#Georges Litman
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Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday overruled the special master she appointed to review thousands of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago, shielding former President Donald Trump from addressing his claims that documents may have been "planted" or "declassified" in court.
Cannon, a Trump appointee in southern Florida, issued an order extending the timeline of the review after Trump's lawyers objected to the expedited schedule laid out by special master Raymond Dearie, who was chosen from a list proposed by Trump's lawyers. Under the new order, the review and any surrounding issues around Dearie's rulings "will almost certainly" stretch into next year, according to Politico.
Cannon, who has served on the bench for less than two years, also overruled Dearie, a Reagan appointee who has served for 36 years, on his requirement that Trump assert whether the FBI's inventory of seized items is accurate, effectively challenging his public claim that agents may have "planted" evidence.
"There shall be no separate requirement on Plaintiff at this stage, prior to the review of any of the Seized Materials, to lodge ex ante final objections to the accuracy of Defendant's Inventory, its descriptions, or its contents. The Court's Appointment Order did not contemplate that obligation," Cannon wrote.
She wrote that if any issues rise during the review "that require reconsideration of the Inventory or the need to object to its contents, the parties shall make those matters known to the Special Master for appropriate resolution and recommendation to this Court."
Cannon also rejected other parts of Dearie's plan for the review, giving Trump's lawyers additional weeks to assert whether they believe any documents are covered by attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.
"If Judge Cannon was going to continue calling every ball in Trump's favor, I'm not at all sure why she felt the need to appoint a special master to review the documents the government seized from Mar-a-Lago," tweeted Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney. "No real surprises here. The name of the game is delay. Judge Cannon countermanded Judge Dearie's streamlined schedule & helped Trump advance his usual delay game in litigation. That means it could be late December before DOJ can use documents it recovered from Mar-a-Lago."
Cannon previously came under criticism for repeatedly siding with Trump in the case. Cannon's initial order barred the Justice Department from continuing its criminal investigation into the documents and ordered documents marked classified to be included in the special master review and shared with Trump's lawyers. A federal appeals court overturned those rulings, arguing that she had abused her discretion and that Trump "not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents."
Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe said that Cannon's order on Thursday was "clearly wrong."
"But she's a sideshow now that the Court of Appeals has lifted her injunction with respect to the classified documents," he tweeted. "On the eve of her stupidly extended deadline, DOJ should indict Trump and render her delays and game playing moot."
Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti said the order was a "minor win" for Trump.
"But this doesn't change the difficult position Trump is in," he added. "He still has to take a position regarding every seized document."
Some legal experts criticized Cannon for repeatedly intervening on Trump's behalf.
"She's an embarrassment to the federal judiciary," wrote conservative attorney George Conway.
"Cannon's latest order has neither law nor reason on its side," tweeted former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman. "Judges never micromanage special masters this way," he said.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who served on special counsel Bob Mueller's team, said that the order was "one more piece of evidence that she is completely unfit to serve on the bench."
"What does Donald Trump have on Judge Cannon or her husband?" Weissmann wrote. "Something is SO off in her decisions (and the court of appeals said as much) that it is impossible not to ask this question in all seriousness."
Read Cannon's full order below:
Cannon overrules Dearie by Igor Derysh on Scribd
#us politics#news#salon#donald trump#judge aileen cannon#11th circuit court of appeals#fbi raid#fbi#department of justice#judge raymond dearie#special master#mar a lago#top secret documents#classified documents#politico#twitter#tweet#Joyce Vance#Laurence Tribe#Renato Mariotti#George Conway#Harry Litman#Andrew Weissmann#scribd#2022
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HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
October 28, 2022 (Friday)
At about 2:30 am, police in San Francisco responding to a call discovered that an assailant had broken into the San Francisco home of House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and attacked her husband, 82-year-old Paul Pelosi, with a hammer, shouting, “Where’s Nancy?” The attacker apparently tried to tie Mr. Pelosi up “until Nancy got home” and told police he was “waiting for Nancy.”
Mr. Pelosi suffered a fractured skull and serious injuries to his right arm and his hands. He underwent surgery today. He is expected to recover.
Speaker Pelosi was in Washington, D.C., at the time. The House speaker is the third-ranking officer of our government, second in line to succeed the president. An attack on her is an attack on our fundamental government structure.
Those who knew the alleged attacker, 42-year-old David DePape, say his behavior has been concerning. His Facebook page featured conspiracy theories common on right-wing media, saying Covid vaccines were deadly; that George Floyd, the Minneapolis man murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin, actually died of a drug overdose; that the 2020 election was stolen; and the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol was a “FARCE.” He reposted a number of videos by Mike Lindell, the Trump loyalist and chief executive officer of the MyPillow company, lying that the 2020 election was stolen.
Matthew Gertz of Media Matters reviewed DePape’s blog and found it “a standard case of right-wing online radicalization. QAnon, Great Reset, Pizzagate, Gamergate and all there, along with M[en’s] R[ights] A[ctivist]/misogyny, hatred of Blacks/Jews/trans people/’groomers,’ and anti-vax conspiracy theories.
”According to Harry Litman, the legal affairs columnist for the Los Angeles Times, DePape has been booked so far only on state crimes, including attempted homicide and elder abuse. According to Joyce White Vance at Civil Discourse, evidence that he went after Mr. Pelosi in order to intimidate Speaker Pelosi or stop her from performing her official duties would constitute a federal crime.
The attack on Mr. Pelosi comes after right-wing figures have so often advocated violence against the House speaker that the rioters on January 6 roamed the U.S. Capitol calling for her in the singsong cadences of a horror movie. Before she ran for Congress, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said Pelosi was a “traitor” and told her listeners that treason is “a crime punishable by death,” and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) once “joked” about hitting Speaker Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel if he becomes speaker himself, prompting laughter from his audience.
Whipping up supporters against a perceived enemy to create a statistical probability of an attack without advocating a specific event is known as “stochastic terrorism.” Without using that phrase, Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) explained it today: “[W]hen you convince people that politicians are rigging elections, drink babies blood, etc, you will get violence. This must be rejected.”
Right-wing media channels immediately spun the home invasion and attack into Republican talking points, saying that “crime hits everybody” and that “this can happen anywhere, crime is random and that’s why it’s such a significant part of this election story.” Some tried to pin the attack on President Joe Biden, blaming him for not healing the country’s divisions; Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin said of Pelosi and her husband: “There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her back to be with him in California.” Aaron Rupar of Public Notice called out how few Republicans publicly condemned the attack and how many tried to pin the blame for it on Democrats.
