Despite Trump’s current laughable lawyers, his DOJ could be staffed with skilled radicals

Posted on January 24, 2024 by Charles Jay

Attorney Alina Habba has been widely mocked for her courtroom blunders and behavior as she defends Donald Trump in the business fraud lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James and in E. Jean Carroll’s second defamation trial against the accused rapist.

Former federal prosecutor Ron Filipkowski, who is now editor in chief of the liberal Meidas Touch, had this post on X, formerly known as Twitter:

I’m gonna say you can watch My Cousin Vinny and Legally Blonde back-to-back and you’d be ready to do a better trial than Habba.
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 18, 2024

And “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert said in a monologue earlier this month, “Habba is, to use a bit of legalese, a bad lawyer,” HuffPost reported. He then played a clip from a podcast interview in which Habba, a former fashion executive, said she’d “rather be pretty than smart.” She then added she “can fake being smart.”

But as Trump has become the first candidate to run a presidential campaign out of a courtroom, Habba has taken on a prominent role in MAGA world by playing the Trump victimization card in numerous interviews on courthouse steps, on Fox News, and other conservative news outlets.

And while Trump’s immunity claims may seem a joke, there’s nothing funny regarding the attorney who handled Trump’s appeal seeking immunity from charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith that he conspired to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. The three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is widely expected to reject Trump’s immunity claim.

As Trump sat watching in the courtroom, his attorney, D. John Sauer, in response to questioning from the judges, suggested that even a president directing SEAL Team 6 to kill a political rival would be an action barred from criminal prosecution unless the president was first impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate.

Mother Jones wrote that “it’s hard to overstate the terrifying absurdity of the argument.” But in social media posts, candidate Trump has argued that presidents deserve complete immunity from prosecution even for acts that “cross the line.” The Atlantic wrote that “Today’s legal argument could very well be next year’s exercise of presidential power.”

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich went even further, stating that “Sauer was arguing for the equivalent of the 1933 Enabling Law in Germany,” which facilitated Adolf Hitler’s success in moving the country from democracy to fascism. That law—approved by the German Parliament in March 1933—gave the new chancellor, Hitler, the power to enact new laws without interference from the president or the parliament for four years.

What’s scary is that unlike Habba, Sauer has a blue-chip legal background. He was a Rhodes scholar and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk to federal appellate court Judge J. Michael Luttig and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

In 2017, then-Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley appointed Sauer to serve as the state’s solicitor general and he continued to serve in that post under Hawley’s successor, Eric Schmitt, who also was elected to the U.S. Senate. The New York Times wrote:

As Missouri’s solicitor general, Mr. Sauer took part in a last-ditch effort to keep Mr. Trump in power after his defeat in the 2020 election, filing a motion on behalf of his state and five others in support of an attempt by Texas to have the Supreme Court toss out the results of the vote count in several key swing states.

He also joined in an unsuccessful bid with Texas in asking the Supreme Court to stop the Biden administration from rescinding a Trump-era immigration program that forces certain asylum seekers arriving at the southwestern border to await approval in Mexico.

Sauer left the solicitor general’s post in January 2023. He served as a special assistant attorney general for Louisiana’s Department of Justice in a First Amendment lawsuit against Biden administration officials over their contacts with social media platforms about “misinformation.”

So could Sauer be another politically ambitious conservative lawyer with an Ivy League law degree looking to make an impression on Trump in hopes of securing a top position at the Department of Justice in a second Trump administration? It’s hard to know for sure, as Sauer keeps a low public profile outside the courtroom and shuns media interviews. But it sounds like he would fit right in, according to a November New York Times article on the subject:

Close allies of Donald J. Trump are preparing to populate a new administration with a more aggressive breed of right-wing lawyer, dispensing with traditional conservatives who they believe stymied his agenda in his first term.

The allies have been drawing up lists of lawyers they view as ideologically and temperamentally suited to serve in a second Trump administration. Their aim is to reduce the chances that politically appointed lawyers would frustrate a more radical White House agenda — as they sometimes did when Mr. Trump was in office, by raising objections to his desires for certain harsher immigration policies or for greater personal control over the Justice Department, among others.

The Times said Trump has even become disenchanted with the Federalist Society, the conservative legal network whose members filled key executive branch legal positions when he was last in office. Trump was particularly enraged at White House and Justice Department legal officials who blocked his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

John Mitnick, who was fired by Trump as general counsel of the Homeland Security Department in 2019, told the Times that “no qualified attorneys with integrity will have any desire to serve as political appointees” in a second Trump term.

The Guardian reported that Trump’s former senior adviser Stephen Miller, known for his draconian immigration policy, “is playing a key role in seeking lawyers fully in sync with Trump’s radical agenda to expand his power and curb some major agencies.” The Guardian wrote:

His search is for those with unswerving loyalty to Trump, who could back Trump’s increasingly authoritarian talk about plans to “weaponize” the DoJ against critics, including some he has labeled as “vermin.”

