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Shit-Posting All the Way to SCOTUS

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I was going to write about how important today’s filing in Illinois’ challenge to Trump’s invasion is.

Thankfully, Steve Vladeck did that so I don’t have to.

As for why it’s this application that presents the Court with a make-or-break moment, it’s worth reflecting on what it would mean if the full Court grants the Trump administration’s request.

First, and immediately, it will mean that the Trump administration is allowed to deploy troops onto the streets of Chicago (and Broadview) to effectively militarize the enforcement of our immigration laws. Although the application to the Supreme Court is replete with references to protecting federal property, the federal government doesn’t need the authorities that are currently blocked to do that; it can use regular troops, almost certainly without invoking 10 U.S.C. § 12406 or any other statute. (This is the “protective” power.) The power the Trump administration is seeking here is much broader—and would almost certainly mean that federalized National Guard troops would start accompanying ICE officers on immigration raids and other operations—even if they’re not making the arrests themselves. That would be a … dramatic … escalation relative to where we are today.

[snip]

Third, and most importantly, it would allow the federal government to obtain emergency relief based upon either (1) a limitless view of what it means to be “unable to execute the laws of the United States”; or (2) an incredibly one-sided factual narrative that was expressly rejected by the district judge, and that the unanimous court of appeals panel refused to disturb. The justices aren’t factfinders, and absent some “clear” reason to believe that the lower courts erred in discrediting the Trump administration’s factual claims (when, in fact, there are lots of reasons to believe that the district court was right), to grant relief in the face of those findings is to not just show stunning disrespect to both the lower courts and the appropriate standard of review; it’s to send the message that the facts just don’t matter—so long as five or more justices personally believe whatever the federal government is telling them.

That would be a big enough problem in other contexts (I’ve already written about the casual relationship Justice Kavanaugh’s Vasquez Perdomo concurrence has with the facts), but it would be utterly catastrophic here. After all, armed with a grant of emergency relief on this application, what is to stop the Trump administration from making comparably inflated and/or invented claims about the situations on the ground in other American cities as a pretextual basis for deploying troops? And what’s to stop it from making those claims not (just) tomorrow, but next November—on the eve of the midterm elections?

Having outsourced that gloomy contemplation to him, I want to point to several things that might lead SCOTUS to exercise some sanity.

First, Vladeck cited from Judge April Perry’s ruling on the lack of credibility of the affiants that the Administration submitted. But he didn’t note the paragraph following the general credibility assessment, in which Judge Perry described how the government threatened to invade the courthouse itself.

Finally, the Court notes its concern about a third declaration submitted by Defendants, in which the declarant asserted that the FPS “requested federalized National Guard personnel to support protection of the Federal District Court on Friday, October 10, 2025.” Doc. 62-3. This purported fact was incendiary and seized upon by both parties at oral argument. It was also inaccurate, as the Court noted on the record. To their credit, Defendants have since submitted a corrected declaration, and the affiant has declared that they did not make the error willfully. Doc. 65-1. All of the parties have been moving quickly to compile factual records and legal arguments, and mistakes in such a context are inevitable. That said, Defendants only presented declarations from three affiants with first-hand knowledge of events in Illinois. And, as described above, all three contain unreliable information. [links added]

Over the weekend, in response to a question about the Insurrection Act, Trump noted that one benefit (to him) of invoking it would be to shut down the courts.

This is not just a threat to the sovereignty of states. It is, explicitly, a threat to the coequal status of the courts, up to and including SCOTUS. That may make them view this threat differently.

And Trump hasn’t helped his credibility since then.

Perhaps most spectacularly, the details regarding a number of “Kavanaugh stops” have come out since Judge Perry ruled for Chicago, not least the case of a teenaged girl who was violently detained in Hoffman Estates.

A teen in Hoffman Estates was thrown to the ground by what appeared to be a federal agent this past weekend, and the teen and two of her friends were detained for hours before they were released.

Her parents spoke out Monday after they say their daughter, 18-year-old Evelyn, is still shaken from the experience.

Evelyn’s parents said her boyfriend got a call that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were in his neighborhood. They went to warn people who live there and recorded the officers. This led to a violent arrest, in which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it did not take part.

Video from the Friday incident shows sirens and undercover law enforcement cars flooding the Hoffman Estates neighborhood where the arrest happened.

The video shows Evelyn getting pulled out of the passenger seat. She is then thrown to the ground, all while saying she is not resisting arrest, as the officer handcuffed her and appeared to put a knee on her back.

[snip]

In a post on X, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin commented on Evelyn’s arrest video, saying, “Imagine being so desperate to demonize law enforcement you post a video from a burglary arrest Chicago police made over a year ago. This isn’t even ICE.”

Hoffman Estates police, however, said ICE was in the area on Friday.

Her treatment not only debunks Justice Kavanaugh’s claim that the impact of racial profiling on US citizens is minimal, but it exposes Tricia McLaughlin as a fabricator.

Meanwhile, even as Trump is claiming a rebellion in Chicago, as many as 250,000 people showed up for the No Kings protest in Chicago on Saturday. While there were clashes at Broadview, where the ICE facility is, I’ve seen no reports of disturbances at the protest itself. Chicago can rightly point to the peaceful protest as a counter to the inflated claims from the government.

Then there’s Trump’s childish tantrums this weekend.

Chicago is arguing that Trump is invading not for any reason tied to law enforcement, but out of animus. It’s hard to imagine any more succinct expression of such animus than Trump’s shit post responding to the protests.

And finally, the fiasco at Camp Pendleton — where Trump whined after Gavin Newsom shut down the freeway during Trump’s live ammunition display at the base, only to be vindicated when shrapnel from the event hit JD Vance’s motorcade.

Vladeck is right: If SCOTUS grants Trump relief here, it will be far worse than any of their earlier shadow docket interventions. Let’s hope that Trump’s weekend tantrums will finally convince the court that he can no longer be indulged.

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Chuck Grassley Says the FBI Must Combat Sexual Misconduct But the Senate Can Whitewash It

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In a piece billed as “analysis” describing why Kash Patel likely faces little Republican opposition, the NYT’s Catie Edmondson chose to quote one after another Republican making false claims about bias from the Bureau:

  • Thom Tillis falsely claiming Patel’s nomination fulfilled Trump’s promise to “enforce our laws equally and fairly”
  • Chuck Grassley lying that the “unprecedented raid of President Trump’s home in Florida” was “to serve a warrant for records” and not conduct a search necessitated by Trump’s earlier obstruction
  • Joni Ernst imagining that Kash’s nomination would “create much-needed transparency at the F.B.I”
  • John Cornyn asserting that “no one should have to go through what President Trump went through by a partisan Department of Justice and F.B.I.,” which he falsely portrayed as a retribution tour launched by Jim Comey
  • Markwayne Mullin imagining that Kash might “actually get them focused on mission, rather than politics”

What the NYT describes but does not factually label is that most of the Republican party either parrots or truly believes Donald Trump’s manufactured claims of victimhood. But unless you describe that those claims that poor Donald Trump has been targeted are false, then you simply participate in the propaganda, blindly performing the same ritual of obeisance the Republican Senators are.

NYT quotes, but does not link, the letter in which Grassley issued his rant. Fact checking the letter (sent the day before Chris Wray announced he would resign, as Grassley demanded) might have provided a way to demonstrate the pile of false claims on which this impression of the FBI was built.