Late yesterday, Twitter’s board completed the $44 billion sale of the company to billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. Musk has promised to be an advocate for free speech and to reopen the platform to those previously banned for spreading racist content or disinformation—including former president Trump—but his actual purchase of the site might complicate that position.
In the technology magazine The Verge, editor Nilay Patel wrote, “Welcome to hell, Elon.” The problems with Twitter, Patel wrote, “are not engineering problems. They are political problems.” The site itself is valuable only because of its users, he points out, and trying to regulate how people behave is “historically a miserable experience.”
Patel notes that to attract advertising revenue, Musk will have to protect advertisers’ brands, which means banning “racism, sexism, transphobia, and all kinds of other speech that is totally legal in the United States but reveals people to be total a**holes.” And that content moderation, of course, will infuriate the right-wing cheerleaders who “are going to viciously turn on you, just like they turn on every other social network that realizes the same essential truth.” And that’s even before Twitter has to take on the speech laws of other countries.
Musk clearly understands this tension. Trying to reassure advertisers before the sale, he tweeted: “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” Car manufacturer General Motors has temporarily stopped running ads on Twitter until its direction becomes clearer.
Today, racist and antisemitic content rose sharply as users appeared to be testing the limits of the platform under Musk. The Network Contagion Research Institute, which studies disinformation on social media, noted that posters on the anonymous website 4chan have been encouraging users to spread racist and derogatory slurs on Twitter. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Center on Extremism, which focuses on civil rights law, backed this observation up today when it noted that on October 27, an anonymous post on 4chan, which users immediately spread to extremist Telegram channels, told followers how to increase antisemitic content on Twitter.
In the first 12 hours after Musk acquired the site, the use of the n-word increased nearly 500%.
After a few high-profile accounts appeared to have been reinstated, this afternoon, Musk tweeted that he is creating a council to figure out a content moderation policy, and that no major content decisions or reinstatements will happen until it creates a policy. At the very least, this should protect Twitter from becoming associated with new accounts promoting violence before the midterm elections.
And that is a concern. Today, the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, National Counterterrorism Center, and U.S. Capitol Police warned of violent extremism surrounding the upcoming midterm elections, including attacks on “candidates running for public office, elected officials, election workers, political rallies, political party representatives, racial and religious minorities, or perceived ideological opponents.” The aim of those attacking our elections is to discredit our democracy.
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The D-Team
So, remember a while ago when I wanted your opinions about a little project I was working on?
Well, I thought about it, and I decided to post stuff about it on here.
So, here you have the first little information about my story: The D-Team.
Demigods of the Xenia Academy
Zeus Dorm:
Princess Aldara “Ally Ross” (Technically Daughter of Heracles, but Rooms There)
Chase Landers
Gabriel Blanchard
Poseidon Dorm:
Matt Bloome
Hades Dorm:
Ashlyn Montez
Phineas Sherman
Raven Romanov (Adopted/Cursed Mortal/Expelled From the School)
Demeter Dorm:
Amelia-Jane “AJ” Able
Carla Beckett
Fallon Madison
Felicity Hamilton
Otto Malone
Susan Trescott
Violet Bates
Athena Dorm:
Celia Hannigan (Cyclops)
Courtney Carrington
Donnie Eversole
James “Jamie” Baxter
Mac O’Malley
Maria Turner
Mike Wolfe
Randall “Randy” Goralink
Ron Baxter
Tara West
Ares Dorm:
Arenia “Rani” Constopolis
Hannah Peters
Javier Cortez
Johnny Switt
Nadia Swift
Rosie James
Tito Martinez
Nemesis Dorm:
Bruce Matthews
Jackson Cole
Nancy St. James
Oliver Cole
Reggie Griswold
Rhonda Edwards
Sonia Vega
Hermes Dorm:
Brynn Weavers
Deborah “Debbie” Oliver
Donna Willick
Ezekiel “Zeke” Rios-Gummer
George Shay
Jerome Conner
Lance Danforth
Mira Hudson
Omar Harris
Selena Burgin
Aphrodite Dorm:
Annabelle Rhodes
Belladonna Rhodes
Britney Jacobs
Carrie O’Connell
Crystal Kingsley
Heather Lewis
Kimberly Ricci
Naomi Alexander
Rachel Bates
Taylor Greene
Timothy Saccomanno
Hephaestus Dorm:
Charlotte “Charlie” Boggs
Jack Showalter
Jason Phelps
Leslie McKessie
Oscar Martin
Ramona Cameron
Rudy Beuaguard
Scott “Scooter” Sullivan
Winnifred “Wheezy” Redfield
Persephone Dorm:
Alani Akamu
Waiola Akamu
Apollo Dorm:
Arnie Blumburg
Brock Detwiller
Chet Lexington
Claire Litman
Niquie Santiago
Percy Valentine
Sawyer Hirano
Sunny Proctor
Terry Sinclair
Zack Shapiro
Hecate Dorm:
Annika Tanner
Emilie Banks
Hector Montoya
Helga Bernard
Henry Walters
Milo LeSal
Sabrina Lecowski
Simon Morris
Sophie Bennett
Spencer Henderson
Stella Karabostos
Tristan Jacob “TJ” Wheeler
Wiley Jones
Zelda Shade
Iris Dorm:
Adrian Moone
Anaisha “Aisha” Tjinder
Charles “Chowder” Fletcher
Daphne Knight
Deliah Cheng
Joey Miller
Kamari Mustafa
Sylvester Russo
Morpheus Dorm:
Chris Austin
Freddy Blake
Joseph Crane
Leo Schmidt
Luna Casey
Sandy Babcock
Steven Puckett
Tom Downe
Dionysius Dorm:
Amy Bishop
Arthur “Art” Harris
Chyna Ferguson
Finnegan “Finn” Peters
Hugo Maybank
Luis Rameriez
Pearl Heyward
Penelope “Pennie” Knox
Winston Daniels
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Some things you can do to save democracy in the US
from Gaslit Nation https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/action-guide
Democracy is a lifestyle:
Trump is a symptom of the corruption, institutional failure, and indifference that we can no longer tolerate.
1. Get a Guide. Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story by Martin Luther King Jr. is an essential guide to self-management, managing others, and building teams. This inspirational case study of resistance, written by a young MLK after successfully leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott, shows how smart organization took on the authoritarianism of the Jim Crow South. Never forget that MLK was considered a radical in his day even though there’s nothing radical about demanding human rights and dignity. Today, the same remains true: it’s not “radical” or “socialist” to demand that corporations stop polluting for profits and to call for an end to tax breaks, like for sending jobs overseas, that worsen the income inequality crisis. To help communicate these urgent issues, another essential guide is The ALL NEW Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff.
