The U.S. Supreme Court should, and may well, affirm the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision that Donald Trump may not appear on the ballot because he is constitutionally disqualified for having engaged in insurrection. That concerns some people, but it shouldn’t. Here's why.🧵 Some are worried that the decision was unfair because Trump did not receive due process. In fact he received a great deal of process. The trial judge ruled that Trump engaged in insurrection after a lengthy evidentiary hearing.

The 14th amendment says that anyone who swore an oath to support the constitution and then engaged in insurrection is disqualified from holding office. That includes Donald Trump, and it does NOT require a conviction for insurrection, or even charges. Let's break that down: 🧵 This provision was put in place after the civil war to ensure that those who rose up against the United States would not then be put in charge of it. Many former confederate officials did not even try to hold office because of it; courts disqualified others who did.

Some thoughts from reviewing the indictment: This is consistent with what we expected and what had been previously reported, but the details make Donald Trump's alleged conduct even worse than we knew.🧵
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco… The national security importance of the documents at issue is striking: documents about American and foreign nuclear capabilities and military vulnerabilities, as well as about plans for possible military action. The damage if this information was compromised is not trivial.

To be clear, there is more than enough time to take Donald Trump's national security case to trial and complete a trial well before the 2024 election. The Department of Justice will be poised to move quickly, and the case is just not that big and complicated.🧵 Of course there are unique and difficult legal questions that need to be sufficiently aired out, and the defendant has a right to bring motions and other process, but all of that should be able to be accomplished in the coming year.

Let's be very clear about this: when Donald Trump sought to overturn an election that he lost and stay in power, that was election interference. Seeking to follow the constitution's requirements about who can serve in office is not election interference.🧵
washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/… The 14th amendment says that anyone who swore an oath to the constitution and then engaged in insurrection is disqualified from office. That's the law of the land, just like the part that says you must be 35 to be president, and it's what Donald Trump did, so he's disqualified.

Perhaps under pressure from calls for investigation by members of Congress and by @CREWcrew's complaint, etc., Justice Thomas offered some more explanations in response to new revelations. Unfortunately, his latest explanation does not resolve anything.🧵
cnn.com/2023/04/17/pol… Thomas reportedly spent $50,000 to $70,000 on improvements to the house and so he says he didn't make money on the sale to billionaire Harlan Crow, the same person who provided many hundreds of thousands in luxury travel to Thomas.

House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan is holding a field hearing today in Manhattan to attack District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who recently indicted Jordan ally Donald Trump, on crime in New York. Here are some reasons why this is deeply problematic: 🧵
nbcnews.com/politics/congr… First, field hearings are generally held in a member's home district to hear from regular people out in the country about the issues they are facing. It can also be a chance to go to the site of an event or a disaster to learn more.

The Manhattan DA may soon indict Donald Trump in relation to hush money payments to adult actress Stormy Daniels. We don't know the charges, but they may relate to falsified business documents. Some thoughts as a former corruption prosecutor: 🧵
nytimes.com/2023/03/10/nyr… First, while these issues may not seem like the biggest in the pantheon of Trump wrongdoing, they do matter. This was a major presidential candidate and then president acting to hide the steps taken and money spent to get himself elected. That hurts the American people.

Today a federal jury found former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder guilty of racketeering for a scheme that involved using a dark money group to funnel tens of millions from an energy company for Householder to use personally and politically. 🧵
dispatch.com/story/news/pol… It's one of the biggest dark money-related criminal cases ever. It shows that dark money can indeed breed corruption because it is so powerful and hard to trace, despite the Supreme Court's protestations, and it shows there can still be accountability for abuses even now.

A Georgia court today released heavily redacted portions of the report issued by a special grand jury investigating efforts by Donald Trump and others to overturn that state's vote in 2020. Some preliminary thoughts: 🧵
nytimes.com/live/2023/02/1… The released portions are in many ways more significant for what they do not show than what they do. We don't know yet whether the special ground jury found evidence of substantive criminal offenses, recommended indictments for those offense, and if so, against whom.

