Tuesday, May 31, 2022
American Samoans demand citizenship // petition Scotus
High Court of American Samoa
The United States of America is a far flung empire. Established by settlement and conquest, some of the conquered territory (the fifty states) afford citizenship to those born within the territory. But thanks to the Insular Cases territories are treated differently. The racist history of the territories seized by our defeat of Spain has been detailed by Gustavo Gelpi, a U.S. District Judge in Puerto Rico. Sometimes that citizenship is compromised (Puerto Rico), others granted citizenship by act of Congress (Hawaii) . But in the case of American Samoa it is denied, though its people are declared to be U.S. "nationals".
Inspired in part by a recent opinion by Neil Gorsuch in U.S. v. Madero (denying P.R. citizens SSI benefits) saying the Insular Cases should be reversed, American Samoans have sought an extension of time to petition for certification of of an adverse en banc decision of the Eleventh Circuit.
Among the incidents of their status is that the territory has no United States District Court.
This case presents the important question whether persons born in U.S.
Territories are is entitled to American citizenship by birth. The Fourteenth
Amendment’s Citizenship Clause declares that those born “in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” U.S. Const.
amend. XIV, § 1. But a federal statute purports to deny birthright citizenship to persons born in the U.S. Territory of American Samoa, declaring them to be
“nationals, but not citizens, of the United States.” 8 U.S.C. § 1408(1)
Sunday, May 29, 2022
Francis' choice of new Cardinal McElroy an unmistakable sign for US church | National Catholic Reporter
In a boost for moderates and progressives Pope Francis has named as a Cardinal a progressive intellectual and ally - the Bishop of San Diego.
In doing so the Pope bypassed Bishop Robert McElroy;s superior - Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez. The President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Gomez has thrown his lot in with the conservatives, including the arch conservative San Francisco Archbishop Cordileone who las wee banned Nancy Pelosi from the communion rail in her home parish of San Francisco. - GWC
By Michael Sean Winters
The news that Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego has been named a cardinal is thrilling. The first American to be named a cardinal who was not already an archbishop or a top Vatican official, McElroy has long been recognized as the leading intellectual among the U.S. bishops. He is America's Newman.
St. John Henry Newman was the Anglican clergyman and Oxford don turned Catholic priest, who emerged as the leading 19th theologian of the English-speaking world. He earned many enemies along the way, but Pope Leo XIII recognized his wisdom and named him a cardinal in 1879. His writings were seen as a precursor to the Second Vatican Council just as McElroy's writings are seen by some as among the finest applications of the teachings of that same council.
NCR has a long association with McElroy. Back in 2010, NCR's Tom Roberts ran the first national profile of McElroy when he was named an auxiliary bishop of his home city, San Francisco. He has written for us many times, including what remains the best article on synodality from a U.S. bishop to be published to date.
Understandably, I am very excited by the announcement and extend the new cardinal my best wishes.
One wonders if the official U.S. delegation to the August consistory where McElroy will receive his red might be led by a prominent Catholic who is also from San Francisco: Speaker Nancy Pelosi. What an exciting thought. I wonderful if San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone's ban on Pelosi receiving communion extends to the Diocese of Rome?
There will be some gnashing of teeth in certain conservative circles to be sure. Michael Warsaw, CEO at EWTN, published an article at the National Catholic Register two days before the announcement, entitled, "A New Era?" Warsaw pointed to Cordileone's action against Pelosi. Right meme; wrong application. It is the McElroy appointment that signals a new era.
Crotty -SDNY fed judge - blocks Unauthorized Practice of Law laws
Paul Crotty, a Manhattan federal judge, has enjoined enforcement of Unauthorized Practice of Law measures against "Upsolve". In Upsolve v. Letitia James, SDNY Case 1:22-cv-00627-PAC, Crotty explains:
“The orderly functioning of our judicial system and the protection of our citizens require that legal advice should be offered only by those who possess the requisite qualifications and authorization for the practice of law. At the same time, one of the most fundamental principles of our system of government prohibits any restraint on a citizen’s right to disseminate his views on important public issues.” Dacey v. New York Cty. Lawyers’ Ass’n, 423 F.2d 188, 189 (2d Cir. 1969).
