@msnbc legal correspondent & recovering litigator; former: off-air legal analyst @maddow, @wagnertonight. Don’t let the pearls fool ya.
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Jun 6 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
NEW: The Paul Weiss departures keep coming, this time with former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Damian Williams exiting . . . for Jenner & Block.
jenner.com/en/news-insigh…
Williams -- a former Garland & Stevens clerk who has never worked at a law firm other than Paul Weiss -- served as the U.S. Attorney throughout Biden's presidency and oversaw the prosecutions of Ghislaine Maxwell, Sam Bankman-Fried, Sean Combs, and, of course, Eric Adams.
May 20 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
NEW: While the Department of Justice issued a statement last night about the criminal charges against Rep. McIver, a spokesperson for her legal team confirms that it did not receive the charging document for until this morning, 12-plus hours later. 1/
DOJ policy, as embodied in the Justice Manual, is clear: "DOJ personnel shall not respond to questions about the existence of an ongoing investigation or comment on its nature or progress before charges are publicly filed." 2/
May 14 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Harvard researcher Kseniia Petrova has been charged criminally with smuggling goods -- e.g., frog embryos and samples thereof -- into the United States on the same day the judge overseeing her habeas case questioned the government's authority to revoke her visa. 1/
The administration told that judge, Christina Reiss, they intend to send Petrova back to Russia, despite her fear of arrest due to her support for Ukraine. Reiss scheduled a bail hearing on May 28, "potentially setting the stage for Ms. Petrova’s release." 2/ ...nytimes.com/2025/05/14/h
Apr 2 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
There's been significant focus today on what the opinion dismissing the criminal case against Eric Adams says about Trump's DOJ. But what it says about the career prosecutors involved is as, if not more, significant. 1/
The Adams debacle resulted in the resignation of two prosecutors, then-acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon and AUSA Hagan Scotten, both former SCOTUS clerks and all-around superstars. And DOJ placed three other members of the core case team on administrative leave. 2/
Jan 21 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I want to live in a world where we do not talk about judges as if they owe their allegiance, or their very existence, to a particular president. Based on my experience as both a litigator and a journalist, that describes the vast majority of the federal judiciary. 1/
And yet, Judge Aileen Cannon, for all of her credentials and pre-judicial experience, has consistently staged the hearing of motions in a way that favors Trump and his co-defendants, handpicked a theory of dismissal at the invitation-by-concurrence of Justice Thomas, and even exercised jurisdiction she did not have. 2/
Jan 16 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
NEW: Per @adamreisstv, Rudy Giuliani is now almost 90 minutes late for a one-day trial on whether his Palm Beach, FL condo can be taken to satisfy his $146 million debt to former GA election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. 1/
Rudy owes the women that money because his failure to participate in their defamation lawsuit was so complete that they won a default judgment on liability. And when they tried the issue of damages to a jury last December, that $146 million was the jury’s award. 2/
Jan 14 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
🧵: In October 2024, @SenWhitehouse released a report about the FBI's supplemental investigation of Brett Kavanaugh after allegations that he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford surfaced. 1/
whitehouse.senate.gov/wp-content/upl…
And that report caused Whitehouse to find that the FBI's supplemental investigation was deeply flawed and manipulated by the Trump White House despite public attestations that the FBI had carte blanche to pursue all investigative leads. 2/
Jan 14 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
If Samantha Hegseth, Pete Hegseth’s second (and now ex-)wife, proactively sought to speak with the FBI about her ex-husband, why was she not interviewed? The Senate’s decades-long failure to develop a responsible background check system to exercise its “advise and consent” powers is baffling.
Instead, however, some senators have decided that anonymity automatically discredits sexual misconduct and assault accusations—even though there are multiple ways the Armed Services Committee, the FBI, or both could have vetted her story without revealing her name publicly.
