Author Topic: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War  (Read 33478 times)

G M

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Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #100 on: May 27, 2021, 02:42:56 PM »
Here Barr's action was consistent with rule of law and so was Garland's.  This is a good thing.

Meaningless in the pit of corruption that is the feral government.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #101 on: May 28, 2021, 01:46:34 AM »
That may well be, but at least you have travelled a bit since "Watching both wings of the deep state work together to hide things from the American public makes me cry tears of joy!"

G M

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Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #102 on: May 28, 2021, 12:32:37 PM »
That may well be, but at least you have travelled a bit since "Watching both wings of the deep state work together to hide things from the American public makes me cry tears of joy!"

It's all meaningless distraction from the truth of our collective situation.

Rule of law=Dead

American Republic=Dead

Crafty_Dog

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Crafty_Dog

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Yoo: How TDS lawsuits have weakened the presidency
« Reply #107 on: July 08, 2021, 07:32:15 PM »

How Lawsuits against the Trump Organization Have Weakened the Presidency
By JOHN YOO
July 8, 2021 6:30 AM

Trump’s critics chopped down another tree in the forest of laws and legal norms to pursue their devil, but to the harm of future presidents and the country.


Was charging a Trump business aide for tax evasion worth the permanent damage to the presidency? After reading the indictments handed down last week, the former president’s supporters and critics should agree that the answer is no. President Biden may well suffer the harm, too.

After three years of criminal investigations into the businesses of the former president, Manhattan district attorney Cy Vance persuaded a grand jury last week to indict Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization. Prosecutors claim that Weisselberg, and the company as a whole, engaged in a scheme for the past 15 years to hide fringe benefits — an apartment, car, school tuition — from tax authorities.

Recall that ever since the criminal probe began, legions of commentators predicted that Vance would undoubtedly uncover fraud and wrongdoing by the president himself. Democrats in Congress buttressed Vance’s attack by demanding that Trump hand over his tax returns and other financial records. When Vance finally convened a special grand jury, the gleeful speculation that the former president might even end up in jail reached a fever pitch.

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Last week’s indictments, however, should leave Trump’s critics with a sour taste in their mouths. Prosecutors found nothing with which to charge Trump, and instead they are filing the type of tax charges that authorities who aren’t as politically motivated as New York’s handle by requiring back taxes and financial penalties. Weisselberg has pleaded not guilty, and it is not unheard of for companies to provide such fringe benefits to their top executives. Weisselberg’s attorneys say he made an honest mistake — he kept a tally of the payments in the company’s financial records, after all. After all of the litigation, millions spent on the investigations, and attacks from within Congress and the media, we are left only with charges about the proper reporting of income over a 15-year period. It’s as if Vance had gone off on an errand into the wilderness with a hunting party and come back with a few prairie dogs.

What went unmentioned in most of the reports on the indictments is the harm to the presidency from this hunt. Soon forgotten was the fact that Vance had taken his quest for the Trump Organization’s financial records to the Supreme Court. Trump had gone to federal court to stop his accounting firm, Mazars USA, from cooperating with the Manhattan DA’s investigation. Unfortunately, Trump made the broad claim that the president enjoyed absolute immunity from state criminal investigation and so courts had to squash Vance’s subpoenas to his company and its accounting firm. This was an uphill climb, due to the Supreme Court’s 1997 Clinton v. Jones decision, which held that President Bill Clinton could not claim immunity from Paula Jones’s lawsuit alleging sexual harassment under federal civil-rights laws. But opponents of President Trump used litigation to an unprecedented degree to attack him and to delay the advancement of his agenda.

In July 2020, the Court dismissed Trump’s defense of the presidency. “The President is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a 7–2 majority in Trump v. Vance. The Court cautioned only that, in order to preserve “both the independence of the Executive and the integrity of the criminal justice system,” the trial judge should manage compliance with the subpoena according to traditional legal and constitutional principles. Small solace that, as Mazars and the Trump Organization soon produced the documents that led to last week’s indictments.

The Supreme Court’s blessing of this attack on Trump undercuts the “energy in the executive” so sought by the Founders. Vance’s criminal investigation into a sitting president by a state prosecutor was unprecedented. It creates the obvious risk, as here, that an official elected by the opposition party might use his or her prosecutorial powers to harass and embarrass the president. As Justice Samuel Alito observed in dissent in Trump v. Vance, our nation has more than 2,300 local prosecutors, many of them elected. The Supreme Court’s opinion now allows any of them to bring a criminal investigation into a sitting president. In their obsession to bring down Trump by any means necessary, his critics have made the presidency vulnerable to state criminal prosecutions brought for partisan purposes.

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And think of the future possibilities for political theater. If a state DA can subpoena presidents, he theoretically can arrest and fingerprint them, bring them before a court for arraignment, detain them until posting bail, and even place travel restrictions on them. He could even conduct a trial where the president would have to appear for all proceedings for weeks. A Republican DA not only could charge Hunter Biden for his sleazy business dealings, he could investigate President Biden himself as a co-conspirator.

