Category Archives: legal news

legal news

Special counsel closes in

I am not a lawyer … and I don’t even play one on TV, but I have a hunch about a legal proceeding that I want to share.

It is that former Vice President Mike Pence’s testimony this week before a grand jury examining the 1/6 insurrection well might be the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s idiotic quest for the presidency in 2024.

Special counsel Jack Smith summoned Pence to testify before the panel; Pence initially fought it, then he and the Pence-Trump legal team were told that the ex-VP had to testify.

Today, he did. Prosecutors sworn him to tell the truth and they then worked him over behind closed doors.

They likely asked Pence: What did Trump say to you in advance of the 1/6 assault on the government and what did you say to him?

I suppose it is possible that Pence could invoke the Fifth Amendment, which protects him against self-incrimination. Except that he isn’t the subject of the probe; Pence is a low-risk witness, given that on that terrible day he stood his ground and stood on the Constitution, which required him to do his duty that day, which was to preside over congressional certification of the Electoral College results from the 2020 presidential election.

Oh, yes, that’s the election that Joe Biden won over Donald Trump. 

Pence has told TV interviewers that Trump’s remarks that day were “reckless” and that they put “everyone in the Capitol that day” in dire danger. Indeed, traitors who stormed the Capitol threatened to assassinate Pence and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

What did Trump do to stop it? Not a damn thing!

That’s the kind of testimony that the former vice president of the United States can deliver to the special counsel and the grand jury that will determine whether to indict the former president of the United States.

My non-lawyerly gut tells me the special counsel’s hammer is about to hit home … as it must.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Move over, Clarence Thomas …

Now we hear that Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch might be in a bit of a jam over ethical conduct.

What the … ?

First it was Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginni, got caught up in The Big Lie nonsense over the 2020 presidential election. She attended the rally in which Donald Trump urged the angry crowd to march on the Capitol and “take back” our country. It didn’t work out well. Then the justice cast the lone vote against a decision requiring the ex-POTUS to turn over documents to the National Archives. A connection? Hmm … looks like it to me.

Then came the Harlan Crow matter, with the Dallas zillionaire lavishing gifts on the Thomases, which the justice didn’t report.

Now comes Justice Gorsuch, who reportedly sold a $2 million piece of property to an executive with a mega-legal firm that does business with the court.

It all calls to question the lax ethical standards intended to govern the behavior of the nine men and women who serve on the nation’s highest court.

There needs to be an ethical standard for the nation’s highest court. Chief Justice John Roberts so far has refused to act. The Senate, which must confirm nominees to the federal bench, can do the right thing, if it can muster up the will. So far it has refused.

I daresay the nation’s founders are likely spinning in their graves over the politicization of the SCOTUS. They sought to remove the judiciary from the political arena. Their experiment has failed, sad to say.

The high court demands lower courts adhere to ethical standards. Yet it doesn’t have any such standards for its own justices to follow.

It’s a shameful (or shameless) dereliction of duty.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Electoral consequences are, um, lasting

As if anyone needs reminding of the consequences of electing certain individuals to public office …

Still, I am going to offer this brief reminder.

Donald Trump, in just a single term as president, was able to get three individuals seated on the U.S. Supreme Court; the court now comprises what they call a conservative “supermajority.” The justices who sit on the court are likely to outlive their political benefactor by many years.

Lower courts, too, will bear the impact of the recent POTUS’s appointment powers. Witness the decision handed down in Amarillo by Matthew Kacsmaryk , a U.S. district judge who tossed out the abortion pill based seemingly on his own personal opposition to abortion. Trump nominated this individual to the district court bench, and the Senate confirmed him. Still, elections have consequences, yes?

This is the kind of decision voters need to ponder when they prepare to cast their ballots, either for governor or president.

Trump is just the latest in a long line of politicians with appointment power who — in my view — abused that power by appointing men and women who provide the correct answers to what they call “litmus test” questions. Trump vowed to appoint anti-abortion judges and he made good on that pledge.

Thus, we see the most indelible effect of the consequence of any presidential election.

