Attention to the Unseen

NBC News reports: The charges brought against President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden are rarely prosecuted, legal experts say. Under a plea deal reached with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware — an office headed by Donald Trump appointee David Weiss — Hunter Biden will plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of failing to pay taxes, which he later reimbursed. Biden also faces a felony gun charge — possession of a firearm by a person who is…

Read More Read More

The Washington Post reports: On Jan. 13, 2022, the department indicted Rhodes and 10 other Oath Keepers on charges of seditious conspiracy. It did not quiet the criticism, but instead put a spotlight on signs the Justice Department was not, in comparison with the House committee, working as actively to investigate Trump’s role in the attempted coup. Politico had reported that week that the House committee had demanded and received documents from several states about fake electors as well as…

Read More Read More

The Guardian reports: With the US besieged by a rightwing culture war campaign that aims to strip away rights from LGBTQ+ people and others, blame tends to be focused on Republican politicians and conservative media figures. But lurking behind efforts to roll back abortion rights, to demonize trans people, and to peel back the protections afforded to gay and queer Americans is a shadowy, well-funded rightwing legal organization, experts say. Since it was formed in 1994, Alliance Defending Freedom has…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: As President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has pursued enemies abroad, his intelligence operatives now appear prepared to cross a line that they previously avoided: trying to kill a valuable informant for the U.S. government on American soil. The clandestine operation, seeking to eliminate a C.I.A. informant in Miami who had been a high-ranking Russian intelligence official more than a decade earlier, represented a brazen expansion of Mr. Putin’s campaign of targeted assassinations. It also…

Read More Read More

  ROBERT COSTA: Would he put the country at risk if he was in the White House again? FMR. ATTORNEY GENERAL BARR: He- he will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country’s interest, there’s no question about it. This is a perfect example of that. He’s like, you know, he’s like a nine year old, defiant nine year old kid who’s always pushing the glass toward the edge of the…

Read More Read More

The Washington Post reports: As former president Donald Trump prepares for trial on charges that he repeatedly violated government rules for handling classified information, his legal team may get a tactical timing advantage from an unlikely source: government rules for handling such secrets. Trump’s indictment on dozens of charges, including mishandling classified documents and trying to obstruct investigators’ efforts to recover that material, means his case will be tried under the rules of the Classified Information Procedures Act, or CIPA…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: The federal prosecutors overseeing the classified documents case against former President Donald J. Trump said in court papers on Friday that the evidence they are poised to give the defense as part of the normal process of discovery contained information about “ongoing investigations” that could “identify uncharged individuals.” The court papers — a standard request to place a protective order on the discovery material — contained no explanation about what those other inquiries might be…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: Jonathan Goodman, the magistrate judge assigned to handle Donald J. Trump’s arraignment, did something of a double take during the proceeding on Tuesday, when the Justice Department offered the former president a bond deal that was not merely lenient but imposed virtually no restrictions on him at all. Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the prosecution for the department, opted not to request conditions routinely imposed on other defendants seeking to be released from custody,…

Read More Read More

Rolling Stone reports: In the days since Donald Trump was indicted, his allies have had a unified demand of his GOP primary rivals: promise to pardon the Donald — or else. It’s not an accident: In the days leading up to his arraignment, the former president worked the phones to vent about the case to his allies and discuss the way forward. According to a person familiar with the matter and another source briefed on it, Trump had one repeated…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: When Donald J. Trump responded to his latest indictment by promising to appoint a special prosecutor if he’s re-elected to “go after” President Biden and his family, he signaled that a second Trump term would fully jettison the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence. “I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,”…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: Aileen M. Cannon, the Federal District Court judge assigned to preside over former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case, has scant experience running criminal trials, calling into question her readiness to handle what is likely to be an extraordinarily complex and high-profile courtroom clash. Judge Cannon, 42, has been on the bench since November 2020, when Mr. Trump gave her a lifetime appointment shortly after he lost re-election. She had not previously served as…

Read More Read More

The Washington Post reports: One of Donald Trump’s new attorneys proposed an idea in the fall of 2022: The former president’s team could try to arrange a settlement with the Justice Department. The attorney, Christopher Kise, wanted to quietly approach Justice to see if he could negotiate a settlement that would preclude charges, hoping Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department would want an exit ramp to avoid prosecuting a former president. Kise would hopefully “take the temperature down,” he…

Read More Read More