by Jordan Rubin | Jun 2, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
There’s been a mysterious subplot running through President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court appeal against writer E. Jean Carroll.
For months now, his petition has been pending in his effort to upend the $5 million in damages awarded to Carroll by a New York jury that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
Yet the justices keep rescheduling the petition from consideration at their private conferences where they decide which new cases to take up. The court doesn’t explain why it reschedules petitions.
I speculated in the most recent edition of the Deadline: Legal Newsletter that perhaps the court, or at least some of the justices, have wanted to put off considering Trump’s petition in order to weigh it alongside another one he has coming, in his separate but related appeal in the case in which Carroll won $83.3 million in defamation damages.
I noted that, on top of involving more money, the second appeal raises issues of presidential immunity and federal government intervention that the high court majority that previously granted Trump broad criminal immunity may be more interested in than the less legally enticing (to the justices) evidentiary issues he raised in the pending petition. (The forthcoming petition involves statements Trump made while he was president during his first term.)
On Tuesday, the same day Trump’s petition was rescheduled yet again, one of his personal lawyers wrote to the justices to suggest that they “may wish to consider the petitions together” once the upcoming one is filed.
That lawyer, Justin Smith, whom Trump has nominated for a federal judgeship, said in the letter that the president plans to bring that new petition to the
by Jordan Rubin | Jun 1, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
FBI Director Kash Patel’s girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, filed a defamation lawsuit against MS NOW and reporters Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian over an article published in December that cited unnamed sources in reporting that Patel had, on more than one occasion, “ordered that the security detail protecting his girlfriend escort one of her allegedly inebriated friends home after a night of partying in Nashville.”
In her federal complaint filed in Tennessee, Wilkins’ lawyers alleged that the article “falsely asserted that Ms. Wilkins demanded, and Director Patel ordered, that federal agents assigned to her security detail — which did not even exist at the time — escort an intoxicated friend home after a ‘night of partying.’”
The suit alleges that the defendants “published these lies knowing they were false or with reckless disregard for the truth.” That language mirrors the “actual malice” standard that plaintiffs who are public figures must satisfy to win defamation suits under the Supreme Court’s 1964 ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan. There has been an ongoing unsuccessful effort to get the justices to reconsider Sullivan over the years, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch having expressed interest in doing so, but it takes four justices to grant review of a petition.
In her complaint, Wilkins’ lawyers said she doesn’t need to meet that high standard anyway because, they write, she “is not a public figure” and therefore only needs to show negligence. “The fact that she is in a relationship with Director Patel does not promote her to the status of public figure or excuse journalists from exercising ordinary care. Neither should false allegations of her benefitting
by Jordan Rubin | May 30, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. E. Jean Carroll was in the news this week, with reports of a Trump Justice Department probe that could ensnare the 82-year-old who won tens of millions of dollars in civil damages against the president. It’s unclear exactly what the DOJ is looking into or how a prosecution against Carroll could succeed if it tries to bring one.
The Donald Trump-backed U.S. attorney in Chicago denied that he’s investigating her. Some of the latest reporting suggests the government is more focused on a Chicago-based nonprofit tied to billionaire Democratic donor Reid Hoffman that funded part of her litigation. CNN, which first reported on the inquiry, said that even after the U.S. attorney’s denial, its sources maintained that the DOJ was focused on whether Carroll committed perjury in a deposition regarding her litigation funding.
Hoffman, for his part, said he “will not bend the knee” to the president, who he said “is investigating me because I supported E Jean’s lawsuit.”
Whatever comes of any criminal probe, it’s a good time to check in on something we know is definitely happening: The president is trying to get the Supreme Court to reverse the damages Carroll won in that civil litigation. His effort involves two separate but related appeals that are at different stages of the process. The bottom line is that it could be months until we learn whether the justices want to review Trump’s claims or, instead, allow the lower court rulings against him to stand and let Carroll start collecting.