Miller, who is not a lawyer, is president of the MAGA-allied group America First Legal, which has been filing lawsuits against the Biden administration. Miller also sits on the board of Project 2025, an effort led by the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups to map authoritarian policy plans for a second Trump administration.

And that brings us to who Trump might choose for attorney general if he makes his way back to the Oval Office. Back in November, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a member of the House Jan. 6 Select Committee, warned in an episode of The Bulwark podcast:

“If he does get through and he wins this time, he's going to interview 100 candidates for attorney general and only take the one that says, 'Mr. President, in essence, I don't care what the Constitution is. I'm going to do whatever you want as your servant at the Department of Justice.'"

And the scary thing is that there is one lawyer who is media savvy, has a blue-chip legal resume, and is a total right-wing monster. His name is Mike Davis.

Tim Miller, a former Republican National Committee spokesperson and Never Trumper, wrote about an interview Davis gave to conservative political commentator Benny Johnson in which Davis discussed what he would do if he were “acting attorney general” for a few weeks in a new Trump term:

But during my three week reign of terror as Trump acting attorney general, before I get chased out of town with my Trump pardon, I will rain hell on Washington, D.C. ... I have five lists, ready to go and they’re growing.

List number one, we’re gonna fire. We’re gonna fire a lot of people in the executive branch, in the deep state.

Number two, we’re gonna indict. We’re gonna indict Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and James Biden and every other scumball, sleazeball, Biden, except for the five year old granddaughter who they refused to acknowledge for five years until the political pressure got to Joe Biden.

Number three, we’re gonna deport. We’re gonna deport a lot of people, 10 million people and growing—anchor babies, their parents, their grandparents. We’re gonna put kids in cages. It’s gonna be glorious. We’re gonna detain a lot of people in the D.C. gulag and Gitmo.

And list number five, I’m gonna recommend a lot of pardons. Every January 6th defendant is gonna get a pardon, especially my hero horn man. He is definitely at the top of the pardon list.

“This is almost comically pathetic chest-beating of a creepy dork,” says Hayes on far-right lawyer Mike Davis. “But again the history of fascism is full of creepy dorks who…used the power of the state to execute their most despicable, violent fantasies.”pic.twitter.com/dRRVhsRKCw
— IT’S TIME FOR JUSTICE (@LiddleSavages) November 22, 2023

In an article for The Bulwark, Miller wrote:

Davis has become an influential voice in MAGA media and activist circles—understandably so, given his crossover appeal as someone who combines legitimate bona fides as a GOP staffer with the incendiary, burn-it-all-down rhetoric that the MAGA base laps up.

And should, God forbid, Trump win a second term, Davis will be emblematic of the type of person who will staff the government. …

Davis’s current gig is spearheading activist groups that fight for right-wing judicial appointments and oppose “Big Tech.” In this role he makes frequent appearances on right-wing media outlets, including primetime Fox and its MAGA competitors (think Real America’s Voice, Newsmax, Bannon’s War Room), where he preaches the Gospel of Trump on issues ranging from the former president’s many indictments to the Biden impeachment.

Davis has an extensive biography on the Federalist Society website. But Miller also exposed Davis’ dark side, including a rant on X about the “violent black underclass” who are “monsters” and should be subjected to “mass incarceration.” He wrote:

Racist demagoguery. Conspiratorial thinking. Promises for retribution against enemies. This is Trump’s stated agenda for 2024. And people like Mike Davis stand ready and willing to execute it.

Davis now heads the Article III Project, which has run ads defending Trump against his four criminal indictments with messages mirroring Trump’s comments that he is a victim of politically motivated prosecutions.

One 60-second digital ad says, “Activist prosecutors and judges have destroyed the rule of law, the scales of justice forever broken and imbalanced. The worst offenders? Those who have weaponized the legal system for political gain against President Trump. Even now they’re resorting to insane legal theories to take him off the ballot,” the ad continues. “They’ve gone after a president of the United States. Do you think they’ll stop there?”

In November, Mehdi Hasan presented an in-depth report on the dangers posed by Davis on MSNBC.

YouTube Video

Davis responded to the report and Miller’s Bulwark article with this tasteless post on X that included a homophobic slur.

😂 Trump’s Dream Team.@mehdirhasan is now on my Lists 2 (indict), 4 (detain), 6 (denaturalize), and 3 (deport). I already have his spot picked out in the DC gulag. But I’ll put him in the women’s cell block, with @Timodc. So these whiny leftists don’t get beat up as often. https://t.co/Ylhb33KVv2
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) November 20, 2023

And here’s the kicker: Donald Trump Jr. actually said on his online show “Triggered” in November that he’d actually like to see Davis as attorney general, even on an interim basis, “just to send that shot across the bow of the swamp.”

