U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw granted Kilmar Abrego Garcia discovery and an evidentiary hearing last week in the alleged human smuggler’s bid to prove the Department of Justice (DOJ) case against him is vindictive, with the Obama-appointed judge citing June remarks by Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche as potential evidence supporting Abrego Garcia’s claim.
In the judge’s Friday memorandum, which notified Abrego Garcia and federal prosecutors of his order calling a Friday status conference to determine the terms of discovery and a forthcoming evidentiary hearing, Crenshaw specifically referenced Blanche’s statements about the genesis of the case against Abrego Garcia from a June interview.
Blanche, according to Crenshaw, “told the public on television on the day of Abrego’s arrest that the government started ‘investigating’ Abrego after ‘a judge in Maryland . . . questioned’ the government’s decision to deport Abrego, found that it ‘had no right to deport him,’ and ‘accus[ed] [the government] of doing something wrong.'”
The judge wrote that Blanche, “further stated that Abrego was not returned ‘for any other reason than to face justice.’ To remove any doubt, Deputy Attorney General Blanche said that the criminal case was brought to return Abrego to the United States, ‘not [because of] a Judge,’ but instead, because of ‘an arrest warrant issued by a grand jury in the Middle District of Tennessee.'”
According to Crenshaw, “This could be direct evidence of vindictiveness.”
Blanche’s words, as blended into the legal memorandum by Crenshaw, were stated during his June 6 appearance on Fox News, in response to a question from host Laura Ingraham, who asked the DOJ official when the government began investigating Abrego Garcia.
The DOJ official told Ingraham that Abrego Garcia was initially deported in March as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, but that after Obama-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis and Democrat lawmakers argued the administration erred in the deportation, a more thorough investigation of Abrego Garcia was completed to determine the veracity of their claims:
The president and the Department of Justice, since January 20, have been doing everything that we can to deport criminals that are here illegally, and that’s what we did with this man. We deported him, we got him out of here, and a judge in Maryland, and many members of Congress – we had a Senator fly down to meet with him – questioned that decision, and said no he’s just a family man. We said okay, we’ll look into it.
When we started looking into it, and we have great law enforcement officers and prosecutors, who started studying this man and investigating him. What we found is that we were right. We were right. He is a criminal who should be deported.
At the end of the day, we have a responsibility to protect the American people and to keep our country safe, so he was indicted, he was indicted on very serious charges because of very serious conduct that we learned about during our investigation, and so he’s returned, but he’s not returned for any other reason than to face justice, period.
Crenshaw additionally used quotes from Blanche’s response to a second question by Ingraham, who followed up her question by asking Blanche if the federal investigation into Abrego Garcia began in response to an earlier ruling by U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, another Obama-appointed judge, which sought to limit the administration’s ability to deport foreign nationals to El Salvador.
Denying that the investigation had anything to do with Boasberg, the DOJ official told Ingraham, “In this case, we have a judge in Maryland tell us that, ‘Oh no, there’s not any evidence that he’s a member of MS-13, you have no right to deport him.'”
Blanche questioned, “What should we do, as a Department of Justice, when a judge us accusing us of doing something wrong? We have an obligation to everybody, including you, to investigate it, and that’s exactly what we did.”
He then clarified, “the reason why he was returned, and the facilitation that brought him back here, is not a judge, it’s an arrest warrant, issued by a grand jury in the Middle District of Tennessee,” where Abrego Garcia stands accused of smuggling illegal immigrants as part of an international conspiracy that lasted nearly a decade.
“That’s why he’s back, and that’s why the government of El Salvador agreed to bring him back, because of a federal arrest warrant,” said Blanche.
Crenshaw additionally appeared to speculate in a footnote that Blanche’s June remarks about Abrego Garcia could have reflected an opinion which, in May, “distressed” Ben Schrader, the former chief of the Criminal Division for the DOJ in Middle Tennessee, who reportedly resigned over concerns with the case.
“It may be that Deputy Attorney General Blanche’s opinion distressed former Chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Tennessee, Ben Schrader,” wrote Crenshaw. “It is alleged that Mr. Schrader resigned on May 21, 2025—the day Abrego was indicted—because of what some have suggested were his ‘concerns that th[is] case was being pursed for political reasons.’”
He ordered the discovery and evidentiary hearing after first ordering prosecutors to respond to Abrego Garcia’s request to prohibit members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet from commenting on the case earlier last week.
The criminal case against Abrego Garcia stems from his November 30, 2022, traffic stop by the Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP), which The Tennessee Star first reported in April.
A spokesman for THP told The Star that Abrego Garcia was released at the instruction of the “Biden-era FBI,” despite a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document showing troopers suspected human trafficking.
Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His case is currently scheduled to reach trial in January 2026.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
How much money, taxpayer for the court system, is going to be wasted on this illegal alien? The courts ordering these frivolous decisions needs to be sanctioned, perhaps cutting their budget. This left-wing partisan nonsense needs to stop.
Why is this person still in the USA? He had been given a final order of deportation years ago.
It appears that the feds need to start physically deporting anyone receiving a deportation order. Of course, a slick illegal could use this for a free flight home, but we would still be better off than we are now.
Well, how do you like this revelation? Another Biden appointed leftist judge defending this abhorrent illegal alien trying to shield him from being deported. This guy wins the Golden Gloves award for beating up his wife.