Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Fischer v. United States, the case challenging an obstruction of justice statute used to prosecute hundreds of Capitol rioters (and Donald Trump). I’ve written previously on Sidebars about the case and why I believe the statute, 18 U.S.C. 1512(c), clearly applies to the events of January 6. Today the New York Times published my essay arguing that the Supreme Court should uphold the use of the law. I wanted to share a free link to the article with all of you: Why Is the Supreme Court Making an Easy Case Related to Jan. 6 Rioters Hard? - New Yor ..read more

Welcome to the Weekend Wrap! Here are the week’s white collar highlights: Trump Prosecutions New York State Case - Hush Money/False Business Records “We have our jury” - Judge Merchan made this announcement at the end of the day on Thursday, when the twelfth juror was selected for Trump’s trial. Judge Juan Merchan (credit: Ahmed Gaber/The New York Times/Redux) There were a couple of hiccups along the way. Seven jurors were selected by the end of the day on Tuesday. But on Thursday when the court reconvened, one of the jurors said she was concerned about her safety because information reveal ..read more

After a dozen or so failed defense efforts to postpone the trial, the first criminal prosecution of a former U.S. president began today in a New York state courtroom. Of the four criminal cases currently pending against former president Donald Trump, this was the first to be indicted. I and many others also consider it to be the weakest of the four. It would not have been my choice for the first to go to trial. But with the Florida case crawling along with a foot-dragging judge, Georgia bogged down by an unwieldy indictment and sideshows about the DA’s love life, and D.C. on hold pending Supre ..read more

Welcome to the Weekend Wrap! Here are the week’s white collar highlights: Trump Prosecutions New York State Case - Hush Money/False Business Records While they should have been preparing for trial, Trump’s attorneys spent much of the week pursuing more fruitless efforts to delay the case. On Monday they sought a stay of the case pending their appeal of a motion to transfer the trial to a different venue. That motion is based on a claim that Manhattan jurors will be hopelessly biased against Trump. A court of appeals judge promptly denied that motion after a brief hearing. Then they sought to h ..read more

Welcome to the Weekend Wrap! Here are the week’s white collar highlights: Trump Prosecutions New York State Case - Hush Money/False Business Records Trial Date: Trump’s attorneys are doing everything they can to delay the trial, set to begin a week from tomorrow. It’s not working. The attorneys sought permission to file a new motion to have Judge Merchan recused based on his daughter’s work for a Democratic consulting firm. The judge already rejected an earlier request after the court’s ethics official advised him there were no grounds for recusal; political activities of a family member are n ..read more

Welcome to the Weekend Wrap! Let’s get caught up on what’s happened in the white collar world while I’ve been away. Trump Prosecutions New York State Case - Hush Money/False Business Records The trial in the New York case was supposed to begin tomorrow. Instead the judge will hold a status hearing and has postponed the trial date to at least April 15. He did this with the government’s consent after the defense recently received more than 100,000 pages of documents from federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. The documents relate to that office’s prosecution of former Trump at ..read more

While I’m away on travel, I’m sharing posts from the Sidebars archive. For almost ten years now I’ve been writing this blog that focuses on white collar crime. I’ve been teaching a class with that name for more than twenty years. But where does that term come from, and what exactly does it mean? White collar is firmly established as a distinct category of criminal law. Defense attorneys announce in their law firm bios that they practice not just criminal defense, but white collar defense. Prosecutor’s offices have white collar crime sections staffed by attorneys who focus on these cases. Th ..read more

While I’m away on travel, I’m sharing posts from the Sidebars archive. Accusations of perjury are tossed around frequently and easily. Particularly in Washington, where I live, whenever a witness on Capitol Hill says something that ends up being false or misleading, cries of “perjury!” soon follow. Most recently, we’ve seen this on display in Georgia in the hearings on whether DA Fani Willis should be disqualified based on her relationship with a special prosecutor she hired, Nathan Wade. Wade and Willis both testified that they first met in 2019 and had a professional relationship and friends ..read more

Welcome to the Weekend Wrap! Here are the week’s white collar highlights: Trump Prosecutions There’s a lot of three-dimensional chess going on right now concerning the possible schedule for the Trump trials. Prosecutors are trying to get cases tried before the election so the voters have relevant information about whether a candidate is a convicted felon, while Trump is doing everything he can to push all the trials past election day. The actual schedule will depend on a number of developments over the next few months, but here’s a proposal I posted last week on The Platform Formerly Known as ..read more

New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, along with his wife and three co-defendants, was indicted last September on federal corruption charges. This is the second federal indictment for Menendez. In 2015 he was charged with accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from a co-defendant, Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen. That case ended in a mistrial in 2017, with the jury hung 10-2 for acquittal. Now federal prosecutors are back, accusing Menendez once again of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes.   Proving public corruption cases is always challenging. Corrup ..read more