If you were privileged to know Judge Richard G. Kopf at all beyond the blawg posts or comment section replies, you were fucking spoiled.

You had the ear of a federal Judge who would give you his 100% no bullshit opinions on anything and everything. If he felt like he could impart some wisdom in the process, so much the better. Continue reading →

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is about to reach its one week anniversary, longer than many had anticipated. The next step requires Hamas to release four female hostages, while Israel is to release more than 100 Palestinian terrorists. For a variety of reasons, this should strike people as a pretty lousy deal. Obviously, the ratio is horribly skewed in favor of Hamas. Then, too, are the “equivalences” of kidnapped hostages to convicted terrorists. How, then, did such a bad deal get struck?

It’s entirely understandable that Israelis whose loved ones were kidnapped and held hostage, often sex slaves, in Gaza would do anything to secure their return. Give up 1000 terrorists? Anything. End the war in Gaza? Anything. If it was your child/parent/spouse in captivity for all this time, would you put geopolitics ahead of their life? Continue reading →

Caught in between the January 6th defendants who had already completed their sentences and those sentenced for many years of imprisonment to come were some whose prosecutions had commenced, but had not yet been completed. Nicholas DeCarlo and Nicholas Ochs were two defendants who had already pleaded guilty, already allocuted under oath that they committed the crimes with which they were charged, and were awaiting sentence when Trump directed the prosecution to trash the case.

I further direct the Attorney General to pursue dismissal with prejudice to the government of all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.

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It’s said that unexplaining lies and irrational arguments to people who passionately desire to believe them and lack the education, experience and knowledge to grasp why the arguments are fundamentally absurd takes a magnitude of effort greater than creating them. Whether that’s true is doubtful; there is no unexplaining lies and irrational arguments to people incapable or disinterested in facts and reason, no matter what effort is mounted.

This was overwhemingly demonstrated in yesterday’s Tuesday Talk, perhaps the most disgraceful showing of ignorance and idiocy I’ve ever suffered here, and which has given me reason to put an end to TT lest Simple Justice become a cesspool of idiocy. Just as I refuse to let the woke have their way with their fantasy version of the world, I refuse to contribute to stupidity by giving space to the Trump faithful. There are other places happy to do so. Go there, not here. Continue reading →

There were the blanket Select Committee pardons and the family pardons, both of which were terrible exercises of judgment that open the door, as if the door needed opening, to cries of “Biden did it first” from the unduly simplistic. And wrongs they were, even if the rationalization was that Trump was going to exact retribution on all the people who were mean to him and kicked sand in his face.

But then came Trump’s turn, and turn it was.

Acting pursuant to the grant of authority in Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution of the United States, I do hereby: Continue reading →

Donald Trump will take the oath of office today to become the 47th President of the United States of America, conclusively proving Mencken right. According to Fox News, he will take “more than 200 executive actions” today. Some are intended to fulfill campaign promises, such as ending undocumented immigrants from entering the country, even if they’re more rhetorical than practical. Some are the sort one would expect of a petty, little person, such as revoking the security clearances of 51 people who said Hunter Biden’s laptop had the earmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.

And then there’s pure Trump, changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America (despite Elon Musk’s request that it be changed to the Gulf of X). Continue reading →

I wasn’t a big fan of Hercules and the Umpire at first. Frankly, it wasn’t until Tamara Tabo pushed me to check it out that I read anything there. After all, what does a criminal defense lawyer from New York care about what some federal judge in Nebraska has to say? That was more Above the Law’s David Lat territory. But one day I checked it out, and Judge Richard G. Kopf was not at all what I expected.

Sure, we were far apart on our views of the law, Judge Kopf never met a prosecutor he didn’t trust and thought Bill Barr, who was AG when he was nominated by Bush I, was a good guy. But he was honest about being a judge, the law, and himself. The first email I ever received from Judge Kopf started, “I [expletive deleted] love bacon.” No other federal judge wrote that to me. Continue reading →

Some of you may recall that I, along with my German son, did a weekly interview at Fault Lines called “Cross.” At one point, I asked Supreme Court advocate and founder of SCOTUSBlog, Tom Goldstein, if he would do an interview. He refused because, as he told me, he was angry with me. For one thing, I was highly critical of him in Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders and, when SCOTUSBlog decided to monetize, refused to be a part of the scheme.

As it turns out, I should have been nicer to Tom so he would have done the Cross, as he may have lived a far more interesting life than I imagined. Continue reading →

Not being a veteran, a military scholar or a person with any knowledge of defense beyond what I read in the newspapers, I’m going to accept what David Brooks says as fact. We are screwed. (Please forgive the lengthy quote.)

• The secretary general of NATO, Mark Rutte, has said that the West is not prepared for the challenges that will come over the next five years and that it’s time to “shift to a wartime mind-set.” Kori Schake, who directs foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, writes that while World War III has not begun, “a world war is approaching.”
• Recent American defense strategy has been based on the optimistic assumption that we will have to fight only one war at a time. But the closer cooperation between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea make a coordinated attack more likely, meaning we may have to fight three or four regional wars simultaneously. Continue reading →

There seemed to be little reason to discuss Jack Smith’s report with regard to Trump’s January 6th prosecution as it provided little new beyond his rationale for not charging Trump with insurrection. That Smith determined that a prosecution was appropriate, and an indictment obtained, reflects the position that there was legally sufficient evidence of guilt. Had there not been, it would have been unethical for Smith to pursue a prosecution and the indictment would (or at least should) have been dismissed for legal insufficiency.

Critically, however, this is not the same thing as saying that, had the case gone to trial, Trump would have been convicted. Continue reading →