Rudy G. hires Jon Sale

Yours truly is quoted in the Herald article praising Rudy for the hire.  It's a smart move.

A former Watergate prosecutor based in Miami may have a big say in whether Rudy Giuliani complies with a subpoena from lawmakers conducting impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives.

Giuliani has tapped Miami-based veteran attorney Jon A. Sale, of counsel with Nelson Mullins, to represent him before the congressional inquiry into whether President Donald Trump improperly pressured Ukraine’s president for a political favor.

“This subpoena is very complex because it raises a lot of issues — including privilege and constitutional issues — so it requires serious analysis,” Sale said in a brief telephone interview Tuesday afternoon. “There’s a lot of work involved here.”

A former New York University law school classmate of Giuliani, Sale was a junior prosecutor during the Watergate probe and is often described as the dean of the white-collar defense bar in South Florida.

Your new chair of the Committee on Audits and Administrative Office Accountability .... is .....

Drumroll please...
....

Chief Judge K. Michael Moore.

Congrats on the appointment by Chief Justice John Roberts.

Other appointments are listed here, including Judge Kethledge as the Chair on the Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules.

Rosh Hashanah

Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish new year, which is celebrated yesterday and today. Schools and state courts were closed yesterday. But the feds were open. And the 11th Circuit issued this opinion regarding Scott Rothstein, affirming his 50 year sentence. They couldn’t have waited a few days to issue the opinion?

In other news, there’s a new baseball smuggling case. The last one, a trial in front of Judge Kathleen Williams, is on appeal. The Sun-Sentinel has the details on the new matter:

A Cuban national in South Florida is accused of running a smuggling operation that moved Cuban baseball players through Mexico and into the major leagues in exchange for a large percentage of their contracts.
After being deported from Mexico in June, Tomas Valle Valdivia, 44, faces new smuggling charges in Miami. Prosecutors say he is part of a criminal enterprise that has profited for years off the black market for Cuban ballplayers.
***
Valdivia, also known as “Tomasito,” is accused of using go-fast boats to smuggle one player off the island in October 2013 and another at an undetermined time. Neither player is identified in court documents, but the first appears to be Cincinnati Reds pitcher Raisel Iglesias.
Court documents claim the agreed-upon price for the player’s smuggling was 20% of his $27 million contract. Iglesias was the Reds’ only Cuban defector in 2013, according to the website baseball-reference.com. He signed a $27 million contract in 2014.
RELATED: White Sox's Jose Abreu says he ate fake passport, washed it down with beer on plane to U.S. »
In addition, Tomasito’s Lawyer, Joaquin Perez, said the player is “not doing so well for Cincinnati.” Iglesias finished last season with a 3-12 won-lost record.
Perez made the comments Thursday in Miami federal court, where he argued unsuccessfully for Tomasito’s release from custody.

“We don’t go about our work in a political manner.”

That was Chief Justice Roberts at a speech earlier this week.  More from The NY Times:

But he added that the outside criticism did not affect the court’s independence. “A lot of the criticism is based on a misperception,” he said.

People often note that the court is made up of five Republican appointees and four Democratic ones, he said, and they expect predictable 5-to-4 decisions along those lines.

“Last year,” he said, “we had 19 5-to-4 decisions, and seven of them were divided with the five justices appointed by Republican presidents in the majority and the four justices appointed by Democratic presidents in dissent.”

“That shouldn’t come as a surprise because we don’t go about our work in a political manner,” he said.

The last term’s two biggest decisions, on partisan gerrymandering and adding a question on citizenship to the census, both featured controlling opinions written by the chief justice, who was appointed by President George W. Bush. Both were closely divided. In the gerrymandering case, Chief Justice Roberts voted with the other Republican appointees. In the key part of the census decision, he voted with the four Democratic appointees.

This was a funny exchange:

And, of course, Justice Ginsburg brings her experience as a rock star,” he said.

Asked if he could best Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at push-ups, he said that would not be a fair fight.

