#trump civil case New York

[simplestoryteller]

Hey uh I think someone needs to tell trump that he should collect charges like an average person collects trinkets. Especially not so close together as he seems to be, since he seems to have gotten at least 3 so far this year (probably more but idk)

I’m not gonna do it but someone should probably maybe idk

[william-r-melich]

Presidential Immunity Acknowledged - 07/02/24

Shortly after Joe Biden's poor debate performance in the first presidential debate, SCOTUS ruled yesterday that POTUS has absolute immunity for official acts, as they've always had. In an article from the Epoch Times today by Catherine Yang, she wrote the following: "Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, with Justice Clarence Thomas adding his own concurring opinion. Justice Amy Coney Barret concurred in part, noting several lines of legal disagreement with the majority. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who also penned a separate dissent."

It's clear now that Biden can't possibly win this November, his mental incapacity has been revealed. With this court's ruling, the left is viciously attacking the Supreme Court and suggesting that Donald Trump, if re-elected, could get away with anything including murdering members of the media; ridiculous! Of course that's not true, he would be impeached.

The system we have has given us the longest time of freedom than any other country in the world. Prior to the U.S.A., no one has held freedom for longer than 80 years, we're closing in on two-and-a-half centuries; incredible!

The presidential immunity doctrine, as listed at https://constitutional.findlaw.com, has been around since the 1860's, which reads: "The President is immune from civil liability absolutely for suits arising from actions relating to official duties. This includes all acts in the 'outer perimeter' of those duties. However, the President is not immune from actions arising from unofficial conduct." It seems reasonable to me why the president must have immunity in order to be able to execute his duties when given in extreme circumstances he must make risky choices that an ordinary citizen would never have to make. False intel, for example, could put the President in a situation where an innocent person is targeted. If the President didn't have immunity, he wouldn't have the confidence to carry out his duties in precarious and sloppy situations. He couldn't be an effective, chief legal officer of the country. Makes sense to me.

Now I wonder how this court's decision will affect the delayed sentencing in Trump's New York "Hush Money" trial. His sentence was originally set for July 11th, now it has been moved to September 18th, depending on whether it will still be necessary. Apparently, there are parts of the charges against him that he may have been immune from, so that has to be re-examined.

Boy, what an interesting time to be alive.

[follow-up-news]

A judge's February ruling that found former President Donald Trump and his company committed hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud should be tossed out, attorneys for Trump said in an appeal filed Monday. Trump's lawyers called the $454 million judgment "draconian" and complained that the "case violates centuries of New York case law."  Judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump, his company and top executives, including his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr., deceived banks and insurers for years, inflating Trump's wealth on financial statements in order to obtain favorable deal terms they wouldn't have otherwise received. Engoron concluded the Trumps and their company benefited to the tune of $354 million in "ill-gotten gains" through the scheme, and ruled they must pay the state that sum plus interest of about $100 million.

[thescoopess]

Donald Trump's Gold Sneakers Sell Out in 2 Hours

Photo: Getty Images A day after the former president unveiled the newest collection of items, the brand’s website claims that one thousand pairs of the limited edition high-top gold sneakers designed by former President Donald Trump have already sold out in presale. Photo: Getty Images Trump unveiled the Never Surrender High-Top Sneaker, a shimmering, golden shoe line that retails for $399 a pair…

[eternalistic]

Read the Filled-Out Jury Verdict Form in the Trump-Carroll Case

The jury held Donald J. Trump liable on Tuesday for the sexual abuse and defamation of E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million.

[calicojack1718]

Comment on This! What's the Over-Under on Whether it is Putin or Ivanka that Pays Trump's $454 Million Dollar Bond?

I was listening to The Rachel Maddow Show and she interviewed a guest about Trump’s inability to find a surety willing to pay his upcoming bond nearly half billion dollar bond in his New York civil fraud case. As a quick aside, does anyone believe he’s not going to stiff the Federal Insurance Company and Chubby Insurance Company for his $91 million dollar debt to E. Jean Carroll? I guess PT…

[mariacallous]

The first thing to say about the hate and scorn currently directed at the mainstream US media is that they worked hard to earn it. They’ve done so by failing, repeatedly, determinedly, spectacularly to do their job, which is to maintain their independence, inform the electorate, and speak truth to power. While the left has long had reasons to dismiss centrist media, and the right has loathed it most when it did do its job well, the moderates who are furious at it now seem to be something new – and a host of former editors, media experts and independent journalists have been going after them hard this summer.