2. Focus on State Races. States decide key quality of life issues and local candidates help drive votes up ballot for federal races. Every District and Future Now are two excellent groups working to build a progressive infrastructure and turn states blue from the bottom up. Get involved by donating what you can and/or join or start your own group with their help in your state. Here are our interviews with Every District (full episode) and with Future Now (last ~20 minutes of the episode) for more background.
3. Join. Grassroots power is one of the strongest forms of power we have left in America, especially with Mitch McConnell and Trump packing the courts. Don’t succumb to savior syndrome by expecting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- or whoever else you admire -- to do all the work. Representatives are human and need our help. Fulfill the far-right’s worst nightmare by creating generations of AOC’s by helping build a more progressive union. Join a local group from any of these great national organizations for important action-alerts like demonstrations and getting out the vote: Indivisible, Swing Left, Sister District, MoveOn, Flippable.
4. Fight Global Warming. Sunrise Movement is a grassroots organization demanding a Green New Deal. There are a lot of other groups working to adopt urgently needed green initiatives: C40 Cities connects cities around the world committed to taking climate action; 350.org helps activists rise to the challenge of the climate crisis; and here are more trusted organizations that need our support!
5. Unionize. In the age of Trump, there should be no more fear of starting or joining a union: just tell your boss that you saw how unions protected workers during the universally unpopular Trump shutdown. Fight for 15 and its local variants are also working to ensure a fair wage and strengthen unions in the service sector. Don’t know how to get started? Read Organizing to Win: New Research on Union Strategies and No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age.
6. Run for Something. There are a lot of great groups out there that demystify the process of becoming a candidate and running a campaign. Run for Something is one of our favorites. There’s even a book to help get you started: Run for Something: A Real-Talk Guide to Fixing the System Yourself by Amanda Litman. If you believe in facts/science and are a compassionate human being, you need to run for something and recruit others to as well. Even if it’s a longshot, you can still create urgent conversations and treat your campaign like a platform for discussions you care about, helping bring together like minded people to work for change even long past the election. Just look at what a refreshing discovery “long shot” Mayor Pete has been and all the great work Andrew Gillum continues to do to register 1 million voters in Florida.
7. Protect the Vote. EveryDistrict Action Fund just launched a “report card” identifying states with enough progressive support in the local governments to push through important voting reforms like automatic registration and the abolishment of racist voter ID laws. Is your state on the list? If so, EveryDistrict Action Fund empowers you to help your state reach the gold standard of voting. Concerned about vote hacking and Ivanka Trump-branded voting machines? Secure Our Vote provides background info and other resources to take action. Other groups to check out are Spread the Vote, Let America Vote, and Project ID which help people get the information they need to register, vote, and get an ID.
8. Launch Ballot Initiatives and Laws. Why not launch a ballot initiative? Katie Fahey turned her Facebook post into the movement Voters Not Politicians to end gerrymandering in Michigan. It passed overwhelmingly. Read more on her story here! Or you could build a grassroots coalition to get a law passed in your state. In our episode on how to “Pass a Law,” Andrea interviewed her mother about how she, while pregnant with Andrea and a young mother without any political experience, mobilized a grassroots army to pass the child carseat law in California. Yes, it can be done!
9. End Terrorism in America. Moms Demand works to elect candidates and lobby for sensible legislation to stop the gun violence epidemic driven by the blood-money gun lobby, the NRA. Southern Poverty Law Center exposes white supremacy, a leading terrorist movement in America. To help immigrant communities deliberately terrorized by Trump’s cruel border policies, here’s a list of groups to support.
10. Make Art. To say that art cannot make a difference stems from a tone deaf attiude of privilege: Ukraine’s EuroMaidan revolution of 2013-2014 relied on art and artists of all kinds to sustain protesters living in arctic-cold temperatures and under the threat of government-sanctioned violence; North Korean dissident Yeonmi Park said that Orwell’s Animal Farm helped her heal after escaping the cult-like dictatorship; and in our episode “The Blue Wave Continues: Kansas Rising” we share Davis Hammet’s account of how painting a rainbow house created a ripple effect in Kansas, leading to major electoral victories. We need the artists and storytellers of all kinds more than ever.
This is not a comprehensive list of suggestions on how you can create a more progressive America and stop entrenched corruption. There are many paths you can take, and we encourage you to think for yourselves and work together. There is no one solution. Whether you’re in a blue state or red state, these ideas apply to you — do not take any of the freedoms you have left for granted. Never underestimate the power of hard work.
It’s also essential to read widely to understand how we got here and the best ways to navigate the challenges of the 21st century. Check out our Reading Guide for some books that we have found helpful.
#gaslit nation#impeach the fucker#save our democracy#democracy#democracy in action#functional democracy#no saviors but ourselves
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Thursday round-up
In an op-ed for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse writes that Chief Justice John Roberts’ vote last week in June Medical Services v. Gee to temporarily block a Louisiana law that would require abortion providers to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals was not surprising, because “circumstances compelled the chief justice to stand up to a stunning act of judicial defiance” by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. At Take Care, Brianne Gorod and Rebecca Damante argue that “what Roberts does next will tell us a lot—about him and the trajectory of the Court he leads.” At The Interdependent Third Branch, Lawrence Friedman maintains that “[m]ore interesting than the Chief voting to impose the stay was Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent—the only separate opinion,” which suggests that “the Chief Justice has another colleague who appreciates that the Court’s ability to perform its constitutionally assigned role is inextricably connected to the esteem in which it is held.”
At Take Care, Leah Litman asserts that last week’s two stay orders, in June Medical Services and Dunn v. Ray, an Alabama death-penalty case, “underscore how procedural rules and procedural maneuvers (or at least the procedural rules the Court invoked in Ray and June Medical Services) are deeply substantive in that they ask the Court to make a determination about who should bear the risk of error in each case, and when (or under what circumstances), procedural rules should be forgiven.” In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Luke Goodrich suggests that Ray’s execution “after the U.S. Supreme Court refused his petition to have an imam beside him as he died” was “unfortunate and unjust,” but that “accusations that the Supreme Court’s decision reflects anti-Muslim bias are also mistaken.”
