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Judge nixes Trump attempt to fire Biden appointee

homesafetytechpros — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 07:02:24 +0000

President Donald Trump listens during a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in the East Room of the White House, Friday, Feb. 7, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).

A federal judge on Tuesday reinstated, for now at least, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board after she sued to regain her position following her removal by President Donald Trump.

On Feb. 10, the 45th and 47th president sent Cathy Harris packing without an explanation. This would-be firing, however, came with a conclusive termination letter that did not offer an explanation.

Under federal law, members of the MSPB are appointees who serve from their appointment until the end of their term unless they are removed “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

In a 21-page memorandum opinion and order, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, a Barack Obama appointee, determined that the statute’s three firing mechanisms simply do not cover “differences of political opinion.” Moreover, the court ruled, the federal worker board must maintain a certain level of independence from politics.

At a basic level, the judge credits the words of the originating statute, the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA), as fully controlling when it comes to determining how membership on the MSPB pans out.

“Any member may be removed by the President only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” Contreras recites the statute.

In order to determine the extent of what this phrase in the statute means, however, the judge turns to case law.

Here, the removal language in question falls under the purview of a 1935 U.S. Supreme Court case that keeps quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial agencies largely insulated from the whims of the president.

“Because the MSPB falls within the scope of [the high court case], Congress has the power to specify that members of the MSPB may serve for a term of years, with the President empowered to remove those members only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” the court’s order reads. “The President did not indicate that any of these reasons drove his decision to terminate Harris. The Court thus concludes that Harris has demonstrated that she is likely to show her termination as a member of the MSPB was unlawful.”

The court also cites another case in which the U.S. president was found to have “no such power” to remove and stack an adjudicatory body “merely because he wanted his own appointees on such a Commission.”

More Law&Crime coverage: ‘Irreparably harm the presidency’: Trump asks SCOTUS to let him fire Biden ethics enforcer, claims he’s suffering ‘unprecedented assault on the separation of powers’

The work of the MSPB itself is integral to how the court views the removal language in light of precedent.

The court helpfully sums the agency up:

The Board reviews federal employee appeals of adverse actions “which [are] appealable to the Board under any law, rule, or regulation,” including those related to removal or suspension for periods greater than fourteen days. It may order federal agencies and employees to comply with its decisions and conduct studies “relating to the civil service” for the President and Congress. The MSPB also reviews “rules and regulations of the Office of Personnel Management.” The MSPB’s final decisions are generally subject to judicial review.

“In enacting the CSRA, Congress exercised its power to regulate the civil service,” the order goes on. “It defined certain prohibited personnel practices, to include discrimination, loyalty oaths, coercion to engage in political activity, and retaliation against whistleblowers.”

In other words, the MSPB is a very limited-purpose agency that only deals with federal workers and has essentially no interaction with the public. This relationship to the regulated, the court reasons, means there is even less of a risk to “individual liberty — and therefore even more of a reason to maintain true independence from the executive.”

The thrust of the ruling is that the board is more or less a creature of statute — or something not entirely unlike an adjunct of Congress which answers to Congress through appropriations, to the president through appointments, and to the courts through judicial review.

More Law&Crime coverage: ‘Sharp departure from established procedures’: Trump DOJ slapped down by US appeals court after trying to block lower judge’s order to let Biden ethics enforcer keep his job

“[T]he MSPB’s mission and purpose require independence,” Contreras writes. “Direct political control over the MSPB would have limited effect on the President’s implementation of his policy agenda. It would instead neuter the CSRA’s statutory scheme by allowing high-ranking government officials to engage in prohibited practices and then pressure the MSPB into inaction. The MSPB’s independence is therefore structurally inseparable from the CSRA itself.”

The judge elaborates, at length:

The CSRA envisions that the Board “is to be nonpartisan; and it must, from the very nature of its duties, act with entire impartiality.” The CSRA also “fixes a term of office.” The MSPB’s duties are “quasi judicial,” in that it conducts preliminary adjudication of federal employees’ claims, which may then be appealed to the Federal Circuit. Although the MSPB lacks its own rulemaking authority, Congress intended the agency to aid its legislative goals by regularly transmitting reports to Congress regarding the Board’s functions. It is additionally evident that Congress hoped to “preclude the President from influencing the [Board] in passing on a particular claim.”

Harris was appointed to her current term in June 2022 and her commission expires in March 2028.

