We learned from an explosive legal filing made public on Thursday that evidence suggests top Fox News hosts and executives didn’t believe it, either.

Yet, as the brief from voting equipment company Dominion Voting Systems in its multibillion-dollar defamation case against Fox News argues, the network still promoted false claims of election fraud, with conspiracy theories that Dominion machines were somehow used to steal the election from Trump. It’s worth reading the lengthy filing in its entirety, which begins by citing a communication from host Tucker Carlson to his producer in November 2020 that bluntly states, referring to a top election denier and MAGA lawyer, “Sidney Powell is lying.” It gets crazier from there.

Dominion’s brief was filed in the Delaware Superior Court last month in support of its motion for summary judgment. That is, the company is arguing that its liability claims against Fox News are so strong that it should win even before trial. Dominion’s lawyers concede that it’s unusual to go for that argument in a defamation case, given the plaintiffs’ heavy burden. They note that plaintiffs usually have to show actual malice — that defendants knew or recklessly disregarded the truth — by inference, because it’s rare to find direct evidence of a defendant knowingly pushing false information.

But this case is different, Dominion argues, alleging in the brief that there is extensive direct evidence against Fox that the network kept airing unhinged election claims while knowing better. That’s one of the points that leads the voting company to argue that a trial isn't needed for Dominion to win, because the company says “no reasonable juror could find in Fox’s favor.”

Lawyers for Donald Trump are seeking to bar the "Access Hollywood" tape, which prompted widespread condemnation during the 2016 presidential campaign, from being used in an upcoming defamation trial brought by a writer who alleges Trump raped her.

In a court filing Thursday night, Trump’s attorneys urged the judge presiding over writer E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit against the former president to ban the 2005 video of Trump speaking to Billy Bush, at the time an anchor for “Access Hollywood,” as “irrelevant and highly prejudicial.”

They further argued that the contents of the the tape “do not even tangentially relate to the core of [Carroll’s] claim” that Trump raped her in the changing room of a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s and then lied about his actions when Carroll went public with her accusation.

Court filings from Carroll show Trump defending his “Access Hollywood” comments in a deposition he gave last October. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, has argued that Trump’s remarks in the 2005 video — which were caught on a hot mic and became public in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign — help show that what allegedly happened to her client was not “an isolated act.”

In the video, Trump can be heard saying, “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women — I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” he said, including “grab ‘em by the p----.”

By its plain text, the speech-or-debate clause (U.S. Const., art. I, § 6, cl. 1) applies only to “The Senators and Representatives” of the legislative branch created by Article I. The vice president is an executive officer under Article II. True, the vice president is made the “President of the Senate” (in art. I, § 3, cl. 4). But that does not make the vice president a senator, which (besides representatives) is what the speech-or-debate clause applies to.

The limited protection prescribed by the speech-or-debate clause also shows that it does not apply to vice presidents. The clause says that “the Senators and Representatives” “shall not be questioned in any other Place” [i.e., other than in Congress] “for any Speech or Debate in either House.” The vice president does not speak or debate, much less propose bills or otherwise legislate. Indeed, even in the role of president of the Senate, the vice president merely breaks the rare tie when the chamber is deadlocked — a power of marginal legislative value, at best, since as a practical matter the vice president exercises it in accordance with the wishes of the president, the chief executive.

Even for the senators and representatives textually covered by the speech-or-debate clause, its immunity is limited. I elaborated on this last fall, when Senator Lindsey Graham tried to assert speech-or-debate immunity to avoid testifying in the Fulton County state grand jury that is investigating Trump’s efforts to reverse Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. In rejecting Graham’s claim, the Eleventh Circuit federal appeals court observed that the protection applies to “Members of Congress” and that the Supreme Court had “warned” that it should not be “extend[ed] . . . beyond its intended scope, its literal language, and its history[.]” The court added that the immunity the clause confers does not “extend[] beyond the legislative sphere” — an ambit limited to activities that take place “in a session of Congress by one of its members in relation to business before it.”

Obviously, the special counsel wants to question Pence about meetings he had with President Trump, Trump advisers, and executive officials regarding the pressure Trump was applying to Pence to derail the counting of state-certified electoral votes at the January 6 joint session of Congress. Again, Pence was not a member of Congress but an executive official, and the pertinent conversations were among executive officials, some of whom were trying to thwart congressional business. Given the Supreme Court’s admonition against expanding speech-and-debate immunity to novel circumstances, we can be confident that the judiciary is not going to extend it to the vice president or to executive actions in anticipation of a congressional session, rather than to legislative actions....

