During the third week in June, my media hits were concentrated on Former Director Comey’s testimony, and Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, and Attorney General Sessions’s testimony.

 

• Guest on Canadian Broadcasting Channel to discuss special counsel investigation (6/14/17) (Vide0).

• Guest on WJIM’s The Steve Gruber Show to discuss Attorney General Session’s testimony (6/14/17) (Audio).

• Guest on The Tommy Tucker Show, WWL AM870 New Orleans, to discuss Attorney General Jeff Session’s testimony (6/14/17) (Audio).

• Guest on Canadian TV News Channel to discuss Attorney General Jeff Session’s testimony, CTV (6/13/17) (Vide0)

• Guest on Guest on Lou Dobbs Tonight to Discuss AG Session’s Testimony, Fox Business Network (6/13/17) (Video).

• Quoted in Notable & Quotable: Gorsuch and Gorsuch, Wall Street Journal (June 14, 2017).
• Guest on Australian Broadcasting Channel News to discuss the travel ban (June 14, 2017) (Video).

• Guest on AM740 KTRH Houston to discuss Trump blocking people on Twitter (June 13, 2017) (Audio).

• Guest on AM740 KTRH Houston to discuss Trump blocking people on Twitter (June 13, 2017) – Short (June 13, 2017) (Audio).

• Do Recent Voting and Immigration Laws Mean Texas is Racist?, Houston Matters on Houston Public Media (June 13, 2017) (Audio).

• Quoted in SCOTUS faces tight timeline to hear travel ban appeal this summer, Politico (June 13, 2017).

Josh Blackman, an associate professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston, said he didn’t expect the schedule change to alter the likelihood that the high court will take the case. “I still think it is feasible that arguments could be [scheduled] by the end of June or the beginning of July, with a resolution over the summer,” Blackman said in an email. “It doesn’t make much sense to wait till the fall, though the justices do value their summer breaks.”

• Cited in The Ninth Circuit’s Refugee EO Decision: Methodically Misreading the Immigration Statute, Lawfare (June 13, 2017).
• Cited in If Trump Fires Mueller (Or Orders His Firing), Lawfare (June 13, 2017).
• Cited in Can the president fire special counsel Robert Mueller? (And then what?), Washington Post (June 13, 2017).
• Quoted in Knives coming out: Trump fans float idea of firing investigator Mueller, The Canadian Press (June 12, 2017).

On the other hand, it would cause a political storm, said the writer.

“Such an action would incur a severe political cost,” wrote Josh Blackman, associate professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston. “The termination of Mueller would amount to an admission of guilt and obstruction of justice. The fallout from the firing of Mueller would likely be as explosive as (Richard Nixon’s) firing of special counsel Archibald Cox in 1973.”

• Quoted in Are the courts treating Trump differently than other presidents?, The Christian Science Monitor (June 12, 2017).

“What the court does here will signal how the judiciary should react to Trump” in the long-term, says Josh Blackman, an associate professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston. “It’s not going to be constrained to this specific case.”

• Quoted in What’s in Neil Gorsuch’s first SCOTUS opinion?, Conservative Review (June 12, 2017).

On Twitter, law professor and legal blogger Josh Blackman called the ruling a “[s]olid [first] opinion from a fitting assignment.” Though he also noted that some of Gorsuch’s humor seemed “forced,” but that “[i]t will become more natural [with] time.”

 

Litigation:

• Author, Brief for Scholar Seth Barrett Tillman as Amicus Curiae in Support of the Defendant, CREW v. Trump (1:17-CV-458, Southern District of New York).