The temporary restraining order puts the plaintiff back in her job as chair and enjoins the relevant administration officials “from removing Harris from her office or in any way treating her as having been removed, denying or obstructing Harris’s access to any of the benefits or resources of her office, placing a replacement in Harris’s position, or otherwise recognizing any other person as a member of the MSPB in Harris’s position.”

The court anticipates Harris will also file for a preliminary injunction. If she does, a hearing on that motion will be held on March 3.

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Former BigLaw partner, fen-phen lawyer among those granted commutations by Biden

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 04:13:30 +0000

Criminal Justice

Former BigLaw partner, fen-phen lawyer among those granted commutations by Biden

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 8, 2025, 8:50 am CST

A former Jenkens & Gilchrist partner and an ex-diet-drug lawyer are among nearly 1,500 people granted commutations by President Joe Biden in December. (Image from Shutterstock)

A former Jenkens & Gilchrist partner and an ex-diet-drug lawyer are among nearly 1,500 people granted commutations by President Joe Biden in December.

All those granted commutations had been placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic and had “successfully reintegrated into their families and communities,” according to a White House press release.

Law.com has the story on the former Jenkens & Gilchrist partner, Paul Daugerdas, while the Louisville Courier Journal has a report on the ex-diet-drug lawyer, William Gallion.

Daugerdas, who headed the Chicago office of Jenkens & Gilchrist, was convicted in a fraudulent $8 billion tax shelter scheme that led to the 2007 dissolution of his law firm. He was sentenced in June 2014 to 15 years in prison for the scheme in which legal opinion letters backed the phony tax shelters.

Daugerdas was ordered to forfeit $165 million and pay $371 million in restitution, penalties upheld by a federal appeals court in 2022.

Gallion and another lawyer were convicted in April 2009 for cheating clients out of $94.6 million in settlement funds in litigation over the diet drug fen-phen, which was removed from the market after it was linked to heart problems. Gallion was sentenced to 25 years in prison, according to the Louisville Courier Journal.

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Biden should pardon Trump, as well as Trump’s enemies, says Watergate figure John Dean

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 02:49:03 +0000

Executive Branch

Biden should pardon Trump, as well as Trump’s enemies, says Watergate figure John Dean

By Debra Cassens Weiss

December 5, 2024, 9:19 am CST

Former lawyer and Nixon White House counsel John Dean (pictured here in September 2018) is suggesting that President Joe Biden should go further with his pardons. (Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press)

Former lawyer and Nixon White House counsel John Dean is suggesting that President Joe Biden should go further with his pardons.

At the top of Dean’s suggested pardons list is President-elect Donald Trump. Others who should receive blanket pardons include everyone “on Trump’s enemies list,” including special counsels who investigated and prosecuted Trump, and everyone on the special counsel teams.

Dean made his suggestions in a post on the social media site Bluesky.

Fox News and HuffPost noted Dean’s recommendations.

Special counsels who should be pardoned, Dean said, are Jack Smith (who prosecuted Trump in the classified-documents and election-subversion cases) and Robert Mueller (who investigated but found no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign).

In an interview with CNN, Dean said the pardons “would create a safe harbor” for the recipients and “take out the retribution and revenge element” from the Trump campaign.

Fox News noted Trump’s comments about retribution at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2023.

“I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution,” Trump said.

Trump later told Fox News host Sean Hannity in June that people worried about retribution are wrong because “it has to stop because otherwise we’re not going to have a country.”

He added however, that “based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them.”

Dean, who was convicted of obstruction of justice in the Watergate coverup, became a whistleblower in congressional testimony about the break-in. He has been “an outspoken critic of Trump,” Fox News reports.

Must Hunter Biden’s indictment be dismissed after presidential pardon? Special counsel doesn’t think so

With Hunter pardon, Biden joins short list of presidents who absolved family

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Trump cites Biden pardon in bid to end hush-money case

homesafetytechpros — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 02:54:25 +0000

Left to right: Donald Trump speaks Tuesday April 2, 2024, at a rally in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Mike Roemer), FILE — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg gestures while speaking during a news conference Feb. 22, 2024, in New York (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II), FILE — Hunter Biden departs from federal court June 11, 2024, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum), Clarence Thomas (YouTube/Library of Congress).

Attorneys for President-elect Donald Trump on Monday asked the judge overseeing his New York City-based hush-money case to dismiss the indictment and vacate the jury’s guilty verdicts.

