Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The legislature is changing the law to eliminate the entire public office before the election winner can be sworn in.
The political dynamics are that the state legislature is controlled by the (largely white) Republican party, while the electorate of Orleans Parish tilts to the Democratic party, largely on the support of black citizens.
This amendment to state law only affects the structure of elected offices in Orleans Parish, and not any other part of Louisiana.
I can’t wait for him to answer questions under oath in a video deposition regarding his tabs at the Poodle Room that were produced in discovery.
The types of visas that are available and the rules for them are set by laws passed by Congress. Trump doesn’t have the power to just unilaterally create a new visa category. So if you look at the fine print, this is actually some other already existing category that allows the president to admit individuals at discretion, and the fee is just a donation to the US Treasury. That’s also why it’s not racking up a bunch of court challenges.
Curiously enough, SPLC was known to pass tips they learned from their spying ops to the FBI until Kash Patel shut that down recently.
More than an investigation, there’s now a criminal indictment that alleges that SPLC, Inc. defrauded their donors when they paid undercover informants to infiltrate racist and extremist groups. The theory of the case is that SPLC was actually assisting and aiding these racist groups, contrary to SPLC’s public positions, by doing things like paying membership dues on behalf of their undercover informants.
There are also money laundering charges on the basis that SPLC deliberately misstated the purpose of funds when they were transferring money over to the undercover infiltration side of the operation. Because, maybe, you know, they were trying to be under cover about it.
You mean the “aid” where we dump off our old military equipment and don’t have to pay to dispose it any more? That aid?
Or is it just the regular aid, where Congress cuts some fat checks to Northrup, Lockheed, and General Dynamics, and all that money circulates inside the United States?
This three judge panel has been quasi-overruled by the en banc court on this case and issue once before. So it seems reasonable to think that might happen again.
There are still a bunch of hurdles to getting close to any kind of real contempt finding, even if that happens. There’s a real argument that the most Boasberg can do with criminal contempt is make a referral to the DOJ for prosecution. And just imagine how much action this DOJ would take on such a referral…
Edit: apparently this is a different three judge panel than the first, but Judge Rao was randomly assigned to both panels.
I’m pretty sure she was fired before quitting.
Before he puts boots on the ground in Iran, he’s got to put boots on the staging ground somewhere in the theater. Unlike strategic bombing, invasions don’t happen from Missouri.
More like after they lose the prelim injunction and the stay pending appeal. My guess, in the 8th circuit, is that they stand a chance at winning the stay pending appeal, which would let them keep rolling for a while.
It’s a non trivial piece of 10th amendment litigation. Maybe Minnesota has a sovereign right to investigate a homicide. But does that oblige the feds to do or not do something? Does it matter if the feds are the only way to get critical evidence? Is it important whether the feds are actively trying to thwart and deny MN’s police power? Does MN have to prove they can beat the Supremacy Clause on this case before they can get stuff?
Don’t forget the 6th amendment right to the assistance of counsel.
The long term problem is that lawyers are often not stupid, and they can see that working for this DOJ will have deleterious effects on their future careers when this stuff is over. I’ve heard that the Minneapolis office is down to 9 attorneys, and should be staffed for 50.
But the immediate problem here dates back to Rumsfeld v. Padilla*. In that case, the supreme court decided that habeas petitions must be filed in the district of actual, physical confinement. This created a race condition, where ICE is trying to get these people out of Minnesota as fast as possible, and these people’s lawyers are trying to file the lawsuits in Minnesota before their clients physically leave the state. ICE would prefer for these petitions to be filed in Texas, because the Texas district courts are a lot more favorable to them. The Minnesota lawyers don’t want to have to file in Texas, both because it’s a disadvantage to them, and because they aren’t admitted to practice in Texas, and it’s a big hassle to work around that.
Combine that with Trump v. CASA, and no one wants to try a habeas class action. So you have a crap ton of individualized habeas petitions, all over the same issue, which is ICE’s incorrect interpretation of federal immigration law. And in many, many of these cases, they properly got filed in Minnesota, but the prisoners got shipped to Texas anyway. The Minnesota judges are figuring out that all these cases are the same, and they’re making the decisions real fast now, and ICE is not keeping up, by design. It’s a total logistical cluster.
*Yes, it’s that Donald Rumsfeld, and that Jose Padilla, the dirty bomb guy.
No. I am suggesting that these times are abnormal.
This is, uh, this is not how judges normally sign off on opinions:
They’re doing this because success would set up factual predicates to support invoking the Insurrection Act. The Insurrection Act is invokable when state governments are actively disobeying federal law.
They’re not invoking the Insurrection Act right at this moment, because with the facts they have right now, they’re not confident they’ll win the case in court. (And they may also lose a voting majority in Congress on the matter.)
The court found that there is no lawful basis to deport Abrego in the first place, because the government was unable to produce a copy of the 2019 deportation order in court.
The court found that government lawyers deliberately “misled the tribunal” regarding their efforts to deport Abrego to Africa. The court “will take this into account” while considering pending motions for sanctions.
In alternative to #1, the court found that the government was not really detaining Abrego to deport him, because they could have sent him to Costa Rica at any time in the past few months. But they did not.
Therefore, there is no lawful reason to subject Abrego to immigration detention, and the writ of habeas corpus is granted.
Abrego is still on bail in the TN criminal case.
This is a different judge in a different district than the one who handled the Comey indictment.
The lawsuit was filed by Dan Richman, who wants his personal data returned to him. The data was seized in 2019-2020 under search warrants, but the public learned in Comey case filings that the FBI failed to exclude non pertinent data, violating the terms of the original warrants. Among other problems.
In the previous Comey case, nearly all of the evidence that the government presented against Comey came out of these warrants. And it’s not clear if they have any other sources of evidence.
The speech and debate clause is separate from the arrest clause. The Treason exception only applies to the first part.
Additionally, Treason has a definition elsewhere in this document, and just giving any kind of speech doesn’t meet the standard.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
It would be pretty hard to claim that any kind of speechifying amounts to “Aid and Comfort”, especially if you can’t identify the “Enemy” in a time when the nation is at peace.
Now the first amendment does apply here, but I expect a legal defense to go to this speech and debate clause first, then 1st amendment. Because 1st amendment has a bunch of exceptions of the “yelling fire in a crowded theater” type, but speech and debate is going to be more ironclad. Once you convince a court that you were doing Congressional speech or debate, then the only discipline you can face is from your chamber’s rules, period.
No, I’m quoting the Constitution because it means something to me, and maybe to you as well. I’m not talking to them.
“They” will only accomplish their goals when enough regular people go along with it. Conversely, the Constitution will continue to have meaning as long as enough regular people are still invested. Despite some serious cracks and strains, it is holding up so far. I hope it continues to do so.