Attention to the Unseen

Norman Eisen and Ryan Goodman write: We’ve reached a turning point in the effort to ensure there are consequences for those who deliberately attempt to undermine our democracy: Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, charged 16 Republican leaders in her state on Tuesday for their role as fake electors working to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The charges, coming on the heels of news that the special counsel Jack Smith has informed Donald Trump that he’s a target of…

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Shan Wu writes: Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is apparently tired of waiting on the U.S. Department of Justice to act on the ‘false electors’ scheme that occurred in December of 2020. The scheme allegedly consisted of a plan to submit fake certificates stating that former President Trump had won seven battle ground states. The plan was simple but audacious. As described by Professor Ryan Goodman, co-director of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School,…

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Aaron Blake writes: After Donald Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, his legal team and his defenders lodged a frequent talking point. Despite Carroll’s claims that Trump had raped her, they noted, the jury stopped short of saying he committed that particular offense. Instead, jurors opted for a second option: sexual abuse. “This was a rape claim, this was a rape case all along, and the jury rejected that — made other findings,” his…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Two U.S. senators are set this week to introduce bipartisan legislation to bar members of the federal executive branch and lawmakers from owning stock in individual companies, as new polling shows broad public support for such a measure. The bill from Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) and Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) would permit the president, vice president, lawmakers, Capitol Hill aides and employees of the executive branch to own mutual funds and broad industry and…

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Rolling Stone reports: The special counsel’s letter to Donald Trump related to Jan. 6 listed the federal statutes under which Trump is expected to be charged, including conspiracy, obstruction, and civil rights violations, according to a source with knowledge of the contents of the target letter. Special counsel Jack Smith sent the letter to Trump on Sunday, informing him he was a target of the Justice Department. Trump on Tuesday announced he’d been sent the letter via a post on…

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The Messenger reports: “We feel it is very important that we have a trial date to work from, realizing that the trial date may not be set in stone,” said Jay Bratt, the Chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. Such a schedule may depend on whether the cases against Trump and Nauta are labeled complex, a designation that the government has opposed. Cannon appeared inclined to find that it was, pressing…

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ProPublica reports: For months, Harlan Crow and members of Congress have been engaged in a fight over whether the billionaire needs to divulge details about his gifts to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, including globe-trotting trips aboard his 162-foot yacht, the Michaela Rose. Crow’s lawyer argues that Congress has no authority to probe the GOP donor’s generosity and that doing so violates a constitutional separation of powers between Congress and the Supreme Court. Members of Congress say there are federal…

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The Washington Post reports: Since his indictment last month on charges of withholding classified documents, former president Donald Trump has publicly called special counsel Jack Smith “deranged” and a “psycho” and said he “looks like a crackhead.” In response, Smith and the federal judge overseeing his pending criminal trial have said … nothing. The prosecution of Trump, who is the first former president to face federal criminal charges and is also under an unrelated state indictment in New York, presents…

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Norman L. Eisen et al write: This model prosecution memorandum (or “pros memo”) assesses federal charges Special Counsel Jack Smith may bring against former President Donald Trump for alleged criminal interference in the 2020 election. The authors have decades of experience as federal prosecutors, criminal defense lawyers, and other legal expertise. We conclude that the evidence likely now meets Department of Justice standards to commence a prosecution. We base that conclusion upon a stream of recent disclosures in court filings…

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The Washington Post reports: Arizona’s top prosecutor is ramping up a criminal investigation into alleged attempts by Republicans to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state by signing and transmitting paperwork falsely declaring Donald Trump the winner, according to two people familiar with the investigation. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) assigned a team of prosecutors to the case in May, and investigators have contacted many of the pro-Trump electors and their lawyers, according to the two people…

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ProPublica reports: On March 15, 2022, an email appeared in the inbox of the election director of Forsyth County, Georgia, with the subject line “Challenge of Elector’s Eligibility.” A spreadsheet attached to the email identified 13 people allegedly registered to vote at P.O. boxes in Forsyth County, a wealthy Republican suburb north of Atlanta. Georgians are supposed to register at residential addresses, except in special circumstances. “Please consider this my request that a hearing be held to determine these voters’…

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The Daily Beast reports: Democrats on the House Oversight Committee called for an investigation on Wednesday into whether the committee’s Republicans relied on falsehoods and misinformation provided by Gal Luft, a supposed “whistleblower” in the Biden family probe who has been charged with being an unregistered foreign agent for China and lying to investigators. In a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D0MAD) and Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) brought up the laundry list…

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The New York Times reports: Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked a federal judge on Monday night to indefinitely postpone his trial on charges of illegally retaining classified documents after he left office, saying that the proceeding should not begin until all “substantive motions” in the case had been presented and decided. The written filing — submitted 30 minutes before its deadline of midnight on Tuesday — presents a significant early test for Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the…

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The Associated Press reports: For colleges and libraries seeking a boldfaced name for a guest lecturer, few come bigger than Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court justice who rose from poverty in the Bronx to the nation’s highest court. She has benefited, too — from schools’ purchases of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of the books she has written over the years. Sotomayor’s staff has often prodded public institutions that have hosted the justice to buy her memoir or children’s books, works that…

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The Messenger reports: One of the witnesses trumpeted by House Republicans as a whistle-blower in the Hunter Biden laptop probe acted as an illegal foreign agent for China, federal prosecutors alleged in a criminal indictment unsealed on Monday. Gal Luft, a U.S.-Israeli citizen and co-head of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a Maryland-based think tank, also stands accused of arms trafficking and sanctions violations by brokering the sale of Chinese-made weapons and Iranian oil to China, according…

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