Sidebars Five Year Anniversary: The Top Ten Posts
Five years ago today I published my first post on this blog, a piece about a New York Times reporter at risk of being held in contempt for refusing to identify a source. Sidebars has grown a lot since then and has been fortunate enough to gain some accolades along the way (including my favorite shout-out from the D.C. Bar Magazine: "Come for the ongoing smackdown with Alan Dershowitz, stay for the trenchant commentary on the rule of law") . To mark this anniversary, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at the Sidebars "Top Ten": my ten most-read posts over the past five years. During those five years I've written more than 120 posts on Sidebars, an average of about one every two weeks. My pace of posting on the blog has definitely slowed down over the past couple of years as I've been writing more as a contributing columnist for the Washington Post and working on an upcoming video lecture course on white collar crime for The Great Courses. But the blog continues to be a great vehicle for deeper dives on selected topics; at about 2500-3000 words, my average post on Sidebars is more than three times the length of a typical op-ed in the Post. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it's rarely a lawyer's strong suit -- and some of these subjects really do call for a more in-depth analysis. As readers know, my focus on Sidebars is on white collar crime. The investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller was the most consequential white collar case in a generation, so it's probably not surprising that a majority of my top posts related to that investigation. Other major white collar cases, such as the prosecutions of Virginia governor Bob McDonnell and New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, also have been bountiful sources of material. But whatever else you might think of them, you can't top the Mueller investigation and the Trump administration when it comes to providing material for commentators on white collar crime. These results definitely reflect that. And with that - here are the Sidebars Top Ten.
#10: Fake News and the National Review
Andrew McCarthy of the National Review is a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York. As a columnist, he's been a vociferous critic of the Mueller probe and booster of president Trump. During the Mueller investigation he regularly wrote columns attacking the investigation that were so factually and legally off-base that it's hard to believe he was once an Assistant U.S. Attorney. Now that Mueller is done, McCarthy is still at it, peddling pro-Trump conspiracy theories about Ukrainian interference with the election and the "Deep State" efforts to take down the president. In what became my tenth most popular post, I collected a number of the arguments from McCarthy's columns about Mueller and showed how he was misleading his readers. I sent the post to the National Review, and I along with some other law professors on Twitter encouraged McCarthy and the National Review to respond, but they never did.
10) What Andrew McCarthy Gets Wrong about the Mueller Investigation - 3/22/18
#9: When is Lying a Federal Crime?
The False Statements statute, 18 U.S.C. 1001, is a workhorse in the white collar prosecutor's stable. It broadly criminalizes material false statements made to the federal government, even if not under oath. A number of witnesses in the Mueller investigation, including Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty to false statements for lying to the FBI during interviews. The statute applies to written false statements as well, and early in the Mueller investigation there was speculation that individuals including Jared Kushner and Jeff Sessions might be liable for concealing various foreign contacts when they filled out paperwork to apply for a security clearance. In this post I explained the scope and requirements of the false statements statute and how it potentially could apply in such a case.
9) Lying on a Security Clearance Form: The Crime of False Statements - 6/5/17
#8: The Dershowitz "Smackdown"
Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz was a vocal critic of the Mueller investigation. For two years Professor Dershowitz was all over conservative media attacking the investigation and making sweeping arguments about executive power and presidential immunity from prosecution that frankly seemed increasingly unhinged. I've written several different posts and articles rebutting Dershowitz's claims. The most popular blog post has been this one from June 2017, taking on Dersh's argument that the president can't be charged with obstruction of justice because, well, he's the president.
8) Trump and Obstruction: What Alan Dershowitz Gets Wrong - 6/19/17
#7: A RICO Review
The Mueller probe offered me several opportunities to write posts explaining the elements of leading white collar statutes and then illustrating them by discussing their potential application to the Mueller investigation. The False Statements post, number nine above, was one such example. Another one ended up as number seven on the list. It provides a primer on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act (RICO) and then discusses how it potentially could apply to the matters that Mueller was investigating. Mueller, of course, did not end up pursing RICO charges against anyone, Russian or American. But we may not have heard the last of RICO and president Trump. Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York may be looking at possible RICO charges involving the Trump Organization. The SDNY is notoriously fond of RICO, and regardless of whether the other elements of the crime could be established, the Trump Organization is a classic RICO "enterprise."