“She has so much less to push up,” he said. “I can comfortably say that I can bench press her weight and she can’t bench press mine.”

Asked for his favorite classic rock band, Chief Justice Roberts, 64, picked the Byrds, saying he had seen them not long ago. “I’ve never been in a room with more 65-year-old men with ponytails,” he said.

He also endorsed the decision to award the Nobel Prize in Literature to Bob Dylan, an observation that was greeted by applause.

How fast is Robert Luck's star rising?

So fast that he had his Florida Supreme Court investiture today, weeks after he was nominated to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals (that nomination is still working its way through the system). Amazing! Good for Justice (soon to be Judge) Luck. Here are some pictures from Tallahassee.com. From a quick scroll of Facebook, it looks like it was an amazing turnout of Miami lawyers and judges (both state and federal). Pretty cool that so many people flew up.

Also in Tallahassee, Miami lawyers Tara Kawass and Chris DeCoste have started trial in State v. Katie Magbanua, one of the highest profile cases in the country right now. The co-defendant, Sigfredo Garcia, is represented by Sa'am Zangeneh. The State is seeking the death penalty against Garcia. More from Tallahassee.com. This might be the first time the blog has cited that newspaper twice in one post.  (Full disclosure, I represent someone who has not been charged in the case.)

And let me be a proud dad for a minute and also post about my daughter Nicole, who has this op-ed in today's Sun-Sentinel. It's on climate change. The intro:

Protesting at last Friday’s global climate strike isn’t enough. Yes, it is amazing that you went. It is incredible that so many people care about the climate that they would miss their jobs, or an important school test, or anything else they may have had.

But if we do not continue to make our voices heard once the strike is over, all of it will be for nothing. Every day, we need to talk about solutions, lobby the government, and change easy habits that can help reduce our collective carbon footprint. When events happen in your community, go to them. When you can, spread awareness to your peers.

Because if the number of people showing up for the environment Sept. 20 showed up every day, we would not face this issue. We would have governments scrambling to keep up with the demands from young people, and old people, and everyone in between.

Unstoppable

If I were her age and had suffered the health set backs that she has had, I would not have the energy to be on the speaker circuit.  (I don't have that energy now!).  But RBG is pretty amazing.  From USA Today:

Over her 86½ years on earth, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been lauded as a women's rights pioneer, a Supreme Court justice and a cultural icon. These days, she receives hearty ovations just for staying on the job.

To satisfy some of her liberal allies, she must do that for at least another 16 months.

Fresh off three weeks of radiation treatment for her fourth bout with cancer, the woman fondly known as the "Notorious RBG" is traveling the nation giving speeches, staging conversations and accepting awards and honorary degrees. By demonstrating her vitality before adoring audiences, she hopes to tamp down concerns about her longevity.

"As cancer survivors know, that dread disease is a challenge, and it helps to know that people are rooting for you. Now, it's not universal," she quipped Thursday night at the famed 92nd Street Y in New York City. She vowed to stay on the job "as long as I'm healthy and mentally agile."

The concerns are based on the political calendar. Ginsburg must remain on the nation's highest court at least until January 2021 to avoid giving President Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Senate the opportunity to replace her. Such a doomsday scenario for liberals would give conservatives a 6-3 hold on the high court – solidifying their majority, perhaps for decades to come.

***
Ginsburg resumes her national hopscotching tour Monday at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., where she will appear before about 1,600 fans. The following week, she will be at Amherst College in western Massachusetts.

The court's 2019 term begins Oct. 7, briefly keeping Ginsburg in the nation's capital, where her latest accolade was a two-story mural unveiled Monday on a downtown D.C. building. When two weeks of oral arguments are completed, she is scheduled to travel cross country to California.

"It's a travel schedule that would exhaust the rest of us," says Marge Baker, executive vice president of the liberal group People for the American Way. “This is a statement that’s she’s making, and she seems to draw energy from it.”

