After Epstein files withheld lawmakers draft articles of impeachment for AG Bondi

The co-sponsors of a law intended to force the Justice Department to release all investigative materials related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein say they are drafting articles of impeachment against Attorney General Pam Bondi, reported Scripps News.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said in an interview on CNN that he and Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, are also considering whether Bondi should be held in contempt of Congress. He said no final decisions have been made and that they plan to see if the Justice Department complies with the "spirit of the law" in the coming weeks.

Khanna warned that other Justice Department officials could also face legal consequences if they played a role in withholding records related to Epstein.

"Any Justice Department official who has obstructed justice could face prosecution in this administration or a future administration," he said.

The Justice Department faced a Friday deadline to release all investigative materials tied to Epstein. While the department released thousands of documents, Khanna said the disclosure fell far short.

"What we found out is the most important documents are missing," Khanna said. "They've had excessive redactions."

The documents released Friday make only limited references to President Donald Trump, even though the administration has acknowledged that his name appears in the files. Being named in the records does not indicate that Trump knew about Epstein’s crimes. Critics, however, say the limited references raise questions about whether the release cherry-picked.

Former President Bill Clinton, by contrast, appears numerous times in the documents. The release included photos of Clinton swimming, as well as images showing him with other well-known figures, including Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. No additional context was given with the photos. A spokesperson for Clinton dismissed them, saying the former president was not aware of Epstein’s alleged crimes when the two were friendly.

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Frank Athen Walls the 47th execution nationwide in 2025

The 47th Execution of 2025

 A man convicted of fatally shooting a man and woman during a home‑invasion robbery, and later confessing to three other killings, was executed on December 19, 2025. It was Florida's 19th execution so far this year, reported CBS News. 

Frank Athen Walls, 58, received a lethal injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke. Walls was convicted of two counts of murder and two counts of kidnapping, burglary and theft. He was sentenced to death in 1988. The Florida Supreme Court later reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial, and Walls was again convicted and sentenced to death in 1992.

Thursday's execution is Florida's 19th in 2025

Thursday's execution was Florida's 19th in 2025, further extending a state record for total executions in a single year.

According to court records, Walls broke into the Florida Panhandle mobile home of Eglin Air Force Base Airman Edward Alger and his girlfriend, Ann Peterson, in July 1987. Walls tied the couple up, but Alger managed to break free and attack him. Walls cut Alger's throat and shot him in the head when the airman continued to fight. Walls then turned to Peterson and shot her as she struggled.

Walls was arrested the day after the bodies were found when his roommate tipped off police about Walls' odd behavior. During a search of the home, investigators reported finding items from the crime scene, and Walls later admitted to the killings.

After his conviction, DNA evidence linked Walls to the May 1987 rape and murder of a woman, Audrey Gygi. Walls pleaded no contest, avoiding another trial and a possible death sentence. Walls also admitted responsibility for the killings of Tommie Lou Whiddon in March 1985 and Cynthia Sue Condra in September 1986 as part of a deal with prosecutors.

Attorneys for Walls filed appeals in state court claiming that his intellectual disability and other medical issues should disqualify him from execution, but the Florida Supreme Court ruled against Walls last week. Appeals were still pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

A total of 46 prisoners have died by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S., and more than a dozen other people are scheduled to be put to death in 2026. 

Florida has executed more people than any other state in 2025

Since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976, the highest previous annual total of Florida executions was eight in 2014. Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, followed by Alabama, South Carolina and Texas with five each.

All Florida executions are conducted by lethal injection using a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the state Department of Corrections.

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Former Trump lawyer says Jack Smith should be celebrated

 John Dowd, President Trump's former lawyer writes at MS NOW:

Former special counsel Jack Smith is scheduled to appear on Wednesday for a closed-door interview with the House Judiciary Committee, despite his request to testify in an open and public hearing. In my opinion, Republicans are depriving the American people of the opportunity to hear from a career prosecutor who investigated serious allegations that President Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election and unlawfully retained classified documents. 