7) RICO and the Mueller Investigation - 1/16/18
#6: Fraud and the Sentencing Guidelines
My sixth most popular post is completely unrelated to Mueller. In 2015 the Federal Sentencing Commission revised the guideline used to calculate the sentence in federal fraud cases. That guideline is key to white collar practice because so many white collar cases involve fraud charges. The old guideline had come under a lot of criticism for the way it calculated white collar sentences, and reform was thought to be long overdue. In this post I discussed the changes made by the new fraud guideline and explained why those amendments really amounted to little more than tinkering around the edges.
6) The New Sentencing Guideline for Fraud Cases - 5/4/2015
#5: What's This Blog About, Anyway?
I'm particularly pleased this post made it into the Top Ten. It deals with what seems like it should be a fairly simple and foundational question: what is white collar crime? If you look in the federal criminal code you won't find a definition, or a section titled "white collar offenses." In fact, there is no universally accepted definition of white collar crime, even though it clearly is recognized as a distinct practice area -- not to mention as the subject of my law school class. This post, way back from only the second month of the blog, is my take on the definition and characteristics of white collar crime. One key takeaway? -- the name itself is something of a misnomer.
5) The Definition of White Collar Crime - 11/26/14
#4: Who Isn't Guilty of That?
I wrote this post on Contempt of Congress back during the Obama administration, when the Republican Congress held the IRS Commissioner, Lois Lerner, in contempt. Prosecutors declined to pursue the case and that was the end of it, and the post lay largely dormant for a couple of years. But recently there has been renewed interest in Congress's contempt power, in light of the apparent stonewalling of Congressional investigations by the Trump administration. And that has led to a lot of renewed interest in this post, catapulting it to number four on the list. Will Congress dust off its inherent contempt power and start locking up recalcitrant witnesses in that rumored jail cell in the basement of the Capitol? We may soon see.
4) Contempt of Congress - 4/20/15
#3: Bribery and the Emoluments Clause
Since before president Trump even took office, there has been controversy about his extensive business holdings and whether he might profit from the presidency in violation of the Constitution's emoluments clause. This relatively obscure Constitutional prohibition is now the subject of several ongoing lawsuits. My third most popular post, written after the election but before Trump was inaugurated, explained the foreign emoluments clause, how it relates to federal bribery law, and whether Trump was at risk of violating it.
3) The Emoluments Clause, Bribery, and President Trump - 11/29/16
#2: It's Conspiracy, Not Collusion
In the early days of the Mueller investigation, a frequent refrain from the president and his supporters was that collusion with the Russians, even if it did take place, would not be a crime. I wrote this post early on in the Mueller investigation. It explained how, for criminal law purposes, the proper term is conspiracy, not collusion. It also described how allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to influence the election, if true, could in fact constitute a conspiracy to defraud the United States -- even if the conduct did not directly violate another criminal statute.
2) Yes, Colluding with Russians to Interfere with the Election is a Crime - 7/5/17
#1: "Collusion" is a Crime
My most popular post of all time -- by quite a large margin -- also dealt with the question of "collusion." In February 2018 Mueller indicted thirteen Russian individuals and three Russian companies for engaging in a social media campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election. The lead charge in that indictment was a conspiracy to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful government functions of the Federal Election Commission, State Department, and Justice Department. This was the same legal theory I had outlined about six months earlier in my second most popular post, described above. One of the indicted Russian companies appeared in court and challenged that conspiracy charge. In November 2018 the federal judge in the case denied that challenge and upheld the conspiracy theory that effectively can make "collusion" a crime. My post describing that judge's ruling, and the possible implications for the Trump campaign, because my most popular post of all time.
1) Judge in Mueller Case Upholds Legal Theory that Makes Collusion a Crime - 11/23/18
Thanks for indulging me in this look back. Whatever the next years bring, I suspect there will continue to be no shortage of material. Thank you for reading!
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