donal brown

The federal courts are stepping into a prominent role in deciding whether  the Trump administration can wall out requests by Congress and others for information regarding President Donald Trump’s Russia connection, financial dealings and alleged obstruction of justice. Transparency got a boost Monday from U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta who ruled that President Donald Trump’s accountant had to submit Trump’s financial records to the House Oversight Committee. Mehta rejected arguments that the quest for

The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals turned down a challenge to a federal law banning foreign nationals from donating to state and local election campaigns. The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 on the ban, but the decision only dealt with federal elections. The case involved a political consultant in a San Diego mayor’s race whose work was financed by a Mexican national and real estate developer with substantial interests in the U.S. but who

The American Civil Liberties Union and an author are protesting the ban on a book about the treatment of black men in the criminal justice system. The book says the system singles out black men and that prison should be abolished. The author Paul Butler, a law professor and former prosecutor, says there is nothing about the book that disrupts the prison or threatens the safety of guards and inmates. (The New York Times, May

Three organizations filed a lawsuit to force the Trump administration to keep and preserve records of the president’s meetings with foreign leaders as mandated by the Presidential Records Act. Barbara Keys of the Society of American Foreign Relations, one of the principals in the lawsuit, remarked of the Trump lapses, “Failing to make or keep records damages not only the capacity of history to render judgment in the future, but also of government to pursue