“Former Sheriff Hayden investigated Johnson County’s top election official, records show”

KC Star:

Former Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden investigated Johnson County Election Commissioner Fred Sherman over allegations of voter intimidation, according to records obtained by The Star. The case was the only one Hayden, a Republican, ever sent to Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe during his years-long investigation into election fraud. The inquiry never found any election fraud but helped stoke baseless conspiracy theories that the county’s elections were somehow tainted.

The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, now led by Democrat Byron Roberson, and Howe, a Republican, both confirmed in separate statements last week that Hayden had submitted only one election-related case. Roberson announced last week that he had formally closed the election inquiry. But law enforcement documents provided to The Star in response to a records request now reveal Sherman was the subject of the intimidation investigation. The documents illustrate the extraordinary situation that played out in Johnson County in 2022 as the then-sheriff investigated the county’s top elections official. Howe declined to prosecute Sherman, finding no evidence of a crime….

The records provided on Tuesday include a full narrative report of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office investigation. While the victim’s name is redacted in the newly-provided documents, the case number matches the partial report previously provided to The Star. In the narrative, Det. Kevin Cronister wrote that the alleged victim in an email alleged that during a July 13, 2022, election worker training, Sherman was disregarding her “beliefs as an American voter and election worker” because Sherman had told her she needed to vote in advance or by mail to be a poll worker on Election Day. The alleged victim said she only believed in voting in-person on Election Day. “Having been required by Fred Sherman to choose between my voting rights and his policy, I felt stripped of my rights,” the alleged victim said, according to Cronister’s narrative report….

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Must Read Adam Liptak in the NYT: “Trump’s Actions Have Created a Constitutional Crisis, Scholars Say” (Gift Link)

NYT:

There is no universally accepted definition of a constitutional crisis, but legal scholars agree about some of its characteristics. It is generally the product of presidential defiance of laws and judicial rulings. It is not binary: It is a slope, not a switch. It can be cumulative, and once one starts, it can get much worse.

It can also be obvious, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.

“We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,” he said on Friday. “There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this.”

He ticked off examples of what he called President Trump’s lawless conduct: revoking birthright citizenship, freezing federal spending, shutting down an agency, removing leaders of other agencies, firing government employees subject to civil service protections and threatening to deport people based on their political views.

That is a partial list, Professor Chemerinsky said, and it grows by the day. “Systematic unconstitutional and illegal acts create a constitutional crisis,” he said.

The distinctive feature of the current situation, several legal scholars said, is its chaotic flood of activity that collectively amounts to a radically new conception of presidential power. But the volume and speed of those actions may overwhelm and thus thwart sober and measured judicial consideration.

It will take some time, though perhaps only weeks, for a challenge to one of Mr. Trump’s actions to reach the Supreme Court. On Monday, a federal judge said the White House had defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump administration is disobeying a judicial mandate.

It remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump would defy a ruling against him by the justices.

“It’s an open question whether the administration will be as contemptuous of courts as it has been of Congress and the Constitution,” said Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “At least so far, it hasn’t been.”…

Pamela Karlan, a law professor at Stanford, added that a crisis need not arise from clashes between the branches of the federal government.

“It’s a constitutional crisis when the president of the United States doesn’t care what the Constitution says regardless whether Congress or the courts resist a particular unconstitutional action,” she said. “Up until now, while presidents might engage in particular acts that were unconstitutional, I never had the sense that there was a president for whom the Constitution was essentially meaningless.”….

Professor Karlan said she worried that the justices would rule for Mr. Trump for fear that he would ignore decisions rejecting his positions. “The idea that courts should preserve the illusion of power by abdicating their responsibilities would just make the constitutional crisis even worse,” she said….

MORE from Joan Biskupic.

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“Trump allies suggest defying court orders after stinging legal rebukes”

Washington Post:

Federal judges have issued President Donald Trump stinging legal rebukes in the early clashes over his blitz of executive orders, and two of his top advisers have responded by suggesting that his administration defy the courts and move forward with its agenda.

There’s no indication that Trump has adopted such a strategy, although a U.S. judge in Rhode Island ruled Monday that the administration has been violating a court order to disburse billions of dollars in already-approved grant funding and hinted at possible penalties.

But the combative rhetoric by Vice President JD Vance and top adviser Elon Musk has troubled legal experts,who said there is no modern precedent for a president to ignore or defy court orders.

Vance wrote on X on Sunday that it would be illegal for a judge to tell a general how to conduct a military operation or for a jurist to dictate how the attorney general used his discretion as a prosecutor. “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” he wrote.

The vice president also shared a post by a Harvard University professor who argued that “judicial interference with legitimate acts of state” is a violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers. Vance has made similar comments in the past, including on a 2021 podcast where he said he would urge the president to defy a court order preventing him from firing federal workers. On Monday, Vance continued to repost messages from other users embracing the theme.

Musk, who owns X and is leading the Trump administration’s effort to cut the federal government, echoed Vance’s comments in his ownpostings on the social media platform. He called for impeaching a judge who last weektemporarily blocked his associates from accessing sensitive data about Americans that iskept in a Treasury Department database. Musk also shared the post of another X user who calledfor Trump to defy judges.