At The World and Everything in It (podcast), Mary Reichard interviews four people on both sides of the dispute in The American Legion v. American Humanist Association, an establishment clause challenge to a World War I memorial shaped like a cross on public property. In an op-ed for Fox News, Todd Starnes points to a “new survey conducted by George Barna of Metaformation indicat[ing] that an overwhelming number of Americans, young and old, believe the war memorial should not be torn down.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is counsel on an amicus brief in support of the petitioners in this case.]
Briefly:
For AP, Mark Sherman reports that “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has missed a month of Supreme Court arguments as she recovers from lung cancer surgery[, b]ut she’s not the first justice to be away for a while and her absence hardly compares with those of some of her predecessors.”
At The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro asks First Amendment scholars and advocates for their reactions to Roberts’ recent description of himself as “’probably the most aggressive defender of the First Amendment on the court now.’”
In an op-ed for The Hill, Scott Douglas Gerber assesses Justice Clarence Thomas’ “impact on American law,” observing that “[h]is most lasting influence is almost certainly going to be on civil rights law, a fact that is particularly important to note during Black History Month.”
We rely on our readers to send us links for our round-up. If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, podcast, or op-ed relating to the Supreme Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion in the round-up, please send it to roundup [at] scotusblog.com. Thank you!
The post Thursday round-up appeared first on SCOTUSblog.
from Law https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/02/thursday-round-up-463/
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President Trump tours an area in Kenosha, Wis., on Sept. 1, 2020. Both the city’s mayor and Wisconsin’s governor had asked him to stay away.
(Evan Vucci / Associated Press ) By HARRY LITMAN SEP. 2, 2020 4:12 PM
President Trump took his discord-and-turmoil tour to Kenosha, Wis., on Tuesday, re-roiling a town that had calmed itself after a week of unrest.
Trump did not meet with the family of Jacob Blake, the Black man who was shot by a police officer seven times in the back, a stomach-turning act that the president likened to a golfer who misses a short putt.
By contrast, he offered supportive comments about Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who drove to Kenosha from Illinois with an AR-15 to join the fray and is accused of shooting three protesters, killing two. Rittenhouse has been charged with first-degree murder, but Trump made the public case that he was acting in self-defense.
Trump, along with Atty. Gen. William Barr, rolled into Kenosha — over the objections of the city’s mayor and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, who told the president that “I am concerned your presence will only hinder our healing.”
Trump’s claim to being a “law and order” president would be risible were it not tragic. His presidency represents the antithesis of law and order. No president has been less respectful of law, both specific legislative enactments and the very concept of the rule of law, not of men.
Is it any wonder that chaos follows him like a bridal train? This is his governing strategy. But the aberration of his presidency goes much deeper than his phony lip service to law and order.
As his comments about Rittenhouse demonstrate, Trump encourages his supporters to take the law into their own hands. It serves his purposes to have them ignite a melee with Black Lives Matter protesters. Trump’s only campaign tactic left at this point, given the COVID-19 catastrophe, is to play out the lie that murderous left-wing mobs are amassing at the gates and only he can stop them.
He is our first pro-vigilante president.
Consider his many acts going back to the start of his term, beginning with his infamous reaction — “you also had very fine people on both sides” — after a car plowed into a group of counterprotesters at a huge white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. Or his pardons of the Hammonds, who were convicted of setting fire to federal land, the case that inspired the Bundy family to lead an armed standoff against the federal government at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. Or his commentary on the protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis — “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) was right on the money when he said Trump “sees this violence, and his ability to agitate more of it, as useful to this campaign. What it does to the country, the loss of life, he doesn’t care.”
Trump’s embrace of vigilantism fits very well with his distinctly racist rhetoric. His desperate fiction is that his supporters who have come to the rallies, nearly all white, are peace-loving patriots, whereas the Black and brown victims of racism and police attacks are, in his dog-whistle descriptions, anarchists, rioters and criminals.
This is the Most Dangerous President Ever...
We All Must Vote...
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Masterlist
The requested rebloggable version of my masterlist under the cut.
Remember that my motto is “If I know it well enough I can write for it” so questions about fandoms and characters are always welcome. I write for movies, tv shows, plays, musicals, books, etc.
All Fics
Anastasia The Musical
Dimitry
Baby Driver
Baby
Buddy
Darling
Being Human (US)
Aidan Waite
Bishop
Josh Levison
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
Bill Preston
Ted Logan
Booksmart
Amy Antsler
Gigi
Molly Davidson
Tanner
The Breakfast Club
Andrew Clark
John Bender
Brooklyn Nine Nine
Amy Santiago
Jake Peralta
Rosa Diaz
Terry Jeffords
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Cordelia Chase
Giles
Spike
Xander
Criminal Minds
Aaron Hotchner
David Rossi
Derek Morgan
Penelope Garcia
Spencer Reid
Daredevil
Foggy Nelson
Frank Castle
Matt Murdock
DC Extended Universe
Arthur Curry
Barry Allen
Bruce Wayne
Harley Quinn
Joker
Mera
Victor Stone
Disney
Christopher Robin
David Kawena
Diaval
Dory
Flynn Rider
Gaston
Lumiere
Maleficent
Moana
Nani Pelekai
Piglet
Prince Adam
Prince Philip
Wiggins
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them
Newt Scamander
Percival Graves
Friends
Chandler Bing
Janice Litman
Joey Tribianni
Monica Gellar
Phoebe Buffay
Rachel Green
Ross Gellar
Fright Night (2011)
Charlie Brewster
Jerry Dandridge
Peter Vincent
Ghostbusters
Egon Spengler
Peter Venkman
Ray Stantz
Guardians of the Galaxy
Gamora
Peter Quill
Yondu
The Good Place
Chidi Anagonye
Eleanor Shellstrop
Jason Mendoza
Michael
Tahani Al Jamil
Halt & Catch Fire
Joe MacMillan
Hannibal
Frederick Chilton
Hannibal Lecter
Will Graham
Harry Potter
Bill Weasley
Charlie Weasley
Draco Malfoy
Fred Weasley
Ginny Weasley
George Weasley
Harry Potter
Hermione Granger
James Potter
Lavender Brown
Lucius Malfoy
Luna Lovegood
Marauders
Neville Longbottom
Oliver Wood
Remus Lupin
Ron Weasley
Severus Snape
Seamus Finnigan
Hateful Eight
Chris Mannix
Domergue Gang
Jody Domergue
Joe Gage
John Ruth
Pete Hicox
The Haunted Mansion
Edward Gracey
House MD
Gregory House
James Wilson
How I Met Your Mother
Barney Stinson
IT
The Losers Club
Bill Denbrough
Ben Hanscom
Eddie Kaspbrak
Richie Tozier
It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia
Dennis
