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Did 9 firms making deals with Trump violate bribery, anti-fraud laws? Democratic letters seek answers

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 06 May 2025 02:07:00 +0000

Law Firms

Did 9 firms making deals with Trump violate bribery, anti-fraud laws? Democratic letters seek answers

April 24, 2025, 2:26 pm CDT

Sixteen Democratic lawmakers have sent letters to nine law firms that ask them to disavow deals with President Donald Trump and to answer questions about their legality. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Sixteen Democratic lawmakers have sent letters to nine law firms that ask them to disavow deals with President Donald Trump and to answer questions about their legality.

Among the 16 Democrats are two lawmakers leading the effort: U.S. Rep. Dave Min of California and U.S. Rep. April McClain Delaney of Maryland, who are both lawyers, according to an April 24 press release and ABC News.

HuffPost reporter Jennifer Bendery posted a link to the documents on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The nine firms getting the letters are Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Milbank; Willkie Farr & Gallagher; Kirkland & Ellis; A&O Shearman; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Latham & Watkins; and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.

Firms making the deals pledged to devote millions of dollars in pro bono hours to issues supported by the firms and Trump. Their agreements allowed them to avoid executive orders that, among other things, call for the suspension of lawyers’ security clearances and imperil their clients’ government contracts.

According to the letters, continued performance under the agreements may be unenforceable under contracts law, would have negative effects on the legal system, could expose the firms to civil and criminal liability, and creates potential ethics violations with respect to conflicts of interest and limits on future law practice.

Agreements of this kind “signal acquiescence to an abuse of federal power, raising serious questions about how or whether your firm would represent clients or take on matters that might be seen as antagonistic to President Trump or his agenda,” the letters said.

The letters asked firms to explain whether the deals open themselves up to liability for:

• Violating federal bribery laws by offering something of value to influence official acts.

• Aiding and abetting violations of the Hobbs Act, which makes it a crime to affect commerce by extortion.

• Violating federal anti-fraud laws that prohibit schemes to defraud the public of the honest services of public officials.

• Violating the federal law that prohibits participation in a racketeering enterprise.

• Violating state statutes that ban providing public servants with benefits to influence actions.

The April 24 letters follow inquiries sent to firms from U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who are both Democrats, according to Reuters and an April 22 press release.

The first batch of letters by Blumenthal and Raskin sought more information on attempts made to poach lawyers and clients from one of the targeted firms and asked six firms to retain records pertaining to the executive orders. A second group of letters asked five firms for more information while asserting that their “capitulation” allowed Trump to suppress their speech.

“Your agreement makes you complicit in efforts to undermine the rule of law and to turn private attorneys into President Trump’s personal law firm, ready to do whatever he decides,” Blumenthal and Raskin wrote.

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Judge says Trump’s anti-DEI orders violate First Amendment

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 17:00:32 +0000

US President Donald Trump arrives before signing the Laken Riley Act into law in the East Room at the White House in Washington on January 29, 2025. The law, named after a Georgia student murdered by an undocumented immigrant is the first bill of the second Trump administration (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Sipa USA/Sipa via AP Images).

A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration’s plans to make “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives illegal.

In late January, the 45th and 47th president signed executive orders which purported to root out DEI from federal government contracts and by barring government contractors with DEI programs of their own. Additionally, Trump directed the U.S. Attorney General to “deter” such “programs or principles” and to consider launching “civil compliance” investigations to effectuate such deterrence.

On Feb. 3, the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) and several other plaintiffs filed a 42-page lawsuit in Maryland federal court. The group describes itself as an organization that aims to help members “advance equity, inclusion, and the value of belonging within their campus communities.”

In their complaint, the plaintiffs alleged the Trump administration’s anti-DEI directives were unconstitutional for myriad reasons. On Friday, a federal court agreed on at least two counts.

In a 63-page memorandum opinion, U.S. District Judge Adam B. Abelson, a Joe Biden appointee, the court found the anti-DEI directives both “unconstitutionally vague on their face” and in violation of the First Amendment guarantee to freedom of speech.