Longtime journalist James Fallows declares that three institutions – the Republican party, the supreme court, and the mainstream political press – “have catastrophically failed to ‘meet the moment’ under pressure of [the] Trump era”. Centrist political reformer and columnist Norm Ornstein states that these news institutions “have had no reflection, no willingness to think through how irresponsible and reckless so much of our mainstream press and so many of our journalists have been and continue to be”.

Most voters, he says, “have no clue what a second Trump term would actually be like. Instead, we get the same insipid focus on the horse race and the polls, while normalizing abnormal behavior and treating this like a typical presidential election, not one that is an existential threat to democracy.”

Lamenting the state of the media recently on X, Jeff Jarvis, another former editor and newspaper columnist, said: “What ‘press’? The broken and vindictive Times? The newly Murdochian Post? Hedge-fund newspaper husks? Rudderless CNN or NPR? Murdoch’s fascist media?”

These critics are responding to how the behemoths of the industry seem intent on bending the facts to fit their frameworks and agendas. In pursuit of clickbait content centered on conflicts and personalities, they follow each other into informational stampedes and confirmation bubbles.

They pursue the appearance of fairness and balance by treating the true and the false, the normal and the outrageous, as equally valid and by normalizing Republicans, especially Donald Trump, whose gibberish gets translated into English and whose past crimes and present-day lies and threats get glossed over. They neglect, again and again, important stories with real consequences. This is not entirely new – in a scathing analysis of 2016 election coverage, the Columbia Journalism Review noted that “in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election” – but it’s gotten worse, and a lot of insiders have gotten sick of it.

In July, ordinary people on social media decided to share information about the rightwing Project 2025 and did a superb job of raising public awareness about it, while the press obsessed about Joe Biden’s age and health. NBC did report on this grassroots education effort, but did so using the “both sides are equally valid” framework often deployed by mainstream media, saying the agenda is “championed by some creators as a guide to less government oversight and slammed by others as a road map to an authoritarian takeover of America”. There is no valid case it brings less government oversight.

In an even more outrageous case, the New York Times ran a story comparing the Democratic and Republican plans to increase the housing supply – which treated Trump’s plans for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants as just another housing-supply strategy that might work or might not. (That it would create massive human rights violations and likely lead to huge civil disturbances was one overlooked factor, though the fact that some of these immigrants are key to the building trades was mentioned.)

Other stories of pressing concern are either picked up and dropped or just neglected overall, as with Trump’s threats to dismantle a huge portion of the climate legislation that is both the Biden administration’s signal achievement and crucial for the fate of the planet. The Washington Post editorial board did offer this risibly feeble critique on 17 August: “It would no doubt be better for the climate if the US president acknowledged the reality of global warming – rather than calling it a scam, as Mr Trump has.”

While the press blamed Biden for failing to communicate his achievements, which is part of his job, it’s their whole job to do so. The Climate Jobs National Resource Center reports that the Inflation Reduction Act has created “a combined potential of over $2tn in investment, 1,091,966 megawatts of clean power, and approximately 3,947,670 jobs”, but few Americans have any sense of what the bill has achieved or even that the economy is by many measures strong.

Last winter, the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has a Nobel prize in economics, told Greg Sargent on the latter’s Daily Blast podcast that when he writes positive pieces about the Biden economy, his editor asks “don’t you want to qualify” it; “aren’t people upset by X, Y and Z and shouldn’t you be acknowledging that?”

Meanwhile in an accusatory piece about Kamala Harris headlined When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?, a Washington Post columnist declares in another case of bothsiderism: “Voters want to blame someone for high grocery bills, and the presidential candidates have apparently decided the choices are either the Biden administration or corporate greed. Harris has chosen the latter.” The evidence that corporations have jacked up prices and are reaping huge profits is easy to find, but facts don’t matter much in this kind of opining.

