Attention to the Unseen

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write: ProPublica released a new report on Friday detailing Justice Clarence Thomas’ close relationship with the Koch brothers with previously undisclosed and extraordinarily damning new details. According to ProPublica, the justice developed a friendship with the Kochs as they were funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into right-wing causes, many of which ended up before the Supreme Court. The brothers then used Thomas to raise money for their sprawling network, inviting him to speak…

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ProPublica reports: On Jan. 25, 2018, dozens of private jets descended on Palm Springs International Airport. Some of the richest people in the country were arriving for the annual winter donor summit of the Koch network, the political organization founded by libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch. A long weekend of strategizing, relaxation in the California sun and high-dollar fundraising lay ahead. Just after 6 p.m., a Gulfstream G200 jet touched down on the tarmac. One of the Koch network’s…

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The New York Times reports: Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the powerful Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was charged on Friday with taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes — including gold bars — to wield influence abroad and at home, aiding the government of Egypt and businessmen in New Jersey. The three-count federal indictment, which also charges the senator’s wife and three New Jersey businessmen, accuses him of using his official position in a wide…

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Politico reports: Donald Trump’s trial calendar is a delicate balancing act, one that could be upended by the possible delay of the first in a long string of Trump trials scheduled to begin early next month, the New York attorney general’s office argued in a court filing. The attorney general’s office wrote that any delay in its upcoming civil fraud trial against Trump, which is set to begin Oct. 2, “is likely to create a cascade of delays in not…

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Rolling Stone reports: In the past several months, Donald Trump has had a burning question for some of his confidants and attorneys: Would the authorities make him wear “one of those jumpsuits” in prison? As the criminal cases against him have piled up, the former president and 2024 GOP frontrunner has wondered aloud in recent months about what life would be like if he’s convicted, and if appeals fail. While Trump publicly professes confidence, privately, three sources familiar with his…

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  Former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb and former Georgia prosecutor Chris Timmons speak with CNN’s Erin Burnett after the New York Times reported that former President Donald Trump told an aide to say she knew nothing about the boxes of documents later found at Mar-a-Lago.

Greg Sargent writes: Democrats won a whole lot of elections in 2022, in no small part on their vow to strengthen and defend democracy. But if they hope to turn the issue into a sustained political winner, they have to deliver on that promise by showing voters what a pro-democracy governing agenda actually looks like. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is set to make a big move in this direction by unveiling a big change on Tuesday that will implement what’s…

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Politico reports: Democrats in the California Legislature are trying a novel approach to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s March 5 primary ballot. But first they need a fellow state Democrat to get on board the long-shot effort. Nine California lawmakers wrote a letter to Attorney General Rob Bonta over the weekend, arguing that Trump isn’t eligible to be on the ballot for inciting an insurrection when a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan….

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Alabama Political Reporter (APR) reports: The Alabama Legislature’s open defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Allen v. Milligan ordering the creation of a second majority-Black district baffled and infuriated the federal three-judge panel that initially ordered the state to redraw its 2021 congressional map.  APR has now identified connections between Alabama officials who led the 2023 redistricting process — which disregarded the U.S. Supreme Court’s order — with far-right power broker Leonard Leo’s dark money network, described this past week by Politico as…

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Joe Jaworski writes: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has spent his eight-year incumbency living on the political edge of scandal, was just acquitted in his historic Texas Senate impeachment trial. The Texas Senate voted largely along party lines, with only two Republican senators bravely voting to convict on virtually all sixteen articles of impeachment. The Texas Constitution requires a supermajority vote to convict on any article of impeachment, and the impeachment prosecutors came up short on each article. Kudos…

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Politico reports: Former President Donald Trump said Sunday that he didn’t respect lawyers and members of his campaign who told him he lost the 2020 presidential election, and that it was his decision to buy into the theory that the election was rigged. “In many cases, I didn’t respect them,” Trump said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” when asked why he decided to ignore his lawyers and advisers who told him he lost the 2020 election to…

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Ankush Khardori writes: The public debate over the applicability of the [14th] amendment kicked into high gear following the release last month of a law-review article written by William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, two conservative constitutional law professors who argue that, under an originalist interpretation of the provision, Trump is barred from running for office. The notion picked up steam in some quarters of the press, as well as an endorsement from two prominent legal thinkers, but it has since drawn vocal objections from the right…

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The 1st Amendment doesn’t protect witness intimidation, jury tampering, or threats to the presiding judge or the prosecution The narrowly tailored gag order that Special Counsel Smith has requested is well within the U.S. Constitution’s limits. About time!https://t.co/nXz0EQzXim — Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) September 15, 2023 Jack Smith was smart to put Trump’s misconduct in front of the judge. She is not going to like it, and it certainly won’t make her more inclined to rule in his favor….

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The Guardian reports: Jenna Ellis – the Donald Trump lawyer who like the former president faces criminal charges regarding attempted election subversion in his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 – says she will not vote for him in the future because he is a “malignant narcissist” who cannot admit mistakes. “I simply can’t support him for elected office again,” Ellis said. “Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that…

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The Guardian reports: The Coffee county board of elections in Georgia held its first meeting on Tuesday after being mentioned more than 50 times in Fulton county’s indictment of Donald Trump and 18 others for allegedly participating in a criminal conspiracy to change the outcome of the 2020 election. Local residents, still frustrated over a lack of accountability for officials who may have known about the conspiracy, pressured the reluctant board for an independent investigation. The small, rural county 200…

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