'50/50 the dude walks': Legal experts attack Pam Bondi's indictment of García
President Donald Trump's administration announced Friday it was bringing Kilmar Ábrego García to the U.S. after being deported to a brutal El Salvador prison without a trial.
Attorney General Pam Bondi spoke in a press conference where she made a number of allegations about Ábrego García but said that he was only being charged with the transport of illegal immigrants.
The harsh allegations, which were not backed up by charges from the Justice Department, prompted some questions and comments from legal and political analysts online.
"50/50 the dude walks," said defense attorney Andrew Fleischman on X.
Immigration lawyer Matt Cameron posted on Bluesky, "I say this with no admiration whatsoever, but extraditing KAG from ES for federal crimes instead of simply complying with multiple court orders to bring him back the usual way is a brilliant way for the Trump admin to save face here."
"Abrego Garcia has been under ICE scrutiny for many years, but these 'trafficking' allegations only got going *after* they wrongfully removed him. We know this because the weak-tea 'investigative referral' which first raised the issue was dated a full MONTH after the 3/15 flight," he added. "We'll wait to see the rest of the evidence I guess, but clearly DOJ was directed to pull together whatever they possibly could to associate this man with something which no one had ever seriously accused him of while he was still in the country, or at least not in any way that was a priority."
"This indictment sure does allege a lot of things! But N.B. that the only concrete, granular, detailed allegations here happen to be from the one time in 2022 that he was encountered in a traffic stop--and they are by far the weakest," Cameron continued.
Cameron also pointed out that if Ábrego García is convicted of "alien smuggling," it would bar him from ever being able to be a citizen."
"So the implication here is that she admits that the last several months of her actions were *not* what justice looks like," remarked Ty Aagard, who helps raise money for the ACLU of Utah. He was responding to Bondi's claim, "This is what American justice looks like."
"This statement opposing bail for Abrego Garcia is about as credible as that photoshop of his hand Trump waved around," said "Law & Chaos" host Liz Dye with a screen capture of page eight of the indictment. "It was a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie. That's their proof he 'had status' in MS-13."
"She is doing defense lawyers a favor with these prejudicial remarks," said national security lawyer Bradley Moss about Bondi's allegations.
Legal analyst Ken White unleashed, "Pam Bondi is thug scum. The Attorney General making these comments about a defendant in a federal criminal case is lawless. This administration’s unethical hacks continue to demonstrate that they want to be deposits (sic)."
"The criminal charges should be, and will be, subjected to extreme scrutiny. As should the particular ICE agents and AUSAs supporting them," he also said, looking at the indictment.
"If Abrego Garcia committed a crime, he should be charged and tried. I wondered, reading this headline, why they didn't just do this in the first place, and then read the article to discover that they only began the investigation in April, after he was deported," noted former FBI agent Asha Rangappa. "If that's the face-saving way to bring him back and give him due process, so be it. Criminal charges will have a higher burden of proof than what the government would need to show in immigration court, so if they have the evidence, let them bring it and a jury can decide."