#doj appeal

[iheartdojacat]

I don’t need a caption for these pictures, she slayed so hard.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 1, 2022

Heather Cox Richardson

Some stories wrapped up today: In Atlanta the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said that the district court had no jurisdiction to block the U.S. government from using the records it seized in the criminal investigation of former president Trump. That is, when U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon allowed Trump’s request for a special master to review the documents seized by the FBI in its search of Mar-a-Lago on August 8, she assumed power the district court did not have. Special Master Raymond Dearie will be dismissed, and the criminal investigation of the former president will go forward. The panel noted in their decision that they were unwilling to “carve out an unprecedented exception in our law for former presidents.” The judges acknowledged that “[i]t is indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president,” but “[t]o create a special exception here would defy our Nation’s foundational principle that our law applies ‘to all, without regard to numbers, wealth, or rank.’” It continued: “The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. Either approach would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.” All three judges on the panel were nominated by Republican presidents: Judge William H. Pryor by President George W. Bush; Judges Andrew L. Brasher and Britt C. Grant, by Trump. Today, Ye, also known as Kanye West, appeared with right-wing white supremacist Nick Fuentes on Alex Jones’s show InfoWars, and was so vile even Jones began to push back. Eventually, Ye praised Nazis and Adolf Hitler. Then, and only then, did the Twitter account of the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee delete its tweet of October 6, 2022, that read: “Kanye. Elon. Trump.” Other stories began: House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) yesterday sent a letter to the chair of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol telling the committee to preserve their records in anticipation of an investigation in the committee once the Republicans take control of the House next year. Of course, House rules already require that preservation; the demand is simply a performance to convince the far-right MAGA Republicans that he is on their team. And, in fact, the committee has said it will release “all the evidence” to the public before the end of the year. Republican representative Ralph Norman (R-SC), who opposes electing McCarthy speaker, told right-wing media that those opposing McCarthy have a different candidate for the position. That candidate is not a House member, and Norman said: “It will be apparent in the coming weeks who that person will be. I will tell you, it will be interesting.” And still other stories showed their enduring power through centuries: Today, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden hosted French president Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, for the first state visit of Biden’s presidency. In a lunch today at the State Department, hosted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Vice President Kamala Harris along with their respective spouses Ms. Evan Ryan and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Blinken emphasized the close ties between France and the United States throughout our shared history. He recalled that France was the first international ally of the United States, recognizing the fledgling nation’s independence from England and providing both military and economic assistance after the two countries contracted a formal alliance in 1778. Vice President Harris reminded the audience that the close alliance between France and the United States has continued ever since, with the troops of both countries fighting together, and dying together, on the battlefields of the two world wars, and with ties of culture, art, and science. Harris recalled that her mother, Dr. Shyamala Harris, worked at the Institut Pasteur with the legendary French professor Étienne-Émile Baulieu. The leaders reaffirmed that France and the United States have a historic past and emphasized that our shared past is the basis for shaping a joint future in which the old allies work to defend the rules-based international order now under attack from autocrats who hope to dominate their neighbors with force. Not only are they defending the rules-based order, but also they are working to make it reflect the realities of the present. In his remarks at the arrival ceremony this morning, Macron explained: “This spirit of fraternity must enable us to build an agenda of ambition and hope, as our two countries share the same faith in freedom, in democratic values, in empowerment through education and work, and in progress through science and knowledge.”

