Category: News Feeds

Earlier this month, we discussed the new guidance issued to banks regarding those things distinctly ungroovy in the federal eye, marijuana businesses. Turns out, they really do need the help, because not only are they not very good at preventing or detecting money laundering, they’re quite easily fooled by those dedicated to it for the purpose of allowing you to pay for blow with your Amex.

The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have recently brought a string of criminal and civil cases accusing individuals and companies of using legitimate-looking websites to deceive financial firms into processing unsavory purchases….

“No processor, even if it spent a fortune, is going to perfectly shield itself from fraudulent merchants,” said Lois Greisman, associate director of the FTC’s Division of Marketing Practices. The FTC, she said, “is seeking to root out processors that are knowingly facilitating fraud.”

Attorney General Bill Barr may be popular inside the Fox News bubble, but among members of the legal profession he ranks somewhere between psoriasis and The Clap.

In October, the New York City Bar Association published an open letter accusing Barr of breaching professional ethics in the Ukraine scandal and calling for him to face sanctions if he failed to recuse himself from the impeachment investigation. In June, George Washington University Law School’s faculty tried to get Barr’s honorary degree from 1992 revoked after he teargassed peaceful protesters so the president could shoot Bible porn in front of a boarded up church.

And now a group of 27 distinguished lawyers has written a letter to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel of the D.C. Bar urging it to “commence an investigation to determine whether Mr. Barr, who is a member of the DC Bar, should be subject to disciplinary action under the Rules.”

“It has been deeply disturbing to witness Attorney General William Barr persistently acting to undermine the rule of law over the past sixteen months,” former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, founder of Lawyers Defending American Democracy, wrote in Just Security. “The administration of justice depends on lawyers honoring their ethical duties and playing by the rules, so the public can have confidence in the fairness and impartiality of our legal system.”

Harshbarger and his fellow signatories, including four past presidents of the D.C. Bar, accuse the Attorney General of betraying his ethical duty to the American people in service of Donald Trump’s venal, personal ends.

Mr. Barr’s client is the United States, and not the President. Yet, Mr. Barr has consistently made decisions and taken action to serve the personal and political self-interests of President Donald Trump, rather than the interest of the United States.

They charge Barr with four “Counts” of impropriety:

1. Misrepresenting the findings of the Mueller Report by falsely claiming that it found no grounds to charge the president with obstruction of justice, rather than acknowledging that the memo presented copious evidence of obstruction, but deferred the charging decision to congress as part of its impeachment power;
2. Falsely implying that the Inspector General’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 and outreach to the Trump campaign was a “witch hunt” which lacked appropriate predication;
3. Making inappropriate public statements prejudging the outcome of the Durham investigation and denigrating the conduct of FBI agents; and
4. Violating the First and Fourth Amendment rights of protestors in Lafayette Park by illegally dispersing them for Trump’s Bible-toting photo op.

This is a long, long letter. Even longer than the unsolicited memo Barr sent the president in 2018 explaining how Article II gives the president the right to order the Justice Department to investigate his political enemies, the one that convinced the president to give him Jeff Sessions’s old job.

In some sense this complaint is purely performative — the D.C. Court of Appeals is not going to initiate disbarment proceedings against the sitting Attorney General in the middle of an election. But at the same time, it’s critically important that we as lawyers stand up and protest as Bill Barr burns down the Justice Department, cooks up bogus investigations of Trump’s political enemies, and torpedoes cases against the president’s friend.

As the letter notes:

The DCRPC and Disciplinary Rules reflect the norms and expectations about the conduct of lawyers in our society. Importantly, Mr. Barr, as our chief law enforcement officer, occupies a position that serves as a model for other lawyers, particularly government lawyers. Thus, serious ethical deviations on his part carry enormous consequences for our profession as a whole. Where a lawyer in Mr. Barr’s position has violated the basic standards of honesty, trustworthiness, and other guideposts of ethical conduct governing lawyers, the Office of Disciplinary Counsel is in a unique, independent position to investigate his conduct.

If not us, then who can take a stand and say, “This is not okay?” Because it really, really isn’t.

Letter Re: Professional Responsibility Investigation of William P. Barr
Why 27 Distinguished DC Lawyers Filed a Complaint with Bar Association Against Attorney General Barr [Just Security]

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Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

I don’t know how this lawyer thought he’d get away with this. I mean, forging not just just a prosecutor’s signature but also a judge’s in the hopes of getting your client’s ankle monitor taken off, well, that’s bold.