Mac
Charlie
The IT Crowd
The IT Department
Roy
Jurassic Park
Alan Grant
Ian Malcolm
Jurassic World
Lowery Cruthers
Zara
Zia Rodriguez
The Kingsman
Eggsy Unwin
Harry Hart
Merlin
A Knight’s Tale
Chaucer
Count Adhemar
Wat
Knives Out
Benoit Blanc
Law & Order SVU
Amanda Rollins
George Huang
John Munch
Mike Dodds
Nick Amaro
Rafael Barba
Rita Calhoun
Sonny Carisi
Lost Boys
David
The Vampire Clan
Lucifer
Chloe Decker
Lucifer Morningstar
Mazikeen
Marvel
Ava Starr
Avengers Team
Bruce Banner
Bucky Barnes
Cable
Carol Danvers
Clint Barton
The Collector
Deadpool
Fandral
Hope Van Dyne
Johnny Storm
Loki
Nakia
Okoye
Peter Parker
Phil Coulson
Pietro Maximoff
Sam Wilson
Scott Lang
Stephen Strange
Steve Rogers
Susan Storm
Thor
Tony Stark
Valkyrie
Vision
Yon Rogg
Wanda Maximoff
The Martian
Mark Watney
Rich Purnell
Merlin
Arthur Pendragon
Merlin
Morgana Pendragon
Morgause
Uther
Mr Right
Francis
New Girl
Coach
Jessica Day
Nick Miller
Schmidt
Winston Bishop
Now You See Me
The Four Horsemen
Parks & Recreation
Andy Dwyer
Chris Traeger
Donna Meagle
Tom Haverford
Peter Pan (2003)
Peter Pan
Peaky Blinders
Ada Shelby
Alfie Solomons
Arthur Shelby
John Shelby
Luca Changretta
Michael Gray
Polly Gray
Tommy Shelby
Phantom of the Opera
Erik
Princess Bride
Buttercup
Pretty In Pink
Duckie
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New story in Politics from Time: Nearly 40% of Americans Think Presidents in Their 70s Are Too Old
President Donald Trump is 72. The Democratic frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden, is 76, while the runner-up, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, is 77. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren turns 70 next week.
Here’s some bad news for all of them: Nearly 40% of Americans think they’re too old for the job.
A recent Economist/YouGov survey found that 22% of respondents thought someone between the ages of 70 and 75 was too old to be president, while 17% felt 75 to 80 was too old.
The poll is significant because of a high number of older candidates in the historically crowded presidential field.
“Age is as much of a lens as anything else,” says Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run For Something, which recruits and trains progressive millennials to run for state and local office. “It is another way in which your lived experience can inform your priorities, not in the same way as race or gender, but certainly in the things that shaped you as you were coming of age and the way you understand how the economy works for people.”
That said, Americans also had some doubts about candidates who were on the younger side.
Thirty-seven percent of respondents said a candidate under 40 would be too inexperienced to do the job well. (South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a surprise top-tier contender, would be almost 40 on Inauguration Day, as would Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.)
The age of the current frontrunners is also a historical anomaly. Three of the last four Presidents — Trump, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton — were born in 1946. Sanders was born in 1941, Biden in 1942 and Warren in 1949. If any of them become President, or if Trump is re-elected, it will be a remarkable phenomenon of generational stasis: with the notable exception of Barack Obama, America will have had more than 30 years of presidents who were born in the 1940s.
At the dawn of the last century, things looked very different. Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when he became President in 1901, after the assassination of William McKinley. His successor, William Howard Taft, was 51. Woodrow Wilson, who came next, was 56. Nine presidents, including Kennedy, Obama, and Clinton, were in their 40s at inauguration, and 25 were in their 50s, including Johnson, Nixon, Lincoln and all of the Founding Fathers.
Donald Trump, who was 70 at his inauguration, was the oldest first-term President in history. Either of the Democratic frontrunners would break that record, and then some.
The survey of 1,500 adult citizens was conducted online June 9-11. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.
By Charlotte Alter on June 12, 2019 at 12:36PM
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Listen to our latest interview. Episode #15 is a great interview with Mesquite, Nevada Mayor Al Litman. Links below and in my bio. Wimmer's Wilderness Podcast is an informed look at Politics, Community, Government, Environment and Education from a local perspective. Find us on iTunes, Google Music, Stitcher, Spotify and on our website Wimmerswilderness.org Click the link in the bio for all the listening options. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/wimmers-wilderness/id1454067837?mt=2 https://play.google.com/music/m/I7dguavevo2fye6mdumcbxqhorm?t=Wimmer_s_Wilderness https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/george-wimmer/wimmers-wilderness https://open.spotify.com/show/7AyZecdY5aP48wn5ZXw2Kt?si=VBz_40jvQPeBEt4QfokGdw . . . . . #community #education #enviroment #politics #government #city #county #podcast #podcasts #military #veterans #veteran #author #leadership #interview #publicservice #council #commissioner #taxes #conservation #resiliency #communityservice #milestone #learning https://www.instagram.com/p/BxjAvuFhm4x/?igshid=pxy043y3sgrv
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Larry Wilmore on Good-Natured Hatred, the New-Look Lakers, and Segmented Audiences (Ep. 320) by The Bill Simmons Podcast .... HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by 'Black on the Air' host Larry Wilmore to discuss the young L.A. Lakers under Luke Walton (6:00), George Gervin's playground game (15:00), Blake Griffin's goodbye (25:00), N.Y. traffic vs. L.A. traffic (34:00), the age of "agreement culture" (42:00), the power of differing opinions (50:00), and Kendrick Lamar's accessibility (1:05:00). Then The Ringer's Juliet Litman joins to discuss all things 'Bachelor' (1:11:00).
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“Irreparable Harms”: How The Flynn Case Became A Dangerous Game Of Legal Improvisation
Below is my column in USA Today on the D.C. Circuit ordering Judge Emmet Sullivan to dismiss the case of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. After this column ran, new evidence emerged that further undermined the FBI and the targeting of Flynn, as discussed in another recent column. Notes from fired FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok show that former FBI Director James Comey told President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden that Flynn’s call to the Russian diplomat “appear legit.” Nevertheless, Biden (who denied having anything to do with the case) is noted as raising the idea of a charge under the facially unconstitutional Logan Act, a law that has never been used successfully to charge a single person since the beginning of this Republic. Comey of course was the one who later bragged that he “probably wouldn’t have … gotten away with it” in other administrations, but he sent “a couple guys over” to question Flynn, who was settling into his new office as national security adviser. We now know that, when Comey broke protocols and sent the agents, he thought the calls were legitimate ant that agents wanted to dismiss the investigation in December for lack of evidence. They were prevented from doing so as Strzok, Biden, and others discussed other crimes, any crime, to nail Flynn just before the start of the Trump Administration.
