by Jordan Rubin | Apr 23, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
A new book that’s supportive of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito provides an occasion to further scrutinize his refusal to recuse himself from a Jan. 6-related case.
The case is Fischer v. United States, a divided ruling from June 2024 that narrowed the scope of obstruction charges brought against some Jan. 6 defendants.
The 6-3 ruling was authored by Chief Justice John Roberts. It was joined by Alito and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden appointee, over dissent by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, that was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. (Despite the president’s recent claim to the contrary, the Democratic appointees don’t always stick together.)
After the Fischer ruling came out, The New York Times reported in September 2024 that Roberts initially tasked Alito with writing the majority opinion, but that the chief justice took it over after the Times reported in May that an upside-down flag, a symbol of the “Stop the Steal” movement in the 2020 election that Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden, had flown outside the Alito home after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Despite the appearance issue, Alito refused to recuse himself from Jan. 6-related cases, attributing the flag-flying to his wife and insisting it didn’t warrant him stepping aside.
When he refused to recuse himself, I argued in May 2024 that his explanation was lacking and raised more questions than answers. For example, he said he asked his wife to take down the flag, but he didn’t explain why he did so if there was nothing wrong with it or if it raised
by Jordan Rubin | Apr 21, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Shauni Kerkhoff, a former Capitol Police officer who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, filed a defamation lawsuit Tuesday over what she alleges is the false accusation that she planted pipe bombs on Jan. 5 outside the Democratic and Republican national committees’ respective headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Another individual, Brian Cole, has been charged with doing so and has pleaded not guilty.
Kerkhoff filed the civil suit against Blaze Media, which published the allegedly defamatory accusation; against Stephen Baker and Joseph Hanneman, who worked as reporters for Blaze Media; and against Veritas Regnat LLC, a new venture founded by Baker and Hanneman “purely to continue to defame Ms. Kerkhoff,” she argues.
Blaze Media, which Kerkhoff called an “aspiring rival to Fox News,” terminated Baker earlier this month and Hanneman resigned earlier this month, per Kerkhoff’s complaint filed in the Eastern District of Virginia. It said Baker himself was a Jan. 6 rioter while Hanneman had a traditional journalism career and more recently worked for the right-leaning newspaper Epoch Times, where he wrote almost exclusively about Jan. 6.
In the complaint, she argues the defendants knew their claims were false when they published them but didn’t care. “They used their contrived, sensational narrative to elevate their brand because they knew it would attract the attention of their target audiences. And they manufactured or distorted facts to fit that narrative,” her lawyers wrote in the filing that spans more than 100 pages.
“Ms. Kerkhoff brings this lawsuit to correct the record, hold Defendants accountable, and reclaim her life,” they wrote.
When Kerkhoff, who currently works for the CIA, was a Capitol Police officer, she was detailed as
by Jordan Rubin | Apr 18, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. It was a busy Supreme Court week, considering that the main action was a mostly unanimous opinion about where certain environmental litigation can proceed. Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion on Friday, backing Chevron’s bid for the more favorable federal forum over state court, was fully joined by every participating justice except Ketanji Brown Jackson; she wrote a concurring opinion to explain why she agreed on the bottom line but for different reasons. The case was decided by an eight-member court, because Justice Samuel Alito recused himself at the last minute, due to his oil-and-gas investment interests.
While the ruling in Chevron v. Plaquemines Parish is important for climate litigation, it was the off-court actions of Thomas and Jackson, as well as Justice Sonia Sotomayor, that dominated the week, as retirement speculation mounts for Thomas and Alito ahead of the midterm elections.
For context, recall Sotomayor’s comments last week, when she made waves for her realist observation about Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s shadow docket opinion backing immigration stops. At a law school appearance in Kansas, the Obama appointee said the Trump appointee’s opinion came from a man “whose parents were professionals” and who “probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.” Sotomayor issued a public apology this week, saying she “made remarks that were inappropriate. I regret my hurtful comments. I have apologized to my colleague.”