Paul “Jake” York, an attorney in Georgia, is accused of doing just that. York’s client, Valerie Ryals, was ordered to wear an electronic ankle monitor after she was arrested for aggravated stalking. That set back the single mom $380 every two weeks, and York believed the charges against his client would ultimately be dismissed, so he asked assistant District Attorney Meredith Davis to sign off on bond modification. All pretty straight forward so far, but, don’t worry, it all goes, allegedly, sideways.

As reported by Law.com, York filed an order that would allow his client to remove the ankle monitor that purported to be signed by ADA Davis and Habersham County, Georgia Superior Court Judge B. Chan Caudell. Only problem, Caudell does not recall that at all and wasn’t even able to sign the order the date it was dated:

“The court does not recall signing the order. The date the order was purportedly signed, March 4, 2020, the undersigned was not in the circuit and was unavailable to to sign the order,” Caudell wrote.

So Caudell set aside the order removing the ankle monitor in a new order and attached a transcript of a phone call between Caudell, York, Davis, and District Attorney George Christian where York admitted to forging Davis’s signature, but denied forging Caudell’s:

“I mean, I thought we had hammered that out yesterday where she gave me the green light,” York is quoted in the transcript.

“Bad assumption on my part, I guess,” he said.

Davis said she had made clear to York that she could not agree to any such modification until she talked to Ryals’ ex-husband.

Davis is quoted saying she had no idea the bracelet was removed until her investigator texted her.

“I did not agree to do this,” she said. “I had no idea this was being done.”

Caudell also said that he didn’t think his signature was real.

“Well, I would just be frank with you,” he said. “This doesn’t look like my signature. … I couldn’t swear that it’s not, but I don’t—it doesn’t look like my signature.”

During that same transcribed call, Caudell said the incident — at a minimum — warranted referral to the state bar. But it seems more than that minimum was called for — York was arrested on two counts of forgery and one count of filing a false document charges and released after posting a $6,900 bond.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

The last explosion, just down the street from our apartment, was strong and loud. It was one of the first that targeted a shop in our area, and it shook the entire neighborhood. The explosion was so strong that it rattled the doors and windows of our apartment. The smoke wafted from the burnt building for days.

That evening, my husband came home and said, “I just don’t think this will work. It’s not safe. You should move back to the United States.” I immediately agreed.

I had spent the last year traveling between Kabul and Atlanta with our now 1-year-old son. I managed my law firm in Afghanistan, which provided global immigration services and rule of law consulting services. I traveled back to Atlanta, where I grew up, frequently. I was proud of my firm and considered it a culmination of my work in Afghanistan on rule of law, immigration, and gender justice in Afghanistan. But as a new mother, the career and location were not tenable. I was tired of being on edge, worried that taking my son out for a walk or to a restaurant would result in death or bodily injury. Deciding to leave was a relief but one that made me feel guilty — the ease in which I could hop on a plane while Afghans were stuck in Afghanistan with the same fears I had. I still struggle with it.

Within a month of deciding to leave, I closed up shop, transferred my portfolio to a business acquaintance who promised to hire my local employees, and moved back into my parents’ home in Georgia, while my husband continued to work in Afghanistan. Once there, I immediately reached out to my network for leads, thinking I would be able to find a job in Washington, D.C. quickly. Unfortunately, this was not the case. I was offered work overseas but as the main parent I did not want to travel extensively. I could not take any of the rule of law/international development jobs I was offered. After several months of a futile job search for D.C.-based work, including a networking trip to D..C, nothing materialized. I had to redirect my search.

I thought back to my other interest, immigration law. My second job out of college was at a corporate immigration law firm, almost 14 years earlier. I liked working with immigrants and had continued working in immigration while I was in Afghanistan. I contacted my boss and asked her for advice. Thankfully, she responded, and I began the marathon of calling people, updating my legal knowledge, and volunteering with the local chapter of American Immigration Lawyers Association.

There is an Afghan proverb that says, “Drop by drop, a river is made.” I muttered it to myself throughout my attempts to figure out what to do next. As an introvert, I remember being so tired of introducing myself over and over again. But I did it, and I am glad I did. It was difficult reaching out for assistance when, just a year ago, I was the one offering advice. I am still so thankful to the immigration legal community — everyone is so welcoming and devoted to helping immigrants. Among the advice I received was to start my own practice, which is what I ended up doing. I now work for another immigration law firm as their full-time remote attorney. Everyone at my firm is devoted to protecting immigrant rights, and I enjoy being part of a team again.

