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RNC launches campaign to oppose Obama's Supreme Court pick
Topics in Legal News |
2016/03/18 22:36
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The Republican Party is launching a campaign to try to derail President Barack Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court, teaming up with a conservative opposition research group to target vulnerable Democrats and impugn whomever Obama picks.
A task force housed within the Republican National Committee will orchestrate attack ads, petitions and media outreach to bolster a strategy that Senate Republicans adopted as soon as Justice Antonin Scalia died last month: refusing to consider an Obama nominee out of hopes that the next president will be a Republican.
The RNC will contract with America Rising Squared, an outside group targeting Democrats that's run by a longtime aide to GOP Sen. John McCain. GOP chairman Reince Priebus said it would be the most comprehensive judicial response effort in the party's history.
Priebus said the RNC would "make sure Democrats have to answer to the American people for why they don't want voters to have a say in this process."
Obama is expected to announce his pick as early as this week, touching off a heated election-year battle as Obama and Democrats try to pressure Republicans into relenting and allowing hearings and a vote. Advocacy groups on both sides are primed to unleash an onslaught of activity aimed at rallying public support, and a number of former top Obama advisers have been drafted to run the Democratic effort.
RNC officials said that in addition to scouring the nominee's history for anything that can be used against him or her, the party will also work to portray Democrats as hypocritical, dredging up comments that Vice President Joe Biden and other Democrats made in previous years suggesting presidents shouldn't ram through nominees to the high court in the midst of an election.
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Lawyer: US citizen charged in UN case to plead guilty
Topics in Legal News |
2016/03/17 22:35
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A defense lawyer says a U.S. citizen charged in the United Nations bribery case will plead guilty Wednesday to charges.
Attorney Brian Bieber said Monday that Francis Lorenzo will plead guilty to three charges. Lorenzo is a suspended ambassador from the Dominican Republic who was arrested in the fall.
The plea comes in a case that resulted in the arrest of a former president of the U.N. General Assembly and a billionaire Chinese businessman.
Bieber says Lorenzo will plead guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit money laundering and filing a false tax return.
Bieber says his client decided to plead guilty after reviewing the government's evidence. He says it led him to "accept responsibility for his role in the criminal conspiracies committed by him and his co-defendants."
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Court declines stay in redistricting; Congress elections off
Topics in Legal News |
2016/02/18 14:44
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The U.S. Supreme Court refused Friday night to stop a lower-court order demanding North Carolina legislators draw a new congressional map, meaning House primary elections won't occur next month as scheduled and are shifted to June.
The denial of the request by state of North Carolina attorneys for the justices to intervene came just hours after Republican lawmakers meeting in Raleigh voted for redrawn boundaries as a safeguard to comply with a federal court ruling that called two majority black districts racial gerrymanders. A new congressional elections calendar also was approved.
The General Assembly reconvened and passed a new map because a three-judge panel had ordered a replacement by Friday.
State attorneys argued that absentee ballots already were being requested for the March 15 primary election, and blocking districts used since 2011 would create electoral chaos and a costly separate House primary later in the year. But voters who sued over the boundaries said they shouldn't have to vote in illegal districts for another election cycle, like in 2012 and 2014.
The refusal — a one-sentence decision that said Chief Justice John Roberts had referred the request to the entire court — means the congressional primary elections will now occur June 7 under new boundaries that put two incumbents in the same district and seriously jeopardize the re-election of Democratic Rep. Alma Adams, who is now living in a strong Republican district.
Mollie Young, a spokeswoman for GOP House Speaker Tim Moore, said the legislative leaders' attorneys would review the decision before making a comment. |
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Court rejects AG Kane's request to reinstate law license
Topics in Legal News |
2016/02/09 11:36
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Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane's law license will remain suspended after the state's highest court on Friday denied her request to have it reinstated while she fights criminal charges of leaking secret grand jury material and lying about it.
The court's unanimous rejection could pave the way to an unprecedented vote in the state Senate on whether to remove her from office.
A Kane spokesman said the first-term Democrat was disappointed, but not surprised.
A Senate vote could happen in the coming weeks after a special committee spent about three months exploring the question of whether Kane could run the 800-employee law enforcement office without a law license. Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre, said senators will discuss the matter when they reconvene in the Capitol next week.
"It's an important issue," Corman said. "It's really unprecedented, so I think it deserves to be addressed."
In seeking to have her license reinstated, Kane argued that Justice Michael Eakin should not have participated in the suspension vote because of his involvement in a salacious email scandal.
In its one-page order, the Democrat-controlled court said Kane did not seek the recusal of Eakin "at the earliest possible time." As a result, the justices said, Kane gave up her ability to object on that basis to the court's unanimous decision in September to suspend her license.
Kane has released hundreds of emails, including some that Eakin sent and received through a private email account in the name of John Smith. Eakin, a Republican, has been suspended with pay by his fellow justices while he awaits trial before an ethics court that could result in his being kicked off the bench.
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South African court hears case against president
Topics in Legal News |
2016/02/09 11:35
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The chant "Pay back the money" filtered into South Africa's highest court on Tuesday, as judges heard a case in which President Jacob Zuma is accused of violating the constitution in a scandal over state spending on his private home.
Inside court, lawyers argued before 11 judges over whether the president broke the law by failing to follow a 2014 recommendation from the state watchdog agency that he pay back some of the more than $20 million in security upgrades to his rural home.
Outside, several thousand opposition party supporters demonstrated against what they described as corruption by the head of state, shouting that he should return state money used to improve his private home.
Zuma's office, on Feb. 3, said he was willing to reimburse some money, an about-turn to his previous position that he did nothing wrong. His critics said he was trying to avoid the embarrassment of a court hearing and a repeat of last year's heckling during his State of the Nation address, to be held on Thursday.
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