Donald Trump Jr. says he wants Laura Loomer as White House press secretary and Mike Davis as attorney general; Loomer has described herself as “pro-white nationalism,” Davis says that he wants to enact a “reign of terror” targeting Trump’s enemies. pic.twitter.com/oy3osluVC4
— Media Matters (@mmfa) November 10, 2023

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Report of investigation into leaked draft of abortion decision is coming, Gorsuch says

Posted on September 9, 2022 (Updated September 9, 2022) by Joan McCarter

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said Thursday that the investigation into the leak of the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, is still continuing and that investigators will issue a report of those findings, but he made no promises that the results will be made public.

Speaking at the 10th Circuit Bench and Bar Conference in Colorado Springs, Gorsuch said that the “internal committee to oversee the investigation” appointed by Chief Justice John Roberts “has been busy, and we’re looking forward to their report, I hope soon.” How soon he would not say, nor would he say if that report would be seen by anyone outside of the Court. The conference organizers barred reporters from questioning Gorsuch or other judges participating.

Gorsuch continued, saying, “Improper efforts to influence judicial decision-making, from whatever side, are a threat.” Yes, from whatever side. “They inhibit our capacity to communicate with one another,” he said, chilling the communication between opposing justices, which “improves our final products,” he said. “I very much hope we get to the bottom of this sooner or later.”

Justice Samuel Alito’s anachronistic screed against abortion was leaked in early May of this year, weeks ahead of the final opinion. It showed precious little input from any dissenting justice, and was virtually identical to the final opinion. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that in the weeks between the leak and the decision, there might have been alterations inspired by one of the three liberals. In another universe, with another set of extremist justices and someone who is not Alito.

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Given all we’ve seen from the Court’s extremist, Trump-packed majority, it seems likelier than not that if the investigation determines the leak came from their camp, that report will never see the light of day. That’s how they like to do things, after all. Look at all the radical and democracy-breaking decisions they issued from the shadow docket, without holding any hearings, with no transparency, and in unsigned decisions consisting of one or two sentences.

But if the leak came from the minority—a clerk, a justice—or from support staff—a janitor—we’re a lot more likely to hear about it.

All we know about the investigation is that it heightened already existing tensions in the Court, according to long-time court reporter Nina Totenberg at NPR. Terrified clerks considered getting lawyers, after the court asked them to sign affidavits and open up their cellphones to the investigators. They were in a no-win situation. Assert their right to get a lawyer and not turn over their phone, and they would immediately be under suspicion, a potentially career-ending situation.

On the other hand, the justices themselves are basically untouchable. No one can demand of them that they turn over cellphones or even cooperate with investigators. If one of the justices was responsible for the leak, we will probably never know.

There’s no code of ethics governing the Supreme Court, and the only remedy for dealing with a rogue justice is impeachment. Impeachment, or court reform and expansion. It’s long past time that Congress applied the same code of conduct to the Supreme Court as to every other federal judge.

It’s also time to impose other reforms, including court expansion, to make correct the horrific imbalance Trump and Mitch McConnell created with their court packing.

‘Misled the American people’: AOC calls out Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on lying about abortion views

Posted on July 13, 2022 by Aysha Qamar

As the country continues to process the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that made abortion legal nationwide, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called on the Senate Monday to question whether Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh lied under oath about their views on the case.

During their Senate confirmation hearings, both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said that they viewed Roe v. Wade as a settled “precedent” that had been “reaffirmed many times.” However, when the time came to uphold that precedent and vote, the two thought otherwise.

Ocasio-Cortez joined with Rep. Ted Lieu to write a letter to the Senate asking them to investigate whether Kavanaugh and Gorsuch lied under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee in order to become confirmed.

"Multiple Supreme Court Justices misled the American people during their confirmation hearings about their views on Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood," Ocasio-Cortez and Lieu said in the letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. "At least two of them, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, directly lied to Senators.

"We respect the right of individual Justices to have their own views on various constitutional issues," the letter continued. "But we cannot have a system where Justices lie about their views in order to get confirmed. That makes a mockery of the confirmation power, and of the separation of powers."

We cannot allow Supreme Court nominees lying and/or misleading the Senate under oath to go unanswered. Both GOP & Dem Senators stated SCOTUS justices misled them. This cannot be accepted as precedent. Doing so erodes rule of law, delegitimizes the court, and imperils democracy. https://t.co/yZW6BKnqFG
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 11, 2022

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Following their vote in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, which overturned Roe v. Wade, several lawmakers who voted to confirm Gorsuch in 2017 and Kavanaugh in 2018 expressed concern at the consequential outcome, saying they felt misled by the two justices, Business Insider reported.

