Friday, April 26, 2024
Columbia’s University Senate Is Said to Consider Less Severe Action Against Its President - The New York Times
Columbia’s University Senate Is Said to Consider Less Severe Action Against Its President
"Worried about the repercussions of a censure vote, the group may offer a watered-down proposal.
Columbia’s university senate, fearing the repercussions of a censure vote against the school’s president, Nemat Shafik, plans instead to vote on a watered-down resolution expressing displeasure with a series of her decisions, including summoning the police last week to arrest protesting students on campus.
Senators worried that a censure vote could result in Dr. Shafik’s removal at a time of crisis. And some feared that such a vote would be perceived as yielding to Republican lawmakers who had called for her resignation, according to interviews with several members of the university senate who attended a closed-door meeting on Wednesday, some of whom requested anonymity to talk about a private meeting.
The university senate is scheduled to meet again on Friday to vote on a resolution.
Carol Garber, a senate member, was among those who questioned the perception of a censure vote with so much political pressure to remove Dr. Shafik.
“It really isn’t a precedent any university wants to set,” said Dr. Garber, a professor of behavioral sciences. “We shouldn’t be bullied by someone in Congress."
The plan to step away from a harshly worded censure resolution followed a presentation by Dr. Shafik at the meeting of the senate, an official university body of more than 100 faculty, students, administrators and staff members.
Emerging from the meeting, Dr. Garber said that some faculty members were “upset and hurt” by Dr. Shafik’s performance during a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, in which she seemed to capitulate to the demands of members of Congress. Dr. Shafik told the House members that the university’s leaders agreed that some protesters had used antisemitic language and that certain contested phrases — like “from the river to the sea” — might warrant discipline.
At the faculty meeting, senators who attended the meeting described a polite but pointed exchange, with some angry over Dr. Shafik’s decision to call in the New York Police Department to break up an encampment protesting the war in Gaza.
Some expressed concern over the implications for more than 100 students who now have arrest and suspension records after having participated in the encampment, including students who were poised to graduate.
During the meeting, Dr. Shafik defended her decision to call in the police, citing worries about hazards from makeshift cooking equipment, as well as sanitation concerns.
“There were hundreds of people sleeping out in an unsafe environment,” Dr. Shafik told the group.
But she admitted that she had not visited the encampment, saying she had not been invited, according to one senator who took notes during the meeting.
That prompted another senator to ask for a show of hands of members who had visited. At least half the group raised their hands.
In something of a mea culpa, Dr. Shafik acknowledged that the police action had been ineffective, with a new protest camp quickly set up in another section of the lawn.
She also described a shift in tactics, with the university now using negotiations rather than force to clear the central lawn on campus where the students have set up camp.
One priority, she said, is to have the camp cleared before Columbia’s undergraduate ceremonies, scheduled on the lawn for May 15.
In calling the police, the administration ignored the wishes of the senate’s 13-member executive committee, which unanimously disapproved of the idea during an emergency meeting. A day before police arrived, they advised Dr. Shafik’s office that she did not have their endorsement and advised her to negotiate.
Dr. Shafik’s decision to go forward in summoning the police against the committee’s wishes, an apparent violation of the university regulations, prompted the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a liberal faculty group, to draft a resolution censuring her for presentation to the senate.
The resolution cites the arrests on campus, and chastises Dr. Shafik for her congressional testimony a day earlier, when she capitulated to Republican lawmakers and broke protocol by discussing internal campus investigations of specific professors, some accused of antisemitism.
But Sheldon Pollock, a member of the A.A.U.P. executive committee at Columbia, said that the campus visit on Wednesday by Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, was a historically singular episode of attempted outside interference.
“My sense is the faculty have been put in a very difficult situation,” said Dr. Pollock, a retired professor who is not a member of the senate. “We do not want politicians intruding on the shared governance procedures of Columbia University. At the same time we are deeply disturbed by the actions our president has taken in the last week.”
The emergency senate meeting on Wednesday was an attempt to defuse tensions before a vote on the proposal.
Dr. Shafik said she was concerned about restoring trust between the administration and faculty, which she argued had eroded even before she was appointed.
Dr. Shafik, who had served as the president of the London School of Economics, arrived at Columbia last July. She told the Columbia senate that she had “been in crisis mode ever since,” starting with the scandal over the former Columbia physician Dr. Robert A. Hadden, who was convicted of sexually assaulting patients, and now with the war in Gaza.
Describing herself as a strong advocate for free speech and academic freedom, she also said she was concerned that, in some cases, free speech had become harassment.
“We have had those incidents on campus and I have seen them, and we need to figure them out together,” she told the group.