Sometimes these two principles conflict, and one must yield to the other. This case exemplifies that conflict. Plaintiffs—a non-profit organization and a non-lawyer individual—seek to encroach upon a small part of what has heretofore been the exclusive domain of members of the Bar. Plaintiffs have crafted a program that would train non-lawyers to give legal advice to low-income New Yorkers who face debt collection actions.
Specifically, Plaintiffs want to help those New Yorkers fill out checkboxes on a one-page answer form provided by the State, in the hopes that more people will avoid defaulting outright in such actions. The legal advice would be free and confined to helping clients complete the State’s one-page form. Plaintiffs’ proposal faces one problem: by giving legal advice as non-lawyers, their activities would constitute the unauthorized practice of law (“UPL”) under several New York statutes. They risk being sued by the Defendant in this case, the New York State Attorney General.
Thus, Plaintiffs seek an injunction that prevents the Attorney General from enforcing the UPL rules against them. The Court concludes a preliminary injunction is warranted. The UPL rules cannot be applied to Plaintiffs’ program because the First Amendment protects their legal advice as speech, and the UPL rules are not narrowly tailored to satisfy strict scrutiny in this context."
Saturday, May 28, 2022
Arizona Can Kill Barry Jones, Supreme Court Rules//The Intercept
Demonstrating their detachment from Catholic Catechismal teaching the six conservative Catholics* on the Supreme Court voted to allow Arizona to execute a man whose guilt is doubtful. To do otherwise would an "affront" to the sovereign State of Arizona, Clarence Thomas explained.
* Neil Gorsuch was raised Catholic, went to Georgetown Prep, studied at Oxford under conservative Catholic natural law theorist John Finnis, now at Notre Dame.
- GWC
Arizona Can Kill Barry Jones, Supreme Court Rules//The InterceptALMOST FOUR YEARS after a federal judge overturned Barry Jones’s 1995 conviction, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the order directing Arizona to release or retry Jones and reinstated his death sentence. The ruling puts Jones on a path to execution in a state that just restarted its death machinery — despite significant evidence that he is innocent.
The 6-3 decision in Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez was authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote that Barry Jones and David Martinez Ramirez, another man on Arizona’s death row, should not have been allowed to present new evidence in federal court showing that they had received ineffective assistance of counsel at trial. In Jones’s case, the evidence dismantled the state’s original theory of the crime, prompting U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess to vacate his conviction. If not for the failures of Barry Jones’s trial attorneys, Burgess wrote in 2018, jurors likely “would not have convicted him of any of the crimes with which he was charged and previously convicted.”
Innocence is not enough Strict Scrutiny podcast EP50 May 30, 2022
Lilian Segura of The Intercept joins law prof hostesses Kate Shaw, Melissa Murray and Leah Litman to discuss the Supreme Court's shocking decision in which Clarence Thomas notoriously suggests that for a federal court to take evidence [as it did] regarding the possible innocence of a death row inmate would be an "affront" to the sovereign state of Arizona.
Bishop Flores: 'Sacralized' guns and 'hope' after darkness// The Pillar
Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, is chairman of the U.S. bishops’ committee on doctrine, and is frequently hailed as a leading intellectual among the U.S. Catholic episcopate.
After a May 24 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, killed 21 people, most of them children, a national conversation on guns began, as it often has after the mass shootings that punctuate American life.
Flores attracted attention among Catholics when he weighed in May 25, with a tweet lamenting that Americans “sacralize death’s instruments, and then are surprised that death uses them.”
Bishop Flores talked with The Pillar Wednesday about guns, human conversation, and the theological foundations of the U.S. bishops’ approach to gun control legislation.
Bishop, I think most people are aware that the bishops’ conference has a long history of advocating for specific gun control measures at the federal level, and that bishops have done the same at the state level.
But less often discussed is the theological foundation for that advocacy. What is the beginning of a theological approach to questions about guns and society?
That’s a good perspective to spend time on, because this conversation gets reduced very quickly to a political sense - to one party’s views as opposed to another. And, at least for us, I think we have to look with a wider lens.