“The post-Cold War era is over,” Blinken said today, “and we face a global competition to define what comes next.” Macron and Biden, as well as Blinken and Harris, all emphasized that the defense of Ukraine as it resists the attempt of Russian president Vladimir Putin to “redraw the borders of a sovereign, independent nation by force” is key to that definition of the future. They emphasized that those defending a rules-based order are “working together to strengthen European security and advance a free and open Indo-Pacific,” “taking urgent steps to save our planet for future generations,” and “making investments in global health to stamp out diseases like malaria and HIV/AIDS, to build greater capacity to prevent and respond to future health emergencies.” Vice President Harris quoted from Marquis de Lafayette, a French aristocrat who fought in the American Revolutionary War, who wrote to his wife in 1778 from Valley Forge, where the ragtag Continental Army encamped in the bitter winter of 1777-1778. “My heart has always been completely convinced that in serving the cause of humanity and America,” he wrote, “I was fighting in the interests of France.” Macron responded: “And when your soldiers came during the First and the Second World War in our country, they had exactly the same feeling. And we will never forget that a lot of your families lost children on the soils they never knew before just because they were fighting for liberty and for universal values.”

—

Notes:

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23323310/221201-11th-c-vacate.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/01/trump-cannon-special-master-rejected/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/01/mccarthy-jan6-committee-trump-letter/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/01/gops-bet-kanye-west-has-gone-very-bad/

Mark Joseph Stern @mjs_DCHere is the 11th Circuit decision ending the special master's intrusive reign over the DOJ's criminal investigation into Trump. The panel holds that Cannon's decision represented a "radical reordering of our caselaw" that violates the separation of powers.

10:35 PM ∙ Dec 1, 20221,281Likes329Retweets

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/jan-6-committee-release-transcripts-interviews-report-expected-christm-rcna59433

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/january-6-committee-evidence-zoe-lofgren-face-the-nation/

Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 @RonFilipkowskiRep. Ralph Norman, who opposes McCarthy for Speaker, says the renegade Republicans have a secret candidate to run against him who is not a House member: “It will be apparent in the coming weeks who that person will be. I will tell you, it will be interesting.”

10:52 PM ∙ Dec 1, 20224,928Likes997Retweets

https://republicanleader.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Rep-Lead-Sharp-MFP_20221130_124326.pdf

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/01/politics/french-president-state-dinner-white-house/index.html

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/12/01/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-and-president-macron-of-france-at-state-luncheon/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/12/01/remarks-by-president-biden-and-president-emmanuel-macron-of-france-before-bilateral-meeting/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/12/01/remarks-by-president-biden-and-president-emmanuel-macron-of-france-at-arrival-ceremony/

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mostlysignssomeportents]

An Epic antitrust loss for Google

A jury just found Google guilty on all counts of antitrust violations stemming from its dispute with Epic, maker of Fortnite, which brought a variety of claims related to how Google runs its app marketplace. This is huge:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/technology/epic-games-google-antitrust-ruling.html

The mobile app store world is a duopoly run by Google and Apple. Both use a variety of tactics to prevent their customers from installing third party app stores, which funnels all app makers into their own app stores. Those app stores cream an eye-popping 30% off every purchase made in an app.

This is a shocking amount to charge for payment processing. The payments sector is incredibly monopolized and notorious for its price-gouging – and its standard (wildly inflated) rate is 2-5%:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

Now, in theory, Epic doesn't have to sell in Google Play, the official Android app store. Unlike Apple's iOS, Android permit both sideloading (installing an app directly without using an app store) and configuring your device to use a different app store. In practice, Google uses a variety of anticompetitive tricks to prevent these app stores from springing up and to dissuade Android users from sideloading. Proving that Google's actions – like paying Activision $360m as part of "Project Hug" (no, really!) – were intended to prevent new app storesfrom springing up was a big lift for Epic. But they managed it, in large part thanks to Google's own internal communications, wherein executives admitted that this was exactly why Project Hug existed. This is part of a pattern with Big Tech antitrust: many of the charges are theoretically very hard to make stick, but because the companies put their evil plans in writing (think of the fraudulent crypto exchange FTX, whose top execs all conferred in a groupchat called "Wirefraud"), Big Tech keeps losing in court:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Now, I do like to dunk on Big Tech for this kind of thing, because it's objectively funny and because the companies make so many unforced errors. But in an important sense, this kind of written record is impossible to avoid. Any large institution can only make and enact policy through administrative systems, and those systems leave behind a paper-trail: memos, meeting minutes, etc. Yes, we all know that quote from The Wire: "Is you taking notes on a fucking criminal conspiracy?" But inevitably, any ambitious conspiracy can only exist if someone is taking notes.

