The question is not, as some simpletons often seek to frame it, that too many criminal cases end in plea bargains rather than trials. They obviously do, and there are many reasons why this is the case as I’ve argued in the past. But in a new pitch to alter the calculus, Clark Neily goes to a place even darker than usual. Rather than argue that trials, rather than pleas, are necessary to vindicate the rights of the accused, Clark argues that it’s the right of the public to enjoy salacious legal content about the public figures they hate the most.

Think how much more we could learn about Biden-family influence peddling and the machinations of foreign agents if the charges against Hunter were litigated in open court, as the Constitution provides. Among other things, the relevant tax filings would have to be offered into evidence and there would be testimony about them, potentially including how Biden earned the income upon which he neglected to pay taxes, who paid him, and whether any other family members participated in the performance or the fruits of that labor. Those questions might lead to others, such as why the government appears to have cherry picked Biden’s least culpable tax shenanigans while turning a blind eye to more serious misconduct, as alleged by multiple IRS whistleblowers.

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My old pal Ken had a handy reply whenever someone mindlessly claimed that conduct he found offensive violated the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act: “It’s not the RICO.” According to the indictment filed by Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willi against Trump and 18 other defendants, including such legal “luminaries” as Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman and Jenna Ellis, it is indeed the RICO. It’s very much the RICO.

Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on  November 3, 2020. One of the states he lost was Georgia. Trump and the other Defendants  charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump. That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the State of Georgia, and in other states.

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Five, if not six, of the co-conspirators in Trump’s January 6th indictment are lawyers. Lawyers?!? According to Cardozo con law prawf Deborah Pearlstein, that must mean something.

At least five and perhaps all six of the individuals who are alleged to have conspired with Mr. Trump to strip millions of Americans of their right to have their votes counted had a special duty to protect our constitutional system. They were lawyers.

In one sense, it would be easy to make too much of this fact. The former senior Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and the former law school dean John Eastman, who seem plainly to be two of the unnamed co-conspirators, are hardly representative of the million-plus practicing lawyers in the United States. Thousands of lawyers, most of them career civil servants, served honorably in Mr. Trump’s administration.

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The old saw is never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. While ink has been largely replaced by pixels, and it’s unclear that the Marion County Record, a weekly newspaper that few beyond Marion County would be aware existed, bought pixels in bulk, but when one of the media tribe gets raided, the wagons circle and the outrage flows.

In an unprecedented raid Friday, local law enforcement seized computers, cellphones and reporting materials from the Marion County Record office, the newspaper’s reporters, and the publisher’s home. Continue reading →

Readership has fallen off over the past couple of years. Some reasons are obvious, such as my changing from two posts a day to one after complaints that I write too damn much and it’s more than you have the time to read. It was just as well for me, as there are (as of today) 12,828 posts here and after a while, the same issues repeat themselves and I’m disinclined to write about the same things over and over. I already said it and don’t feel any need to say it again. I realize that some of you didn’t read it the first time around, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s here already. Continue reading →

The argument appears to be straight forward. Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment precludes anyone who provided aid and comfort to insurrectionists from holding public office.

Section 3 Disqualification from Holding Office

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

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Monique Worrell wasn’t the first state’s attorney Governor Ron DeSantis removed. The first was Hillsborough County prosecutor Andrew Warren, who announced after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that he would not prosecute anyone for abortion-related crimes. On the one hand, Warren was twice elected to his office. On the other, the Florida legislature enacted the 15-week abortion ban. And on the third hand, DeSantis was shortly thereafter re-elected by a huge margin.

“When you flagrantly violate your oath of office, when you make yourself above the law, you have violated your duty, you have neglected your duty and you are displaying a lack of competence to be able to perform those duties,” DeSantis said to cheers.

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To be honest, I never heard the name Kai Cenat before the Union Square riot. To be honest, I’m not really up to date on most social media “influencers,” a weird characterization for people who amass a huge following for no particular reason. He’s on a platform called “Twitch,” and I’m not. So when he told his followers to show up at Union Square Park, they showed because he’s an “influencer.”

“We’re going to be going crazy,” Mr. Cenat, a social media superstar who has become known for his marathon streaming sessions, said during a Wednesday broadcast on the social media platform Twitch. He announced a gathering in Union Square to tens of thousands of viewers. All his New York people needed to be there, he said. Continue reading →

In a New York Times op-ed, Isaac Butler raised a well-worn complaint.

The American theater is on the verge of collapse.

Granted, it’s the sort of thing someone involved in theater would say when things aren’t going well, and given the impact of the pandemic and the shuttering of America, it should come as no surprise that even the arts suffered. But Butler’s argument isn’t merely that the theater has taken a hit, but that its financial viability is crashing and burning. Continue reading →

While I’m generally against judges writing decisions that contain song lyrics or other cutesy gimmicks as being insufficiently serious about the very serious effect they have on people’s lives, I can’t help but feel Bronx Justice Jeffrey Zimmerman’s pain. I’ve felt it as well, and while I’ve tried to make the best of it from when bail reform was enacted in the dark of an Albany night by people who lacked the knowledge, experience and humility to get it right before making it law, it was never the solution to a very real problem.

Justice Zimmerman had enough.

“Maybe you’ll find direction
Around some corner where it’s been waiting to meet you”
–Phil Lesh and Robert Hunter, “Box of Rain” Continue reading →