Clerk Scotus
includes district appellate
cb gray katsas, alito jon berry
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AMICUS: NAOMI REMINDS US OF KICKASS: THE PT IS FIND CLERK TO TAYLOR PRECEDENTS, TRUSTED SRC/ PAL 9 26
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cofman
Federal agents executed a search warrant at the Fulton County elections office in Georgia on Jan. 28, seizing 2020 ballots and related election materials in an investigation tied to alleged election law violations. The warrant listed a Missouri-based prosecutor, Thomas Albus, interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, as the Justice Department attorney on the document, an unusual choice for a Georgia-based investigation.
The involvement of a Missouri prosecutor in a Georgia warrant has fueled questions and controversy about the federal operation. Fulton County officials and national reporters noted that Theodore Hertzberg, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, was not named on the warrant, and DOJ has not publicly explained the arrangement.
Local authorities confirmed the FBI, operating under a “court-authorized activity,” found and loaded hundreds of boxes of ballots, voting rolls and machine tapes into trucks during the multi-hour search. It is unclear what evidence was presented to justify the warrant, as the supporting affidavit remains sealed.
One potential reason for Albus’s appearance on the warrant may stem from a special DOJ appointment. According to a Bloomberg Law report, Attorney General Pam Bondi quietly designated Albus under a federal statute to coordinate election integrity cases nationwide, allowing him to sign warrants and pursue investigations outside his home district.
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Still, county officials and outside legal analysts say DOJ has not clarified why Georgia’s own U.S. Attorney was not listed, raising unanswered questions about the case’s handling and federal oversight.
“This is a highly unusual setup,” said one legal analyst familiar with federal election investigations, “and that’s why everyone wants to know just what legal basis exists for it.”
The raid and use of a Missouri official to authorize a Georgia warrant is now drawing scrutiny from lawmakers in both states, and legal challenges may follow as county officials seek more transparency on the federal action and detainee custody of the ballots.
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REUTERS
Nov 14 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday announced three federal district court judge nominees, including a former law clerk to conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a lawyer pursuing litigation over the participation of transgender athletes in women's college sports.
The three new picks to serve as trial court judges in Indiana, Missouri and Tennessee brought to 34 the number of judicial nominees the Republican president has announced in his second term as he works to further shift the judiciary's ideological balance to the right.
The Republican-led Senate has confirmed 19 of them, adding to the 234 judicial nominees whose appointments Trump secured during his first term as president.
The latest nominees include Brian Lea, a former Thomas clerk and partner at Jones Day who joined the U.S. Department of Justice near the start of Trump's return to office and was picked to be a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee.
Lea, a deputy associate attorney general, has served as a lead defender of efforts by the National Institutes of Health and other agencies under Trump to sharply cut research funding provided to universities, moves that have been repeatedly blocked by judges in Boston.
"In his new role, Brian will boldly defend our Constitution, and prioritize LAW AND ORDER in Tennessee — HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN," Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
To fill a district court seat in the Southern District of Indiana, Trump tapped Justin Olson, a lawyer at Kroger Gardis & Regas whom the president said "has been fighting tirelessly to keep men out of women’s sports."
Olson with other lawyers has been representing former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines and other current and former college athletes in a lawsuit challenging now-rescinded NCAA policies that allowed transgender women to compete in women's sports as long as they met testosterone limits on a sport-by-sport basis.
A federal judge in Atlanta in September dismissed much of the lawsuit but allowed the plaintiffs to continue pursuing a claim arising out of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
Trump also said he is nominating Platte County Circuit Court Judge Megan Benton in Missouri to serve as a life-tenured judge on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.
She is the daughter of U.S. Circuit Judge Duane Benton, a member of the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who last month announced that he plans to take senior status, a form of semi-retirement for judges, creating a vacancy on the appeals court that Trump can fill.
Trump in announcing Megan Benton's nomination noted her prior tenure as a prosecutor and said she "is currently delivering strong results for the Rule of Law."
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