Dear listeners,
Sean Combs was indicted in September and a jury is now being selected for his eight-week RICO trial — lightning-fast pacing for a complex federal criminal case. As Ken notes, Combs has been held in custody, which is a reason his legal team would be inclined to hurry. Additionally, the government’s need to prove long-ago acts based on the recollections of not-always-reliable witnesses is another reason Combs would want to hurry to trial: it’s best not to wait for the government to get more of its ducks in a row.
In the Alien Enemies Act cases, we’ve now gotten a ruling that gets at the heart of the policy question: whether there is an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” that triggers presidential powers under the law in the first place. A ruling in the Southern District of Texas says no — but it gets there with logic that Ken and I find somewhat odd, and that seems to create an opening for the Trump administration to get its way by simply being less honest in its declarations under the AEA. (After we recorded, federal courts in New York and Colorado also enjoined AEA removals with their own analyses of why the law doesn’t apply — we’ll take those cases up next week.)
In a case involving a removal to the Gambia, ICE contends it doesn’t matter that it violated a court order about how to remove Sering Ceesay, since he’d still be removable even if they did everything right. That’s not washing with the courts — though as we note, the fact that Ceesay’s case has been ongoing for more than a decade points to the need to expand the capacity of the immigration courts.
Perkins Coie won a permanent injunction in its lawsuit over the president’s executive order targeting the firm, and in the ruling granting the injunction, Long-Suffering Federal Judge Beryl Howell took a shot at the many firms that chose to settle with the administration instead of fighting. Meanwhile, the firms that settled have been insisting that they agreed to very little, and we may be about to get some information about how true that is, since Trump is making noise about directing firms to take on pro bono cases defending cops accused of misconduct. And Mark Zaid, a lawyer with a specialized practice representing government whistleblowers and people accused of mishandling classified information, is suing over Trump’s personal revocation of his own security clearance.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
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