What's more, any large conspiracy involving lots of parties will inevitably produce leaks. Think of this as the corollary to the idea that the moon landing can't be a hoax, because there's no way 400,000 co-conspirators could keep the secret. Big Tech's conspiracies required hundreds or even thousands of collaborators to keep their mouths shut, and eventually someone blabs:

https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-moon-landing-you-d-need-400000-conspirators

This is part of a wave of antitrust cases being brought against the tech giants. As Matt Stoller writes, the guilty-on-all-counts jury verdict will leak into current and future actions. Remember, Google spent much of this year in court fighting the DoJ, who argued that the company bribed Apple not to make a competing search engine, paying tens of billions every year to keep a competitor from emerging. Now that a jury has convinced Google of doing that to prevent alternative app stores from emerging, claims that it used these pay-for-delay tactics in other sectros get a lot more credible:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-google-loses-antitrust-case

On that note: what about Apple? Epic brought a very similar case against Apple and lost. Both Apple and Epic are appealing that case to the Supreme Court, and now that Google has been convicted in a similar case, it might prompt the Supremes to weigh in and resolve the seeming inconsistencies in the interpretation of federal law.

This is a key moment in the long project to wrest antitrust away from the pro-monopoly side, who spent decades "training" judges to produce verdicts that run counter to the plain language of America's antitrust law:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

There's 40 years' worth of bad precedent to overturn. The good news is that we've got the law on our side. Literally, the wording of the laws and the records of the Congressional debate leading to their passage, all militate towards the (incredibly obvious) conclusion that the purpose of anti-monopoly law is to fight monopoly, not defend it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

It's amazing to realize that we got into this monopoly quagmire because judges just literally refused to enforce the law. That's what makes one part of the jury verdict against Google so exciting: the jury found that Google's insistence that Play Store sellers use its payment processor was an act of illegal tying. Today, "tying" is an obscure legal theory, but few doctrines would be more useful in disenshittifying the internet. A company is guilty of illegal tying when it forces you to use unrelated products or services as a condition of using the product you actually want. The abandonment of tying led to a host of horribles, from printer companies forcing you to buy ink at $10,000/gallon to Livenation forcing venues to sell tickets through its Ticketmaster subsidiary.

The next phase of this comes when the judge decides on the penalty. Epic doesn't want cash damages – it wants the judge to order Google to fulfill its promise of "an open, competitive Android ecosystem for all users and industry participants." They've asked the judge to order Google to facilitate third-party app stores, and to separate app stores from payment processors. As Stoller puts it, they want to "crush Google’s control over Android":

https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/epic-v-google-trial-verdict-a-win-for-all-developers

Google has sworn to appeal, surprising no one. The Times's expert says that they will have a tough time winning, given how clear the verdict was. Whatever this means for Google and Android, it means a lot for a future free from monopolies.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/12/im-feeling-lucky/#hugger-mugger

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #10

March 15-22 2024

The EPA announced new emission standards with the goal of having more than half of new cars and light trucks sold in the US be low/zero emission by 2032. One of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history, it'll eliminate 7 billion tons of CO2 emissions over the next 30 years. It's part of President Biden's goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 on the road to eliminating them totally by 2050.

President Biden canceled nearly 6 Billion dollars in student loan debt. 78,000 borrowers who work in public sector jobs, teachers, nurses, social workers, firefighters etc will have their debt totally forgiven. An additional 380,000 public service workers will be informed that they qualify to have their loans forgiven over the next 2 years. The Biden Administration has now forgiven $143.6 Billion in student loan debt for 4 million Americans since the Supreme Court struck down the original student loan forgiveness plan last year.

