There’s no one who has better insight as to the nitty gritty of the court cases across the country than Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News.
Last night we went through the big cases on the dockets right now.
There’s breaking news in the Luigi Mangione case, which of course, is the topic of my next book with James Patterson: In the Federal case, in which the death penalty is on the line, the Hon. Margaret Garnett changed her mind over the weekend, and now wants to hold a brief evidentiary hearing in the next two weeks about police procedure in Altoona, Pennsylvania (Mangione was arrested in a McDonalds in the town). In her minute order she has said that she just wants one witness from Altoona to explain police procedure when it comes to “securing, safeguarding and inventorying the personal property of a person arrested in a public place”.
A reminder: this is because Mangione’s defense is arguing that the Altoona police illegally searched his backpack in the McDonalds without a warrant, when it was six feet away from him. Further, they argue that the way they inventoried his stuff inside the station was improper, partly because, again minus a warrant, a policewoman opened Mangione’s journal and read some of it.
The most startling thing, though, to me was that at the end of Friday’s court hearing, both legal teams raised the topic of prospective trial dates with Judge Garnett. I had been under the impression that the State trial was going to precede the Federal one, but it seems that State is moving much more slowly.
So, it’s possible we may get a trial in federal court this year, if Judge Garnett takes the death penalty off the table. (That was the issue for Friday’s hearing. The defense is arguing that counts three and four - which is murder through use of a firearm and a firearms offense respectively - should be chucked out because they rely on a federal interstate stalking statue as the predicate, and the defense argues it isn’t applicable here, because Brian Thompson never knew he was being stalked. It’s a very technical argument, that went above the heads of many people in the courtroom.)
If Judge Garnett leaves the death penalty on the line, then we still could have a trial late in the year, or in January. So I am already gearing up to cancel Christmas this year!
Adam, meanwhile has been focused on Sen. Mark Kelly’s lawsuit against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in which Sen. Kelly is asking a judge to block Hegseth’s efforts to strip of his retirement benefits after Kelly took part in a video with five other lawmakers, reminding people not to follow Illegal orders. This was in the wake of Hegseth’s order to a naval captain on a drugs bust to blow survivors out of the water in the Caribbean. Adam says that suit will be heard this week.
Then there’s the back and forth between lawmakers and Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem. After the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, many members of Congress showed up to visit ICE facilities over the weekend but were denied access. Noem was pushing back on a court order that expressly required ICE facilities to be open to congressional visits, saying a week’s notice was required. Now rep Joe Neguse of Colorado has filed suit against this - and back to court Noem’s reps go.
And then, there’s the extraordinary video made by Fed Chair Jerome Powell in which he revealed he’s under federal investigation because, in his view, he didn’t set interest rates as low as the President wanted.
All this before we touch on the arraignment of Nicolas Maduro and the legal challenges in that case.
I always learn so much talking with Adam.
There’s so much detail in each of these cases that you don’t get from newspaper reports.
So, if you have the time, please do watch our conversation.
I won’t see you this Wednesday due to unavoidable commitments. But I shall be back next week.
Thank you Tom Kudla, Jeanne Elbe, An Mcgreevy, Independent Voter 1, Jeoffry Gordon, MD, MPH, and many others for tuning into my live video with Adam Klasfeld! Join me for my next live video in the app.
