Cristian Farias
‪@cristianfarias.com‬

Why they’re doing this:

The Trump administration knows that the Supreme Court won’t let a Cabinet secretary be dragged into court to testify. (She may file an affidavit, as she’s already done in this litigation.)

So the only recourse here is to pierce executive and/or attorney-client privilege.

I’m not a betting man, but my guess is that James Boasberg has been around the block long enough that … he’s going to go for it. May even appoint outside counsel.

One possibility: Because his inquiry relates to criminal contempt, he may invoke the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege.

Another one:

James Boasberg has been around the block long enough that he doesn’t need to pierce attorney-client privilege. All he needs is testimony from everyone except the top brass, including the general counsel, to get at the nature of what lower-level employees communicated up the chain.

Remember: The lawyers who received the judge’s orders in the courtroom on March 15, 2025, only had one job: Telling their clients about the order and the need to comply.

If everyone down the chain understood that unambiguously, then you don’t need top brass or the “privileged” advice they got.

More fundamentally:

Judge Boasberg may be trying to set precedent in the D.C. Circuit for how judges ought to deal with an administration openly defying court orders—and exploring the tools available to the judiciary when the Executive branch won’t prosecute a criminal referral against itself.