It is not just the president who would suffer, but the American people. As Justice Thomas wrote in his dissent in Trump v. Vance: “The President has vast responsibilities both abroad and at home,” such as protecting the national security, conducting foreign policy, and executing federal law. In order to give the nation the benefit of “energy in the executive,” the Founders made the conscious choice to vest these many responsibilities in a single individual who could act with “decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch,” as Alexander Hamilton argued in Federalist No. 70. The investigation will consume the time, energies, and resources that the president should devote to carrying out his constitutional and political duties and advancing the agenda upon which the American people elected him. As Thomas Jefferson had argued when served with a subpoena in the Aaron Burr treason trial, the president’s “duties as chief magistrate demand his whole time for national objects,” rather than racing from one end of the nation to the other to defend himself in court. Even if the president were not immune from state criminal investigation, the Supreme Court should have required — as Justices Thomas and Alito urged — that state proceedings wait on hold until Trump had finished his term in office.

But in the chaotic summer of 2020, the Supreme Court would not take the constitutionally courageous step of suspending an investigation into Donald Trump’s financial shenanigans. Instead, it made the president vulnerable to partisan investigations that not only can damage the incumbent politically, but also interfere with the execution of his high office on behalf of the American people. In exchange, all that the critics of Donald Trump won is the indictment of Allen Weisselberg for 15 years of tax cheating — not the vast criminal conspiracy promised by Vance and other New York officials. In this case, as in others, Trump’s critics chopped down another tree in the forest of laws and legal norms to pursue their devil, but to the harm of future presidents and the American people.

ccp

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ccp

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Newsweek - "hold lawyers to account"
« Reply #110 on: September 14, 2021, 06:05:28 AM »
but only those who are Republican or question suspicious events around obviously manipulated elections results - 

https://www.newsweek.com/holding-lawyers-account-part-2-opinion-1625956

what a joke

one can only imagine the monstrously Democrat partisans reading this and nodding yes in agreement .

the left is so crazy




Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #111 on: September 14, 2021, 06:18:39 AM »
In fairness it must be asked whether Lin Wood and Sidney Powell brought bullsh*t suits, perhaps as part of a grifting fund raising operation.

ccp

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Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #112 on: September 14, 2021, 06:31:40 AM »
Good morning  CD,

"In fairness it must be asked whether Lin Wood and Sidney Powell brought bullsh*t suits, perhaps as part of a grifting fund raising operation."

well it does look that way now
but it did not seem like BS at the time
how would we know if they did not bring suit

we all did question , and I still do , the veracity of the election
I am still convinced cheating went on in enough of a scale to swing the election in the battleground states for Biden and I think you do too (?)

The main point of my post is what about all the sleazy Democrat lawyers
like the big DC firms that behave like mafia for the Left - to my knowledge none of them are ever held to account.  no mention of their lack of integrity in Newsweek
they only choose Republican lawyers to impugn


Crafty_Dog

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Crafty_Dog

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G M

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Re: MY
« Reply #115 on: November 07, 2021, 07:48:12 PM »






Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #121 on: December 13, 2021, 07:01:17 AM »
The trial lawyer-Dem connection is HUGE, as is the pipeline to funding left wing activism.

If ever we get back in power dissemebling this pipeline should be a major front and center mission.

Crafty_Dog

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ccp

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Biden judges confirmed 4 x faster then Trump in first yr
« Reply #124 on: December 23, 2021, 04:51:20 PM »
https://www.newsmax.com/us/biden-federal-judges/2021/12/23/id/1049799/

I can only imagine what Democrat partisans they are


Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #125 on: December 23, 2021, 06:26:32 PM »
Fk.

Sen. Lindsay Graham had a hand in this, , ,

ccp

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Dershowitz on Potter convictions
« Reply #126 on: December 24, 2021, 12:22:03 PM »
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/587236-the-dangerous-trend-behind-officer-kim-potters-conviction

First odd I am citing Alan so much here  these days   :-o. I remember in the 90s or early 2000's I could not change the channel fast enough when he would be on !   :-D

Minnesota Statutes on :

manslaughter 2nd degree :
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609.205

manslaughter in 1st degree:

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609.20

I know Alan is a defense lawyer and maybe slants that way
but on reading the wording of the laws this amateur lawyer (me). would agree with him
when reading the wording of the law

That said , we have another political scapegoat police officer.

Just my take.



DougMacG

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Re: Dershowitz on Potter convictions
« Reply #127 on: December 24, 2021, 05:06:18 PM »
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/587236-the-dangerous-trend-behind-officer-kim-potters-conviction

First odd I am citing Alan so much here  these days   :-o. I remember in the 90s or early 2000's I could not change the channel fast enough when he would be on !   :-D

Minnesota Statutes on :

manslaughter 2nd degree :
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609.205

manslaughter in 1st degree:

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609.20

I know Alan is a defense lawyer and maybe slants that way
but on reading the wording of the laws this amateur lawyer (me). would agree with him
when reading the wording of the law

That said , we have another political scapegoat police officer.

