Category Archives: legal news

legal news

Cornyn pulls out of FBI search … good!

John Cornyn issued a statement today that says this: “Now more than ever the country needs a well-credentialed, independent FBI director. I’ve informed the administration that I’m committed to helping them find such an individual, and that the best way I can serve is continuing to fight for a conservative agenda in the U.S. Senate.”

The Republican U.S. senator from Texas had been considered a prime candidate for the FBI directorship. After all, he had served as a trial judge in Bexar County, a justice on the Texas Supreme Court and Texas attorney general before being elected to the Senate.

He would have been a terrible pick for Donald Trump to make to replace the fired FBI boss James Comey. Cornyn is too partisan, too political, too friendly — I only can assume — with the president to be the kind of “well-credentialed, independent FBI director” the agency needs in this critical time.

He has pulled his name out of the running for the FBI job. Good deal.

Many Americans’ hope now is that the president will find someone who fits the description of a tough-minded independent law enforcement official to lead the FBI.

Let’s get busy, Mr. President.

legal news, national news, political news

Listen to your fellow GOPers, Mr. President

Lindsey Graham isn’t exactly a huge fan of Donald J. Trump.

He ran against him for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Trump hurled a few insults at him. Graham said some unkind things in return.

But the U.S. senator from South Carolina is trying to implore the president to do the right thing — and avoid naming a politician to become the next director of the FBI.

Sen. Graham is talking specifically about Texas Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, who has emerged as one of the favorites to succeed James Comey at the FBI, whom Trump fired this past week.

Cornyn could face stiff resistance in the Senate if Trump selects him, even though Cornyn has been part of the “world’s greatest deliberative body” for some time now. He’s known to have friends on both sides of the aisle.

But the FBI needs a decidedly non-political director in this difficult time, Graham said. “I think it’s now time to pick somebody that comes from within the ranks or is such a reputation that has no political background at all,” he said. “John Cornyn is a wonderful man. Under normal circumstances, he would be a superb choice to be FBI director. But these are not normal circumstances. We’ve got a chance to reset here as a nation.”

“Reset” is a mild term. I prefer to think the FBI leadership needs a major overhaul.

It’s not that Comey was a bad director, despite what the president said about him. Word filtering out of Washington by those who know Comey well say the president’s description of him as a “showboat” just doesn’t square with the man’s reputation.

Sen. Graham’s assessment of a successor, though, is on target. The FBI needs to be led by someone who knows how to pursue an investigation to a comprehensive conclusion. I would have thought Comey is capable of doing that, which likely got him in trouble with Trump.

Cornyn may have great political skill. The agency needs someone who would cooperate fully with a special prosecutor — whom the Justice Department should name to handle this probe.

Sen. Cornyn’s political background is precisely the wrong fit for this job — at this time.

legal news, national news, political news

Now it’s the Democrats’ turn to play hardball

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer laid it on the line.

There shouldn’t be a Senate vote on the next FBI director until we get a special prosecutor appointed to continue the investigation into whether Donald John Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russians who sought to swing the 2016 election in Trump’s favor.

Sounds pretty straightforward, yes? Of course it does. I get it. I’ll bet the president gets it, too.

The president fired the former FBI director, James Comey, in a stunning personnel move that has confounded even the FBI and White House staffs. The message over why Trump acted has been muddled and uncertain; it remains so to this very day!

Democrats want a special prosecutor named; so do a growing number of Senate Republicans. I reckon that’s the hand Schumer is playing now as he threatens to hold up a vote on anyone nominated to lead the FBI.

My own bias and political leaning allows me to suggest that Schumer is on to something with this demand.

FBI must bow out of this probe

As Schumer noted to CNN, the FBI is linked to the Department of Justice, which is led by an attorney general who has recused himself from any Russia dealings. At least that Jeff Sessions has said, despite his reported involvement in recommending that Trump fire Comey … which the president said he decided to do before getting the recommendation. Do you see what I mean about muddled messages?

The point, though, is that we need to get a special prosecutor appointed and that person needs to get his or her feet planted firmly before we move ahead with a new FBI director.

Look at it this way: If the Republican leadership can block a nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court for no other reason than to play politics with the federal court system, it seems to me that Senate Democrats are standing on pretty firm ground in demanding a special prosecutor before considering an FBI appointment.

legal news, national news, political news

Don’t pick Sen. Cornyn to lead FBI, Mr. POTUS

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn has shown up on Donald J. Trump’s short list of possible nominees to become FBI director.

