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Classified documents case: Legal complexities, partisan debates, and potential trial delays
- New York Times: How Classified Evidence Could Complicate the Trump Documents Case: Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump have told the judge overseeing his documents case that they have started the process of obtaining security clearances, the first step of what is likely to be a major fight over classified evidence before his trial. Mr. Trump is facing 31 counts of unauthorized retention of national security secrets under the Espionage Act, along with accusations that he obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve sensitive files — including by defying a subpoena.Here is a closer look at the tricky legal issues raised by the role of classified evidence in the case.
- Guardian: Some Republicans denounce Trump over classified documents but question DoJ’s motives: Some Republican politicians and officials fanned out on Sunday to denounce Donald Trump over his handling of classified documents but also to question the motives of the US justice department in bringing an unprecedented 37-count indictment against the former president. Speaking to CBS Face the Nation, Christie acknowledged that he had questions about politically “equitable” application of the law when it comes to politicians but that did not change accusations about Trump’s conduct.
- New York Times: Barr Says Documents Case Against Trump Is ‘Entirely of His Own Making’: William P. Barr, who served as attorney general under President Donald J. Trump, excoriated his former boss on Sunday for “reckless conduct” that led to Mr. Trump’s indictment on charges of mishandling classified documents, saying that the case was “entirely of his own making.” Mr. Barr, in an interview with CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” walked through the severity of the charges against Mr. Trump. He described the former president’s actions — laid out in a 49-page indictment — as harmful not only to the country, but also to the Republican Party and the conservative movement that Mr. Trump leads.
- CNN: Special counsel seeks court order to ensure Trump and his defense don’t share materials turned over in discovery: Special counsel Jack Smith’s team is asking the judge in the classified documents case against Donald Trump to bar the former president and his defense team from publicly disclosing some of the materials shared in the criminal case as part of the discovery process. In a new filing on Friday, Smith’s team said that among the unclassified materials that prosecutors are set to turn over to the defense is “information pertaining to ongoing investigations, the disclosure of which could compromise those investigations and identify uncharged individuals.” The filing, which includes a proposed protective order, is an expected, procedural step now that Trump has entered his not guilty plea and the proceedings are moving forward. Lawyers for Trump and his co-defendant Walt Nauta do not oppose the requested protective order, according to the filing.
- Washington Post: How government rules for classified papers could help Trump delay his trial: As former president Donald Trump prepares for trial on charges that he repeatedly violated government rules for handling classified information, his legal team may get a tactical timing advantage from an unlikely source: government rules for handling such secrets. Trump’s indictment on dozens of charges, including mishandling classified documents and trying to obstruct investigators’ efforts to recover that material, means his case will be tried under the rules of the Classified Information Procedures Act, or CIPA — a law that could, in theory, delay any trial until after the 2024 presidential election. Trump, who is leading in the polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and some of his GOP competitors have slammed the investigation as partisan, suggesting that any one of them may try to force the Justice Department to drop the case if elected.
Republicans’ conflicted stance on Jan. 6: Shifting narratives and an increasing appeal to extremism
- Politico: House GOP flirts with Jan. 6 extremism: House Republicans don’t want to talk about Jan. 6. They also can’t stop talking about it. At times, GOP lawmakers insist they’re uninterested in relitigating an attack that is political poison for the party outside of deep-red areas. But at other times, some Republicans have stoked narratives that falsely pin blame for the attack on police, Democrats or far-left agitators — or downplay the violence at the Capitol. The latter approach has seen a noticeable uptick of late. And it’s not just far-right conservatives who fall in that group — some House GOP leaders and key committee chiefs have shown they’re willing to flirt with the fringe without an outright embrace. Speaker Kevin McCarthy has shared security video of that day with far-right media figures who have minimized or fed inaccurate portrayals of the attack.
- MSNBC: Why a misguided Republican ‘hearing’ on Jan. 6 rioters matters: In the U.S. House, when a party is in the minority, it will sometimes organize events that are intended to look like real congressional hearings, but they’re really not. It’s the House majority that controls the committees, and it’s up to committee chairs to decide whether or not to hold proper, legitimate hearings. Members in the minority will occasionally organize informal meetings, describe invitees as “witnesses,” and hope the media takes an interest, but for all intents and purposes, they’re theatrical presentations, intended to shine a light on concerns the majority prefers to ignore. What’s weird is when members of the majority feel the need to hold their own fake hearing.
In The States
OHIO: In a split decision, state Supreme Court allows August special election that could make it harder to amend constitution
- The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio Supreme Court OKs August election for plan to make it harder to amend constitution: Ohio can proceed with an August election for voters to decide whether it should be harder to amend the state constitution, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled Friday. In a 4-3 ruling, the Republican-leaning court determined that lawmakers legally set an Aug. 8 election for Issue 1. If approved, the measure would require 60% of voters to enact new constitutional amendments, instead of a simple majority of 50% plus one. Issue 1 would also change the signature-gathering process citizens must follow to place amendments on the ballot. It requires citizen groups to get voter signatures from all 88 counties, instead of 44, to place an amendment on the ballot. And it would eliminate a 10-day period that petitioners are granted to replace any invalid signatures. The One Person One Vote coalition sued Secretary of State Frank LaRose in May and asked the court to direct LaRose to scrap the Aug. 8 election. The group contends it’s not legal because of Ohio’s new voting law, which limits when August special elections can be held.
