A Matter of Pretext

The latest Main Justice episode with Mary McCord and me

Last week, Judge James Boasberg squashed the Justice Department’s pressure campaign against Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell. The judge quashed two subpoenas served on the Federal Reserve, intended to pressure Powell into “voting for lower interest rates or resigning.” Finding “essentially zero evidence” of criminal behavior, Mary and I explain how these subpoenas were found to have been issued as retribution and retaliation against Powell — Boasberg cited over 100 statements that the president and his underlings made attacking him. We explain the legal and factual underpinnings of the ruling and what to expect next.

Next, we dig into the disciplinary proceedings against President Trump’s pardon attorney Ed Martin, who, while serving as DC’s interim U.S. Attorney, pressured Georgetown Law School to change its alleged “DEI” curriculum. We explain how this complaint relates to DOJ’s current effort to promulgate a new rule to thwart any state bar efforts to hold its attorneys’ to ethical rules. A link is below if you want to read the proposed rule AND there is still time for you to post your views about the rule before the April 6 deadline. Public comment is important in passing or defeating the implementation of the proposed rule, so if you disagree with it, you can say so now.

Last on the agenda, and importantly, Mary and I highlight the case that AI firm Anthropic filed against the Defense Department and others over being blacklisted. The case is centered around the Pentagon labeling the AI firm a “supply chain risk” after Anthropic refused to permit the Pentagon to use their “Claude” technology to do two things: “deploy lethal autonomous warfare without human oversight” and use it for “mass surveillance of Americans.” Just think about that, the Trump administration is engaging, the complaint alleges, in this severe retaliation campaign against the company Anthropic because it wants to use the company’s artificial intelligence to kill people without human intervention and to spy en masse on Americans. Anthropic refused to allow either, noting that Claude is not even set up or tested for the lethal killing that the administration is seeking to use it for.

Stay engaged, now more than ever.

Andrew

Further reading: 

• Here is the complaint Anthropic filed against the government: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.465515/gov.uscourts.cand.465515.1.0_5.pdf

• Here once again is the Federal Register link if you’d like to enter public comment:  Review of State Bar Complaints and Allegations Against Department of Justice Attorneys

To pre-order my book, Liar’s Kingdom, you can do so at your favorite bookstore and links are here — linktr.ee/liarskingdom (the first two links are to independent bookstores with signed copies).