It’s hard to gloat over the decline of these dinosaurs of American media, when a free press and a well-informed electorate are both crucial to democracy. The alternatives to the major news outlets simply don’t reach enough readers and listeners, though the non-profit investigative outfit ProPublica and progressive magazines such as the New Republic and Mother Jones, are doing a lot of the best reporting and commentary.

Earlier this year, when Alabama senator Katie Britt gave her loopy rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address, it was an independent journalist, Jonathan Katz, who broke the story on TikTok that her claims about a victim of sex trafficking contained significant falsehoods. The big news outlets picked up the scoop from him, making me wonder what their staffs of hundreds were doing that night.

A host of brilliant journalists young and old, have started independent newsletters, covering tech, the state of the media, politics, climate, reproductive rights and virtually everything else, but their reach is too modest to make them a replacement for the big newspapers and networks. The great exception might be historian Heather Cox Richardson, whose newsletter and Facebook followers give her a readership not much smaller than that of the Washington Post. The tremendous success of her sober, historically grounded (and footnoted!) news summaries and reflections bespeaks a hunger for real news.

[contemplatingoutlander]

First of all, Sean Spicer? The spineless former Trump White House press secretary and Dancing With the Stars buffoon, Sean Spicer?

Second, anyone who fills out bank forms for loans knows that you can be charged with fraud if you don't disclose your assets truthfully.

The banks most likely lost some money because the interest rates they offered Trump were probably lower than if he had been honest in his financial statements.

Given that in some states people can get harsh jail terms for stealing a relatively small amount of goods or money, why shouldn't a "billionaire" be held accountable for trying to "steal" huge sums of money through fraudulently-obtained lower interest rates?

BTW, I grew up in the Tri-State area. Trump was hated by contractors and the construction workers whom he stiffed on payments for construction projects. He's certainly no friend in real life to people who have to work for a living.

And that is a large reason why he is reviled the the New York City metropolitan area.

The working class MAGA folks who support Trump are fools for doing so.

Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer expressed his displeasure with the $355 million fine levied on former President Trump Friday in the verdict following a months-long civil fraud trial in New York.

“Overall this ruling today was the definition of what happens if insanity and outrage had a baby,” Spicer, who served under the Trump administration, said Friday in an interview on “The Hill on NewsNation.”

“This is nuts, the idea that you’re … fining someone $350 million for something that no one actually suffered from,” he continued. “The banks didn’t complain, the insurance companies … everything that Tish James laid out was a complete and utter lie.”

His comments come after Judge Arthur Engoron’s 92-page ruling ordered Trump to pay the nearly $355 million in penalties for inflating and deflating his net worth in order to receive tax and insurance benefits. Engoron had already ruled last year that Trump and the Trump Organization had committed fraud after New York Attorney General Letitia sued the former president in 2022.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Keith Edwards at No Lies Detected:

Fascism doesn’t come for every generation, but it has come for ours.  This is not a fight on the beaches of Normandy, but in our own country. This article begins a series on what opposing Donald Trump and his movement can look like. I hope you will join me as these progress.

[...]

Do not leave. Faced with the might of the United States government aligned against you, you might consider resigning preemptively to avoid the humiliation of inevitable termination. This is counterproductive for at least two reasons: If you leave, you save Trump Administration officials the time and effort of identifying you, which otherwise could have taken months or years. Second, your principled stand would likely only result in your replacement by an unprincipled Trump loyalist. By staying on, you may find yourself helping to implement policies you find hateful, but by refusing to leave, you can ensure that you have some influence on those policies, because then you can...

Delay. Delay. Delay. Waiting out the enemy until he moves on, gives up, or forgets is a time-honored strategy not just among civil servants but also history’s best generals. That email about a proposed rule change to healthcare protections? Bury it in everyone’s inbox by sending it late. A meeting on reviewing the U.S. government’s foreign aid commitments to a region you oversee? Oops, you’ll be out that day! That agency conference your political-appointee boss requested you arrange? Next month didn’t fit everyone’s schedule, so you had to push it to after the new year! Slow-walking is the classic tool in any bureaucrat’s toolbox, and in the next Trump Administration, you can use it in defense of the Constitution.

