Briefly Noted: Legal Developments In Presidential Politics
Very brief.
Jonathan Turley correctly calls on the SCOTUS to do the right thing—by being unanimous:
Turley: SCOTUS Should Rule Unanimously Against Trump Ballot Ban
In his book Profiles of Courage, John F. Kennedy discussed figures who answered the call of history and how such defining moments are “an opportunity that sooner or later is presented to us all.” That moment will now be presented to nine justices of the United States Supreme Court after a divided decision of the Colorado Supreme Court to disqualify Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
The test for the U.S. Supreme Court is not just what they should do, but how they should do it.
As an institution, the Court is often called upon to seize such moments to bring unity and clarity on our core values. That is why this insidious opinion must not only be unequivocal but unanimous.
The Colorado decision to bar Donald Trump from the ballot will be overturned because it is wrong on the history and the language of the 14th Amendment.
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Well, they did the right thing on this next case, and they did it unanimously. Amazing. Maybe they see where the real threat to democracy is coming from.
Supreme Court Rules Against Special Counsel, Will Not Expedite Trump Immunity Clash
The Supreme Court's new docket just dropped, notably without expedited consideration of Trump's claim of presidential immunity in his 2020 election interference case - a critical question which will determine whether he can be put on trial for trying to overturn the results of the last presidential election.
BREAKING: Supreme Court docket reflects a *denial* of Jack Smith's request for expedited consideration of Trump's immunity appeal. https://t.co/eOKZyWnyhj pic.twitter.com/daCuXjOmkR
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 22, 2023
The one-sentence order, with no noted dissents, means that a federal appeals court in Washington will be the first to review a district judge's ruling earlier this month which rejected Trump's claim of immunity - with arguments scheduled to begin Jan. 9.
This next is an excerpt from a much longer article. Really. Based on my experience and on what we know about the way federal government surveillance has been conducted since the Patriot Act, you have to believe there’s a high likelihood of finding relevant conversations:
Just The News ^ | December 21, 2023 11:30pm | By Steven Richards and John Solomon
Ever since Hunter Biden was captured in a recording calling his client, Patrick Ho, “the f—ing spy chief of China,” questions have swirled around the Chinese official who headed a U.S.-based think-tank that worked to advance the interests of CEFC China Energy and its now-vanished founder, Ye Jianming.
Court records from Ho’s case reviewed by Just the News show the FBI and Justice Department gathered evidence under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) from around the time when Hunter Biden and his uncle James were dealing with CEFC officials, including Ho.
Joe Biden also met twice with CEFC officials: once as vice president and once as a private citizen, according to statements made by a family friend to the FBI.
“The United States intends to offer into evidence, or otherwise use or disclose in any proceedings in the above-captioned matter, information obtained or derived from electronic surveillance and physical search conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA),” federal prosecutors wrote in a February 2018 filing in the Ho case.
You can you read that memo here.
gov.uscourts.nysd_.485530.45.0.pdf
Now, investigators in President Joe Biden’s impeachment inquiry in Congress want to review that FISA evidence to see if it has any communications between Biden family members and their Chinese business partners.
“This is certainly interesting information. We will pursue every piece of evidence that relates to Hunter Biden and his father. If there are FISA intercepts, it is something we should try to get,” said Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., a member of the House Judiciary Committee that is part of the impeachment process and the chairman of its surveillance subcommittee.
Evidence intercepted under FISA is sensitive intelligence, but Congress has succeeded in important investigations to obtain it, including in the post-Sept. 11 inquiry of security failures, and the Russia collusion case, where an intercept of Trump national security advisor Mike Flynn with a Russian ambassador was shown to lawmakers.
“If the government intercepted Patrick Ho’s communications during the time he was working with Hunter Biden and his associates, then those intercepts may contain information Congress needs to conduct its constitutional oversight and impeachment inquiry functions,” said Jason Foster, the now-retired Chief Investigative Counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee.
”When I worked for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Feinstein sought on a bipartisan basis the intercepts of calls between General Michael Flynn and the Russian ambassador because the content was needed for our oversight work,” he added. “So such a request from Congress would not be unprecedented.”
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Seems totally reasonable to me.
Turley's point is a critical one: Scotus can't just churn out another partisan 6-3 ruling on this; it has to go all in at 9-0 if the credibility of democracy's last line of defence is to survive.
Lot of hard-drives in the counterintelligence offices about to accidentally get beaten into dust with hammers and lost in the Potomac.