Stunning DOJ misconduct sinks two high-profile cases

Hey, everybody.The Department of Justice just had two extraordinary losses in court.Both involve high -profile prosecutions that were thrown out because of misconduct by prosecutors, including the acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche.I'm Liz Hoyer, the former pardon attorney for the Department of Justice.On Friday, a judge in Tennessee dismissed the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego -Garcia.Abrego was wrongly deported to El Salvador last year.

A court ordered the Trump administration to return him to the U .S., which eventually they did.But on his return, they indicted him on charges of human trafficking.Abrego's lawyers argued that this was a vindictive prosecution, meaning DOJ was prosecuting Abrego just to punish him for successfully challenging his deportation.That type of retaliation is unconstitutional.

But here's the thing.Vindictive prosecution is almost impossible to prove.The law requires courts to give every benefit of the doubt to the prosecutors, which means these claims almost always fail.In my whole career, I have never seen a successful claim of vindictive prosecution until now.

The judge let DOJ call witnesses and present evidence, but he was not persuaded.Here's what he said.The objective evidence shows that absent Obrego's successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the government would not have brought this prosecution.He called it an abuse of prosecuting power.The judge called out Todd Blanche by name.He said that, quote, Blanche's tainted investigation required him to dismiss the case.

I cannot overstate how rare it is for a case to be thrown out for vindictive prosecution, and for the misconduct to go all the way to the top is truly unheard of.This would be extraordinary on its own, but it actually happened just one day after another high -profile prosecution was thrown out because of prosecutor misconduct.That case involved a group of protesters in Chicago known as the Broadview Six who were charged with obstructing a federal officer during a protest

at an ICE detention center.Just days before trial, shocking prosecutor misconduct came to light.

I'll do a separate post with more details, but the gist is that prosecutors misled the grand jury to get an indictment, and then they tried to hide their misconduct from the court.The judge flipped when she found out.DOJ was forced to dismiss all the charges, and now the judge is considering sanctions against the lawyers.These cases prove that DOJ is totally corrupted.They are lying and cheating to make cases.But here's the good news.

There are excellent defense lawyers on the other side.They are exposing DOJ's misconduct, and the courts are not letting it go.They are holding DOJ to account.To me, it feels like the tide is starting to turn.I'll share some ideas soon about how we can help it along, so stay tuned.Thanks.