Be intentionally incompetent. As a career employee, you likely have always had the advantage of knowing your workplace better than your politically appointed overlords. This is perhaps your most potent weapon against Trump. Draft rules unlikely to survive judicial review. Favor lengthy rulemaking or review processes over expedited ones. Complete tasks sequentially rather than in parallel to draw out timelines. Add complexity, stakeholders, and process wherever possible. In short, exploit the knowledge gap you hold over your bosses to diminish, defuse, and defeat their plans.

Leak. Federal employees have the right to report what they believe to be illegal or abusive of authority to their agency’s inspector general (IG) without fear of retaliation. Trump however has singled out IGs for replacement after one played a pivotal role in his first impeachment, so the availability of this option may depend on how politically prominent your agency is. Fortunately, you can anonymously tip prominent news outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post, which boast extensive investigative units and employ rigorous safeguards to protect sources’ identities. You can also seek out sympathetic elected officials, such as Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee, whose main function is investigation of the federal government. (If you choose disclosure, be sure that the information is not classified, the unauthorized disclosure of which carries stiff federal penalties.)

Disregard and refuse. When you have exhausted all other options, you may want selectively to resort to riskier behaviors. These include going behind political appointees’ backs to subvert their activities, say by picking up the phone and countermanding their directions. In extreme cases, you may have outright to refuse direct orders to the appointee’s face. Though such actions seem like a fasttrack to termination, you may still be protected by the fact that overwhelmed political appointees might hesitate to go through the onerous process of finding a politically reliable replacement. Remember, the longer you stay in, the harder you make it for Trump to do what he wants. Know your rights. If the worst happens and your agency moves to terminate you, you can still fight back. There are multiple avenues an employee designated for dismissal can pursue to delay, reduce, or reverse agency penalties against them.1 The beauty of these options is that they can take months or even years to resolve and may be appealed to higher bodies, further extending the process. All the while, you are collecting a salary and occupying a full-time equivalent (FTE) position that your agency can’t fill until you finally depart. (This is not legal advice. If you find yourself in this situation, please seek a lawyer.)

Keith Edwards writes in his No Lies Detected Substack on how civil servants can show resistance to the tyrannical Trump 2.0 Regime from within.

[mikkeneko]

"We already have seen several legal actions against DOGE, with four cases alleging that the entity has violated transparency, conflict of interest and other relevant federal laws. These suits are seeking to kneecap DOGE from even being allowed to operate. We have also seen lawsuits brought by blue state attorneys general (led by Leticia James of New York) and by nonprofits seeking an injunction against the federal government-wide pause on financing and grants. That entire effort by the Trump White House to freeze funds met with such pushback that the original memo implementing the freeze was rescinded, and a federal judge, who reviewed Press Secretary Karoline’s Leavitt’s misleading post on social media claiming that the freeze was still in effect, expanded the injunction beyond the memo to include the entire administration.

That is important, because Musk is currently threatening to halt payments that Congress has already authorized through his control of the federal payment system, deciding on his own that something is “fraud” or “waste.” But Musk doesn’t have that power, and he certainly doesn’t have it in light of the judge’s injunction. If he defies it, as he has shown a willingness to do in the past, he could be held in contempt of court."

"Indivisible and MoveOn have called for daily protests outside of OPM each morning. They have also organized a protest set for Tuesday evening at Treasury demanding Musk and his team be ejected. As a side note, the first organized protests against ICE and its policies, involving thousands of people in Los Angeles, Dallas, and many other cities across the country took place over the weekend.

It’s too early to tell whether protests against the Trump administration will continue to grow in strength or what effect they may have on the situation on the ground. There is some concern that Trump will use any sign of civil unrest as an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and turn U.S. military forces against peaceful protestors. But the threat of possible overreach by Trump should not and likely will not deter protestors, and if Trump chooses to escalate in this fashion he may lose further public support."

[socialjusticeinamerica]

“The ownership of the Proud Boys' trademark is now in the hands of a Black church that the White supremacist group vandalized in 2020.

The Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., was granted ownership of the group's trademark in a Feb. 3 ruling from Judge Tanya M. Jones Bosier of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. The decision also gives the Metropolitan AME Church a lien on the trademark and the power to block the Proud Boys from using the trademark or selling licensed goods, like T-shirts or hats, without the church's approval.

Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys' leader, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement to the New York Times, which earlier reported the court ruling, and which Tarrio posted on X, he said the judge should be impeached and the church's nonprofit status revoked.

Tarrio, who had been serving a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy tied to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol building, was pardoned by President Trump after his Jan. 20 inauguration.

The ruling on the Proud Boys' copyright stems from an incident on Dec. 12, 2020, when members of the all-male right-wing group attended a "stop the steal" event in Washington, D.C., and also attacked the Metropolitan AME Church by climbing over a fence to get onto church property, where they destroyed a "Black Lives Matters" sign, according to court documents. A court ordered the Proud Boys to pay the church $2.8 million, money that the group has failed to pay, the documents note.

As a result, the court gave the Metropolitan AME Church ownership of the trademark, giving them the right to deny use of the group's name and yellow or black laurel wreath symbol.

"This is our time to stand up, to be very clear to the Proud Boys and their ilk that we came here fighting, that we have never ever capitulated to the violent whims of White supremacist groups," Rev. William H. Lamar IV, pastor of the Metropolitan AME Church, told CBS MoneyWatch. "If they thought we would be afraid, they were wrong. There are many people with us and who stand with us."

The Metropolitan AME Church, which was founded in 1838 and has hosted speakers including Frederick Douglass and Eleanor Roosevelt, can now collect funds from sales of Proud Boys merchandise as well as its membership dues, people familiar with the case said. The church can also block the Proud Boys from using the trademark, they said.

The notoriety of the Proud Boys' name likely helped the group in recruitment, which means blocking use of its trademark could both hurt the group's ability to sell merchandise and recruit new members, they added.

"From our point of view, it's fitting that the money the Proud Boys raised in sales and dues will go to fund the good work of the Metropolitan AME," Kaitlin Banner, who represented the church in the case and serves as deputy legal director at the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, told CBS.

In his statement posted on X, Tarrio indicated he didn't intend to honor the court's ruling. "I hold in contempt any motions, judgments and orders issued against me," he wrote.”

[follow-up-news]

Former President Donald Trump can’t find an insurance company to underwrite his bond to cover the massive judgment against him in the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case, his lawyers told a New York appeals court. Trump’s attorneys said he has approached 30 underwriters to back the bond, which is due by the end of this month. “The amount of the judgment, with interest, exceeds $464 million, and very few bonding companies will consider a bond of anything approaching that magnitude,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. (Trump himself was ordered to pay $454 million; the $464 million includes the disgorgement for his adult sons Don Jr. and Eric.) An insurance broker, Gary Giulietti, who testified for Trump during the civil fraud trial, signed an affidavit stating that securing a bond in the full amount “is a practical impossibility.” Potential underwriters are seeking cash to back the bond, not properties, according to Trump’s lawyers. Trump’s lawyers have asked the appeals court to delay posting the bond until his appeal of the case is over, arguing that the value of Trump’s properties far exceed the judgment. If the appeals court rules against him, Trump asked the court to delay his posting the bond until his appeal to New York’s highest court is heard. Last month, Trump was ordered to pay $355 million in disgorgement, or “ill-gotten gains,” by New York Judge Arthur Engoron in a civil fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Engoron wrote in his 93-page decision that Trump and his co-defendants – including his adult sons – were liable for fraud, conspiracy and issuing false financial statements and false business records, finding that the defendants fraudulently inflated the value of Trump’s assets to obtain more favorable loan and insurance rates. The amount Trump owed surpassed $450 million with interest included. Trump is appealing the ruling, but in order to stop the state from enforcing the judgment, Trump has to post a bond to be held in an account pending the appellate process, which could take years to litigate.

[thescoopess]

Donald Trump Appeals $454 Million New York Civil Fraud Judgment

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES In an attempt to refute Judge Engoron’s conclusion that he lied about his wealth while building the real estate enterprise that propelled him to fame and the presidency, Donald Trump has filed an appeal of his $454 million New York civil fraud judgment. Attorneys for the former president filed notices of appeal on Monday, requesting that the state’s intermediate appeals court…

[oldguardleatherdog]

[Gift link, no paywall]

Zuck wiļl now explicitly allow vile and dehumanizing hate speech against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people to be posted on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads without adverse consequences for the poster. He has gone so far as to provide Meta employees with detailed examples of speech that will now be allowed on Meta platforms. This article goes into detail as to how these new policies were formulated and rolled out. It's worth a read to understand the calculation and planning that went into this.