In the name of non-bias, non-political leanings and law enforcement professionalism, I am hoping that the president does not pick Sen. Cornyn to lead the FBI in this critical time.

James Comey got the boot from the FBI’s top job because — if we are to believe anything that comes out of the president’s mouth — he was spending too much time and energy on the “Russia thing.”

Truth be told, in my view, the next FBI director needs to spend a whole lot more time on Russia and related matters. Is John Cornyn the man to do the job? No way, dude!

Cornyn may get a good look

I’ve known Cornyn for a number of years in my capacity as a journalist first in Beaumont and then in Amarillo. We have had a nice professional relationship during those years. I’ve known him as a Texas Supreme Court justice, as a state attorney general and as a U.S. senator. I disagree with him politically, but he’s a gentleman.

Over the years, as my hair got grayer, Sen. Cornyn would needle me that I eventually would get as gray as he has been for decades. I’m still not there yet, although I’m close.

All that said, he is as wrong for the job of FBI director as anyone being considered. Why? He is a partisan hatchet man for the Senate’s Republican caucus. He’s the No. 2 man in the Senate GOP hierarchy and his main task in recent Senate sessions has been to ensure the election of more Republicans. I understand that’s part of his job and I respect that someone has to do it, that they need to fill the ranks with partisans on both sides of the aisle.

Cornyn’s highly political profile, though, makes him a terrible fit for the FBI director’s job. Comey was in the middle of an investigation that was looking into allegations that the Trump campaign was complicit in efforts by the Russian government to influence the 2016 election — seeking to help Trump get elected president.

Are we to believe that a member of the president’s own party who would get the task of leading the FBI and, presumably, continue that investigation will shed his partisan leanings?

The president needs to look within the law enforcement community to find a new FBI director. He needs to find someone who has no political axe to grind. He needs to nominate someone with zero political ties to the White House, or to the Congress.

John Cornyn is not the man for this job.

legal news, national news, political news

Congressional clown act isn’t so funny

The clowns who comprise a substantial portion of the U.S. Congress seem intent on deflecting criticism of the president’s firing of FBI Director James Comey.

They are staking out an openly transparent — and dubious — strategy in that attempt.

Donald J. Trump canned Comey while the FBI director was in the midst of an investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government’s effort to influence the 2016 presidential election.

It’s the timing of the dismissal that has drawn the incoming fire.

Congressional Republicans are defending the president’s action by saying something like this: Leftists are angry because Trump did something they wanted done this past autumn when Comey sent Congress that letter regarding Hillary Clinton’s e-mails; so now that they’re getting what they wanted in the first place, they should be happy, not angry.

I heard Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., make that argument this morning. I damn near pitched something heavy at my TV set.

That is not the issue, Sen. Paul!

It’s the timing, dude. The timing!

I’m one of those Americans who was angry at Comey for releasing that letter to Congress just 11 days before the presidential election. He sought to inform lawmakers that his office had found some more e-mails that needed some examination. It likely helped stall Clinton’s march to victory, although I am not going to heap all the cause for Hillary’s defeat on the FBI director; she and her campaign made plenty of mistakes all by themselves while Trump and his team were doing things right.

Did I ever think Comey should resign, or should be fired?

In addition to the timing of Trump’s dismissing of Comey we have this White House’s stumble-bum explanation, which simply doesn’t hold up. The president said he was upset at the way Comey handled the Hillary e-mail matter. What the …?! Donald Trump the candidate thought Comey had done exactly the correct thing at the time — and he said so repeatedly as news was breaking in October.

Then we hear that Trump became angry because Comey was exerting too much energy on the Russia hacking matter, but then comes word from some in the White House that the firing had nothing to do with the Russia investigation. Holy mackerel!

Deputy White House press flack Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it’s time to “move on,” away from the Russia matter. Oh, no it isn’t, young lady! Far from it.

But this crap from congressional Republicans and Trumpkins all across the land that those who are critical of the firing are the same folks who wanted Comey canned in the first place are missing the point by a country mile.

Timing, as they say, is everything.

legal news

Break up the 9th U.S. Circuit? C’mon, get real

Donald J. Trump keeps ratcheting up his open combat with the federal judicial system.

The president wants to break up the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals because — doggone it, anyway! — the judges keep issuing rulings with which he disagrees.

Poor guy. That’s how it goes sometimes, Mr. President.

The 9th Circuit has ruled against the president’s ban on refugees seeking entry into this country from majority-Muslim countries. That just won’t stand in Trump’s world. So his solution is to dismember the court, which is based in San Francisco and is considered to be arguably the most liberal appellate court in the federal judicial network.