Under Pressure from the administration and Democrats in Congress Drugmaker AstraZeneca caps the price of its inhalers at $35. AstraZeneca joins rival Boehringer Ingelheim in capping the price of inhalers at $35, the price the Biden Admin capped the price of insulin for seniors. The move comes as the Federal Trade Commission challenges AstraZeneca’s patents, and Senator Bernie Sanders in his role as Democratic chair of the Senate Health Committee investigates drug pricing.

The Department of Justice sued Apple for being an illegal monopoly in smartphones. The DoJ is joined by 16 state attorneys general. The DoJ accuses Apple of illegally stifling competition with how its apps work and seeking to undermining technologies that compete with its own apps.

The EPA passed a rule banning the final type of asbestos still used in the United States. The banning of chrysotile asbestos (known as white asbestos) marks the first time since 1989 the EPA taken action on asbestos, when it passed a partial ban. 40,000 deaths a year in the US are linked to asbestos

President Biden announced $8.5 billion to help build advanced computer chips in America. Currently America only manufactures 10% of the world's chips and none of the most advanced next generation of chips. The deal with Intel will open 4 factories across 4 states (Arizona, Ohio, New Mexico, and Oregon) and create 30,000 new jobs. The Administration hopes that by 2030 America will make 20% of the world's leading-edge chips.

President Biden signed an Executive Order prioritizing research into women's health. The order will direct $200 million into women's health across the government including comprehensive studies of menopause health by the Department of Defense and new outreach by the Indian Health Service to better meet the needs of American Indian and Alaska Native Women. This comes on top of $100 million secured by First Lady Jill Biden from ARPA-H.

Democratic Senators Bob Casey, Tammy Baldwin, Sherrod Brown, and Jacky Rosen (all up for re-election) along with Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Sheldon Whitehouse, introduced the "Shrinkflation Prevention Act" The Bill seeks to stop the practice of companies charging the same amount for products that have been subtly shrunk so consumers pay more for less.

The Department of Transportation will invest $45 million in projects that improve Bicyclist and Pedestrian Connectivity and Safety

The EPA will spend $77 Million to put 180 electric school buses onto the streets of New York City This is part of New York's goal to transition its whole school bus fleet to electric by 2035.

The Senate confirmed President Biden's nomination of Nicole Berner to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Berner has served as the general counsel for America's largest union, SEIU, since 2017 and worked in their legal department since 2006. On behalf of SEIU she's worked on cases supporting the Affordable Care Act, DACA, and against the Defense of Marriage act and was part of the Fight for 15. Before working at SEIU she was a staff attorney at Planned Parenthood. Berner's name was listed by the liberal group Demand Justice as someone they'd like to see on the Supreme Court. Berner becomes one of just 5 LGBT federal appeals court judges, 3 appointed by Biden. The Senate also confirmed Edward Kiel and Eumi Lee to be district judges in New Jersey and Northern California respectively, bring the number of federal judges appointed by Biden to 188.

[yeiyeisj]

New rules released on appeals from prosecutors’ resolutions

New rules released on appeals from prosecutors’ resolutions

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has revised its rules on appeals from resolutions issued by city or provincial prosecutors and by the prosecutor general “in the interest of speedy, efficient, and effective administration of justice.” In a Department Circular issued last July 13 by Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin C. Remulla, “the Office of the Secretary of Justice (OSEC) shall review appeals from…

[donald-trump-official]

In the past 48 hours:

- the trump org was convicted on 17 counts of fraud and tax evasion

- Special counsel Jack smith subpoenaed multiple state officials for their communications with Donald trump

- Trump’s lawsuit requesting a special master has been rejected. He will not appeal, meaning the DOJ now has access to all of the material it seized from Mar A Lago as of Dec. 9th

