Monday Night Court News
Roger Stone, a Trump pal and GOP dirty trickster, has dropped his appeal of his felony convictions for lying, obstruction, and witness tampering. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence, enabling him to avoid prison time, but didn’t pardon him. Stone remains a convicted felon. “He remains a convicted felon and rightly so,” Robert Mueller, the former special counsel who led the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published on July 20, 2020.
Meanwhile, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals declined to intervene in a federal lawsuit accusing Trump of conflicts of interest and violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause by using his office to profit in his businesses. The plaintiffs are a hotel operator and group of restaurants. The same court rejected an appeal in September 2019 and the President’s government lawyers requested an en banc hearing. Typically, appeals are reviewed at the Circuit Court level by a three-judge panel, and a request for an en banc hearing asks all the judges of the circuit to overturn, by majority vote, the the ruling of that panel. Lacking such a majority, the Second Circuit, which includes New York, where the case is being heard because Trump’s businesses are headquartered there, allowed the lawsuit to proceed. You can read the order here.