Pence appears to be laying the groundwork to explain to Republican voters that he took extraordinary measures to try to avoid testifying. I suspect this will backfire: Pence’s credibility will take a hit for taking an untenable legal position, he will lose support from people who admire his refusal to buckle under Trump’s pressure on January 6, and he will get no love from Trump’s base — which will remember only that he testified, not that he tried not to.

A Russian general who was recently fired by Vladimir Putin has been found dead in a suspected suicide, according to reports.

Major General Vladimir Makarov, 67, was in charge of 'combating extremism' in Russia and was found shot dead on Monday morning.

He reportedly led the hunting down and suppression of opponents of the Russian president, as well as journalists deemed hostile to the Kremlin.

Makarov also took action against young people who protested against Putin.

Putin issued a decree to fire him last month, it is reported. However, his reasons for doing so remain unclear.

Luttig merely deemed McCarthy’s article “interesting” on Wednesday, but even that signaled to me that he thought there was something to it. So I wanted to flag that Luttig has since followed up with some expanded thoughts on "speech or debate" in a Twitter thread of his own:

https://twitter.com/judgeluttig/status/1626375756946321408

Laying out the matter in classic judicial fashion, Luttig observes at the outset that the scope of “speech or debate” protections for vice presidents in Pence's situation is unsettled. Crucially, however, Luttig opines that, even if a vice president has those protections, they still have to "yield to the demands of criminal process."
https://twitter.com/judgeluttig/status/1626375767142563841
The bottom line being: even if Pence is able to claim those protections, that doesn’t necessarily mean he wouldn’t have to testify. And while Luttig is no longer on the bench, given the historical role he has played in the matter at hand, his view is worth considering as we potentially head toward litigation to decide this open constitutional question. It doesn't appear that Pence is heeding the judge's advice, but the rest of us are free to appreciate it.

Attorneys representing failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake are at serious risk of losing their law licenses by moving forward with frivolous litigation trying to overturn elections, said legal analyst Danny Cevallos on MSNBC Friday.....

"There are two questions there really," said Cevallos. "First, can every politician go and challenge their loss in court? In theory, yes. And we should encourage that because the courts are certainly a better place to do it than say, storming a Capitol building. So using legal recourse is the best outcome."

"But when does a case go from 'I think I should have won' to frivolous?" Cevallos continued. "Well, there is a standard for that in federal court. It's called Rule 11. But the bottom line is, what did they know when they filed? Did they know that this was hopeless or more? Did they know that it was not grounded in any way in either existing law or an argument for the creation of new law? If that's the case, then that's the frivolous standard. So I think in the future, we continue to encourage politicians to take their claims to court not to the streets, but warn them don't do so if you know you're wrong."

"But if it's frivolous, what's the penalty?" asked Jansing.

"The penalty can be sanctions," said Cevallos. "With the court, there are so many different sanctions that a court can impose. They can get very creative when it comes to sanctions. And by the way, as we've seen, the lawyers who are involved do so at their own risk as well. They could lose their license or be suspended or be sanctioned. And there's nothing that strikes fear into the heart of lawyers, I can tell you, more than the idea that someone might pull our ticket. So that is a very real threat for the lawyers who would go and help politicians if their claims are frivolous."

Sen. John Fetterman’s hospitalization for depression is most likely to be short and successful, more a reset during a difficult period than a life-altering, career-threatening event, according to mental health authorities, other stroke survivors, academic research and people on Capitol Hill.

Despite lingering misconceptions about the gravity of hospitalization for acute depression, it is mainly a safe, speedy way to address a crisis. The vast majority of people resume the lives they led previously, though they may need ongoing outpatient care.

“The hospitalization doesn’t necessarily say anything about his future status,” said Will Cronenwett, chief of general psychiatry at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “Hospitalization is often the thing to do to recover quickly. A hospitalization, rather than ending anyone’s career, enables them to regain lost function.”

Data show Fetterman’s chances of full recovery at 70 to 90 percent, said Joshua Gordon, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. That doesn’t mean he won’t need to stay on medication or continue therapy afterward, but in all likelihood, he will find relief from his symptoms of depression and return to normal functioning.

“Many people are able to stop medications and maintain wellness,” he said.