Under the Fifth Amendment‘s Due Process Clause, a basic principle of constitutional caselaw is that “an enactment is void for vagueness if its prohibitions are not clearly defined,” the judge notes — citing a U.S. Supreme Court case from 1972.

Here, the court determined that the “Termination Provision” of the anti-DEI directive — the provision that intends to broadly impact all existing contracts and any current or would-be contractors — has two major definitional flaws.

“First, the vagueness of the term ‘equity-related’ grants or contracts’ invites arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement,” Abelson writes. “Second, the vagueness of the term offers insufficient notice to current grantees about whether and how they can adapt their conduct to avoid termination of their grants or contracts.”

The court also found Trump’s directive for law enforcement to enforce the anti-DEI crusade through civil compliance investigations vague under the 5th Amendment’s guarantee of due process under the law.

From the opinion, at length:

Defendants have rescinded swaths of existing executive branch guidance on what the executive branch considers the federal civil rights laws to require, prohibit, or allow. Yet neither [executive] Order gives guidance on what the new administration considers to constitute “illegal DEI discrimination and preferences,” or “[p]romoting ‘diversity,’” or “illegal DEI and DEIA policies,” or what types of “DEI programs or principles” the new administration considers “illegal” and is seeking to “deter.” The due process clause of the Fifth Amendment requires that “prohibitions” on conduct be “clearly defined.”

“Vague laws invite arbitrary power,” the opinion goes on — directly quoting Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.

“Plaintiffs here have shown substantial evidence of the risks of such arbitrariness here,” Abelson continues. “By threatening the ‘private sector’ with enforcement actions, based on those vague, undefined standards, the Enforcement Threat Provision is facially unconstitutional under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.”

The court also found several First Amendment violations.

“There is a label for government action that seeks to ‘deter . . . principles,’ that the government disagrees with: ‘restrict[ion]’ of ‘expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.’ And the most ‘blatant’ and ‘egregious form of content discrimination’ is viewpoint discrimination,” the opinion goes on. “The Certification and Enforcement Threat Provisions squarely, unconstitutionally, ‘abridge the freedom of speech””

Specifically, the court found that the effort to force potential contractors to certify compliance with anti-DEI principles and the threat against private businesses to stop their existing DEI policies in violation of the First Amendment.

Abelson explains, again at length:

The Enforcement Threat Provision applies broadly to the private sector; therefore, unlike with the other provisions, the analysis is based on pure private speech regulated by the First Amendment as opposed to the speech of federal contractors or grantees. Plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the Enforcement Threat Provision, which threatens to bring enforcement against perceived violators of undefined standards, is, on its face, an unlawful viewpoint-based restriction on protected speech. The Enforcement Threat Provision expressly focuses on “deter[ring] DEI programs or principles that constitute illegal discrimination or preferences” and “encourag[ing] the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI,” without, for example, a similar restriction on anti-DEI principles that may also be in violation of existing federal anti-discrimination laws That is textbook viewpoint-based discrimination.

Ultimately, the judge issued a preliminary nationwide injunction against each of the three anti-DEI directives. The court declined, however, to enjoin the Attorney General from preparing a report — as one of Trump’s orders directs her to do.

The injunction will remain in effect pending the resolution of the case itself at the district court level, or, unless the administration is granted and wins a reprieve from a federal court of appeals.

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Oregon law barring secret audio recordings does not violate First Amendment, en banc appeals court says

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 11:10:45 +0000

First Amendment

Oregon law barring secret audio recordings does not violate First Amendment, en banc appeals court says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 9, 2025, 11:14 am CST

A federal appeals court has tossed a challenge to an Oregon law that generally bans secret audio recordings. (Image from Shutterstock)

A federal appeals court has tossed a challenge to an Oregon law that generally bans secret audio recordings.

The en banc 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco ruled Tuesday that the conversational privacy law does not violate the First Amendment.

Law360, Reuters, the Volokh Conspiracy and the Legal Profession Blog have coverage.

The Oregon law generally requires people making an audio recording to notify the target. It was challenged by the activist group Project Veritas, which uses undercover journalism in support of its conservative message.

