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Supreme Court Justices under renewed scrutiny
- Associated Press: Book sales, a lure for money and more takeaways from the AP investigation into Supreme Court ethics: In a monthslong inquiry, which included reviewing tens of thousands of pages of documents from more than 100 public records requests, The Associated Press has examined what happens behind the scenes when Supreme Court justices travel to colleges and universities for lectures and other events. The AP learned the identities of donors and politicians invited to events with justices, details about the perks that have accompanied the school visits and information about how school trips have helped advance books sales.
- Guardian: Lawyers with supreme court business paid Clarence Thomas aide via Venmo: Several lawyers who have had business before the supreme court, including one who successfully argued to end race-conscious admissions at universities, paid money to a top aide to Justice Clarence Thomas, according to the aide’s Venmo transactions. The payments appear to have been made in connection to Thomas’s 2019 Christmas party. The payments to Rajan Vasisht, who served as Thomas’s aide from July 2019 to July 2021, seem to underscore the close ties between Thomas, who is embroiled in ethics scandals following a series of revelations about his relationship with a wealthy billionaire donor, and certain senior Washington lawyers who argue cases and have other business in front of the justice.
- Salon: “Not appropriate”: Public Venmo transactions reveal lawyers with SCOTUS business paid Thomas’ aide: Several lawyers who have handled cases before the Supreme Court, including one who successfully argued for the elimination of race-based affirmative action at colleges, sent money to a top aide of Justice Clarence Thomas, according to the aide’s now-private Venmo transaction history. The sent what appeared to be payments for Thomas’ 2019 Christmas party to Rajan Vasisht, an aide in Thomas’ chamber from July 2019 to July 2021. The transactions “seem to underscore the close ties between Thomas, who is embroiled in ethics scandals following a series of revelations about his relationship with a wealthy billionaire donor, and certain senior Washington lawyers who argue cases and have other business in front of the justice,” according to The Guardian.
- The Root: A Guide To All of The Supreme Court Scandals and Shenanigans: The days when it was taboo to criticize the lives of Supreme Court Justices are over. And it turns out there’s plenty hiding in their closets. Whether it’s Justice Clarence Thomas sending his relative to school on a Republican megadonor’s dime or Justice Samuel Alito reportedly taking a lavish trip with a billionaire with cases before the court, the Supreme Court is rife with ethics scandals.
Trump’s defense tries delaying classified documents trial until after the 2024 election
- New York Times: Trump Lawyers Seek Indefinite Postponement of Documents Trial: Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked a federal judge on Monday night to indefinitely postpone his trial on charges of illegally retaining classified documents after he left office, saying that the proceeding should not begin until all “substantive motions” in the case had been presented and decided. The written filing — submitted 30 minutes before its deadline of midnight on Tuesday — presents a significant early test for Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the Trump-appointed jurist who is overseeing the case. If granted, it could have the effect of pushing Mr. Trump’s trial into the final stages of the presidential campaign in which he is now the Republican front-runner or even past the 2024 election. While timing is important in any criminal matter, it could be hugely consequential in Mr. Trump’s case, in which he stands accused of illegally holding on to 31 classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to reclaim them.
- CNN: How Trump will fight the classified documents charges he’s facing, including asking for a long delay: Former President Donald Trump and his co-defendant Walt Nauta on Monday night laid out some of the legal attacks they’ll potentially launch against charges related to the alleged mishandling of classified information brought against them by special counsel Jack Smith. The defendants argue the charges will give rise to “unprecedented” pre-trial disputes that will require US District Judge Aileen Cannon to weigh in on legal questions that have likely never been put before a court before. The defense also suggests it won’t be possible to seat a fair jury while the presidential campaign is underway – a hint that Trump may ultimately ask for a post-election trial date, though Monday’s filing did not propose any specific schedule.
- Washington Post: Trump seeks major trial delay, citing 2024 campaign and legal factors: Former president Donald Trump’s lawyers invoked the 2024 presidential campaign in court papers late Monday, arguing that for a host of legal and political reasons, Trump’s classified documents trial should be pushed far past the December time frame proposed by the Justice Department. In a 12-page filing, lawyers Christopher Kise and Todd Blanche claimed that putting the former president on trial later this year for alleged mishandling of classified papers and obstruction — even as he seeks the Republican nomination to return to the White House — would be “unreasonable, telling, and would result in a miscarriage of justice.” The lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon not to set a date for the trial for the time being, while the two sides work through pretrial motions and hearings. They suggested that to ensure an impartial jury, the trial should not be held until after the presidential election.
