'Very unusual:' Court stalls on contempt charges against Trump lawyers

More than three months after a federal judge threatened to hold representatives of the Donald Trump administration in contempt for delaying an order to halt deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants, the case remains stalled with no explanation, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

“It’s very unusual,” Stephen Vladeck, law professor at Georgetown University, told the Times. “An appeals court may need hours or days to figure out an administrative stay, but it doesn’t need weeks and certainly not months.”

The case stems from an emergency order in March by Judge James Boasberg, who instructed the Trump administration to halt flights deporting more than 100 Venezuelans to El Salvador. Alleged to have ties to the Venezuelan street gang Tren de Aragua, the migrants were mid-flight when Boasberg ordered the planes turned around.

According to a DOJ whistleblower's account, the deportations went forward despite the order. Boasberg pressed the DOJ for weeks in an effort to determine whether the administration had deliberately ignored his ruling and, on April 16, warned that the government would either need to provide the deported individuals with due process or face a contempt investigation that could result in criminal charges.

Two days later, however, an appeals court issued an administrative stay pausing Boasberg’s proceedings, with the court having taken no action since.

“Justice (Amy Coney) Barrett said administrative stays could be problematic because they can be issued quickly and without delving into the merits of a case,” wrote Alan Feuer with the New York Times Tuesday. “If left to linger, she suggested, they could be used as a way to freeze a case in place without discussing any of its underlying facts.”