Just my take.

Thanks for the links.  She certainly didn't do 'manslaughter 1', any of the five defined types of it.  She didn't intentionally do anything beyond taser him which most find reasonably justified.

On manslaughter second degree, the only question is whether she committed this:

(1) by the person's culpable negligence whereby the person creates an unreasonable risk, and consciously takes chances of causing death or great bodily harm to another
;

Was her accident culpable negligence?  Arguably yes. 
"and"
Did she "consciously take the chance of causing death or great bodily harm to another"?  Arguably no.  She was tasing him, consciously deciding not to shoot her available, loaded gun, when she thought she was shooting a taser while shooting him.  She knew her body cam was on and was doing she thought what was right and appropriate for the situation. 

Should he be allowed to leave while being arrested by three officers on an open warrant for armed robbery?  No.  The action she thought she was taking was a reasonable one.  Doing her job.

The biggest factor in my judgment of this whole tragedy is that the deceased's actions created the situation where that this mistake could so easily take place and his death was the result.  He had the expired tabs.  He had the open warrant for his arrest related to an aggravated armed robbery attempt.  He resisted and tried to flee.  Right?  He knew she and all of them were armed.  He risked all that by choosing to resist and flee over comply with three presumably armed officers.  He defied them and dared them to stop him.  Because of all of this, she decided to discharge the taser and by clear accident discharged the gun.

She did something VERY wrong by accident.  As a trained police officer, she should be held to a very high standard of training and competence for the responsibility of carrying a badge and a loaded weapon.  Her admitted and videotaped mistake resulted in his death.  There should be some consequence, but these specific charges have specific definitions.

I don't see how this action meets that criminal definition.
« Last Edit: December 24, 2021, 06:11:13 PM by DougMacG »


ccp

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Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #129 on: January 20, 2022, 01:39:51 PM »
"according to public records, the three named trustees are Hughes herself, Hughes' sister-in-law, and Hughes' 24-year-old son, who shares an address with his mother."

"Cynthia, you're a true patriot," former Trump adviser Steve Bannon told Hughes on his "War Room" podcast, where he included her in a roundup of "People of the Year."

"Hughes stated in court documents that she had struggled with late payments, poor credit scores, and the ripple effects of filing for bankruptcy in the 2000s."

connect the dots

I never listen to Steve Bannon - I do hold the position he is honorable.
Ben Shapiro was totally right about him.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #130 on: January 20, 2022, 01:44:03 PM »
What is your take on the grifting charge while on a Chinese billionaire's yacht (or something like that)?

ccp

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Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #131 on: January 20, 2022, 02:25:39 PM »
Crafty asked,

"What is your take on the grifting charge while on a Chinese billionaire's yacht (or something like that)?"

I am sorry . I don't follow you .

Crafty_Dog

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G M

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Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #133 on: January 20, 2022, 03:38:13 PM »
What is your take on the grifting charge while on a Chinese billionaire's yacht (or something like that)?

Guo Wengui doesn’t seem to be beloved by Beijing.

ccp

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Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #134 on: January 20, 2022, 04:07:55 PM »
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/20/904245273/steve-bannon-arrested-in-scheme-to-raise-money-for-trumps-border-wall

truthfully ,

does this not sound like something Bannon would do :

Bannon — who publicly referred to We Build the Wall as a "volunteer organization" — is alleged to have received more than $1 million from the organization via a nonprofit he controls, and "at least some of it was used to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in [his] personal expenses," according to the indictment.

The four men are each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/20/904245273/steve-bannon-arrested-in-scheme-to-raise-money-for-trumps-border-wall

here is NPR interview with Ben on Bannon

with caveat that it is the Democrat partisan NPR :
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interview/ben-shapiro/

ccp

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DougMacG

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lawyerlister gets rich privately for practice he decries publicly, Marc Elias
« Reply #137 on: February 03, 2022, 11:31:11 AM »
https://www.conservativereview.com/marc-elias-makes-millions-off-democratic-gerrymandering-efforts-2656541379.html

At the caucus Tues night, I met neighbor Kim Crockett formerly Center for the American Experiment who is running against George Soros funded incumbent MN Sec. of State Steve Simon.

She mentioned Marc Elias by name, with ties to the false Steele Dossier, as to who hand picked this guy to run this divided state's elections for the Left.

If you want to defeat George Soros and Marc Elias, defeat his puppets:
https://electionintegritywatch.org/after-a-first-of-its-kind-election-some-reforms-are-needed
https://www.kimsos.com/
https://secure.winred.com/kim-crockett-for-secretary-of-state/donate

In May there will be a Republican nomination for MN Attorney General to oppose Keith Ellison.  Once that is determined, same goes there.

Figure out how to make a difference.  This is not "voat harder".  This is act smarter.

FYI, crooked ballots in Minneapolis under the 'watch' of the Minnesota State Secretary of State brought you the 60th Dem Senator in 2009 and Obamacare.

Butterfly effect.  Elections in MN don't affect you?  Did you keep your Doctor?  Did you keep your plan?  Mine went up 12-fold after that.
 and now I'm a ward of the state.