“It is exceptionally myopic, hypocritical and dangerous,” Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck said of the calls by Trump officials to defy court orders. “In our system, the way you object to a legal ruling you find objectionable is to appeal.”..

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“Push to Drop Adams Charges Reveals a Justice Dept. Under Trump’s Sway”

NYT:

The Justice Department on Monday ordered federal prosecutors to drop the corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, a remarkable incursion into a continuing criminal case that raises questions about the fair administration of justice during President Trump’s second term.

The order was sent in a letter from the department’s acting No. 2 official, Emil Bove III, to Manhattan prosecutors who brought the charges against the mayor last year.

Mr. Bove justified the decision to ask for the dismissal by saying that the mayor’s indictment had limited Mr. Adams’s ability to cooperate in President Trump’s immigration crackdown. He also suggested that the indictment, which was handed up in September, threatened to interfere with the June 2025 mayoral primary, despite the nine-month interval between the two events.

Mr. Bove explicitly said that the Justice Department had made its decision without assessing the strength of the evidence against Mr. Adams or the legal theories undergirding the case. Instead, his letter criticized the U.S. attorney who brought it and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. He offered expressly political arguments for dropping the charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions from foreign nationals and bribery, asserting the urgency of Mr. Trump’s immigration objectives.

It will now fall to the acting head of the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, Danielle R. Sassoon, whether to heed Mr. Bove’s order to dismiss the charges “as soon as is practicable” by filing a motion with the judge. A spokesman for Ms. Sassoon’s office declined to comment.

The letter was a remarkable intervention in a high-profile public corruption prosecution, one that cast the independence of federal prosecutors into doubt given the way Mr. Adams has curried favor with Mr. Trump. Mr. Bove directed that the charges against Mr. Adams be dismissed without prejudice, suggesting that the case could be revived if merited — or if it pleased the president….

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“Fiery Directives Under Trump’s Justice Dept. Signal a Significant Shift”

NYT:

Hours after being sworn in as President Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi declared to the entire Justice Department work force, “This shameful era ends today.”

That assertion, in one of 14 memos she issued on Wednesday, underscored what many current and former law enforcement officials describe as a major — and alarming — departure from years of Justice Department practice in which it steered clear of political rhetoric. The new tone, they said, suggests the opposite, seeming to promise a campaign of intimidation against career prosecutors and agents viewed as insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump.

Such language is not unique to Ms. Bondi. Newly minted senior officials from powerful perches across the Justice Department have issued fiery broadsides against employees, denouncing “insubordination” or “abhorrent” conduct and, in one instance, vowing to pursue unspecified opponents of Mr. Trump’s cost-cutting efforts “to the ends of the Earth.”

One Justice Department lawyer who has worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations said the attorney general’s words were chilling in appearing to suggest that the new leadership of the department sees long-serving career lawyers as villains.

Another of Ms. Bondi’s memos urged “zealous” advocacy for the president’s agenda, part of a series of missives from top officials effectively demanding loyalty from their employees.

“I am not the president’s lawyer; I serve the people of the United States,” the lawyer said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “I’ve always been able to go to my supervisor and say, ‘I got this case and I’m uncomfortable with it.’ Based on the attorney general’s emails, it seems like those conversations are not welcome anymore, and that is scary.”

That memo warned that “any attorney who because of their personal political views or judgments declines to sign a brief or appear in court, refuses to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination, consistent with applicable law.”

It has long been the practice within the Justice Department that lawyers do not substitute their own views for the administration’s goals or the department’s policies. On rare occasions, however, lawyers may argue that they cannot make a good-faith argument for a particular position. To some Justice Department lawyers, the new directives are intended to nip any such internal disagreement before an objection can be raised.

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“Trump Pauses Enforcement of Law Banning Foreign Bribery”

NYT:

President Trump on Monday ordered a pause in the enforcement of a federal law aimed at curbing corruption in multinational companies, saying it creates an uneven playing field for American firms.

The law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, makes it illegal for companies that operate in the United States to pay foreign government officials to secure business deals. Though the law was enacted in 1977, federal authorities have more heavily enforced it since around 2005, cracking down on bribery, especially in countries where it is a common business practice.

Mr. Trump has objected to the law, which has led to charges and huge fines against some of the world’s largest companies. In November, U.S. prosecutors accused Gautam Adani, the Indian tycoon, of bribing Indian officials and charged him with fraud. His company has called those claims “baseless.”

Companies that have paid fines under the act include the engineering conglomerate Siemens and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson. In 2020, Goldman Sachs agreed to pay more than $2.9 billion to resolve charges that employees at its Malaysian subsidiary had paid $1 billion in bribes to foreign officials.

The law has been “abused in a manner that harms the interests of the United States,” Mr. Trump’s executive order on Monday said, adding that its enforcement was impeding foreign policy objectives.

The order bars federal authorities from starting any new investigations under the act or enforcing new actions for 180 days. The administration will also review existing investigations launched under the act, it said, to “restore proper bounds” on the law.

It also directs the attorney general to issue new guidance on how to enforce the act “that promotes American competitiveness and efficient use of federal law enforcement resources.”…

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