Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks alongside President Donald Trump at a White House press briefing in this 2025 photo. (Getty Images)
DOJ lawyers said that they plan to ask the judge to quash the subpoenas to prevent the officials from testifying.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw ruled earlier this month that Abrego Garcia’s legal team had established a "realistic likelihood" of vindictiveness in his criminal case, which was initiated by the Justice Department while he was detained in El Salvador. Crenshaw ordered new discovery and a two-day evidentiary hearing, scheduled for the first week in November.
Crenshaw’s ruling named Blanche directly on several occasions, which could present a bigger hurdle for the Trump administration in their efforts to quash the subpoena.
The judge cited Blanche’s remarks directly, including from an interview in June, in which the deputy attorney general said that Abrego Garcia was brought back to the U.S. not because of orders from a federal judge in Maryland, but because of the Tennessee arrest warrant. "This could be direct evidence of vindictiveness," Crenshaw said in his ruling.
ABREGO GARCIA REMAINS IN US FOR NOW AS JUDGE TAKES CASE UNDER ADVISEMENT
Demonstrators gather outside the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Md., to protest the Trump administration's deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to El Salvador in March in what administration officials said was an administrative error. (Breanne Deppisch/Fox News Digital) (Breanne Deppisch/Fox News Digital)
A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined to comment on the subpoenas, citing the judge's earlier order for both parties to limit their public remarks about Abrego Garcia's case.
"We cannot comment due to a gag order in this case," the spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in March in violation of a 2019 court order, and in what Trump administration officials later acknowledged was an "administrative error."
He entered the country illegally more than a decade ago and had been living in Maryland with his wife and child when authorities deported him to a maximum security prison in El Salvador in March.
Trump officials have repeatedly alleged that Abrego Garcia is a vicious MS-13 gang member, a notion that Crenshaw dismissed as "fanciful" in ordering Abrego Garcia's release from criminal custody pending trial.
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Others have also objected to the administration’s characterization of the smuggling charges brought against him, noting that in 2024, they carried an average prison sentence of 15 months.
Breanne Deppisch is a national politics reporter for Fox News Digital covering the Trump administration, with a focus on the Justice Department, FBI and other national news. She previously covered national politics at the Washington Examiner and The Washington Post, with additional bylines in Politico Magazine, the Colorado Gazette and others. You can send tips to Breanne at Breanne.Deppisch@fox.com, or follow her on X at @breanne_dep.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/top-trump-officials-subpoenaed-abrego-garcia-hearing-vindictive-prosecution