Crafty_Dog

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Columbia Law Prof: Intolerant Lawyers should not be Judges
« Reply #138 on: February 10, 2022, 03:22:08 PM »
Intolerant Lawyers Shouldn’t Be Judges
Law school deans, faculty and students who stifle opposing views are unfit ever to sit on the bench.
By Philip Hamburger
Feb. 9, 2022 12:22 pm ET


What should be done about law-school deans and others in legal institutions who censor, cancel, blacklist, refuse to hire, fire, “investigate” and otherwise threaten others for their opinions? A partial answer lies in reminding them that their misconduct may disqualify them from ever sitting on the bench. At one point or another, most lawyers dream about being a judge. Lawyers and aspiring lawyers should remember that their conduct today may be the measure of their disqualification tomorrow.

The question came up last week at Georgetown Law School, when the dean, William Treanor, put a newly hired administrator and senior lecturer, Ilya Shapiro, on leave pending an investigation—merely because of a tweet about the pending Supreme Court nomination. Leaving aside that nonacademic opinion is no reason for punishing an academic, Mr. Treanor’s reaction is one more case of harassing dissenters.

The problem is now pervasive in law schools. On account of mere dissent, deans investigate faculty for their views, give them meager salary increases, bar them from teaching some subjects, and even threaten to fire them—as at Georgetown. It’s not only deans. Faculties or their appointment committees regularly refuse to hire people with the wrong views. Just as bad, student law-review editors exclude dissenting students from their boards and even threaten to fire editors whom they discover to have the wrong views, whether on pronouns or matters of law. Student editors also refuse to publish perspectives they dislike—at some journals, they have blocked conservative perspectives, originalist arguments, and “anti-administrative” (aka constitutional) positions. Many students and faculty therefore shy away from exploring such viewpoints. Quietly in the background, members of faculty oversight boards encourage or permit this narrow-mindedness. Cases therefore increasingly come before the courts, even the Supreme Court, with much academic literature on one side and little on the other. The intolerance thus becomes a due-process problem.

Elsewhere in the legal world, law firms discourage associates, even partners, from taking pro bono cases for dissenting individuals. At many large firms, representing terrorists after 9/11 was fine, even admirable. Now, representing conservatives can be a risky move for a young lawyer. Whether in bar associations or law firms, there are serious consequences for due process.


The situation has become so serious that it’s increasingly difficult to find academics and others to write or sign friend-of-the-court briefs on key issues—including freedom of speech. Many lawyers, even if apparently secure in tenure or partnership, are, if not afraid, uncomfortable being associated with what seem hazardous points of view.

What’s to be done? In the legal world, the first step is to remember that people who are intolerant aren’t fit to serve as judges or in other positions of legal authority.

If a dean, committee member, law-review editor, bar-association leader, or other person in authority cancels, blacklists, excludes, threatens or otherwise disadvantages scholars, students, lawyers or their work on the basis of their opinions, can he be trusted as a judge to listen with an open mind to conflicting legal positions? If someone can’t tolerate both sides, how can he be trusted to do justice impartially?

Otherwise-decent faculty, students and partners often go along with intolerance because they lack the stomach to protest it. They may tell themselves they’d do better on the bench. But academics have tenure, and partners have much financial security. So there’s little reason to think they’ll do better as judges.

The position of a judge is unlike any other job. Judges enjoy vast authority over their fellow Americans, and the primary defense against abuse of this authority is their internal commitment to impartiality—their dedication to hearing both sides with an open mind and deciding without prejudice. This is a constitutional requirement of judicial office and due process.

So it’s not too much to consider intolerance or cowardice disqualifying. Those who have shown themselves to be intolerant of difference or too fearful to stand up for what is right have no business sitting on the bench.

Mr. Hamburger is a professor at Columbia Law School and president of the New Civil Liberties Alliance.

ccp

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Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #139 on: February 10, 2022, 04:23:58 PM »
"Elsewhere in the legal world, law firms discourage associates, even partners, from taking pro bono cases for dissenting individuals. At many large firms, representing terrorists after 9/11 was fine, even admirable. Now, representing conservatives can be a risky move for a young lawyer. Whether in bar associations or law firms, there are serious consequences for due process."

yes we are worse then Nazis

just ask any lib

I don't know how we beat this.
legislation that needs to protect the Right......

when we get control of both Houses and the Pres (if possible)

pass laws that "amend"  the constitutional to explicitly stop bulling of  those on the Right solely for their ideas

like Dershowitz points out this is McCarthyism from the LEFT
same thing but much worse in my view.

ccp

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shysters mad at Durham!
« Reply #140 on: February 15, 2022, 09:00:03 AM »
 :roll:

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/02/15/sussmann-lawyers-furious-at-durham-for-exposing-spying-complain-about-breitbart-coverage/

