donal brown

President Donald Trump’s allies are calling for a criminal investigation of The New York Times reporters for breaking the law in reporting on the president’s tax returns. One such ally cites 216 U.S. Code7213 that says it’s illegal to disclose tax returns. But while it is possible that the information was leaked illegally, the Times reporters are unlikely to suffer any legal repercussions. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that the First Amendment protected

A federal judge ruled that Homeland Security must release records of Covid-19 cases in immigration detention centers and Border Patrol stations. University of Chicago Law School investigators filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the information in June. They said the release “would allow the public to understand the extent and the nature of the crisis clearly occurring within Southern California detention centers and take informed steps to address and mitigate that crisis.” The

The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals dealt a blow to an Indian band who has spent years trying to build a hotel/casino on an abandoned naval base owned by the city of Richmond. The court ruled that tribal sovereign immunity was rendered moot through litigation in federal district court so that a nonprofit environmental group could hold the city to adhere to the Brown Act, the state’s open meeting law, in any settlement over

The Seattle police announced they will abandon efforts to subpoena five local news groups to obtain unpublished videos and photos during a demonstration on May 30. They said they needed the videos to help them solve arson and theft cases. The department said it would take until next year to obtain the visual evidence and that they arrested a suspect in one of the cases. The media groups appealed to the state Supreme Court a

The nonprofit news outlet ProPublica revealed that a conservative lawyer has been conducting private briefings with Republican state election officials. The lawyer, Hans von Spakovsky who holds that, contrary to fact, voter fraud is widespread, has not included Democratic officials in the briefings. Von Spakovsky has published essays favoring in-person voting over voting through mail and advice on how to cull voter rolls. (ProPublica, September 15, 2020, by Mike Spies, Jake Pearson and Jessica Huseman)