”This decision is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon," Sen. Susan Collins, an abortion rights supporter, said in a statement.

"I trusted Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh when they testified under oath that they also believed Roe v. Wade was settled legal precedent and I am alarmed they chose to reject the stability the ruling has provided for two generations of Americans," Sen. Joe Manchin said in a statement. While personally against abortion, Manchin supports legislation to protect abortion rights.

The letter isn’t the first time Ocasio-Cortez questioned the SCOTUS justices lying during their respected confirmations.

In her argument that the two lied, Ocasio-Cortez emphasized the point that even Republicans who supported Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were shocked by their recent votes. She added that lying under oath is a serious offense that she believes calls for impeachment.

"To allow that to stand is to allow it to happen," Ocasio-Cortez told NBC News on June 26. "What makes it particularly dangerous is that it sends a blaring signal to all future nominees that they can now lie to duly elected members of the United States Senate in order to secure Supreme Court confirmations and seats on the Supreme Court."

Lieu also previously accused some justices of lying about their stance on Roe v. Wade. The day the Dobbs’ decision was announced, Lieu posted a message about a Gallup poll that found confidence in the Supreme Court’s support for abortion rights was at a low.

"Multiple conservative Supreme Court Justices led the American people to believe that Roe v. Wade was settled precedent during their confirmation hearings," Lieu wrote in the June 24 tweet. "The American people now know these Justices lied. And now public confidence in the Court is at its lowest level in history."

Both Lieu and Ocasio-Cortez vowed to fight for abortion rights following the official verdict.

"People will die because of this decision," Ocasio-Cortez said. "And we will never stop until abortion rights are restored in the United States of America."

You want to make the Supreme Court a fight for 2020, Moscow Mitch? You got it

Posted on March 5, 2020 by Joan McCarter

Moscow Mitch McConnell is clutching his phony pearls, shocked, shocked that Sen. Chuck Schumer would dare politicize the Supreme Court. Yes. Mitch McConnell. The McConnell who stole a Supreme Court seat from President Barack Obama and called it, "One of my proudest moments." The same McConnell who refused to allow an FBI investigation into credible allegations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court nominee who had perjured himself, repeatedly, before a Senate committee.

In case you missed the brouhaha, Schumer spoke at an abortion rights rally at the Supreme Court Wednesday following the arguments in the latest abortion case, one that threatens the court’s integrity if it reverses a decision made just four years ago that protects access to abortion.

Enough of this. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as Senate majority leader.

Schumer riffed off of the threat Brett Kavanaugh made to Democratic senators during his confirmation hearing. "You sowed the wind," Kavanaugh snarled at the senators, and "the country will reap the whirlwind." He accused Democrats of "a calculated and orchestrated political hit fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election," and even said that his hearing was "revenge on behalf of the Clintons," since he was on Kenneth Starr's team during the Clinton impeachment. So what Schumer said Wednesday echoed Kavanaugh's words back to him. "I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh," Schumer said, "You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."

Was the last sentence impolitic? Sure. Schumer admitted as much. Was it threat to Gorsuch and Kavanaugh directly? No. Of course not. It was Schumer telling it like it is: These justices played politics and paid lip service to respecting precedent to get on the court, and they are political actors now. But cue McConnell and his plastic pearls. This was a "threat," McConnell said, a "Senate leader appearing to threaten or incite violence on the steps of the Supreme Court" and "astonishingly, astonishingly reckless and ... irresponsible."

Yeah, right. And what did McConnell say when the occupier of the Oval Office he is enabling attacked Judge Gonzalo Curiel for his Mexican heritage? Or Judge James Robart as a "so-called judge." Or Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who he says should recuse themselves from "anything having to do with Trump or Trump related."

Where was McConnell's concern for the independent judiciary then? Yeah, invisible. McConnell did not say one word in defense of those judges, in defense of an independent judiciary, because he doesn't believe in it. He is more than happy to turn as much of the federal judiciary into Trump courts—TRUMP courts—as he possibly can. It doesn't matter if the judges he installs are unqualified or incompetent or raging extremists and white supremacists. All the better, in fact, for McConnell's vision for our republic.

McConnell is playing with fire here. If this court, now with Neil Gorsuch—the guy he installed by stealing a seat from President Obama—and Brett Kavanaugh—the accused sexual assaulter and perjurer—decides to overturn four-year-old precedent on abortion? If that happens, McConnell's majority is done. Which, by the way, was what Schumer was talking about at the Supreme Court Wednesday. It's what he said on the Senate floor Thursday morning: "The fact that my Republican colleagues have worked, systematically, over the course of decades, to install the judicial infrastructure to take down Roe v. Wade—and do very real damage to the country and the American way of life—that is the issue that will remain."

McConnell wants this fight? He's got it.