Lisa Rubin
@msnbc.com legal correspondent & recovering litigator; former off-air legal analyst @maddow.msnbc.com.
Don’t let the pearls fool ya.
- I am struggling to understand why, when as the Deputy Attorney General acknowledged, it is not appropriate to comment on a pending criminal investigation, it is ok to disparage Newark’s mayor, who now faces charges under a federal criminal complaint, on national TV. 1/
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View full threadAnd yet, in service of what they call responding in kind, this DOJ doesn’t seem to care a lick about complying with the department policy they claim the preceding administration ignored. 4/
- So just to be clear, DOJ policy prohibits personnel from offering “any opinion as to the defendant’s guilt” except during the proceeding itself or after a conviction. There is no exception for media appearances. FIN.
- Weren’t the public statements of then-SDNY U.S. Attorney Damian Williams a large part of their claim that the charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams were politically motivated? 2/
- That claim was thoroughly dismantled by a federal judge, even after the Justice Department scoured prosecutors’ emails and texts for proof of their purported misconduct. 3/
- So it’s Friday night and Rumeysa Ozturk is out on bail, Ras Baraka is in Homeland Security custody, and Stephen Miller is casually toying with suspending habeas corpus. Do I have that right?
- NEW: On public reports that NY Attorney General Tish James is under federal investigation, her lawyer Abbe Lowell gave a statement to MSNBC: "These baseless and long-discredited allegations, put to rest by my April 24th letter to the Department of Justice, are suddenly back in the news . . . ." 1/