I am not a newcomer to high-profile and politically charged investigations. Over a legal career spanning six decades, I prosecuted mobsters and politicians, and I defended both Republican and Democratic senators and House members. More recently, I represented President Trump during his first term in the special counsel’s investigation into allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. 

Republicans are depriving the American people of the opportunity to hear from a career prosecutor who investigated serious allegations against the president.

Jack Smith was once my adversary in a high-profile investigation of a Republican client. In that investigation, Smith proved himself to be fair, impartial and fearlessly committed to the facts and the law. He was unmotivated by partisan politics. But recent attacks on Smith are motivated by partisan politics, and they are untethered to the facts or the law.

As a prosecutor, I have experienced the pressure applied to attorneys pursuing high-profile investigations. During my time in the Department of Justice in the 1970s, I oversaw the federal investigation into Pennsylvania Democrat Dan Flood, a House appropriations subcommittee chairman. The attorney general’s office received some 300 phone calls from members of Congress urging us to drop the investigation. Then-President Jimmy Carter never pressured us to back down — despite some lawmakers threatening that if Carter did not get the Justice Department to drop the investigation, his legislation would go nowhere.

That’s how the Justice Department is supposed to work. You follow the facts and the law, and you don’t let politics pollute decision-making. You swear an oath to the Constitution and put country first; you do not swear an oath to the person temporarily occupying the presidency. And you do not put the private interests of one man over the interests of every United States citizen.   

That commitment to the rule of law is what I experienced from Jack Smith when I represented Rep. Don Young of Alaska, one of the highest-ranking Republicans in Congress at the time. Smith inherited this investigation when he became chief of the Public Integrity Section — the Justice Department unit that oversaw public corruption cases from 1976 until the Trump administration effectively dismantled it this year. Back then, the FBI had been investigating the congressman for years, but he had done nothing wrong. When Smith took over the case, I asked to meet with him and discuss the investigation of my client.

That’s how the Justice Department is supposed to work. You follow the facts and the law, and you don’t let politics pollute decision-making.

Smith met with me for more than three hours. He had clearly read the case and asked thoughtful, probing questions. A few days after the meeting, Smith called to inform me that he was declining to prosecute. 

In all of my interactions with him, Smith demonstrated that he was a straight shooter, open-minded and a man of integrity. He did not let politics influence an investigation, and he did not care whether my client was a Republican or a Democrat. That is the Jack Smith I know. I cannot stand silent while he is vilified by people who do not know him. 

Jack Smith should be celebrated for courageously pursuing justice. I say this not as a member of any political party but as a lawyer, prosecutor, defense attorney and former Marine who cares more deeply about the rule of law and the well-being of our country than I do about the whims of a former client

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CREATORS: Lawyer Babble: The Fight to Strike Legalese

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
December 16, 2025

What is legalese? The New Oxford Dictionary defines it as "the formal and technical language of legal documents that is often hard to understand."

Why would a professional write a document that is intentionally difficult to understand? A lawyer, who else, might argue that legalese provides precision and creates formality. Technical language is intended to define rights and obligations without room for misinterpretation.

Legalese has long been condemned from every quarter, including the U.S Supreme Court. The late Justice Antonin Scalia was once asked what characterized good legal writing. He declared, "(b)eyond pure literacy, avoid legalese." He suggested, "A good test is, if you used the word at a cocktail party, would people look at you funny?"

However, Scalia was the same guy who wrote in his dissent of the decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act that the majority opinion was "legalistic argle-bargle." Not sure that argle-bargle would pass the cocktail party test. Argle-bargle means "imbroglio," excuse me it means "fight."

Legalese has been an increasing object of derision. During World War II, Maury Maverick, a U.S. Congressman from Texas and chairman of the U.S. Smaller War Plants Corporation, wrote a memo banning "gobbledygook language." Maverick's word has been accepted into the American lexicon. Merriam-Webster defines gobbledygook as "speech or writing that is complicated and difficult to understand."