The law’s “relatively modest notice requirement” is narrowly tailored to a significant government interest in letting Oregon residents know when their conversations are being recorded, the appeals court said in the 9-2 decision.

Judge Morgan Christen, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, wrote the majority opinion.

“Because Oregon’s statute does not discriminate on the basis of viewpoint or restrict discussion of an entire topic, we conclude it is content neutral, and that it survives intermediate scrutiny,” Christen wrote.

The Oregon law has several exceptions to the ban on unannounced audio recordings.

One exception allows oral recordings of conversations during a felony that endangers a human life. Another allows audio recordings of conversations by a law enforcement officer performing official duties in plain view, when the person making the recording has a lawful right to be there. Yet another allows open audio recordings at public gatherings and in private meetings in which participants can reasonably expect that they are recorded.

The 9th Circuit said the law is content neutral because it does not draw distinctions based on a speaker’s viewpoint and was not enacted because of disagreement with a speaker’s message. It also allows other alternatives that allow a would-be recorder to disseminate a message.

“Project Veritas retains numerous alternative channels to engage in its journalistic speech activities,” the 9th Circuit said. “It may employ all the traditional tools of investigative reporting, including talking with sources, reviewing records, taking photographs, recording videos openly during public and semi-public meetings and events, recording videos that do not capture oral conversations, recording conversations after announcing it is doing so, and making use of Oregon’s freedom-of-information laws.

“Project Veritas may have its reporters go undercover and report on what they have seen and heard—without secretly recording its targets—as journalists have done for centuries.”

Project Veritas lawyer Benjamin Barr said his client will seek review with the U.S. Supreme Court. He told Law360 that the decision upholds the “broadest recording law in the nation” and “suffocates a reporter’s ability to investigate corruption and work with whistleblowers.”

The case is Project Veritas v. Schmidt.

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Judge who allowed secretary to work remotely didn’t violate ethics rules, state supreme court says

homesafetytechpros — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 23:58:08 +0000

Judiciary

Judge who allowed secretary to work remotely didn’t violate ethics rules, state supreme court says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 29, 2024, 8:45 am CDT

The New Jersey Supreme Court has tossed a pending ethics complaint against a judge who sometimes allowed his secretary to work remotely in violation of office policy. (Image from Shutterstock)

The New Jersey Supreme Court has tossed a pending ethics complaint against a judge who sometimes allowed his secretary to work remotely in violation of office policy.

The New Jersey Supreme Court found no ethics violations by New Jersey Judge Douglas H. Hurd in an Oct. 16 order, report Law360 and Law.com. Hurd is civil presiding judge in the Mercer vicinage in Trenton, New Jersey.

It is rare for the New Jersey Supreme Court to dismiss a disciplinary case before a ruling by the New Jersey Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct, sources told Law.com.

New Jersey courts were working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. When in-person operations resumed, a new policy allowed remote work for one and then two days per week. But the new policy did not apply to judges, secretaries of judges, and judicial law clerks, according to the Jan. 30 ethics complaint.

Despite the requirement for in-office work, Hurd’s secretary was allowed to work remotely “on a periodic basis” for about six months in 2022, the ethics complaint said.

Hurd thought that he had discretion to allow remote work in light of the secretary’s “incredible work ethic,” according to an amended answer to the ethics complaint.

The secretary worked remotely about three to six days per month during a five- to six-month period. Hurd immediately ended his approval for remote work when he was advised that he didn’t have the discretion to allow it.

Hurd declined to comment on the dismissal of the complaint when Law360 contacted a representative.

Law.com spoke with lawyers who were relieved to hear that the ethics complaint was tossed.

Michael Donahue, managing shareholder of Stark & Stark in Hamilton, New Jersey, told Law.com that Hurd had “an unblemished reputation.” While the complaint was pending, Hurd “kept his head up and the vicinage running,” Donahue said.

“I am incredibly relieved and gratified to hear the news that the New Jersey Supreme Court has seen the right side of this issue,” Donahue said.

A new policy adopted after the ethics complaint was filed allows law clerks and secretaries to work remotely up to four days per month with judicial approval, according to Law.com.

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