“Claiming vast executive powers and “the mandate of the electorate,” the Justice Department on Monday night informed a federal judge that it was invoking the state secrets privilege and refusing to answer a judge’s orders for more information on several deportation flights of alleged Venezuelan gang members.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and other high-ranking Justice Department officials filed a “Notice Invoking State Secrets Privilege” claiming that it “would pose reasonable danger to national security and foreign affairs” to comply with U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s fact-finding inquiries to determine if the U.S. government violated his order to turn those deportation flights around.”
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“Boasberg has repeatedly ordered the Justice Department to produce detailed information on those flights to determine if officials knowingly defied his orders. The Trump administration has offered various explanations for why it did not comply—that it didn’t consider Boasberg’s verbal order valid, and that Boasberg didn’t have jurisdiction once the flights crossed into international space, for instance.
As Boasberg’s fact-finding orders have proceeded toward considering contempt, the Justice Department’s responses have grown more obstinate, culminating in Monday night’s invocation of the state secrets privilege.”
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“the Trump administration is claiming that it can declare a war by executive order and send immigrants to a labor camp in another country, all without meaningful judicial review of the facts. As Ilya Somin recently wrote at The Volokh Conspiracy, the Trump administration’s policy violates the Due Process Clause of the Constitution and is “obviously unjust.”
“Imprisoning people without any due process whatsoever is a cruel and evil practice usually used only by authoritarian states,” Somin wrote. “And if the Trump administration gets away with it here, there is an obvious danger it will expand the practice.”
The Trump administration’s attempt to invoke the state secrets privilege raises another, tertiary danger: that we won’t even be able to know if they’re expanding the practice.”
“Trump talks often about using the DOJ to target his political adversaries and people he views as foes. An NPR report on October 22 found that Trump “made more than 100 threats to prosecute or punish perceived enemies.” That includes a threat to, in Trump’s words, “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.”
Trump also accused former Rep. Liz Cheney, a prominent Republican critic of the incoming president, of “TREASON” and threatened “TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.” (Which, if they were to actually happen, would presumably take place in the Defense Department’s legal structure, but could involve some DOJ personnel.)
Trump’s decision to name Gaetz, a staunch loyalist, to lead the Justice Department created considerable alarm. Historically, the White House has obeyed strong norms against interfering with Justice Department prosecutorial decisions, but these norms have no legal force. A Trump loyalist like Gaetz could have torn down this barrier altogether. (If someone like him is confirmed atop the Justice Department, that barrier could still go.)
Trump’s decision to appoint his personal lawyers to top DOJ jobs is equally concerning. Federal lawyers are supposed to represent the interests of the United States, not of any particular politician, while they work for the government. But Trump has selected three people who aren’t simply accustomed to representing his personal interests, but who have also likely collected considerable legal fees from him.
Blanche, Sauer, and Bove’s conventional résumés also mean that, if they use their DOJ posts to pursue Trump’s personal campaign of vengeance, they are likely to be fairly effective in doing so.”
“A conservative lawyer working on Donald Trump’s transition, Mark Paoletta, offered a stark warning to career Justice Department lawyers Monday that those who refuse to advance Trump’s agenda should resign or face the possibility of being fired.
“Once the decision is made to move forward, career employees are required to implement the President’s plan,” Paoletta wrote in a post on X responding to a POLITICO story detailing widespread fear among DOJ lawyers about being asked to advance or defend policies they consider unethical or illegal.
“If these career DOJ employees won’t implement President Trump’s program in good faith, they should leave,” Paoletta said. “Those employees who engage in so-called ‘resistance’ against the duly-elected President’s lawful agenda would be subverting American democracy. … [t]hose that take such actions would be subject to disciplinary measures, including termination.””
“As far as consumer complaints go, of course, there’s nothing wrong with some of the DOJ’s concerns. We might wish that every product we owned was compatible with every other product we owned and that they worked in perfect tandem. We might wish we never had to consider tradeoffs between price, function, design, compatibility, etc.
Where this gets crazy is the federal government saying: Consumers being able to choose whether to use a product is not good enough. We’re going to step in and say that this business has to make a competitor’s products more accessible. It has a legal duty to undermine its own business interests to help outside—and many would argue inferior—products compete.
