Judge harshly rejects 'baseless' Trump admin arguments for withholding basic information about OLC memo on fatal boat strikes in the Caribbean, gives DOJ deadline

President Donald Trump delivers the Memorial Day Address astatine the 157th National Memorial Day Observance astatine Arlington National Cemetery, Monday, May 26, 2025, successful Arlington, Va., arsenic Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, right, look connected (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson).

A national justice successful Manhattan repudiated an effort by the Trump administration to reconsider an bid requiring the authorities to uncover its justification for fatal attacks connected boats successful the Caribbean.

In a 16-page ruling issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, a Barack Obama appointee, flatly rejected assorted arguments precocious by the U.S. Department of Justice for keeping an Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memo connected the taxable — arsenic good arsenic basal accusation and arguments astir the memo — wholly nether wraps.

In August 2025, operating connected a statesmanlike directive authorizing subject unit against "foreign transgression groups," the Department of Defense (DOD) began attacking boats it claimed were trafficking drugs into the country. Some 234 radical person been killed successful those attacks, and the authorities has not provided grounds conclusively proving its claims, according to the underlying suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and different groups.

Litigation began successful December 2025 aft the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. In denying the request, and frankincense withholding the OLC memo successful full, the DOD cited 3 abstracted exemptions to the nation's premier authorities transparency law.

During motions practice, the parties considered 2 exemptions. In theory, these concessions would person allowed for a constricted merchandise of the OLC memo with redactions aft the papers was reviewed by the judge. The government, however, said 1 of those exemptions meant it could inactive withhold the OLC memo successful afloat by citing a signifier of enforcement privilege.

In late September, Engelmayer rubbished the government's presumption arsenic relying connected "secret law." In a lengthy order, the tribunal directed the authorities to supply the OLC memo for reappraisal down closed doors, arsenic good arsenic arguments circumstantial to the enforcement privilege question, earlier making a last determination connected disclosure.

Earlier this month, the authorities asked the justice to revise the bid to get escaped of the "requirement for the authorities to place each persons who person been fixed entree to the OLC Memorandum."

Engelmayer said that accusation was indispensable "to measure defendants' representations that entree to the Memo has been constricted and that the Memo has not been meaningfully disseminated beyond the President's interior circle."

The DOJ had argued the privilege successful question could not beryllium waived, that the court's petition was "based connected a misapprehension of the law," and was truthful "not germane" to the lawsuit astatine all.

But the justice was not having it.

"The Court's bid frankincense gave defendants—assuming their representations were true—a straightforward way to triumph successful this litigation: taxable accusation that, by defendants' account, was readily disposable and stood to enactment their position," the bid reads. "The defendants now, however, inquire the Court to retract that order."

To perceive the Trump medication archer it, "the statesmanlike communications privilege is incapable of being waived by the dissemination of the Memo wrong the Executive Branch," the tribunal explains.

On apical of that, the authorities besides claimed "it would offend the separation of powers for them to submit, for successful camera judicial review, accusation regarding their dissemination of the Memo."

"Each statement is baseless," the justice said. "The Court accordingly denies defendants' partial question for reconsideration."

The tribunal archetypal addressed the government's assertion that waiver by dissemination is unavailable arsenic a substance of law.

"[T]hat is wrong," the justice wrote. "[T]he lawsuit instrumentality uniformly holds that the privilege is taxable to waiver, including wherever privileged materials person been disclosed to 3rd parties extracurricular the constricted ellipse of statesmanlike advisers and unit whose communications the privilege protects."

The bid goes connected to enactment that determination "is nary contrary authority" to the lawsuit instrumentality cited successful the archetypal bid requiring successful camera review.

Engelmayer goes connected to explicate however the different arguments precocious by the authorities cannot get it retired of its obligations.

"To the grade defendants reason that a waiver cannot person occurred with respect to the OLC Memo, that statement is some incorrect and premature," the bid goes on. "[D]efendants' bid for a regularisation that would let officials to circulate, waiver-free, a statesmanlike connection wrong the Executive Branch is astatine likelihood with a azygous assemblage of lawsuit instrumentality emphasizing the privilege's constrictive contours."

The bid continues:

A bright-line regularisation that adjacent wide downstream dissemination wrong the Executive Branch of a President's privileged statesmanlike communications could not effect a waiver would beryllium inconsistent with the privilege's constrictive parameters[.]

The tribunal went connected to cull the government's separation of powers statement arsenic efficaciously nonsensical.

"Far from offending the separation of powers principle, a court-imposed information-gathering work connected the Executive Branch is acquainted arsenic a means to trial the viability of a FOIA exemption invoked by the Executive Branch," the bid says.

The authorities present has 14 days to proviso the requested information, Engelmayer ordered.

The station Judge harshly rejects 'baseless' Trump admin arguments for withholding basal accusation astir OLC memo connected fatal vessel strikes successful the Caribbean, gives DOJ deadline archetypal appeared connected Law & Crime.