It’s true that the [bishops’] conference has spoken about different policies, and advocated for various kinds of reforms in terms of gun control.
But the larger framework, theologically, is the Church’s expectation that civil society must seek after the common good - and that means protecting the vulnerable and exercising a reasonable prudence with regard to the order of things. And that's a responsibility not primarily of the Church, but for the human good that any society would have no matter what political system it happens to operate under.
There is a moral dimension to how we organize ourselves, for the sake of, for example, the good of children, the good of the elderly, the good of the sick, and so on, there are certain laws that need to be constructed in a way that promote the best possible stewardship of human life, and of a peaceable community, so that everyone can live in peace in their local communities and in their countries. That’s a basic moral good.
You go back to something like Mater et magistra and even to Pius XII talking about the responsibilities of civil society.
And again, this is not the Church saying, “Okay, this is how you need to organize things.”
But instead, given their particular circumstances, it's the responsibility of the political order and the social order to deliberate and to take seriously the responsibility for the ordering of things, for the good of the whole. So that's a moral responsibility.
And, you know, the question of guns becomes a part of that. Indeed, with any kind of weaponry — there is a legitimate right of the state to exercise a vigilant and reasonable stewardship and control over the access to weapons or things which could potentially cause great damage to the good of the whole.
And that’s a basic stance, especially in modern society, it’s an important one, because it delineates the Church’s expectation of forming her own people to be active and participatory in the political process that comes to a kind of consensus as to how we order things in a way that protects our children, protects our elderly protects, protects people who are vulnerable, especially when it comes to the potential of violence. So that's the basic moral framework
And then we can look at each locality: each country, and state, and city, or region, and so forth, in terms of how that plays itself out. It’s not just one size fits all necessarily. The circumstances here in this country are different than they are necessarily in another country, so we, of course, have to be most concerned about how we order things here, and that's the issue in our frame of responsibility.
But there is a responsibility to govern these things and to order them.
As we think about that moral responsibility, you tweeted Wednesday morning about “sacralizing death’s instruments,” which is a very powerful phrase. Can you talk more about that?
Well, I was referring to the fact that the discourse we’ve had now for decades, about any attempt to control weapons that can cause grave damage — some of which moves have been enacted into law and others which have been resisted — is countered with a description that [gun ownership] is basically an individual’s sacred right, that no matter what the cost, it must be preserved.
And when I say “sacralized,” I mean that we make it seem almost as if it detracts from human dignity, or the human good, simply to say that we need to have some reasonable limit on these things. To say something is sacralized is to say it’s almost taken out of any possibility for conversation.
It is a strong statement, but we do sometimes speak about things that way, and I must say that in some sense, we have kind of sacralized the whole idea of the individual right, such that it trumps any communal concern. It becomes an untouchable aspect in the discourse, that the common concern for the good of the vulnerable is not in any way sufficient to limit the individual right to determine whether or not I want to own this kind of a gun, or that kind of gun, or, you know, a hand grenade for that matter.
Friday, May 27, 2022
Video - panel - Common Good Constitutionalism- by Adrian Vermeule //Fordham Law
On May 10, 2022 I moderated a panel discussion about Adrian Vermeule's controversial new book. discussants were Eric Segall, Georgia State University, James Fleming, Boston University, and Michael Baur, Fordham. - GWC
Watch video - Common Good Constitutionalism
Deep in Vatican Archives, Scholar Discovers ‘Flabbergasting’ Secrets - The New York Times
Deep in Vatican Archives, Scholar Discovers ‘Flabbergasting’ Secrets - The New York Times
May 27, 2022, 10:00 a.m. ET
VATICAN CITY — David Kertzer put down his cappuccino, put on his backpack and went digging for more Vatican secrets.
“There’s an aspect of treasure hunting,” said Mr. Kertzer, a 74-year-old historian.
Moments later he cut through a crowd lined up to see Pope Francis, showed his credentials to the Swiss Guards and entered the archives of the former headquarters for the Holy Roman Inquisition.