The career pivots I made throughout my legal career were unexpected but ultimately fulfilling. I remember feeling alone and confused when I was in the middle of trying to figure out what to do next. I did not take the typical path when I graduated, and finding my footing as a lawyer back in my hometown was disconcerting and sometimes demoralizing. But when I speak to other lawyer moms, everyone’s career took turns they were not expecting. Very few attorneys stay where they started out and most are better for the change. Drop by drop, a river is made.

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Asiyah Sharifi is a lawyer with many years of experience in immigration and international law. Her experience includes both family and business immigration to the U.S. and internationally. Asiyah holds a Juris Doctor (JD) from American University’s Washington College of Law, a Master of Arts (MA) in International Development from American University’s School of International Service in Washington, D.C., as well as a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in History from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She is admitted to the New Jersey Bar and is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). From 2012 to 2016, Asiyah founded and managed a law firm where she provided immigration services to American companies operating in Afghanistan. Her previous positions included managing a gender justice program for the U.S. State Department; advising the Afghan government on the negotiation and drafting of various laws and procedures concerning public financial management, customs and taxation; as well as assisting in setting up a legal clinic which facilitated Continuing Legal Education for numerous judges, attorneys and new graduates. Asiyah is a mom to two boys, a six-year-old and two-year-old. You can follow her on twitter @Asiyah_sh or email her at asiyah.sharifi@gmail.com.

It’s just kind of the right thing to do. [Law grads joining Biglaw firms are] highly likely to pass the bar exam anyway.”

— Timothy Powers, managing partner of Haynes and Boone, offering support for diploma privilege for the class of 2020, noting that he’d expect a fair number of his Biglaw colleagues to support it as well, considering the bar exams’ current state of flux due to the pandemic.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

WASHINGTON: In a stormy two-hour hearing, members of the House Oversight Committee lambasted Lockheed Martin and Pentagon officials for putting pilots at risk of accidents by failing to fix the F-35’s troubled maintenance system.

“Fix this now, before you have blood on your hands,” said Rep. Rashida Talib.

Criticism and concern came from both sides of the aisle, although Democrats were particularly harsh — especially regarding Lockheed Martin’s performance and what they allege is an unwillingness on the part of the defense giant to pay back the government for problematic F-35 parts.

“We cannot simply hope that these accidents never occur. These problems must be addressed,” said the committee chair, Rep. Carolyn Maloney. “The US government is a major client of Lockheed Martin. In 2019 alone, Lockheed expected to earn $41 billion in revenue from the US government, business paid for by the American taxpayers. For that much money, we can expect Lockheed to deliver products that work and that keep our service members safe. Anything else is unacceptable.”

“I also plan to look at whether legislation is needed to ensure that F-35 is meeting performance expectations,” she added.

Rep. Jackie Spear took Lockheed Martin VP for the F-35 Lightening II program Greg Ulmer to task for what she characterized as foot-dragging on the firm’s part regarding negotiations to pay back unwarranted performance incentives for parts deliveries over the past six years.

“I would like to say Mr. Ulmer, you are not a good actor in this. This is just one component. We already know that there are nine flaws on the F-35 that are identified as critical, as Priority Ones, that to my knowledge have still not been addressed,” she said. “For you not to come to the table and negotiate this $183 million really aggravates me, and should aggravate every taxpayer in this country.”

Republicans also expressed concerns about the ongoing issues with parts and the long-troubled ALIS maintenance software. But some GOP lawmakers — including the committee’s ranking Republican, James Comer — tried to lower the temperature of the rhetoric, stressing that DoD and Lockheed Martin were working hard to resolve the myriad problems.

“I am pleased to hear that progress is being made,” Comer said. “We must work together to ensure we get the best products quickly and at the least expense to the taxpayer. Increasing commercial item acquisition, competition, transparency and end-user input may all help with that.”

For their part, DoD officials testifying rushed to reassure committee members that no unsafe F-35 Joint Strike Fighters are being flown, because service maintenance personnel are certifying that all parts are air worthy before allowing planes take off.