In an 80-page filing, attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove say three distinct sources of federal law “require” the defense’s requested “result” and those legal sources “require it immediately.”

But the penultimate filing in the case actually begins with an invocation of current events: President Joe Biden’s pardon of his adult son Hunter Biden’s felony gun conviction and any would-be crimes.

“Yesterday, in issuing a 10-year pardon to Hunter Biden that covers any and all crimes whether charged or uncharged, President Biden asserted that his son was ‘selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,’ and ‘treated differently,”” the filing, docketed Tuesday, reads.

Trump’s attorneys do not only crib language from the 46th president’s perfidious bout of patrimonial clemency, they also echo the elder Biden’s words targeting the work of federal prosecutors.

“President Biden argued that ‘raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice,’” the motion goes on. “These comments amounted to an extraordinary condemnation of President Biden’s own DOJ. This is the same DOJ that coordinated and oversaw the politically-motivated, election-interference witch hunts targeting President Trump.”

The filing accuses Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, of having engaged in “precisely the type of political theater” the president rubbished when he issued his son’s pardon.

Late last month, Bragg’s office made it clear prosecutors intend to push forward and ask for Trump to be sentenced in connection with his 34 felony convictions on charges of falsifying business documents — after he finishes his second term as president in January 2029.

The Damocletian nature of that option is mentioned in the motion.

“With respect to Presidential immunity, it would be egregious and unlawful for this Court to hold the prospect of a 2029 sentencing over President Trump’s head while he continues his service to this Country,” the filing reads. “President Trump would be required to operate ‘under an apprehension that the motives that control his official conduct may, at any time, become. the subject of inquiry’ at a future sentencing.”

Trump’s attorneys go on to say the prospect of a president working under such conditions would “seriously cripple the proper and effective administration of public affairs as entrusted to the executive branch of the government.”

And, so the argument goes, simply putting the sentencing of the case on a shelf in a legal freezer would violate the presidential immunity doctrine created by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year.

In the filing, Trump’s attorneys tear into Bragg for having “ignored” the recent vintage immunity doctrine — saying the district attorney’s “hubris on that topic” and “stubborn insistence on offering official acts evidence in grand jury proceedings and at trial resulted in damage to the institution of the Presidency.”

The motion also criticizes the court itself for rushing ahead with the case “despite obviously relevant Supreme Court proceedings.”

The motion then lists a direct quote from Justice Clarence Thomas’s influential concurrence to the majority opinion: “Few things would threaten our constitutional order more than criminally prosecuting a former President for his official acts.”

Presidential immunity, the motion argues, dovetails with arguments for dismissal sourced from the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

“Local elected officials such as DA Bragg have no valid basis to cause such disruptions, which also violate the Supremacy Clause,” the filing goes on. “Consequently, the federal Constitution is an absolute ‘legal impediment’ to further proceedings, and the case must be immediately dismissed.”

The motion elaborates on this point, at length:

As relevant here, “the Supremacy Clause prohibits state judges and prosecutors from interfering with a President’s official duties.” The Supreme Court has applied the Supremacy Clause in that fashion to federal employees since the 1800s.

…

The Supremacy Clause adds additional urgency to the need for immediate dismissal because DANY has created the nightmare scenario where a local, biased prosecutor is seeking to interfere with the outcome of the national election by encumbering the people’s choice of a leader with unacceptable burdens and distractions.

The third source of federal law cited by the defense is a statute: the Presidential Transition Act of 1963.

“The Presidential Transition Act applies to President Trump,” the motion goes on. “The Act’s legislative history makes clear that there is no material distinction between the President-elect and the post-inauguration sitting President for these purposes.”

Trump’s attorneys, citing precedent, say a presidential transition is effectively part of an incoming administration that implicates the “national interest” as well as the “public function” of the presidency.

This is essentially an argument that as president-elect, Trump is no longer a private citizen because his job already “includes evaluation of sensitive national security issues and associated grave risks.”

“[Bragg’s] insistence on continuing with these unlawful, failed proceedings intensifies the risk associated with that vulnerability,” the motion goes on. “President Trump has already commenced this complex. sensitive, and intensely time-consuming process. which is a ‘monumental undertaking.’ These proceedings are interfering with that process and must therefore be terminated immediately.”

The district attorney’s office has until Dec. 9, to file their response.

