Roger Parloff Profile picture
Jul 12 7 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Many conservatives now accept with bored acquiescence the near certainty that Trump, if elected, will dismiss both federal indictments against himself. Yet it would be an abuse far greater than the Saturday Night Massacre that once shocked the nation...
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In Oct 1973, Nixon fired AG Elliot Richardson & then Dep AG Wm Ruckelshaus for refusing to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was subpoenaing Nixon’s White House tapes. The firings galvanized bipartisan support for impeachment proceedings ...
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... which began 10 days later. Quaint though it may now seem, US District Judge Gerhard Gesell even ruled, later on, that the Cox’s dismissal had been illegal. ...
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... Yet the SCOTUS majority in Trump v US contemptuously chided the bipartisan lower courts for trying to let justice be done before Trump has a chance to abuse power to derail it. They even purported to be acting expeditiously ...
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... though we are, right now, pointlessly counting 32 more days off the calendar for SCOTUS’s ruling to become final, because the court declined to make it immediate. (The pause permits the losing party to seek rehearing—inconceivable here as the Court well knows.) ...
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... Is the president now above the law? Half-heartedly, the majority claims (s)he is not—with asterisks galore. They say the dissents are “fear-mongering” with “extreme hypotheticals”—which they tellingly don’t deign to refute. ...
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... Justice Thomas disdains that tack. He quips that the once-revered notion has been largely meaningless all along. Immunity from prosecution for official acts *is* the law, he writes, archly. Silly Nixon, silly us, silly forefathers for imagining otherwise.
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More from @rparloff

Nov 3
I’ll unpack here my unintelligible thread from last night about Judge Howell’s ruling on the scope of the felony charge “obstruction of an official proceeding” (18 USC 1512c2) after Fischer v US. It impacts many Jan. 6 cases but has only minor impact on US v Trump, IMHO ...
1/18
... The ruling concerns two Proud Boys, Nick DeCarlo & Nick Ochs, who pleaded guilty to 1512c2 in 2022 to satisfy an indictment alleging 2 felonies & 4 misdemeanors. After SCOTUS narrowed the scope of 1512c2 last June, they petitioned for release ...
/2
... In Fischer, SCOTUS held that the law doesn’t apply to rioters who obstruct a hearing by force. It only applies to those who obstruct a hearing (or try to) by “impairing” the “integrity” or “availability” of docs to be used at a proceeding. ...
/3

lawfaremedia.org/article/the-ju…
Read 19 tweets
Oct 29
NBC asks Judge Chutkan for right to televise US v Trump immunity determination hearings in DC, which "go to the strcuture of American democracy" & “may be [among] most important arguments ever made before any US court.” ...
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... NBC argues that American public has "extraordinary interest" in seeing hearings involving allegations that Trump, "a current nominee for reelection to the Presidency, sought to destroy our nation's democracy for personal benefit." ...
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... "The public should be permitted to see & hear the argument ... that will determine who is subject to the law, and to what extent." ...
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Read 7 tweets
Oct 27
Regarding @WashingtonPost owner @JeffBezos’s blocking the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, this thread aims to flesh out Trump’s history of attacks on Bezos & show how Trump’s past unchecked abuses are already chilling free speech ...
1/16
nytimes.com/2024/10/27/bus…
... In 2019, the cloud computing unit of Bezos’ Amazon, known as AWS, sued the Defense Dept. It alleged that Trump used “improper pressure” to steer a $10bn DoD contract away from AWS to punish Bezos for the Post’s tough coverage of him ... ...
/2 bit.ly/3YnbPDNImage
... I wrote about the suit in @YahooFinance at the time here . But the tl:dr is as follows.
Because of probing Post coverage, in Feb 2016, candidate Trump vowed to “screw Amazon” if he won. “They’re going to have such problems.” ...
/3 yhoo.it/3eoCFDtImage
Read 16 tweets
Oct 20
DOJ must make a sensitive decision soon. On Thurs., accused would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh moved to recuse Judge Aileen Cannon in his case. Does DOJ oppose—undercutting notions of reassigning the US v Trump (MaL) case? Support? Take no position?
1/7
bit.ly/40iF6SmImage
... DOJ knows that criminal defs are constantly trying to judge-shop. Recusal standards are & need to be high. Trump himself has tried to recuse USDJs Chutkan (DC) & Kaplan (SDNY, in E Jean Carroll cases), as well as Engoron, Merchan, & Willis in state courts. ...
/2
... It’s clear that a judge’s appointment by a prez who’s a party is not disqualifying. Chief Judge Pryor (11th Cir) has already said so in rebuffing an ill-conceived write-in campaign to oust Cannon from US v Trump for “misconduct.” ...
/3 bit.ly/3YgZgcWImage
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Read 7 tweets
Oct 18
Judge Chutkan’s pithy line below is the definitive answer to Trump & critics (including @eliehonig & @lawfare’s own @jacklgoldsmith ) who’ve suggested that DOJ’s “60-day rule” militates against releasing the redacted appendix. I’ll return to Chutkan's line momentarily. ...
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In a nutshell, Trump et al are wrong. The rule focuses on “overt investigative actions” or filing of charges. Trump’s DC indictment was filed on Aug 1, 2023, which was 462 days before the election. ...
/2
The “60-day rule” is unwritten. In 2018, the DOJ inspector general summarized it below. Yes, it’s fuzzy around the edges. But it unmistakably focuses on “overt investigative actions,” meaning actions *before* charges have been brought that are apt to become public ...
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Read 19 tweets
Oct 16
In US v Trump (DC), the govt explained today why Fischer v US doesn’t require dismissal of the two obstruction-of-an-official-proceeding counts (18 USC 1512c2). Govt says Trump’s false elector scheme is “falsely creating evidence,” which SCOTUS said is still covered. ...
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Remember that Fischer v US narrowed the definition of 1512c2. It now only reaches defendants who obstruct by try to impair the “integrity” or “availability” of docs or objects being used at a proceeding. Full explanation below: ...
/2

lawfaremedia.org/article/the-ju…
... In his filing today, Jack Smith likens Trump’s scheme to a precedent (the Reich case) that SCOTUS said 1512c2 would still cover. There, a defendant had forged a court order to trick an opposing party into taking action in his favor. ...
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Read 9 tweets

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