Oh sure, this particular journalist might not have had time to point out that on December 10, Alexander Smirnov answered any questions about the bribery claim he made up against Joe Biden by signing a plea deal (which the NYT wrote up yesterday, but buried), which Grassley complained about this way:

Consistent with that FBI failure, yet another glaring example of FBI’s broken promises under your leadership is its inexcusable failure to investigate bribery allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden, while strictly scrutinizing former President Trump. You’ve repeatedly claimed you would ensure the FBI does justice, “free of fear, favor, or partisan influence.”25 The FBI under your watch, however, had possession of incriminating information against President Biden for three years until I exposed the existence of the record outlining those allegations, but did nothing to investigate it.26 This record, known as an FD-1023, documented allegations of bribery between and among then-Vice President Biden, Hunter Biden, and Ukrainian officials.27 The FBI confidential human source (CHS) behind this FD-1023 was on the FBI’s payroll during the Obama administration, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, was given permission to violate the law, and the information he provided was used in prosecutions. The FBI called this CHS “highly credible,” and Deputy Director Abbate publicly testified in response to the FBI’s refusal to remove obstructive redactions from that document that “[w]e often redact documents to protect sources and methods…the document was redacted to protect the source as everyone knows, and this is a question of life and death, potentially.” 28 Then after the FD-1023 was made public – which didn’t include the source’s name – DOJ not only publicly named him, but indicted him, calling into question the truthfulness of Deputy Director Abbate’s testimony and his refusal to be transparent.29 Still, to-date, the DOJ and FBI have neither answered whether they investigated the substance of the FD-1023, nor have they provided an explanation for any effort undertaken to obtain the financial records and other pieces of evidence referenced within the document. This sounds a lot like Director Comey’s leadership of the FBI, which was nothing short of shameful.

As I noted on the Senate floor on February 27, 2024, if a highly regarded source had alleged President Trump accepted a bribe, the FBI would pursue this information without keeping it stored away in one of its dusty closets for three years.30

Even before Smirnov’s plea agreement, though, there was plenty in the indictment (like reference to all the travel records that disprove Smirnov’s claims) that not just debunk Grassley’s claims, but make clear that the scandal here was that Scott Brady falsely insinuated to Congress that Smirnov’s travel records corroborated his claims, when they did the opposite.

There’s a far, far bigger problem though: Grassley’s claims about how FBI would respond to a claim of bribery if one implicated Trump are ridiculous.

When FBI (in reality, the decisions here were repeatedly made by DOJ, not FBI, which returning SJC Chair Grassley should be expected to know) got credible claims Trump had been paid by Egyptian spooks, first Robert Mueller (probably Rod Rosenstein), then Bill Barr prevented investigators from obtaining the financial records to pursue the case, a version of which story NYT published in August.

There’s the tip that — the NYT described — the Italians gave Barr and John Durham in 2019 about “suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump,” a detail Durham chose to exclude from his final report.

There’s the $2 billion investment that Saudis made with Jared Kushner after Trump’s son-in-law finished his nepotistic service in the White House; as the NYT laid out, even the Saudis had doubts that Kushner had the expertise to invest that money. A NYT follow-up showed that Kushner’s firm has pocketed $112 million in fees without showing any profit from investments. Democrats have called for a Special Counsel to investigate that, but the Special Counsel-happy Merrick Garland has not done so.

And since the election, a Chinese national whom the SEC has accused of fraud, Justin Sun, effectively just sent Donald Trump $18 million (here’s a less direct NYT story on the how cryptocurrency creates real opportunity for corruption). Where’s your call for fairness, Chuck?

But there were alternative ways to debunk Grassley’s lies other than pointing to the six NYT stories that disproved his claims that FBI ignored a bribery allegation about Biden but chased them with Trump. Consider his most justified complaint, the one with which he begins his rant: The FBI has not explained whether it has pursued allegations of sexual misconduct within its own ranks fairly.

One of the most egregious examples is the FBI’s failure to provide basic information I requested more than two years ago related to the FBI’s ongoing mishandling of sexual harassment claims made by the FBI’s female employees. This request was not pulled out of a hat. It was based on credible whistleblower disclosures alleging hundreds of FBI employees had retired or resigned to avoid accountability for sexual misconduct. 5 Whistleblowers also alleged the FBI had disciplined senior officials less severely than their subordinates for this misconduct.6 In November 2022, I released internal FBI documents corroborating these disclosures.7 I and my staff ever since have asked repeatedly for information sufficient to determine how FBI handled these serious claims and how widespread the problem really is. The FBI, for its part, told the media it would provide the information to me.8 You personally told me at a December 5, 2023, Judiciary Committee hearing, when I confronted you with the FBI’s blatant inaction, that you would check with your team and then follow up with me.9 Your Deputy Director, Paul Abbate, also publicly stated the FBI is serious about removing officials for sexual misconduct. 10 After a year since you made that pledge, over three years since Deputy Director Abbate’s public comments, and after many more requests to FBI to provide this information, neither of you have followed up or followed through. This inexcusable delay and obstruction by you and Deputy Director Abbate has prevented Congress and the Judiciary Committee from addressing the shocking sexual misconduct at the FBI. This is a promise made and broken, on an issue of utmost importance.

Chuck Grassley says FBI’s failure to deal with credible claims of sexual misconduct is “an issue of utmost importance.”

Huh.

Grassley has not yet weighed in on the nominations of Pete Hegseth, Linda McMahon, or Kimberly Guilfoyle — all of whom have been implicated in sexual harassment or assault, but his comments about RFK Jr thus far have focused on, “educating him about agriculture,” rather than the assault of a nanny RFK admitted to. Other Senators, though, have suggested that Hegseth’s accusers should not enjoy the same protections that Grassley has fiercely defended for FBI whistleblowers, and have brushed off how Hegseth’s accuser could testify publicly given the nondisclosure agreement he paid her to sign.

More curiously, when he was asked about the sexual misconduct allegations against Matt Gaetz, Grassley falsely claimed his committee, “did a very thorough job following up on every accusation made against (Supreme Court) Justice Kavanaugh and nothing ever materialized.” Grassley said that after Sheldon Whitehouse issued a report showing that the FBI had forwarded all tips to the White House, rather than chasing them down.

On instructions from the White House, the FBI did not investigate thousands of tips that came in through the FBI’s tip line. Instead, all tips related to Kavanaugh were forwarded to the White House without investigation. If anything, the White House may have used the tip line to steer FBI investigators away from derogatory or damaging information.

Whitehouse’s report describing the whitewash FBI did quotes now-debunked claims Grassley made about the thoroughness of the investigation several times.

“These uncorroborated accusations have been unequivocally and repeatedly rejected by Judge Kavanaugh, and neither the Judiciary Committee nor the FBI could locate any third parties who can attest to any of the allegations.”

[snip]

Then-Chairman Grassley said that the FBI “decided” which individuals to contact,98 that the FBI’s investigation was being conducted “in accordance with the agency’s standard operating procedures,” that “the career public servants and professionals at the FBI know what they’re doing and how best to conduct a background investigation,” and that the FBI’s investigation “should be carried out independent of political or partisan considerations.”

If you want to talk about FBI’s inadequate response to sexual misconduct allegations, then surely its whitewash of allegations against Brett Kavanaugh should be included? Want to complain about the FBI? Complain about how they deprived you, Chuck Grassley, of treating misconduct claims against Brett Kavanaugh as “an issue of utmost importance.”

But doing so would expose Grassley’s crass double standard, refusing to exercise the same due diligence with sexual misconduct allegations that, he complains, the FBI has not done in his own job, exercising advice and consent with Donald Trump’s nominees.

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Chief Justice John Roberts Just Invited President Biden to Pardon Nicholas Roske

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Since Republicans on the Supreme Court voted to make Presidents king yesterday, I’ve been thinking about ways to reverse the decision.