Only corroborates my theory that the
shyster lawyer hack jornolisters
 
strategized to come out with lead story about Trump taxes
to give msm excuse to continue to black out Durham findings


ccp

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young lady takes on the Harvard mafia machine
« Reply #141 on: February 17, 2022, 03:20:46 PM »
without her written authorization
to release her medical records

then what they did is a crime

(or Court order to release)

just mentioned a doctor to someone is not authorization to release records

hope she wins this one BIG


Crafty_Dog

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McCarthy: Biden rejects Trump privilege claim on WH visitor logs
« Reply #142 on: February 18, 2022, 04:59:08 AM »

NR PLUS WHITE HOUSE
Biden Rejects Trump Privilege Claim on White House Visitor Logs
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
February 16, 2022 1:59 PM


President Joe Biden speaks before signing executive orders at the White House, January 28, 2021. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
The former president had sought to deny the House January 6 Committee access to the logs.


President Biden has directed the National Archives to make Trump White House visitor-log information available to the House January 6 Committee. The directive, which was expected and is consistent with a similar determination Biden previously made, contravenes former President Trump’s attempt to assert executive privilege in order to block disclosure of the logs to the Committee.

The New York Times reports that the White House issued Biden’s directive in a letter to national archivist David Ferriero yesterday, and planned to alert Trump’s lawyers today (though, not before the Times was given a look at the letter, as it acknowledges).

The Committee is focusing on the former president’s activities in the White House during the hours when the Capitol riot took place on January 6, 2021. More broadly, it is also examining other Trump team gambits to overturn the results of the 2020 election — the litigation challenging Biden’s victory in several states; the efforts to persuade Republican legislators and election officials in these disputed states to entertain unproven claims of fraud and adjust vote tabulations; the unsuccessful efforts to persuade Justice Department officials to induce disputed states to investigate these fraud claims; discussions about the possibility of causing federal officials to seize state voting machines so they could be examined for evidence of tampering; the scheme to have Republican officials in disputed states gin to up slates of Trump electors that could be offered as alternatives to state-certified slates of Biden electors; the efforts to persuade and browbeat then-vice president Mike Pence into refusing to count certified electoral votes from the disputed states at the January 6 joint session of Congress; and so on.

The Committee understandably believes that the visitor logs, in conjunction with other evidence it has gathered from interviewing well over 500 witnesses and perusing a wide array of audio/video exhibits and thousands of relevant documents, will shed light on these matters. The Times reports that Biden regards the congressional investigation as “urgent” and the Committee’s need for the logs as “compelling.” He has thus directed the National Archives to provide the logs to the Committee within the next 15 days. In rejecting Trump’s privilege claims, White House Counsel Dana Remus explained, Biden concluded that “constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield, from Congress or the public, information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself.”


Since only the sitting president wields the Constitution’s executive power, one would think that only the sitting president could assert executive privilege. Yet a Supreme Court decision involving the disposition of President Nixon’s White House records in the wake of the Watergate scandal — Nixon v. Administrator (1977) — opined that former presidents maintain some undetermined quantum of executive privilege covering materials from their own administrations, which may theoretically be asserted over the sitting president’s objection. This dubious suggestion no doubt owes to tradition: Historically, presidential materials were presumed to be the property of the president whose administration generated them. Following Watergate, Congress enacted the Presidential Records Act to clarify that the records belong to the public.


While the courts have not formally abandoned Nixon v. Administrator in this regard, they have circumvented it by giving broad deference to the sitting president’s decisions about whether or not to assert privilege. As I have previously detailed, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a lengthy, unanimous decision in December, upholding a federal district judge’s rejection of Trump’s privilege claims. Last month, the Supreme Court affirmed that decision in an 8–1 ruling.

Trump could sue to try to get the courts to countermand Biden. Based on the rulings already made (which clearly anticipated that this situation could recur), he would be sure to lose, so the point of such a lawsuit would be to delay the Committee’s work, in hopes that it could not release its report before the midterm elections — when he hopes that Republicans will win back the House and disband the Committee. (This possibility is one of the reasons I have urged that the Committee be restructured).

Yet, this strategy has no realistic prospect of success. Having already decided the privilege issue in principle, the courts are very likely to reject any new Trump lawsuit rapidly. The Committee, moreover, has done enough work already that, even if access to some materials were blocked, it would still be poised to produce at least a preliminary report in advance of the midterms.

Biden has not given the Committee blanket access to his predecessor’s records. In late December, he asserted executive privilege to shield from disclosure hundreds of pages of Trump-era documents, citing national-security concerns, among other reasons. And the Democrat-controlled Committee acceded to Biden’s privilege assertion rather than taking the White House to court, which could be read as further evidence that it believes it will have enough information to produce a final report in the coming months regardless.

In short, Trump has few good options left for impeding the Committee’s work.

ccp

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A new category of law
« Reply #143 on: March 15, 2022, 05:32:42 AM »
that must be taught in law school

besides CRT :

suing Trump !:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-great-trump-goose-chase

I wonder how much these lawyers get paid for this?

