Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports: Twenty former U.S. attorneys — all of them Republicans — on Tuesday publicly called President Trump “a threat to the rule of law in our country,” and urged that he be replaced in November with his Democratic opponent, former vice president Joe Biden. “The President has clearly conveyed that he expects his Justice Department appointees and prosecutors to serve his personal and political interests,” said the former prosecutors in an open letter. They accused Trump of…

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The Daily Beast reports: The FBI has failed to produce a legally required report detailing the scope of white supremacist and other domestic terrorism, despite mounting concerns that the upcoming election could spark far-right violence. According to a key House committee chairman, that leaves the country in the dark about what the FBI concedes is America’s most urgent terrorist threat, as well as the resources the U.S. government is devoting to fight it. In June, the bureau was supposed to…

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Jamie Crooks and Samir Deger-Sen write: The current court is, despite occasional hand-wringing on the right over a decision or two, the most conservative this nation has had in nearly a century. Yet each time it has delivered significant conservative victories — such as Citizens United, which struck down key campaign finance limits, written by our former boss in 2010 — liberals accepted the outcome as the law of the land. But it is wrong to think that such acquiescence…

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Star Tribune reports: In the wake of protests following the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a member of the Boogaloo Bois opened fire on the Minneapolis Police Third Precinct with an AK-47-style gun and screamed “Justice for Floyd” as he ran away, according to a federal complaint made public Friday. A sworn affidavit by the FBI underlying the complaint reveals new details about a far-right anti-government group’s coordinated role in the violence that roiled through civil unrest over Floyd’s…

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CNN reports: The doomsday scenario of lawyers and judges setting surprise terms for voting or even deciding the election this year has loomed large. Yet that likelihood is diminishing by the day, several elections law experts say, with the terms for voting already essentially set in many states and a calm coming over the courts in pre-Election Day litigation. The focus on courts has been extreme at times this year, especially with President Donald Trump pushing for the confirmation of…

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CNN reports: Senior officials throughout various departments and agencies of the Trump administration tell CNN they are alarmed at White House pressure to grant what would essentially be a no-bid contract to lease the Department of Defense’s mid-band spectrum — premium real estate for the booming and lucrative 5G market — to Rivada Networks, a company in which prominent Republicans and supporters of President Donald Trump have investments. The pressure campaign to fast track Rivada’s “Request for Proposal” (RFP) by…

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Ellen L. Weintraub, a commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, writes: Among many other recent developments not likely on anyone’s 2020 bingo card, a Supreme Court decision about foreign aid and legalized prostitution has shattered perceived constraints on the authority of the United States to robustly defend its elections against foreign interference. This summer, in U.S. Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International, the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-3 decision, with the majority opinion written by Justice…

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The Daily Beast reports: The FBI is investigating the purloined laptop materials from Joe Biden’s son as part of a possible foreign disinformation operation, a congressional source told The Daily Beast—an investigation at odds with a statement from President Trump’s director of national intelligence. John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, told Fox Business on Monday that the dissemination of materials from Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop was not part of a Russian disinformation campaign. “The intelligence community doesn’t believe that…

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The Associated Press reports: Six current and former Russian military officers sought to disrupt through computer hacking the French election, the Winter Olympics and U.S. hospitals and businesses, according to a Justice Department indictment unsealed Monday. It details destructive attacks on a broad range of targets and implicates the same Kremlin unit that interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. The indictment accuses the defendants, all said to be officers in the Russian military agency known as the GRU, in hacks…

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Politico reports: He’s mused out loud about an embarrassing 2020 defeat. He’s acknowledged his severe deficit in key polls. And he’s made naked appeals to the critical voting blocs of suburban women and older adults — two demographics he has struggled to win over. Just weeks from Election Day, President Donald Trump is saying the quiet part out loud about his own campaign. The president is crisscrossing the country with a packed schedule, flying to some states he won handily…

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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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