Some of those ways (like expanding the court) are structural, long term, and involve winning both the presidency and Senate in November by good margins.

But another way is to get the court to recognize how insane their ruling was in practice, to encourage them to moderate their order, as they did by using the Rahimi decision to moderate their Bruen insanity.

Another way is to use the pretrial hearings on what counts as official and unofficial conduct as a way to demonstrate the problem with the decision. Since any decisions Tanya Chutkan makes will come back to SCOTUS, they will have to review their handiwork.

But the one I keep thinking of is action President Biden can take that would demonstrate to the Justices the problem with their decision.

Some such actions would be symbolic: Biden can order the military to use military planes to fly women needing abortions in states where it is banned for necessary medical care, for example. Acting as Commander in Chief, his power would be at its zenith.

On Bluesky, someone recommended selling Willie Nelson a pardon — one guitar — for smoking marijuana in a National Park in a state where pot is legal.

But the most symbolic way that President Biden could convey the insanity of yesterday’s decision would be to pardon Nicholas Roske. Roske is the suicidal man who, in June 2022, flew to Maryland with vague plans but real weapons to assassinate Brett Kavanaugh. Since he filed a suppression motion for admissions he made after his arrest, he and the government have been discussing a plea.

Let me be clear: I don’t think it would be wise to pardon Roske. Biden has the unreviewable authority to do so, but it would be stupid to do so. While Roske seems he is mentally ill, he nevertheless armed himself and took steps that put Justice Kavanaugh in danger.

But Roske is exactly the kind of menace that John Roberts just immunized yesterday.

The weapons Roske armed himself with — including a Glock, pepper spray, zip ties, a hammer, a screw driver, a nail punch, a crow bar, and duct tape — were precisely the kinds of things with which January 6ers armed themselves when they attacked the Capitol and threatened to kill Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell. Many January 6ers, like Roske, suffer from mental illnesses. Like Roske, many Jan6ers were trying to give their life meaning.

The only thing that makes Roske different is that he wasn’t sent by a political candidate trying to get elected.

Still, Roske is always used, especially by Congressional Republicans, to describe the unique danger the Justices face.

There would be no better way for Biden to make it clear to the Justices what kind of danger they have blessed than to pardon Roske (for which, again, I’m not advocating).

With their ruling yesterday, the Justices have said that Members of Congress, Biden voters, and democracy itself must face similar threats without recourse. And one way to make that clear would be to pardon Roske.

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Brett Kavanaugh Thinks that Jack Smith Is as Crazy as Ken Starr Was

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There was a subtle moment in yesterday’s SCOTUS hearing on Trump’s absolute immunity claim.

Former Whitewater prosecutor Brett Kavanaugh asked Michael Dreeben whether DOJ had weighed in on this prosecution.

Did the President weigh in? he asked. The Attorney General?

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: As you’ve indicated, this case has huge implications for the presidency, for the future of the presidency, for the future of the country, in my view. You’ve referred to the Department a few times as having supported the position. Who in the Department? Is it the president, the attorney general?

MR. DREEBEN: The Solicitor General of the United States. Part of the way in which the special counsel functions is as a component of the Department of Justice.

The regulations envision that we reach out and consult. And on a question of this magnitude, that involves equities that are far beyond this prosecution, as the questions of the Court have —

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: So it’s the solicitor general?

MR. DREEBEN: Yes.

Having been told that Jack Smith consulted with a Senate-confirmed DOJ official on these tough issues, Kavanaugh immediately launched into a screed about Morrison v. Olson, the circuit court decision that upheld the Independent Counsel statute.

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: Okay. Second, like Justice Gorsuch, I’m not focused on the here and now of this case. I’m very concerned about the future. And I think one of the Court’s biggest mistakes was Morrison versus Olson.

MR. DREEBEN: Mm-hmm.

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: I think that was a terrible decision for the presidency and for the country. And not because there were bad people who were independent counsels, but President Reagan’s administration, President Bush’s administration, President Clinton’s administration were really hampered —

MR. DREEBEN: Yes.

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: — in their view —

MR. DREEBEN: Mm-hmm.

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: — all three, by the independent counsel structure. And what I’m worried about here is that that was kind of let’s relax Article II a bit for the needs of the moment. And I’m worried about the similar kind of situation applying here. That was a prosecutor investigating a president in each of those circumstances. And someone picked from the opposite party, the current president and — usually —

MR. DREEBEN: Mm-hmm.

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: — was how it worked. And Justice Scalia wrote that the — the fairness of a process must be adjudged on the basis of what it permits to happen —

Kavanaugh slipped here, and described the horror of “Presidents,” not former Presidents, routinely being subject to investigation going forward.

MR. DREEBEN: Mm-hmm.

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: — not what it produced in a particular case. You’ve emphasized many times regularity, the Department of Justice. And he said: And I think this applied to the independent counsel system, and it could apply if presidents are routinely subject to investigation going forward. “One thing is certain, however. It involves investigating and perhaps prosecuting a particular individual. Can one imagine a less equitable manner of fulfilling the executive responsibility to investigate and prosecute? What would the reaction be if, in an area not covered by this statute, the Justice Department posted a public notice inviting applicants to assist in an investigation and possible prosecution of a certain prominent person? Does this not invite what Justice Jackson described as picking the man and then searching the law books or putting investigators to work to pin some offense on him? To be sure, the investigation must relate to the area of criminal offense” specified by the statute, “but that has often been and nothing prevents it from being very broad.” I paraphrased at the end because it was referring to the judges.

MR. DREEBEN: Mm-hmm. Yes.

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: That’s the concern going forward, is that the — the system will — when former presidents are subject to prosecution and the history of Morrison versus Olson tells us it’s not going to stop. It’s going to — it’s going to cycle back and be used against the current president or the next president or — and the next president and the next president after that. All that, I want you to try to allay that concern. Why is this not Morrison v. Olson redux if we agree with you? [my emphasis]

Kavanaugh pretended, as he and others did throughout, that he wasn’t really suggesting this was a case of Morrison v. Olson redux; he was just talking hypothetically about the future.

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: Right. No, I was just saying this is kind of the mirror image of that, is one way someone could perceive it, but I take your point about the different structural protections internally. And like Justice Scalia said, let me — I do not mean to suggest anything of the sort in the present case. I’m not talking about the present case. So I’m talking about the future.

This intervention came long after Kavanaugh suggested that charging Trump with defrauding the US for submitting fake election certificates and charging Trump with obstructing the vote certification after first charging hundreds of others with the same statute amounted to “creative” lawyering.

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: Okay. For other official acts that the president may take that are not within that exclusive power, assume for the sake of argument this question that there’s not blanket immunity for those official acts but that to preserve the separation of powers, to provide fair notice, to make sure Congress has thought about this, that Congress has to speak clearly to criminalize official acts of the president by a specific reference. That seems to be what the OLC opinions suggest — I know you have a little bit of a disagreement with that — and what this Court’s cases also suggest.

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: Well, it’s — isn’t — it’s a serious constitutional question whether a statute can be applied to the president’s official acts. So wouldn’t you always interpret the statute not to apply to the president, even under your formulation, unless Congress had spoken with some clarity?

MR. DREEBEN: I don’t think — I don’t think across the board that a serious constitutional question exists on applying any criminal statute to the president.

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: The problem is the vague statute, you know, obstruction and 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States, can be used against a lot of presidential activities historically with a — a creative prosecutor who wants to go after a president.

But Kavanaugh returned to his insinuation that it was a stretch to prosecute a political candidate for submitting false certificates to Congress and the Archives under 18 USC 371 after his purported complaint about Morrison v. Olson.