- the January 6th committe is preparing to release it’s final report on Dec. 21st. It is expected to include a referral for criminal charges against Donald trump, and they will also turn over all of their evidence to the DOJ

- the DOJ has asked a judge to hold the trump legal team be in contempt for refusing to affirm to the court that all classified material has been returned

- a company hired by Donald Trump’s lawyers did a sweep of all of his properties, finding additional classified material in a storage unit

- a congressional investigation has been opened into Jared Kushner for alleged tax violations in regards to his property in New York

[eastgaysian]

okay here's one post i have to make. Finally racism confirmed real in succession. other people have talked about this before but it is a huge blind spot of the show not to acknowledge the intersection between racism and capitalism, and the excuse that the characters are the 1% and the 1% are vastly white is pretty weak. the fact that the show sidelines its existing characters of color while every now and then broadly gesturing towards race makes this worse, especially as the show more directly focuses on fascism and just Doesn't bring race into it. like i don't even think race is totally absent as a concern of the writers but it's clearly not a priority. i think a lot about how mo's widow is a filipino woman

anyway. ken and rava's conversation in this sense doesn't really qualify as, like, revolutionary in terms of succession's commentary on race esp since it's a discussion between two white parents about their brown daughter without her present. the point of interest to me really is that kendall completely fails to recognize racism as a systemic issue, much less that he works for and is trying to sustain a company that actively works to perpetuate that hegemony. his questions are why was sophie on the street? why wasn't rava there? in the same episode where he calls matsson homophobic for saying the numbers are gay. socially aware king

it's not particularly revelatory to say that a rich white man doesn't grasp the concept of systemic racism LOL but i do think it's more than that for kendall, and i also think this trait is something his siblings don't share. it's like how he doesn't realize he's in a position of power over anna and she was pressured into attending the recny with him, and his adoption of a faux-feminist stance in s3 while continuing to treat women like shit. kendall's whole concept of Everything, including systemic social issues, goes back to logan. there's no system outside of dad. the doj doesn't find the cruises evidence compelling? that's because they're scared of logan. logan's the source of the evil in the world, therefore opposing him is inherently progressive, leaving kendall with even less of a coherent moral framework after his death. and he's completely unable to process the idea that he could be participating in and benefiting from the greater racist or sexist system, because that's fundamentally incompatible with his logan-based idea of his own identity.

i don't think roman or shiv or even connor share this particular nearsightedness. roman 'we do hate speech and roller coasters' roy knows what's going on but he doesn't really care and he doesn't believe it can be changed (or, maybe more accurately, that there's any point in trying). he doesn't buy into fascism on the ideological level, exactly, but the spectacle appeals to him and he does believe it's profitable to align with it, so he's perfectly happy to do so. i think he's the most similar to logan in this regard. and shiv and connor have actual political ideologies, even if they're far from being meaningfully opposed to fascism, which requires a base awareness of the fact that We Live In A Society and That Society Has Systems In It. for kendall it really boils down to logan and logan alone

[wilwheaton]

Under binding 11th Circuit precedents a case should be reassigned to a different judge if, among other reasons, the original judge would have “difficulty” setting aside her previous views and findings and reassignment would not result in a waste of judicial resources. Those factors clearly weigh in favor of reassignment here, due to the difficulties that Judge Cannon will likely face in diverging from her previous unorthodox and wrongful rulings benefiting Trump. This is the path that appears most likely to be pursued if Judge Cannon is to be removed, because her approach thus far suggests that it unlikely that the judge will recuse herself. DOJ might choose to make the case in a recusal motion that it would be better for her and everyone concerned if she stepped aside. In just about any other high-profile criminal case, if a trial judge were to err in the direction of excessive leniency favoring a criminal defendant in a preliminary hearing and were reversed on appeal, law-and-order conservatives would be the first to say that trial judge had a conflict and should be removed. That judge’s reputation would be on trial. Impartiality would be too dubious. The same is true here.