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Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #145 on: March 21, 2022, 11:49:30 AM »
https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-lefts-attack-on-attorney-client-confidentiality-the-case-of-trump-adviser-john-eastman_4346758.html?utm_source=Opinion&utm_campaign=opinion-2022-03-20&utm_medium=email&est=KxtWY%2Byq%2BK4diEYqaLx%2BbVZSgLVE0K0I2dYsddcbMpzb8oRwJL%2FGHY6ro9%2FZnz9fJyhh

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The Left’s Attack on Attorney-Client Confidentiality: The Case of Trump Adviser John Eastman
Rob Natelson
Rob Natelson
 March 19, 2022 Updated: March 20, 2022biggersmaller Print
Commentary

Americans are witnessing attacks by the “progressive” left on some of our oldest and most treasured rights. These include not only constitutional rights such as free speech and freedom of religion, but some even older than the Constitution itself.

Until recently, a consensus spanning the political spectrum protected these guarantees. But to the authoritarians of the new American left, nothing is sacred.

Attacks on Rights Older Than the Constitution
Last year, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the powerful House Homeland Security Committee, made a stunning suggestion. It pertained to members of Congress who, during the Jan. 6, 2021 electoral vote count, favored investigating the election results. Thompson suggested they should be placed on the national terrorist “no-fly” list.

Thompson either didn’t know or didn’t care about the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause (Article I, Section 6, Clause 1). Based on a provision in the 1689 English Bill of Rights, the Speech and Debate Clause protects lawmakers from persecution or retaliation from other branches of government because of what they say or how they vote (pdf).

Other “progressives” demanded that Congressmen who voted the “wrong way” during the electoral vote count be formally disqualified from office under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

Another guarantee older than the Constitution is the right of those accused of crime to a speedy trial. Codified by the Sixth Amendment, it’s traceable to Magna Carta (1215). Yet the right to a speedy trial apparently has been denied to some of the defendants detained in last year’s Capitol incursion.

The attorney-client privilege also antedates the Constitution. It was firmly established in England no later than the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). The privilege guarantees that if you confide in your lawyer, he or she cannot be compelled to disclose what you said in confidence. It also protects papers generated while your lawyer is working for you.

Like other treasured “privileges”—such as habeas corpus and trial by jury—attorney-client confidentiality is central to our legal system. It helps assure citizens effective legal representation. If it were lost, many accused people would feel they couldn’t tell their lawyers the whole truth. This would undermine the quality of their legal representation. Moreover, if lawyers are compelled to reveal information about their own clients, many of those accused would stand defenseless against government prosecutors.

Rep. Thompson appears to have no more regard for the attorney-client privilege than for the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause. The “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol,” which he chairs, is trying to deny the attorney-client privilege to former President Donald Trump and to his lawyer, professor John Eastman.

John Eastman
Eastman advised Trump during the latter part of 2020 and early 2021. He also helped develop strategy for addressing contested election results.

The mainstream media have gone to unconscionable lengths to abuse Eastman. One of their gentler tactics is to label him with epithets such as “right wing lawyer” (pdf). Calling Eastman a “right wing lawyer” is like calling Winston Churchill “an English cigar-smoker”: It omits everything you really need to know about the man.

Eastman is one of the nation’s most respected constitutional scholars. After a stellar student record at a top law school, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Eastman practiced law for several years, then became a law professor. He served on the faculty of Chapman University law school for 20 years, and served as dean for four. He has an extraordinary record of scholarly research and public service. Several versions of his résumé are freely available online (pdf; see also here), which the mainstream media have chosen to ignore.

Eastman inspired some of my own scholarly work. In the early 2000s, I attended a national law professors’ convention at which he was a panelist. His presentation discussed the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution’s General Welfare Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1). I was sufficiently intrigued to research the subject myself. The results included two major scholarly articles (pdf) (pdf).

I’ve met Eastman personally perhaps three or four times. In 2016, for example, we both attended a simulated convention of states. He served as a commissioner (delegate) and I as a constitutional adviser. His fellow commissioners—mostly legislators from all 50 states—elected him vice president of that convention. However, we had no contact during the election controversy and none pertaining to this essay.

Eastman and I have had our disagreements as well. Among them: I disagreed with his opinion that Vice President Mike Pence could have unilaterally delayed the electoral vote count. But since when do law professors always agree?

In view of Eastman’s reputation and expertise, Trump was fortunate to get him as legal counsel. And, of course, most Americans would concur that there are few gigs more honorable than advising a President of the United States—whether they like the particular president or not.

Enter Thompson’s Jan. 6 Committee
Thompson’s committee is a congressional fishing expedition. Key to a congressional fishing expedition is this: Instead of doing the investigative work yourself, get someone else to do it, so you can take the credit and still have plenty of time left to raise campaign money.

Thompson and his committee want Eastman to do their work for them. So they have demanded that he produce tens of thousands of emails and other documents stemming from his legal representation of Trump.

The committee offers several excuses for this extraordinary demand. First, it claims that Eastman may not have had a professional relationship with Trump. This is nonsense. Late in 2020, Eastman wrote and filed a Supreme Court brief on Trump’s behalf.

