Free Republic

A federal appeals court in New York on Tuesday handed former President Trump a partial victory in a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who accused Trump of raping her in the 1990s, with the court ruling that presidents are covered by a federal law that gives broad legal immunity to government employees. A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit said a lower court erred when it ruled that Trump’s accuser, E. Jean Carroll, could sue Trump personally for the allegedly defamatory statements he made about her during his presidency.

The US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday overturned a lower court judge’s decision and ruled ‘insurrectionist’ members of Congress may be barred from office. A three-judge panel on the appeals court made the decision in a lawsuit against GOP North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn. Last week Madison Cawthorn lost a tight primary race in North Carolina after a relentless smear campaign. But the Democrat-DC Swamp is still trying to destroy him and other ‘America First’ GOP members of Congress through lawfare. Tuesday’s appeals court ruling legally binds only the states in the 4th circuit: Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia,...

A federal appeals court in Richmond on Tuesday cleared the way for a legal effort that seeks to disqualify Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s (R-N.C.) candidacy for office due to his alleged role in the Jan. 6 insurrection by supporters of former President Trump.

In the year since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, a handful of Democrats, constitutional scholars and pro-democracy advocates have been quietly exploring how a post-Civil War amendment to the Constitution might be used to disqualify former President Trump from holding office again. Calls for Congress to take steps to strip Trump of his eligibility, which reached a crescendo in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot, have since decreased. But those who remain engaged on the issue say discussions about applying Section 3 of the 14th Amendment have been ongoing. “If anything, the idea has waxed and waned,”...

The Supreme Court on Monday sided with law enforcement in a pair of cases that implicated “qualified immunity,” the controversial legal doctrine that gives police broad protection from lawsuits. In a pair of unsigned summary rulings issued without noted dissent, the justices reversed two federal appeals courts that had permitted excessive force lawsuits to proceed against officers in separate cases arising from California and Oklahoma. The justices ruled the officers should be granted qualified immunity, which shields government officials from liability unless it is proven they violated a “clearly established” right, a difficult legal hurdle. Both lawsuits dealt with police...

Several Democratic lawmakers are pushing for Justice Amy Coney Barrett to recuse herself from an upcoming case linked to a conservative group that funded an ad blitz supporting her confirmation to the Supreme Court. In a three-page letter, the lawmakers argued that Barrett was at risk of bias in favor of a litigant funded by Charles Koch, the conservative billionaire behind a group that bankrolled a high-priced ad campaign for the Trump appointee’s Senate confirmation last fall. “Statute, constitutional case law, and common sense all would seem to require your recusal,” Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and...

The Supreme Court on Wednesday lifted another injunction on the Trump administration's rapid push to resume federal death sentences this week. A divided court lifted one of a handful of injunctions temporarily blocking the execution of a man whose lawyers say suffers from severe dementia. The vote was 5-4 with the liberal justices — Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — dissenting. DEVELOPING...

For years, Democrats have tried to force President Trump to disclose his tax returns, and Trump has resisted. The California Legislature, aiming at the president, passed a law this year to try to force Trump’s hand. On a party-line vote, lawmakers approved a bill to require presidential candidates to disclose five years of tax returns in order to appear on the state’s primary ballot, the first such law in the nation. It did not survive even six months. California’s highest court decided Thursday that the Legislature went too far. Though legislators and analysts considered early on whether the requirement might...

California’s highest state court on Thursday struck down a law that would have required President Trump to hand over his tax returns as a condition to appearing on the state’s ballot for the Republican primaries. The California Supreme Court held that the "Presidential Tax Transparency and Accountability Act," signed into law in July, violated the state’s constitution as it related to the president's tax returns.