JD Vance wants to let social media users sue tech companies if they get fired for abhorrent posts
July 8, 2021, 7:27 AM ET
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Jack Smith is 'keeping his cards close to his vest' as he takes meetings with Trump lawyers: NYT reporter
June 05, 2023
Former President Donald Trump's attorneys met with special counsel Jack Smith as the Mar-a-Lago classified documents probe appears to be drawing to a close.
In a panel on CNN that discussed recent evidence in the case, including a maintenance worker who flooded security servers at Trump's country club while draining the pool, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, appearing alongside former federal prosecutor Elie Honig, broke down how prosecutors are still not tipping their hand on upcoming charges.
"Elie, you're a former federal prosecutor," said anchor Kaitlan Collins. "When you look at something like this and you hear they've seized the phone of a maintenance worker here, what questions would you have?"
"The big question here is, was this on purpose or was this an accident?" said Honig. "I completely understand why prosecutors were charmed to this, right? Especially when you consider the timing. There's already been a subpoena at this point. You've already had the search warrant. And DOJ is trying to collect the surveillance and now the room where the surveillance is stored was damaged. You're looking for communications. You're looking for a text. You're looking for an email. Somebody gives an order. Why? Sometimes people think they've deleted their phones, deleted their texts, if you swipe and hit delete. That doesn't delete them. You can raise those up in the FBI lab. I guarantee they're doing forensics on those phones and looking for that kind of communication."
"Pretty extraordinary to see Trump's attorneys going into the Department of Justice, Justice Department, sitting down with Jack Smith," said Collins, turning to Haberman. "What is your response to how Trump responded to this? He posted on Truth Social, asking why he should be charged when other presidents have not been charged."
"We know — although the indications seem that it's likely or not — we know that the DOJ just said they're not charging anyone in connection with Mike Pence, for instance, for documents he had," said Haberman. "I think that's a comparison point. I have been hearing before this meeting took place, that Trump expected he is going to be charged. It's not that they have said this to him. It's just that he believes it. Now, these meetings — and you would know this better than me. DOJ officials, typically prosecutors at any level keep their cards close to the vest. I don't think this was different in this meeting. But I also don't think they came away thinking, oh, we've solved this. For somebody like Donald Trump who treats everything like a deal and exchange and transaction, I don't think this is the meeting he wanted."
Watch the segment below or at this link.
Maggie Haberman on Trump lawyers' meeting with Jack Smith www.youtube.com
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MAGA ally: Trump's fans will still love him even if he goes down in classified documents case
June 05, 2023
Former President Donald Trump's attorneys met with Justice Department prosecutors and special counsel Jack Smith as the Mar-a-Lago classified documents probe wraps up and charging decisions are expected in the coming weeks — and the former president's rants on his Truth Social platform suggest he believes there is a significant risk he will be charged.
But don't expect Republican voters to abandon Trump just because of federal charges, said MAGA ally and former Trump adviser David Urban — after all, when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought business fraud charges, they just supported him more fiercely than ever.
That said, Urban continued, the new reporting that a maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago flooded a security server room while draining the pool is potentially troubling.
"We're going to have to wait and see what comes out in the details, right?" said Urban. "Obviously it depends on what is in the indictment, how serious of the nature it is. Look, you can argue any obstruction is bad, obviously, right? You're going to be charged for it. But I think if it's spelled out, if you find out that, like has been speculated here, that the pool was flooded perhaps in an attempt to damage this, if that's in fact true and there's more details upon details that the president directed certain aides to move boxes once he knew things, if those things are fleshed out and they're meat put on the bones, then I think it's going to be much harder to ignore what's going on. And you're going to have to speak out about it."
"Do you think a Justice Department indictment would change former President Trump as a candidate?" asked anchor Anderson Cooper. "Do you think he would change tactics? A lot of the witch hunt rhetoric would come to the fore. Do you think, from a candidate standpoint, it changes him in any way?"
"I don't think it changes anything," said Urban. "As I said, you and I sat next to each other, he got taken into custody, and then his poll numbers went up."
"I think that this is the most serious case that he's facing, this indictment charge is the most serious to date," added Urban. "We'll see what happens. But, you know, I suspect that, again, that the die-hard Trump base, that 30 percent, 35 percent of the Trump supporters who love the president are going to continue to love the president no matter what happens in this case."
Watch the segment below or at this link.
David Urban says Trump supporters will still love him if he's indicted www.youtube.com
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Harlan Crow’s argument for refusing to cooperate with Senate investigators is feeble: legal expert
June 05, 2023
Harlan Crow is at the center of an ethics scandal over lavish gifts to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and the conservative billionaire isn't offering up much in the way of a legal argument for declining to cooperate with a Senate inquiry, legal analyst Kim Wehle writes for The Bulwark.
Crow’s gifts to Thomas and his wife, Ginni, which included luxury vacations, are the subject of a ProPublica investigative report that have prompted renewed calls for Supreme Court ethics reform.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin issued a statement last month calling for “the full extent of Mr. Crow’s and the corporations’ gifts to Justice Thomas, what other individuals were able to gain special access to Justice Thomas and any other Justices via the travel and lodging provided, and whether those individuals had interests before the Supreme Court.”
Crow claims the request to review the gifts is unconstitutional and has declined to comply.
His attorney Michael Bopp, in a letter to responding to the committee’s request wrote that “Congress does not have the constitutional power to impose ethics rules and standards on the Supreme Court,” and that therefore the entire investigation is illegitimate.
Wehle contends that the Crow’s lawyer is making a flimsy argument.
Wehle writes that “If Bopp’s letter were filed with a federal court, it would come precariously close to violating Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which enables courts to impose sanctions on lawyers for advocating excessively frivolous arguments.”
Bopp in his letter argues that the Constitution restricts Congress from applying the types of ethical rules and standards already exist or lower court on the Supreme Court.
Wehle writes that “The argument is that the Supreme Court is created by the Constitution expressly, whereas the Constitution gives Congress the power to create the lower federal judiciary, which it did with the first Federal Judiciary Act of 1789, so Congress can only regulate the courts that it actually creates in the first place.”
Wehle believes that Bopp’s argument that the Supreme Court is “so constitutionally sacrosanct” that it is above being accountable to Congress is historically inaccurate.
“Crow is rebuffing a legitimate inquiry into an ethics scandal that directly involves himself,” Wehle writes.
“Given the sobering separation of powers concerns at stake, Crow’s contempt of the U.S. Congress is truly contemptible.”
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