He said lawyers shop for friendly judicial venues and the president believes the 9th Circuit is a favorite forum to hear cases pitting the federal government against anyone else.

Give me a break.

Conservative courts have ruled against liberal presidents. Indeed, liberal courts have ruled against conservative presidents as well. Have presidents of either stripe been so thin-skinned that they’ve sought to break up an appellate court? Not until this one took office.

Leave the court alone, Mr. President.

A better option for the president would be to craft laws that can withstand judicial challenge. Federal judges in Hawaii, Washington state and Maryland all have found sufficient fault with the Trump administration’s effort to ban refugees to rule against them. Appellate judges have upheld the lower court rulings.

In a strange way this kind of reminds me of when President Franklin Roosevelt sought to tinker with the federal judiciary by “packing” the U.S. Supreme Court with justices more to his liking; he sought to expand the number of justices on the nation’s highest court. He didn’t succeed — thank goodness.

To be sure, Trump isn’t the only recent president to bully the federal judiciary. Barack Obama called out the Supreme Court while delivering a State of the Union speech in 2010 over its Citizens United ruling that allowed unlimited political contributions by corporations. The president was wrong to do so — in that venue — with the justices sitting directly in front of him.

The nation’s founders sought to establish an independent federal judiciary that ostensibly should be immune from political pressure. The president is seeking to bully the court system through a number of methods: He calls out judges individually and criticizes the courts’ decisions openly and with extreme harshness.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals needs to remain intact and the president needs to live with the consequences of how it interprets the U.S. Constitution.

legal news

RIP, Racehorse Haynes

I just heard that one of the more fascinating characters I’ve had the pleasure of meeting has passed away.

Richard “Racehorse” Haynes died early today. He was 90.

Man, I’ve got a short story I want to tell. So I believe I will.

Many years ago, when I was living and working in Beaumont, Texas, I walked down the street from the Beaumont Enterprise — where I worked as editorial page editor — to the Jefferson County Courthouse.

I approached the front door and waved at a fellow I knew, a local lawyer named Gilbert Adams, who motioned for me to approach. I did and at that, Adams introduced me to Racehorse Haynes, who standing next to Adams puffing on a pipe. “Hey, Race,” Adams said, “I want you to meet this fellow.” We shook hands and Adams then informed Haynes that I was editor of the local newspaper.

So help, as God is my witness, when Haynes heard that that I was a member of the media, his eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. We stood there for seemingly hours. I barely got a word in edge-wise. Haynes regaled me with his tales of his relationships with the media; he managed to tell me why he was in Beaumont in the first place, which was to assist Adams on a case that Adams was working on.

I ended up having to break off the visit. I am pretty sure it would have gone on until the next great flood.

Two things stood out about Haynes, whose reputation as one of the nation’s top criminal defense lawyers was well-known; I certainly knew of him. I knew that he was from Houston and that he had defended some very high-profile defendants.

The first thing I recalled at the time was how grandfatherly he appeared. He was not a physically imposing man. He was dressed in a plain dark suit and he looked like, well, anything but a flamboyant barrister.

The second thing, of course, was how he garrulous he was with a media guy. His status as a “famed” lawyer didn’t seem to impede his willingness to talk about anything with yours truly.

We said goodbye and went our separate ways.

Years later, I moved to Amarillo to become editorial page editor of the Globe-News. Then I learned of Haynes’ connection to the Texas Panhandle. It was where a Tarrant County judge had moved the trial of one Cullen Davis, the Fort Worth millionaire who was accused of murdering the live-in boyfriend of his estranged wife and his 12-year-old stepdaughter. Davis was thought at the time to be the richest man ever accused of a capital crime in the United States.

A Potter County jury acquitted Davis, whose lead counsel in that trial was Racehorse Haynes.

So, one of the nation’s more notable lawyers has passed from the scene. I just felt compelled to tell you my Racehorse Haynes Story.

May you rest in peace … “Race.”

legal news, national news, political news

No intention to lecture AG about the law, but really …

I am acutely aware that Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is an educated man.

He went to law school; passed the Alabama state bar; served as a federal prosecutor; tried to become a federal judge in the 1980s, but was rejected by the U.S. Senate because of some things he reportedly said about black people; then he was elected to the Senate.

He now serves as U.S. attorney general, thanks to an appointment by Donald John Trump.

There. Having stipulated all of that, I need to remind the attorney general that he should not disrespect the tenet of judicial review that the nation’s founders established when they formed our republic more than two centuries ago.

I say this with no desire to lecture the AG about the law, or the U.S. Constitution.