To put legalese into context, here is what the blog "Words to Deeds" believes the children's rhyme Jack and Jill would sound like if written by lawyers: "The party of the second part hereinafter known as Jill ... Ascended or caused to be ascended an elevation of undetermined height and degree of slope, hereinafter referred to as 'hill.'"

What is the big deal about legalese? Nobody reads their mortgage or their credit card agreements. If an individual has a contract to read or understand, they bring it to a lawyer. Is legalese about precision or job security for lawyers?

The greater concern is that obtuse language extends beyond contracts and agreements, right to the heart of liberty and freedom. A defendant charged with a crime is entitled to a lawyer - a competent one. The accused is also entitled to a jury of his or her peers and here is where it gets tricky.

Before a jury retires to deliberate the fate of the accused, the judge provides those jurors with instructions to assist in their decision-making. Unfortunately, those instructions are legalistic and often difficult to understand.

A report published in The Trial Expert, a publication of the American Society of Trial Consultants, found, "the reading levels of instructions are frequently at or above the twelfth grade, a result that is inconsistent with the average reading level of the American adult."

The report continued, "Considering that less than fifty percent of adults possess the basic skills and knowledge necessary to read and comprehend moderately difficult reading passages, it's not likely they are able to synthesize the complex language present in jury instructions."

That is a mouthful, but simply put, one in two jurors is confused by the language used to help them decide the fate of a fellow citizen.

Megan McAlpin, a professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, told Jack Hamann of The Writer, "I think there's a desire to sound smart. But you sound smarter if you can take something complex and make it clear to anybody.' Albert Einstein, a pretty smart guy, once said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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Mangino joins Jesse Weber on Law and Crime's Sidebar

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Trump is about to pay himself, with taxpayer dollars, $230 million over FBI raid

Donald Trump is about to order the government to pay him “damages” for the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago mansion and for special prosecutor Jack Smith’s two investigations of him — one for stealing, hoarding, and improperly sharing classified documents, and the other for Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, reported The Watch. He’s going to pay himself $230 million.

So Trump — who didn’t spend a minute behind bars — about to swindle about 50 percent more than the total amount of money paid to the 97 innocent people who were incarcerated for more than 1,200 years in Texas. Or about 12 percent more than the total paid last year to 957 victims of police brutality in New York City.

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Trump Administration white washes history of abolition, women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement

Recently at the Philadelphia auditorium a group of invited guest were present for the  unveiling of coins designed to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary. They provided a traditional, even simple, take on the American journey, with Pilgrims and founding fathers and a stovepipe hat tip to the Gettysburg Address.

Left unmentioned amid the event’s fife-and-drum pageantry was that these coins also represented a rejection of a different set of designs — meant to commemorate certain other inspiring chapters of the nation’s history, including abolition, women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement, reported The New York Times.

An event largely unnoticed by anyone other than coin enthusiasts, then, wound up reflecting the national struggle over how the American story is told, as the Trump administration seeks to frame any focus on the knottier moments in the nation’s arc as “wokeness.”

The treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, is authorized by law to make final decisions about coin designs, including these 250th anniversary coins — a dime, a half-dollar and five quarters — which are both collectible and legal tender. But his choices ignored the more diverse recommendations for the quarters by the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, a bipartisan group mandated by Congress to review the U.S. Mint’s proposed designs for American coins.

To commemorate the abolition of slavery, the committee had recommended an image of Frederick Douglass on the obverse and shackled and unshackled hands on the reverse. To honor women’s suffrage, a World War I-era protester carrying a “Votes for Women” flag. And to evoke the civil rights movement, a 6-year-old Ruby Bridges, books in hand, helping to desegregate the New Orleans school system in 1960.

Mr. Bessent opted instead for the more general, and much whiter. For the Mayflower Compact, a Pilgrim couple staring into the distance. For the Revolutionary War, a profile of Washington. For the Declaration of Independence, a profile of Thomas Jefferson. For the Constitution, a profile of James Madison. And for the Gettysburg Address, a profile of Lincoln on the obverse, and on the reverse, a pair of interlocking hands. No shackles.

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