Transcript: Trump’s Rage at Judge Rattles GOP Amid “Terrifying” Crisis
Dye: Yeah, I think that they might do it. We are certainly headed for that kind of constitutional crisis. At this point, it would appear to be that they are in defiance of several court orders, not just in this case. What they are doing right this minute is going into court and having the Justice Department lawyers say, No, we really, really are complying. We are very close in this case, though, because of developments this afternoon as we record. As we said, we had this issue of contempt of court, and Judge Boasberg said, Hey, explain yourself. Tell me how you didn’t define my order. And now the administration is talking about invoking the state secrets privilege to not discuss things—which, of course, Marco Rubio has been tweeting about it, President Nayib Bukele has been tweeting about it. To say we have to invoke the state secrets privilege when we just tweeted out a music video of what happened here is strange credulity.
Sargent: But to be clear, they are saying that they’re going to invoke the state secrets privilege precisely in order so that they don’t have to explain before the judge how they “know” that these men are a threat to national security, correct?
Dye: No, that’s not quite right. They’re trying to invoke the state secrets privilege to cover up the fact that they are in open defiance of the court, that when the judge said turn the planes around, they still could have turned the planes around. So he said, Come in and explain to me how you didn’t defy me, and they’ve said, We can’t explain because of national security, which I don’t think that’s going to go over.