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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • In related news

    While Trump has functionally escaped legal jeopardy by winning the election, the other criminal defendant breathing a sigh of relief after Trump’s election is Mayor Eric Adams, who is currently scheduled to go on trial in April on corruption charges. Thanks to Trump, the mayor’s day in court may never come.

    Damien Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District whose office indicted Adams, is a presidential appointee who will almost certainly be replaced by Trump. Recall that back in 2017, less than two months into the first Trump term, his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, abruptly and publicly fired 46 U.S. Attorneys who had been appointed by President Obama. That list included Preet Bharara, a mentor and predecessor of Williams.

    After getting rid of Bharara, Trump named — and later fired — Geoffrey Berman as his successor. Berman’s days were numbered when he began investigating and prosecuting members of Trump’s inner circle; Berman was replaced by Jay Clayton, a Wall Street securities attorney and golf buddy of the president.

    It’s hard to imagine that Williams will not be replaced by Trump and gone long before Adams’s trial date. And that’s where things get interesting.

    It’s not at all clear that a new Trump-picked prosecutor will continue the corruption case against Adams, especially in light of the subtle political quasi-alliance between Trump and the mayor. “I know what it’s like to be persecuted by the DOJ for speaking out against open borders,” Trump semi-joked at the nationally televised Al Smith charity dinner. “We were persecuted, Eric. I was persecuted, and so are you, Eric.”

    Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20241113121556/https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trumps-big-win-was-also-a-win-for-eric-adams.html

























  • Related article that’s not as good and on a crappier website, but has at least one passage that makes an important observation in passing - holy crap were there a lot of highly educated and highly paid legal experts who went on TV and said obvious bullshit

    It was clear after Trump’s loss in 2020 — even before Jan. 6 — that his conduct warranted serious legal scrutiny by the Justice Department, particularly in the area of potential financial crimes. But that probe, which could and should have been pursued by Biden’s U.S. Attorney and aspiring attorney general in Manhattan, somehow never materialized.

    Garland’s defenders over the years — including many Democratic lawyers who regularly appear on cable news — claimed that Garland and the department were simply following a standard, “bottom-up” investigative effort. Prosecutors would start with the rioters, on this theory, and then eventually get to Trump.

    This never made any sense.

    It did not reflect some unwritten playbook for criminal investigations. In fact, in criminal cases involving large and potentially overlapping groups of participants — as well as serious time sensitivity — good prosecutors try to get to the top as quickly as possible.

    The Justice Department can — and should — have quickly pursued the rioters and Trump in parallel. The fact that many legal pundits actually defended this gross dereliction of duty — and actually argued that this was the appropriate course — continues to amaze me.

    Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/aWmXf