“D.C. ethics board recommends Rudy Giuliani be disbarred”

ethics investigations, fraudulent fraud squad

NBC News:

The D.C. Bar’s Board on Professional Responsibility on Friday recommended that Rudy Giuliani be barred from practicing law in the nation’s capital.

In its report, the board cited Giuliani’s work in Pennsylvania following the 2020 presidential election in which he sought to have the state’s election results thrown out in favor of his former client Donald Trump.

“The Board agrees with the Hearing Committee that Disciplinary Counsel proved by clear and convincing evidence that Respondent violated Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct,” the report says. “With respect to sanction, we agree with the Hearing Committee that Respondent should be disbarred.”

This report follows one from last year in which a disciplinary board for the D.C. Bar also recommended disbarment for Giuliani. Now, the case heads to the D.C. Court of Appeals, which will decide whether Giuliani, who formerly served as the mayor of New York City, will be disbarred.

In a statement provided to NBC News, Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for Giuliani, blamed the findings in the report on “partisan Democrats” and said the decision would discourage attorneys from taking on Trump as a client.

“This recommendation comes as no surprise as partisan Democrats continue to destroy the credibility of the American justice system all in an effort to beat President Trump and to hold onto power,” Goodman said.

Here is the report, via Democracy Docket.

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“Marco Rubio spreads debunked election claims about 2020 ballots”

election subversion risk, fraudulent fraud squad

WaPo:

In the contest to join former president Donald Trump on the 2024 ticket as his running mate, aspirants have had to follow his path on questioning election integrity in the United States. Many refuse to say they would accept the election results if Trump doesn’t win. Some in contention have echoed Trump’s falsehoods, as Vivek Ramaswamy did when he declared in one of the GOP primary debates that “the 2020 election was indeed stolen by Big Tech.” (The theory, without evidence, is that more coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop would have changed the election results.)

In a recent television appearance, Rubio managed to achieve a trifecta.

He refused to say he would accept the results: “If it’s an unfair election, I think it’s going to be contested.”

He suggested that more coverage of the laptop would have affected the results: “What undermines elections is when NBC News and every major news outlet in America in 2020 censored the Biden laptop story, which turned out to be true, not Russian misinformation, unprecedented.”

And he made three specific claims about 2020 — one misleading, two debunked. Let’s examine them in the order he made them. A Rubio spokesperson declined to address his statements in detail. She forwarded the office’s news release on his appearance, which cast his comments as addressing the “legacy media’s one-sided questioning on election denying.”

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“Supreme Court sends dispute over Arkansas’ GOP-drawn congressional map back to lower court”

redistricting, Supreme Court

NBC News:

The Supreme Court on Monday told a lower court to take a fresh look at claims alleging that Republican-drawn congressional districts in Arkansas sought to minimize the influence of Black voters.

The justices threw out a May 2023 ruling by a panel of three federal judges that left in place the state’s congressional district map. All four districts are held by Republicans.

The Supreme Court said the lower court should review the case again in light of the justices’ ruling last month in a similar case from South Carolina in which Republican-drawn districts were left in place.

The lower court had concluded that the plaintiffs, Black voters and politicians, had failed to “create a plausible inference” that race was the predominant consideration when the new map was drawn.

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“Multiple Trump Witnesses Have Received Significant Financial Benefits From His Businesses, Campaign”

chicanery

ProPublica:

Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company.

The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee.

These pay increases and other benefits often came at delicate moments in the legal proceedings against Trump. One aide who was given a plum position on the board of Trump’s social media company, for example, got the seat after he was subpoenaed but before he testified.

Significant changes to a staffer’s work situation, such as bonuses, pay raises, firings or promotions, can be evidence of a crime if they come outside the normal course of business. To prove witness tampering, prosecutors would need to show that perks or punishments were intended to influence testimony.

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“Courting Risk: Corporate Underwrites & State Attorneys General”

campaign finance, political polarization

New report from CPA.

From the foreword by Jacob Hacker & Paul Pierson:

Political spending to support controversial policies and leaders thrives in darkness. And no spending has defied necessary scrutiny more than the bigger and bigger donations that public corporations are giving to state attorneys generals through partisan third-party groups.


As this pathbreaking report lays bare, even companies that have dedicated themselves to transparency and accountability in political spending are pouring tens of millions of dollars
into state attorney general races through third-party groups like the Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA) and Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). RAGA, in particular, has raised more than $84 million from public companies and its trade associations (roughly half again more than DAGA), which it has used to help elect state attorneys general who have pursued aggressive litigation directly at odds with these companies’ stated values.


The stakes could not be higher. Riven by gridlock and polarization, America’s Congress has ceded much of its power to shape policy to the courts and the states. In this political vacuum, state attorneys general have become far more powerful. Fueled by the same rising polarization, they have also become far more partisan….

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“A Felon in the Oval Office Would Test the American System”

election subversion risk

Peter Baker for the NYT:

The revolutionary hero Patrick Henry knew this day would come. He might not have anticipated all the particulars, such as the porn actress in the hotel room and the illicit payoff to keep her quiet. But he feared that eventually a criminal might occupy the presidency and use his powers to thwart anyone who sought to hold him accountable. “Away with your president,” he declared, “we shall have a king.”

That was exactly what the founders sought to avoid, having thrown off the yoke of an all-powerful monarch. But as hard as they worked to establish checks and balances, the system they constructed to hold wayward presidents accountable ultimately has proved to be unsteady.

Whatever rules Americans thought were in place are now being rewritten by Donald J. Trump, the once and perhaps future president who has already shattered many barriers and precedents. The notion that 34 felonies is not automatically disqualifying and a convicted criminal can be a viable candidate for commander in chief upends two and a half centuries of assumptions about American democracy.

And it raises fundamental questions about the limits of power in a second term, should Mr. Trump be returned to office. If he wins, it means he will have survived two impeachments, four criminal indictments, civil judgments for sexual abuse and business fraud, and a felony conviction. Given that, it would be hard to imagine what institutional deterrents could discourage abuses or excesses.

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