A day after the meeting, members of the senate were busy redrafting a resolution, to be voted on Friday during the final senate meeting of the year.
While expressing disapproval with Dr. Shafik’s actions, it will stop short of a full censure.
Stephanie Saul reports on colleges and universities, with a recent focus on the dramatic changes in college admissions and the debate around diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education. More about Stephanie Saul"
Thursday, April 25, 2024
“Jackson wanted to know how future presidents would be disincentivized to commit crimes.
She expressed fear it could turn the Oval Office into "the seat of criminal activity in this country."
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was animated on Thursday when she discussed the potential of what could happen to the presidency if the Supreme Court were to grant presidents the sweeping immunity former President Donald Trump is seeking.
"The most powerful person in the world with the greatest amount of authority could go into office knowing there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes," Jackson said during oral arguments. "I'm trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into, you know, the seat of criminal activity in this country."
Trump's lawyer, John Sauer, argued for sweeping absolute immunity for former presidents that would shield Trump from special counsel Jack Smith's prosecution related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. As multiple justices outlined during oral arguments, the issues in the case could have major implications for the future of the presidency.
Jackson appeared alarmed that some of her colleagues, especially some of the court's conservatives, seemed more afraid of limiting presidential immunity the court would neuter by the presidency by forcing future leaders to question if a political rival would try to prosecute them after they left office.
Instead, Jackson said there should be at least equal consideration given to the possibility that by granting sweeping immunity, the nation's highest court would give a green light to presidential criminality if a future president could even tangentially tie criminal actions to carrying out the job of leading the nation.
"Presidents from the beginning of time have understood that that's a possibility," Jackson said later of how past leaders understood they could be prosecuted after leaving office. "That might be what has kept this office from turning into the kind of crime center that I'm envisioning."
Jackson repeatedly underlined her points when questioning Sauer, underlining how far future presidents could push the envelope. She seemed particularly drawn to a brief filed by Georgetown Law School professor Martin Lederman that outlined how presidents with immunity could commit perjury, destroy or conceal documents, or bribe other public officials.
Jackson's concerns are based on another element of Trump's arguments, which propose that a president could not be charged with a crime unless the law they are accused of violating specifically mentions that it applies to the presidency.
The court's newest justice has considered Trump's conduct and the power of the presidency before. As a Circuit Court judge, Jackson torched the Trump White House for arguing that former White House counsel Don McGahn didn't have to cooperate with Congress' investigation.
"Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings," Jackson wrote in 2019. "Rather, in this land of liberty, it is indisputable that current and former employees of the White House work for the People of the United States, and that they take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
US supreme court to hear arguments on Trump presidential immunity case | Donald Trump | The Guardian
US supreme court to decide on Trump’s claim of presidential immunity
"The former president claims immunity in his federal election subversion case – is the court indulging his bid for a delay?
The US supreme court will on Thursday hear oral arguments in Donald Trump v United States, the former president’s appeal in his federal election subversion case, in which he claims presidents are immune from prosecution for acts committed in office.
In briefs to the court, lawyers for Trump said “a denial of criminal immunity would incapacitate every future president”.
Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted Trump on four counts related to his attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, argued: “Presidents are not above the law.”
Constitutional law experts overwhelmingly side with Smith. Nonetheless, as Trump seeks to delay all four of his criminal cases, in the hope he might regain power and have them dismissed, the six rightwingers and three liberals on the supreme court will give his immunity claim a hearing.
Trump appointed three of those rightwingers. That and his apparent desire to govern with impunity should he be re-elected have fueled alarm over whether the court is indulging his bid for delay.
Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law and author of The Supermajority: How the Supreme Court Divided America, is among those who have dismissed Trump’s argument – and excoriated the court for even appearing to entertain it.
In a recent newsletter, Waldman pointed to the opening of Trump’s first criminal trial in New York this week, concerning hush-money payments to women claiming affairs.
“Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is a serious prosecutor, and this is a serious prosecution,” Waldman wrote. “But it wasn’t supposed to be the first.
“That was supposed to be the federal trial, originally scheduled to start 4 March, about Trump’s drive to overthrow the 2020 election and block the peaceful transfer of power” – culminating in the deadly attack on Congress of 6 January 2021.
“Trump claims he is immune from prosecution as an ex-president. That’s a nonsensical argument, one the justices could have quickly dispatched. Instead, they have stalled.”
The Brennan Center participated in an amicus brief in which leading constitutional historians show how presidents have never been placed above the law.
“No plausible historical case supports [Trump’s] claim,” the brief says, pointing to how supreme courts have moved with speed on questions of presidential immunity at key moments in US history, including the Watergate scandal, the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the contested election of 2000.