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Hunter Biden warned of ‘real’ Trump threat before pardon

homesafetytechpros — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 09:22:11 +0000

Left: President Joe Biden talks with his son Hunter Biden as he arrives at Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Del., Tuesday, June 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta). Right: Former President Donald Trump waits for the start of proceedings in his trial at Manhattan criminal court, Tuesday, May 14, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, Pool)

Hunter Biden’s legal team released a report over the weekend that included a “stark warning” that the first son may face retribution at the hands of incoming President-elect Donald Trump. With the election of the 45th and soon-to-be 47th president, the “threat against Hunter is real,” his lawyers claim. The report was released on Saturday ahead of President Joe Biden issuing a full federal pardon for his son on Sunday night.

The 52-page report, obtained by the Washington Post and Washington Examiner, laid out the criminal prosecutions that led to convictions for Hunter Biden.

“Here, in one place, is the complete and reprehensible history of the political persecution of Hunter Biden,” one of Biden’s lawyers, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement. “This is a seven-year saga propelled by an unrelenting political desire to use a son to hurt his father.”

More coverage from Law&Crime: ‘Unprofessional and unwarranted hostility’: Ex-Overstock CEO says Hunter Biden’s request for sanctions violates court rules and is ‘factually and legally baseless’

With Trump coming to power in January, things could have become dicey for the president’s son if he weren’t pardoned. Per the Post, the report contains a timeline of the allegations against Hunter Biden.

“It is a wild and terrifying story that serves as a stark warning of what is to come as some of the same Republicans who targeted Hunter prepare to resume power and have stated their intention to use the government’s vast power to pursue their perceived enemies,” Lowell said.

Hunter Biden could have faced serious jail time for crimes ordinary citizens would not be prosecuted, his lawyers argue.

“There is no disputing that Trump has said his enemies list includes Hunter,” the report says, according to the Post. “The prospect that Trump will turn his vengeance on the Special Counsel prosecutors if they fail to take a harder line against Hunter no doubt exerts considerable pressure on them not to let up on Hunter.”

The document also pointed out that Biden suffered from addiction at the time of his criminal activity.

“A system that is supposed to protect against abuses failed to do so and was corrupted by political leaders in this country,” the document reportedly said. “As a result, Hunter faces significant sentences for felonies and misdemeanors far beyond precedents of others committing less serious offenses or where civil resolutions or consent judgments are normally sought — all on the basis of his mistakes, made while in the throes of serious drug addiction.”

As Law&Crime previously reported, Biden was convicted in June of three felonies relating to gun possession dating back to 2018.He’s slated to be sentenced on that case in the coming weeks.

In 2023, it had appeared that Biden’s tax and gun charges would be resolved by a plea agreement, but when that deal fell apart, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed David C. Weiss as special counsel, soon after leading to separate indictments on the West Coast and East Coast.

Then in September, Biden pleaded guilty to nine tax offenses in a California federal court. He was charged last year on nine tax-related accounts, including an accusation that he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes from 2016 through 2019.

In the gun case, the first charged count alleged that Biden “knowingly made a false and fictitious written statement, intended and likely to deceive” StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply to obtain a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver, averring that he was not an “unlawful user of, and addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance, when in fact, as he knew, that statement was false an fictitious.”

The second count alleged that Biden falsely “certified” to the ATF on “Form 4473” that he was not an unlawful user of or addicted to drugs by checking the boxes “no.”

The third count alleged that Biden illegally possessed the revolver from Oct. 12, 2018 to Oct. 23, 2018, an 11-day period, while “knowing” that he was an unlawful user of or addicted to drugs.

Jurors heard that Hallie Biden, Beau Biden’s widow and the subsequent girlfriend of Hunter Biden, on Oct. 23, 2018, tossed the firearm in the garbage behind a grocery store located across the street from a high school in Delaware, but when she and Hunter went back to the scene later to retrieve the gun, it was gone. The gun was recovered and turned in days later by a man who had sifted through trash, Politico reported. No state charges were brought, but the federal case against Hunter did eventually come.

The jury also heard from the defendant’s ex-wife Kathleen Buhle, who reportedly testified about finding drug paraphernalia in Hunter’s car in 2018, not knowing exactly when that year this allegedly took place. Biden ex-girlfriend Zoe Kestan, CNN additionally reported, testified that she saw Hunter smoking crack the month before he bought the revolver.

