The justices decided to hear the case one day after Kennedy announced his retirement

[dajoki]

A Supreme Court Case Could Liberate Trump to Pardon His Associates
Gamble v. United States isn’t related to the Russia investigation. But the outcome—which one senior Republican senator has tried to influence—could still have consequences for the probe.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/09/trump-pardon-orrin-hatch-supreme-court/571285/

A key Republican senator has quietly weighed in on an upcoming Supreme Court case that could have important consequences for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

The Utah lawmaker Orrin Hatch, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, filed a 44-page amicus brief earlier this month in Gamble v. United States, a case that will consider whether the dual-sovereignty doctrine should be put to rest. The 150-year-old exception to the Fifth Amendment’s double-jeopardy clause allows state and federal courts to prosecute the same person for the same criminal offense. According to the brief he filed on September 11, Hatch believes the doctrine should be overturned. “The extensive federalization of criminal law has rendered ineffective the federalist underpinnings of the dual sovereignty doctrine,” his brief reads. “And its persistence impairs full realization of the Double Jeopardy Clause’s liberty protections.”

Within the context of the Mueller probe, legal observers have seen the dual-sovereignty doctrine as a check on President Donald Trump’s power: It could discourage him from trying to shut down the Mueller investigation or pardon anyone caught up in the probe, because the pardon wouldn’t be applied to state charges. Under settled law, if Trump were to pardon his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, for example—he was convicted last month in federal court on eight counts of tax and bank fraud—both New York and Virginia state prosecutors could still charge him for any crimes that violated their respective laws. (Both states have a double-jeopardy law that bars secondary state prosecutions for committing “the same act,” but there are important exceptions, as the Fordham University School of Law professor Jed Shugerman has noted.) If the dual-sovereignty doctrine were tossed, as Hatch wants, then Trump’s pardon could theoretically protect Manafort from state action.

If Trump were to shut down the investigation or pardon his associates, “the escape hatch, then, is for cases to be farmed out or picked up by state-level attorneys general, who cannot be shut down by Trump and who generally—but with some existing limits—can charge state crimes even after a federal pardon,” explained Elie Honig, a former assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey. “If Hatch gets his way, however, a federal pardon would essentially block a subsequent state-level prosecution.”

<<snip>>

But while Hatch has earned his bona fides in the arena of criminal-justice reform, the timing of his filing is nevertheless significant. For months, the Gamble case has been analyzed through the lens of the Mueller investigation, and Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee to replace the retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, could be on the bench by the time the Court reconvenes this fall. The justices decided to hear the case one day after Kennedy announced his retirement.

[Fullduplexxx]

1. Who is gamble? how'd someone get this in front of scotus so fast?

[ProfessorPlum]

3. I think it is in the article

someone who got arrested for possessing a gun? and got charged both federally and by the state for it.

[Fullduplexxx]

6. How very convenient ... thanks i'll go dig into the article

[PoliticAverse]

7. Background on the case...

https://www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/gamble-v-united-states/

It likely made it to the Supreme Court docket with the support of Ruth Bader Ginsberg who has called for the court to revisit past decisions on "dual sovereignty".

[Fullduplexxx]

14. Thank you for that

[ProfessorPlum]

2. yep

get out of jail free, and an easily-blackmailed, paid-off justice to be the 5th vote.

[onenote]

18. Why do you assume he's a necessary fifth vote

in a case that Justices Ginsburg and Thomas are in agreement. How do you think the other six justices divide on the issue presented?

[PoliticAverse]

4. The article ends with a very misleading quote...

A result overturning 200 years of dual sovereignty

The case isn't about "200 years of dual sovereignty" it's about how the Supreme Court has extended the idea
of "dual sovereignty" and weakened the protection against "double jeopardy" in recent times. This is why Ruth Bader Ginsberg has called for the Supreme Court to revisit prior court decisions on this issue.

[dalton99a]

5. Well-timed coincidence, or synchronized corruption?

You decide

[dajoki]

8. the latter n/t

[Raster]

13. without a doubt: synchronized corruption

This is the GOP* of tRump*... it could NOT be anything else.

[Gregory Peccary]

19. Cooincidences take a lot of planning

[debsy]

9. I'd like to know what they are bribing or blackmailing Hatch and the rest of the repukes with.

Positions of power after one-party rule is imposed for good? Lots of money stolen from the American taxpayer (this is what the Russian Oligarchs do) for them to leave to their families after they die?

Pictures of them jerking off to little boys or murdering someone?

My guess would be a mixture of both but that, of course, is simply speculation on my part. I have no evidence to accuse anyone of that type of behavior.

[debsy]

10. Oh, and Orin Hatch needs to STFU.

[RecoveringJournalist]

11. timing

Speaking of timing, the brief was filed on 9/11 - when it could conveniently be overlooked in the wake of 9/11 remembrances.

[Botany]

12. Power grab & cover up

It was a coup.

[SunSeeker]

15. K & R for exposure.

[apnu]

16. So where's all the 'states rights' people now?

Traditionally a Republican group, right? Where you all at? Hatch is firing directly at state sovereignty.

[onenote]

17. One of those voting to take this case almost certainly was Justice Ginsburg

She authored an opinion last term, joined by Justice Thomas, urging that the time had come to reconsider the dual sovereignty doctrine. She minced no words about it:
"The double jeopardy proscription is intended to shield individuals from the harassment of multiple prosecutions for the same misconduct. Green v. United States, 355 U. S. 184, 187 (1957). Current “separate sovereigns” doctrine hardly serves that objective. States and Nation are “kindred systems,” yet “parts of ONE WHOLE.” The Federalist No. 82, p. 245 (J. Hopkins ed., 2d ed. 1802) (reprint 2008). Within that whole is it not “an affront to human dignity,” Abbate v. United States, 359 U. S. 187, 203 (1959) (Black, J., dissenting), “inconsistent with the spirit of [our] Bill of Rights,” Developments in the Law— Criminal Conspiracy, 72 Harv. L. Rev. 920, 968 (1959), to try or punish a person twice for the same offense?"

If Ginsburg and Thomas are aligned on this issue then, one way or another, there is already is a majority on the Court to roll back the dual sovereignty exception and Kavanaugh's confirmation is immaterial to the outcome.

[riversedge]

20. k for visibility

[Rhiannon12866]

21. K&R! Thank you!

This has got to be it!