Jan 3 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
NEW: Rudy Giuliani’s back in his old stomping grounds — Manhattan federal district court — this morning. And today, he’s facing the prospect of a contempt ruling for failing to turn over a host of property to two former GA election workers to whom he owes nearly $150 million. 1/
In a filing earlier this week, the women’s attorneys note that despite a clear Oct. 2024 order, Giuliani has not given them the title or deed for his vintage Mercedes convertible or his NY condo, both of which he was ordered to turn over. 2/
Dec 31, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Based on the comments in my last thread, it seems like a lot of folks are misinformed or simply willing to drink the red Kool Aid about the law that allowed E. Jean Carroll to make a sexual assault claim in her second, 2022 lawsuit against him. 1/
First and foremost, E. Jean needed no change in law to bring her second defamation claim against Trump. What begat that was his October 2022 tweet basically repeating the same statements about her that he had made in 2019. 2/
Dec 31, 2024 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
The appellate decision affirming E. Jean Carroll’s first jury verdict against Donald Trump is a 77-page foray into rules of evidence. You might be tempted to put it aside. Don’t look away. 1/
Its holdings about the use of testimony from other sexual assault victims and other evidence that shows a defendant’s modus operandi not only will complicate Trump’s continued efforts to fight Carroll’s two jury verdicts but will reverberate throughout federal courts. 2/
Dec 20, 2024 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
NEW: Between 1972 and 2001, when Timothy McVeigh was executed for his role in the Oklahoma City bombings, there were no federal executions of convicted criminals. Only 3 took place between 2001 and 2003, and then the executions stopped again until July 2020. 1/
July 2020 is when the first Trump administration decided it was time to execute some of those on federal death row, and before Trump left office, and even through the week before his term ended, 13 federal executions took place. 2/
Dec 9, 2024 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
NEW: You might have read tonight about a lawsuit filed today against Shawn Carter (aka Jay Z) for sexually abusing a then-13-year-old girl with Sean “P. Diddy” Combs at a 2000 VMA afterparty. And you might have asked, “How can she sue now after 24 years?” 1/ 🧵
As you would expect, the answer is complicated. But as you probably would not expect, it comes from a law passed by the New York City Council: the Victims of Gender Motivated Violence Protection Act.
NEW: Today’s court order requiring Rudy Giuliani to place most of his possessions, cash, and even his NYC apartment in receivership for the two GA election workers to whom he owes $148 million reminds us what the Big Lie has cost its most avid mouthpieces. 1/
But while Rudy isn’t even allowed to keep his TV, a signed Reggie Jackson photo, or his grandfather’s watch, Trump remains locked in an airtight battle for a second presidential term, during which, if he wins, his legal problems will either disappear or at least recede. 2/
Oct 16, 2024 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
NEW: Georgia’s hand count rule cannot be implemented for the election, rules Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney.
For McBurney, the timing was crucial. He acknowledges that a hand count of ballots could be “consistent with the
SEB’s mission of ensuring fair, legal, and orderly elections.” But when the rule is scheduled to be implemented a mere fortnight before the election? 2/
Oct 15, 2024 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
NEW: I am watching a live hearing about the lawfulness of yet another Georgia Elections Board rule, this one requiring hand counts of ballots prior to certification. And Judge Robert McBurney wants to know why, given a “robust record of chaos” caused thus far, he shouldn’t just enjoin it. 1/
Because Fulton County Superior Court proceedings are live-streamed, come watch with me here: .youtube.com/live/-z0N1dHym…
Oct 9, 2024 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
NEW: While Hurricane Milton approaches, voting rights groups in GA and FL are in two separate federal courts this afternoon fighting for emergency extensions of Monday's voter registration deadline for those impacted by Hurricane Helene and/or preparing for Milton. Stay tuned.
An update: The judge in Florida, Robert Hinkle, just denied the effort to extend the deadline there. More to come.
Sep 30, 2024 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
Look beyond the result of today’s GA abortion decision, and you can see Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney stake out a broader, methodological position, especially in the footnotes. 1/
McBurney makes plain what many are afraid to say: that “the meaning of the Constitution is no more fixed than is the composition of the majority in the highest courts of the land — especially when formerly bedrock principles such as stare decisis appear to be on the wane.” 2/
Sep 24, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
NEW: Judge Tanya Chutkan has now granted the Special Counsel's request to file a 180-page brief defending its superseding indictment as compliant with the Supreme Court's immunity ruling. But don't get your reading corner ready just yet. 1/
Since last year, the federal election interference case has been governed by a protective order that dictates how sensitive discovery materials must be used. And under that order, virtually any material that was not already public or obtained by the defense on its own, not through discovery, is covered. 2/
Sep 18, 2024 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
NEW: Today, while announcing the indictment of Sean “Diddy” Combs, SDNY U.S. Attorney Damian Williams thanked the victims and witnesses who have stepped forward so far. But there is one whose story looms largest in the indictment: Cassie Ventura, his ex-partner. 1/
Ventura filed a civil complaint against Combs last November in federal court that was settled a day later. But the complaint is still available—and a quick read highlights that many of the incidents she alleged are also core to the indictment. 2/
Sep 13, 2024 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
NEW: I watched a portion of the Trump press conference today--but it wasn't until I read his comments that I realized that just a day after New York's highest court upheld the gag order, he arguably violated it again. 1/
Trump focused his ire on "one person in particular" who he characterized as having been sent by the White House from DOJ to New York to get NY Attorney General Tish James's civil fraud case started, "then go to the DA in Manhattan." 2/
