LegalEagle contrasts 'Signal War Plans vs. Hillary's Emails' for Throwback Thursday

Happy Throwback Thursday! For today's brief look back, I'm sharing LegalEagle with Liz Dye comparing and contrasting Signal War Plans v.s. Hillary's Emails.

One of these things is not like the other...So when exactly did the military stop classifying time and package of air strikes?

I took a silly look at "Whiskeyleaks" in 'SNL' mocks the Signal group chat in its cold open and Weekend Update, which LegalEagle clipped. It was time I took a serious look at it, along with revisiting a controversy I thought I'd dispensed with nine years ago, Hillary Clinton's emails, although it led to me writing Trump and Putin, a bad bromance, which I last linked to in Kosta, Colbert, and Meyers take closer looks at tariffs on Flashback Friday two weeks ago. I still have my suspicions about that relationship and how it's influencing Donald "Hoover Cleveland" Trump's actions. Also, the accusations against Secretary Clinton turned out to be another example of projection being the Right's favorite defense mechanism. That's turned out to be even more true 13 years later.

Enough of these scandals. Follow over the jump for a retrospective of the top post featuring LegalEagle during the 2024-2025 blogging year.

LegalEagle explains 'Trump's Bombshell Federal Document Indictment'

Donald Trump is scheduled to be arraigned today — for the second time — on one of 'the Trump investigations you should actually care about'.

The other federal investigation is focused on classified documents that Trump brought with him from the White House to his Florida estate after losing the 2020 election. According to reports from the Washington Post and the New York Times, when the FBI searched his estate in August 2022, they found documents related to nuclear weapons, as well as files containing information that could put US informants in the field in danger.

LegalEagle explains the charges and evidence for them released so far in Trump's Bombshell Federal Document Indictment.

This is a bombshell...Will he actually go to jail this time?

Yes, it's a bombshell, one that requires more analysis than I'm willing and able to give here. After all, I'm a scientist, not a lawyer. I refer my readers to Marcy "Emptywheel" Wheeler's posts on the subject. She's much better at this than I would be.

I'm being a good environmentalist by recycling my answer to his second question.

I expect he'll be sentenced to house arrest in Trump Tower with the Secret Service as his guards, at least for this set of crimes. He might get a more severe punishment if he's indicted and convicted for crimes in Georgia and Washington, D.C.

I thought that this indictment would be in Washington, D.C., not Florida, but the jurisdiction doesn't matter for my expectations of punishment; it might be more severe than mere house arrest.

I'm sure I'll have more to say on this later, but first stay tuned for Flag Day, when I usually examine the state of D.C. statehood. It's also TFG's birthday. LOL, happy birthday. Enjoy your indictment presents!

Legal Eagle asks is there 'Astonishing Corruption at The Supreme Court?'

It's time to update the topic of Justice Clarence Thomas with Legal Eagle asking is there Astonishing Corruption at The Supreme Court?

Ethics? Never heard of it...What's the solution here?

I'm being a good environmentalist by recycling my reaction from MSNBC interviews ProPublica about Justice Thomas's unreported vacations paid for by Harlan Crow, which also reuses another reaction.

I'm recycling a passage from CNBC examines 'How The Supreme Court May Threaten Democracy' for the first part of my reaction.

[T]he Supreme Court needs more accountability and transparency. I'm less clear about which reforms Congress can and should implement. The bills for a greater transparency and compliance with ethics rules would certainly be a good start.

That's the long-term structural response to this incident, which shows that these proposed reforms are definitely needed. The short-term response is to ask what to do about Justice Thomas. Should he resign? Abe Fortas resigned for something similar although involving less money, even after inflation. Will he? Ha! No, not unless the situation gets much worse for Justice and Mrs. Thomas. Should he be impeached, convicted, and removed? It doesn't matter, because the Republican House majority will never vote to impeach Thomas. We'll have to wait until 2025 for a Democratic majority. Even then, I doubt the Senate would convict, even if the Democrats retain their majority. We'll just have to outlast him. Sigh.

Reduce? No, I think we should expand the court: "I also support increasing the size of the Supreme Court so that there is a Justice for every federal appellate circuit, but President Biden is not in favor of this idea and Republicans would filibuster it." That's still true, although I wonder if Biden's mind will change. It's also a subject for another post. Stay tuned.

LegalEagle explains how lawyers can fight climate change

I have an entire lecture about the role of government in my environmental science course. This includes the role of law and legal action, so I couldn't resist featuring How Lawyers Fight Climate Change, which LegalEagle uploaded to YouTube this morning.

Can you just sue climate change out of existence? This video was created in partnership with Bill Gates, inspired by his new book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”

When I first embedded a LegalEagle video in Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, and Legal Eagle have more funny things to say about GameStop, a tale of the stock market and Retail Apocalypse, people complained that, while informative, it was too long and the sponsor content at the end was too intrusive. I think this video doesn't have either of those issues, as it's shorter — maybe even too short for the subject — and the plug of Bill Gates' book is briefer and in better taste. If nothing else, Gates is a big step up from SkillShare, NordVPN, and the other common sponsors of YouTube creators' videos and most likely allowed LegalEagle to purchase the rights to use all of the stock footage and other clips used. Still, the sponsorship might be enough to deter me from showing this to my classes. Otherwise, I think it's an informative and entertaining video about the legal challenges facing climate change action and what can be done about them.