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How Thick is the Blanket? – Preemptive Pardons as a Presidential Power
FEATURED
December 6, 2024
How Thick is the Blanket? – Preemptive Pardons as a Presidential Power
By: James Trusty
As the presiding judge scolded Hunter Biden’s attorneys this week, “The Constitution provides the President with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 1, but nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history.”[1] But what exactly is that history he claims is being re-written? Judge Scarsi was challenging the largely academic issue of whether a pardon signed at noon, for instance, protects against crimes committed on the same day at dinnertime. That is a very limited run at the notion of “preemptive” pardons, and it seems to be strictly a question of chronology. The judge did not seem to question the idea of…
Supremely Improbable
July 30, 2024
Supremely Improbable
By: James Trusty
President Biden’s pronounced objectives for Supreme Court “reform” are improbable, politically lifeless under a particularly lame duck presidency, and motivated by transparently November-driven calculations. But even if the proposed changes are doomed from the start, they push public discourse on a couple of issues that are red meat for the democrats. The stated reforms are superficially simple ones: 1) to “clarify” that “there is no…
Presidential Immunity Ruling Stirs Sound and Fury
July 5, 2024
Presidential Immunity Ruling Stirs Sound and Fury
By: James Trusty
The immediate and eventual impact of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision in Trump v. United States is both considerable and dramatically misrepresented. The initial consequences include likely delay to the January 6 prosecution out of D.C. and the setting of hearings—in D.C., Georgia and south Florida—where the judges will be required to make factual findings as to whether the evidence supporting the indictments reflect “official…
Closing the Loop: The Proposal of New Subcontracting Limitations on Small Businesses
February 5, 2015
Closing the Loop: The Proposal of New Subcontracting Limitations on Small Businesses
By: Nicole Kardell
Many small business government contractors may have to rethink the way they do business. The Small Business Administration issued a proposed rule at the end of December to implement provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013. The NDAA, which was signed into law in January 2013, requires several significant modifications to the rules for small business concerns, including changes to the Limitations on…
The World Wide Tax Web: FATCA Data Sharing Goes Online
January 20, 2015
The World Wide Tax Web: FATCA Data Sharing Goes Online
By: Nicole Kardell
The IRS has unveiled a secure web application, the International Data Exchange Service (IDES), for cross-border data sharing. IDES will allow Foreign Financial Institutions (FFIs) and tax authorities from other countries to transmit financial data on U.S. taxpayers’ accounts, via an encrypted pathway, to the IRS. The tool is part of the IRS’s effort to track U.S. taxpayer income globally. It is intended to assist…
Even Governors Go To Jail
January 6, 2015
Even Governors Go To Jail
By: Ifrah Law
Photo Credit: Steve Helber, AP This afternoon, the long-running saga of Robert McDonnell came to what may be the end (not counting appeals) when the former Virginia Governor was sentenced to serve two years in prison after a jury convicted him of bribery while in office. As with many cases, this one has lessons to teach for those of us who carefully follow sentencing advocacy…
Remote Search Warrants and the Continued Threat to Privacy Rights
December 1, 2014
Remote Search Warrants and the Continued Threat to Privacy Rights
By: Nicole Kardell
What were you doing Wednesday, November 5, 2014? If you are a staunch Republican, you might have been toasting the election results from the day before, dreamy-eyed and dancing. If you are a staunch Democrat, you might have been scratching your head profusely, thunderstruck and quiet. People across the country were talking politics and policy in a very public way that day. How would the…
The Crisis of New Jersey Courts and the Challenge to Judicial Recall
November 25, 2014
The Crisis of New Jersey Courts and the Challenge to Judicial Recall
By: Ifrah Law
At the very core of judicial independence is the notion that courts and judges decide matters in accordance with the evidence and legal precedent, independent from political power or outside controls. The question of whether a bipartisan and independent judiciary is still alive and well in New Jersey has been called into question recently, as Governor Christie has been accused of packing the state supreme…