If all of that seems “illegitimate” and “irregular,” it pales in comparison to how two judges on the D.C. panel reviewed the handling of the Flynn case by Judge Emmet Sullivan. It seems that everyone from the President to the Vice President to the FBI Director to ultimately the federal judge have engaged in a dangerous form of improvisational law when it came to Michael Flynn. That will now hopefully end though many questions still remain.
It is possible for Judge Sullivan to appeal, though the upcoming hearing on Flynn has been removed from the docket.
Here is the column:
The dismissal of the case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn sent shock waves across Washington, including Congress which was hours away from a hearing addressing the case. Any appellate decision taking unprecedented measures to stop “irreparable harms” and “irregular” conduct is newsworthy. However, those admonishments were not describing Flynn’s conduct but that of his trial judge, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan. The D.C. Circuit panel took the exceptionally rare step of ordering Sullivan to stop further proceedings and dismiss the case to avoid further damage caused by his prior orders.
The case should have been dismissed
One month ago, I wrote a column criticizing the handling of the Flynn case by Judge Sullivan after the government moved to dismiss its own prosecution.
The law in this case is clear and the case should have been dismissed. Instead, Sullivan took the extraordinary action of appointing a retired judge, John Gleeson, to argue positions that neither of the actual parties supported. Gleeson not only had publicly denounced the administration over its handling of the case but, as a judge, was reversed for “irregular” conduct in usurping the authority of prosecutors. In addition, Sullivan suggested that he might charge Flynn with perjury for alleging that he was wrongly charged despite the support of the Justice Department in finding abuses in his case.
Criticizing Sullivan, who I have appeared before for years as counsel and previously complimented for his demeanor, was not popular. Legal analysts in The Washington Post, CNN and other outlets insisted that his actions were entirely appropriate and justified. Yet, another letter from “former prosecutors” was given unquestioning media coverage to show that Sullivan should deny the motion in the case.
In an opinion piece, UCLA Law Professor and former U.S. Attorney under Bill Clinton, Harry Litman even explained how Sullivan could “make trouble” for the Trump administration in these hearings. Litman insisted that I was “a very lonely voice in the wilderness” of academia in contesting the use of an outside lawyer to make arguments in a criminal trial case that neither the defense nor the prosecution supported.
The wilderness now appears to include at least two other voices from the D.C. Circuit. The panel specifically denounced the “irregular” use of Gleeson and his hyperbolic arguments in the case. Gleeson suggested that the court should actually send Flynn to jail despite prosecutors raising evidence of misconduct and abuse as the basis for dismissal. He also argued that, rather than give Flynn a trial on a new charge from Sullivan of perjury, Flynn should just be sentenced in light of such perjury as part of his prior non-perjury charge.
Even for those of us who believed that Sullivan was operating well outside of the navigational beacons for a court in such case, the decision was breathtaking. Most of us expected that the appellate court would remand the case to allow Sullivan a face-saving hearing with an inevitable order to dismiss. The panel, however, clearly had little trust in the plans for this hearing or any true judicial purpose. Indeed, it may have been convinced that the primary purpose was indeed to “make trouble” for the administration.
As some of us wrote previously, the appellate court was particularly alarmed by the implications of Sullivan’s orders, including noting that the “invitation to members of the general public to appear as amici…” The panel said that such an invitation by Sullivan “suggests anything but a circumscribed review.” Moreover, it noted that the Justice Department had submitted troubling evidence of possible misconduct. And that “each of our three coequal branches should be encouraged to self-correct when it errs.”
Gleeson, wrong appointment
The greatest irony is that Sullivan’s unwise decision to appoint Gleeson to make the case was perhaps too successful. Gleeson ultimately proved not the case against Flynn but against Sullivan. In reviewing Gleeson’s brief, the panel declared “we need not guess if this irregular and searching scrutiny will continue; it already has.” The panel noted that Sullivan’s appointed counsel “relied on news stories, tweets, and other facts outside the record to contrast the government’s grounds for dismissal here with its rationales for prosecution in other cases.”
The panel was also aware of past concerns raised in the case, including the rather bizarre first sentencing hearing held in December 2018. In that hearing, Sullivan suggested that Flynn might be guilty of treason in a case involving comparatively minor charges of false statements to federal investigators. Sullivan dramatically used the flag in the courtroom as a prop and accused Flynn of being “an unregistered agent of a foreign country while serving as the national security adviser to the president of the United States. Arguably, that undermines everything this flag over here stands for. Arguably, you sold your country out.” (He later apologized for his comments.)
The irony, however, is that Sullivan proved the best thing that could have happened to Flynn. After that unnerving exchange, Sullivan asked if Flynn still wanted him to sentence him or wait. He indicated that he might go substantially beyond what Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team had demanded. Flynn wisely decided to wait. The resulting delay allowed the damaging evidence from his case to be review and released. Had Sullivan simply sentenced Flynn last December, it would have been much more difficult for Flynn to have raised these issues.
Sullivan then handed down his novel orders including appointing his own counsel to argue for prosecution against the actual prosecutors.
This record proved too much for the appellate court. Rather than order Sullivan off the case, it decided to order Sullivan to dismiss the case. Short of an order of actual recusal of a judge, a mandamus order is the most stinging indictment of the handling of a case that can come from an appellate court.
The ruling in this case is unlikely to force any real circumspection by legal analysts or the media in the prior coverage. Nuanced legal questions quickly evaporate in this age of rage. Conflicting case law is dismissed in favor of the clarity demanded by echo journalism. The law however brings its own clarity and the message of this opinion could not be clearer. Sullivan’s actions in the case did not spell “trouble” for the Trump administration, but rather, they spelled trouble for the administration of justice in our court system.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter: @JonathanTurley
“Irreparable Harms”: How The Flynn Case Became A Dangerous Game Of Legal Improvisation published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/
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June 18, 2019
Being paid to not do anything. Is there anything better? I don’t think so. I’m enjoying being at home, texting Christiana, shooting off some emails to my parents about a wedding venue and just relaxing it. It’s overcast here for the first time in weeks.
