The Trump administration was subjected to a healthy amount of criticism and mockery on social media as it invoked the state secrets privilege Monday in response to a federal judge's order to provide further information about the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.
The Justice Department's action came after several days of heated back-and-forth with U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the Trump administration to turn around a plane of Venezuelan migrants, whom officials have said were gang members.
The Justice Department argued that the court "has all of the facts it needs to address the compliance issues" and that further details would threaten national security and foreign relations, Newsweek reported.
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"Further intrusions on the Executive Branch would present dangerous and wholly unwarranted separation-of-powers harms with respect to diplomatic and national security concerns that the Court lacks competence to address," the filing said. "Accordingly, the states secrets privilege forecloses further demands for details that have no place in this matter, and the government will address the Court's order to show cause tomorrow by demonstrating that there is no basis for the suggestion of noncompliance with any binding order."
Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche endorsed the filing.
But social media critics noted late Monday that the Trump administration has a rocky history with state secrets — particularly given reporting that earlier in the day, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth inadvertently shared top-secret bombing plans with the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.
Attorney and Rewire journalist Imani Gandy wrote on Blusky, "Invoking the state secrets privilege is pretty ironic since apparently all the state secrets are on WhatsApp and Snapchat."
"The Justice Department instructing Judge Boasberg to yield to 'the mandate of the electorate' and stop asking questions about defiance of his court order is honestly one of the most demented and disturbing things I’ve ever seen in a legal filing. It comes pretty close to a claim of divine right," remarked Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer at Slate.
"'[W]inning an election makes you sovereign' is definitely a claim of dictatorial authority," added New York Times Columnist Jamelle Bouie. He added: "[S]tate secrets doctrine" seems straightforwardly incompatible with any notion of the executive as one of limited authority."
"This is so preposterous. When the flight took off is not a state secret. They are invoking the state secrets privilege because they violated the court's order and they can't admit it. That's it," wrote business litigator Josh Stokes on Bluesky.
"State Secrets did you say - no problem, my DMs are open," chided Philip Gourevitch, staff writer at The New Yorker.
"The team that accidentally adds a prominent journalist to a text chain where they are improperly discussing classified information on an insecure text thread can probably be trusted to deport people with no due process without actually sweeping up any citizens," a sarcastic Matthew Yglesias, columnist at Bloomberg, wrote on X.
National security attorney Mark S. Zaid added: "I've litigated multiple State Secrets cases & I'm one of select few attorneys in 75 years who defeated govt invocation. SCOTUS made it clear when creating privilege that invocation does not require judges to abdicate their responsibility to question Executive Branch assertion."