Category: Legal Affairs
Not the Donald, But the Don – Indicting a Career Racketeer
by Jonathan M. Winer | Aug 15, 2023 | Legal AffairsBefore the indictment of criminal defendant Donald John Trump under the racketeering statute in the State of Georgia, Godfather references were already a cliché. Former New Jersey Governor and Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie recently described Trump and his associates at Mar-a-Largo as “acting like the Corleones with no experience,” in their efforts to hide […]
Moore v. Harper and the Fire Next Time
by Jonathan M. Winer | Jun 30, 2023 | Legal AffairsThe Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Moore v. Harper may well be one of the most consequential Constitutional cases affecting the future of American democracy. But its political meaning is as significant as its legal implications. Its wider context is the current court’s crisis of legitimacy, Donald Trump’s attempted coup to overthrow the result of […]
Backgrounder on Barre Seid, the Billionaire Extremist who Enabled Leonard Leo to Stack the Court and Overturn Roe
by Lisa Graves | Oct 31, 2022 | Legal Affairs, PoliticsOn August 22nd of this year, the New York Times reported that a secretive Chicago industrialist named Barre Seid had transferred more than $1.6 billion into the control of Leonard Leo, to whom Donald Trump outsourced the packing of the U.S. Supreme Court. (For more on that court-packing, check out Jim Hightower’s piercing series on Leo.) That story by […]
Racial Disparities, Cowboy D.A.s, Prosecutorial Impunity, Hanging Judges, and Above All—Texas; the Death Penalty’s Time is Up
by Barbara Koeppel | Sep 3, 2021 | Legal Affairs, PoliticsSome 4,000-year-old dogmas, like the Bible’s “eye for an eye,” never die. State-sponsored killings have morphed over millennia (from stonings, beheadings, burning at stakes, firing squads, gas chambers, lynchings, and electric chairs to lethal injections) but continue apace. In the United States, the federal government and the 27 states that still impose the death penalty […]
Contributing to Barr’s Effort to Undermine Impeachment, US Attorney John Durham Violated DOJ Guidelines
by Murray Waas | Oct 28, 2020 | Legal Affairs, PoliticsJohn Durham—the United States attorney tasked by Attorney General William Barr to conduct a wide-ranging inquiry into the origins of the Justice Department’s and FBI’s Russia inquiries—contributed to a September 2019 statement released by Barr and the Justice Department intended to undermine efforts to impeach President Trump. Durham approved portions of the statement describing his […]