The defense maintained that, despite its client’s published crack addiction admissions, that the prosecution did not have solid proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Hunter Biden, a trained lawyer, “knowingly” viewed himself as an addict after exiting rehab and buying the revolver at issue by lying. A jury quickly convicted Biden.

Marisa Sarnoff and Matt Naham contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: This story now includes updated information that President Biden issued a pardon to his son.

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Trump judge blocks Biden ‘parole in place’ immigration rule

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 14:01:16 +0000

FILE — President Joe Biden talks with the U.S. Border Patrol and local officials, as he looks over the southern border, Feb. 29, 2024, in Brownsville, Texas, along the Rio Grande. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

A federal judge in Texas has struck down a policy aimed at allowing undocumented spouses and stepchildren of U.S. citizens to stay in the country instead of being deported while waiting for green card status.

The so-called “parole in place” policy was announced by President Joe Biden in June, and the “Keeping Families Together” program was implemented on Aug. 19. According to U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, the purpose was to allow “certain noncitizen spouses and noncitizen stepchildren of U.S. citizens to request parole in place” and avoid deportation. Specifically, it allowed spouses and stepchildren to stay in the U.S. while applying for Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) status, instead of leaving the country and seeking an immigrant visa, waiting for approval — which could potentially take years — in their home country.

Texas — which has a history of fighting Biden’s border policies — along with more than a dozen other states filed a lawsuit within days of the announcement, and on Aug. 26, U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker issued an administrative stay blocking enforcement of the policy. On Thursday, Barker made the stay permanent, finding that the Biden administration lacked the legal ability to grant this type of relief to noncitizens.

“The court declares that defendants lack statutory authority under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5)(A) itself (as opposed to under other provisions modifying or supplementing that authority) to grant parole ‘in place’ to aliens, as that term is used in the final agency action published [on Aug. 20, 2024], or to deem parole ‘in place’ as used there to be parole ‘into the United States’ for purposes of [federal immigration law]. That agency action is hereby set aside and vacated[,]” wrote Barker, a Donald Trump appointee, in a one-page judgment.

In a separate, 74-page memorandum, Barker explained his reasoning.

The judge noted that while the policy didn’t automatically change the qualifying noncitizens’ status — that decision was left to the discretion of Department of Homeland Security officials, who “may” grant such a request — language in the rule itself suggests that such applications would have to essentially be rubber-stamped.

“The Rule then constrains the exercise of that discretion, declaring that granting parole in place to aliens eligible under the Rule’s criteria ‘will achieve’ or ‘will generally provide’ significant public benefits,” Barker wrote, honing in on the difference between “may” and “will” in his interpretation of the rule.

The judge further found that other provisions of the policy similarly limited DHS officials’ decision-making ability.

“It is not merely a proposed measure,” he wrote. “It states what DHS ‘will begin’ doing.”

The language of the rule, Barker also found, “does not leave DHS personnel free to deny parole requests based on a different view” of relevant immigration law. “Rather, the Rule obligates DHS staff to act on a particular understanding of a legal norm, with direct consequences for whether many aliens obtain immigration relief or not.”

Barker didn’t buy the federal government’s argument that certain “qualifiers” in the language of the policy left officials “free to disagree in specific cases or exercised ‘unfettered’ discretion” to deny a noncitizen’s request.

“[I]t is more likely than not that, as employees of a government agency acting under directions to preserve family unity, agency staff will not read the Rule as allowing them to disregard the agency’s stated conclusion that a ‘significant public benefit’ as [federal law] uses the term includes granting parole in place to aliens meeting the Rule’s family-relationship and other eligibility criteria,” the judge wrote. “At a minimum, the Rule imposes a presumption no less impactful than the presumptions … that certain aliens are eligible for parole.”

Barker also found that requiring DHS staff to use “new forms and process” also “creat[ed] obligations binding them.”

Texas had argued that the policy injured the Lone Star State because the noncitizens’ updated status would allow them to qualify for state-sponsored benefits, such as food assistance through SNAP, as well as costs “incurred based on the continued presence and activities” of noncitizens as well as costs “incurred on account of future immigration into Texas encouraged by a broader message behind the Rule.”

The judge agreed, calling the “increased cost to Texas of administering SNAP for these additional beneficiaries is substantially likely” and would last for years.

“[Keeping Families Together] Rule beneficiaries who entered the country after August 22, 1996, would thus generally become SNAP eligible five years after receiving parole,” the judge wrote. “It is fairly predictable and substantially likely that SNAP benefits will be utilized among that group, as many will have incomes leading to SNAP enrollment even after work authorization (as with Americans generally).”

