'Mistake': Nicolle Wallace uses Trump admin's own words to slam MS13 claims

MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace contrasted Attorney General Pam Bondi's statement about Maryland migrant, Kilmar Ábrego García and his indictment, with previous government statements — and found conflicts.

After the announcement on Friday that the Justice Department was charging García with the illegal transport of undocumented migrants, a panel of MSNBC analysts had questions because it conflicted so much with previous statements.

"Let me just not let the news cycle get so charged that we forget what we learned from the Trump administration itself," Wallace began.

She cited Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, who announced in a May 21 statement that Ábrego García's deportation was part of a "highly sensitive counterterrorism operation with national security implications."

"The attorney general of the United States of America just stood before the world and said nothing about a 'highly sensitive counterterrorism operation with national security implications,'" Wallace noted.

Wallace also cited from that same May 21 press briefing, McLaughlin claimed, "We invoked the state secrets privilege over many of the details. Of course, our officials discuss what should be divulged publicly. This just proves they're responsible public servants."

"You know, their stories have changed so many times," Wallace remarked. "I guess that's my point. The Trump administration made a mistake, and that much was clear."

She then quoted from the New York Times: "The Trump administration had deported a Maryland man named Kilmer Ábrego García to a prison in El Salvador, even though a judge had issued a ruling prohibiting that from happening. When news reached DHS, that set off a days-long scramble and clashes among officials in three different agencies over how to deal with what everyone knew had been an error.

"As it became clear that keeping it quiet was not an option, DHS officials floated a series of ideas to control the story that raised alarms among the Justice Department lawyers on the case. In the days before the government's error became public, DHS officials discussed trying to portray Ábrego García as a 'leader of the violent street gang MS-13, even though they could find no evidence to support the claim.'"

"I guess my question is about, you know, how the evidence will stand in a court of law, and a jury will decide its veracity," said Wallace. "So I'm not making any comment about the evidence, but the process in terms of what we know from Trump senior officials feels reverse-engineered."

Former Republican Tim Miller commented that there's a political opportunity to take the lens back to discuss that the U.S. government "kidnapped" migrants to send them to a foreign prison without due process."

"I think here's a political opportunity, as we learned today, that they can bring people back from El Salvador, the people that they sent there," Miller noted. "And so that is a development that is important and relevant for the other 250 people they sent there."

See the discussion below or at the link here.

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