I’m not a legal academic, but I was a pretty fancy pants lawyer – Harvard Law magna cum laude, federal clerkship, DOJ Civil Rights Division, AUSA for a decade doing public corruption cases, litigation partner, university general counsel’s office, etc.
I’m not sure I can describe the level of despair among many of my contemporaries.
I was discussing this last night with a retired ACLU lawyer and a retired big firm litigation leader.
As someone who almost certainly falls into your “elite academic” category, I have some thoughts about the current discussion.
A while back, many people thought that the law was deterministic. Enter a set of facts, and the law will immediately spit out an answer, one that is replicable regardless of who the judge is. I think that most now understand that the judge’s identity matters. This does not mean that the process is necessarily corrupt. Rather people approach interpretive questions and understand facts differently, with those differences often being based on life experiences.
I’ve read with interest some of your posts about the legal academy, and wanted to weigh in briefly.
I have a somewhat unique perspective here, in that I’ve been adjacent to some of the more elite legal world, but I am not a part of it: I have an Ivy League law degree, and know plenty of people who got fancy clerkships, but I am a lowly practicing lawyer in Minneapolis.
It’s a question that’s lingered since January, when the FBI raided Fulton County’s election hub at conspiracy theorists’ request: where’s next? There are a handful of swing states where Trump and his election truthers pressed hardest in 2020: Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. The DOJ obtained Maricopa County, Arizona’s, 2020 records through a roundabout effort that involved sending a grand jury subpoena to the state Senate, and there are signs its also investigating Wisconsin. In Michigan, however, the DOJ’s Civil Division did something unexpected — demand Detroit-area voting records not for 2020 but for 2024. Is a politicized investigation of that state’s 2020 vote also coming?
President Trump’s corrupt $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is the gift that keeps on giving … to Trump.
New details continue to dribble out about the so-called settlement agreement resolving Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS.
Foremost among them: A thin, shoddily drafted single-page document dated May 19 and signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that purports to release any claims that the IRS might have against Trump, his family and his businesses:
The date of the release, quietly posted on the DOJ website early yesterday, is important. Reporting over the past few days had suggested that the settlement agreement would include some sort of release of Trump, or at least abandonment of the IRS audits of Trump, where he faced a potential penalty of as much as $100 million. But no such language appeared in the settlement agreement that was dated May 18 and released the same day. It’s not clear if the apparent side agreement the next day was planned all along, was a rushed make-do in reaction to Trump ire over the terms of the settlement agreement, or was the result of some other chicanery. The odd circumstances also raise questions about the enforceability of the side agreement, since Trump’s lawsuit was dismissed the day before the side agreement was reached.
Notably, the release is so broad and poorly worded that it left some legal commentators wondering if it covered not just any tax cases against Trump, which is bad enough, but any other criminal conduct. It uses the ill-defined and loaded terms “Lawfare and/or Weaponization” in a way that seems sweeping and unlimited. The better reading of the side agreement is that by its own terms it covers only claims by the IRS and Treasury Department, who were defendants in the Trump lawsuit, which would seem to limit it to tax-related matters. Still, the Blanche-signed document is vague, loose, and imprecise in ways that invite over-broad interpretations and future legal wrangling over what it means, which may not have been by accident.
The president’s former personal attorney granting him sweeping release from government claims against him is a stunning conflict of interest unheard of in past administrations. It comes less than a week after a CNN report that as soon as Blanche arrived at the Justice Department last year, he was told by the DOJ’s top ethics lawyer that he would have to recuse himself from matters involving Trump personally. The DOJ said then that Blanche was complying with his ethical obligations.
Among the other developments:
The IRS thought it could successfully defend the Trump lawsuit against it. The NYT reports on a previously undisclosed memo to that effect:
I.R.S. officials prepared a 25-page memorandum outlining what they saw as flaws in Mr. Trump’s suit and advising the Justice Department to move to dismiss it, according to two people familiar with the memo. That memo was provided to Treasury officials in April, and it is unclear if they passed it along to its intended recipients at the Justice Department, according to the people, who spoke anonymously to discuss internal government deliberations.
The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” lacks the rigorous controls that are typically put in place for compensating victims, Bloomberg reports. “They’ve apparently just decided to give money away. That’s what this looks like,” said Arthur Gary, former general counsel of DOJ’s Justice Management Division.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) wants the testimony of Brian Morrissey, the Treasury Department’s top lawyer until he resigned Monday after the settlement agreement was announced.
Months ago, DOJ official Ed Martin told a GOP ally that big payouts were coming for the Jan. 6 defendants, though he estimated it would only be $40 million, not the $1.776 billion it turned out to be.