Second, another point, you said talking about the criminal statutes, it’s very easy to characterize presidential actions as false or misleading under vague statutes. So President Lyndon Johnson, statements about the Vietnam War —

MR. DREEBEN: Mm-hmm.

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: — say something’s false, turns out to be false that he says about the Vietnam War, 371 prosecution —

MR. DREEBEN: So —

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: — after he leaves office?

None of this intervention made any sense; it wouldn’t even have made sense if offered by someone who hadn’t criminalized an abusive, yet consensual, blowjob for years.

After all, contrary to the demands of many, Merrick Garland didn’t appoint a Special Counsel until Trump declared himself a candidate. By that point, hundreds of people had already been charged under 18 USC 1512(c)(2) and DOJ was at least four months into Executive Privilege fights over testimony from Mike Pence’s aides and Trump’s White House counsel. Jack Smith was appointed nine months after Lisa Monaco publicly confirmed that DOJ was investigating the fake electors and six months after overt subpoenas focused on the scheme came out (to say nothing of the treatment of Rudy Giuliani’s phones starting a year earlier).

This is not a Morrison v. Olson issue.

Rather, Kavanaugh is using his well-established hatred for Morrison v. Olson to complain that Trump was investigated at all — and that, after such time that a conflict arose, Garland appointed a non-partisan figure to head the already mature investigation.

It was one of many examples yesterday where the aggrieved white men on the court vomited up false claims made by Trump.

Kavanaugh made no mention of the appointment of Robert Hur — not just a Republican but a Trump appointee who had deprived Andy McCabe of due process — to investigate Joe Biden for precisely the same crime for which Trump was charged. That’ll become pertinent at such time as Donald Trump’s claim to Jack Smith’s appointment gets to SCOTUS. After all, in that case, Trump will have been similarly treated as Joe Biden. In that case, Hur’s distinction between Biden’s actions and Trump’s should (but probably won’t) reassure the right wing Justices that Trump was not selectively prosecuted.

Speaking of things Kavanaugh didn’t mention, his false complaint — and which Clarence Thomas raised as well — comes at a curious time.

Because of Aileen Cannon’s dawdling, Trump’s challenge to Jack Smith’s appointment won’t get to SCOTUS for months, if ever.

But Hunter Biden, whose challenge to David Weiss’ appointment takes the same novel form as Trump’s — an appropriations clause challenge — may be before the Third Circuit as soon as next week. In a passage of Abbe Lowell’s response to Weiss’ demand that the Third Circuit give Lowell, an observant Jew, three days including Passover to establish jurisdiction for his interlocutory appeal, Lowell scolded Weiss for presuming to know the basis of his appeals.

The Special Counsel boasts that it prepared its motion in “two days” (Mot.Exped.3), but the legal errors that permeate its motion to dismiss only underscore why more time is needed to adequately research and thoughtfully brief the jurisdictional issues for this Court. The Special Counsel ignores numerous bases for jurisdiction (e.g., 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291 (collateral order doctrine), 1292(a)(1) (denial of Appropriations Clause injunction), and 1651 (mandamus)) over this appeal, and the legal claims it does make are flatly wrong, compare Mot.6 (falsely claiming “all Circuit Courts” reject reviewing denials of motions to enforce plea agreements as collateral orders), with United States v. Morales, 465 F. App’x 734, 736 (9th Cir. 2012) (“We also have jurisdiction over interlocutory appeals of orders denying a motion to dismiss an indictment on the ground that it was filed in breach of a plea agreement.”)

In addition to mandamus (suggesting they may either attack Judge Noreika’s immunity decision directly or ask the Third Circuit to order Delaware’s Probation Department to approve the diversion agreement that would give Hunter Biden immunity), Lowell also invoked an Appropriations clause injunction — basically an argument that Weiss is spending money he should not be.

Normally, this would never work and it’s unlikely to work here.

But even on the SCO challenge, there are a number of problems in addition to Lowell’s original complaint: that Weiss was appointed in violation of the rules requiring someone outside of DOJ to fill the role.

For example Weiss keeps claiming to be both US Attorney and Special Counsel at the same time (most obviously in claiming that tolling agreements signed as US Attorney were still valid as Special Counsel), or the newly evident fact that Weiss asked for Special Counsel status so that he could revisit a lead he was ordered to investigate — in the wake of Trump’s complaints to Bill Barr that Hunter Biden wasn’t being investigated diligently enough — back in 2020, a lead that incorporated Joe as well as Hunter Biden, a lead that uncovered an attempt to frame Joe Biden, an attempt to frame Joe Biden to which Weiss is a witness.

The oddities of Weiss’ investigation of Joe Biden’s son may even offer another claim that the right wing Justices claim to want to review. Jack Smith claims to have found only two or three charges with which Kavanaugh, who insists (former) Presidents can only be charged under statutes that formally apply to Presidents, would leave available to charge a President. But there’s one he missed: 26 USC 7217, which specifically prohibits the President from ordering up a tax investigation into someone, which Lowell invoked in his selective and vindictive prosecution claim. Lowell has not yet proven that Trump directly ordered tax officials, as opposed to Bill Barr and other top DOJ officials, to investigate Hunter Biden for tax crimes. But there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that Trump pushed such an investigation. Certainly, statutes of limitation on Trump’s documented 2020 intrusions on the Hunter Biden investigation have not yet expired.

The Hunter Biden investigation has all the trappings of a politicized investigation that Kavanaugh claims to worry about — and with the Alexander Smirnov lead, it included Joe Biden, the Morisson v. Olson problem he claims to loathe.

That’s a made to order opportunity for Brett Kavanaugh to restrict such Special Counsel investigations.

Except, of course, it involves Democrats.

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SCOTUS Takes Up January 6 Obstruction Challenge — But with Unknown Scope

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Today, SCOTUS granted cert to one of the initial challenges to 18 USC 1512(c)(2), that of Joseph Fischer.

Depending on what they do with the appeal, the review could have significant effect on all the January 6 cases charging obstruction — over 300 defendants so far, including Trump.

But no one knows how broadly they will be reviewing this appeal.

On its face, the only thing being appealed in Fischer is whether this statute requires document tampering.

Did the D.C. Circuit err in construing 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c) (“Witness, Victim, or Informant Tampering”), which prohibits obstruction of congressional inquiries and investigations, to include acts unrelated to investigations and evidence?

If SCOTUS upheld the DC Circuit opinion (and all the underlying District opinions), nothing would change. If it overturned the DC Circuit opinion, then hundreds of cases of rioters would be thrown out.

Remember that defendants have always likened the January 6 attack with the interruption by protestors of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing (there are significant differences, starting with the fact that all the protestors who disrupted Kavanaugh’s hearing were in the building legally). So I wouldn’t even rule out some set of Republicans rejecting this application on those grounds.

But it’s not clear that would affect the charges against Trump. That’s because Trump’s obstruction does involve document tampering: the forged elector certificates.

It’s possible, though, that SCOTUS will also review a more contentious issue: the definition of “corrupt purpose” in the statute. Fischer addresses that deeper in the petition.

While some courts have limited Section 1512(c)(2)’s scope by a particular definition of the critical mens rea element—“corruptly”—they have not defined it uniformly. See Miller, 605 F. Supp. 3d at 70 n.3. And the D.C. Circuit’s lead opinion declined to define it all, even while stating that “corrupt intent” limited Section 1512(c)(2)’s reach. Compare Pet. App. 17a-18a with Pet. App. 20a. The lead opinion nonetheless acknowledged three potential definitions:

1. Corruptly means conduct that is “wrongful, immoral, depraved, or evil.” Pet. App. at 18a (quoting Arthur Anderson LLP, 544 U.S. at 705, discussing 18 U.S.C. § 1512(b)).

