April 15, 2024

In the News

The Federalist: Trump’s Strongest New York Defense Has Nothing To Do With Alvin Bragg Or Judge Merchan

By Bradley A. Smith

.....Misreporting business expenses is normally, at most, a misdemeanor. Bragg seeks to ratchet it up to a felony here by arguing that the misreporting was done to cover up a crime. That alleged crime is a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). The theory is that Trump’s payments to Daniels were campaign expenditures and thus needed to be publicly reported as such. By not reporting the expenditure, the theory goes, Trump prevented the public from knowing information that might have influenced their votes. 

There is one big problem with this theory: The payments to Daniels were not campaign payments. 

Supreme Court

NBC News:  Supreme Court rejects BLM activist's bid to evade police officer's lawsuit

By Lawrence Hurley

.....Rejecting an appeal brought by Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson, the Supreme Court on Monday skipped deciding whether the leader of a demonstration can be sued for an injury to a police officer caused by another protester.

Mckesson, who was leading a protest in Baton Rouge in July 2016 following the police killing of a Black man, faces a lawsuit from an officer who was hit in the head by a rock or piece of concrete thrown by an unidentified person.

Wall Street Journal: Corruption or Just Politics? Supreme Court Weighs New Bribery Case as More Clashes Are Brewing

By Jan Wolfe and C. Ryan Barber

.....The Supreme Court for years has been making it more challenging for prosecutors to bring corruption cases against public officials, guided by the belief that some of the dealmaking and fundraising in the political realm is unseemly but not illegal.

A new batch of cases making their way through the courts shows that where to draw the line remains in flux.

In New York, a U.S. appeals court recently revived the prosecution of a former lieutenant governor after a trial judge earlier tossed the charges. In Ohio, a group of top former Justice Department officials is criticizing the bribery prosecution of a former Cincinnati City Council member whose political-action committee took money from undercover FBI agents posing as businessmen working with a developer.

The Courts

Bloomberg Law: Amicus Disclosure Proposal Advanced by Judicial Conference Panel

By Suzanne Monyak

.....A US judicial advisory panel advanced a proposal that would require organizations to disclose their financial backers if they are submitting friend-of-the-court briefs in litigation.

The Wednesday vote by the Appellate Rules Committee of the Judicial Conference will send the proposed change to the standing committee with the recommendation that the proposal be published so the public can submit comments.

“We’re far from done with this, but this is a big step,” Judge Jay Bybee of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, who chairs the panel, said following the vote.

He also said members of the panel should expect a lot of comments filed and a “great deal of interest” within the legal community...

The proposed amendment would require organizations filing an amicus brief in court to disclose whether any of the parties in the matter were involved in the creation of the brief, such as by helping to write it or contributing or pledging money meant to fund it. This would include if a party, or the attorney, had contributed or pledged more than a quarter of the amicus organization’s revenue in the year prior. 

The amendment would also require amicus filers to name any individuals who aren’t a party in the case who contributed or promised more than $100 toward the drafting of the amicus brief. Organizations formed in the past year would be exempt from this requirement.

Ed. note: Proposal may be found under Tab 6B on pg. 157 of the meeting agenda book.

Congress

Wall Street Journal: Powerful Senator Crafts TikTok Crackdown

By Natalie Andrews

.....Sen. Maria Cantwell said she wants to end China’s control of TikTok. She also wants such legislation to hold up in court. But what that bill looks like, and how quickly it could get to President Biden’s desk, remain in play, the powerful Democrat said…

In an interview in her Senate office, Cantwell laid out the questions facing her. “Do we want a tool by which the United States can stop bad actors from broadcasting, if you will, into the United States with nefarious messages? And the answer is yes, we want that tool to exist,” she said. “And so now the question is: Is the House tool good enough, or do we need to make some changes to it?” …

She said she didn’t believe the House TikTok bill violates First Amendment speech protections, another concern some lawmakers have raised. 

DOJ

Wall Street Journal: Australia Asks U.S. Justice Department to Reach Plea Deal With Assange

By Aruna Viswanatha and Max Colchester

.....The Justice Department is under growing pressure to reach a plea deal with Julian Assange, after a request to do so from the WikiLeaks founder’s native Australia and questions from a U.K. court that could prevent his extradition to the U.S. for many more months. 

The government of Australia last week asked the U.S. if it could reach a felony plea deal with Assange that could result in his return home, according to people familiar with the matter.

The U.S. is also facing a Tuesday deadline to provide assurances to a U.K. court that Assange would be afforded free-speech protections under the First Amendment comparable to those U.S. citizens enjoy—something that contradicts what U.S. prosecutors previously suggested in the case. Without providing those assurances, Assange is likely to be allowed to pursue an additional appeal of his extradition from the United Kingdom, where he has been in prison for the past five years. 