Just In: Facebook Meme Case Settles
A Tennessee man wrongfully jailed for 37 days for posting a meme to Facebook in the aftermath of the 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk has settled his case against Perry County, Tennessee and Sheriff Nick Weems for $835,000, his lawyers announced this morning.
Retired law enforcement officer Larry Bushart’s comment on a Facebook post promoting a Kirk vigil in Perry County, Tennessee recycled a Trump meme from a 2024 school shooting in Perry County, Iowa:
Even though the sheriff later admitted he knew it was a preexisting meme about an out-of-state school shooting, he claimed that it was being interpreted as a threat to Perry County High School in Tennessee and sought and obtained a warrant for Bushart’s arrest. Bushart, who lives in a nearby county, was held on a $2 million bond before the case fell apart after widespread media attention.
The settlement, in which the defendants did not admit to fault or liability, is being paid by the county’s insurer. As part of the settlement, Bushart and Weems issued a joint statement today.
“I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated,” said Bushart, who was represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “The people’s freedom to participate in civil discourse is crucial to a healthy democracy. I am looking forward to moving on and spending time with my family.”
For his part, Weems sounded unchastened: “As Sheriff, there is no responsibility I take more seriously than protecting the children in our community, who are some of the most vulnerable among us. Ensuring their safety is not just a duty of this office, it is a commitment I carry with me every single day. I am happy to have this matter resolved, and I look forward to continuing to serve and protect the people of Perry County.”
2026 Ephemera
KY-04: The iconoclastic Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was successfully primaried by Trump-backed Ed Gallrein, further shrinking any nominal GOP resistance to Trump on Capitol Hill.
GA-Sen: In the GOP primary to determine who will challenge Sen. Jon Ossoff (D), Rep. Mike Collins advanced to the June 16 runoff against Derek Dooley, son of Georgia football legend Vince Dooley.
GA-Gov: In the GOP primary, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — who famously resisted Trump’s effort to overturn the state’s presidential election in 2020 — was squeezed out of the runoff by two election deniers.
AL-Sen: In the GOP primary, Rep. Barry Moore ran well ahead of Attorney General Steve Marshall, but they’re headed to a June 16 runoff.
AL-Gov: Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R) and former Sen. Doug Jones (D) won their respective primaries to set up a rematch of their 2020 Senate race.
TX-Sen: After dangling for weeks a possible endorsement of Sen. John Cornyn (R), President Trump threw his support at the last minute to Attorney General Ken Paxton in the May 26 GOP primary runoff.
‘A Government of Laws, Not Men’
In protest of the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” an advocacy group for current and former DOJ employees invoked John Adams:
Tonight, Justice Connection projected John Adams’ warning over the Trump banner hung on DOJ headquarters. We are “a government of laws, not of men.” Because this administration is turning DOJ into one man’s sword and shield.
There will be a lot of discussion today of a Trump-backed automaton’s victory last night over Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), the eccentric libertarian who was perhaps the last Republican in Congress to reliably choose his right-wing but distinct ideology over Trump’s demands whenever he felt the two diverged. But don’t overlook Tuesday’s primaries for offices that will run Georgia and oversee its elections. The state has, of course, been a hotbed for MAGA hijinks and efforts (still!) to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss. Last night, Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state who famously resisted Trump’s demand that he “find 11,780” votes, lost the GOP gubernatorial primary to two election deniers, one of whom served as a fake elector in Trump’s 2020 scheme. The deeply Trumpy Vernon Jones, meanwhile, is one of two Republican candidates to advance in the race for secretary of state.
The winner of Georgia’s GOP Senate primary will be decided in a June 16 runoff after no single candidate received a majority of votes cast in Tuesday’s primary. MAGA election denier Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) will face off against football coach Derek Dooley, who has repeatedly stopped short of saying the 2020 election was stolen and privately admitted Trump lost that election in audio leaked earlier this year. Tuesdays results are only a half-win for the dominant, hardline sect of the GOP, as their other self-professed MAGA warrior Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter came in third place.
In 2020, Georgia stood out: a red state in which top officials bucked President Trump’s demand to overturn his election loss.
Tuesday’s GOP primaries suggested Georgia’s relative independence from Trump’s reactionary movement may be coming to an end. Election deniers went one and two in the GOP primary for governor, ending the gubernatorial bid for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The winning attorney general candidate, meanwhile, has vowed to defend “President Trump’s effort to enforce” existing voting laws.
Ed Gallrein — a farmer and a former Navy SEAL who was recruited by President Trump personally to oust Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) — bested the incumbent in the Republican primary for Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District on Tuesday.