Over the last few decades, Mr. Kertzer has turned the inquisitive tables on the church. Using the Vatican’s own archives, the soft-spoken Brown University professor and trustee at the American Academy in Rome has become arguably the most effective excavator of the Vatican’s hidden sins, especially those leading up to and during World War II.
The son of a rabbi who participated in the liberation of Rome as an Army chaplain, Mr. Kertzer grew up in a home that had taken in a foster child whose family was murdered in Auschwitz. That family background, and his activism in college against the Vietnam War, imbued him with a sense of moral outrage — tempered by a scholar’s caution.
VATICAN CITY — David Kertzer put down his cappuccino, put on his backpack and went digging for more Vatican secrets.
“There’s an aspect of treasure hunting,” said Mr. Kertzer, a 74-year-old historian.
Moments later he cut through a crowd lined up to see Pope Francis, showed his credentials to the Swiss Guards and entered the archives of the former headquarters for the Holy Roman Inquisition.
Over the last few decades, Mr. Kertzer has turned the inquisitive tables on the church. Using the Vatican’s own archives, the soft-spoken Brown University professor and trustee at the American Academy in Rome has become arguably the most effective excavator of the Vatican’s hidden sins, especially those leading up to and during World War II.
The son of a rabbi who participated in the liberation of Rome as an Army chaplain, Mr. Kertzer grew up in a home that had taken in a foster child whose family was murdered in Auschwitz. That family background, and his activism in college against the Vietnam War, imbued him with a sense of moral outrage — tempered by a scholar’s caution.
Thursday, May 26, 2022
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Texas Bar Says Paxton's Election Litigation Was Misconduct - Law360
Texas Bar Says Paxton's Election Litigation Was Misconduct - Law360By Katie Buehler ·
Law360 (May 25, 2022, 4:10 PM EDT) -- The State Bar of Texas' disciplinary arm on Wednesday said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was dishonest in litigation challenging the 2020 presidential election results, according to a lawsuit seeking a ruling he engaged in professional misconduct.
In the Collin County District Court lawsuit, the Commission for Lawyer Discipline accused Paxton of conduct involving fraud, dishonesty, deceit or misrepresentation, in violation of Texas attorney disciplinary rules. The filing comes just a day after Paxton handily defeated challenger George P. Bush, the state's land commissioner, in the Republican runoff election for the party's attorney general nomination.
Paxton is accused of being dishonest and wasting state money, time and resources to fight the election results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, swing states that President Joe Biden won.
In the Collin County District Court lawsuit, the Commission for Lawyer Discipline accused Paxton of conduct involving fraud, dishonesty, deceit or misrepresentation, in violation of Texas attorney disciplinary rules. The filing comes just a day after Paxton handily defeated challenger George P. Bush, the state's land commissioner, in the Republican runoff election for the party's attorney general nomination.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks to anti-abortion activists at a rally outside the Supreme Court in November. Paxton is accused of being dishonest and wasting state money, time and resources to fight the election results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
"KIDS WHO DIE" - A POEM BY LANGSTON HUGHES — sankofa.org
This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.
Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi
Organizing sharecroppers
Kids will die in the streets of Chicago
Organizing workers
Kids will die in the orange groves of California
Telling others to get together
Whites and Filipinos,
Negroes and Mexicans,
All kinds of kids will die
Who don’t believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment
And a lousy peace.
Of course, the wise and the learned
Who pen editorials in the papers,
And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names
White and black,
Who make surveys and write books
Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die,
And the sleazy courts,
And the bribe-reaching police,
And the blood-loving generals,
And the money-loving preachers
Will all raise their hands against the kids who die,
Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets
To frighten the people—
For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people—
And the old and rich don’t want the people
To taste the iron of the kids who die,
Don’t want the people to get wise to their own power,
To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get together
Listen, kids who die—
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field,
Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht
But the day will come—
You are sure yourselves that it is coming—
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky—
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.
(Langston Hughes)
This powerful poem published recently in memoriam to Trayvon Martin (5 February 1995- 26 February 2012) is historic, contemporary, and sadly timeless. It got me thinking about my friend Ross Evans.