- Guardian: Trump asks for classified documents trial to take place after 2024 election: Donald Trump asked the federal judge overseeing the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case to indefinitely postpone setting a trial date in court filings on Monday and suggested, at a minimum, that any scheduled trial should not take place until after the 2024 presidential election.The papers submitted by Trump’s lawyers in response to the US justice department’s motion to hold the trial this December made clear the former president’s aim to delay proceedings as their guiding strategy – the case may be dropped if Trump wins the election Trump’s lawyers essentially argued in the 12-page court filing to US district court judge Aileen Cannon in Florida that she should not bother setting a tentative trial date until the major pre-trial motions were finished because they could not know how long the discovery process might take.
House panel targets FBI Director Wray
- New York Times: F.B.I. Director Testifying Before House Panel as It Assails the Bureau: Republicans bombarded Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, with criticisms about his role in the Trump documents investigation, efforts to address extremist violence and the bureau’s surveillance practices during a contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday. Republicans on the committee, led by the chairman, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, treated Mr. Wray as if he were a hostile witness — repeatedly interrupting his attempts to answer their rapid-fire queries. Most of the Republicans sought to portray the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, and Mr. Wray, who was appointed by President Donald J. Trump, as political tools of the Democrats.
- NPR: FBI Director Wray grilled as House GOP members allege ‘politicization’ of the agency: FBI Director Christopher Wray was in the hot seat Wednesday as he fielded questions — and accusations — from members of the House Judiciary Committee. The interactions between lawmakers (particularly Republicans) and Wray were, at times, tense as the director addressed questions, most framed as accusations that the FBI pursues a political agenda. Committee members questioned Wray over the agency’s response to Jan. 6, investigations into former President Donald Trump, President Biden and the wider Biden family, and the agency’s use of the federal program known as FISA — the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — which conducts surveillance of foreign entities for national security reasons.
- CNN: FBI Director Wray faces off with his harshest critics at heated congressional hearing: House Republicans unloaded a barrage of criticism directed toward FBI Director Christopher Wray Wednesday, outlining a litany of complaints while Wray testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Chairman Jim Jordan opened the hearing launching into a wide array of attacks on the FBI. Those ranged from allegations the bureau allowed social media companies to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 to claims FBI whistleblowers have been retaliated against to the FBI’s handling of threats on school boards and a since-withdrawn memo from the bureau’s Richmond field office on extremism in the Catholic Church.Republicans accused Wray of undermining public trust in the law enforcement agency, including the handling of the investigations into former President Donald Trump and the son of President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden.
In The States
NEVADA: Judge rejects the GOP request to block a state law mandating parties to hold primaries for the 2024 presidential election
- Nevada Independent: Judge denies NV GOP request to block presidential primary election: A Carson City judge has denied a motion by the Nevada Republican Party to block the state from holding a presidential primary election next year in favor of a caucus. Judge James Russell issued the ruling from the bench Monday, denying the state party’s lawsuit filed in May challenging a 2021 law moving the state away from a presidential caucus to a primary election. The lawsuit argued that the 2021 law would prevent the party from holding a caucus, but attorneys representing the state said the NV GOP could still choose to hold a caucus to determine how to allocate presidential delegates if it chose to do so. Nevada Republican Party Chair Michael McDonald said in an interview Monday that the party was weighing legal options after the ruling, but had anticipated the outcome and was “prepared for a long fight.” He said the party was working with Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar’s office (whom he described as “phenomenal to work with”) to reach a workable solution.
- Nevada Current: Top election official says new legislation will improve system, expand access to NV voters: Axing Nevada’s embrace of universal mail ballots, implementing voter identification requirements and other highly political proposals may have been dead on arrival, but Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and the Democratic-controlled state legislature found common ground on several pieces of election-related legislation. The 2023 legislature passed — and the governor signed — bills to expand voting access on tribal lands and in jails, to protect election workers, and to invest in resources to help state and county administrators run elections more smoothly. And while the governor did veto a trio of election bills, the provisions of one of those are expected to be voluntarily embraced. One of the most high profile election bills of this year’s session was Senate Bill 406, which fulfilled a campaign promise made by Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar to protect election workers from intimidation and election interference. SB 406 makes it a category E felony “to use or threaten or attempt to use any force, intimidation, coercion, violence, restraint or undue influence with the intent to interfere with the performance of duties of an elections official.”
