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Welcome to this week's edition of the Deadline: Legal Newsletter, a roundup of top legal stories, including the latest developments from the Supreme Court, the Donald Trump cases and more. Click here to have the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox every Friday this Supreme Court term.
Supreme Court justices retake the bench Monday for the November oral argument sitting, which features a case threatening to further expand the Second Amendment, in the wake of one of the deadliest mass shootings in recent U.S. history. While the court was relatively quiet this week, Justice Clarence Thomas’ RV made noise (don’t worry, I’ll explain). Another noisy boy was Donald Trump, who stormed out of a New York courtroom during his civil fraud trial.
But what’s this about Thomas’ RV? That’s the luxury motor coach the justice has used to project his faux image of an everyman who’s most comfortable parked in a Walmart lot. Of course, as the series of reports about billionaire Harlan Crow’s years of (unreported) largesse to the GOP appointee showed, Thomas hasn’t been living like the rest of us. But now we know he got the RV in what a tax expert told The New York Times was a “sweetheart deal,” with financing from yet another wealthy benefactor. The justice was part of the 6-3 GOP majority that struck down student loan relief in June, but a Senate inquiry found his own loan was forgiven, in a move the Times said has “ethical and potential tax consequences for the justice.” Wake me when those consequences come.
How to possibly segue from the shady financial dealings of a powerfully dangerous right-wing figure into Trump? Behold, the former president’s fraud trial that has his namesake business empire in the legal crosshairs. Trump’s former fixer and current foil Michael Cohen took the stand against his old boss, and my MSNBC colleague Lisa Rubin was there for the historic showdown. She reported that Cohen “methodically testified to his participation, over several years and at Trump’s express directive, in ‘reverse engineering’ the value of Trump’s assets in order to meet Trump’s asserted net worth objective for each of those years.”
If you can believe it, Trump hasn’t taken the case too well, storming out after facing off with Cohen. Speaking to reporters at the courthouse Wednesday, the GOP presidential frontrunner called Judge Arthur Engoron partisan and appeared to say the same about the judge’s clerk. That was a bad idea, because it earned Trump his second gag order fine in as many weeks, after Engoron found Trump’s claim “not credible” that he was talking about Cohen, not the clerk. And how much did this most recent antisocial behavior cost the supposed billionaire, you ask? A whopping $10,000. If you’re keeping score, that’s after a paltry $5,000 fine for the first violation and the threat of jail for future ones. But between the lack of serious sanction in New York and the unclear fate of his gag order in the federal election interference case, which is paused while Trump challenges it, he doesn’t have much incentive to shut up yet.
Speaking of sweetheart deals, the guilty pleas keep piling up in Georgia. Jenna Ellis was the latest Trump co-defendant to get in early and grab one from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Ellis’ no-jail plea follows similar ones from fellow lawyers Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, but Ellis’ cooperation could be the strongest of the bunch yet. She directly admitted to aiding and abetting the 2020 election lies of Rudy Giuliani and fellow MAGA lawyer/co-defendant Ray Smith.
So, with 15 defendants left on the Georgia indictment, who’ll be the next to drop? We can safely assume it won’t be Trump, who’s aiming to retake the White House despite — or is it because of? — his several criminal cases.
But is Trump even eligible for office? Under the 14th Amendment, maybe not. The amendment bars insurrectionists, and its impact on the GOP frontrunner is hitting trial and oral argument next week in Colorado and Minnesota courtrooms, respectively. Ahead of the trial, I spoke to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold about the eligibility issue and her role in potentially keeping Trump off the ballot. Check out our interview here and buckle up for the next round of Supreme Court arguments and Trump legal madness.