The Media

The Atlantic: Right-Wing Media Are in Trouble

By Paul Farhi

.....This past February, readership of the 10 largest conservative websites was down 40 percent compared with the same month in 2020, according to The Righting, a newsletter that uses monthly data from Comscore—essentially the Nielsen ratings of the internet—to track right-wing media…

What’s going on? The obvious culprit is Facebook. For years, Facebook’s mysterious algorithms served up links to news and commentary articles, sending droves of traffic to their publishers. But those days are gone. Amid criticism from elected officials and academics who said the social-media giant was spreading hate speech and harmful misinformation, including Russian propaganda, before the 2016 election, Facebook apparently came to question the value of featuring news on its platform. In early 2018, it began deemphasizing news content, giving greater priority to content posted by friends and family members. In 2021, it tightened the tap a little further. This past February, it announced that it would do the same on Instagram and Threads. All of this monkeying with the internet’s plumbing drastically reduced the referral traffic flowing to news and commentary sites.

Free Expression

CBS News: Salman Rushdie on censorship in America today

By Brit McCandless Farmer

.....Censorship in America today comes from both the left and the right, Salman Rushdie told 60 Minutes in his first major television interview since he was attacked at a literary festival in 2022. The writer spoke out ahead of the publication this week of his new book, "Knife," a deeply personal exploration of his near-death experience.

"There seems to be a kind of growing orthodoxy, particularly amongst young people, that censorship … is a good thing," Rushdie told correspondent Anderson Cooper. 

The acclaimed author said the attack on free expression today comes from different directions. Previously, he explained, conservative voices were the ones calling for books to be banned, including those that discuss the role race has played in history. But now, according to Rushdie, people on the left are just as likely to call for limits on free speech. 

Politico: ‘The Antisemitism Is Absolutely Disproportionate’

By Melanie Mason

.....[John A. Pérez, University of California Regent:] When you look at the Free Speech Movement, it was about creating the space for all debate, including debate that one disagrees with. What we’ve seen of late is something very different, which is shutting down debate. Last year, at Berkeley Law School, student groups passed a series of resolutions, essentially banning debate, saying that holders of “Zionist viewpoints” would not be allowed to come [to their events]. That’s very different. It’s one thing to say any given organization shouldn’t be compelled to invite somebody who has a viewpoint that’s contrary to theirs. But to say that we want to ban a whole section of debate is inherently problematic in society. It’s particularly problematic in law school, and particularly problematic in a law school centered in a place that in many ways was the birth of the free speech movement on university campuses.

Wall Street Journal: Why I’m Leaving Clark University

By Mary Jane Rein

.....Among the many ills plaguing higher education is a lack of civility, friendship and intellectual humility. I observed this firsthand on March 13, when an unruly and hate-filled audience shut down a lecture I helped organize at Worcester State University. Because of the response of my own institution, Clark University, I am resigning my position as executive director of Clark’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Candidates and Campaigns

The Hill: DNC paid Biden’s legal bills during Hur investigation

By Alex Gangitano

.....The Democratic National Committee (DNC) paid for President Biden’s legal fees surrounding the investigation into his handling of classified documents even as his own campaign railed against former President Trump for using campaign donations to pay for similar services. 

Axios first reported that Biden used campaign donations for the fees, citing two people familiar with the matter and campaign finance records. It found the DNC paid more than $1.5 million to the president’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, and the firm Hemenway & Barnes LLP.

Online Speech Platforms

Politico: Google blocks some California news as fight over online journalism bill escalates

By Jeremy B. White

.....Californians may find their Google results bereft of local news links Friday morning as the search giant escalates its fight against a landmark state bill aimed at forcing tech giants to pay online publishers.

Google is temporarily blocking California-based news outlets’ content for some state residents, reprising a political tactic the tech industry has repeatedly used to try to derail such bills in places like Canada and Australia that require online platforms to pay journalism outlets for articles featured on their websites.

The States

WRAL: Voter fraud defamation case heard at NC Supreme Court could have implications for 2024 elections

By Will Doran

.....A timely constitutional question, as the 2024 elections ramp up: Should people who falsely accuse North Carolina voters of committing voter fraud be immune from being sued for defamation, if they go through the state’s formal process for making the accusations?

The North Carolina Supreme Court considered the issue Thursday in a case that focuses on just a few voters — but which could also have significant ramifications for how future allegations of voter fraud are handled in this closely watched swing state.