Lyle Denniston

Nov 8 2024

Collapse of Trump prosecutions begins

Conceding that Donald Trump will be the next U.S. President, the special federal prosecutor moved quickly on Friday to begin the process of ending Trump’s prosecution for multiple crimes growing out of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Special Counsel Jack Smith on Friday afternoon urged a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to put… Read More

Nov 7 2024

No prison time for Trump

By winning Tuesday’s presidential election, and doing so by enough votes to remove any doubt, former President Trump very likely will avoid any other form of accountability – except the judgment of history. Very soon, it appears, the four criminal cases against Trump will begin to evaporate – including the one in which a New… Read More

Oct 11 2024

The Court and the election

It now seems highly likely that the Supreme Court will be pulled into the midst of the presidential election campaign, with only 25 days before the voters go to the polls.  The hectic pace that might now unfold could test the Court as it has not been since the 2000 election a quarter-century ago. The… Read More

Oct 8 2024

The Court and “ghost guns”

The Supreme Court may be only one vote away from a wide expansion of the constitutional right to obtain a gun, and that prospect will get a test today when the Justices go to the bench for a historic hearing.  The Court opened its new term yesterday. At the center of the new gun rights… Read More

Oct 2 2024

Trump, politics and the law: 34 days, 165 pages

A political catastrophe, and maybe a legal catastrophe, struck former President Donald Trump on Wednesday afternoon, and he has little time and perhaps little opportunity to overcome the impact. With just 34 days to go before the presidential election on November 5, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., allowed the publication of a 165-page document… Read More

Sep 20 2024

New challenge to Trump Jan. 6 case

Mounting a broad new challenge to prosecution of Donald Trump for attempting to stay in power in 2021, the former President’s lawyers urged a federal judge on Thursday to stop that case before it goes any further. At the center of the new filing, made public Friday, is a claim that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith… Read More

Sep 6 2024

Judge delays Trump’s sentencing

A state judge in New York City on Friday, issuing a ruling that seemed to make him uncomfortable, put off until after the November 5 election the sentencing of former President Donald Trump for 34 guilty verdicts. Although Judge Juan M. Merchan said, in a four-page ruling, that he was acting to avoid affecting the… Read More

Sep 3 2024

Trump loses again in court

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday failed in his latest attempt to prevent a state judge in New York from imposing a sentence for the 34 guilty verdicts arising out of a sex scandal surrounding his presidential election campaign in 2016. In a brief, four-page ruling, a federal judge in New York City refused to… Read More

Aug 31 2024

Trump asks long delay of January 6 case

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump, vowing multiple legal challenges to his prosecution for the violent January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and his attempt to stay in office after being defeated, asked a federal judge late Friday night to set a schedule that would keep the case going at least through January 2025…. Read More

Aug 30 2024

Trump makes new move to avoid prison

Former President Donald Trump, conceding that he may be sent to prison in the midst of his election campaign, went to a federal court on Thursday night seeking to put off any sentencing for his 34 guilty verdicts in New York state court. In a 64-page filing by his legal defense team, Trump asked a… Read More

Lyle Denniston continues to write about the U.S. Supreme Court, although he “retired” at the end of 2019 following more than six decades on that news beat. He was there for three revolutions – civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights – and the start of a fourth, on transgender rights. His career of following the law began at the Otoe County Courthouse in his hometown, Nebraska City, Nebraska, in the fall of 1948. His online, eight-week, college-level course – “The Supreme Court and American Politics” – is available from the University of Baltimore Law School, and it is free.

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