2. Undertaken with a “corrupt purpose or through independently corrupt means, or both.” Pet. App. 18a-19a (quoting United States v. Sandlin, 575 F. Supp. 3d 16, 30 (D.D.C. 2021) (citing United States v. North, 910 F.2d 843, 942-43 (D.C. Cir. 1990) (Silberman, J., concurring and dissenting in part)).

3. Conduct that involves “voluntarily and intentionally [acting] to bring about either an unlawful result or a lawful result by some unlawful method, with a hope or expectation of either financial gain or other benefit to oneself or a benefit of another person.” Pet. App. 19a (quoting Aguilar, 515 U.S. at 616-17) (Scalia, J., concurring).

Here, SCOTUS could adopt the more restrictive definition of corrupt benefit, option 3.

In that case, it’s not clear what would happen with the crime scene defendants: at the DC Circuit, Justin Walker argued that Trump supporters might have obtained a corrupt purpose if Trump were unlawfully retained.

But for Trump, there’s no question: He was attempting to retain one of the most valuable jobs in the world through unlawful means.

All of which is to say, SCOTUS’ decision to review the case is huge — though not entirely unexpected.

But we won’t know what to make of the review for some time.

Update: I had been anxiously waiting to see what Steve Vladeck had to say about this. He notes that SCOTUS took Fischer but not Miller and Alam, which had been joined to it.

All three defendants filed cert. petitions challenging the D.C. Circuit’s decision. The Department of Justice filed a single, consolidated brief in opposition—and the Court’s website used to reflect that the three cases had been “vided” (meaning that they were being considered alongside each other). Thus, it’s really strange that the Court granted Fischer, but not Lang and Miller. (And then quietly removed the notation from Fischer’s docket page that the case was tied to Lang and Miller.) Yes, the Court often holds parallel cases for a lead case, but not after both the court of appeals and the government had already consolidated them.

Part of why it’s weird is because all three petitions raise the question presented in Fischer—the actus reus question. The other two petitions also raise the mens rea question (and Fischer does not), but if the Court was interested in answering the actus reus question in general (and only the actus reus question), it could easily have granted all three petitions only on that question.

Otherwise, the only difference I can readily discern between Fischer and the other two cases is that Fischer entered the Capitol later on January 6 (after the Joint Session recessed). But it’s hard to believe that the Court is intervening in an interlocutory posture (remember, the cases have not yet gone to trial) because it wants to draw a temporal distinction among which January 6 rioters can and can’t be prosecuted under 1512(c)(2).

All of this is to say that, if the Court really was interested in narrowing the scope of 1512(c)(2) to align with Judge Katsas’s dissent in Fischer, I don’t get why the Court would sever cases that had hitherto been consolidated.

 

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On January 19, 2022, SCOTUS Upheld Judge Tanya Chutkan’s Decision Rejecting Trump’s Executive Privilege Claims

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On November 9, 2021, Judge Tanya Chutkan — the judge who randomly got assigned to Trump’s January 6 prosecution — rejected Trump’s request to enjoin the Archives from turning over documents to the January 6 Committee.

Chutkan held that because the incumbent President had waived Executive Privilege and the January 6 Committee had a legislative interest in preventing another attack on the peaceful transfer of power, she had no reason to second guess the political branches of government about the import of the investigation.

The legislative and executive branches believe the balance of equities and public interest are well served by the Select Committee’s inquiry. The court will not second guess the two branches of government that have historically negotiated their own solutions to congressional requests for presidential documents. See Mazars, 140 S. Ct. 2029-31.

Defendants contend that discovering and coming to terms with the causes underlying the January 6 attack is a matter of unsurpassed public importance because such information relates to our core democratic institutions and the public’s confidence in them. NARA Br. at 41. The court agrees. As the Supreme Court has explained, “the American people’s ability to reconstruct and come to terms” with their history must not be “truncated by an analysis of Presidential privilege that focuses only on the needs of the present.” Nixon v. GSA, 433 U.S. at 452-53. The desire to restore public confidence in our political process, through information, education, and remedial legislation, is of substantial public interest. See id.

Plaintiff argues that the public interest favors enjoining production of the records because the executive branch’s interests are best served by confidentiality and Defendants are not harmed by delaying or enjoining the production. Neither argument holds water. First, the incumbent President has already spoken to the compelling public interest in ensuring that the Select Committee has access to the information necessary to complete its investigation. And second, the court will not give such short shrift to the consequences of “halt[ing] the functions of a coordinate branch.” Eastland, 421 U.S. at 511 n.17. Binding precedent counsels that judicially imposed delays on the conduct of legislative business are often contrary to the public interest. See id.; see also Exxon Corp. v. F.T.C., 589 F.2d 582, 589 (D.C. Cir. 1978) (describing Eastland as emphasizing “the necessity for courts to refrain from interfering with or delaying the investigatory functions of Congress”).

Accordingly, the court holds that the public interest lies in permitting—not enjoining— the combined will of the legislative and executive branches to study the events that led to and occurred on January 6, and to consider legislation to prevent such events from ever occurring again.

On December 9, 2021, the DC Circuit upheld Chutkan’s ruling. Patricia Millett repeated Chutkan’s argument that the agreement of Congress and the Executive provided no basis for the courts to intervene. But she also described that even by a heightened standard — even if Trump were withholding these documents while still President — the need for the documents would overcome his privilege claim.

While former President Trump can press an executive privilege claim, the privilege is a qualified one, as he agrees. See Nixon v. GSA, 433 U.S. at 446; United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. at 707; Appellant Opening Br. 35. Even a claim of executive privilege by a sitting President can be overcome by a sufficient showing of need. See United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. at 713; In re Sealed Case, 121 F.3d at 292. The right of a former President certainly enjoys no greater weight than that of the incumbent.

In cases concerning a claim of executive privilege, the bottom-line question has been whether a sufficient showing of need for disclosure has been made so that the claim of presidential privilege “must yield[.]” Nixon v. GSA, 433 U.S. at 454; see United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. at 706, 713. 12

In this case, President Biden, as the head of the Executive Branch, has specifically found that Congress has demonstrated a compelling need for these very documents and that disclosure is in the best interests of the Nation. Congress, which has engaged in a course of negotiation and accommodation with the President over these documents, agrees. So the tests that courts have historically used to police document disputes between the Political Branches seem a poor fit when the Executive and Congress together have already determined that the “demonstrated and specific” need for disclosure that former President Trump would require, Appellant Opening Br. 35, has been met. A court would be hard-pressed under these circumstances to tell the President that he has miscalculated the interests of the United States, and to start an interbranch conflict that the President and Congress have averted.

But we need not conclusively resolve whether and to what extent a court could second guess the sitting President’s judgment that it is not in the interests of the United States to invoke privilege. Under any of the tests advocated by former President Trump, the profound interests in disclosure advanced by President Biden and the January 6th Committee far exceed his generalized concerns for Executive Branch confidentiality.

[snip]

Keep in mind that the “presumptive privilege” for presidential communications “must be considered in light of our historic commitment to the rule of law.” United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. at 708. In United States v. Nixon, the particular component of the rule of law that overcame a sitting President’s assertion of executive privilege was the “right to every [person]’s evidence” in a criminal proceeding. Id. at 709 (quoting Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 688 (1972)). Allowing executive privilege to prevail over that principle would have “gravely impair[ed] the basic function of the courts.” Id. at 712.