It’s true what they say about Colorado- 300 days of sunshine a year. I never thought I’d miss the rain, the clouds, the world’s way of saying “Stay inside. Read a book. Enjoy your eggs at your own pace.” I’m grateful for this rain and this time to pull back and relax. Soon I’ll have some meth doing adolescents on my hands.
I worry about this job, more specifically my ability to do this job. I realize how fucking sheltered I am, how sheltered I’ve always been. I don’t even feel like I had a rebellious adolescence, how will I be able to understand and empathize with these kids? What do I know of angst?
I’m take so much solace in the idea of “trusting your instincts.” What happens when you don’t have any instincts to trust? What happens when you’re making it all up as you go along? What happens if there’s a kid at the door ready to hit me with a boulder?
The unknown scares me. Drives me. Inspires me. Keeps me up at night. It’s the oil in the pan, the flavor, the spice of life, the stripes on that hot guy’s shirt, the this, the that, the underbelly of why I’m choosing to be a therapist. What is this job without a leap of faith, a hope, a prayer, a gratitude list, a Juliet Litman podcast to bring me back down before I heave ho and go. I’m not sure what I’m even saying right now. THis lack of speech and articulation is unnerving for me, but I’m just trying to sink into it for now.
So much “trying to lean into it... for now”
On a different note, I felt so amazed when Haley Jakoson posted something on her Tumblr about her breakup with Lydia. I feel a bit strange for checking up on her Tumblr time and time again to see what’s happening, but something just told me to check. I really feel for her, it’s hard to do long distance. And she really owned up to her feelings. The constant display of vulnerability on her IG must get SO exhausting. Even if there is a lot of validation and affirmation, it’s still so much work to come up with feelings, to articulate them to yourself and then put them in a way that others can understand. I just feel like she doesn’t get enough credit sometimes for doing a lot of hard work. There are times when I want more from her, like more about race, her SES, her trust fund, whatever happened with Kerri George, the real personal details. But I know she’s shifting now from a person sharing on IG to a brand. It must be hard to have to isolate yourself from others in order to achieve success. Is it possible to be commercially successful without isolating yourself from the ones you love? I can’t help but wonder: as her Instagram followers increased, her friendship with Kerri has (seemingly faded) and her relationship with Lydia vanished without a trace (or a public explanation). Of course she isn’t alone alone, but like... she is kind of all alone in a lot of respects. Not that she would want to, but could she, would she ever go back?
I don’t know, I’m signing off but this is what 12 PM on a Tuesday thoughts look like.
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Thursday round-up
Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which the court ruled Monday in favor of a Christian baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, stays front and center. For The New York Times, Julie Turkewitz reports that a Colorado celebration for “the cake baker’s fans, … [t]here were balloons and Bible verses, and also misgivings: In a nation that has moved so far in the direction of gay rights in recent years, it wasn’t clear if Mr. Phillips’s victory would mean much for long.” At the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, John Sides questions a law professor about the “political impact” of the decision.
At First Things, Hadley Arkes maintains that after Masterpiece, “[t]he local authorities will still be able to force Catholic institutions out of business if they will not place children for adoption with same-sex couples, or cover those couples in their medical insurance”; “[t]hey will just have to be nice while they’re doing it.” Linda Greenhouse worries in an op-ed for The New York Times that “the Supreme Court has imposed a regime of constitutional political correctness on how we talk about religion.” In an op-ed for The Guardian, Joshua Matz highlights “three features of [Justice Anthony] Kennedy’s opinion that should be celebrated by progressives and members of the LGBTQ community.” Additional commentary comes from Kristin Waggoner in an op-ed for The Washington Post, Chris Potts in an op-ed for CNS News, and James Gottry in an op-ed at The Daily Wire, who maintains that the court “left itself ample room, in future cases, to protect the constitutional freedoms of all Americans.”
Briefly:
In the latest episode of the Heritage Foundation’s SCOTUS 101 podcast, Elizabeth Slattery and Tiffany Bates “break down the Masterpiece cake case and chat with Judge Kevin Newsom of the 11th Circuit.”
For The New Yorker, Douglas Starr reports that Dassey v. Dittman, a cert petition filed by one of the subjects of the Netflix documentary series “Making a Murderer,” “could provide some much needed attention to the subject of police interrogations.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the petitioner in this case.]
At The George Washington Law Review’s On the Docket blog, Michael Selmi is surprised, not by the outcome in Epic Systems v. Lewis, in which the court held that arbitration clauses in employment contracts that require employees to forgo class and collective actions are enforceable, but by “the stridency of the majority and dissenting opinions, both of which could have been uploaded straight from one of the many advocates’ briefs.”
At PrawfsBlawg, Carissa Hessick argues that Hughes v. United States, in which the justices held that a defendant who pleads guilty in a plea deal can generally benefit from later changes in the sentencing guidelines, “marks another episode in the continuing saga about how to treat the Federal Sentencing Guidelines,” and that “[b]y failing to explain what ‘advisory’ Guidelines actually are, and by making inconsistent statements about the role of the Guidelines at sentencing, the Court has left sentencing law ambiguous.”
Also at PrawfsBlawg, Leah Litman points out some areas of overlap between the government’s position in Jennings v. Rodriguez, in which the court held that immigration-law provisions do not give detained aliens a right to periodic bond hearings, and the administration’s “policy of separating families” at the border, maintaining that “courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, have played a part in enabling an abusive and excessive immigration system.”
We rely on our readers to send us links for our round-up. If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, podcast, or op-ed relating to the Supreme Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion in the round-up, please send it to roundup [at] scotusblog.com. Thank you!
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/get-ready-for-muellers-phase-two-the-middle-east-connection?via=twitter_page
Today
—Maria Butina pleads guilty
—@thedailybeast: Mueller to outline Middle Eastern nations tried to help Trump win
—@MotherJones: Flynn spoke to Kislyak during camp about @POTUS-Moscow cooperation
—@NBCNews: Trump in room for hush $ pay
—@WSJ: Trump's inaugural committee probed
HERE WE GO Get Ready for Mueller’s Phase Two: The Middle East Connection
Erin Banco/12.13.18 5:00 AM ET/Daily Beast/POSTED December 13, 2018
EXCLUSIVE
Over the past year, the indictments, convictions, and guilty pleas have largely been connected, in one way or another, to Russia. But now, special counsel Robert Mueller’s office is preparing to reveal to the public a different side of his investigation. In court filings that are set to drop in early 2019, prosecutors will begin to unveil Middle Eastern countries’ attempts to influence American politics, three sources familiar with this side of the probe told The Daily Beast.