The committee also claims an exception to the attorney-client privilege for planning future criminal or fraudulent acts. But there’s no evidence that Eastman did anything more serious than plead the case to Vice President Pence for postponing the electoral count. If trying to persuade a politician were a crime, then every lobbyist in the country would be in jail.

In fact, despite all the anti-Trump prosecutors out there—including those in Eastman’s home state of California—not one has charged him with a crime. His law-abiding record contrasts sharply with the criminal street violence so common among the political allies of the Democrats who accuse him.

During the time leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, electoral vote count, Eastman tried to buy enough time so that claims of election irregularities (some of which since have been proven or partially substantiated) could be investigated. His obvious goals were, first, to ensure that the president sworn in on Inauguration Day was the person who actually won the election and, second, if nothing came of the investigation, to assure that Trump supporters accepted the results.

We can see this in a Jan. 6, 2021, email that Eastman wrote to Vice President Pence’s lawyer. In the email, Eastman first referred to how Congress had violated the Electoral Count Act, a statute not binding on Congress because it’s constitutionally defective. Then he added:

I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation and adjourn for 10 days to allow the [state] legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here. If none of that moves the needle, at least a good portion of the 75 million people who supported President Trump will have seen a process that allowed the illegality to be aired.

This is what the committee and the mainstream media persist in labeling as an effort to “overturn the election,” “subvert the election,” and “justify a coup.” Whether or not Eastman’s request to Pence’s lawyer was legally sound, it clearly was patriotic rather than insurrectionary.

The Cost
Possibly because committee members fear a Republican sweep in the November congressional elections, they have ramped up the pressure to get Eastman to prove their case for them. A Democratically appointed federal district judge has sided in large part with the committee. The judge ordered Eastman to review 1,500 pages of legal documents a day—later reduced to 500—and, as to each document provide explanations as to why it should or should not be subject to attorney-client privilege. That prevents Eastman (who no longer has an academic salary) from working for other clients during this high-pressure schedule.

The persecution of Eastman is probably intended as warning to anyone who challenges “progressive” domination of America. It shows that even the oldest and most firmly established personal guarantees are no longer safe from zealots on the political left. It’s an additional reason for both (1) cleaning house this November and (2) curbing federal power so as to reduce the ability of people like Thompson and his committee to abuse it.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Rob Natelson
Rob Natelson
Following
Robert G. Natelson, a former constitutional law professor, is senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at the Independence Institute in Denver.

Crafty_Dog

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Justice Thomas
« Reply #146 on: March 30, 2022, 12:42:33 AM »
The Hypocritical Attack on Justice Clarence Thomas
The left smears him for the opinions of his wife, Ginni, a standard never applied to other judges.

By Jason L. Riley
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March 29, 2022 6:10 pm ET
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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas listens as President Trump speaks on the South Lawn of the White House, Oct. 26, 2020.
PHOTO: PATRICK SEMANSKY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

“We are long past the day when a wife’s opinions are assumed to be the same as her husband’s.”

So argued Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, in 2013. If the professor’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s been cited by seemingly every major media outlet since news broke last week that Virginia Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, sent text messages to Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows urging him to fight the 2020 election results.

The Los Angeles Times described Mr. Gillers as a “judicial ethics scholar,” and the New York Times dubbed him “one of the nation’s foremost legal-ethics experts.” But it turns out that the professor’s ethics, like those of a lot of liberal Democrats these days, are situational. In 2013 he was defending a decision by late-Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals not to recuse himself from a case involving the American Civil Liberties Union, even though Reinhart’s wife, Ramona Ripston, had served as executive director of the ACLU for Southern California.

“Ms. Ripston’s opinions, views and public pronouncements of support for the district court opinion . . . do not trigger any reasonable basis to question Judge Reinhardt’s ability to honor his oath of office,” asserted a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Mr. Gillers and four others. “A contrary outcome would deem a judge’s spouse unable to hold any position of advocacy, creating what amounts to a marriage penalty.”

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Reinhardt had a well-earned reputation as one of the most liberal judges on one of the nation’s most liberal appellate courts. Which might explain why Mr. Gillers and his partisan allies have changed their tune. “ ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ is not an acceptable strategy for the Thomases’ marriage,” he’s now telling reporters. “Both have crossed a line and deserve no benefit of the doubt.”

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To anyone not wearing ideological blinders, Justice Thomas and his wife are just as deserving of the benefit of the doubt as Reinhardt and his wife were. And there are other examples. Judge Cornelia Pillard of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is married to David Cole, national legal director of the ACLU. The husband of Alice Batchelder, a judge on the Sixth Circuit, served as speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives. Marjorie Rendell was an appellate judge when her husband, Ed, served as governor of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Democratic National Committee. When these judges had to recuse themselves from a case due to a conflict of interest, they were trusted to do so.

