Late on Monday, the Supreme Court overwhelmingly slammed the final nail in the coffin in Trump’s attack on mail-in voting.
The 7-2 majority refused to pause a federal court injunction blocking a U.S. Postal Service rule from enforcing Trump’s executive order before the midterm elections in an unsigned opinion.
Only Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.
In their dissent, Alito claimed that the U.S. Postal Service’s rule would “‘enhance the visibility of Federal Ballot Mail’ in order to better detect election fraud.”
Two federal judges, including a Trump appointee, found that the administration didn’t provide any evidence of voter fraud to justify a plan that would have invalidated lawful votes.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately to state that he believed that there was “at least a fair prospect” that USPS could enforce Trump’s executive order — but not before the midterms because “state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”
The majority’s ruling ensures that U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani’s injunction blocking the rule will remain in place through the midterm elections. On Sunday, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, became the second judge to block the implementation of the rule.
A 25-state coalition, lead by California, and advocacy group’s led by the League of Women voters filed the lawsuits that produced the injunction that was left in place today.
Today’s decision is a victory for our democracy and a powerful affirmation of the rule of law,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.
Celina Stewart, the CEO of the League of Women Voters, echoed those sentiments.
“The Postal Service exists to deliver Americans’ mail — not to rewrite election rules, demand voters’ personal information, or decide which ballots make it through the system,” she said in a statement.
Stewart will discuss the Supreme Court’s decision during a Substack Live on All Rise News scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday.
Read the order in full here.
Tonight’s legal roundup continues below.
‘The Reality of Trump/Russia”
Earlier this year, Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island took to the Senate floor to deliver a roughly 48 minute speech laying out the connections between Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and the Russian government.
“When recently asked by a reporter about the Epstein files, Trump said in part, ‘It’s just a Russia Russia Russia hoax’ — again, ‘hoax,’ the word he uses for when something is true,” Whitehouse said in March. “But the most telling part is that Trump’s mind, when asked about Epstein, immediately went to Russia.”
For Whitehouse, even Trump’s critics have fallen for his official line that the “Russia speculation had gotten out of hand and that perhaps we had been wrong to believe there was a troubling connection between Trump and Russia after all.”
“But were we?” Whitehouse asked at the time.
So when ProPublica published bombshell revelations that a Putin-tied oligarch paid for the wedding celebrations of Donald Trump Jr., Whitehouse immediately asked with a palpable sense of vindication: “Can we NOW wake up to the reality of Trump/Russia?”
Donald Trump, Jr. and his wife Bettina Anderson Trump do not dispute that Putin-friendly oligarch Umar Kremlev spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on their wedding celebration. Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, which has been financed by the Russian state-owned oil company Gazprom. He also works with an organization Healthy Fatherland, which has been sanctioned by the Ukrainian government and accused of abducting children under the guise of rehabilitating them.
Asked for comment on the revelations, Sen. Whitehouse compared the story to something one might read in “The Onion.”
“For some reason, the Trump-Russia evidence just piles up and piles up and piles up, and yet the traditional legacy media seems to be unwilling to pay attention to it,” Whitehouse said. “It’s really pretty remarkable.”
When scheduling an interview, All Rise News had reached out to Whitehouse about a Washington Post investigation showing that the Trump Justice Department has been stonewalling European governments investigating revelations in the Epstein files. Although authorities were also snubbed in Norway, Latvia, and the United Kingdom, one investigation stood out: The Polish government focused on Epstein’s possible ties to Russian intelligence, and it couldn’t get the Justice Department’s help.
Citing Poland’s history as a former Soviet satellite that’s deeply attuned to the Kremlin’s machinations, Whitehouse said: “So when Poland comes asking for information, that ought to send up flares in the U.S. intelligence community that we should help these guys.”
A former U.S. Attorney, Whitehouse noted that such requests typically would have been processed through the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) process, an evidence-sharing agreement between countries.
That didn’t happen.
“Here, we’ve got this ally asking for something fairly obvious, and we won’t even cooperate,” Whitehouse said.
For Whitehouse, this is part of a pattern for which Trump has gotten too much of a pass in his second term.