An equally essential aspect of the rule of law is the peaceful transition of power, and the constitutional role prescribed for Congress by the Twelfth Amendment in verifying the electoral college vote. To allow the privilege of a no-longer-sitting President to prevail over Congress’s need to investigate a violent attack on its home and its constitutional operations would “gravely impair the basic function of the” legislature. United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. at 712.

On January 19, 2022, the Supreme Court upheld Chutkan’s ruling. With only Clarence Thomas dissenting, Justice Kavanaugh noted that the DC Circuit’s ruling that Trump’s appeal would have failed even under more stringent standards made any review of this decision unnecessary.

The Court of Appeals concluded that the privilege claim at issue here would not succeed even under the Nixon and Senate Select Committee tests. Therefore, as this Court’s order today makes clear, the Court of Appeals’ broader statements questioning whether a former President may successfully invoke the Presidential communications privilege if the current President does not support the claim were dicta and should not be considered binding precedent going forward.

I have written repeatedly about how Merrick Garland set up a framework in July 2021 by which Congress’ investigative requests would provide an opportunity for President Biden to waive Executive Privilege without violating DOJ’s contacts policy. That is, in July 2021, Garland solved a tricky problem with investigating the former President: how to obtain privilege waivers while keeping the existing President entirely walled off from the criminal investigation.

But this legal background, in which, with just one dissent, SCOTUS upheld a Tanya Chutkan opinion pertaining to an investigation into Donald Trump, will prove critically important in the days ahead, for two reasons that go to the screeds the former President is engaging in on his failed social media platform.

Along with making a venue complaint that has failed the dozens of times other January 6 defendants have made it (here’s a Roger Parloff post from before the Riley Williams and Oath Keepers trials showed that juries will rule against the government on precisely the same charges), Trump is preparing to claim that Judge Chutkan is biased and must be recused.

And Trump has been claiming that DOJ could have brought this case years ago, before the election season.

As to the first point, on a topic directly pertinent to this investigation, eight Justices have already upheld Judge Chutkan. Three Trump appointees, with Justice Kavanaugh writing the decision, have already ruled with Judge Chutkan.

That will make it harder to claim her prior central involvement in the January 6 investigation presents a conflict.

More importantly, that Judge Chutkan decision in November 2021 led to a SCOTUS decision, on January 19, 2022, upholding the DC Circuit’s opinion that the peaceful transfer of power is a sufficiently important basis to overcome an Executive Privilege claim, even if only for a congressional investigation, which litigation in the stolen documents case noted was a significantly lower standard than a criminal investigation.

Yet, even in spite of that decision on January 19, 2022, Donald Trump continued to make Executive Privilege claims that delayed DOJ’s investigation. He did so to stall DOJ’s interviews with Mike Pence’s advisors in summer 2022. He did so to stall DOJ’s interviews of Trump’s White House Counsel later that summer. He did so to stall DOJ’s interviews with other top aides in January 2023. And he did so to stall Mike Pence’s testimony.

Donald Trump continued to stall DOJ’s investigation using Executive Privilege claims for 463 days after a Justice that he himself had appointed had already rejected such claims. At the very least, these frivolous Executive Privilege invocations were critically responsible for any delay from July 2022, when Greg Jacob and Marc Short first refused to answer some questions because of Trump’s privilege claims, until April 2023, when Mike Pence testified — nine months.

Nine months, Trump kept making Executive Privilege claims that it was clear SCOTUS wouldn’t uphold.

Indeed, Trump’s frivolous Executive Privilege claims are responsible for even more of any delay than his own Special Master demand in the stolen documents investigation caused — in that case, three months.

Donald Trump is complaining that he wasn’t charged for his attempt to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 until during his campaign to regain the presidency.

But he is personally responsible for much of that delay.

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How Legal Certainty about 1512(c)(2) Has Wobbled Even as Certainty Trump Violated It Increased

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In the past year, those who believe Trump could and should be held accountable for January 6 reached near unanimity that he should be charged with obstruction of the vote certification — 18 USC 1512(c)(2).

In the same year, certainty about how the law applies to January 6 has wobbled, with one appeal pending before the DC Circuit (which will be appealed no matter how it comes out), and either an expansion of this appeal or a follow-on one virtually certain. All that uncertainty may not change DOJ’s determination to use it; under all but the most restrictive appellate rulings, it should still easily apply to Trump and his ilk, though not necessarily all the January 6 rioters who’ve already been prosecuted with it.

But DOJ probably won’t know exactly how it’ll apply for at least six months, maybe another year.

This post will attempt to explain what has happened and what might happen going forward.

1512(c)(2) reads:

Whoever corruptly otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

You need an official proceeding — here, Congress’ vote certification mandated by the 12th Amendment, you need an attempt to obstruct it, and you need corrupt purpose. The “otherwise” here is at the center of the legal dispute, meaning how this clause relates to the rest of the obstruction statute is under dispute. But depending on that relationship, the obstruction statute has the advantage of including a potential 20 year sentence, an explicit conspiracy charge, with enhancements under the sentencing guidelines for things tied to the degree of obstruction and the use of violence that offers a good deal of flexibility to tailor sentences ranging from 4 months to 6 years (and hypothetically far higher).

At first, lawyers not following the actual DOJ investigation imagined that Trump could be held accountable for January 6 on an incitement model; indeed, that’s what Congress used in impeachment. But from the start, DOJ charged many of the rioters who premeditated their effort to stop the vote certification with obstruction. It charged Oath Keepers Jessica Watkins and Proud Boy Joe Biggs with obstruction from their initial arrest affidavits on January 16 and 19, 2021, respectively. A jury found Watkins guilty of obstruction (but not seditious conspiracy) on November 30, 2022, and Biggs’ obstruction and sedition conspiracy trial kicked off last Thursday.

In July 2021, I argued that Trump (and any of members of Congress prosecuted) would be charged with obstruction, not incitement. I repeated and expanded that argument in August 2021. In her December speech calling to hold Mark Meadows in contempt, Liz Cheney invoked obstruction as the crime under consideration, which led TV lawyers, almost a year after the fact, to consider Trump’s conduct using the frame of obstruction. In March, Judge David Carter ruled it more likely than not that Trump and John Eastman had attempted to obstruct the vote certification (adopting the 9th Circuit standard for corrupt purpose).

At that point, 14 months after the attack, everyone was in agreement: That’s how Trump could be held accountable. By prosecution under 18 USC 1512(c)(2).

But starting in a November 22, 2021 hearing in the case of Garret Miller, former Clarence Thomas clerk Carl Nichols explicitly raised questions about whether obstruction could apply to the President. In March, even before Judge Carter’s ruling, Nichols ruled that while the vote certification counted as an official proceeding, obstruction required the involvement of documents. In refusing to change his mind on reconsideration, Nichols also noted the discrepancy among DC judges as to what “corruptly” means in the statute.

And that’s how on December 12, 2022, almost two years into this process and a month after the appointment of a Special Counsel, former Trump White House lawyer Greg Katsas, Mitch McConnell protégé Justin Walker, and Biden appointee Florence Pan came to consider how 1512(c)(2) would apply to January 6. On paper, the question they were reviewing pertained to Nichols’ ruling that obstruction under 1512(c)(2) must involve documents. But along the way, the Republican judges invited both sides to weigh in on both how to define corrupt purpose under the statute and, procedurally, how to address it if they were going to rule on it (that is, whether to issue a ruling now, or to remand it back to Carl Nichols only to be appealed after he rules).

Defendants have challenged whether the vote certification counts as an official proceeding too, and I don’t rule out that this Supreme Court, would insert itself into that issue as well, especially given that protests associated with the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation have, from the start, been raised as an inapt parallel to January 6.

