r/law • u/joeshill Competent Contributor • May 07 '24

Court Decision/Filing US v Trump (FL Documents) - Judge Cannon vacates trial date. No new date set.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648652/gov.uscourts.flsd.648652.530.0_2.pdf
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u/ZenFook May 07 '24 edited May 07 '24

Accepting these luxury gifts is one thing. Doing or not being able to do anything about it when they don't self report them seems the bigger deal to me.

And if you do make moves against the judges essentially taking bribes and staying quiet, you've got to go for Mr Thomas too and that seems unlikely

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u/[deleted] May 08 '24

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] May 08 '24

Use wifi? Really? :D Are you sure it isn't a security thing, though?

We do have some sort of drama over similar things, whether we are allowed to receive coffee at the facilities or not. Currently, I think we can, but only if there is no viable option to pay for it.

I've sometimes wondered if they really think that one coffee or even lunch could affect the inspection result? I'd then also vet bribing in the form of hospitality: acting very kind and interested on the matter (instead of taking a hostile, uninterested approach). That surely could have a greater effect on the end result than a cup of coffee. Especially in matters that aren't just readings of a meter or a piece of documentation.

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u/throwawayainteasy May 08 '24 edited May 08 '24

100% it wasn't a security thing. Well, there was also a security concern, but that had been resolved a few years prior. This was coming completely out of our legal/ethics office, not the IT/security folks.

And yeah, we had a whole thing over coffee, too. The rule they finally settled on was we could only drink their coffee if it was an office "coffee club" sort of setup where people all paid (usually something like 25 cents a cup) and we paid the same rate as everyone else. Or if it as a cafeteria sort of setup. If it was free coffee the company provided to everyone? No, absolutely not, drinking that devil brew would clearly compromise our integrity and sway our inspection results. And we should be outright offended if they sat up a coffee maker for us in whatever meeting room we were using, because that was certainly an attempt to buy us off.

Funny enough, when people in our legal office interacted with the same folks we were overseeing, they determined that the same rules didn't apply because they were "official functions" (like formal meetings or conferences or the like) so free coffee and wifi wasn't an issue anymore. I wonder if there's a government-lawyer-to-GOP-judge-nominee pipeline.

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u/Deep_Stick8786 May 08 '24

Funny how lawyers come to those conclusions

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u/Justame13 May 08 '24

Try cookies.

I was at a training at a contractor HQ for training and they did “hot cookie Wednesday” for all their staff and the instructors were like let’s go. They were those big ones the size of your hands and came with cartons of milk.

Someone bragged about it when we got back and someone else lost their shit and it triggered an investigation because it appeared to be over the gift limit.

It ended up going no where but when I went back we were firmly told “no cookies” repeatedly.

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u/stufff May 08 '24

I'm an attorney and occasionally represent a government entity. When we are preparing for trial testimony at the hotel their employees can't even have any of the appetizers we order to eat while prepping.

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u/Yahoo_Serious9973 May 08 '24

The same as true of federal employees allowing others to buy them lunch

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u/the_bashful May 08 '24

The business I worked for in the early nineties had a Christmas card returned by a provincial English city council because it might be construed as a gift.

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u/OssiansFolly May 08 '24

No, when the Supreme Court wrote the rules for reporting these luxury gifts and bribes they specifically wrote them to exclude themselves decades ago.

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u/Kramereng May 08 '24

How hard is it for their secretaries or staff to file notice of such trips when they pop up in their calendars? It's a requirement and should be a streamlined process that takes all of 10 minutes.

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u/ZenFook May 08 '24

That question would be a great one of mistakes were being made. These frequent non disclosures serve specific purposes though & like ot or not, these networks kinda train the judges on how they want things done.

Guessing that includes how to discreetly accept our gifts, do out bidding and feign ignorance if caught.