The judge also found that Texas had successfully shown that qualifying minors would also put an additional strain on the state’s SNAP resources. He also agreed that Texas would “incur concrete harm on account of increased costs of providing educational and healthcare services to that additional alien population.”

The Biden policy provided temporary relief from the threat of deportation to an estimated 500,000 people, NPR reported. Potential applicants under the policy would have to have lived continuously in the U.S. for at least 10 years and not pose a security threat.

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Hunter Biden lawsuit against IRS over tax info moves forward

homesafetytechpros — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 23:16:29 +0000

FILE — Hunter Biden departs from federal court June 11, 2024, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum).

Hunter Biden’s lawsuit over the public disclosure of his tax return information will move forward after a federal judge finds that the IRS might be liable for the actions of two whistleblowers’ lawyers.

As Law&Crime previously reported, Biden sued the IRS in September 2023, alleging that two agents, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, “completely disregarded their confidentiality obligations” and engaged in a “campaign to publicly smear” Biden through “unauthorized” disclosures of tax return information to media outlets, resulting in an “assault” on his privacy rights.

President Joe Biden’s son argued that Shapley and Ziegler directed their lawyers to publicly share Biden’s tax information, and were therefore subject to laws against disclosure.

The federal agency filed a motion to dismiss in February, arguing that Biden failed to show the agency’s alleged lack of “safeguards” to prevent two whistleblowers and their attorneys from disclosing his “confidential tax return information” in media interviews caused him to suffer “actual damages.” Lawyers for the IRS also argued that sovereign immunity protects the IRS against lawsuits over disclosures made by nonemployees of the federal government — in this case, lawyers for Shapley and Ziegler.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, a Barack Obama appointee, said that Biden’s unlawful disclosure claim can stand, finding that “the lawyers’ actions can be imputed to the IRS employees — and therefore the United States — under general principles of agency law.”

Historically, Congress “intended taxpayers’ return information to be broadly protected from disclosure to prevent abuse by Executive officers and politicization of the voluntary assessment system,” Contreras wrote. “The evolution of these statutes additionally demonstrates that Congress specifically decided that civil liability for federal employees’ unlawful activity should lie against the federal government and not against the employees themselves.”

The judge also denied a motion to intervene filed on behalf of Shapley and Ziegler themselves, who argued that their alleged actions were legal under whistleblower protection laws and that Biden’s confidential return information was already in the public domain. The intervention request was opposed by both Biden and the IRS.

“The Court agrees with the parties that the IRS agents do not have a legally protected interest in the outcome of this litigation,” Contreras wrote. The judge said that Shapley and Ziegler were not, as they argued, “the real subject” of Biden’s lawsuit.

“The real subject of this controversy is the United States’s liability under 26 U.S.C. § 7431(a)(1), and resolution of that dispute will have no direct impact on the intervenors’ legally protected financial or property interests,” the judge wrote.

It wasn’t all bad news for the IRS: Contreras handed a victory to the agency by granting its request to dismiss Biden’s privacy claim, finding that Biden hadn’t properly pled actual damages, and his claim wasn’t within the Privacy Act’s waiver of sovereign immunity.

Read the judge’s ruling here.

Law&Crime’s Matt Naham contributed to this story.

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ABA calls on Biden administration to protect asylum-seekers

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 04:20:51 +0000

Immigration Law

ABA calls on Biden administration to protect asylum-seekers

By Amanda Robert

March 7, 2024, 9:07 am CST

ABA President Mary Smith is urging the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Domestic Policy Council to honor due process when responding to conflicts at the U.S.-Mexico border. (Image from Shutterstock)

ABA President Mary Smith is urging the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Domestic Policy Council to honor due process when responding to conflicts at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a March 6 letter to Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of the DHS, and Neera Tanden, the director of the Domestic Policy Council, Smith said the ABA recognizes that efforts to provide additional tools and resources to address challenges at the border have stalled in Congress.

But, she added, the association opposes “any actions or policies, including the widespread and indiscriminate use of a national border expulsion authority and the heightening of the credible fear standard, that abrogate our nation’s moral and legal responsibility to protect asylum-seekers.”

Smith contended that raising the credible fear standard and limiting the review of fear-based claims would exacerbate existing concerns over due process. She also said a national border expulsion authority could jeopardize protection measures that are now available to vulnerable people and families.