I first met Langston Hughes’ poetry through my friend Dr. Ross Evans in the late 1960’s when he was the first black professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Ross named his first child Langston. Langston was born a few years after my first child, Simon was born. By the time Langston came along, Ross had been teaching Simon hambone for a while.
Ross was from Kansas. He told me about lying on the floor of a car when he, with other college kids rode through white neighborhoods with white girls on board. He rode with death looking over his shoulder for much of his life. At Teacher’s College it was not unusual for Ross to be rousted out of his office my security guards who didn’t know there was such a thing as a Black professor of psychology.
Ross studied abnormal psychology (he had lived in its thrall for years after all). He was a scientist, did experimental research, was always deep in the findings of other people’s research. He argued that only about 1% of any child population was organically impaired. The vast failure of kids in schools was the result of poverty and racism. Poverty destroyed confidence in learning and racism destroyed confidence in living. To overcome those challenges was his mission.
Ross’s favorite song was “Bridge over Troubled Waters.” (“Like a bridge over troubled waters/I will lay me down”). We thought it was, in 1968, a human breakthrough that we each would “Lay me Down” for each other.
-Colin Greer
Tuesday, May 24, 2022
Eric Segall: The Concession that STILL Dooms Originalism // Dorf on Law
"The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." OW Holmes, Jr. (1881)
It is Holmes insight that allows Professor Segall to say - in his debate with `originalists' I, of course, do not have to prove that I am right in 100% of cases (though I likely am).
- Circumstances change. Words that are incapable of adapting to change must be changed. For that reason (among many others) judges should defer to those charged with making laws - legislatures. Arbitrariness and caprice are virtually the only license judges have: delegated, for example, by the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 USC 706.
By Eric Segall
One of the most cited articles about constitutional interpretation in recent years is the boldly named, "Originalism Versus Living Constitutionalism: The Conceptual Structure of the Great Debate," by the Godfather of New Originalism Professor Larry Solum. The piece is complex and much can and has been said about it by it other theorists but I want to focus (again) on one aspect of the article that I wrote about previously because that part of Professor Solum's article was also used by Professor Randy Barnett in his recent and interesting review of Adrian Vermeule's book "Common Good Constitutionalism."
First this post talks about Professor Solum and then Professor Barnett.
In his article, Professor Solum quoted my previous work talking about Professor Barnett's New Originalism. This is Professor Solum quoting me in his seminal article on the "Great Debate."
The problem with Barnett’s originalism is that constitutional litigation almost always involves vague constitutional provisions that have uncertain meanings in the context of our ever-changing society. When is the last time someone litigated the requirements that there be two Senators from every state, that the President be at least thirty-five, or that jury trials are required if more than twenty dollars are at stake? Most cases that end up in front of judges implicate vague phrases like 'equal protection,' 'due process,' 'establishment of religion,' and 'cruel and unusual punishment.'
Professor Solum then made the following concession:
From this premise, Professor Segall draws the conclusion that originalism may be indistinguishable from living constitutionalism. The key to understanding Professor Segall’s metalinguistic argument is identification of his crucial premise—which is that all, or almost all, constitutional issues that are actually litigated involve indeterminate constitutional provisions. If it were true that the original public meaning of the constitutional text was radically indeterminate in all litigated cases, then it would follow that the Constraint Principle would have no constraining force, hence originalism and living constitutionalism would not be meaningfully different.
Professor Solum then said that "the claim that the communicative content of all the actually litigated clauses is radically indeterminate is an empirical one. Redeeming that claim would require actual originalist work, employing a rigorous originalist methodology—something that neither Professor Segall nor any other critic of originalism of whom I am aware has done."
Similarly, Professor Barnett said the following responding to Vermeule's claim (virtually identical to mine) that the original meaning of the litigated Constitution is too "thin" to make originalism possible (at least without great deference): "But the claim that the text’s original meaning is this 'abstract' or 'thin' must be established with evidence, not merely stipulated. Like most non-originalist law professors, however, Vermeule is an armchair originalist who simply asserts, rather than proves, that this fixed constitutional meaning was highly abstract."
