Legal Eagles, Con't

Not a good day for the GOP in the arena of the federal courts, as the 11th Circuit and SCOTUS handed down big L's to Sen. Lindsey Graham and GOP attorneys general, respectively. First, Graham lost his bid to quash the subpoena in the Trump election fraud investigation by Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Wilson.

A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected Sen. Lindsey Graham’s emergency request that it halt a subpoena for his testimony from the Atlanta-area grand jury investigating efforts to undermine the 2020 election in Georgia.

The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court judge in ruling that the South Carolina Republican senator may be questioned about certain topics.

“(C)ommunications and coordination with the Trump campaign regarding its post-election efforts in Georgia, public statements regarding the 2020 election, and efforts to ‘cajole’ or ‘exhort’ Georgia election officials” are not legislative activities protected by the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution, the three-judge panel ruled.

With its new ruling, the appeals court lifted the temporary hold it had placed on the subpoena while it was considering Graham’s case.

However, Graham may not be questioned about conduct related to any fact-finding he was doing about whether to vote to certify the 2020 election results, the court ruled, okaying the approach taken by the lower court.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is leading the investigation, has indicated that she wants to question Graham about his phone calls with Georgia election officials as former President Donald Trump and his allies were seeking to reverse his defeat in the state.

The appeals court said if there was a dispute over whether investigators’ questions about those calls related to the fact-finding he was doing for the certification vote, Graham could raise those issues when he is testifying. But the new ruling makes clear that the three other categories of conduct fall outside of the protections of the Speech and Debate Clause, which shields legislators from certain law enforcement activities connected to their duties as lawmakers.

The 11th Circuit order was unanimous and came from a panel made up of two Trump appointees and a Clinton appointee.

 

Meanwhile, the courts refused to block President Biden's college debt relief program, not once, but twice.

Federal courts on Thursday delivered two wins for President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett rejected a challenge to the program brought by a Wisconsin taxpayers group. And on the same day, a federal district court judge rejected a separate lawsuit brought by six Republican-led states.

Student loan cancellations, worth up to $20,000 per eligible borrower, could begin on Sunday.

The appeal at issue in the Supreme Court case was considered an uphill battle because lower courts had ruled that the group, the Brown County Taxpayers Association, did not have the legal right or “standing” to bring the challenge. Under normal circumstances, taxpayers don’t have a general right to sue the government over how it uses taxpayer funds.

Barrett acted alone because she has jurisdiction over the lower court that ruled on the case. She declined to refer the matter to the full court. Her denial appeared as a single sentence on the court’s docket.

A federal judge in Missouri, US District Judge Henry Edward Autrey, rejected the lawsuit from the GOP-led states also because the plaintiffs did not have the legal standing to bring the challenge.

As I said before, the issue is standing: who is harmed by the student debt relief program, and what harm needs to be redressed? The courts' answer at both the appeals and SCOTUS level is that there is no harm. I'm shocked, personally. I figured Justice Barrett would go along but she 100% did not.

Too nuts even for her.