Below is my column in the Washington Post on the controversy over the possible use of pardon authority by President Donald Trump to protect his family and aides involved in the Russian investigation. Trump’s tweet reference to his “complete power to pardon” fueled rumors that he is considering pardons, including a possible self-pardon.
Baxley, Georgia was the scene of a deeply disturbing confrontation between two customers and a restaurant owner. Qwik Chik owner Jeanette Norris is shown being repeatedly punched by a woman whose male companion then slugged her teenage daughter. The suspects were identified by police as Nathaniel and Latasha Smith (right).
Continue reading “Police Seek Georgia Couple In Videotaped Assault on Restaurant Owner and Daughter”
This weekend my column on the Trump pardon controversy ran in the Washington Post. (Notably, while the first title referenced a President pardoning himself, the later title referenced pardoning aides which was the thrust of the column). As I have stated in the press, I consider this one of the most difficult questions in the Constitution. I wrote that there is nothing in the Constitution that says that a president cannot self-pardon and that this was a very close and unresolved question. The same day, a column ran that said conclusively that the self-pardon are clearly and textually barred by the Constitution. That column was written by Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe, Minnesota Professor Richard Painter, and Brookings Institution fellow Norman Eisen. I must respectfully disagree despite my respect for the prior work of all three of these men. While I believe that it would have been better for the Framers to expressly bar self-pardons, they did not do so. What is left is a difficult interpretive question that is not answered by the arguments made in the column. Indeed, some of the arguments are challengeable on either a historical or legal basis. This is an issue that could easily go either way in the courts. In the meantime, President Trump this morning fueled greater speculation with a tweet referring to his “complete power to pardon.”
Continue reading “Self-Pardons: A Response To Tribe, Painter, and Eisen”
The media is reporting that President Donald Trump’s legal team is investigating possible conflicts of interest by former FBI Director Robert Mueller. Today I ran a column in USA Today on those conflicts of not just Mueller but Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. I have great respect for Mueller but I believe it was a mistake of Rosenstein to select him given his history with Comey and his reported interview with Trump for Comey’s job. Nevertheless, as I have stated since this story broke this morning, I am very concerned with any concerted effort to investigate the investigators. Such an approach is less evidence of a strategy as a spasm. Clearly, defense counsel has a right — if not an obligation — to raise any known conflicts of interest with the Justice Department. Yet, such investigations can easily get out of hand and can trip legal wires if aides are too aggressive in investigating the investigators.
Continue reading “Report: White House Investigating Mueller”
Below is my column in the Hill newspaper on how critics of Donald Trump have been calling for radical extensions or interpretations of criminal provisions against core figures. The implications for such interpretations of crimes like treason need to be considered by critics.
President Donald Trump gave a bombshell interview with the New York Times on Wednesday in which he said that he would not have appointed Jeff Sessions to be attorney general had he known Sessions would recuse himself from the Russian investigation. It was a highly disturbing interview since Sessions recused on the advice of ethics experts at the Justice Department and the overwhelming view of the bar.
Washington was rocked last night by another scandal with allegations of collusion and a true cover up. As you can see in the above screenshot, I appeared on Fox News but my suit jacket did not. The reason, dear readers, was that my jacket was lifted from the green room at Fox News shortly before I went on with Martha McCallum. The culprit left a very small blue jacket in its place. With minutes to go live, I had to choose between looking casual in shirt sleeves and looking fat in an undersized jacket. Vanity won out over propriety. But there remained growing questions of who knew about the jacket switch and when did they know it. The culprit left the studio literally cloaked in the cover up that was once my jacket.
Continue reading “WASHINGTON ROCKED BY ALLEGED COVER UP WITHIN FOX NEWS”
Emily-Jo Banks, 23, has been sentenced to jail in a bizarre case where she framed a man for harassing her with abusive texts for months – texts that the police confirmed that she sent from August to September 2015.
Continue reading “English Woman Sentenced In Hoax Stalking Case”
The Saudi Kingdom is still leading the boycott of Qatar over its support for extremist Islamic groups. However, the Kingdom has not stopped pursuing threats at home with an attack launched against a historic fort. Saudi police are searching for this woman who has shocked the Kingdom by posting images of herself wearing a miniskirt in public. That’s right, the police are pursuing the case brought to them by the infamous Saudi morality police to bring the woman to justice. UPDATE: The Saudis have now arrested the woman in the miniskirt in the latest madness of Saudi extremist values.
Any time a family (like the one in Appleton, Wisconsin, this week) finds a burglar naked in one of their beds, it is noteworthy. However, one aspect of the arrest of Bradley Braxton, 40, caught my eye.
Continue reading “Wisconsin Family Find Naked Burglar In Bedroom”
Below is my column in The Hill Newspaper exploring the legal liability for Jared Kushner. While new media reports that some documents may have been turned over to the Trump aides in the infamous meeting with the Russian lawyer, there is no evidence of any prior or later conspiracy to commit a crime. There is no specific crime of “collusion” and the meeting did not constitute prima facie evidence of any collateral crime. That does not take away from the fact that Donald Trump Jr. wanted to collude. He agreed to go to a meeting with the understanding that the Russian government was sending over a lawyer with incriminating information. He should have called the Justice Department. Moreover, only a click-bait chump would have gone to that meeting. Now the Trump Administration will have to maintain the only thing that it has long eluded it: a consistent and coherent narrative.
Here is the column:
Continue reading “Jared Kushner and The Precarious Line Between Inconsistency and Criminality”
I have been discussing the dubious claims of criminal liability over the meeting of Donald Trump Jr. with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower. As I have mentioned, there is a legitimate reason to investigate this latest undisclosed meeting, though the overheated rhetoric on possible (if not imminent) criminal charges is bizarre. This morning on CNN, Sen. Richard Blumenthal raised possible charges of espionage and treason. Putting aside the facially weak foundation for such charges, I must again note that the underlying narrative around this meeting remains rather speculative and unbelievable. I have worked on the legal side of national security investigations for decades in both espionage and terrorism cases. As I said when this meeting first surfaced, none of this makes sense as an actual Russian intelligence operation as opposed to a rather transparent “bait-and-switch.” If this is a Russian spy mystery, it hardly makes for a sequel of Le Carre’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.”
Below is my most recent column in the Hill Newspaper on the latest round of predictions of possible criminal charges against the Trump family.
Continue reading “The Media Rorschach Test And The Russian Meeting”
Below is my column in the Hill Newspaper on the curious coverage surrounding James Comey and his leaking of his memos on meetings with President Donald Trump. With the confirmation hearings of Comey’s replacement, Chris Wray, today, the status of the memos may come up in the Senate.
Here is the column:
Continue reading “Printing The Legend: The Growing Gap Between Comey’s Image and Actions”
Yesterday, I posted a column in the Hill detailing how the media and various legal experts have worked mightily to avoid the fact that former FBI Director James Comey (1) leaked his memos to the media, (2) the memos were presumptively government material, and (3) the memos were likely classified and/or privileged under long-standing FBI rules. As I said in the column and in earlier columns, none of this takes away from the underlying allegations or the importance of the investigation into possible obstruction of justice. However, the response to the recent Senate Homeland Security majority report and the Hill Newspaper story was precisely what the column discussed: a concerted effort to deny any wrongdoing by Comey (who has assumed the position of an immaculate hero in this political narrative). One such denial of any wrongdoing came from Comey’s friend Columbia Law Professor Daniel Richman. Professor Richman invoked a familiar defense: the memos he was given had no classification markings – the very same defense made by Hillary Clinton and rejected by then FBI Director James Comey.