“When I was the lead Democrat on the Munich Security Council delegation, the meeting was just buzzing with the notion that [Steve] Witkoff and [Jared] Kushner were cutting private deals with Russian oligarchs to enrich themselves and their families in return for taking Russia's position in the negotiations against Ukraine,” Whitehouse said. “And we saw the internal communication from the Russians saying, ‘Good news! They're gonna basically do everything that we want as close as possible.’”
Though the heady days of the Mueller investigation have receded from the national conversation, Whitehouse believes the public is hungry for more information about the Trump family’s connections with Russia. His floor speech on Trump, Epstein and Russia has reached almost 5 million views on YouTube, and a large percentage watched through all 48 minutes.
“So I think it shows that there’s a real thirst for information out there that is not being met,” he said.
Whitehouse said that trend is likely to accelerate should the Democrats regain control of the Senate, where one of his colleagues — Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon — recently pursued an investigation into Epstein’s finances that Republicans refused to join. Congressional control would come with subpoena power.
“The House also has the power to issue subpoenas, and their subpoenas’ enforcement can't be filibustered on the Senate floor. So we actually have two venues to get information,” he added.
Look out for my full video interview with Sen. Whitehouse later this week.
‘Grand conspiracy’ probe update
Late last week, the prosecutor in charge of an outlandish “grand conspiracy” investigation purporting to tie dozens of Trump’s opponents to a more than decade-long criminal scheme abruptly resigned.
That prosecutor, Joe diGenova, strongly hinted in various interviews that he was experiencing pressure from Washington to rush to indictments.
The reports surprised many because diGenova, a former Reagan-era prosecutor turned right-wing cable commentator, was a MAGA loyalist who had called for the prosecution of Trump’s targets like ex-CIA director John Brennan for several years. A MAGA stalwart, diGenova had hardly been a careful steward calling for a slow, methodical, by-the-book investigation, and the criminal investigation that he was pushing — which diGenova still defends — is widely viewed in the legal community as a farce. The probe seeks to rebrand every investigation against Trump, from the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane through his criminal indictments, as a supposed deep-state plot.
On Tuesday, Brennan’s lead attorney Ken Wainstein said that the news of diGenova’s resignation broke on the same day that he accepted service of a subpoena for his client to testify before a grand jury in Ft. Pierce, Fla. on Oct. 15.
“The morning of September 10, I, along with co-counsel, reached out to Mr. diGenova by text message, to coordinate a conversation to discuss the subpoena. He responded that he would ‘arrange counsel’ to speak with us,” Wainstein wrote in a court declaration. “Later in that same day, multiple news outlets reported that Mr. diGenova had resigned his position with the Department of Justice. Mr. diGenova reportedly said, ‘If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem.’”
The next day, Wainstein reached out to another Trumpworld lawyer: Kurt Olsen, a 2020 election denier who became part of the “grand conspiracy” prosecution team.
Olsen reportedly said that Brennan was the “target” of a criminal investigation — but not the probe for which the ex-CIA director had been subpoenaed to testify.
Brennan filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to order the government to preserve evidence for a prosecution that he calls “preordained.” To say that diGenova had it in for Brennan is an understatement: In 2018, diGenova called Brennan a “traitor” on live TV and called for his prosecution.
Watch my video explainer from last month on diGenova’s longstanding hatred of Brennan — and Brennan’s counterattack.
Kennedy Center and Comey, revisited
Look out for updates on two major cases on Tuesday morning.
The Kennedy Center litigation returns for a hearing amid reports that the Trump-stacked board wants to shut it down imminently and find a way to get his name back on the building.
The Fourth Circuit considers the Trump Justice Department’s appeal of last year’s ruling dismissing the criminal cases against James Comey and Letitia James because of the illegal and unconstitutional appointment of Lindsey Halligan for a U.S. Attorney position for which she was unqualified.
Thanks, Adam. Just when we think we have seen the worst, the current malefactors surprise us. I hope you have had some breathing room this month.
I can't wait for the research showing why Americans idealize and idolize crime bosses, from the Sopranos and Corleones to Al Capone and Donald Trump. Trump's taken it to a new level by linking foreign crime boss/political leaders such as Putin w/ Trump's own crime dynasty that started w/ his dad and now, I fear, might even include his grandchildren, as criminals in training.
Actually, we don't need research. Because at some point there will be a TV series if the BBC wants to do Mar-a-lago Abbey featuring America's Trump crime family.