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‘Hellbent on hiding truth’: Dem leader pounces as DOJ official hints at holding back files
The top Democrat in the Senate has directly responded to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche after he said that "thousands" of Jeffrey Epstein files would be withheld by the Department of Justice despite a law requiring "all" documents to be released by Friday.
"I expect that we're going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks. So today, several hundred thousand. And then over the next couple weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more," Blanche told Fox News on Friday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer responded by indicating that Democrats would not stand for the Trump DOJ flouting the law.
"The law Congress passed and President Trump signed was clear as can be - the Trump administration had 30 days to release ALL the Epstein files, not just some. Failing to do so is breaking the law. This just shows the Department of Justice, Donald Trump, and Pam Bondi are hellbent on hiding the truth," Schumer insisted. "Senate Democrats are working closely with attorneys for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and with outside legal experts to assess what documents are being withheld and what is being covered up by Pam Bondi. We will not stop until the whole truth comes out."
"People want the truth and continue to demand the immediate release of all the Epstein files. This is nothing more than a cover up to protect Donald Trump from his ugly past," he added.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) suggested that Bondi would be "prosecuted" if the DOJ does not release the full Epstein files on Friday.
Fani Willis denies Trump campaign rumor of relationship with gang member: report
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is reportedly pushing back on rumors being spread by the Trump campaign in a TV ad.
Willis, who it was recently reported will be seeking more than a dozen indictments in the near future in her investigation into 2020 election tampering, called the allegations “derogatory and false" in an internal email, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's report on Wednesday.
"Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Wednesday flatly denied that she had a relationship with a former client and other rumors spread by former President Donald Trump in a new campaign ad," the outlet reported. "In an email to her colleagues, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Willis called the information in a television spot bankrolled by the Trump campaign 'derogatory and false.' She urged her staff not to respond to any of the allegations."
AJC senior reporter Tamar Hallerman included the following quote from the Willis email:
“You may not comment in any way on the ad or any of the negativity that may be expressed against me, your colleagues, this office in the coming days, weeks or months,” Willis wrote in the email, sent early Wednesday. “We have no personal feelings against those we investigate or prosecute and we should not express any.”
IN OTHER NEWS: Media blitz by Trump's lawyer violates D.C. criminal rules: legal experts
Here's what she denied:
"In the minute-long ad, titled 'The Fraud Squad,' the narrator refers to Willis as 'Biden’s newest lackey.' It says that Willis presided over a sharp rise of violent crimes in Atlanta and highlights her office being disqualified from investigating Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in her long-running election interference case due to a political conflict of interest," the report states. "But the most incendiary allegation is that Willis 'got caught hiding a relationship with a gang member she was prosecuting.' It cites as evidence a Jan. 25, 2023, article in Rolling Stone."
‘This man cannot shut up’: Ex-judge says Trump is headed towards a gag order
The judge in Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 election conspiracy case is likely to issue a gag order in response to the former president’s incendiary rhetoric, a legal expert said Monday.
Retired California Superior Court Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell, during an appearance on CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins,” said one of the former president’s social media posts in particular was “clearly a threat.”
Cordell’s comments came in response to a question from Collins over whether Trump’s all-caps Truth Social post on Friday in which he wrote "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!" would likely influence Judge Tanya Chutkan’s decision over whether to issue a protective order.
“I don't know necessarily that that quote impacts the protective order, but that certainly would get me thinking if I were the trial judge about a gag order in this case,” Cordell said.
“It's clearly a threat, and a good trial judge doesn't just look at the law, you use common sense.”
Cordell said the timing of Trump’s post, the day after he was arraigned, would also likely figure into how a judge would look at the rhetoric.
Cordell said she believes a gag order is likely and that “my guess is Trump would violate it in a heartbeat and then we'll see what the judge does in terms of consequences for violating yet another court order.”
Seeking clarification, Collins asked: “So you think there will be a gag order here? At least you think that there should be?”
“I absolutely can see it coming because this man cannot shut up. He's a ‘chatty Charlie’ and he's going to just talk and talk and he really doesn't care about rules that say you can speak or cannot speak,” Cordell said.
“So this is where the test of a good trial judge comes about. If you're going to have a fair trial, it's going to be by the rules set by that person in the black robe. And if the rules are you do not talk about this other than in the court, because it's not punishment it's to ensure fair trial. If that doesn't happen, there have to be immediate consequences to violating a court order.
“Only in that way can everyone have respect for the system.”
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Trump lashes out at Jack Smith and Judge Chutkan hours before his lawyers face critical deadline
Donald Trump launched a fresh attack on special counsel Jack Smith and U.S. District Court judge Tanya Chutkan hours before his legal team has been ordered to answer for his previous comments about his prosecution.