It has been a month since the DC Circuit ruling, so they could rule anytime. In the hearing, Katsas seemed inclined to rule for defendants on requiring obstruction to include a documentary component and to intervene to sharply narrow corrupt purpose. Walker seemed to start out in the same camp, but by the end may have come around to splitting his ruling, ruling with DOJ on the documents question but with defendants on the corrupt purpose one. Importantly, he seemed to favor tying “corrupt purpose” to some personal benefit. Pan, who presided over some of these cases before being elevated to the Circuit, seemed inclined to rule with DOJ on both counts.

Whatever the DC Circuit decides, it will be appealed.

If DOJ loses, they’re likely to ask for an en banc review, where they would not face a panel with a majority of Trump appointees. If the defendants lose, they’re likely to appeal it to SCOTUS, where they’d be guaranteed a conservative majority. If the DC Circuit remands the “corrupt purpose” issue — procedurally the correct thing to do — it might be another nine months before DC Circuit gets it back. And then that decision will be appealed by the losing side, to the full panel or SCOTUS. Plus there’s a minor issue on a Trevor McFadden ruling that will be appealed too, how much of a penalty to impose at sentencing.

There will not be certainty on how 1512(c)(2) applies to January 6 before June, and such certainty might not come until next June.

With rioters, DOJ has responded to these legal challenges by adopting several backstop positions. With edge cases, it allowed defendants accused of obstruction to plead down to the more serious misdemeanor, 18 USC 1752. With defendants who had some kind of confrontation with the cops, they have charged civil disorder, 18 USC 231. At the beginning of this process, there were the same kind of appellate challenges to 231, too, but those have been significantly resolved. With the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, DOJ has also added 18 USC 372 charges, conspiracy to prevent Congress from doing its duty of certifying the vote count.

To see how those backstops would work, consider the Oath Keepers found guilty in the first sedition trial. If the obstruction verdict against all five were thrown out, Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs would remain jailed on sedition guilty verdicts, Kenneth Harrelson and Jessica Watkins would remained jailed on 372 verdicts (as well as civil disorder in Watkins’ case), Thomas Caldwell’s other obstruction conviction — obstructing the investigation by destroying evidence — would stand, as would those of Rhodes, Meggs, and Harrelson. There seems to be some movement on plea bargaining in the third Oath Keepers group, which suggests DOJ may be offering some of them 231 pleas as well.

And because of that mens rea requirement, DOJ has had limited success in getting obstruction convictions. A jury hung on obstruction with Riley Williams, and Judge Amy Berman Jackson just acquitted Joshua Black of obstruction as well. Both Williams and Black were found guilty of other felonies.

As I said above, even if the DC Circuit or SCOTUS adopts the most restrictive rulings on existing challenges, an obstruction charge against Trump still should survive. That’s because Trump’s obstruction, which included the recruitment of fake electors to create falsified certificates that members of Congress could use to justify their vote challenges, entails a documentary component that should meet Nichols’ standard. And while the most restrictive imaginable definition of corrupt purpose would include a desire for personal benefit, Trump was seeking the most craven personal benefit of all: to remain President even after voters had fired him.

But the further you get from Trump, the harder proving such a corrupt purpose would be. Did Mark Meadows do what he did because he wanted to remain in a powerful White House position? Did John Eastman do what he did because he was seeking personal benefit? Did Peter Navarro? Did the lower level aides who flew fake elector certificates from state to state? Many of them did what they did because they believe Democrats are illegitimate, just like Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito do, or resent them like Brett Kavanaugh does, and so even that kind of ruling would constrain 1512’s applicability to the stuff that Jack Smith has been appointed to investigate.

Plus, if SCOTUS rules (perhaps driven byBrett Kavanaugh’s ever-festering resentment) that non-investigative Congressional proceedings are not official proceedings, then 18 USC 1512(c)(2) wouldn’t even apply to Trump.

As I alluded to in passing recently, one reason I think the scope of what has become the Jack Smith investigation has expanded, beyond the fact that it is investigating real corruption and the fact that numerous witnesses may be exposed on one part of the scheme and so could be coerced to cooperate on other parts of the scheme, is to backstop the Trump investigation. If you charge fraud based on raising money off false claims about vote fraud, and charge campaign finance violations tied to violating PAC rules, and charge  conspiracy to defraud the US, forgery, and extortion tied to the fake elector plot, then it meets the standard for corrupt purpose that Dabney Friedrich adopted on 1512(c)(2): otherwise illegal activity.

But it also ensures that if SCOTUS throws out the obstruction charge for anyone for January 6, even someone corruptly seeking to remain President after being fired, those other charges would backstop the main charge, just like 18 USC 372 and civil disorder are backstopping charges against the Oath Keepers.

I think Trump has exposure on other charges, too. I believe Trump has exposure to aid and abet charges tied to the assaults his armed mob committed; that’s a lonely position, but I’ll take Amit Mehta’s opinion on the issue over virtually anyone else’s. I’m increasingly confident DOJ is trying to charge Trump in a conspiracy, via at least Alex Jones and Roger Stone, with the Proud Boys and other militias (though what that conspiracy would be depends on the Proud Boy jurors and the various appellate rulings). I wouldn’t be surprised if DOJ used 372 as a backstop with people like Trump, Eastman, and Meadows, just like they did with the two militias.

And DOJ is no doubt doing a similar kind of analysis as it considers whether and if so, how, to charge others who tie Trump and his associates with the crime scene, along with people who, independently of the White House efforts, funded or otherwise abetted the attack. None of that will entirely hold off further charges; in September, DOJ charged Kellye SoRelle, who has ties to the Oath Keepers, Latinos for Trump, and Trump’s efforts to undermine votes in some states, with three counts of obstruction (one of which would not be affected by these appellate issues). But her case has been continued until March. And, in part, because of the centrality of the Proud Boys case to where things go from here, I expect a lot to remain in flux until then on a bunch of other cases.

No matter how much work Jack Smith and his team get accomplished in the weeks ahead, it will be hamstrung by appellate uncertainty around the one charge, most everyone agrees, that should be used to hold Trump accountable.

Resources

Opinions upholding DOJ’s interpretation of 1512(c)(2)

  1. Dabney Friedrich, December 10, 2021, Sandlin*
  2. Amit Mehta, December 20, 2021, Caldwell*
  3. James Boasberg, December 21, 2021, Mostofsky
  4. Tim Kelly, December 28, 2021, Nordean; May 9, 2022, Hughes (by minute order), rejecting Miller
  5. Randolph Moss, December 28, 2021, Montgomery
  6. Beryl Howell, January 21, 2022, DeCarlo
  7. John Bates, February 1, 2022, McHugh; May 2, 2022 [on reconsideration]
  8. Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, February 9, 2022, Grider
  9. Richard Leon (by minute order), February 24, 2022, Costianes; May 26, 2022, Fitzsimons (post-Miller)
  10. Christopher Cooper, February 25, 2022, Robertson
  11. Rudolph Contreras, announced March 8, released March 14, Andries
  12. Paul Friedman, March 19, Puma
  13. Thomas Hogan, March 30, Sargent (opinion forthcoming)
  14. Trevor McFadden, May 6, Hale-Cusanelli
  15. Royce Lamberth, May 25, Bingert

Carl Nichols’ interventions:

DC Circuit proceedings

Amit Mehta opinion ruling it plausible that Trump conspired with rioters and the militias: February 18, 2022

David Carter opinion ruling, on 9th Circuit standard, it more likely than not that John Eastman and Trump obstructed vote certification: March 28, 2022

January 6 Committee Executive Summary, including referral for obstruction and other crimes: December 19, 2022

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Six Weeks: The Tactics of Sammy Alito’s Abortion

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Last night, Politico published a February 10 draft opinion in the Dobbs case, authored by Sam Alito, that overturns Roe and Casey entirely. I’ll leave it to experts to analyze the opinion. For my purposes, it matters only that it is legally and historically shoddy (meaning, Alito didn’t even care about making a convincing argument before taking away constitutional protections), and that it would also permit states to roll back protections for gay rights, contraception, and privacy generally.