What is so maddening about the federal judicial appointment process is how political it has become, which to my viewing is counter to what the founders envisioned when they granted federal judges lifetime seats on the bench. Their effort was to de-politicize the federal judiciary; instead, it appears to have become more politicized today than ever in our nation’s history.

But then again, when we realize the consequences we face when certain politicians get elected president, this is what we get.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Judicial activism anyone?

RICHFIELD, Utah — A federal judge in Amarillo, Texas, has offered yet another example of how the MAGA cult of the Repubican Party has turned traditional GOP orthodoxy on its ear.

The standard GOP mantra used to be that the party hated activist judges, that they shouldn’t “legislate from the bench.”

Well, welcome to the new world of GOP judicial activism.

It reared its repulsive puss in the form of U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who ruled this past week that the abortion drug mifepristone shouldn’t be used to terminate a pregnancy. He suspended its use, which the Food and Drug Administration approved more than 20 years ago, and which women for decades have relied on to end health-endangering pregnancies.

I write this blog while sitting in a community that likely endorses the judge’s activist stance. No worries. I’ll be gone in the morning.

To suggest that the judge has launched a legislative battle from the bench is to be guilty of grotesque understatement.

The judge is a Donald Trump appointee. He succeeded an iconic figure in Texas Panhandle judicial circles, the late Judge Mary Lou Robinson, who likely never — not in a million years — would have tossed out judicial precedent in the manner exhibited by her successor.

Kacsmaryk has done the dirty work of the GOP members of the MAGA cult in Congress. Never mind that most Republicans oppose the judge’s decision, along with a significant majority of all Americans, who want to protect a woman’s reproductive rights.

The Justice Department has filed an appeal with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and is preparing to take the matter to the top of the judicial food chain, the U.S. Supreme Court.

As for Judge Kacsmaryk, he has tossed aside GOP political precedent by invoking the most judicially activist position possible in wiping out women’s rights.

I am fairly confident that the women, along with many milliions of other Americans, are going to have their say when the 2024 election rolls around.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

It’s the ‘rule of law’

The “rule of law” has nearly become a cliche, given the frequency of its use by politicians on both sides of the great divide.

It is much more than that, of course. The rule of law needs to apply to every single citizen of this great country, even former presidents of the United States.

Thus, it is critical to view the indictment of Donald Trump on 34 counts relating to his hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels as a victory for the rule of law.

Trump’s allies on the right wing of the Republican Party say that an ex-POTUS is above being prosecuted, that the Manhattan district attorney overstepped his authority by persuading the grand jury to indict Trump.

The translation of that, naturally, is that the rule of law doesn’t apply to an ex-POTUS.

Baloney! It damn sure does apply. Indeed, it must apply if the judicial system is going to work as the founders designed it. Either we cherish the system or we toss it aside.

I am going to cherish it with the hope that the rule of law will run its complete course.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Come clean, Mr. Justice … or else!

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should be in a world of hurt right now, but he isn’t. Not by a long shot.

Why? Because the court on which he has served since 1991 has no rules governing its members’ conduct.

Oh, my … that needs to change!

It has been revealed that Thomas accepted ritzy travel gifts from a rich Republican donor, Harlan Crow of Texas, without reporting them to authorities. Thomas  now says he was advised by others that he didn’t need to do such a thing and, of course, accepting such extravagant gifts did nothing to influence his rulings on political matters.

Democrats are outraged over these findings. They have good reason to be angry. They also are a bit dispirited because they have few legislative options in Congress available to them.

Thomas is a walking case of judicial hypocrisy. The high court demands that lower courts set strict ethical standards and requires them to enforce them strictly. The SCOTUS, though, is immune from such protection. Justices are free to flout the rules whenever they please. Clarence Thomas is the worst of the bunch.

He needs to be impeached by Congress and put on trial for his ethical transgressions. Will it happen? Hah! Hardly.

The man is a disgrace to the court and to the nation.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

This ain’t Wal-Mart, Mr. Justice

Clarence Thomas once declared he is favors RVs and Wal-Mart parking lots over luxury vacation retreats.

He said he comes from “simple stock.”

