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
by Jordan Rubin | May 19, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
After South Carolina’s Supreme Court reversed Alex Murdaugh’s double-murder conviction and life sentence last week, the state’s attorney general, Alan Wilson, said the death penalty is “on the table” for a retrial against the ex-attorney who was found guilty in 2023 of killing his wife, Maggie, and their son Paul in 2021.
But introducing the prospect of capital punishment could further complicate the state’s case in what’s already been a tortured legal process.
Murdaugh defense lawyer Dick Harpootlian said that Wilson, a Republican who is running for governor this year, is playing politics rather than law. “The law is clear that he cannot seek the death penalty if it is due to vindictive prosecution,” said Harpootlian, a former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. He said the question is: What does Wilson know now that he didn’t know when he brought the case? “Is there some new piece of evidence?” the defense lawyer wondered.
Harpootlian made those comments during a press conference on Monday, at which Murdaugh’s legal team announced a civil lawsuit against Rebecca Hill, the court clerk whose improper influence over jurors led the state’s high court to upend his convictions.
If Wilson tries to seek the ultimate punishment against Murdaugh, then the state could wind up having to play defense.
When Harpootlian referred to a “vindictive prosecution,” he apparently had in mind U.S. Supreme Court precedent that says defendants can’t be punished by facing more severe penalties for getting their convictions overturned on appeal. So if Wilson does, in fact, seek the death penalty in a retrial, that could raise what’s known as a presumption of vindictiveness that the state
by Jordan Rubin | May 19, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
The judge presiding over Luigi Mangione’s New York state murder case in the 2024 shooting death of healthcare executive Brian Thompson issued an important pretrial ruling Monday. The mixed decision blocks state prosecutors from presenting certain evidence but allows other key items, such as a gun allegedly used for the fatal shooting as well as a notebook with allegedly incriminating writings.
As for the ruling’s broader implications, it should not stop Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office from making its case against Mangione, who has pleaded not guilty in this case as well as in his separate federal case, where the judge previously rejected his similar suppression motion. Prosecutors must prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt if the cases go to trial.
Given the high-profile nature of the prosecution and the passion it provokes both for Mangione’s supporters, who have hailed him as a folk hero, and people who think murder is unwarranted no matter the victim’s profession, jury selection will be especially important. The state trial is scheduled to go first, in September.
Monday’s ruling dealt only with the question of what alleged evidence and statements made by Mangione can be presented by state prosecutors to the jury — and what cannot.
Thompson was fatally shot in midtown Manhattan on Dec. 4, 2024, and Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, five days later. Officers first removed some items from his backpack at the McDonald’s and then other items later at the police station.
That distinction of location and type of search was crucial to Judge Gregory Carro’s suppression ruling, because they involved different legal circumstances that called for applying different
by Jordan Rubin | May 16, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. Waiting is a big part of Supreme Court reporting. The court is notoriously opaque about what it’s doing, when it’s doing it and, sometimes, due to its lack of explanations for significant rulings, why it’s doing it. But let’s put a pin in that last “shadow docket” point for now. It’ll make a surprise cameo later.
We were in familiar waiting territory on Thursday afternoon, as the clock ticked toward 5 p.m. ET. That was the latest arbitrary deadline that Justice Samuel Alito had set in the emergency litigation over nationwide mail access to mifepristone. If that deadline were to pass without word from the high court, then an unprecedented lower court order from the 5th Circuit halting such access would take effect. A company that makes the abortion pill warned that the order would unleash “chaos for patients, providers, pharmacies, and the drug-regulatory system.”
Five o’clock came and went. No word from the court. It wasn’t until closer to 5:30 that the justices decided — over dissents from Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas — to maintain mifepristone access while the litigation continues in the lower court. It could come back to the justices again, but the status quo access stands for now.
It’s unclear what real effect the time gap had, if any, when the 5th Circuit order was technically live for about a half hour. But what was clear, in those moments approaching the deadline and increasingly as the postdeadline minutes mounted before the court finally ruled, is that this is no way to run a modern legal system. Due to the court’s outsize influence
by Jordan Rubin | May 15, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
In the Supreme Court’s latest action that helps Republicans ahead of the midterms, the justices rejected Virginia Democrats’ emergency bid to save the state’s redistricting effort that voters approved last month.
Friday’s order follows the GOP-appointed majority’s recent Voting Rights Act ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which prompted Republican-led states to try to make their maps redder ahead of November’s elections. Earlier this week, the high court majority granted emergency relief to Alabama Republicans who cited Callais as justification to use a congressional map that was previously deemed discriminatory.
The justices didn’t explain their decision in their unsigned order Friday, as is typical for emergency appeals. None of the justices noted any dissent.
The rejection of Virginia’s appeal is another court win for Republicans in this election season, because the state’s voters had approved a process for new congressional districts that were poised to deliver more seats to Democrats. At President Donald Trump’s urging, Texas set off a wave of mid-decade redistricting last year that led other states, including Virginia, to follow suit. In prior orders affecting congressional maps, the Supreme Court approved the Texas effort as well as a Democratic countermeasure from California, while also helping New York Republicans hold onto a seat.
The GOP-appointed majority said in a 2019 ruling that federal courts can’t do anything about partisan gerrymandering. Combined with Callais, that set the stage for Republicans to erase districts throughout the South that have been led by Black representatives and supported by Black voters, under the legal guise of partisanship rather than race. The Callais ruling makes it even more difficult to prove that map-makers are motivated by improper racial
by Jordan Rubin | May 15, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
The Supreme Court on Thursday kept mifepristone abortion pills available for now, pending further litigation, siding with the drug’s manufacturers over Louisiana in an emergency appeal that called nationwide access to the widely used medication into question.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
The manufacturers brought emergency appeals to the justices after a federal appellate panel issued an order on May 1 that would stop the pills from being mailed nationwide without needing an in-person visit to a doctor. The companies, Danco and GenBioPro, called the lower court order unprecedented and warned of chaos if it wasn’t halted. The order came from a three-judge panel of all GOP appointees, including two Trump appointees, on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
Alito, who fields emergency appeals from that circuit, granted temporary relief for the drug companies on May 4 through May 11 and then extended that relief through Thursday at 5 p.m. ET. He issued what are known as administrative stays, which weren’t statements about his position on the merits of the issue, but the practical effect was to keep the drug available while he and his colleagues considered the matter further. The court missed Alito’s deadline on Thursday and issued the order siding with the companies closer to 5:30 p.m. ET.
Louisiana urged the justices to let the circuit’s order stand while the state’s lawsuit continues against the drug’s remote availability without seeing a doctor in-person. The Republican-led state argued that the issue stemmed from the Biden administration’s attempt to undermine the 2022 Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, and that the companies merely wanted to “increase their profits by selling more abortion drugs” and avoid compliance costs.
Alito echoed that sentiment in