Waldman wrote: “In US v Nixon in 1974, the court took just two weeks to rule that the president had to turn over his Oval Office tapes. Two weeks after that, [Richard] Nixon resigned [to be pardoned by Gerald Ford]. In 2000, Bush v Gore [over who won the presidential election in Florida, and thus the White House] took three whole days to resolve.”
In the Clinton case, in 2001, the president agreed a deal to avoid indictment.
Regardless of its ruling in the Trump case, Waldman said, the supreme court had now “given Donald Trump what he craved most: time.
“Smith first asked for the justices to get involved last December. Instead, they stayed their hand, and the DC circuit court of appeals unanimously ruled against Trump” in early February.
“Rather than affirming that ruling, or unfreezing the trial, the court [said in late February it would] hear the case on the very last day set for oral arguments this term, 25 April. All the while they purr that they are acting in an ‘expedited’ manner.
“Voters have a right to know if they are being asked to elect someone who is guilty of the most serious crimes that a president could commit against democracy itself. Indeed, that’s the very argument Trump made when he asked the court to quickly rule that a Colorado court could not bar him from the ballot” under the 14th amendment, a ruling the court supplied in early March, a month after oral arguments.
In the immunity case, Waldman said, “the justices have already done great damage.
“They engineered one of history’s most egregious political interventions – not with an ugly ruling, at least not yet, but by getting ‘the slows’. At the very least they should issue this ruling in three weeks. That would give trial judge Tanya Chutkan enough time to start the trial [before the election], if barely.”
In their amicus brief, the historians who reject Trump’s immunity claim cite the words of one of the first supreme court justices. In July 1788, in an address to the North Carolina convention that ratified the constitution, James Iredell said: “If [the president] commits any crime, he is punishable by the laws of his country.”
Waldman put it slightly more grandly, though still invoking the revolution in which Iredell played his part: “In our nation, the law must still be king. And presidents cannot be cloaked in the immunity of monarchs.”
Meadows, Giuliani and other Trump allies charged in Arizona 2020 election probe - The Washington Post
Meadows, Giuliani and other Trump allies charged in Arizona 2020 election probe
"PHOENIX — An Arizona grand jury on Wednesday indicted seven attorneys or aides affiliated with Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign as well as 11 Arizona Republicans on felony charges related to their alleged efforts to subvert Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, according to an announcement by the state attorney general.
Those indicted include former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and Christina Bobb, top campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn and former campaign aide Mike Roman. They are accused of allegedly aiding an unsuccessful strategy to award the state’s electoral votes to Trump instead of Biden after the 2020 election. Also charged are the Republicans who signed paperwork on Dec. 14, 2020, that falsely purported Trump was the rightful winner, including former state party chair Kelli Ward, two state senators and Tyler Bowyer, a GOP national committeeman and chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of the pro-Trump conservative group Turning Point USA.
Trump was not charged, but he is described in the indictment as an unindicted co-conspirator.
The indictments cap a year-long investigation by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) into how the elector strategy played out in Arizona, which Biden won by 10,457 votes. Arizona is the fourth state after Michigan, Georgia and Nevada to seek charges against those who formed an alternate slate of presidential electors. As those cases slowly make their way through the legal system, Trump is again running for president, and officials in Arizona and other battleground states are preparing for another likely contentious election.
In releasing the indictment, Mayes’s office redacted the names of all the individuals outside of Arizona who were charged until they have been served their indictments. The Washington Post was able to identify all of them through the accounts of their alleged actions described in the indictment.
“In Arizona, and the United States, the people elected Joseph Biden as President on November 3, 2020,” the indictment reads. “Unwilling to accept this fact, Defendants and unindicted coconspirators schemed to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency” to keep Trump in office “against the will of Arizona’s voters.”
“This scheme would have deprived Arizona voters of their right to vote and have their votes counted.”
All defendants appear to have been charged under each count of the indictment. The charges are as follows: conspiracy, fraudulent schemes and artifices, fraudulent schemes and practices, and forgery. All are felonies, with the most serious being fraudulent schemes and artifices, which carries a standard sentence of five years in prison.
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Attorneys for several of those charged cast the indictment as politically motivated. George Terwilliger, a lawyer representing Meadows, said that if his client “is named in this indictment, it is a blatantly political and politicized accusation and will be contested and defeated.” Charles Burnham, an attorney for Eastman, said the lawyer “is innocent of criminal conduct in Arizona or any other place and will fight these charges as he has all the other unjust accusations leveled against him.” And Ted Goodman, a spokesman for Giuliani, called the indictment a “continued weaponization of our justice system should concern every American, as it does permanent, irrevocable harm to the country.”
