Attention to the Unseen

CNN reports: A defamation law firm representing Dominion Voting Systems has sent letters to White House counsel Pat Cipollone and President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani instructing them to preserve all records related to the company at the center of Trump’s conspiracy theories and warning Giuliani that legal action is “imminent.” Through two well-known defamation attorneys, Dominion Voting Systems sent letters to Cipollone and Giuliani Tuesday, demanding Giuliani stop making “defamatory claims against Dominion” and ensure there is “no…

Read More Read More

The Washington Post reports: Outgoing Attorney General William P. Barr said Monday he saw no basis for the federal government seizing voting machines and that he did not intend to appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations of voter fraud — again breaking with President Trump as the commander in chief entertains increasingly desperate measures to overturn the election. At a news conference to announce charges in a decade old terror case, Barr — who has just two days left…

Read More Read More

Erica Newland writes: I was an attorney at the Justice Department when Donald Trump was elected president. I worked in the Office of Legal Counsel, which is where presidents turn for permission slips that say their executive orders and other contemplated actions are lawful. I joined the department during the Obama administration, as a career attorney whose work was supposed to be independent of politics. I never harbored delusions about a Trump presidency. Mr. Trump readily volunteered that his agenda…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: Traveling for work and far from home, Seda Basay-Yildiz received a chilling fax at her hotel: “You filthy Turkish sow,” it read. “We will slaughter your daughter.” A German defense lawyer of Turkish descent who specializes in Islamist terrorism cases, Ms. Basay-Yildiz was used to threats from the far right. But this one, which arrived late one night in August 2018, was different. Signed with the initials of a former neo-Nazi terrorist group, it contained…

Read More Read More

Adam Klasfeld writes: Outgoing President Donald Trump and his soon-to-be-former Vice President Mike Pence’s attempt to invalidate Wisconsin’s vote in only Milwaukee and Dane Counties appears to be racially motivated, two of the state’s Supreme Court justice remarked in a brutal Saturday hearing for the lame duck president. Trump’s attorney, James Troupis, had barely begun to address the high court when Justice Jill Karofsky noted that the attack focused on the two counties with the state’s largest number of Black…

Read More Read More

The Washington Post reports: They are both elected and appointed, selected by Democrats and Republicans alike. Some have served for decades — while others took the bench only months ago. One is a former high school teacher, another the first Native American woman appointed to a federal judgeship. A third worked for years for a Republican governor who has been a vocal supporter of President Trump. Since the November election, they have all ruled in court against Trump or one…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy this week joined 125 House GOP colleagues in support of an effort to subvert the presidential election. Most Senate Republicans weren’t going anywhere near it. Not a single GOP senator signed a “friend of the court” brief for the long-shot Texas lawsuit to throw out other states’ results in a bid to keep President Donald Trump in power. And there was no coordinated effort to get Republicans on board, according to interviews with more…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: In the hours before the Supreme Court rejected it, another 20 House Republicans — including their top leader — joined a legal brief on Friday supporting an extraordinary lawsuit seeking to overturn President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, underscoring the increasingly extreme lengths to which many in the party are willing to go to invalidate the election results. The Supreme Court on Friday rejected the suit brought by Texas to throw out the results in…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: State prosecutors in Manhattan have interviewed several employees of President Trump’s bank and insurance broker in recent weeks, according to people with knowledge of the matter, significantly escalating an investigation into the president that he is powerless to stop. The interviews with people who work for the lender, Deutsche Bank, and the insurance brokerage, Aon, are the latest indication that once Mr. Trump leaves office, he still faces the potential threat of criminal charges that…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: Officials from four presidential swing states forcefully criticized an effort by Texas and President Donald Trump to enlist the Supreme Court to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election, with Pennsylvania calling the last-ditch legal effort “seditious” and built on an “absurd” foundation. “The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated,” Pennsylvania said in a 43-page brief signed…

Read More Read More

CNN reports: President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to block millions of votes from four battleground states that voted for President-elect Joe Biden. Trump’s request came in a filing with the court asking to intervene in a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton seeking to invalidate millions of votes cast in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The President is being represented by a new attorney, John Eastman, who is known for recently pushing a racist…

Read More Read More

Steve Vladeck writes: For all of the (many) lawsuits that President Donald Trump and his supporters have filed challenging the 2020 election results, the new winner for hubris and cynicism may be the action that the state of Texas filed directly in the Supreme Court late Monday night, asking the justices to throw out the results in four (but only four) battleground states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. So far, 17 states have filed motions backing the Texas attorney general,…

Read More Read More

CBS News reports: A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to fully restore an Obama-era initiative that protects undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation, requiring officials to open the program to new applicants for the first time since 2017. Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn instructed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to post a public notice by Monday that states the department will accept and adjudicate Deferred Action for…

Read More Read More

Benjamin Wittes writes: How should the next attorney general, whoever he or she turns out to be, handle the John Durham probe? The more I study what Attorney General Bill Barr did in his secret October order naming the Connecticut U.S. attorney as a special counsel, the more devilishly clever it seems—and the bigger the pickle it creates for Barr’s successor. This, presumably, is Barr’s intention. Untangling this knot is going to take no small amount of diplomacy, lawyering and…

Read More Read More