To understand why these claims by Professors Barnett and Solum are simply wrong we first must remember what is a core principle of New Originalism. Under the New Originalist approach, and in the [in]famous construction zone, judges have discretion to bring an almost endless array of post-ratification facts and changed cultural values into consideration when resolving constitutional cases, diluting any meaningful constraining effect of the text’s original meaning. For example, I previously quoted Professor Solum himself for the following proposition shared by most New Originalists:
Monday, May 23, 2022
Supreme Court condemns Barry Jones to die despite strong evidence he’s innocent - Vox
Clarence Thomas, for the Court, in Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, on limiting habeas corpus petitions for death row inmates who have been represented by incompetent lawyers:
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE BREYER and JUSTICE KAGAN join, dissenting.
To put it bluntly: Two men whose trial attorneys did not provide even the bare minimum level of representation required by the Constitution may be executed because forces outside of their control prevented them from vindicating their constitutional right to counsel. It is hard to imagine a more “extreme malfunctio[n],”...than the prejudicial deprivation of a right that constitutes the “foundation for our adversary system,” Martinez, 566 U. S., at 12.
Sonia Sotomayor spoke with characteristic candor - another voice from the Bronx.
- GWC
Supreme Court condemns Barry Jones to die despite strong evidence he’s innocent - Voxby Ian Millhiser
n 1995, Barry Jones was convicted of murdering Rachel Gray, his girlfriend’s 4-year-old daughter, and sentenced to die. Since then, the case against him has shattered.
Gray died of a laceration of her small intestine, an extremely painful injury that slowly floods the victim with poisonous fluids. The prosecution’s theory was that Jones must have inflicted this injury on Gray during a four-hour period when he was taking care of her on May 1, 1994. Gray died about 12 hours later.
But this theory does not make sense medically. Gray’s injury would have killed her slowly, and should not have proved fatal in only 12 hours. In a comprehensive article reviewing the evidence against Jones, the Intercept’s Liliana Segura quotes three physicians who say that the prosecution’s theory is wrong.
One, who Segura describes as a “renowned pediatric forensic pathologist,” said that Gray’s injury “could not possibly have been inflicted on the day prior to her death.”
There are also several other potential suspects. Gray’s mother Angela, for starters, was eventually convicted of child abuse and sentenced to eight years in prison. There’s evidence that Gray’s brother sexually preyed on young girls. And, on top of all of that, Gray reportedly said shortly before her death that a boy had hit her in the stomach with a metal bar.
Simply put, no sensible jury confronted with all of this evidence would have concluded that Jones was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
But Jones’s lawyers failed to present crucial evidence at his trial. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in an opinion released on Monday, “Jones’ trial counsel failed to undertake even a cursory investigation and, as a result, did not uncover readily available medical evidence that could have shown that Rachel sustained her injuries when she was not in Jones’ care.” Then, after Jones challenged his conviction in a state court proceeding, he was met with, as Sotomayor put it, “another egregious failure of counsel.”
In the words of the law, Jones was denied his constitutionally required right to effective assistance of counsel — twice.
Sotomayor, however, wrote these words in a dissenting opinion. On a party line vote in Shinn v. Ramirez, the Court held that Jones will not receive a fair trial despite his lawyers’ poor performance.
Trump Pays $110K To NY AG For Not Complying In Biz Probe - Law360
Trump Pays $110K To NY AG For Not Complying In Biz Probe - Law360
Law360, New York (May 20, 2022, 4:33 PM EDT) -- Former President Donald Trump has paid a $110,000 fine for his failure to comply with the New York attorney general's probe into his business practices and filed affidavits ahead of a Friday deadline to keep a court's contempt order lifted.
Attorney General Letitia James said Friday she had received the fine, according to a spokesperson from James' office. Later Trump filed affidavits attesting to his search for documents or policies regarding record destruction and retention. He was required to provide those affidavits to avoid reinstatement of the contempt order by New York Justice Arthur F. Engoron. The order imposes a $10,000 fine for every day that the former president fails to comply with the subpoena seeking documents in the attorney general's investigation of his business.
In order for Justice Engoron to completely lift the contempt order, independent discovery firm HaystackID had to provide a report on Trump's compliance with the subpoena and confirm there had been an adequate search for documents, according to a filing.
