Arguably he corrupted very few appointments, much to his own detriment. By all accounts he just basically de facto farmed the selections out to the Federalist Society and otherwise paid little attention to them on an individual basis. This seeded a very large number of originalist/textualist judges in the Federal judiciary, which is very not good from my POV. But he failed to seed many obligate Trump loyalists, which bit him on the ass. At the end of the day after they were appointed most of those all-too-serious libertarian judges probably didn’t give a shit about him and his laughable attempts to bend the law.
And several of them went on to rule against him during his and his mooks’ various laughable challenges to the 2020 election results.
Yeah, he wasn’t able to fully vet all of them as he did his Supreme Court nominations. Many were actual qualified law and order type judges.
I Tried to Overthrow the Government and All I Got Was This Orange Jumpsuit!
DOJ subpoenas Patsy Baloney:
Heh (I say, heh!)
Cipollone may find that DOJ is less deferential than the Jan 6 interviewers to his claims of being unable to answer due to either executive privilege or attorney-client privilege. DOJ may take his claims right to a judge (who, one hopes, will bear in mind the crime-fraud exception to privilege).
Downside: it all could take a LONG time. (Would have been nice if DOJ had thought it worth interviewing the Trump White House Counsel, some time before more than a year-and-a-half had gone by…)
They did. Pat Cipollone wouldn’t be in front of a grand jury if they hadn’t.
And the executive privilege stuff won’t take a long time. They will bring Mr. Cipollone up in front of Chief Judge of the DC Circuit, Beryl Howell, who doesn’t fuck around with this sort of thing, and question him for his claims of privilege. She can rule from the bench, or she can rule after the hearing.
Either way, no need for it to take long at all.
ETA: Judge Beryl Howell is very well aware of the crime fraud exception.
All good news. This bodes well for, potentially, making people considering election-interference think twice. For too long they’ve been permitted to believe that some people truly ARE above the law in the USA.
I encourage you to spend some time learning about Judge Beryl Howell. I think your concerns will be somewhat ameliorated. She will not waste time.
(hopefully one-post derail)
Yep, Judge Howell’s good to have in our corner.
More good news!
From Elendil’s link above
The two-paragraph order from DC District Judge Amit Mehta rejects Trump’s claim that he has immunity from these lawsuits because his actions fell within his presidential duties.
It was Trump’s presidential duty to direct a riot to attack the Capitol of the US?
I’m surprised the judge didn’t just respond with one sentence, one word - “Bullshit”
“I am under request from various federal agencies and law enforcement to provide (the records),” Mark Bankston, the plaintiffs’ attorney, told Judge Maya Guerra Gamble. “Absent a ruling from you saying you cannot do that … I intend to do so immediately following this hearing.” …
“I’ve been asked by the January 6 committee to turn the documents over,” Bankston added later…
The judge overseeing the case advised Reynal to take some time while they await a verdict to research a legal argument to stop Bankston from disclosing information to the January 6 committee and others.
What does Alex Jones have to do with Jan 6?
It is my understanding that he had a lot to do with funding.
From The New York Times, “The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has been pushing to obtain Mr. Jones’s texts for months, saying they could be relevant to understanding Mr. Jones’s role in helping organize the rally at the Ellipse near the White House before the riot. In November, the panel filed subpoenas to compel Mr. Jones’s testimony and communications related to Jan. 6, including his phone records.”
Well, I think the excuse of “Oh, my phone was inadvertently wiped after a routine update” is not going to fly here in this case.
He was there, inciting the crowds, on the day and on the 5th as well.
Xpost in Schadenfreude thread:
More information about the ‘phone’. Apparently it wasn’t just a phone, it was a data image of a Connecticut attorney’s hard drive, this attorney working on the Proud Boys case, defending them from J6.