In other words, the “Russia investigation” is set to go global.
While one part of the Mueller team has indicted Russian spies and troll-masters, another cadre has been spending its time focusing on how Middle Eastern countries pushed cash to Washington politicos in an attempt to sway policy under President Trump’s administration. Various witnesses affiliated with the Trump campaign have been questioned about their conversations with deeply connected individuals from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, according to people familiar with the probe. Topics in those meetings ranged from the use of social-media manipulation to help install Trump in the White House to the overthrow of the regime in Iran.
Now, according to those same sources, the Special Counsel’s Office is ready to outline what cooperating witnesses have told them about foreigners’ plans to help Trump win the presidency. Two sources with knowledge of the probe said Mueller’s team has for months discussed the possibility of issuing new charges on this side of the investigation.
“If this is going to be unveiled, this would be like the surfacing of the submarine but on the other plank which we haven’t seen,” said Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney. “I guess what Mueller has to date has turned out to be pretty rich and detailed and more than we anticipated. This could turn out to be a rich part of the overall story.”
“If this is going to be unveiled, this would be like the surfacing of the submarine but on the other plank which we haven’t seen”
— Harry Litman, former U.S. Attorney
The switch in focus comes as Mueller winds down cooperation with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who participated in 19 interviews with the special counsel’s team. In often-heavily redacted court documents made public over the last two weeks, the Special Counsel’s Office hinted at ways in which Flynn helped with its investigation into links between Trumpworld figures and the Russian government.
But Flynn was also involved in conversations with representatives and influential individuals from other foreign governments, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel—encounters The Daily Beast has reported over the last several months. Flynn’s cooperation with Mueller could bring new details about the scope of the special counsel’s probe into how individuals from those countries offered not only to help Trump win the presidential election, but also how they sought to influence foreign policy in the early days of the administration.
Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, said it is unclear if Mueller’s team will unveil nefarious foreign activity beyond what normally occurs in Washington.
“Many of these characters involved are somewhat unsavory,” he added. “But governments deal with all kinds of people all the time. It might be possible to question the wisdom of some of these connections, but not really possible to impugn the right of a government to deal with shadowy dealers in influence and access.”
Still, the Special Counsel’s Office has taken a keen interest this year in practices that were once considered business-as-usual in Washington. Republican operative Sam Patten pleaded guilty to the rarer-than-rare charge of “causing foreign money to be paid to the 2016-17 Presidential Inaugural Committee.” Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Flynn were both charged with not disclosing parts of their businesses under the Foreign Agents Registration Act—the first indictments of this nature in more than half a century.
It’s unclear exactly how, if at all, this side of Mueller’s probe overlaps with his mandate from the Department of Justice to investigate links and coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.
Mueller also has the jurisdiction to “investigate and prosecute federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, the special counsel’s investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses,” according to the code.
“For something like this to happen, Mueller would have needed to get approval from [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein for this,” Litman said. “It’s not really in the original grant of jurisdiction and it appears then that he made his case to Rosenstein some time ago and that Rosenstein agreed.”
Mueller’s office has been investigating several meetings attended by George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman and emissary to the UAE. Nader helped arrange the now-infamous meeting between Trump associate and Blackwater founder Erik Prince and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds—and he also acted somewhat as a go-between with representatives from Gulf state governments, at least one well-connected Israeli, and the Trump team.
Although Nader has been cooperating with the Special Counsel’s Office since March, it is still unclear what evidence he has offered prosecutors during interviews.
In one August 2016 meeting, first reported by The New York Times and later confirmed by The Daily Beast, Nader told the room that the crown princes of both Saudi Arabia and the UAE were eager to help Trump win the election.
Also ready to lend his services was Joel Zamel, a self-styled Mark Zuckerberg of the national-security world with deep ties to Israeli intelligence. Zamel had already been in close contact with the Trump team because one of his companies, Psy Group, had drawn up a plan to use social-media manipulation to help Trump clinch the Republican nomination. The company sent former senior campaign aide Rick Gates that proposal.
But the connections between Trumpworld and Psy Groupin 2016 were more extensive than previously reported, as The Daily Beast noted in November. Former employees said there were at least two other individuals who reached out to the firm during the campaign, both representing themselves as members of Trump’s inner circle.
Over the past year, Mueller’s team has interviewed a host of employees from Psy Group because of its connection to the Trump camp. Several former employees said the firm never went forward with its plan to help Trump, but others disputed that claim.
Zamel, through his lawyer, has also said publicly that he cooperated with the Special Counsel’s Office. His lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this story. The Special Counsel’s Office declined to comment. Nader’s lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Zamel remained close to the Trump team throughout the election and into the transition. Part of the reason? He had an easy in. He had been introduced to Nader years earlier by John Hannah, a former aide to Dick Cheney who now works as a senior counselor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a right-leaning think tank. Hannah has also been in the sights of the Special Counsel’s Office.
Zamel popped back into the mix in the transition period after the election and further offered services, this time for crafting a plan for regime change in Iran. The Daily Beast was the first to report the meeting, which included Nader, Flynn, and a Saudi general, Ahmed al-Assiri. During this time, Nader was also promoting a plan to carry out economic sabotage against Tehran. The meeting appears to be part of Saudi and Emirati efforts to lobby the incoming Trump administration against Qatar and Iran, their top regional competitors. The New York Timesreported this year that Nader worked with Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy to urge the White House to take an aggressive stance against the two countries.
Mueller has also probed Nader’s role in the January 2017 Seychelles meeting between Prince and Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. In his House testimony, Prince said the meeting was a chance encounter and the two met to talk about trade and mineral wealth. But prosecutors this year received evidence that showed the meeting was premeditated. Communications reviewed by The Daily Beast reflect that narrative.
A memo shows the two spoke about a range of topics, including peace between Ukraine and Russia, military operations in Syria, investment in the Midwest, and nuclear weapons. Although RDIF is under U.S. sanctions, it was and is still legal for U.S. individuals to meet with Dmitriev, and, in some circumstances, do business with the fund.
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee are hoping to take another shot at questioning Prince next year—part of the new Congress’ effort to investigate the Trump administration. Prince told The Daily Beast this summer that he was cooperating with the Special Counsel’s Office, but it is not clear to what extent. His previous lawyer, Victoria Toensing, is no longer representing him.
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