- Ohio Capital Journal: Ohio redistricting slated for later this summer, maps in September, Senate president predicts: Once the Ohio two-year budget cycle is finished by June 30, Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman expects work to begin again on redistricting for Statehouse maps, with September as a likely date for them, he told reporters last week. Both Ohio’s U.S. Congressional district maps and Statehouse maps were declared unconstitutional gerrymanders multiple times by a bipartisan majority of the former Ohio Supreme Court, but voters were nevertheless forced to vote under them in 2022 after Republicans on the Ohio Redistricting Commission ran out the clock and appealed to a federal court. With swing vote former Ohio Supreme Court Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor forced to retired due to age, Republicans added partisan labels to the 2022 Ohio Supreme Court races and won a majority of justices. Gov. Mike DeWine then appointed a family friend to an open seats after Justice Sharon Kennedy was elected chief justice.
NORTH CAROLINA: Voting advocates revive federal suit on felon voting restrictions after loss at NC Supreme Court
- NC Newsline: Voting rights advocates sue in federal court over NC’s felony disenfranchisement: The Southern Coalition for Social Justice filed a lawsuit in federal court Thursday over a law that makes it a felony for a North Carolinian to vote while they are on supervision for a felony conviction, even if they are erroneously told by their parole officer or an election worker that they are allowed to cast a ballot. “It is completely unjust for a prosecutor to bring a felony charge against someone who made an honest mistake by voting before their sentence was complete due to some unpaid, and often unknown, court cost,” Pat McCoy, the Co-Executive Director of Action NC, said in a statement. “We hope the court will enjoin this law before the next election to ensure thousands of North Carolinians have their voices heard at the polls.” Legislators enacted the law, known as the “Strict Liability Voting Law,” in 1877 to disenfranchise Black voters, and reenacted it in 1899 as part of a broader attempt by the legislature to suppress Black voters’ political voice. The Southern Coalition for Social Justice and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP asked the court to declare the law unconstitutional on Fourteenth Amendment grounds.
WASHINGTON: State Supreme Court upholds Washington Voting Rights Act against constitutional challenge
- NBC Right Now: Washington Supreme Court ruling upholds state voting rights: In 2020 a group of Washington state Latino voters and the League of United Latin American Citizens challenged the Franklin County election system. The voters challenged Franklin County’s hybrid electoral system which required all commissioners to run county-wide rather than by district. Voters argued the system was shutting Latino voters out of local politics. A year after the case was filed, Latino voters and the county reached a settlement agreement that would see that the county’s Latino population would be able to elect a candidate to the three-member Franklin County Commission for the first time in over two decades beginning during the 2024 election cycle. James Gimenez, a Franklin County resident opposing the lawsuit challenged the legality of the settlement and the state law that prevents members of minority groups from being discriminated against during elections.
What Experts Are Saying
William Galston, Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution: “‘A constitutional democracy stands or falls with the effectiveness and trustworthiness of the systems through which laws are created and enforced’…‘If you have fundamental doubts raised about those institutions, then constitutional democracy as a whole is in trouble.’” Washington Post
Jack Goldsmith, who served in the Justice Department and at the Pentagon during the administration of George W. Bush and now is a professor at Harvard Law School: “‘It’s so different from the Watergate context, when there was a pretty broad consensus in the legitimacy of what the prosecutors were doing,’ Goldsmith said. ‘That’s not in today’s politics.’” Washington Post
Adrienne Jones, professor at Morehouse College: “I say we should celebrate Juneteenth to celebrate U.S. government that includes all of the people. Today we urgently need the motivation and encouragement to participate in the challenging continuing work of guiding our government to serve democracy and away from secreting and disregarding Constitutional rights and protections to which we are all entitled.” Telegraph Herald
Heather Cox Richardson, American historian at Boston College: “The addition of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1868 remade the United States. But those determined to preserve a world that discriminated between Americans according to race, gender, ability, and so on, continued to find workarounds.” Letters from an American
Michael Podhorzer: “The deadly assault on the Capitol would not have been possible without Senators Cruz, Hawley, and others announcing that they were going to challenge the Electoral College vote. The difference between Trump’s recent futile calls and the one he made for January 6th is that those Republican congressional leaders – especially in what they said outside of the mainstream media (on Fox et al, as well as in social media and fundraising appeals) – created the illusion that coming to Washington on January 6th could actually overturn the results of the 2020 elections. In the fantasy world they breathed life into, those coming to Washington could easily imagine that they would soon be seen as patriotic heroes. They were not coming to Washington merely to ‘protest’ or to show their solidarity with Trump, but to literally take back their country.” Weekend Reading Substack
Headlines
The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections
KCBS Radio : Trump: ‘MAGA has left Fox’
New York Times: G.O.P. Targets Researchers Who Study Disinformation Ahead of 2024 Election
Trump Investigations
Washington Post: The dozens of attorneys who have defended Trump since 2016
PBS: Trump’s legal cases, explained
Hill: Barr ‘skeptical’ of Trump conviction in Georgia voting investigation
January 6 And The 2020 Election
Washington Post: NSA staffer linked to ‘America First’ movement joined Jan. 6 mob
Washington Post: Oath Keepers attorney is found incompetent to stand trial in Jan. 6 case
Washington Post: FBI resisted opening probe into Trump’s role in Jan. 6 for more than a year
Associated Press: Disciplinary hearing against Trump attorney John Eastman begins in California
Opinion
Washington Post: A former prosecutor explains what surprised her most about Trump’s indictment
Hill: The betrayal at the heart of Trump’s alleged crimes
New York Times: To Jail or Not to Jail
Washington Post: As Trump is arraigned, Republicans honor the insurrectionists
In the States
Michigan Advance: States with low election turnout did little in 2023 to expand voting access
Texas Tribune: Tarrant County picks deputy county clerk to run elections, eschewing GOP activist
Chattanooga Times Free Press: Progressive groups wonder about the impact of gerrymandering ruling on Tennessee