Trump indictment: How to force Judge Aileen Cannon off the case.

[mightyflamethrower]

What's a Little Creepy About the FBI's Arrest Warrant for a Blaze News Reporter

We have another instance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation going off the reservation. A Blaze News reporter who has done a couple of stories on the January 6 riot, which embarrassed the Justice Department, will be forced to turn himself in on Friday. Steve Baker has cooperated with the Justice Department, which has had Baker on their radar for months.  

The creepy part about this story is that this reporter doesn’t know what charges he’s facing. The FBI has instructed him to wear clothing that suggests he’ll be forced to wear an orange jumpsuit. However, the Justice Department told Baker and his legal team that misdemeanors were the only charges facing the journalist. The outlet had all the details about the legal drama in a lengthy post, including the stories that might have painted a target on Baker’s back 

"They didn’t have to go this route," Baker told Blaze News on Tuesday evening. "We have been told that my charges are only misdemeanors. And my attorneys have been assured that this will be an ‘in and out’ affair with 'no intention' to detain me. But rather than issuing a simple order to appear, they went the 'arrest warrant' route."  What's more, Baker said he still does not know what the charges against him are, noting to Blaze News that the powers that be won't tell his attorney about the charges because they believe Baker will post them on social media.  Baker's Dallas attorney, James Lee Bright, added to Blaze News that withholding the nature of the charges against his client is a "really unusual" move. Bright also said he's hoping to get a copy of the complaint against Baker as early as possible Friday morning.  […]  Bright told Blaze News that he's "disturbed" about what's transpiring with his client, especially given that Baker has been "in full compliance" all this time. Bright also said the federal government "three-plus years later going after people who were legitimate functioning journalists that day" appears designed to have an "absolute chilling effect."  […]  Baker added that when he asked his other attorney, William Shipley, why the federal government is treating him like this, Shipley replied, "You know why. You've been poking them in the eye for three years" 

Baker's first Jan. 6 analysis for Blaze News came last October, following countless hours in a House subcommittee office looking at frame after frame of Jan. 6 closed-circuit video — and it had him wondering: did Capitol Police Special Agent David Lazarus perjure himself in the Oath Keepers trial? 

Soon after, the slow pace of getting an unrestricted look at everything recorded on video prompted Blaze Media editor in chief Matthew Peterson's appeal to House Speaker Mike Johnson to release all the videos. On Nov. 17, Johnson did just that. 

Baker's investigative efforts also resulted in two additional analyses, both focusing on Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn: "January 6 and the N-word that wasn't" and "Harry Dunn's account of January 6 does not add up. At all." 

In December, Baker alleged he uncovered major irregularities involving Dunn, Capitol Police, the press, and U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland). 

In January, Baker asserted that just-released U.S. Capitol closed-circuit TV video clips from Jan. 6 show Lazarus gave false testimony in the Oath Keepers trial. 

Like Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag, Baker also touched upon the curious case of the January 6 pipe bomber and the alleged targeting of the Republican National Committee, wherein new evidence suggests that the RNC was not the target. The FBI might have misrepresented the location of the supposed explosive device, which a then-FBI contractor discovered. 

The FBI has harassed and targeted pro-life activists, so going after reporters who have questioned their narratives about some highly politicized stories isn’t shocking. The Obama CIA and DOJ colluded to manufacture a fake narrative about Russian collusion against Donald Trump. The FBI made up evidence to justify an illegal FISA spy warrant against Trump campaign officials. The FBI and the Secret Service appear to be engaged in a cover-up regarding the ever-elusive pipe bomber who cannot be found. They can find hundreds who entered the Capitol building that day, but not this guy.  

[qqueenofhades]

Is it possible we could see a full blown conviction and lock up before the election?