The special counsel's office asked Chutkan to set limits on what Trump's team could do with evidence shared with them after Trump posted an apparent threat against witnesses in the case, and the judge set a deadline for 5 p.m. Monday to respond to that motion -- and the former president continued commenting.
"Deranged Jack Smith is going before his number on draft pick, the Judge of his 'dreams' (WHO MUST BE RECUSED!), in an attempt to take away my FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS," Trump posted on his Truth Social website. "This, despite the fact that he, the DOJ, and his many Thug Prosecutors, are illegally leaking, everything and anything, to the Fake News Media!!!"
Prosecutors sought in their original protective order request to prohibit Trump's attorneys from providing copies of "sensitive" details from grand jury transcripts and other evidence to the ex-president because they feared he would publicly share them or take other actions that could possibly obstruct the case.
READ MORE: 'What's worth that?': Lindsey Graham buried for latest 'groveling' claims about Trump
Trump could be shown those materials under those restrictions but would not be allowed to take down personal identifying information from those documents.
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‘Hellbent on hiding truth’: Dem leader pounces as DOJ official hints at holding back files
The top Democrat in the Senate has directly responded to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche after he said that "thousands" of Jeffrey Epstein files would be withheld by the Department of Justice despite a law requiring "all" documents to be released by Friday.
"I expect that we're going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks. So today, several hundred thousand. And then over the next couple weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more," Blanche told Fox News on Friday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer responded by indicating that Democrats would not stand for the Trump DOJ flouting the law.
"The law Congress passed and President Trump signed was clear as can be - the Trump administration had 30 days to release ALL the Epstein files, not just some. Failing to do so is breaking the law. This just shows the Department of Justice, Donald Trump, and Pam Bondi are hellbent on hiding the truth," Schumer insisted. "Senate Democrats are working closely with attorneys for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and with outside legal experts to assess what documents are being withheld and what is being covered up by Pam Bondi. We will not stop until the whole truth comes out."
"People want the truth and continue to demand the immediate release of all the Epstein files. This is nothing more than a cover up to protect Donald Trump from his ugly past," he added.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) suggested that Bondi would be "prosecuted" if the DOJ does not release the full Epstein files on Friday.
‘The brink of illegitimacy’: Professors warn no turning back for ‘noxious’ Supreme Court
Two American university professors Friday warned the "noxious" Supreme Court can no longer be saved.
Harvard law professor Ryan Doerfler and Yale law professor Samuel Moyn wrote an opinion piece published by The Guardian about how the high court's legitimacy has been increasingly damaged under President Donald Trump's second term. Conservative justices have handed Trump and the MAGA movement a number of wins, including overturning of Roe v. Wade, "what remains of the Voting Rights Act," and losing its "nonpartisan image."
The role of the court has shifted and with the conservative majority, the liberal justices had previously "proceeded as if their conservative peers would continue to take their own institution’s legitimacy seriously."
But over the last several months, that has also changed.
"Yet with the conservative justices shattering the Supreme Court’s non-partisan image during Trump’s second term, liberals are not adjusting much," Doerfler and Moyn wrote. "The liberal justices – Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor – have become much more aggressive in their dissents. But they disagree with one another about how far to concede that their conservative colleagues have given up any concern for institutional legitimacy. Encouragingly, Jackson pivoted to 'warning the public that the boat is sinking' – as journalist Jodi Kantor put it in a much-noticed reported piece. Jackson’s fellow liberals, though, did not follow her in this regard, worrying her strategy of pulling the 'fire alarm' was 'diluting' their collective 'impact.'"
By now, Trump has used a "shadow docket" of emergency orders to his advantage and to advance his policies.
"Similarly, many liberal lawyers have focused their criticism on the manner in which the Supreme Court has advanced its noxious agenda – issuing major rulings via the 'shadow' docket, without full-dress lawyering, and leaving out reasoning in support of its decisions," according to the writers.
Critics have argued that the conservative-majority Supreme Court, including Trump's appointees, has used the shadow docket to issue consequential rulings on controversial issues like abortion, voting rights, and immigration with minimal explanation or public deliberation, effectively allowing the court to reshape law through expedited procedures that bypass traditional briefing and oral argument requirements.
Now, "progressives are increasingly converging on the idea of both expanding and 'disempowering' federal courts and looking to see how to shake up the status quo."
"Rather than adhere to the same institutionalist strategies that helped our current crisis, reformers must insist on remaking institutions like the US supreme court so that Americans don’t have to suffer future decades of oligarchy-facilitating rule that makes a parody of the democracy they were promised," Doerfler and Moyn wrote.
"In Trump’s second term, the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court has brought their institution to the brink of illegitimacy. Far from pulling it back from the edge, our goal has to be to push it off," the writers added.