The first Supreme Court petition Trump filed is in the case where a New York jury awarded Carroll
by Jordan Rubin | May 28, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Justice Brett Kavanaugh was alone among his high court colleagues this week in claiming an interest in hearing an appeal from the NFL and several professional football teams in a dispute over whether they could force a race discrimination case into arbitration led by league commissioner Roger Goodell.
Because it takes four justices to grant review of a Supreme Court petition, Tuesday’s denial means the civil case brought by former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores can proceed in court.
In declining to take up the appeal, the justices passed on what the petitioners said was an important question: whether a sports league’s arbitration agreement is unenforceable because it makes the league commissioner the default arbitrator and lets the commissioner develop the arbitration procedures.
Flores, now the Minnesota Vikings’ defensive coordinator, filed suit in the Southern District of New York in 2022, alleging he was unfairly treated and impacted by systemic race discrimination in the league. He claimed discrimination in his termination by the Miami Dolphins, and in the New York Giants’ and Denver Broncos’ failures to hire him.
“While racial barriers have been eroded in many areas,” he said in the complaint, the NFL “lives in a time of the past” and “remains rife with racism, particularly when it comes to the hiring and retention of Black Head Coaches, Coordinators and General Managers.”
Joined by fellow Black coaches Steve Wilks and Ray Horton, Flores later filed an amended complaint adding retaliation claims against the Houston Texans based on his removal from consideration for a head coach position after filing suit, as well as claims from Wilks and Horton alleging discrimination against the Arizona
by Jordan Rubin | May 22, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. I’ll tell you the answer soon. But, without looking it up, if you don’t know already: Does the Constitution permit the execution of intellectually disabled people? If your first thought is that such an execution would obviously be unconstitutional, when do you think the Supreme Court said so?
The answer: 2002.
Even at that late date in American history, it was only by a 6-3 vote that the court deemed such executions to violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In Atkins v. Virginia, Justice John Paul Stevens cited the growing opposition to the practice among states.
“This consensus unquestionably reflects widespread judgment about the relative culpability of mentally retarded offenders, and the relationship between mental retardation and the penological purposes served by the death penalty,” Stevens wrote, joined by Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
Though the three dissenters were all GOP appointees, Atkins wasn’t a party-line split like the ones we see today. That’s because today’s party lines — where the six Republican appointees align with Republican policies in big cases, and vice versa for the three Democratic appointees — didn’t exist even a couple of decades ago.
Indeed, that’s a consequence of the reaction to the more “liberal” votes of GOP appointees like Stevens and, more famously, Souter — who prompted conservative cries of “No More Souters” and led to a hardening of the confirmation process that now produces nominees who know to show up for the right team in the big games.
Of the three Atkins dissenters, only Justice Clarence Thomas is still on the
by Jordan Rubin | May 19, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made an almost interesting concession during his Senate testimony on Tuesday.
Under questioning from Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., President Donald Trump’s defense lawyer-turned-top Justice Department official said he would commit to not recommending a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Yes, I can commit to that, of course,” Blanche said of agreeing to not help the convicted child sex trafficker and associate of Jeffrey Epstein’s. In 2019, Epstein died in custody ahead of a federal trial on his own sex trafficking charges.
Fallout from Epstein’s sprawling connections, including his association with Trump (who has denied any wrongdoing), has haunted the president’s second term, as his administration has struggled to prove that it’s taking the Epstein matter seriously.
Van Hollen: “Can you commit that the DOJ will not recommend a pardon for…Ghislaine Maxwell?”Blanche: “Yes, I can commit to that, of course.”— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2026-05-19T14:25:17.168Z
It should be unremarkable that the (acting) head of the DOJ would agree not to recommend a pardon to someone who has done nothing obvious to deserve one. But the fact that Van Hollen thought to pose the question emphasized that we’re in remarkable times.
In the spirit of these times, Blanche is not a traditional DOJ official but rather an avatar for the client he worked to keep out of jail ahead of the 2024 election. Now the two have moved offices to Washington and have the power of the United States government behind them.
One of the ways they used that power was when Blanche personally conducted what was, in theory, a “proffer” interview of Maxwell last year while she was incarcerated in a Florida prison to