This is more than "mere" homophobia and transphobia. Zuck went out of his way to explicitly target us and single us out over other minorities who use these platforms.

It's clear that this is Zuck prepping and staging his platforms for use in actions that The Rapist Administration is setting up to launch against us in the days to come. Our elected officials and our so-called national LGBTQ+ leaders and organizations have put out a statement or two, but I'd hate to be hanging until they actually take action to protect us.

We need to find a way to mount a response to this, and to all the rest of what's coming at us. Good people of good will are gathering and planning, but it's early yet. Take note of these signs, keep watch and stay alert, don't detach, don't look away.

From the article:

"Among its changes, Meta loosened rules so people could post statements saying they hated people of certain races, religions or sexual orientations, including permitting 'allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation.' The company cited political discourse about transgender rights for the change. 

"The company also removed the transgender and nonbinary 'themes' on its Messenger chat app, which allows users to customize the app’s colors and wallpaper, two employees said.

"That same day at Meta’s offices in Silicon Valley, Texas and New York, facilities managers were instructed to remove tampons from men’s bathrooms, which the company had provided for nonbinary and transgender employees who use the men’s room and who may have required sanitary pads, two employees said.

"In the @Pride employee resource group, where workers who support L.G.B.T.Q. issues convene, at least one person announced their resignation as others privately relayed to one another that they planned to look for jobs elsewhere, two people said.

"In a post this week to the @Pride group, Alex Schultz, Meta’s chief marketing officer [and Meta's highest-ranking openly gay executive], defended Mr. Zuckerberg and said topics like transgender issues had become politicized. He said Meta’s policies should not get in the way of allowing societal debate and pointed to Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case, as an example of 'courts getting ahead of society' in the 1970s. Mr. Schultz said the courts had 'politicized' the issue instead of allowing it to be debated civically.

"'You find topics become politicized and stay in the political conversation for far longer than they would’ve if society just debated them out,' Mr. Schultz wrote. He said looser restrictions on speech in Meta’s apps would allow for this kind of debate.

"On Friday, Roy Austin, Meta’s vice president of civil rights, announced he was leaving the company. He did not give a reason."

[Emphasis added.]

[mariacallous]

In February, several Justice Department officials resigned rather than obey a directive to drop their corruption case against New York City Mayor Adams. After they did, another DOJ official signed the order to avoid people being fired.

Complying or resigning are not the only options. Federal employees sometimes have another: In the words of Mrs. Reagan, sometimes they can “just say ‘no.’” In fact, sometimes that’s their duty.

The Trump administration has begun a broad attack on many activities of the federal government it now controls. It has acted aggressively to implement its agendas, to stop programs it disagrees with, and to fire members of the civil service on allegations of “poor performance” without evidence. Some of these actions are lawful implementation of the president’s agenda. However, as various court decisions show, many are not.

Under federal law, employees who call out violations of law, fraud, waste, or abuse receive whistleblower protections. Agencies cannot legally fire them, demote them, or remove them. Those same statutes provide a “right to disobey.” They protect employees who refuse an order because doing so would violate the Constitution, laws, agency rules, or federal regulations. Federal employees need not resign or comply. They can just say “No.”

The law doesn’t permit civil servants to disobey solely because they disagree with a policy. However, when federal employees join the federal service, they sign an oath to “… well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office … So help me God.” That oath doesn’t change from administration to administration. It clearly includes complying with the nation’s laws. If directed to do something that violates the Administrative Procedures Act, federal personnel statutes, published federal procurement rules and regulations, or an appropriation enacted by Congress and signed into law, federal personnel may legally refuse to obey and, under their oath of office, arguably must.

That right to disobey was what Congress sought to protect when it unanimously passed the Follow the Rules Act during the first Trump administration. During the first Trump administration, Congress strengthened these protections—unanimously. The original statute covered only orders that would “violate a law.” In 2017, Congress expanded that protection to include refusal to obey “an order that would require the individual to violate a law, rule, or regulation.” President Donald J. Trump signed the Follow the Rules Act into law.

