Listen on Spotify (transcripts available) Listen on Apple (transcripts available) The post Fridays with Nicole Sandler appeared first on emptywheel.

There was a subtle moment in yesterday’s SCOTUS hearing on Trump’s absolute immunity claim. Former Whitewater prosecutor Brett Kavanaugh asked Michael Dreeben whether DOJ had weighed in on this prosecution. Did the President weigh in? he asked. The Attorney General? JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: As you’ve indicated, this case has huge implications for the presidency,...

The Magna Carta Monument, Runnymede England I am annoyed by folks who claim to love history and are blind to it. I am disgusted by folks who claim to love history, are willfully blind to it, and in their willful blindness try to use their power to inflict damage on others. Why yes, I *did* listen to the oral arguments at SCOTUS today. Why do you ask?...

I’m not, now, as full of despair as I was at one point in the SCOTUS hearing on Presidential immunity. (Here’s my live thread.) I believe that a majority of the court will rule that for private conduct — adopting the Blassingame rule that a President acting as candidate acts in a private role — a former President can be prosecuted. But whooboy, Sam...

According to Person 16 — who has the potty mouth and performed candor we’ve come to expect from Eric Herschmann — Person 5 is a “total moron” — an opinion about Boris Epshteyn that Herschmann has expressed elsewhere. “I certainly am not relying on any legal analysis from either of you or Boris who — to be clear — I think is an idiot,” Mr. Herschmann...

I continue to dig through the document dump Judge Aileen Cannon finally released the other day. The dump included 70 exhibits (some FOIAed documents) submitted in conjunction with Trump’s motion to compel discovery and a few exhibits submitted with the government’s response. The most titillating of the latter set is a November 2022 interview with...