In the vein of other recent antitrust actions against tech companies, particularly under the Biden administration, the Apple suit relies on an absurd conception of how the law should work. And it’s a conception that could seriously harm innovation, weaken the position of U.S. tech companies, and mess with products many people like.
And many people really, really love Apple products, including iPhones.
The bottom line: Nobody has to use an iPhone, and no developer has to distribute its app through the App Store. There are other ways to communicate, other smartphone options, and other ways to distribute apps (including other ways to distribute apps to iPhone users). That many people still carry iPhones and distribute their apps through the App Store speaks to the fact that many people find the phone’s upsides and the App Store’s upsides stronger than any downsides.”
“A federal judge ruled in January that DeSantis violated the First Amendment and the Florida Constitution when he suspended Warren, although the judge also found that the court did not have the authority to reinstate the prosecutor.”
“The DOJ alleged that the tech giant is monopolizing the market by contracting with Apple to become the default search engine for the iOS platform. The DOJ claims that Google and Apple will harm consumers with the possibility they could exploit their dominant positions.
Despite this claim of potential harm, the default search deal between Apple and Google provides an attractive service to consumers in an increasingly competitive market. The result of this lawsuit is a deliberate step backward toward a vision of antitrust that seeks to prioritize the welfare of individual competing firms instead of consumers. Where firms are at the center of government concern, consumers invariably lose.”
“Esformes was not convicted of the most serious charges leveled against him. The government failed to convince a jury, for example, that he committed conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud. So his 20-year sentence—handed down by U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola of the Southern District of Florida—may appear grossly disproportionate to his convictions.
Until you realize the judge explicitly punished Esformes for charges on which the jury hung.
That is not an error. “When somebody gets sentenced [at the federal level]…they get sentenced on all charges, even the ones they’re acquitted on, [as long as] they get convicted on one count,” says Brett Tolman, the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah who is now the executive director of Right on Crime. It is a little-known, jaw-dropping part of the legal system: Federal judges are, in effect, not obligated to abide by a jury’s verdict at sentencing. They can, and do, sentence defendants for conduct on which they were not convicted. In this case, Esformes was already sentenced—and had that sentence commuted—for the crimes that the DOJ now wants to retry.
“This defendant, as much as you might not like him…do you think he should be punished two or three times for the same conduct?” asks Tolman. “I don’t find anybody who thinks that’s fair.””
“White House lawyers initially found sensitive documents at the Penn Biden Center in Washington — where Biden kept a personal office — on Nov. 2, a day before the midterm elections, and notified the Justice Department. On Dec. 20, Biden’s team notified the department of a second batch of documents in Biden’s Wilmington garage. On Thursday, they informed the department of another document found in Biden’s house. Garland was briefed on the investigation on Jan. 5.”
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“there are significant differences in the timeline of the Trump-related documents and those found at Biden’s office and home. The National Archives discovered the presence of records with classified markings at Mar-a-Lago in January 2022, after a protracted effort to reclaim presidential records that Trump had warehoused at his estate since leaving office. Trump sent an initial batch of 15 boxes back to the archive that month.
After discovering the material marked classified, the Archives forwarded the matter to the Justice Department, which soon subpoenaed Trump’s presidential office for all other documents with classified markings. The department also subpoenaed security footage to review the handling of the documents, which were kept in a storage room and Trump’s personal office.
But Justice Department investigators said evidence they collected showed that even after the subpoena, Trump’s team had not turned over everything in their possession — even as the ex-president’s aides presented the department with a signed attestation that all subpoenaed documents had been turned over. The FBI discovered another trove of sensitive records after executing a search at Trump’s estate in August, including some that he kept in his personal office.
Biden’s team, by contrast, has repeatedly emphasized its proactive approach to the discovery of the records. In two statements, White House lawyer Richard Sauber said Biden’s own team discovered the documents, immediately alerted the Archives and the Justice Department and returned the records. Similarly, they conducted additional searches and have pledged to cooperate with department investigators.
Trump sued last year to demand the return of documents seized by the FBI, a battle that reached the Supreme Court, only to result in a sharp rejection of his effort to sideline the Justice Department investigation. Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have demanded assessments of the potential damage to national security caused by the handling of the documents.”