“I have faith in our maintenance unit leaders who look at each part and determine whether the aircraft is fit to fly,’ said DoD acquisition chief Ellen Lord. “They are well versed in safety and would never make any safety compromises,”

Lord is leading the Pentagon’s effort to fix not only ALIS but the wider sustainment issues that have resulted in the F-35’s exorbitant operations and maintenance costs — estimated by the watchdog Government Accountability Office (GAO) in a May 20 report to total some $1.2 trillion (yes, trillion with a t) over the fleet’s 66-year life time. That would dwarf the up-front cost of R&D and procurement, bringing total life-cycle costs for the program to $1.6 trillion.

Gen. Eric Fick, head of the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO), likewise said he had “full faith” in maintenance personnel.

The GAO in March issued a report that found “a persistent issue with inaccurate or missing data” in ALIS, the Autonomic Logistics Information System, used to track parts and schedule maintenance, GAO’s Director of Defense Capabilities and Management Diana Maurer told the committee. That problem has led to maintainers ignoring the system because of too many false alarms grounding planes, and instead keeping track of parts replacement and maintenance requirements by hand, she explained, which in turn raises risks that human error may actually cause pilot risk.

Personnel interviewed by GAO, Mauer said, worried that by “ignoring alerts in ALIS caused by missing or inaccurate data, squadrons could be at risk of ignoring an alert for a legitimate aircraft issue.”

She also stressed that DoD has failed to institute a number of GAO recommendations, including a recommendation that DoD establish concrete performance requirements for ALIS that dates back to 2014. The lack of such performance parameters could end up extending ALIS’s troubles to its replacement program, called the Operational Integrated Data Network (ODIN), she warned.

Fick said that the JPO and the user community is heavily involved in software development for ODIN, and stressed that DoD will own the system’s intellectual property so that maintenance, including parts replacement, can be done by the Air Force, Army and Navy rather than only by Lockheed Martin.

As I reported yesterday, the Air Force’s Kessel Run unit is lending its software expertise both to find interim fixes for ALIS and to help with development of ODIN. Today, both Lord and Fick said that maintenance crews and operators are happy with improvements to ALIS made so far.

Fick said that DoD has budgeted $540.7 million between 2021 and 2025 for ODIN, while that the JPO estimates another $70 million will be needed between now and 2022 to continue to improve ALIS. Initial operating capability (IOC) for ODIN, meaning it will be in use with one F-35 squadron, is planned for September 2021, he said, with the new system available across the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps fleets by December 2022.

The Air Force on July 13 announced that it has granted Lockheed Martin an $87.5 million indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) for transitioning ALIS to ODIN. Fick said Lockheed Martin will be providing coding for “three specific applications for ODIN,” and that the contract is for “early work associated with those apps.”

DoD’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG)  found in an audit last June that a big part of the ALIS breakdown lies with the fact that Lockheed Martin has been delivering parts that are not “ready for issue” (RFI) — meaning they are not ready to be installed — because they lack proper electronic tagging (known as an Electronic Equipment Logbook or EEL) that enables them to be tracked by ALIS. So ground crews are forced to keep track of the parts by hand if they are going to use them.

“According to JPO officials, on any given day, 50 percent of the F-35 fleet is flying with non-RFI spare parts,” said Assistant Inspector General Theresa Hull. She noted, however, that non-RFI parts are not necessarily faulty — a fact that Ulmer also hammered home.

“The parts are not the concern, it’s the electronic file,” Ulmer said, stressing that that “there are several layers” — both at LM and at depots — to ensure parts integrity.

“We acknowledge EELs have been a challenge, but significant improvements have been realized,” he said. “Lockheed Martin has applied diagnostic and engineering resources to resolve the issue. These challenges do not indicate that a part is flawed.”

Fick explained that the EELs “similar to a digital medical record, it tells the story of the part from cradle to grave.”

“We are aggressively targeting the root cause of EEL and non-compliance issues,” he added.

Lord noted that in June, 83 percent of parts delivered were RFI compliant, complete with EELs. Further, she said, the JPO “has also been working to negotiate more comprehensive contract terms in future sustainment contracts to ensure the contract has defined EEL and RFI metrics to measure performance.”

Fick also stressed that despite the ongoing issues, the JPO has pushed sustainment costs down over the last year to $35,000 per flying hour. The goal is to reduce that price tag to $25,000 per flying hour by 2025, he said, but he admitted that is a “stretch goal.”

