Trump wanted DOJ to copy Texas's failed election lawsuit in the US Suprme Court nearly verbatim, but lean in more to false election fraud conspiracy theories.
Doing a side-by-side comparison, the draft complaint that Trump wanted DOJ to take to SCOTUS mostly copy/pastes the case Texas filed that got tossed on standing. One of the few substantive differences? More references to the Dominion conspiracy theories buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…
You can see the difference here: On the left (starting with #39) is Texas's complaint. On the right is Trump's draft that was pitched to DOJ, which mostly tracks the two grafs before Texas's Pennsylvania section, but then adds a Dominion section buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…
There was a lot of overlap between the post-election lawsuits that Trump filed and ones filed by his supporters/allies — these docs are notable because they show Trump wanted DOJ to literally wholesale pick up where Texas left off (DOJ declined to do so) buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…
The emails accompanying the SCOTUS draft also show how an outside lawyer who'd worked on the Texas case and was apparently working with Trump, Kurt Olsen, was having trouble getting through to DOJ officials at the time to make the pitch buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…
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Hello from Judge Hogan's virtual courtroom, where a status hearing will start soon in the case of J6 defendants George Tanios and Julian Khater, the two men charged with assaulting Officer Sicknick. Recall they're both in the middle of appealing pretrial detention orders
While we wait for Khater and Tanios to come on the line from jail, judge is shooting the breeze with the lawyers. One of the defense lawyers (I think Joe Tacopina) quips with a chuckle that there wouldn't be a delay if the judge had granted bond...
Okay Khater and Tanios are connected and the status hearing is underway. Hogan notes the pending appeals re: detention, says in the meantime they need to move forward with the case. AUSA Gilead Light says they're working to get discovery over to the defense teams
Anna Lloyd is set to become the first Jan. 6 defendant to be sentenced (hearing set for Friday) — she's pleading guilty to one misdemeanor, asking for no jail time. Here's her sentencing memo, which says govt agrees with probation + $500 restitution: assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2089…
Lloyd's lawyer says she had "many political and ethical discussions" with Lloyd, and gave her a book/movie list to better educate herself, incl. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Just Mercy, and Schindler's List. Lloyd filed reports on the latter two with the court
For a refresher on Lloyd's case, here's her charging docs: assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2049… She went with a friend, and they posted about going to the Capitol and tagged each other. Lloyd wrote: "I'm here. Best day ever. We stormed the capital building"
A (belated) hello from Judge Lamberth's virtual courtroom, where the govt is arguing for detention for Russell Taylor, charged in a J6 conspiracy case (the one involving people affiliated w/ Three Percenters militia). Here's the govt's latest filing: assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2089…
Lamberth pressed the AUSA on the limits on pretrial detention in these cases from the DC Circuit's Munchel decision — govt said difference is that Taylor was an organizer who bragged after and called for "Insurrection!", not a person who was swept up in the moment
(Of all the judges handling these cases in DC, Lamberth is perhaps most acutely aware of what the DC Circuit did in the Munchel case, since he was the judge who got reversed. Previously: buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…)
Throughout the pandemic, anecdotal evidence indicated judges were all over the map in how they responded to compassionate release petitions from people in federal prisons. Now, there's data to back that up buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…
People trying to flee COVID-19 hotspots in federal prisons faced big disparities in outcomes depending on what court they petitioned, per US Sentencing Commission data. Approval rates as low as 0%, as high as 68.5% and everywhere in between buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…
Why is this? Judge Charles Breyer, the US Sentencing Commission's lone member, told me he blames the fact that the commission hasn't had a quorum since 2018, so it hasn't put out newer guidelines that might have helped ensure more uniform decisionmaking buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…
Hello from Judge John Bates' virtual courtroom, where J6 defendant Federico Klein (former Trump admin appointee) has a status hearing. Prev: buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…
Govt says they've made a plea offer but no response yet from Klein and his lawyer
Klein's lawyer Stanley Woodward says they're concerned about volume and pace of discovery turned over so far, incl. whether feds pulled any evidence from Klein's phone and extent of videos from that day
Woodward says plea offer extended this week is not "reasonable" but they're open to negotiations. He says he wants the case to move along, says Klein's pretrial release conditions are v restrictive and requests to go for a run or get gas during the recent shortage were denied