Prof. Steve Vladek is a giant in Constitutional Law. He was courageous in Tangerine 1.0’s time, often pointing out where the MAGA lawyers were… lying. And here he is doubly courageous, in forcefully pointing out that Justice Alito HIMSELF (perhaps unwittingly, but perhaps… intentionally) has taken to mis-representing factual events in the public record, all in service of Tangerine 2.0. [Our simpler effort on this score, from Sunday morning, was here.]

Hinderaker should go read all of it. Maybe Alito was making mistakes, late on a Saturday night, or maybe his clerks were… but if he knew — and lied — this is a vast indictment of the man.

I will not try to summarize it, but it makes plain that — for whatever reason — Alito is purely a MAGA political creature now, beholden to Tangerine 2.0, just like Clarence Thomas. So… shut it, Hinderaker.

Most encouragingly, though, it suggests that Roberts, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and yes even Barrett. . . are putting lots of daylight between themselves, and the two in the MAGA wing. Do go read it all:

…[Alito:] “[A]n attorney representing the Government in a different matter informed the District Court in that case during a hearing yesterday evening that no such deportations were then planned to occur either yesterday, April 18, or today, April 19….”

This is perhaps the most troubling point Alito makes in his dissent. He is, quite obviously, referring to an exchange between a Justice Department lawyer (Drew Ensign) and Chief Judge Boasberg in the emergency hearing Boasberg held Friday afternoon in the J.G.G. case (where the ACLU was also trying to get a new TRO to block the apparently imminent AEA removals of folks from Texas). According to multiple accounts of folks who were listening, Ensign said he was unaware of any flights scheduled for Friday, but that he was specifically instructed to “reserve the right” for the government to conduct removals on Saturday, April 19. In other words, the DOJ lawyer did not say what Alito said he said.

What’s more, according to NBC News, at least 28 AEA detainees were placed on a bus at the Bluebonnet detention facility on Friday night — and were heading for the Abilene airport before the bus turned around. This at least appears to suggest that the government was potentially planning to have a flight take off shortly after midnight on Saturday — which would not have been inconsistent with the letter of Ensign’s representation, even if it would have been inconsistent with the notice and process that J.G.G. required.

This matters because the entire premise of Alito’s dissent is that the Court intervened “hastily and prematurely.” But to get there, Alito had to misstate (if not misrepresent) what the government had told Chief Judge Boasberg, and then discount the ACLU’s credible allegations, as backed up by numerous media reports, that additional removals were impending. To be sure, the NBC News report (which includes video of the bus) was not published until Sunday morning — after Alito filed his dissent. But even if one is willing to take Justice Department lawyers at their word these days, Ensign had gone out of his way to “reserve the right” to have removals take place on Saturday — which seems to rather decisively undercut Alito’s claim that the Court acted “prematurely….”

So… now you know, John — from someone obviously much brighter than you. Onward.

नमस्ते