Oh, really, Mr. Supreme Court Justice? How does he explain the luxurious vacations he and his wife, Ginni, took on the dime of a wealthy Republican donor? Well, he isn’t talking because the Supreme Court doesn’t have any ethics rules for justices to follow.

Justice Thomas is a hypocrite of the lowest order. He needs to be resign from the court. The House ought to impeach him. The Senate ought to try him and he ought to be removed from the court.

Recall, too, how Justice Thomas voted against rules sanctioning the 45th POTUS after it was revealed that Ginni Thomas is a vocal supporter of The Big Lie about the 2020 election, which she contends was “strolen” from the ex-POTUS.

Good grief! This baloney has got to stop.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Belief in the system

I happen to be a staunch and faithful believer in the U.S. criminal justice system, the one that relies on everyday folks such as you and me to deliver justice in the form they believe fits.

With that, it is incumbent on me to forgo any bitching about a system that could produce a verdict in a high-profile case involving a former POTUS who has just been indicted on unspecified charges involving a hush money payment he made to a woman with whom he allegedly had a one-night tumble in 2006.

I’ll tell you where I am going with this. Even though I want a criminal trial jury to convict Donald Trump of whatever he is being charged, I need to stipulate that I must accept an acquittal if that is what the jury decides in due course. I won’t like the verdict, but in the interest in fealty to my faith in the system, I need to accept it.

There is no way to predict what a trial jury would decide, even if it goes to trial. I am just preparing myself for the worst outcome, but you won’t see me marching in the streets to protest whatever a jury would decide.

Unlike the defendant in this case, I believe in the integrity of the system, in the Manhattan, N.Y., district attorney who presented the evidence to the grand jury and in the grand jurors who acted in good faith to deliver their indictment.

The ex-president won’t ever acknowledge that the system worked the way it is designed to work. Fine. Let him bitch.

I won’t stoop to his level of cynical ignorance.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

‘Protests’ … again? Good grief!

Let’s see how this will play out, given what happened the last time POTUS 45 called on his followers to “protest” an election result in which he lost.

The ex-POTUS appears to be headed for an indictment by a Manhattan, N.Y., grand jury on allegations that he misspent money to pay a porn star to be quiet about a tryst he said didn’t occur. Weird, eh?

Well, if an indictment is in this individual’s immediate future, we now can expect some “protests” from his MAGA followers. How might it end? Well, the 1/6 insurrection offers a glaring example of how “protests” such as what the ex-president is now calling for might end up. It will end badly.

The criminal justice system is doing its job. Pure and simple. There is no “rigging” of the system that is going to result in a former POTUS being indicted for criminal activity. The evidence is there. He directed his lawyer at the time to write a check to the porn star; the question is whether he violated the law in doing so.

I believe he did. But that’s just me.

As for the “protests,” the traitors who adhere to The Big Lie and who believe their hero did nothing wrong need to be very careful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

‘No!’ to using public money for payout

Dade Phelan is putting his foot down as speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and my hope is that the Legislature follows his lead.

Phelan opposes any notion of the Legislature appropriating taxpayer money to pay Attorney General Ken Paxton’s settlement with several lawyers who filed a whistleblower complaint against the state’s AG.

Paxton and the lawyers reached a settlement that requires Paxton to pay $3 million without admitting any guilt or issuing any apology for the complaint they filed. He will avoid any accountability for this latest (alleged) transgression.

Phelan told KTVT Channel 11 news that spending public money is an inappropriate use of taxpayers’ funds. I happen to stand with the speaker on that one. How does Paxton come up with the money he will have to pay? I don’t know, nor do I give a damn.

The settlement does spare the state from having to pay for an expensive trial, so in a significant sense the agreement is a win for Texans. That doesn’t justify spending public money to pay off the attorney general’s penalty for firing the lawyers who acted out of conscience to expose what they believe is corruption within the attorney general’s office.

My personal preference would be for a state trial jury to convict Paxton of securities fraud, a charge for which a Collin County grand jury indicted him back in 2015. Paxton has been skating around any accountability for that allegation almost since the day he took office.

My plea at this moment? Stand firm, Speaker Phelan … and don’t let the Texas House approve any public money to pay this settlement.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com