A federal judge found Friday that there was a “realistic likelihood of vindictiveness” behind federal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, entitling the wrongly deported man to an evidentiary hearing on claims that the Trump administration is punishing him for causing “embarrassment” to the government — a legal strategy that ex-FBI Director James Comey might be watching closely.

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 human smuggling, allegedly stemming from a 2022 traffic stop.

From the start, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers chalked up the charges as retaliation against their client for filing a lawsuit that challenged his removal from Maryland to El Salvador and forced the government, which called him “a known MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, and serial domestic abuser” upon his return to the U.S., to nonetheless admit its error.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw has now written in an opinion that defendant will have an opportunity to test those claims, which are normally difficult to prove, in court.

Crenshaw, a Barack Obama appointee, said that the “totality of events creates a sufficient evidentiary basis to conclude that there is a ‘realistic likelihood of vindictiveness’ that entitles Abrego to discovery and requires an evidentiary hearing before the Court decides his motion.”

Factoring into the decision were comments by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, on Fox News in June, apparently linking the prosecution to the consequences of Abrego Garcia’s lawsuit.

“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,'” the judge wrote. “This could be direct evidence of vindictiveness.”

Calling Blanche’s words “remarkable,” and citing to a case that said an “actual confession by the prosecutor” is the “clearest” way to show a vindictive prosecution, Crenshaw said the “statements could directly establish that the motivations for Abrego’s criminal charges stem from his exercise of his constitutional and statutory rights to bring suit against the Executive Official Defendants, rather than a genuine desire to prosecute him for alleged criminal misconduct.”

As a result, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers were granted a discovery and a hearing, as the judge noted the “embarrassment” the defendant has caused to the executive branch of government:

The Executive Branch invested time, resources, and international coordination with El Salvador to remove Abrego from the United States. All of this occurred notwithstanding an order forbidding his removal to El Salvador. Abrego’s successful challenge, and the federal injunction he obtained, meant that the Executive’s time, resources, and international coordination with El Salvador was a waste. The Executive Branch now must start anew if it seeks to remove Abrego again. This has created a significant burden on and embarrassment to the Executive Branch, that must now expend additional time, resources, and international goodwill to remove Abrego to El Salvador or elsewhere. Even more telling is the injunction to facilitate his return to Maryland created both national and international burdens on the Government, and more specifically, on the Executive Official Defendants.

Abrego Garcia’s insistence that there be a hearing on his vindictive prosecution claims was the same ask that Trump had at one point in his Mar-a-Lago classified documents criminal prosecution, a case that would later be dismissed on unrelated grounds.

Hunter Biden likewise pursued this line of argument, but without success, before his father, then-President Joe Biden, pardoned him for his crimes.

And a legal strategy centered on the government’s motivations might also be of interest to James Comey, as a possible “roadmap” for eventually dismissing his false statement and obstruction indictment in the Eastern District of Virginia on vindictive prosecution grounds.

There, the “totality of events” includes that Trump appears to have removed ex-EDVA U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert for questioning the strength of the evidence against Comey and for refusing to bring a mortgage fraud case against Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump responded by replacing Siebert with his former Mar-a-Lago case lawyer Lindsey Halligan, who had never previously prosecuted a case, and openly demanded in a social media post that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi prosecute his rivals, including his longtime Russia probe foe Comey, seemingly worried that not doing so was harming the administration’s “credibility” and causing embarrassment.

“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT,” the Sept. 20 post said.

Time was of the essence because the statute of limitations on the alleged Sept. 30, 2020, offense was set to expire at the end of the month, and Halligan got the Comey indictment the president wanted, even as reports swirled that DOJ higher-ups, and certain conservative legal commentators, had their doubts about the case.

In the aftermath of the indictment, the president took a victory lap, calling Comey a “Dirty Cop” and a “destroyer of lives” who had to pay “a very big price” for a “very serious and far reaching lie[.]”