However, when he pops off about a federal judge sitting on the bench “on an island in the Pacific,” he has disrespected one of the basic frameworks set aside by those founders.

The judge presides over a federal court in Hawaii, one of the nation’s 50 states. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson ruled against Trump’s temporary travel ban on constitutional grounds. The travel ban is now heading to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

You’ll recall, too, that the president himself referred to another federal jurist in Washington state as a “so-called judge” when he struck down an earlier travel ban involving refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries. Trump might need a lecture about the Constitution and the separation of powers written into it; he might need to be told about how the founders intended for the judiciary to be independent of political pressure. Given that Trump had zero government experience prior to becoming — gulp! — president, he might be unaware of the not-so-fine print written in the Constitution.

The attorney general should know better than to disparage a federal judge in the manner that he did.

An island in the Pacific? C’mon, Mr. Attorney General.

Suck it up. Let the courts do their job. Sure, you are entitled to challenge court decisions’ legality. However, let’s stop the petulant put-downs.

Same thing goes for you, too, Mr. President.

legal news

Mr. AG, Hawaii isn’t just an ‘island in the Pacific’

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said this on a radio talk show: “I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power.”

Hmm. An island in the Pacific? Was it, oh, Fiji? Palau? Tahiti?

Oh, no. The “island in the Pacific” is Hawaii, one of the 50 United States of America. Hawaii is governed by the very same federal government as all the rest of the states.

The object of the attorney general’s criticism, though, is a federal judge — a Hawaii native — who ruled against Donald J. Trump’s second travel ban that bars Muslims from several countries from entering the United States. The ruling came from U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson, who happens to live in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.

Sessions blows that dog whistle

Hawaii’s two U.S. senators have reacted strongly to Sessions’ statement, made on talk show host Mark Levin’s program. The Huffington Post reported: “Sen. Mazie Hirono likened his remarks about Watson to ‘dog whistle politics.’” That identifies the kind of coded remarks meant to appeal mainly to certain segments of the population. Republicans and Democrats both have their “bases” that respond instinctively to certain political “dog whistles.”

The Huffington Post also reported: “In a statement later Thursday, Hirono, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee that vets and confirms federal judges, called Sessions’ suggestion that Watson is somehow unable to carry out his duties impartially ‘dangerous, ignorant, and prejudiced.’

“’I am frankly dumbfounded that our nation’s top lawyer would attack our independent judiciary,’ she said. ‘But we shouldn’t be surprised. This is just the latest in the Trump Administration’s attacks against the very tenets of our Constitution and democracy.’”

I feel the need to stipulate once again: Hawaii isn’t some remote outpost. Judge Watson adheres to the same oath that the attorney general himself took when he joined the Justice Department.

These attacks on the “independent judiciary” have to stop.

Immediately!

International news, legal news

Karma might have struck once again

Oh, the irony is too rich to ignore.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel is going to hear a case involving a young man who says he is being deported illegally by the federal government.

Judge Curiel isn’t just any ol’ federal jurist. He happens to someone whom presidential candidate Donald John Trump slammed for being of “Mexican heritage” while he was hearing a case involving the defunct Trump University.

Curiel now gets to hear a case regarding the deportation of Juan Manuel Montes. He got the assignment by luck of the draw, it turns out. Montes, who’s now 23, is one of those “Dreamers” who came here when he was 9 years of age and had obtained DACA status.

Why is this case so tantalizing? It’s because Curiel is an American; born in Indiana and educated in the United States. He is a fine jurist. He’ll now get to hear a case brought by a young man who contends that the federal government didn’t provide sufficient documentation requiring him to be sent back to Mexico.

Judge Curiel’s citizenship didn’t stop Trump from defaming him during the 2016 presidential campaign by alleging that his Mexican heritage disqualified him from judging the Trump U case fairly. Trump, you’ll recall, opened his presidential campaign by declaring his intention to build a wall across our southern border to keep all those immigrants who were coming here to commit heinous crimes.

Stand tall, Judge Curiel

The wall? Blocking immigrants from Mexico? The judge’s parents are of Mexican descent? Why, of course he cannot judge the Trump U case fairly and without bias, according to Donald Trump.

As it turned out, Trump settled that matter with a $25 million payout to those who complained about the “education” they received. The president didn’t admit to any wrongdoing … quite naturally.

How will Judge Curiel do with the Montes deportation case? I am confident he’ll judge the case the way judges are supposed to judge such matters.

If the case goes against the federal government, though, expect the president to launch yet another tweet tirade.

Don’t you just love it when karma bites back?