It is, alas, unlikely, especially in the classified documents case, but that doesn't mean he'll succeed in getting the trial postponed until after the election (with the obvious idea that he will then be Dictator-for-Life and cancel all criminal cases against him). Even if Judge Cannon is too outrageously partisan to Trump and grants some degree of his nonsense delay requests, the DOJ is clearly wise to this tactic (see the scathing response they filed the other day) and won't put up with it forever. But if they then have to appeal to the 11th Circuit to get her reversed/recuse her/otherwise stop her from favoring Trump at every opportunity, that will still take time, and since Trump has clearly thrown all his chips at trying to save himself by being the aforesaid Dictator-for-Life, yeah. It might be going on by 2024, but I would still be very surprised if we had a conviction, much less anything else.

The good news, however, is that another federal indictment for January 6 is clearly very close to coming down the pike (possibly including Insurrection Act charges, if Trump's recent deranged Truth Socialing is any indication) and the Orange Führer will have MUCH less control over delaying that one, or luck in getting a favorable pool of jurors drawn from ruby-red Florida counties. For one thing, a J6 trial would take place in Washington DC, not Florida, where the judges would not be at all inclined to grant endless extensions, and the juror pool would be drawn from deep-blue DC and Northern Virginia. Not that the political views of a juror should really matter at all, and they secured a conviction for Trump in the NY sex abuse case with at least one Trump supporter on that jury, but since it's been brought up as some kind of factor for whether he'll be convicted or not, there's that. So it's possible that we could see him on trial for J6 before the Mar-a-Lago case, and this is still not to forget the also-clearly-pending Georgia indictment for election interference. So yeah, the Mar-a-Lago stuff is not our only egg to put into the Oh God Send Him To Jail Already and Preferably Forever basket.

[azspot]

The words bold and fearless action were repeated on a loop today, as a kind of mantra of how effective presidents must be free to act quickly and decisively to save democracy from the many unanticipated threats it faces. And yet the court—which has been asked to take bold and fearless action to deter the person who called Georgia’s secretary of state to demand that he alter the vote count, and threatened to fire DOJ officials who would not help steal an election—is backing away from its own duty. The prospect of a criminal trial for a criminal president shocked and appalled five men: Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch suggested that Smith’s entire prosecution is unconstitutional; meanwhile, Roberts sounded eager at times to handle the case just a hair more gracefully: by cutting out its heart by preventing the jury from hearing about “official acts” (which lie at the center of the alleged conspiracy). Justice Amy Coney Barrett was far more measured, teasing out a compromise with Dreeben that would compel the trial court to tell the jury it could not impose criminal liability for these “official” acts, only “private ones.” Remember, drawing that line would require months of hearings and appeals, pushing any trial into 2025 or beyond. The president who tried to steal the most recent election is running in the next one, which is happening in mere months.

Supreme Court immunity arguments: The court just showed how and why it will let Donald Trump get away with it.

[profeminist]

"The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday asked a federal appeals court to keep the abortion pill mifepristone on the U.S. market as litigation plays out, and indicated that it may ask the Supreme Court to intervene in the case, days after a federal judge suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the medication nationwide.

The DOJ asked the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to block U.S. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s unprecedented decision by noon Thursday “to enable the government to seek relief in the Supreme Court if necessary.” Kacsmaryk’s suspension of the FDA’s approval of mifepristone is set to take effect 12 a.m. Saturday CT.

“If allowed to take effect, that order will irreparably harm patients, healthcare systems, and businesses,” the Justice Department lawyers wrote in a court filing.

Danco Laboratories, the distributor of mifepristone, also asked the 5th Circuit to block Kacsmaryk’s decision from taking effect, calling it an “unprecedented judicial assault on a careful regulatory process that has served the public for decades.”

Read the full piece here: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/10/abortion-pill-us-asks-appeals-court-to-keep-mifepristone-on-market.html

[reading-writing-revolution]

(via How E. Jean Carroll came out on top - Palmer Report)

A jury just ordered Donald Trump to pay E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in her defamation case (considered case #1). That was in addition to the $5.5 million Trump was ordered to pay Carroll in May 2023 for her rape case (considered case #2), which Trump is appealing.

