There is no question but that the pardon power belongs to the president, and only the president, and is unreviewable. And while I remain unconvinced that crypto-currency isn’t the modern equivalent of tulips, I have no personal feelings about Changpeng Zhao, or CZ as he’s called, the richest man in crypto, being pardoned per se. Heck, pardons are good, even bad pardons. Mercy is good. Even mistaken mercy is good.

But was this mercy?

President Trump granted a pardon to Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, wiping away one of the U.S. government’s most significant crackdowns on crypto crime. Continue reading →

Trump says he might give it to charity, or to the White House. Maybe. Maybe not. We might never know anything about it, from whether Trump’s Justice Department, run by Trump’s former lawyers, decided to gift him what he claims to be owed because of the “unfair” federal investigations into the Russian connections with his campaign and the raid at Mar-a-Lago after he lied about, then refused to return, secret documents which he retained and were found during the execution of a search warrant. Either way, Trump has demanded $230 million from the United States for himself.

President Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him, according to people familiar with the matter, who added that any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit.

Continue reading →

Every lawyer accepts certain limitations on his freedom of speech when he seeks and obtains bar admission. We can’t reveal client confidences, for example, even though it would otherwise be fully within our right of free speech. These are the rules of the profession, and we accept them when we accept our ticket.

But when a lawyer in New Hampshire sent a demand letter to a putative defamation defendant, a non-lawyer, did it violate Rule 4.4(a) of the Rules of Professional Conduct because it included a demand for payment of $250,000? Continue reading →

Despite efforts to denigrate it, ridicule it, mischaracterize it and reframe it, the “No Kings” march was peaceful, broad-based and huge. Whether it was 7,000,000 people as estimated can’t be said with certainty, but there were marches all over the country and they were well attended by a vast array of patriotic Americans who love their country as well as the occasional inflatable frog.

Contrary to the efforts of Republicans, it was neither hateful nor communist nor antifa and paid Soros agitators. It was as American as apple pie.

They were teachers and lawyers, military veterans and fired government employees. Children and grandmothers, students and retirees. Continue reading →

Trump says they were “narco-terrorists.” Colombia says it was a fishing boat. Trump has offered no evidence other than his say-so. Colombia had the audacity to complain. How dare they, Trump says.

President Gustavo Petro of Colombia accused the United States of murdering an innocent fisherman in an attack on a boat that the American authorities claimed had been carrying illicit drugs, prompting President Trump to declare on Sunday that he would slash assistance to Colombia, one of Washington’s top aid recipients in Latin America, and impose new tariffs on the country’s goods.

That Trump believes he can murder at will is bad enough, although for the most part the boats he’s been blowing up are from Venezuela, and everybody hates Venezuelan dictator Maduro, who should not be confused with Argentinian President Javier Milei, to whom Trump promised $40 billion (up from $20 billion) in aid provided he gets re-elected. Trump likes Milei, who likes Trump back. Continue reading →

Was George Santos, if that really is his name, really a Trump and MAGA supporter? Who would know? Given his proclivity to saying anything that serves his interests at any given moment, and given that it’s in his interest at the moment to claim to be a Trump supporter, he says he is. And for Trump, that’s good enough.

Former Representative George Santos of New York, the disgraced Republican fabulist whose lies made him an object of national scorn, was released from a federal prison on Friday night after President Trump commuted his seven-year sentence for fraud.

It’s hardly surprising that Trump commuted his sentence, and he’s hardly the first person to be pardoned or have his sentence commuted who wasn’t exactly deserving of presidential mercy. That goes for Democratic as well as Republican presidents. Remember Marc Rich (Clinton)? And then there was Crazy Joe Arpaio (Trump)? And Joe Biden’s autopen pardons on the way out the door raised serious concerns. Continue reading →

Admiral Alvin Holsey was put in charge of the United States Southern Command, which is responsible for bombing boats from Venezuela that are allegedly carrying drugs and run by drug smugglers who are now characterized as “narco-terrorists” to make their high seas murder less offensive, at least to those who aren’t troubled by murders of those claimed to be drug smugglers if you’re inclined to trust the Trump administration.

They could have been interdicted. They could have ascertained whether they were, in fact, carrying drugs and then had the drugs seized and the people on the boat prosecuted. Instead, they were just murdered, the only evidence of their conduct based on trusting the Trump administration not to lie or be wrong. Continue reading →

It’s bad enough that Hamas is executing people, claimed to be collaborators, in the streets of Gaza City with a bullet to the head in front of crowds. After all, how better to teach the natives to fear you and not resist than a bullet to the head?

Despite the fact that the Trump peace plan required Hamas to lay down its arms and relinquish control of Gaza, this doesn’t appear to bother Trump, who calls them “gangs” of “very bad people.” Continue reading →

In response to Adam Liptak’s New York Times article extolling UVA Law Professor Caleb Nelson’s essay doubting the originalist interpretation of the Constitution, Josh Blackman questions why the mainstream media only cares about originalist scholars when they buck the trend.

I think there is something of a pattern. The mainstream media will elevate originalism when it bucks conservative orthodoxies. But when originalism unquestionably supports a conservative position, it is described as fringe and radical.

Josh’s observation isn’t necessaryily wrong, but it’s easily explained by the old adage that it’s not news when dog bites man, but it is news when man bites dog. And Caleb Nelson’s post is man biting dog, good and hard. Continue reading →

George Stephanopoulos had Yale Law School graduate, hillbilly, one-time Trump hater and now Vice President, J.D.  Vance on his ABC television show, This Week. It was an interesting interview, to say the least.

At the 9 minutes mark, Stephanopoulos asked Vance whether immigration Czar Tom Homan, who was recorded taking $50,000 in cash from the FBI, kept the money or gave it back. The balance of the interview had Stephanopoulos repeating the question as Vance did everything possible not to answer. Eventually, the interview was ended without Vance answering the question. Continue reading →