Maggie Haberman Torpedoes Trump And Stephen Miller Over Bombshell Habeas Corpus News

CNN commentator and New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman torpedoed President Donald Trump and White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller over the bombshell news they’re considering a suspension of habeas corpus, telling anchor Kaitlan Collins that their understanding of the issue is “not correct.”

A key underpinning of Trump’s deportation push has been the idea that the U.S. is as “war” with certain migrants, and Miller took that another step forward when he said Friday that “the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion”and “that’s an option we’re actively looking at.”

On Friday night’s edition of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, Collins asked Haberman about the news, and both of them knocked down the administration’s arguments for the move:

KAITLAN COLLINS: Maggie, obviously, it’s no surprise to anyone that Trump has been frustrated by the courts. I mean, he says it publicly. He was tweeting about it this morning, I think. What do you make of the fact that this is even being considered inside the White House?

MAGGIE HABERMAN: So we have seen incredibly aggressive posture from this White House for some time, both from President Trump and Stephen Miller.

We know that in the prep before the administration began, Stephen Miller spent years, trying to figure out ways to get these plans enacted. Allies of the President figured out how to get lawyers who would help them arrive at a yes as opposed to a no. So I’m not surprised to hear them talking about this.

However, as you noted, what Stephen Miller said, a lot of it is not correct.

Number one, most of the courts, I think all of the courts, I don’t think any court has agreed that the U.S. is under invasion. That is how it has been used, in the past, to suspend habeas corpus, regionally. And when Abraham Lincoln did it, it was actually quite controversial. Number one.

Number two, this absolutely would be challenged. I don’t know how you would call it, Just for migrants. And the border is sealed. So, they have really undermined their own case, in a lot of ways. I think they do have some running room, politically, on this. But they will — they may run out of it at some point.

COLLINS: Yes, that’s a great point that you make there, about the border, because border crossing’s at an all-time low due to President Trump’s actions–

HABERMAN: Correct.

COLLINS: –and what they’ve taken. And obviously, he ran on this.

But if they’re arguing that the border is, at this point, that crime is so low in the United States, but also that there is an invasion happening, a judge may see that and say, I’m not so sure about that logic.

HABERMAN: Right. And a number of judges, including a Trump-appointed judge from his first term, have already said that they are misreading, they are overstretching the statute on the Alien Enemies Act, which is what they have used for these controversial deportations.

Some of this might just be fear. A, it’s a way to intimidate the courts, which we have seen Trump and Stephen Miller do, a lot of, they’ve been criticizing judges routinely and repeatedly.

It also might be to scare migrants and to get migrants to leave. We know that they are trying to get migrants to be willing to go on their own out of concern that they might be arrested.

But I don’t know how well this would go, if they actually attempted it.

Watch above via CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins.