Wisconsin @GovEvers asked a court to impose $106,780 in sanctions over ex-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell's failed effort to overturn the presidential election there. "There is no reason for Wisconsin taxpayers to bear the expense of this attempt to hijack the democratic process."
The brief walks through the short history of the case, which is a compendium of things you should not do in litigation.
It goes on.
In addition to $106,000 in legal fees, Gov. Evers wants a court to impose additional sanctions on Powell, her client and fellow lawyers, perhaps payable to a group "focused on protecting voting rights in Wisconsin."
Nearly two years after the Justice Department IG recommended it, the DEA hasn't committed to conducting a "rigorous legal review" before using its subpoena power to launch "bulk collection" surveillance programs.
"Next time check to see whether it's legal *before* doing it" might be the most anodyne recommendation ever from an IG. The recommendation doesn't actually say that the DEA needs to conclude the program is legal - just that it should pause to think about it.
NEW from @Reuters: Federal prosecutors have offered an ominous new assessment of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol last week, saying they had "strong evidence" that "the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials."
Prosecutors alleged that the man who appeared shirtless wearing horns on the Senate dais during the siege participated "in an insurrection attempting to violently overthrow the United States government," its strongest language so far describing last week's unrest.
(Fixing a typo): The court filing in which prosecutors allege rioters planned to assassinate elected officials is here: courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
From @Reuters: The first wave of arrests from the siege of the U.S. Capitol was of rioters who made themselves especially visible - people who mugged for cameras or posted real-time confessions online. Authorities expect more serious charges will follow.
The Capitol mob was a diverse mix of QAnon adherents, right-wing activists and people who were school employees, policemen and even an Olympic swimmer. One had an attempted-murder rap. What united them was support for Trump and a deep political grievance.
For the most part, the people facing charges so far in the Capitol siege made it exceptionally easy for the FBI to find them. I've never seen this many people charged with this many crimes this quickly based on their own public confessions. reuters.com/article/us-usa…
The shirtless man with furs and a horned hat photographed on the Senate dais during the Capitol siege, Jacob Chansley, has been charged with unlawful entry. He told the FBI he came to D.C. "at the request of the President that all 'patriots' come to D.C."
Chansley confirmed to the FBI that this was him, according to the charging documents.
Prosecutors also charged the man who mugged for news cameras while walking through the Capitol holding a lectern. He posted about being in the Capitol on social media.
These are the lowest-hanging fruit for criminal cases.
The president's call with Georgia election officials is hard to listen to. We spend billions of dollars to make the president the best-informed person on Earth, but the information he's parroting about the election is total bullshit.
It's stunning that the president is peddling this much misinformation even in private. He told Georgia election officials that he actually won the state by a half-million votes. He didn't. It's hard to describe how far removed from reality that fiction is.
One wonders whether anyone who has the president's ear also has the courage to tell him the truth: He lost.
... And the lawsuit filed by Rep. Gohmert and others trying to give Vice President Mike Pence the power to singlehandedly select the next president has been dismissed because, to nobody's great surprise, they didn't have standing to bring this kind of case.
The opinion is quite straightforward, cites to the controlling cases, and in this way illuminates just how flimsy a lot of the legal arguments in support of this nonsense actually were.