold El Salvador responsible for the handling of other people in these El Salvador prisons. In response, El Salvador’s government responded by pointing the finger right back at America.

Specifically, Bukele’s government argued that El Salvador “bears no legal responsibility” for the people it detained. In fact, El Salvador was just doing the “bidding” of the United States “when it accepted the men into its prison system.”

Again, who’s lying?

Because I see a pattern here.