Attention to the Unseen

Politico reports: As news of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death rippled across Washington on the evening of Sept. 18, some of President Donald Trump’s conservative allies likened the sudden Supreme Court vacancy to an eleventh-hour bailout. Besieged by slipping poll numbers and new accusations that he misled Americans about the dangers of Covid-19, Trump — and his closest aides and allies — saw a Republican-led confirmation fight as a welcome detour to galvanize his base in the final month before…

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Donald B. Ayer and Alan Charles Raul write: When a vacancy on the Supreme Court arose nine months ahead of the election in 2016, Sen. Mitch McConnell said in no uncertain terms: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.” Now, after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg less than two months before Election Day, as voters are…

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The Washington Post reports: Five years ago, Donald Trump promised to preserve more than 150 acres of rolling woodlands in an exclusive swath of New York suburbia prized for its luxury homes and rural tranquility. In exchange for setting aside this land on his estate known as Seven Springs, Trump received a tax break of $21.1 million, according to court documents. The size of Trump’s tax windfall was set by a 2016 appraisal that valued Seven Springs at $56.5 million — more…

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Jamelle Bouie writes: Much of the point of the Republican alliance with Donald Trump was to establish control over the federal judiciary as a whole and the Supreme Court in particular. The deal was simple: Republicans would support him and his agenda, such as it was. He would nominate a cadre of reliably conservative judges, handpicked by the Federalist Society and backed by groups like the Judicial Crisis Network, to lifetime positions on the federal bench, where they would write…

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Trump issued this command on April 17: LIBERATE MICHIGAN! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2020 The Detroit News reports: Federal agents said Thursday they thwarted a plot to violently overthrow the government and kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — a conspiracy that included visits to her home in northern Michigan and training with explosive devices. The alleged plot involved conspirators who met during a Second Amendment rally at the Capitol in Lansing in June and reached out to…

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Bloomberg reports: Elliott Broidy, a former top political fundraiser for President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, has been charged as part of a wide-ranging federal probe into back-channel efforts to influence the Trump administration on behalf of foreign interests. Broidy participated in a scheme to illegally lobby the Trump administration to stop investigating the embezzlement scandal at the 1MDB Malaysian state investment fund, according to charging documents unsealed on Wednesday. Jho Low, a Malaysian fugitive who was charged as…

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Politico reports: Amy Coney Barrett hasn’t even arrived yet, but the Supreme Court has begun delivering its first big signals of how aggressive a role the court plans to play in setting the rules for next month’s election. The court stepped in Monday night to reinstate a South Carolina ballot witness requirement, even as a Pennsylvania dispute over late-arriving absentee ballots is now teed up for imminent emergency action by the justices. And another simmering fight over voting rules in…

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Quinta Jurecic and Susan Hennessey write: Barely a week after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, before the late justice had even been buried, President Donald Trump hosted a Rose Garden ceremony to formally announce his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to fill the open seat on the Supreme Court. A week later, it appears that the inauspicious ceremony may have been at the center of the coronavirus outbreak now plaguing the White House and the Senate. Yet even with…

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USA Today reports: Former Justice Department attorneys expressed concerns Thursday that Attorney General William Barr is using the power of the agency to help President Donald Trump win reelection, citing statements Barr had made about mail-in ballots and the politically fraught inquiry into the Russia investigation. “We fear that Attorney General Barr intends to use the DOJ’s vast law enforcement powers to undermine our most fundamental democratic value: free and fair elections,” according to an open letter signed by about…

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The Washington Post reports: A national commission on policing launched earlier this year by President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr has violated federal law by seating only people in law enforcement and failing to include members with different perspectives such as civil rights activists, defense attorneys or mental health professionals, a federal judge ruled Thursday as he halted the group’s work. The commission also did not file a charter, post public notice of its meetings or open them…

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Garrett M. Graff writes: Andrew Weissmann headed the prosecution of Paul Manafort on Robert Mueller’s team. His new memoir, Where Law Ends, is an elegy for the Russia investigation that never was—one in which the special counsel’s office was actually able to crack the oddball collection of grifters who populated Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, from Paul Manafort to George Papadopoulos, and figure out the actual truth of their relationship with an expansive cast of Russian oligarchs and intelligence…

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Lawrence Goldstone writes: Following Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, Democrats, not surprisingly, are outraged at Republicans’ course reversal on filling a vacancy during an election year. Two proposals are gaining momentum among commentators and progressive activists: expanding the number of justices and instituting term limits. These ideas almost always seem to smack of political revenge. But to think only in terms of getting even is to miss the point. Each of these notions is in line with what the Founders…

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Jeffrey Toobin writes: Amy Coney Barrett, whom President Trump has nominated to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, was born in 1972, so she can expect to spend several decades shaping both American law and American life. As it happens, a year before Barrett’s birth, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., then a prominent lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, and later a Supreme Court Justice himself, wrote a now famous memorandum to the United States Chamber of Commerce, arguing that businesses…

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The New York Times reports: In the effort led by President Trump to create a misleading impression of widespread voter fraud, administration and campaign officials have seized on nine mail-in military ballots in a Pennsylvania county that Mr. Trump won by 20 points in 2016. Federal officials have disclosed that they are investigating whether local elections officials improperly discarded the ballots, at least seven of which were cast for Mr. Trump, they said. A Justice Department official said on Friday…

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