FLORIDA: DOJ submits statement in a lawsuit challenging Florida’s “wet signature” requirement for voter registration
- Politico: Department of Justice jumps into FL voting case: The Biden administration is weighing into yet another legal fight against the state of Florida underway in federal court. The Department of Justice this week filed a “statement of interest” regarding a lawsuit challenging a voter registration provision that requires some people to physically sign their name with a pen, aka the “wet signature” requirement. The lawsuit was filed in March against Secretary of State Cord Byrd and the state’s election supervisors by the voting advocacy group Vote.org, as well as the Florida state branch of the NAACP and two other organizations. The groups are being represented by lawyers from the Elias Law Group, a firm aligned with Democrats. The case is being presided over U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor, an appointee of former President Donald Trump. The DOJ brief entered into the court record took aim at a motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the supervisors as well as the Republican National Committee, which has intervened in the case to defend the state law. The RNC has called the signature requirement a way to deter and detect fraud while also noting that most people get around the requirement because they register when they get a drivers’ license.
NORTH DAKOTA: County auditor sues to ban North Dakota from counting ‘late ballots’
- Associated Press: North Dakota election official challenges mail ballot counting law in Trump-aligned group’s lawsuit: A North Dakota county election official is suing the state’s election director to block the counting of mail-in ballots received after Election Day in a lawsuit filed by a conservative group that also brought lawsuits amid former President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud in 2020. An election law expert says the Public Interest Legal Foundation appeared to be “court-shopping” for a conservative circuit with its case, which seeks an injunction against the election director for enforcing the state’s laws. Burleigh County Auditor Mark Splonskowski, who was elected last fall, alleges he “is harmed by instructions to accept and cast ballots received after Election Day,” and that “because federal and state law conflict on the day the ballots must be turned in, he faces an impossibility in enforcing the law,” according to a complaint filed Wednesday in federal court.
What Experts Are Saying
Norm Eisen, special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for the first impeachment of President Donald Trump: “Trump’s petition for indefinite delay on MAL docs trial is contrary to law[.] It’s also a major test for Judge Cannon—who previously showed unfounded favoritism to him[.] If she missteps again, expect major recusal litigation in her court & 11th Circuit” Tweet
Richard Hasen, legal scholar at University of California, Los Angeles: “Even if it turns out that laws intended to suppress the vote do not have that effect overall and in the aggregate, that would not justify such laws. A state should not have the right to put stumbling blocks in front of eligible voters. Such laws violate the rights and dignity of each voter, and such laws should have to be justified by real, empirically verifiable interests in preserving the integrity of the vote or serving some other key state purpose.” New York Times
LISTEN: Conversation between media expert Margaret Sullivan and NYU professor of history Ruth Ben-Ghiat on creeping autocracy in the United States American Crisis Substack Podcast
Headlines
The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections
Salon: Hunter Biden “whistleblower” exposed as a fugitive and accused spy — but MAGA won’t budge
Trump Investigations
Washington Post: The latest on Donald Trump’s indictments and other key investigations
Huffington Post: Ex-Trump Attorney Predicts Jan. 6 Indictment Is ‘About To Happen’
CNN: Georgia grand jury handling potential indictments in Trump 2020 probe is sworn in
NBC: Justice Department reverses course on defending Trump in E. Jean Carroll case
January 6 And The 2020 Election
New York Times: Arizona Man Cited in Conspiracy Theories Sues Fox News for Defamation
NBC: Judge orders Jan. 6 rioter who showed up outside Obama’s home detained until trial
Fox 4 Kansas City: Kansas City-area man sentenced in Jan. 6 riots, hitting officers
News 7 Watertown: Watertown man, charged in January 6 riot, faces prison time
AP: Justice Department to challenge length of prison sentences for Rhodes and other Oath Keepers
Opinion
New York Times: This Is One Republican Strategy That Isn’t Paying Off
Washington Post: The rot in the federal judiciary goes deeper than the Supreme Court
In the States
Alabama Political Reporter: Deadline passes for public to submit maps for redistricting process
ABC4: Supreme Court hears claims of unconstitutional redistricting in Utah
MLive: Law requiring landlords give voter information to tenants set to be repealed in Ypsilanti
CNN: Federal prosecutors interviewed Michigan secretary of state in special counsel’s election interference probe
