CNN’s Elie Honig Calls BS on Scott Jennings Over Trump ‘Gang Member’ Claims: ‘Doesn’t Sound Like a Terrorist to Me’

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig torpedoed GOP analyst Scott Jennings when he repeated President Donald Trump’s claim that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the wrongly deported Maryland man at the heart of a Supreme Court ruling, is a “gang member” and therefore a “terrorist.”

Trump and his administration have been making a series of escalating claims — without providing evidence — about Garcia. During a meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office Monday, Trump, several top administration officials, and Bukele labeled him a “gang member” and a “terrorist” without providing evidence.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took things up a notch by adding a claim of “human trafficking” to the list at Tuesday’s briefing — again without providing evidence.

Available evidence suggests the basis for the “gang member” claim is an allegation by a since-suspended detective’s anonymous informant that Garcia belonged to a gang several states away from his home state and the fact that he was “was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie.”

On Tuesday night’s edition of CNN NewsNight, anchor Abby Phillip went over the issue with a panel that included Jennings, Honig, Shermichael Singleton, Julie Roginsky, and Daniel Koh.

As Phillip and others called out the administration for failing to provide evidence, Jennings said he believed the claims because “I’ve got two heads of state telling me that they believe it.”

Later in the segment, Honig summarized the available facts and said that while he can’t say for sure, Garcia “does not sound like a terrorist to me”:

ROGINSKY: No. Excuse, Scott, excuse me, stop, do you really believe that this guy’s an MS-13 member because —

JENNINGS: I’ve got two heads of state telling me that they believe it.

ROGINSKY: Okay, your heads of state.

PHILLIP: Let me address what Scott’s saying because I — maybe, Scott. Maybe you are correct. But the venue to litigate that very thing that you just said is in a court.

…

PHILLIP: Scott, I’m asking if he is responsible for heinous crimes in this country, should he not be not prosecuted for the crimes?

JENNINGS: What? Do you want to send him away?

PHILLIP: I’m actually asking why he’s not being prosecuted. That’s my question.

HONIG: So, first of all, you don’t have to be an MS-13 member to be deported if you are here illegally. But let me just give you my sort of experience, the benefit. Nobody at this table knows if the guy is a terrorist or not, myself included. But I can tell you this. When I was a federal prosecutor, if an FBI agent said, came to me, I was in charge of gangs and organized crime, and said, we got a big guy here for you, I said, oh, tell me. He goes, well, he’s been in the country 14 years. He’s never been arrested. Some source said six years ago, one guy said he was involved in a gang in New York. By the way, he lives in Maryland. I can’t name anything bad that he’s done, and also every year he makes an appointment with ICE and goes in and self- reports, I’d say, does not sound like a terrorist to me. And even if he is, we got much bigger fish to fry.

Watch above via CNN NewsNight.