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump, called the charges against the former president’s allies “another example of Democrats’ weaponization of the legal system.”
Epshteyn declined to comment. Bobb, Bowyer, and attorneys for Roman and Ellis did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Kurt Altman, an Arizona-based attorney who represents eight of the 11 Republican electors, including Ward, said he is “confident that these charges are unwarranted.”
Many of those involved in the 2020 elector strategy, which played out in Arizona and six other states, have long insisted that the tactic was legal because the Trump electors were only placeholders to be activated if legal challenges to Biden’s win were successful in court. But Mayes charges that Trump’s allies inside and outside of Arizona intended all along to use the electors to falsely claim that the outcome of the election was in doubt — facilitating an effort to obstruct the certification of Biden’s victory in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.
The effort was aided by Trump, the indictment said, who “himself was unwilling to accept that he had lost the election.” While the charges focus on the elector strategy, the indictment spells out various ways that Trump and his allies sought to pressure state and local officials to “encourage them to change” the election results. Trump allies initially put pressure on members of the Phoenix-area Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the indictment said. When it became clear that the GOP-led board would not alter the results, pressure was placed on members of the state legislature — namely then-House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) — who heard from Trump and other allies.
When that effort failed, Trump sought to appeal to then-Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R), who ignored a call from Trump while certifying the state’s election results. That day, the indictment notes, Trump berated Ducey on social media for certifying the results.
Unlike probes by state prosecutors in Michigan and Nevada, Mayes took a top-to-bottom approach with her investigation. Similar to prosecutors in the Atlanta area, Mayes targeted not just local conservatives who carried out the plan in Phoenix, but also the out-of-state middlemen in Trump’s orbit who allegedly helped put it together. But unlike in Georgia, Mayes did not try to indict the former president.
This is a second round of charges for Meadows, Giuliani, Ellis, Eastman and Roman, who were all indicted alongside Trump in Georgia last year. Ellis pleaded guilty in October to illegally conspiring to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia and has been cooperating with prosecutors. This is the first time Epshteyn — now a top 2024 campaign aide who frequently talks with the former president — has been charged for his alleged actions after the 2020 election. Same for Bobb, a former One America News correspondent who has espoused false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and last month was named the senior counsel for election integrity at the Republican National Committee.
Mayes’s case had been squarely focused on local conservatives up until late last year. Then,Arizona prosecutors and investigators met in December with Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney and an architect of the elector strategy who pleaded guilty in Georgia in October to a single felony count of participating in a conspiracy to file false documents. Chesebro provided Mayes’s team with records — some that had been previously unseen — that revealed more information about those involved in the Arizona effort, according to two people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about the sensitive conversations. After that, they said the Arizona investigation widened.
Much of the activity that Mayes investigated happened in the weeks after Biden was declared the winner in Arizona and Dec. 14, 2020, when the Republican electors gathered to sign paperwork. Emails, records, text messages and other documents from this time have emerged in a variety of ways, including from the U.S. House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Conversations among attorneys and Trump allies about using GOP electors to change the electoral outcome began as early as Nov. 4, 2020, the indictment said. Eastman, a pro-Trump lawyer, helped devise the multistate strategy and outlined how it could be achieved. By Dec. 12, documents for seven states had been drafted.
By the time the strategy reached Republicans in Arizona, according to the timeline in the indictment, Republicans in the state had worked to try to undermine confidence in the state’s electoral outcome.
By then, Giuliani and Ellis frequently traveled together as they worked to overturn Trump’s loss, state by state. Both attended a Nov. 30, 2020, event in downtown Phoenix attended by state GOP state and federal lawmakers, where they falsely claimed widespread fraud had marred the election. Then, Giuliani, Ellis and other Trump allies tried to persuade Bowers(R) to help overturn the results.
Bowers, speaking in 2022 before the House committee, said he remembered Giuliani saying during that meeting, “We’ve got lots of theories — we just don’t have the evidence.”
Bobb, who has ties to Arizona, communicated with Trump allies about the strategy. After the House speaker met with Giuliani and other Trump allies, Bobb emailed the then-state Senate president with information that Giuliani believed could be used to sow doubt about the 2020 outcome.
Roman, the campaign staffer who oversaw Election Day operations, circulated emails about the alternate elector plan, tracked elector participation in several states and communicated about making sure the paperwork was in Washington by Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress convened to count electoral college votes. Roman directed Chesebro to make sure that Ward, the state party chair, had the necessary paperwork to prepare for the signing of official-looking paperwork, according to emails that have been made public.
