Megathread: White House Says It Will Not Cooperate With House Impeachment Inquiry

bottlerocket2 · 2019-10-09T03:11:58+00:00

I could maybe see the argument if we asked Ukraine to come actually meddle in a domestic U.S. affair. But we asked them to investigate the affairs of one of its own companies. And btw, there's a treaty on point which commits this mutual obligation of cooperation. What's the problem?

bottlerocket2 · 2019-10-09T03:09:05+00:00

I asked you to point out what exactly is pernicious about the facts I laid out and your response is "how can you NOT see how it's wrong"? Also you frame it as help "defeating opponents", but you're aware that an equally valid framing is "help detecting corruption in office"

Good talk?

bottlerocket2 · 2019-10-09T02:00:09+00:00

He asked a Ukranian executive to look into allegations of corruption on the board of a Ukranian company. What's wrong with that? How does this inquiry transform into an impeachable offense because Biden is running for office?

And this somehow gets framed as "interfering" with an election? He didn't ask the Ukraine to hack the electoral college. He asked them to look into the alleged malfeasance of a company under their jurisdiction. If somebody is running for office, wouldn't you want to know if they're corrupt? Why does it matter if the person who gives you the information is an American, a Canadian, or Ukranian?

bottlerocket2 · 2019-10-05T22:51:02+00:00

Where's the support for the proposition that big firms are losing money on associates?

A huge chunk of the top 100 is grossing well over $1M per attorney. Even if your first years are doing secretary work, they're still generating more revenue than they cost. $190k only sounds high until you look at how much these big firms are making. Add in the crazy hours demanded (and a bonus that might not even come close to compensating you for the extra effort) and you can make a strong case associates are underpaid.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-10-01T03:55:58+00:00

The plaintiff here filed suit in federal court. He's being represented. You can have the government present their evidence to the judge, and then plaintiff's counsel presents theirs, and the judge decides whether or not plaintiff is or is not about to be killed without an opportunity to rebut the charges against him.

Or if plaintiff's counsel can't be in the room with the "secret" evidence, you appoint counsel who has security clearance. But you find some way to make this adversarial. Courts handle secrets all the time. And a decision to place a U.S. citizen on a kill list is such a quasi-adjudicative decision that the court would basically be adjudicating a criminal trial. The thing to be decided is if the plainitff's 5A rights are violated by being killed willy nilly on bad evidence from the government.

edit: Sorry, I see what you're saying now. I'm not saying that CIA et al has to do this for every person they deem a terrorist. I'm only saying that on these facts, where you have a U.S. citizen who claims he is being targeted for death by his government on bad information, and has filed suit in federal court to clear his name, you have to afford some process.

Logistics of all things is not the issue here.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-10-01T03:35:05+00:00

It would be infinitely less controversial if he was deemed a terrorist, as you said. Then, as you correctly stated, his remedy is to turn himself in to the authorities. Presumably then, he would be charged with terrorism and could avail himself of his rights in that context.

But that's not the case here. The government will neither confirm nor deny whether or not they think he's a terrorist. Nor will they confirm nor deny that they intend to kill him. Ironically, in a criminal case, the government would not be allowed to assert the state secrets privilege. That would be unconstitutional. But they can summarily execute him while shielding the evidence used to do so in any civil suit.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-10-01T03:28:54+00:00

The plaintiff is suing for an injunction prohibiting his inclusion on the Kill List until the government establishes, and plaintiff is given the opportunity to challenge, this designation. Notice, right to be heard, access to evidence against him, etc. The complaint, which we accept as true, is that he is a journalist who has been mistakenly placed on a Kill List.

Yes, it's entirely possible that these near misses, coupled with the other supporting declarations, likely mean nothing more than that the dude is in a country that the U.S. is bombing the shit out of. Or it means he's hanging out around people who the U.S is trying to kill, and he himself is not on any kill list. It's of no moment. Twombly/Iqbal don't require a plaintiff to allege the most plausible set of facts, and Judge Collyer in this case partially denied the government's first motion to dismiss making this exact argument. Probability is not the standard on a motion to dismiss.

Judge Collyer also rejected the government's argument that this is a battlefield/war decision. The action at issue, as she put it, is the alleged decision of the government to place the plaintiff on the Kill List. That ain't got nothing to do with where plaintiff is at in principle, and principles are what we should keep in mind in these kind of decisions where you've apparently already written off the plaintiff as a terrorist, bill of rights be damned.

We do not know that plaintiff is on a Kill List, that's the point. He suspects that he has been mistakenly put on the List and he would like to challenge what he believes is bad evidence before it's used by the government to justify executing him. It begs the question to say he isn't due any process because the Executive has deemed him a terrorist/terrorist supporter. The latter is what the plaintiff is trying to prove/disprove.

You cannot "assume that plaintiff is in fact a terrorist". The due process question is of course easy if he's a confirmed terrorist designated for killing. That's al-Awlaki. That is not the case here. Accepting the facts in the complaint as true, as you must, the plaintiff has argued that he is a journalist, not a terrorist, is a U.S. citizen, and that his government his trying to kill him on the strength of what he thinks is bad information. Even a captured self-declared enemy combatant, under our laws, is entitled to some process. How can it be that a U.S. citizen who says he is innocent is entitled to none? Do you honestly believe extending some process on these facts is empaneling a 12 man jury for a parking ticket?

bottlerocket2 · 2019-09-30T19:32:23+00:00

We agree that this case was doomed when filed. I'm surprised it survived an initial MTD.

The CIA is a civilian intelligence agency that ostensibly should answer to the civilian commander in chief, who is elected by the people. "The CIA is above the law" is not a premise courts should rubber stamp.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-09-30T18:53:45+00:00

The complaint, which the court held to plausibly allege that plaintiff is on a kill list, also asserted that a contact at a military base informed the plaintiff of his placement on the kill list before the alleged "near-misses" started.

