The Department of Justice (DOJ) has moved to nullify subpoenas issued by the legal team representing Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Garcia, a Salvadoran national who was mistakenly deported and now faces criminal charges in Tennessee, alleges vindictive prosecution. The DOJ contends these claims are based on mere “speculation” and lack the necessary evidence to justify breaching executive branch confidentiality.

The DOJ maintains that testimony from acting U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire, along with Homeland Security Investigations agents John VanWie and Rana Saoud, at the upcoming November 4 evidentiary hearing, should be adequate to prove that no vindictive prosecution against Abrego Garcia occurred.

Highlighting McGuire as the key decision-maker in the human smuggling case, the DOJ cautioned U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw that forcing Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche—who previously served as President Donald Trump’s defense lawyer—and other senior officials to testify could set a risky precedent based solely on Abrego Garcia’s “baseless claims” of prosecution bias.

The DOJ’s motion to quash warns that compelling high-ranking DOJ officials to testify merely due to unfounded allegations would deter prosecutors and executive officials from engaging in candid discussions about critical law enforcement and prosecutorial decisions, ultimately harming public safety and the justice system.

The DOJ argues that Abrego Garcia’s legal team lacks substantial evidence, relying instead on “speculation,” which is insufficient to summon Blanche, Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh, and Blanche’s counselor James McHenry to the stand. The government asserts that the rationale for breaching the executive branch’s protected discussions is “extremely weak” and should be dismissed promptly.

That is especially true, the DOJ continued, because there were plainly “non-vindictive reasons” to charge Abrego Garcia when his return to the U.S. from El Salvador became the likely scenario — even though Crenshaw, a Barack Obama appointee, cited Blanche’s Fox News remarks about the case as potential “direct evidence of vindictiveness.”

“At the time that the investigative and prosecutorial decisions were made here, there was a possibility and increasing likelihood that Defendant would return to the United States as a result of civil litigation, giving the government strong, non-vindictive reasons for investigating and prosecuting Defendant in order to ensure that he would not pose a threat to the public in the event of his return to this country,” the DOJ added.

Abrego Garcia was deported in March from Maryland and imprisoned in El Salvador at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). The Trump administration, eventually admitting the deportation was due to “administrative error,” was ordered to “facilitate” his return — and it carried out that return in June, weeks after securing a federal indictment in Tennessee on charges of “smuggling illegal aliens,” allegedly stemming from a 2022 traffic stop.

After the defendant asserted that the human smuggling case was a retaliatory and vindictive action, traceable to the “embarrassment” his habeas corpus lawsuit caused the government, Crenshaw in early October ordered up an evidentiary hearing, calling Blanche’s Fox News appearance from June “remarkable” potential proof backing Abrego Garcia’s claim.

In vehement defense of Blanche and the executive branch’s privilege claims, the DOJ asked Crenshaw to reject, once and for all, Abrego Garcia’s subpoenas of high-ranking officials as “unreasonable, oppressive, and contrary to established federal law.”

As Law&Crime reported last week, the DOJ bashed Abrego Garcia’s demands as an “open-ended fishing expedition” and said the “overbroad, legally improper, and highly damaging” discovery bid could not access “predecisional” and “deliberative” internal DOJ documents “that are plainly privileged.”

As the clock ticks down to the early November hearing, it’s unclear if Abrego Garcia will even be in the United States, as he could be deported to Liberia by Halloween.