For years, Ginsburg has traveled and spoken publicly more than most of her colleagues. Before Associate Justice Antonin Scalia's death in 2016, the two ideological opposites occasionally made joint appearances that called attention to their longtime friendship. Ginsburg has made more than 170 public appearances in the last five years; only Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor has done more.

"When I am active, I am much better than when I am just lying about feeling sorry for myself," Ginsburg said at the Yale Club event. "The necessity to get up and go is stimulating."

No bond for AA employee who sabotaged a plane

From Fox News:

Prosecutors said Alani glued styrofoam inside the nose of the aircraft that disabled a part used to gauge airspeed and other critical flight data. Pilots detected the issue before takeoff, and a subsequent inspection discovered the problem.

Airport surveillance captured Alani, who walks with a limp, working on the plane's nose for about seven minutes. He was identified by co-workers.

After his arrest earlier this month, he told agents he acted “out of my evil side” and “wanted to do something to delay” the plane “to get overtime” for maintenance repairs, Assistant U.S. Attorney Maria Medetis told the judge Wednesday.

While Alani is not yet charged with a terror-related crime, Medetis said the potential links to the Islamic State give rise to the possibility that his actions had a darker purpose beyond what he insisted was a labor issue.

The judge ultimately denied Alani bail.

Whenever I hear the word “sabotage,” I think of this.

Who was the only Supreme Court Justice ever impeached?

Answer: Samuel Chase. This Washington Post story has the interesting story, which shows that judges shouldn't always just side with prosecutors:

Samuel Chase was a frequent subject of the rumor mill for his entire life. As a young lawyer in Annapolis, Md., in the 1760s, he was expelled from a debating society for “extremely irregular and indecent” behavior. He was also an early critic of the Stamp Act and headed up Anne Arundel County’s chapter of the Sons of Liberty.

His height and broadness added to his gruff and intimidating personality. He also had a reddish-brown complexion, earning him the nickname “Old Bacon Face” — which some might consider its own impeachable offense.

***

President George Washington nominated Chase to the Supreme Court in 1796. At the time, though, the highest court in the land had little to do, so justices still served on lower courts.

And those lower courts are where Chase’s problems arose.

While presiding over the 1800 sedition trial of Thomas Cooper, Chase railed against Cooper during his instructions to the jury, seeming to act more as a prosecutor than a judge.

Before a treason trial in Philadelphia, he showed defense attorneys his opinion before the trial had even taken place. He later sentenced the man to death. (President John Adams pardoned him.)

At a sedition trial in Richmond, he sat a juror who said he had already made up his mind that the defendant was guilty.

And while presiding over a grand jury in Delaware, Chase angrily refused to dismiss a grand jury after it declined to charge a man with sedition.

But all of that is background to why he ended up getting impeached:

Once they had the reins of power, the Democratic Republicans overturned a law that had created lower courts in a bid to limit the power of Federalist judges installed by Adams.

But that didn’t stop Chase. In 1803, before a Baltimore jury, Chase denounced the Democratic Republicans for overturning the law.

When Jefferson found out about it, he sent a letter to a congressman friend strongly suggesting that — cough cough, hint hint — only Congress could do something about Chase.

The next year, the House voted 73-32 to impeach him, charging that he “tend[ed] to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested.”

The Senate trial took place in February 1805. Over 10 days, senators heard from more than 50 witnesses, according to Rehnquist. Chase maintained that he could not be impeached for poor judgment, but only indictable offenses.

Two-thirds majorities were needed to convict on each of the eight articles of impeachment. If the votes had gone strictly down party lines, Democratic Republicans would have had more than enough; at the time, they dominated the Senate 25 to nine, according to the Senate Historical Office.
But that isn’t how the votes went. Though majorities found Chase guilty on three of the eight articles, none passed the two-thirds threshold.

Old Bacon Face had dodged the frying pan.

And a precedent had been set, Rehnquist said, that “a judge’s judicial acts may not serve as a basis for impeachment.”