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Baltimoronic Investigation
FEATURED
July 8, 2025
Baltimoronic Investigation
By: James Trusty
June 24, 2025, may mark the day that the criminal justice system for Baltimore, Maryland finally established its lunacy. If the allegations are correct, an employee of Pretrial Services committed what Maryland officials view as a cardinal sin—he or she let ICE know that there was an illegal alien coming to the office. Armed with that information, ICE showed up at the courthouse, was allowed up to the 4th floor, and arrested an illegal alien. There are no allegations of disruption to the Pretrial Services office, no suggestion that the arrest caused a courthouse-wide panic, and no lawyers rushed to microphones to announce the alien had been tortured, beaten, and shipped off to a Salvadoran prison. But the Baltimore City…
Biden and DOJ’s Spiteful Ploy Boomerangs: How Politics Destroys Privilege
June 30, 2025
Biden and DOJ’s Spiteful Ploy Boomerangs: How Politics Destroys Privilege
By: James Trusty
During the pre-indictment period in which I was one of President Trump’s lawyers, there was a considerable amount of then-sealed litigation over the Special Counsel Office’s (“SCO”) insatiable search for incriminating evidence. We regularly found ourselves fighting against prosecutors providing ex parte information to the Court in support of their singular claims that Donald J. Trump did not have the same legal privileges as almost…
AI Conversations Feel Private. Could They Be Privileged?
June 11, 2025
AI Conversations Feel Private. Could They Be Privileged?
By: Robert Ward
The New York Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI continues to spark debate, and not just about copyright. Most recently, a federal magistrate judge ordered OpenAI to preserve chats that the company might otherwise have deleted at a user’s request. In response, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggested that it may be time for a version of the attorney-client or physician-patient privilege, but for AI. While any attempt…
Nevada Case Points to Perils of Assertion of 5th Amendment in Civil Cases
March 12, 2012
Nevada Case Points to Perils of Assertion of 5th Amendment in Civil Cases
By: Ifrah Law
One of the hardest decisions on which a lawyer may be called upon to advise a client in civil litigation is the decision whether to assert the Fifth Amendment privilege. On the one hand, the overlap between pending civil and criminal matters may make it dangerous for the client to make statements that could incriminate him or her in the criminal case. On the other…
D.C. Appeals Court Rejects Challenge to Admission of Handwriting Evidence
March 8, 2012
D.C. Appeals Court Rejects Challenge to Admission of Handwriting Evidence
By: Jeffrey Hamlin
If there was ever an open question as to whether forensic handwriting identification is admissible under D.C.’s common law of evidence, the D.C. Court of Appeals has finally put that question to rest. On February 9, 2012, the Court of Appeals held that handwriting comparison and identification, as practiced by FBI examiners, passes the Frye test for admissibility. The issue arose after Robert Pettus’ jury…
DOJ Goes After Smaller Fraudsters, Lets Big Fish Escape
March 5, 2012
DOJ Goes After Smaller Fraudsters, Lets Big Fish Escape
By: Nicole Kardell
Successful criminal prosecutions of mortgage fraud seem to have one thing in common: a fraud figure well below $10 million. One of the recent cases that generated a fair amount of press involved the convictions of co-conspirators in a mortgage scheme carried out by an ex-NFL player. That scheme, which took place during the housing boom in the early 2000’s, resulted in 10 convictions. Former…
Justice Would Be Served by an ‘Open File’ Policy for Prosecutors
March 2, 2012
Justice Would Be Served by an ‘Open File’ Policy for Prosecutors
By: Jeff Ifrah
A couple of years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice made an effort to systematize and improve its discovery obligations under Brady v. Maryland, the 1963 Supreme Court case that requires prosecutors to disclose information in their files that would tend to exculpate criminal defendants. A U.S. attorney, speaking at a conference of defense lawyers, commented at the time that the department takes its Brady…
D.C. Circuit Tackles Ex-Prosecutor’s Allegations of Privacy Violations
February 20, 2012
D.C. Circuit Tackles Ex-Prosecutor’s Allegations of Privacy Violations
By: Ifrah Law
After a nearly decade-long legal battle, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking to dismiss once and for all the privacy suit of Richard Convertino, a former federal prosecutor in Detroit who alleges that the DOJ illegally gave the press details of an internal investigation into his alleged misconduct. In February 2004, Convertino filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of…
