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3. Former Girardi Keese CFO ordered to pay over…

Criminal Justice

Former Girardi Keese CFO ordered to pay over $8.9M in restitution, serve prison time for embezzlement

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 15, 2025, 11:32 am CDT

The former chief financial officer for the now-defunct law firm Girardi Keese was sentenced Friday to 121 months in federal prison for embezzling money from the firm and its clients.

Christopher Kazuo Kamon, 51, was also ordered to pay more than $8.9 million in restitution, according to a April 11 press release. He had pleaded guilty in October 2024 to two counts of wire fraud in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton of the Central District of California said during the sentencing hearing that Kamon helped build a “web of deceit and manipulation.” Kamon had worked closely with former name partner Tom Girardi, who was convicted in August 2024 on four counts of wire fraud for or stealing $15 million from four clients over the course of a decade.

Girardi, who has been disbarred, was famous for his legal team’s portrayal in the film Erin Brockovich and for his marriage to Erika Girardi, who has appeared on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reality TV show.

Law360, Law.com and Reuters are among the publications with coverage of Kamon’s sentence.

During the hearing, Staton described the relationship between Kamon and Girardi as “symbiotic,” according to Law.com.

According to Law.com, “Staton’s voice shook slightly as she described, in detail, the disastrous financial situations of two of Girardi’s injured clients: a family who, as a result of Girardi’s main fraud scheme, was unable to purchase a house large enough to house the equipment necessary to care for their quadriplegic child and a widowed client who—after being assured by the firm that her embezzled settlement would pay off her house—was later forced to take out a home equity loan and sell it.”

Kamon is also facing federal charges in Illinois for allegedly stealing money from relatives of air crash victims. Kamon’s lawyer, Michael Severo, told Law360 that a nearly finalized plea deal would allow Kamon to serve his sentence in the Illinois case concurrently with the California sentence.

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3. Can Trump serve third term? Yale Law prof…

Constitutional Law

Can Trump serve third term? Yale Law prof sees ‘possible loophole’ to 22nd Amendment ban

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 3, 2025, 3:01 pm CDT

Can President Donald Trump serve a third term? The 22nd Amendment appears to prevent it. “No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice,” it reads. But could a president serve a third term if he isn’t “elected” to the office?

The use of the word “elected,” rather than “serve,” is “an unfortunate drafting error,” in the view of Michael C. Dorf, a professor at Cornell Law School, who spoke with the Washington Post.

The Wall Street Journal (gift link via How Appealing), the Washington Post and the New York Times have coverage of the constitutional questions.

The issue is getting attention since Trump told NBC News that “there are methods” by which he could serve a third term, and he wasn’t joking.

NBC News asked Trump about a scenario in which Vice President JD Vance would run for president and then hand the office of president to Trump.

“That’s one” method, Trump responded.

But Trump could not be Vance’s vice president, according to many experts who spoke with the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. That’s because of the 12th Amendment, which says, “No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice president of the United States.”

Because Trump wouldn’t be eligible to be president, he wouldn’t be eligible to be vice president under the 12th Amendment, said Akhil Reed Amar, a constitutional law professor at Yale Law School.

Taking a contrary view are the authors of an article in the Minnesota Law Review written when former President Bill Clinton was president. The article argues that the 12th Amendment might not bar a two-term president from the vice presidency because “it is by no means clear that the term ‘eligibility’ as used in the 12th Amendment refers to or incorporates a person’s reeligibility under the 22nd Amendment” that followed.

The 12th Amendment eligibility provision was likely referring to constitutional requirements for the presidency based on citizenship, residency and age, according to the article co-authored by Bruce G. Peabody, a government and politics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University. The ambiguities might allow a vice presidential run by a two-term president, he told the Wall Street Journal.

There is another possible scenario. What if Vance is elected president, he appoints Trump as the secretary of state, Vance and his vice president resign, and others in the line of succession before the secretary of state step aside?

That could work if Congress changes the federal presidential succession law to eliminate the ban on cabinet officials becoming president if they are ineligible for the job, according to Amar.

“There is a possible loophole. I wish it weren’t true, but there is,” Amar told the Wall Street Journal.

But some experts said there should be no debate on the issue.

The history of the 22nd Amendment’s drafting and ratification “make clear beyond doubt it was written that way to guard against the danger that anyone could use the office to assert long-term tyrannical control in the United States,” said Deborah Pearlstein, a professor at Princeton University, in an email to the Washington Post.

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3. Last-minute election lawsuits may serve political…

Election Law

Last-minute election lawsuits may serve political goals, law prof says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

August 30, 2024, 9:50 am CDT

Last-minute lawsuits challenging election rules and voter-registration procedures are being filed in battleground states in the run-up to the Nov. 5 presidential election.

Democrats and Republicans are filing suits, the Wall Street Journal reports. Democrats are challenging a new Georgia rule for certifying results, while Republicans are challenging voter-registration procedures in North Carolina and Arizona.

Prior suits have already produced rulings in other states regarding the rules for absentee ballots, regulations for voter registration and the cleanup of voter rolls, according to the article.

The suits are unlikely to result in big changes in how voters cast their ballots, but they can serve political goals, according to Justin Levitt, a professor at the Loyola Law School in California, who spoke with the Wall Street Journal.

Partisan suits can help with fundraising and motivate voters, Levitt said.

“It fosters discontent with a system that works pretty well,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

The Wall Street Journal has details on these recent suits:

  • The Republican National Committee and the North Carolina Republican Party have filed two suits against the North Carolina State Board of Elections. One suit claims that the elections board failed to remove noncitizens from voter rolls, despite their assertion that they weren’t citizens on jury questionnaires. The other contends that the board improperly registered voters without proper identification to verify citizenship. The cases are North Carolina Republican Party v. North Carolina State Board of Elections and Republican National Committee v. North Carolina State Board of Elections.

  • The chair of the Arizona Republican Party has sued Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs over executive orders expanding locations for voter-registration locations and ballot drop-offs. The case is Swoboda v. Hobbs.

  • Democratic officials in Georgia have sued the state election board to challenge new rules governing the certification of votes. The new rules require election officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before vote certification and to allow county board members to examine election-related documentation. The suit contends that the rule change turns confirmation of vote totals “into a broad license” for board members to hunt for purported election irregularities, potentially delaying certification and displacing court-supervised processes for addressing fraud. The case is Abhiraman v. State Election Board.

Hat tip to How Appealing, which noted the story and provided a link.

See also:

SCOTUS allows Arizona voter-registration law requiring proof of citizenship