A court will be releasing Thursday three sections of a Georgia special grand jury's report of its investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and others to overturn Georgia's vote in 2020. We will learn a lot, particularly from a section about witnesses possibly lying. BUT 🧵 Looking at this with my former federal corruption prosecutor hat on, there are some important pitfalls we need to be careful of when this partial production happens.
usatoday.com/story/news/pol…

Some thoughts about the calls from House Republicans for the Biden administration to produce visitor logs for President Biden's house in Delaware: @CREWcrew has pushed multiple administrations to make White House visitor logs publicly available. 🧵
nytimes.com/2023/01/16/us/… The Obama administration finally started releasing White House visitor logs, but the Trump administration abandoned this practice. The Biden administration restored the practice of making White House visitor logs available to the public, which is crucial to transparency.

Let's talk for a moment about this new subcommittee the House Republican majority created headed by Rep. Jim Jordan to examine the "weaponization of the federal government." This is dangerous in so many ways, but let's start with the irony.🧵
washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/… For four years, Donald Trump misused the federal government for his own political and personal gain, including interfering in prosecutions of friends and allies, encouraging investigations of perceived enemies, firing inspectors general whom he perceived to be a threat,

Classified documents are never to be taken lightly, and it's appropriate that a U.S. Attorney, a Trump-appointed one, is investigating the documents from the Penn Biden Center. From what we know now, this situation is different from the Mar-a-Lago situation in important ways.🧵 Here, it was a small number of classified documents, and they were turned over to the Archives as soon as they were found. A large number of classified documents were seized at Mar-a-Lago after repeated unsuccessful requests for them to be turned over.

This past week's debacle in the House was not just an embarrassment. Now-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to secure his victory, gave unprecedented power to the extreme right wing of the Republican Party. That will have serious and lasting ramifications.🧵 Putting aside the effects on the economy of likely brinksmanship on budgets and the debt limit (which is outside my area or expertise), McCarthy's deal has dangerous implications for ethics and democracy.

A few thoughts on why it is so important to explain what we mean, and keep doing it, when we talk about "threats to democracy."🧵 The term "fake news" was used in 2016 to talk about made-up stories and conspiracy theories spread most often by people and organizations on the right for political gain. It was then coopted by Donald Trump and allies to refer to actual news reporting they didn't like.

This legal action by the New York Attorney General is more expansive than most observers were expecting, going against not just the Trump Organization, but also Donald Trump individually, as well as Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump and others. 🧵 Allegations of repeated fraudulent acts are extremely serious. This is not a technical or victimless crime. It alleges a systemic and recurring lawlessness, which is consistent with the lawless way that Donald Trump conducted his presidency.

This ruling seems like a huge stretch based on the law and the facts, as experts across the political spectrum have recognized. That is troubling. But there are now a couple of ways it can go:
washingtonpost.com/national-secur…🧵 I think it's a close call as to whether the Justice Department will appeal. They certainly should on the merits, but delay is one of the things they're seeking to avoid here, and appeals could cause additional delays, with results never guaranteed.

The Mar-a-Lago search warrant affidavit released today is heavily redacted. The most enlightening portions are likely those redacted to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation and the safety of witnesses. Still, some quick thoughts: 🧵
nytimes.com/live/2022/08/2… The affidavit emphasizes the number and sensitivity of the classified documents that had been eventually turned over to the Archives from Mar-a-Lago, that they were not organized or protected, and that disclosure of these or similar documents could be dangerous.

BREAKING: After years of fighting and @CREWcrew’s recent appeals court win, the Department of Justice released the legal memo former AG Bill Barr relied on to say there was no basis to charge Donald Trump with obstruction of justice. And it’s a doozy. 🧵
citizensforethics.org/news/press-rel… The memo presents a breathtakingly generous view of the law and facts for Donald Trump. It twists the facts and the law to benefit Trump and does not comport with a serious reading of the law of obstruction of justice or the facts as found by Special Counsel Mueller.

Donald Trump is now claiming he had a "standing order" that all documents he took with him when brought work home with him would be declassified. On so many levels, that fails to hold up legally or as to his duties to the country. 🧵
businessinsider.com/trump-claims-s… First, it's not clear this is true. If this were to have any effect at all, we'd need to see documentation of this "order"; others would need to know about it. We haven't seen that yet.