Saturday rewind: The All Rise News playlist
Learn why Lindsey Halligan's big flop is the best possible outcome for Trump's DOJ, Pete Hegseth's latest crusade is "preposterous," and Texas maps put SCOTUS in a bind.
Donald Trump’s Justice Department failed in their effort to prosecute James Comey and Letitia James with his inexperienced and unlawfully appointed loyalist Lindsey Halligan.
This could have been the best possible outcome for Trump’s Justice Department.
In this week’s “Saturday Rewind,” I break down how the dismissal of the Trump-ordered cases on Appointments Clause grounds spares Halligan and Attorney General Pam Bondi from scrutiny over their other grand jury antics. Florida Law Man Dave Aronberg joins me for a wide-ranging discussion on Legal AF.
Also this week:
Pete Hegseth’s “preposterous” crusade against war hero turned Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) gets roasted by a top military law expert: Yale Law School’s Eugene Fidell.
Supreme Court scholar Leah Litman breaks down why a pair of cases over Texas and Louisiana electoral maps puts the Roberts court in a bind.
I break down how a Washington Post investigation caught Trump’s Justice Department in a lie about Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Access the All Rise News playlist on the YouTube page here.
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Trump DOJ Got Off Easy
The dismissal of the cases against Comey and James made for what one can only assume to have been an unhappy Thanksgiving inside the corridors of the Department of Justice. But if they were thinking wisely about the issues, this was the easiest way that these cases could have been resolved for Halligan and Bondi.
Florida Law Man Dave Aronberg and I break down why.
Hegseth’s ‘preposterous’ crusade against Sen. Kelly
Hegseth’s threats to investigate Sen. Mark Kelly for participating in a video informing armed service members that they can refuse to follow illegal orders inspired this reaction from a top military law expert: “My first reaction was that [Hegseth] was not fit to hold the office that he’s holding,” Yale Law School scholar Eugene Fidell said in an interview on All Rise News.
During the interview, Fidell dissects Hegseth’s purge of the JAG corps, blasts Trump’s rebrand of the Department of Defense as an “abuse of language,” and explains why the boat strikes in the Caribbean are murder.
Where will SCOTUS draw the line?
The Roberts Court is considering whether to reinstate redistricted Texas maps voided by a lower court as racially gerrymandered. Professor Leah Litman, the author of “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes,” breaks down how the case lands at the same time that the conservative justices consider gutting the Voting Rights Act.
Trump DOJ “misleads” the court on Abrego
Trump’s Justice Department spent months claiming that Costa Rica would not accept Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but a bombshell Washington Post exposé has exposed that as a lie. Abrego’s lawyers cited that report as evidence of the government’s campaign to “mislead the courts and defy court orders,” arguing that Abrego’s case should be dismissed for vindictive prosecution.
Stay tuned for another interview with attorney Mark Zaid on Sunday.
given that we know she f'd up the grand jury, can't Hooligan have a bar complaint now?
I hope that the Trump-biased Supreme Court justices bind themselves in such torturous knots that they fail to undo the Voting Rights Act. It is a nice image of those justices tangled in an uncomfortable heap.