A May 11 decision from Justice Engoron indicated that Trump's failure to pay heed to any of those requirements by Friday's deadline would result in the $10,000 daily fine resuming and a restoration of the contempt order. Justice Engoron held Trump in contempt in April for flouting the AG's subpoena and failing to turn over documents in her investigation, which deals in part with whether Trump inflated property values for tax benefits.
That contempt order was temporarily lifted when Trump filed affidavits on May 6 that Justice Engoron said "complied in significant part but not completely" with the court's order.
While Trump and the attorney general have fought in state court over Trump's subpoena compliance, he's sought to put an end to her civil probe in federal court. A suit from the former president makes various constitutional challenges to the investigation, accusing James of violating Trump's rights under the First, Fourth and 14th amendments by pursuing groundless inquiries, attempting to infringe on his free speech and issuing unjustifiably broad subpoenas requesting information on him, his family, his businesses and his associates.
James has been investigating whether Trump inflated the value of his assets and has issued subpoenas requesting information on him, his family members and officials from the Trump Organization, including Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. She has sought information on the business' valuation of assets including Seven Springs, a property in Westchester County, New York, according to filings.
A representative of Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
New York is represented by Kevin C. Wallace, Andrew Amer, Colleen K. Faherty, Alex Finkelstein, Wil Handley, Eric R. Haren, Louis M. Solomon, Austin Thompson and Stephanie Torre of the Office of the New York State Attorney General.
Trump is represented by Alina Habba and Michael T. Madaio of Habba Madaio & Associates LLP.
The case is New York v. The Trump Organization et al., case number 451685/2020, in the Supreme Court for the State of New York, County of New York.
--Additional reporting by Frank Runyeon. Editing by Neil Cohen.
Update: This article has been updated to reflect the filing of the affidavits.
Attorney General Letitia James said Friday she had received the fine, according to a spokesperson from James' office. Later Trump filed affidavits attesting to his search for documents or policies regarding record destruction and retention. He was required to provide those affidavits to avoid reinstatement of the contempt order by New York Justice Arthur F. Engoron. The order imposes a $10,000 fine for every day that the former president fails to comply with the subpoena seeking documents in the attorney general's investigation of his business.
In order for Justice Engoron to completely lift the contempt order, independent discovery firm HaystackID had to provide a report on Trump's compliance with the subpoena and confirm there had been an adequate search for documents, according to a filing.
A May 11 decision from Justice Engoron indicated that Trump's failure to pay heed to any of those requirements by Friday's deadline would result in the $10,000 daily fine resuming and a restoration of the contempt order. Justice Engoron held Trump in contempt in April for flouting the AG's subpoena and failing to turn over documents in her investigation, which deals in part with whether Trump inflated property values for tax benefits.
That contempt order was temporarily lifted when Trump filed affidavits on May 6 that Justice Engoron said "complied in significant part but not completely" with the court's order.
While Trump and the attorney general have fought in state court over Trump's subpoena compliance, he's sought to put an end to her civil probe in federal court. A suit from the former president makes various constitutional challenges to the investigation, accusing James of violating Trump's rights under the First, Fourth and 14th amendments by pursuing groundless inquiries, attempting to infringe on his free speech and issuing unjustifiably broad subpoenas requesting information on him, his family, his businesses and his associates.
James has been investigating whether Trump inflated the value of his assets and has issued subpoenas requesting information on him, his family members and officials from the Trump Organization, including Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. She has sought information on the business' valuation of assets including Seven Springs, a property in Westchester County, New York, according to filings.
A representative of Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
New York is represented by Kevin C. Wallace, Andrew Amer, Colleen K. Faherty, Alex Finkelstein, Wil Handley, Eric R. Haren, Louis M. Solomon, Austin Thompson and Stephanie Torre of the Office of the New York State Attorney General.
Trump is represented by Alina Habba and Michael T. Madaio of Habba Madaio & Associates LLP.
The case is New York v. The Trump Organization et al., case number 451685/2020, in the Supreme Court for the State of New York, County of New York.
--Additional reporting by Frank Runyeon. Editing by Neil Cohen.
Update: This article has been updated to reflect the filing of the affidavits.
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