Justice Thomas’s critics don’t want to hold him to a higher standard so much as a different standard. Major cases involving abortion, gun control, affirmative action and religious liberty are on the high court’s docket this year. The left’s goal is to diminish his influence—and by extension the influence of the court’s conservative wing. And since the target is Justice Thomas, who has been driving his ideological opponents batty for the past 30 years, the thinking is that anything goes.

“The facts are clear here,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar told ABC News on Sunday. “You have the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice advocating for an insurrection.” No, those aren’t the facts, unless the senator knows something that the rest of us don’t. There has been no evidence made public that Mrs. Thomas called for violence or had anything to do with the ransacking of the Capitol by Trump supporters. Lumping her in with those who did is a smear. All we know is that she urged Mr. Meadows to “stand firm” against what she believed was an election “heist.” If a case comes before the court that involves Mrs. Thomas or her activities, Justice Thomas can make a decision about recusal at that time.

Perhaps more disturbingly, Ms. Klobuchar, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sounded like she was threatening Chief Justice John Roberts to do the bidding of her fellow Democrats in Congress. “All I hear is silence from the Supreme Court right now, and that better change in the coming week,” she said. “Not only should [Justice Thomas] recuse himself, but this Supreme Court badly needs ethics rules.” The chief justice has made no secret that he cares deeply about the reputation of the court. One way to damage that reputation would be to bend to the politics and passions of the day in the way that people like Ms. Klobuchar are suggesting.

Clarence Thomas is the longest-serving member of the court and has been consistent in his jurisprudence over the decades. We trust judges to behave professionally and with integrity when it comes to recusal decisions, and Justice Thomas has earned our trust.


Crafty_Dog

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Biden's transformation of judiciary in full swing
« Reply #148 on: March 31, 2022, 09:15:18 AM »
second

Biden’s transformation of federal judiciary in full swing P

resident Biden took office in January 2021 with clear instructions about undoing his predecessor’s impact on the federal judiciary. Weeks earlier, more than 70 liberal groups issued a statement urging Mr. Biden to appoint judges who would advance “the administration’s priorities” on a range of issues. Their demand became Mr. Biden’s plan and, while a lot of attention is focused on his first Supreme Court nominee, he already has made significant progress in pushing the judiciary in that more liberal, politicized direction.

The Constitution requires the Senate’s “Advice and Consent” before a president can appoint those he has nominated. This role was supposed to identify “unfit characters” who, for “special and strong reasons,” should not be appointed. Both political parties embraced this design and, between 1789 and 2000, the Senate confirmed 97% of judicial nominees with no opposition and 96% without a recorded vote.

In addition, during the 20th century, senators of one party opposed an average of just 1% of judicial candidates nominated by a president of the other party. The Senate took an extra vote to invoke cloture, or end debate, on an even smaller percentage of nominees. Since the turn of the 21st century, however, each of these confirmation process norms has radically changed. Today, resistance and opposition have become the rule rather than the exception.

This transformation was especially dramatic during the Trump administration. Only 22% of former President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees were confirmed without opposition or a recorded vote, the average Democrat voted against a majority of Trump nominees, and Democrats forced the Senate to take a cloture vote on 80% of them.

A report from the Heritage Foundation documents how this trend has continued since Mr. Biden took office. In his first year, not a single judicial nominee was confirmed without opposition or without a cloture vote, and the average Republican voted against 74% of Mr.

Biden’s nominees.

Despite this volatility, the president appointed 67% more judges in his first year than the average of his six predecessors. Put differently, Mr. Biden appointed nearly 5% of the federal judiciary in 2021, compared to an average of 3% during those previous presidents’ first year. This is especially significant since there were 65% fewer vacancies when he took office than the historical average. He was able to appoint so many judges because a record number of judges decided to leave active service during Mr. Biden’s first year.

Mr. Biden and his liberal allies like to highlight the personal and professional “diversity” of his judicial nominees, but this emphasis is not what it seems. If it were, more than 40 Democrats would not have voted to filibuster, and then to oppose, Mr. Trump’s appointment of the first Asian Americans appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals in two circuits. When he was a senator, Mr. Biden himself voted six times to filibuster the nomination of Miguel Estrada and twice the nomination of Judge Janice Rogers Brown to the same court on which his Supreme Court nominee sits today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

No, diversity is actually a means to an end. Research by Harvard professor Maya Sen shows that judges with certain personal characteristics and professional experience are more likely to rule a certain way in particular kinds of cases. Those results, after all, are what really matter to Mr. Biden and his liberal allies. The judicial ends justify the political means.

The Senate will narrowly approve Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Mr. Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, within a week or so and will then return to the task of transforming the rest of the federal judiciary. If Mr. Biden’s first year is any indication, the machinery within the administration for identifying nominees and the Senate’s process for approving them is greased and ready to go.


• Thomas Jipping is a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies

ccp

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the Democrats lawyer army
« Reply #149 on: April 02, 2022, 11:01:53 AM »
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2022/04/01/more-than-60-of-yale-law-students-hate-free-speech-police/

send these over to ukraine to yell and scream at Russians and see how far we get

the Dems to give the lawyers lots of business

so most are Democrats

it ain't about justice despite their screams