Jackson continued the broader shadow docket critique in a Yale Law School lecture dedicated to the topic. Her talk was titled “Equity and Exigency: A First-Principles Solution for the Supreme Court’s Emergency Docket.” Elaborating on criticism she has made in her
by Jordan Rubin | Apr 17, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Early in his Supreme Court tenure, Justice Clarence Thomas, who joined the court in 1991, reportedly said he wanted to stay on until 2034. The reason, according to a 1993 New York Times report citing one of his clerks: “The liberals made my life miserable for 43 years, and I’m going to make their lives miserable for 43 years.”
Fast-forward to this week, when Thomas, 77, said at a public appearance in Texas, “I don’t count the number of years I’m on the court.”
He made that remark Wednesday during the Q&A session that followed a speech he gave at the state’s university at Austin, tied to the upcoming 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
During his speech, an excerpt of which The Wall Street Journal’s opinion page headlined, “Justice Thomas: Progressives vs. the Declaration,” the George H.W. Bush appointee bemoaned what he saw as a modern betrayal of founding-era ideals. He also gave a shoutout to attendees, including Harlan Crow, whose undisclosed gifts to the justice raised an ethical scandal for him and the court.
The justice’s rosier view of the past extended to his own service on the court as well. During the Q&A portion, in response to a question about the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Thomas said he “loved working with him. I loved working with that court. That court that was together 11 years was my favorite. It was a wonderful time.” Thomas made a similar comment in public remarks last year, saying he “came of age with that court.”
None of these comments alone would seem to make the justice any more likely to retire this year. And another
by Jordan Rubin | Apr 16, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
The Justice Department is doubling down on its prosecution of alleged pipe bomb planter Brian Cole. The DOJ filed a second superseding indictment in the criminal case that claims Cole lodged the explosives at both the Democratic and Republican national committee headquarters in Washington on Jan. 5, 2021 — the day before Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol as Congress certified his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
The latest charging document adds allegations that Cole attempted to use weapons of mass destruction and committed terrorism. That brings the total counts he faces to four, on top of the existing counts alleging interstate transportation of explosives and malicious attempt to use explosives. Neither device detonated.
While the case against Cole, who pleaded not guilty, is more than worthy of attention, prosecutors bringing superseding indictments is not unusual in criminal cases.
Yet the latest indictment is worth scrutinizing, especially as it coincides with the DOJ’s jarring move to drop some of the most serious Jan. 6 cases, in which defendants were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Those defendants were some of the few Jan. 6 convicts whom Trump did not immediately pardon, but rather only commuted their sentences to time served, in the blanket clemency and dismissal order that he issued upon returning to office.
As it happens, Cole has a long-shot pending motion arguing that his charges should be dismissed because, he says, they’re covered by Trump’s pardon. The DOJ counters — probably correctly — that it doesn’t apply to Cole, and a judge still has to rule on the motion.
But even if he isn’t saved by the blanket pardon, the DOJ’s bid
by Jordan Rubin | Apr 10, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. Regular readers weren’t surprised when the Supreme Court cleared the way for the dismissal of Steve Bannon’s contempt conviction. We’ve been following this one for a while and, on Monday, the court gave Donald Trump’s Justice Department what it asked for: a chance to ask the trial court to permanently dismiss Bannon’s conviction for blowing off the House Jan. 6 committee. The DOJ didn’t detail why it wants that relief for the Trump ally, claiming only that burying the case “is in the interests of justice.”
The court was mostly quiet besides that, as the justices are in between argument sessions ahead of the term’s final two-week hearing stint later this month. After that, we enter the home stretch of anticipating some of the term’s biggest rulings, which will come down later in the spring and early summer.
But the court did act on a quirky shadow docket dispute in another election-related appeal ahead of the midterms. Samuel Ronan, who previously sought to lead the Democratic National Committee, was certified to run as a Republican in an Ohio congressional primary this year. Yet a Republican voter asked to kick him off the ballot, Republican officials agreed to do so and Republican-appointed judges on lower courts declined to let him run. On Thursday, the Supreme Court denied Ronan’s emergency appeal, though none of the justices dissented, so it wasn’t a complete party-line wash.
Meanwhile, Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a shadow docket dissent, of sorts, in public remarks this week. Speaking at the University of Kansas School of Law on Tuesday, the Obama appointee called out Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s