Authorities believe that Roy Den Hollander is responsible for killing the son of Judge Esther Salas and critically wounding her husband. He’s also linked to the earlier murder of Marc Angelucci. It’s a tragic turn in the story of a “men’s rights” activist attorney whose career served as a punchline for years as he sued night clubs for offering Ladies’ Nights and alleged a RICO conspiracy among the news media to malign Donald Trump.

But should the media be to blame for indulging Den Hollander’s attention-seeking career? Could the playful mockery have simultaneously inflated his ego and fed a dangerous paranoia that ultimately became deadly? These are the questions asked in an interesting Cracked article by Amanda Mannen.

Making fun of lawyers is the bulk of our daily routine at Above the Law. Between the industry analysis and exploration of legal tech advances, we treat the audience to some lawyer getting benchslapped into oblivion or tripping over obvious ethical rules. We’re also big fans of the nonsensical lawsuits from suing Apple over internet porn to adding a citizenship question to the census. And in that vein, we’d thrown our own shade on Den Hollander’s legal causes.

But is that bad? From the Cracked piece:

After filing a series of lawsuits against various New York City nightclubs arguing that “ladies’ night” specials constituted discrimination, he was granted cheeky profiles in The New York Times and The New Yorker and even interviewed by Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central, who has been quick to take down YouTube videos of the segment since the news of the murder broke.

It’s telling that Den Hollander got his 15 minutes of fame over his night club fight but not his effort — in the case overseen by Judge Salas — to extend the draft to include women. The latter case had merit and, even if he necessarily didn’t see it, a feminist justification. But it’s not as funny as complaining over night club covers.

Offering Den Hollander a major television hit certainly awarded him unnecessary attention. Even with the ironic jabs of Colbert’s faux right-wing persona, the joke got far overshadowed by the attention. For the other cited sources, profiling the fringe as if it’s mainstream — or at best “just another viewpoint” — invites every bit of the risk of emboldening these folks. If Den Hollander didn’t seem like a violent guy 13 years ago, that required turning willfully blind eyes to the logic animating his misogynist agenda. Overlooking that smacks of malpractice.

But what about straightforward mockery? Mannen’s article doesn’t explicitly get into this distinction, but does flag some articles that directly assail goofy lawyers and seems to suggest that the media should trust judges to toss these lawsuits and not stoke the paranoia of the lawyers behind them. For attorneys so psychologically stunted to see women as an existential threat, pushing them to the margins could dangerously exacerbate their already troubling tendencies.

It’s a fair point, but ultimately it seems to amount to letting the terrorists win. Misogyny is spreading and flourishing online regardless of anything media outlets do about it. Like most noxious philosophies, it feeds on radicalizing people who can’t put their personal setbacks into context. It’s arguably an obligation to present a steady counternarrative that, no, “edgelord69” who you just met on 8chan is not “the only guy really talking about the struggle for incel equality” — we’re all talking about it and we’re telling you it’s dumb.

The lesson for the media is not to disengage from these folks, but to engage them consistently and honestly. These lawsuits are dumb. People should know that they are dumb.

A ‘Wacky’ MRA Lawsuit Guy Shot A Judge’s Family; Maybe We Should Stop Indulging This [Cracked]

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Imagine you’re a defendant who’s pleaded guilty to two felony charges for possessing a stolen car and attempting to steal a pickup truck. You’re now facing sentencing, but you’d rather be dead than go to jail. Hmm… maybe you’ll fake your own death so you don’t have to do time for your crime.

That’s the bright idea that Robert Berger, 25, allegedly had last September. He reportedly created his own death certificate and had his significant other pass it off to his lawyer, who then sent it to the district attorney’s office. There was just one problem: a glaring typo.

The New York Times has the details on what led to this discovery:

The name of the deceased was typed in an unusual font on the death certificate. Other details, like the manner of death, appeared to be printed in much smaller type than normal. And then there was the biggest red flag that the document was fake: The name of the department that would have issued it was misspelled.

The death certificate, which supposedly came from the New Jersey Department of Health, Vital Statistics and Registry, had it rendered as “Regsitry.”

“We’ve seen it where people fake their deaths so that they can receive life insurance benefits or where family members have died and no one notifies anyone so they could keep collecting those benefits,” said Madeline Singas, the Nassau County district attorney. “But I’ve never seen anything like this.”

