Bench Slapped Overturn

8 25 bleated vague? NEGLECTED?

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11 19 25

White House lawyer calls for Bondi and Halligan to be 'disbarred' after flubbed indictment

Legal expert says Trump prosecutor 'going to need a presidential pardon'

Judge asks if Trump prosecutor is 'a puppet' during 'gobsmacking' Comey hearing

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MEDIAITE 11 25

Newsmax legal analyst Andrew Napolitano was stunned by a sudden turn in the Trump administration’s case against former FBI Director James Comey.

On Monday, a judge ordered the prosecution — led by Lindsey Halligan — to hand over records relating to grand jury proceedings in the perjury case against Comey. In a scathing opinion, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick cited “government misconduct” and “fundamental misstatements” that could “compromise the integrity of the grand jury process.”

Halligan’s appointment by President Donald Trump was the subject of controversy earlier in the year. Despite being tasked with such a massive case, she has never prosecuted a federal criminal case before. Her relevant background largely focused on real estate law.

In response to the judge’s order, Napolitano claimed such a measure was “very, very rare.” He continued:....

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an 11 25

A magistrate judge overseeing grand jury material related to the appointment of Lindsey Halligan as interim U.S.Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia says in a "scathing" rebuke that the government must hand over all grand jury materials by 3 p.m. Monday to the defense team of former FBI Director James Comey, reports MS NOW's legal affairs reporter Fallon Gallagher.

The materials include audio of the grand jury proceedings presented Halligan presented by herself.

Gallagher reports that after reviewing all the evidence and material, the judge issued a "scathing opinion" expressing "serious concerns."

"... Basically he's saying there's possible misconduct and negligence here," Gallagher reports.

"And he goes on to surmise that this may even be enough for the Comey defense team to get this case dismissed," Gallagher says.

She explains that the defense team will be able to review and incorporate the evidence into their case with a series of motions to get the case dismissed.

Halligan, a Trump appointee with no prior prosecutorial experience, brought charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Comey is charged with making a false statement to Congress and obstruction of a congressional proceeding while James is charged with bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution.

Attorneys for both Comey and James are arguing that Halligan's appointment was illegal, meaning she lacked the authority to present their cases to a grand jury and, therefore, the indictments are invalid.

One of the motions to dismiss was combined with James' case involving the "unlawful appointment" of Halligan as U.S. Attorney, Gallagher reports.

"As far as that one, they argued that one last week," Gallagher says, and she says to "expect a ruling maybe by this week."

The judge's orders Monday, Gallagher notes, are "pretty significant because, if you remember, Halligan is the only one to prosecute this to the grand jury. Hers is the only signature on that indictment, so if she is found ineligible to serve as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, that could be enough to get his case dismissed in and of itself."

Gallagher also says the fact that the judge is ordering the grand jury materials to the defense team is highly unusual.

"This is very rare. This is a very rare thing that's happening and the judge acknowledges that in his opinion . . .there might be misconduct here and that is why he's handing the material over to the defense so they can see how they will use that to get the case dismissed," she says.

"The judge reviewed the materials. They will be docketed. Comey's defense will see it. One of the things we learned is that there may be a chunk of time when Halligan was alone with that grand jury and there's no transcript of what happened in that last chunk between the end of her presentation and when she actually secured that indictment, so it'll be interesting to see what the Comey team finds in these grand jury materials. My guess is that it's pretty serious if the judge is speaking as strongly as he is in this written order," Gallaher adds.

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an 8 25

Atlantic writer Quinta Jurecic reports Trump’s plan to use the DOJ for revenge against protesters and Democratic politicians is not going as well as he’d like.

“The Justice Department has been slow to move forward with the investigations Trump demanded, hemmed in by the constraints of the legal system,” writes Jurecic. “… American criminal law appears to be a less flexible tool in the hands of an authoritarian than Trump hoped — at least for now.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi may be ready to carry out Trump’s “personal-retribution project” with investigations of the Obama administration and former prosecutor Jack Smith, says Jurecic, but a prosecutor still requires a jury to issue an indictment, and to do that the prosecutor has to make a convincing case. This is usually easy, but Jurecic says the “administration keeps tripping up.”

Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli filed more than 35 felony prosecutions against June protestors against ICE raids in Los Angeles, but they only managed to persuade grand juries to indict some of them. Later, his office dismissed eight of his own indictments and downgraded others to misdemeanors after “falling short at the grand jury stage” according to the LA Times.

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By comparison, Jurecic reports only six refusals by grand juries to indict suspects across the nation in 2016 — out of roughly 180,000 cases.

Meanwhile, over on the east coast, prosecutors moved to dismiss U.S. Attorney Alina Habba’s trespassing charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka after he attempted to visit an ICE detention facility. The judge in that case slammed Habba’s office so hard for trying to press the charges that Baraka could be heard saying: “Jesus, he tore these people a new a——.”

And Jurecic reports Bondi appears to be “struggling” to pursue Trump’s demand to prosecute people involved in perpetrating what Trump calls the “Russia hoax.”

“The biggest challenge there is that there was no hoax,” said Jurecic, “as both Special Counsel Robert Mueller and a bipartisan Senate intelligence report concluded, Russia really did try to help Trump win the 2016 election.”

Jurecic said it looks like Bondi“was caught unawares” by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s release of documents related to the “hoax” from 2016, and “displeased about the political pressure from the right to launch an investigation in response.”

“All Bondi appears to have done is ask prosecutors to possibly present grand jurors with evidence, with no clear deadline,” said Jurecic, despite “exciting” Fox News headlines.

And regarding the investigation of Smith, Jurecic says the “harshest penalty that the Office of Special Counsel could demand would be Smith’s dismissal from government service, but he has already resigned.”

“A jury is in essence a democratic institution, requiring citizens to exercise their judgment in a model of shared deliberation that is at odds with Trump’s autocratic tendencies,” said Jurecic. “… So far, that system has held up against Trump’s encroachment. But the rapid erosion of democratic life in the United States over the past six months is a reminder of how quickly things can change.”

Read the full Atlantic report at this link.

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