Some federal officials have taken the third option and just said “No.” Before Kash Patel was confirmed as FBI Director, then-acting Director Brian Driscoll refused to fire agents guilty of no offense, other than obeying an instruction to investigate Jan. 6 rioters.

What should federal employees do when faced with an order that would violate their oath and that they reasonably believe to be unlawful? Many advise consulting a lawyer. However, faced with an immediate order, most federal employees don’t have the time or money to consult legal counsel. They must rely on their own knowledge, experience, and reasoned judgment to decide for themselves.

This administration has proven that it will fire federal employees who disobey an instruction that would have them violate the law—even though that firing would be illegal. So, many will comply even when they know they should not. However, as Mr. Driscoll shows, some will stay true to their oaths. If their legal protection—the right to disobey—were better known, more might do so. Each person who did so would slow or stop implementation of unlawful orders.

Furthermore, law-abiding-but-fired federal employees have remedies. Career civil servants who were fired, demoted, or reassigned because they have refused an order can appeal to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), created by Congress to investigate violations of personnel law and rules. In cases where OSC believes there has been an unlawful “prohibited personnel action,” it will advise the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). Congress chartered the MSPB to police the federal personnel system. It can require reinstatement into the job, retroactive back pay, and payment of legal fees.

These protections are more than just theory: Only a few days ago, the MSPB, acting on a recommendation from OSC, temporarily reinstated six provisional employees who had been fired in an apparent violation of federal rules. It’s worth noting that the Trump administration has attempted to undermine both the OSC and MSPB by removing their leaders. However, Congress by law required good cause before either can be removed, and thus far courts have overturned most of these dismissals.

So, why don’t more federal employees just say no? The main reason is that many employees cannot afford to lose their jobs and wait for reinstatement. The remedies for wrongful personnel actions can take months, even in normal times, and these are not normal times. It’s also important to note that some believe that it’s important they continue to do the other parts of their job.

But there are other reasons. Based on conversations with lawyers, advocacy groups, and public interviews, there are many:

Some who do disobey see no benefit in publicizing that fact, as public whistleblowers can and do become public targets.

Many don’t know they can say “No.” As of this writing, there are no descriptions of the right to disobey on the websites of major federal unions or the Partnership for Public Service.

Advocacy groups fear being seen as giving legal advice. Some educational webinars actually start with a notice that “this is not legal advice”.

Even some lawyers representing federal employees in wrongful personnel action cases are unaware of the law, focusing on the more widely discussed protections for whistleblowers who disclose rather than employees who refuse to act.

Federal employees confronted with orders they believe are illegal must make their own decisions—with or without legal counsel—about how to comply with their oath to the public they serve, despite the genuine personal risks. That’s a part of public service, too.

[meret118]

However, the reelection of Trump casts this measure in a new light. His promise to turn the civil service into an engine of personal vengeance should be sufficient evidence that he’d likely abuse the powers granted under H.R. 9495, potentially allowing the president to target fairly well-known liberal organizations, such as the Center for American Progress, with punishing sanctions that would prevent such outfits from raising or banking money—penalties which, under the proposed law, such sanctioned organizations would be barred from pursuing legal recourse to plead their case. Moreover, in addition to activist groups, many universities and news outlets are nonprofit organizations.

While significantly lower than the 52 members who joined in last week’s vote to advance the bill, 15 Democrats is still a surprising number of representatives who seem to care more about wanting to neutralize irksome protesters than a fascist, authoritarian president targeting any nonprofit he doesn’t like.Here’s a full list of Democrats who voted for the bill:

Colin Allred—Texas

Yadira D. Caraveo—Colorado

Ed Case—Hawaii

Henry Cuellar—Texas

Don Davis—North Carolina

Jared Golden—Maine

Vicente Gonzalez—Texas

Suzanne Marie Lee—Nevada

Jared Moskowitz—Florida

Jimmy Panetta—California

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez—Washington

Brad Schneider—Illinois

Tom Suozzi—New York

Norma Torres—California

Debbie Wasserman Schultz—Florida