Case #1 was delayed in 2021 when Merrick Garland’s DOJ upheld an earlier decision by Trump’s DOJ to substitute themselves as the defendant for remarks Trump made while president in 2019. Lest anyone still begrudge Garland’s DOJ decision, it turned out to be fortuitous. Case #2 was filed after New York state gave people the chance to sue over sexual assault in the Fall of 2022. Then in 2023, case #1 resumed after the DOJ reversed its decision to shield Trump.

[brostateexam]

I'm sure this is gonna go great because the conservatives on the supreme court have shown a steadfast respect for administrative law when it's doing things they don't personally agree with

[gynoidgearhead]

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Thread by Alec Karakatsanis from June 15, 2021:

This the story of one of the most remarkable cases in U.S. history, and you’ve probably never heard of it. The story of what the U.S. government did to Ezell Gilbert is important because it explains how our legal system works as well as any case I have ever seen.

In 1997, Ezell Gilbert was sentenced to more than 24 years in federal prison in a crack cocaine case. Because of mandatory sentencing (treating crack 100 times as severely as powder), he was put in a cage for a quarter century, and even the judge said this was too harsh.

At sentencing, Gilbert saw an error that increased his sentence by about **ten years** based on a misclassification of a prior conviction. In 1999, without a lawyer, he filed a petition complaining about the mistake. The Clinton DOJ opposed him, and a court ruled against him.

Ten years later, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in another person’s case, confirming that Gilbert had been correct about the error in his case. A public defender helped him file a new petition for immediate release from prison back to his family. He had served his time.

But Obama/Holder DOJ argued to a federal judge that even if his sentence was illegal, Gilbert must remain in prison. They said the “finality” of criminal cases was too important to allow prisoners to file more than one petition, even if the first one was wrongly denied.

The federal judge sided with Obama/Holder, and Ezell Gilbert remained in a cage even though everyone agreed he was now in prison illegally. He had the audacity to hope that courts would follow the law.

A federal appeals court disagreed with Obama/Holder, and in June 2010, three judges set Gilbert free after more than 14 years in prison.

The judges rejected the DOJ’s argument as a departure from fairness and common sense. They said that it could not be the law in the U.S. that a person had to serve a prison sentence that everyone admitted was illegal. Ezell Gilbert went home and stayed out of trouble.

Here’s where it gets interesting. There are many people like Gilbert in federal prison whose sentences are illegal. Did you know that? Instead of rushing to ensure that thousands of people illegally separated from their families were set free, DOJ decided to fight and appeal.

The Obama/Holder DOJ argued: If prisoners were allowed to file more petitions, the “floodgates” would open and many others — mostly poor, mostly Black — would have to be released. They asked a larger group of judges to reverse Gilbert’s victory.

In 2011, a larger group of judges, led by a Republican majority, agreed with Obama/Holder that the “finality” of sentences was too important to allow prisoners to be released on a second rather than first petition, even if the prisoner was correct all along.

Ezell Gilbert was rearrested and sent back to prison to serve out his illegal sentence in a cage. media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/f…

An 87-year-old Republican judge wrote a dissent. Having served in WWII, he called the explicit decision to illegally keep a human being in jail “shocking.” He wrote that a “judicial system that values finality over justice is morally bankrupt.”

Addressing Obama/Holder argument directly, he said: “[T]here are many others in Gilbert’s position — sitting in prison serving sentences that were illegally imposed. We used to call such systems ‘gulags.’ Now, apparently, we call them the United States.”

Major media ignored Ezell Gilbert’s case at the time.

In 2013, two years after sending him back to a cage, Obama granted Gilbert clemency, and the media praised Obama for his leniency. Tens of thousands of other human being remained in prison illegally. You’ve never heard their names.

(end thread)