One of the most incomprehensible aspects of Trump’s foreign policy decision-making is his abject refusal to do lay any responsibility, any blame, on Vladimir Putin and Russia. Jay Nordingler wrote an insightful post about how Trump understands America’s position in the world relative to Russia, and his personal grasp of his role relative to Putin. It doesn’t explain why, but it does explain how.

William F. Buckley Jr. had a line about moral equivalence. He worded it slightly differently each time, but here is one version: “The man who pushes an old lady into the path of an oncoming truck, and the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of an oncoming truck, are not to be denounced evenhandedly as men who push old ladies around.”

In Trump’s eyes, however, the United States and Russia are two sides of the same coin, each the moral equivalent of the other. Continue reading →

Only in a fantasy narrative wholly detached from any cognizable version of reality could one not see the settlement as the United States Department of Justice, or Attorney General Pam Bondi to be more specific, handing over taxpayer funds to a Trump=aligned criminal-turned-retconned victim to the tune of $1.25 million as an act of  flagrant corruption. Granted, that’s not a huge sum, particularly in light of the sums that will be paid by Bondi to victims-of-injustice Trump and his family, but it’s still nothing to sneeze at.

But mostly, the notion that the United States paid off Michael Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty to obstruction for lying to investigators, after being fired by Trump as National Security Advisor for lying to Vice President Mike Pence, and ultimately pardoned by Trump in the waning hours of his first term, is such a flagrant act of corruption as to be absurd, but for the fact that it happened. The Attorney General of the United States agreed to give $1.25 million to Flynn, who pleaded guilty and was pardoned, for being maliciously prosecuted. Nope, it actually happened. Continue reading →

Over more than 40 years of practice, I’ve worked in jurisdictions in which I was not admitted to practice and served as local counsel to lawyers not admitted in jurisdictions where I was. It’s hardly uncommon, but it is fraught with the potential for very serious problems. As Eugene Volokh notes, those problems smacked an Oregon local counsel upside the head for a sanction of $14,205.66 when pro hac vice counsel submitted papers containing hallucinated AI citations.

Ms. Couvrette … [had] asked Mr. Murphy to serve as local counsel for Mr. Brigandi’s pro hac vice admission. Mr. Murphy signed Mr. Birgandi’s pro hac vice application and personally attested that he read and understood the requirements of serving as local counsel under LR 83-3….

Mr. Brigandi’s son was dating Ms. Couvrette’s daughter, and Mr. Brigandi had agreed to represent Plaintiffs for free. According to Mr. Murphy, Mr. Brigandi was primarily responsible for the litigation strategy and for all dispositive motions practice. Mr. Murphy explained, “[m]y role mostly involved strategizing with Mr. Brigandi and Ms. Couvrette on how to fashion a settlement in connection to the commercial property…. I believed that my expertise in landlord tenant law would be helpful.” … Continue reading →

Trump did his civic duty by voting by mail, even if he doesn’t want you to because that’s cheating. Following up on his debunked conspiracy delusion that the 2020 election was “rigged” and stolen from him, Trump has told congressional Republicans to make no deal to fund the Transportation Safety Administration, and thereby end the hours of waiting on line at airports, unless the SAVE Act is passed

.“I’m suggesting strongly to the Republican Party, don’t make any deal on anything,” Mr. Trump said during a crime reduction event in Memphis.

He suggested that he would use the standoff over funding for the Department of Homeland Security as leverage to pass his voter ID bill, which he says is necessary to combat voter fraud by noncitizens — something that is exceedingly rare. Continue reading →

For many of us, notably including lawyers for whom the courts remain the final arbiters of legality and constitutionality, the judicial branch of government has become the “go to” guardrails of government. Congress has forsaken any meaningful role in national governance, and Trump neither knows nor cares about the limits of his lawful authority. So where else are institutionalists to turn but the courts?

In a New York Times op-ed, Duncan Hosie argues that our faith in the courts is misplaced.

Most areas of the law, like contract law and criminal law, can readily handle the bad man: They simply have to ensure that the consequences of violating the law are clear enough and strong enough to dissuade even those who lack moral scruples. But constitutional law is different. It is predicated not on consequences, but on the assumption that those who occupy public office will subordinate self-interest to larger obligations of service. It does not compel compliance so much as it presupposes it. Against a bad man, it has no obvious recourse.

Continue reading →

Robert Mueller, widely respected despite being a lifelong Republican and former Director of the FBI, was appointed by Trump’s Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in 2017 to investigate foreign interference in the 2016 election and obstruction of justice. He found it.

Over nearly two years, the investigation examined a broad campaign by Russia to influence the election, including the hacking and release of Democratic emails connected to his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and a social media operation aimed at American voters. It also scrutinized contacts between Russian individuals and Mr. Trump’s campaign advisers, as well as actions taken by the president after he took office.

The inquiry resulted in charges against more than 30 people and three companies on more than 100 criminal counts. Continue reading →

There’s nothing quite like the convenience and splendor of luxury cruise ships these days. You’re on a boat housing the population of Nashville that contains all manner of amenities designed to relax, entertain, and separate you from more of your hard-earned money than you originally intended to spend.

My ship was 25 decks of heaven. There were two theaters, a comedy club, restaurants open twenty-four hours a day, and a replica of a British rock club where the Beatles used to play. The pool deck had two pools separated by age, hot tubs, a splash pad and two waterslides that hung over the side of the ship. Continue reading →

It first dawned on me that the ability to make music was an extraordinarily effective way to smack the crap out of someone who did you wrong when Dave Carroll of Sons of Maxwell put United Breaks Guitars on Youtube. Not only was it incredibly cutting, but it was a damn good song as well.

But then came Joseph Foreman, a/k/a Afroman, whose door was broken down and home searched after a confidential informant accused him of having a basement dungeon. One problem was that he had no basement, but that didn’t stop the Adams County, Ohio, sheriff’s deputies from raiding his home. Continue reading →

At the public hearing of the House Oversight Committee, Attorney General Pam Bondi was, to say the least, uncooperative. Without answering questions, she reached deep into her “Op Book” to attack Democratic representatives who questioned her about the failure to comply with the Epstein Transparency Act. Then came the subpoena, at the behest of Republican Representative Nancy Mace.

Committee Chair James Comer had little choice but to issue the subpoena after the committee vote, but made the return date April 14th. A lot can happen between now and then that could well distract people, including the committee members, from issues surrounding the Department of Justice’s monumental and, as yet unexplained, failure to comply with the law. Who knows who we will be at war with? Who knows whether Bondi will still hold the position by then? Who knows if Bondi will even show up? If she doesn’t, what does the committee plan to do about it? It’s not as if Chairman Comer gives a damn. Continue reading →

There’s some irony that the walls behind Trump as he “explained” from the Oval Office that the United States didn’t need any other country’s help are covered in the resplendent gold-ish doodads reminiscent of King Louis XIV. Of course, this came after our former NATO and other allies begged off sending ships to help Trump open the Strait of Hormuz. Not their war. Not their monkey.

Trump could have consulted with our former allies before starting the war, but that’s not the way Trump operates. Indeed, he didn’t bother to consult our own military, which would have told him that there was little doubt that Iran would bomb its neighboring countries and close the Strait to shipping other than that of its allies, of which it approved, thus giving Russia and China a huge win by continuing to provide oil while its enemies were deprived of fuel. Trump then doubled down by waiving sanctions on Russia so it could sell its oil to India, giving its starved economy lifeblood so it could continue its war against Ukraine. Continue reading →