After some quick research, prosecutors determined that the death certificate had been falsified. Berger was still very much alive, and in fact, was arrested again during the time he’d been faking his death. He’s now been charged with forging a death certificate, and faces up to four years in prison if convicted.

Ms. Singas said the case served as a reminder to her office to double-check documents and as a lesson to others.

“I would say it’s probably a bad idea to give phony documents to the district attorney,” Ms. Singas said. “You’re going to get caught.”

Next time, if you’re trying to play dead, work harder on staying dead.

He Might Have Been Able to Fake His Death, if Only He’d Spell-Checked [New York Times]

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

State bar examiners thought they had everything under control when they drew up their little “waivers.” Never mind that experts generally agree that these waivers are just gibberish — what matters is that it looks official. No one is really going to sue the state bar examiners for running a superspreader event!

Now a new group founded by some Georgetown Law grads aims to use the legal process to keep examiners honest.

Law Graduates for Sensible Bar Admission brings together law school graduates with claims related to the upcoming bar exam and interested in pursuing lawsuits on either a nationwide or state-by-state bases against state law examiners and the National Conference of Bar Examiners.

We are interested in pursuing any and all claims that bar applicants may have against these organizations and their respective directors and officers. We are especially interested in obtaining 1) declaratory judgment that bar examiners’ waivers of liability for in-person exams are void, 2) injunctive relief prohibiting the administration of unsafe and inequitable in-person exams, 3) injunctive relief prohibiting untested and inequitable online exams, 4) injunctive relief requiring states to institute emergency diploma privilege – as this is currently the only reasonable and humane path to legal licensure, and/or 5) obtaining any monetary damages possible

If you want to join the initiative they’d love to hear from you. Even more useful to the effort would be licensed attorneys interested in taking on these cases. They already have people lined up in 15 jurisdictions so the odds are pretty good that they’re going to need lawyers everywhere before too long.

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

One of my favorite cases of 2019 was the deceptively boring-sounding Department of Commerce v. New York. That was the case about whether the 2020 Census should have a question about citizenship, which the Census Bureau staff itself objected to because it would discourage participation by undocumented immigrants. That was, of course, the point. But the Commerce Department told various judges that it was akshully rilly just trying to enforce the Voting Rights Act. In support of their argument, the department had to manufacture a VRA-related request from DOJ, well after evidence shows work had started on the citizenship question.

Unfortunately for them, the guy who came up with the plan spelled out the real goals — creating an electorate “advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites” — in documents that his estranged daughter provided to the media after his death. That alone would put the case in the running for my favorite, but an added bonus was that the revelation proved Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross lied under oath. As Elie Mystal observed in these hallowed pages, the Supreme Court did its best to protect Ross from any consequences. (Those are for criminal defendants, not powerful white people!) But in the end, John Roberts apparently wasn’t willing to put up with being outright lied to.

Fast-forward to this week. Not content with undermining democracy in the 503 area code, Donald Trump issued an executive order Tuesday instructing Ross to ethnically cleanse Census data of any undocumented immigrants before submitting it to the White House. Thus, he is trying to achieve via executive order what he could not achieve by blatantly lying to the courts and the American people: erasure of undocumented people, so that Congressional seats will be taken from blue-voting parts of this country with high immigrant populations and given to places that vote Republican.

It’s blatantly illegal. The Constitution says federal census-takers must count “the whole Number of free Persons.” It also says that the census should be made “in such Manner as [Congress] shall by Law direct.” Either of those things alone is likely enough to get an injunction. The ACLU’s Dale Ho, who led that organization’s citizenship-question litigation, has already promised to sue, and the states that stand to lose Congressional representation probably won’t be far behind. They will win, and — if we manage to get through the next few months without a civil war — it will hopefully be obviated by a Joe Biden presidency.

Speaking of the election, one final thought. Apparently Trump is running for re-election as a guardian of “law and order,” which is some astounding chutzpah. Especially on immigration, but outside of it too, the Trump administration has a long history of blatantly breaking laws it doesn’t like. I’m not even talking about stuff like Ivanka Trump using her job to promote canned beans; I mean that they are outright ignoring the DACA ruling, the limits of federal law enforcement’s authority, and the Administrative Procedure Act. Law and order, like consequences for perjury, apparently do not apply to powerful white people.

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Lorelei Laird is a freelance writer specializing in the law, and the only person you know who still has an “I Believe Anita Hill” bumper sticker. Find her at wordofthelaird.com.