In early December 2020, Epshteyn emailed a Wisconsin-based attorney who was aiding the campaign and asked him to draft sample language for alternate electors in seven states, including Arizona. Epshteyn wrote that the request came from Giuliani, and he added, “If that’s difficult, we can have counsels in those states do it.”
Meadows, as Trump’s final White House chief of staff, has sought to downplay his involvement in the elector plan. In a federal court hearing last August in Georgia, Meadows repeatedly testified under oath that he played no role in the elector effort. Prosecutors introduced into evidence December 2020 emails between Meadows and Jason Miller, a longtime Trump campaign aide that showed Meadows forwarding a memo about the plan to Miller.
“Let’s have a discussion about this tomorrow,” Meadows wrote. When Miller told him the campaign was already talking about it, Meadows replied, “We just need to have someone coordinating the electors for the states.” In court, Meadows sought to downplay the email, saying that his use of the term “we” meant the campaign, not him. Meadows also testified that he did not want to get “yelled at” by Trump.
On Dec. 10, 2020, the state party’s executive director called Chesebro to work through logistics of the elector plan, the indictment said. Chesebro emailed the Republican information about the plan and then emailed an Arizona-based attorney to ask if an appeal was planned for an election-related lawsuit.
“Reason is that Kelli Ward & … just spoke to the Mayor about the campaign’s request that all electors vote Monday in all contested state,” the email said, referring to Giuliani. Chesebro wrote that Ward and another person were “concerned it could appear treasonous for the AZ electors to vote on Monday if there is no pending court proceeding that might, eventually, lead to the electors being ratified as the legitimate ones.”
By Dec. 12, 2020, Republicans in Arizona were finalizing plans to assemble in Phoenix to stand in solidarity with Trump, according to previously released communications. Ward emailed Chesebro, Roman and others that the Trump campaign had requested the participation of Arizona electors. “We are all prepared to meet 12/14,” she wrote. “It would be optimal if the campaign created and produced the documents in the ACTUAL format needed so staff can print the collateral, the electors can show up, meet/vote, and sign, and then staff can collate the documents and send to the appropriate places in the appropriate way.”
Roman responded to the group and directed Chesebro, “Please send the full updated AZ packet,” according to records previously made public.
Ward also made clear in her email that she had talked to Giuliani. She wrote that she had “told him we were working to make sure we accomplish what we need to do.”
On Dec. 14, 2020, the day the electoral college formally convened, Ward and other pro-Trump Republicans gathered at the state party’s headquarters. The party publicized the event — which they called “The Signing” — on Twitter, and electors posed for photos.
The indictment said that the pro-Trump electors “made statements directly contradicting any intention that their votes would only be used if they succeeded in legal challenge that changed the outcome of Arizona’s election.” The indictment included an image of a social media post from Ward that prosecutors said demonstrates that “her goal was to have the Arizona Legislature certify the fake Republican electors’ votes.”
Leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, the indictment said, Ward continued calling for the state legislature to change the election outcome while Bowyer made public statements “demonstrating that the contingency plan was cover for his attempt to change the outcome of the election.” And other electors either sought to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to delay certification, the indictment said, or recertify Biden’s electors.
In the weeks following the Jan. 6 attack, prosecutors across the country weighed whether to investigate pro-Trump electors in their states. At the time in Arizona, then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) chose not to do so. After Mayes won her election in 2022 — partly on a promise to investigate the elector strategy — she assigned a team of prosecutors to begin pursuing evidence.
Along the way, state prosecutors spent several hours interviewing Bowers, Republican members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors who voted to approve election results from the Phoenix area and others familiar with how the elector maneuver unfolded inside of the state GOP.
In early March, the probe began nearing an end, and the pro-Trump electors received subpoenas requesting their testimony before a grand jury. Many had been advised to invoke their Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions.
Holly Bailey in Atlanta, Amy Gardner in Portland, Ore., and Josh Dawsey, Hannah Knowles and Maegan Vazquez in Washington contributed to this report."
Live Updates: Harvey Weinstein’s Conviction Is Overturned by New York’s Top Court - The New York Times
Live Updates: Harvey Weinstein’s Conviction Is Overturned by New York’s Top Court
"Manhattan prosecutors must now decide whether to retry Mr. Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood producer whose sexual abuse case sparked the #MeToo movement.
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New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on felony sex crime charges, a stunning reversal in the foundational case of the #MeToo era.
In a 4-3 decision, the New York Court of Appeals found that the trial judge who presided over Mr. Weinstein’s case had made a crucial mistake, allowing prosecutors to call as witnesses a series of women who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them — but whose accusations were not part of the charges against him."