“While we applaud the efforts of those working to find solutions to the current challenges at the border, the administration should refrain from abandoning our domestic and international legal responsibility to provide protections for individuals facing threats of harm in their own countries by upholding our asylum and humanitarian parole systems,” Smith said.

She encouraged Mayorkas and Tanden to consider other solutions, such as expanding resources at ports of entry and for communities and organizations that provide shelter, case management, legal services and language interpretation to people seeking asylum.

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Biden recalls time he bluffed knowledge of torts case and why he changed his mind about civil-trial work

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 23:44:49 +0000

Careers

Biden recalls time he bluffed knowledge of torts case and why he changed his mind about civil-trial work

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 14, 2024, 2:34 pm CDT

President Joe Biden waves before boarding Air Force One at the El Paso International Airport in El Paso, Texas, on Jan. 8, 2023, to travel to Mexico City. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/The Associated Press)

President Joe Biden digressed when answering questions last fall about documents stored at his vice presidential residence to remember his tough torts class at the Syracuse University College of Law and the first job that he got after graduation.

Biden was responding in October to questions by then-special counsel Robert K. Hur, who later concluded that Biden shouldn’t be charged with mishandling classified information because jurors would perceive him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Reuters has the story on Biden’s law school recollection, based on this transcript. Above the Law noted the story.

Biden said he didn’t take law school very seriously. is torts professor, who was “really difficult,” called on Biden to discuss a case that he had never read.

Biden said he nonetheless stood up and spoke for 10 minutes.

“The whole class stood up, started clapping,” Biden said.

The torts professor noted that not a single thing that Biden said was relevant to the case. But he was apparently impressed by Biden’s performance.

“You’ll be a hell of a trial lawyer,” Biden recalled the professor saying.

After law school, Biden took a job with the best-known trial law firm in Delaware handling mostly civil-defense cases. Biden recalled a case involving a “poor kid” who was 23 years old when his jeans caught fire at his worksite. The man had been wearing the wrong pants, and when his jeans caught fire he lost part of his penis and testicles.

Delaware law barred a tort recovery if there was contributory negligence by the plaintiff. Biden was asked to write a motion to dismiss.

He did so, “and son of a b- – – -, it prevailed,” Biden said. “And I looked over at that kid and his wife home with two little kids, and I thought, ‘Son of a b- – – -, I’m in the wrong business. I’m not made for this.’”

He quit the job and became a public defender.

“Trump-appointed US attorney is investigating classified documents found by Biden’s lawyers at office he used”

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Federal gun charge trial for Hunter Biden set for June 3

homesafetytechpros — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 03:58:49 +0000

Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, with attorney Abbe Lowell, left, leaves after a closed-door deposition in the Republican-led investigation into the Biden family, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The federal gun charge trial for Hunter Biden is set for June 3.

A federal judge in Delaware set aside the weeks of June 3 and June 10 for a jury trial, the court docket said.

CBS News reported that the judge is reviewing motions, including one by Hunter Biden to dismiss the case, and will issue a ruling later. Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said he does not expect the case to go to trial, telling the network he thinks the judge will dismiss it based on diversion and a plea agreement.

The president’s son was indicted last September on charges related to his purchase of a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver from a federally licensed firearms dealer on Oct. 12, 2018, when he was using drugs, Law&Crime reported. Authorities allege he made a false written statement on a federal form when he bought it, allegedly certifying he was not an unlawful user of, or addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance.

As Law&Crime reported this week, he offered the judge in his case additional authorities to support his attempt to torpedo the case as selectively and vindictively brought by special counsel David Weiss, whom the defendant likened to a tool of Russian intelligence.

Pointing to erstwhile FBI informant Alexander Smirnov’s February indictment for making allegedly “false bribery allegations” against Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, the president’s son asserted Weiss knew for years that the claims were “baseless” but reopened an investigation after pressure from congressional Republicans and, just a short time later, after prosecutors reneged on a plea agreement, Weiss was appointed as special counsel and only ramped up his probe to secure bicoastal indictments for gun and tax offenses.

Hunter Biden, 54, who struggled with addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine, has been under the spotlight.

Federal prosecutors have been investigating his finances. Senate Republicans have subjected him to immense scrutiny, opening several investigations into his overseas business dealings, specifically his work on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings.

Law&Crime’s Matt Naham and Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.

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