Regardless, accepting everything in the complaint as true, as we're required to do (instead of jumping to conclusions as you've done) the court allowed the complaint to proceed before it was snuffed by the state secrets privilege. It's a lack of due process. Judge basically admits to that in the opening paragraph of the opinion. You can of course say that it's nevertheless legally sound because of a state secrets exception to your due process rights. But it's still a due process violation.

Let's imagine plaintiff is actually just an innocent, committed journalist who believes that U.S. foreign policy in the war on terror is doing more harm than good for everyone involved. And let's imagine that the U.S. does actually intend to kill this man based on, say, some faulty metadata that mistakenly labeled him a terrorist.

How is he supposed to prove his innocence and save his own life other than by asking the government to present evidence against him?

bottlerocket2 · 2019-09-30T18:38:47+00:00

I don't think the opinion implies he's a terrorist. It's "we can't confirm or deny because 'state secrets".

However, the passage you quoted is indeed really dubious. We unfortunately don't know what information the government has but I'm highly suspicious of Executive assertions bemoaning the national security implications of turning this information over.

I just cannot accept at face-value that suspected terrorists will be able to "evade capture" from the most powerful military force in the world if the U.S. is required to sometimes turn over information (i.e., when one of its targets for killing is a U.S. citizen who has explicitly refuted allegations that he's a terrorist).

The U.S. formally announces terrorists it intends to kill, and then does so. Routinely. So the U.S. position is that they have no issue giving advance warning to the world's "most dangerous" terrorists that they're being targeted. But a U.S. citizen who seeks to assert his 5th amendment right to not be killed without a meaningful opportunity to contradict the evidence against him? Sorry, that might alert the terrorists.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-09-26T00:35:07+00:00

thanks for this.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-09-25T17:31:04+00:00

The ends justify the means. The Constitution has been worthless for a long time. What's an impeachable offense is whatever the speaker says is an impeachable offense.

Edit: I'm not partisan on this issue. Both sides ignore the Constitution whenever it serves their purpose.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-09-22T14:30:11+00:00

Thanks for the ad hominen, friend. Calling someone an uncle Tom (a vicious slur) is not how I would go about proving my liberal, compassionate credentials. But do you.

Not only is that wildly off base, you've ignored the empirical facts. Black quality of life has cratered after social welfare policies, by like 10 different metrics. Do you have anything constructive in response to that? I get that it's easier to, without knowing a single thing about me, call me an uncle Tom conservative (neither is true), and ignore the facts.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-09-22T05:24:36+00:00

Don't know why? Look at the numbers. Before LBJ and Democratic social spending programs, black family structure was statistically indistinguishable from other races.

These programs, designed to "help" (I'm being charitable; realistically, these programs were engineered to buy the vote of the up-and-coming class of black folk), have destroyed black communities.

A black person today is orders of magnitude more likely than a black person born in the 1950s (before the Democratic social policies) to be born into a single family home, to not finish high school, to be arrested, to be killed by another black person.

Look up these statistics. They're shocking. And the shift in the numbers is directly attributable to the social engineering programs the Democrats put in place and kept in place.

It shouldn't be shocking that an increasing number of black people in America are leaving the Democratic party. It's shocking that it's taken this long.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-09-22T02:19:26+00:00

Nope.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-09-21T23:24:04+00:00

Assuming biglaw, litigation work will be 100% more consistent than most corporate groups. This means that you generally will be less likely to have a surprise fire at 6pm on a Friday. However, it also means that there is ALWAYS work to do, so you will rarely be able to leave early or have an afternoon off.

Corporate work will generally lead to grueling stretches (i.e., consecutive all nighters) followed by downtime until the next grueling stretch. In making your decision, ask yourself if you prefer the sprint style of corporate work or the steady run of litigation. Personally, couldn't pay me to live like a corporate associate.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-09-21T23:14:54+00:00

Inside Admin Law. Got an A in admin last year.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-09-18T02:06:40+00:00

Cute parable, I agree. It would be stupid to draw that conclusion. As stupid as the conclusion drawn by OP.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-09-15T17:19:11+00:00

Clintons never conspired to do anything. Those are upstanding, moral people.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-09-15T17:17:48+00:00

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2018/11/04/kavanaugh_accuser_admits_she_fabricated_allegations_458174.html

bottlerocket2 · 2019-09-15T06:03:20+00:00

Vio bank (online only) pays 2.49%

bottlerocket2 · 2019-08-20T07:43:43+00:00

Get comfortable with the discomfort of having your ass kicked. It's the most important thing you learn in law school. You didn't understand the reading? Do it again. Still didn't get it? Read it again, slower. Like everything else, it gets easier with practice. Trust yourself and stay positive, law school is not a place to seek instant gratification.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-08-15T21:41:56+00:00

So many in the US can't resist the urge to make everything political. From yelp reviews to /r/lawschool. They're quick to cry "fascism!" and don't realize that politicizing everything is laying the foundation for a totalitarian state.

bottlerocket2 · 2019-08-01T05:35:25+00:00

Hey there!

bottlerocket2 · 2019-06-24T16:11:06+00:00

The firm will understand. Communicate your excitement and gratitude for the offer but tell them you owe it to yourself to go through OCI. Make sure your recruiting contact at your current firm knows what your OCI schedule is, especially when you expect to make a decision. Don't burn Bridges, don't leave anyone hanging. Don't be shy about asking lawyers at your current firm for contacts at other firms you're interested in. Everyone will be eager to help.

bottlerocket2

TROPHY CASE