I’d like to talk about tactics.

This leaked draft opinion, while not unprecedented, is almost that momentous. But the leak of the draft will in no way affect abortion access after June in any case. Since the oral argument, there was never a doubt that Casey, at least, was going to be effectively overturned. The only suspense, then, and now, concerned the scope of rights the Supreme Court eliminated and how John Roberts will vote.

The most hackish five justices support the Alito argument. And — in CNN reporting that is almost as important as the Politico leak — John Roberts would have voted to uphold Mississippi’s sharp restrictions on abortion in any case.

CNN legal analyst and Supreme Court biographer Joan Biskupic reported late Monday that Chief Justice John Roberts did not want to completely overturn Roe, meaning he would have dissented from part of Alito’s draft opinion, likely with the top bench’s three liberals.
That would still give the conservatives a 5-4 majority on the issue.

Roberts is willing, however, to uphold the Mississippi law that would ban abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy, CNN has learned. Under current law, government cannot interfere with a woman’s choice to terminate a pregnancy before about 23 weeks, when a fetus could live outside the womb.

CNN’s report suggests this leak more likely came from Roberts’ chambers than the most likely other source, Stephen Breyer’s. The most logical explanation for the leak is that Roberts is trying to get his colleagues to adopt a less radical opinion. And if that’s the purpose, it might have the desired effect, both by making it clear what a shit-show the original Alito opinion will set off, but also by exposing the opinion itself to the ridicule and contempt it, as written, deserves.

But that doesn’t change the fact that in one way or another, the national protection for access to abortion is gone by the end of the SCOTUS term next month.

So those who support equality for women (and LGBTQ rights, and privacy generally) should consider this leaked draft as an opportunity to use the next six weeks — assume the final opinion will be released in mid-June — to lay the groundwork for what comes next. Symbolically, those who support equality for women (and LGBTQ people) now have about as long as many states will permit abortions to do something to protect the right to abortion (and to marry who you love) going forward.

It’s not clear how overturning abortion access or the early release of this opinion will affect politics going forward. I can certainly see it driving the plurality of Republicans who support such a radical stance. I can also see this decision being decisive in defeating some anti-choice Senate candidates and maybe, because this was released before the run-off, the remaining anti-choice Democrat, Henry Cuellar. Gavin Newsom has already talked about adding abortion to California’s constitution, and California might not be the only such state. Perhaps it is not too late to find a way to put reproductive rights on the ballot as a referendum (though I assume it is). Certainly, this is way to make abortion support a litmus test for state-wide elections.

Certainly, this decision raises the stakes of Brett Kavanaugh’s lies in his confirmation and Clarence Thomas’ implication in his wife’s participation in a coup attempt.

Democrats are talking about abolishing the filibuster to pass abortion rights, but there’s no indication they have 51 votes to pass it. Maybe this would change things?

But there are other ways to mobilize what is a solid majority (including most large corporations) in the United States to undercut this decision, and possibly to change the tenor of politics in this country. Americans believe that women and gays (at least) should be treated as equals. A radical minority disagrees.

Use the next six weeks to figure out how to isolate them as a radical minority.

Update: Noted that this opinion will just end national protections on abortion access.

Update: Roberts is ordering an investigation, suggesting he is not aware of the leaker’s identity. Others have made persuasive arguments that this is from one of the radicals, attempting to keep the five vote majority.

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DOJ Gets Closer to Arguing Terrorizing Congress Amounts to Obstruction

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In August, I wrote about how one of Brady Knowlton’s lawyers got up to claim that because there could be no miscarriage of justice in the January 6 vote certification, his client could not have obstructed it under the statute DOJ is using to charge the more serious January 6  perpetrators, 18 USC 1512. I noted that the lawyer, Brent Mayr, was actually suggesting that Joe Biden and the 81 million voters who voted for him would suffer no injury if Biden’s vote certification had never taken place.

Up until that moment, the hearing before Judge Randolph Moss was an admittedly close question. Knowlton’s other lawyer made a robust argument that vote certifications weren’t the kind of official proceeding that could be obstructed. And AUSA John Pearse focused on the word “corruptly” distinguishing other First Amendment protected activities, such as those who protested the Brett Kavanaugh hearing, from those who stormed the Capitol.

Something similar just happened in the Oath Keeper case. After David Fischer made the same argument that Knowlton’s lawyers made — that this was not an official proceeding, to much skepticism from Judge Amit Mehta — Carmen Hernandez got up to argue that her client could not have known that he would risk a 20 year sentence for forcing his way into the Capitol as part of a stack.

Before I explain what happened next, four details are worth noting. First, Hernandez is, in my opinion, a smart and passionate lawyer. Her briefs on this case (surely helped by other public defenders, as they have so many clients facing this charge) were probably the most cogent I’ve read, and I’ve read virtually all of these challenges. That said, Hernandez submitted a 30-page brief, this morning which (Judge Mehta made a point of telling her) he had read by the time of the 2PM hearing. Also, she interrupted Mehta several times. Those things really pissed him off. Finally, of all the Oath Keepers, I think Donovan Crowl may have the best argument that he did not willfully enter into a conspiracy and did not intend to interrupt the vote count. That is, I think Crowl might beat the obstruction charge Hernandez was challenging in court, even if his co-defendants might not, but that’s an evidentiary issue, not a constitutional one.

Still, it was a robust argument. Hernandez made as good a First Amendment argument as has been made about this, that this was just about influence Congress. “Influencing Congress, going to Congress and shouting and making a fool of yourself? That’s what Americans do.”

Mehta challenged prosecutor Jeffrey Nestler why under Yates v. US, in which SCOTUS ruled that destroying fish to avoid prosecution for catching undersized fish was not tantamount to obstruction for a statute envisioning the destruction of documents, this kind of obstruction is not obviously obstruction.

Nestler also made a point that hasn’t been made enough by DOJ — one I noted in my post on Knowlton’s challenge. To argue that the rioters obstructed justice, rather than Trump or those who orchestrated the mobs, you really need to argue that it’s a kind of witness tampering, an attempt to terrify members of Congress not just to flee, but also to vote against the lawful winner of the election. There is abundant evidence that not only occurred on the day of the vote certification, but that the terror of the event led some Republicans to vote against impeachment. This is a classic case of witness tampering, a case where Congress was held hostage in an attempt to terrify them to not do their jobs. And it nearly succeeded. And the after effects remain.

So Nestler argued that the object of the conspiracy was to scare Congress to stop the proceedings. Judge Mehta rightly responded, “Where do I look in the indictment for that?”

But like the Moss hearing, this one ended up with a hypothetical. If someone burst into his courtroom with the specific intention of preventing these proceedings from taking place, Judge Mehta asked Hernandez, would that amount to obstruction. Yes, she responded, resorting immediately to the far weaker argument that Fischer had tried to make, that the vote certification is not an official proceeding.

That may ultimately be the hook on which Mehta starts to unravel this question.

Whatever happens, that will not be the end of this question, because until DOJ makes a much stronger argument, both about how the terror was designed to function here and what distinguishes not only January 6 defendants from Kavanaugh protestors, but also the January 6 obstruction defendants from those charged with parading, judges will continue to face this difficult question. And at some point, a defense attorney will avoid providing the judge the obvious way to answer the question.

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