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Lisa Rubin

@lawofruby.bsky.social
77K followers 27 following 102 posts

@ms.now senior legal reporter & recovering litigator; former off-air legal analyst @maddow.msnbc.com. Don’t let the pearls fool ya.

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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
NEW: Epstein lawyer and estate co-executor Darren Indyke testifies today before House Oversight. And based on what witnesses, including Epstein victims, told the FBI and DOJ about their interactions with him, there are ongoing questions about what he knew and when. www.ms.now/news/as-epst...
ms.now
As Epstein’s longtime lawyer testifies, questions remain about what he knew
Epstein documents suggest Darren Indyke facilitated payments to women and directed witnesses to avoid talking to law enforcement.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
NEW: DOJ says the ongoing dispute over Alina Habba is one about titles, not authority. What does that mean? And why is their fallback position more frightening for the rule of law than their insistence on keeping her as Acting U.S. Attorney? Read here: www.msnbc.com/opinion/anal...
msnbc.com
Was former Trump lawyer Alina Habba ‘validly appointed’ to her DOJ post?
Whether or not she is legitimately serving as New Jersey’s U.S. attorney, DOJ’s fallback position is even more concerning.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
NEW: In an email to her now-former colleagues today, veteran SDNY prosecutor Maurene Comey says she was “summarily fired” by “Main Justice” and urges that fear not “seep into the decisions of those who remain.” Read her whole email here: www.msnbc.com/top-stories/...
msnbc.com
Read Epstein prosecutor Maurene Comey’s letter to colleagues after DOJ firing
“Fear is the tool of a tyrant,” wrote the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, a frequent target of President Donald Trump.
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Reposted by Lisa Rubin
MS NOW @ms.now · 27/06/2025
Democratic state AGs have filed dozens of lawsuits against the Trump admin. and are showing no signs of stopping. MSNBC's @lawofruby.bsky.social sits down with three of them to discuss their role in combating Trump 2.0 in a new episode of "Can They Do That?" WATCH: www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIz_...
youtube.com
Trump facing endless legal NIGHTMARE: 'Keep on suing'
YouTube video by MSNBC
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
Pete Hegseth's not the only Trump ally nor the only Trump nominee to express doubts that the executive branch should follow court orders, full stop. It's a disturbing trend, especially when the doubters are themselves federal judicial nominees. My latest for @msnbc.com: msnbc.com/opinion/anal...
msnbc.com
Hegseth's Senate testimony on court orders proves we're living in the legal upside-down
The defense secretary said, in so many words, that we cannot count on the Pentagon's compliance with a federal court order. That's a big problem.
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Reposted by Lisa Rubin
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell @lastwordmsnow.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
TONIGHT: @lawofruby.bsky.social joins @lawrenceodonnell.msnbc.com on The #LastWord at 10pm ET.
Promotional graphic for MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell featuring MSNBC Legal Correspondent Lisa Rubin
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
The court battles between the Trump administration and Harvard are now so extensive and critical to Harvard that, as I just said on @msnbc.com, collectively, they remind me of this scene.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
The Trump memo launching an investigation into the Biden White House’s use of the autopen allegedly to conceal his mental state is something else. Why is the White House Counsel in charge of this investigation? That is one indicator that something is awry. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...
whitehouse.gov
Reviewing Certain Presidential Actions
MEMORANDUM FOR THE ATTORNEY GENERALTHE COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT SUBJECT:       Reviewing Certain Presidential Actions By the
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
NEW: I watched today’s nomination hearing for the first of Trump’s judicial nominees, and spoiler alert: they are willing to go places unthinkable for legal conservatives even 4 years ago. My latest for MSNBC.com: www.msnbc.com/opinion/anal...
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
Lisa Rubin is going home to her daughters and take-out.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
NEW: The first judicial nominees of Trump 2.0 get a Senate Judiciary hearing this morning starting in 2 min. Watch along with me? www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-ac...
judiciary.senate.gov
Nominations | United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
NEW: Everyone's got a hot take on Trump's beef with the Federalist Society. Mine? Trump wants to eliminate both FedSoc and the ABA's influence over judicial nominations so he's the sole arbiter of nominees' qualifications & fitness. My latest for MSNBC.com: www.msnbc.com/opinion/anal...
msnbc.com
As law firms and clients push back against Trump, he shifts focus to judicial 'vetters'
In cutting off the American Bar Association's access to judicial nominees and attacking the Federalist Society, Trump seeks to become the sole arbiter of judicial quality.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
NEW: Pam Bondi & Kash Patel are under increasing pressure to release more info about Jeffrey Epstein’s life and death. But putting aside our own curiosity, doesn’t federal law enforcement owe his victims a review of their own failure to act? My latest at MSNBC.com: www.msnbc.com/opinion/anal...
msnbc.com
Victims' lawsuits show FBI and DOJ's focus on Epstein files misses the mark
Instead of devoting thousands of hours to document redactions, the agencies should determine how to more effectively — and emphatically — respond to sex abuse victims.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
NEW: Are the courts holding in Trump 2.0? Well, that depends. No court can hold if its orders are flouted—and one immigration case highlights how willing the administration seems to disobey. My latest for MSNBC.com: www.msnbc.com/opinion/anal...
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
NEW: The audio of Biden's interview with Robert Hur matters less for what he said than how he said it--and underscores, like the Sean "Diddy" Combs trial, why there's often no replacement for actually hearing a witness's account. My latest for @msnbc.com: www.msnbc.com/opinion/anal...
msnbc.com
The significance of Biden’s Hur audio isn’t what he said. It’s how he said it.
The release of the Biden audio amid the Sean “Diddy” Combs trial underscores why the public’s ability to watch and listen to court proceedings matters.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
And why was she arrested the same day that a federal judge in another court expressed doubt that customs officials had authority to revoke her visa? Something smells off here -- and it's not the "biological material" Petrova failed to declare on her customs forms.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
Petrova was detained at Logan Airport on February 16. If the case against her is righteous and just, why did it take the feds two months after detaining her to file so little?
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
In the meantime, the charging papers are little more than an affidavit from a Homeland Security Investigations agent and this criminal complaint.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
At some point today, the administration moved to unseal its criminal complaint against Petrova in a Massachusetts federal court and represented she has been arrested:
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
The administration told that judge, Christina Reiss, that they intend to send Petrova back to Russia, despite her fear of arrest because of her support for Ukraine. Reiss scheduled a bail hearing on May 28, "potentially setting the stage for Ms. Petrova’s release": www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/h...
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
Harvard researcher Kseniia Petrova has been charged criminally with smuggling goods -- e.g., frog embryos and samples thereof on slides, etc. -- into the United States on the same day the judge overseeing her habeas case questioned the government's authority to revoke her visa.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
NEW: Beyond detailing the horrors she alleges she suffered at Sean Combs' hands, Cassie Ventura has dropped some other important details: the names of Combs' alleged enablers (aka co-conspirators). I break down why that matters in my latest for @msnbc.com: www.msnbc.com/opinion/anal...
msnbc.com
Why it matters that Cassie Ventura named names
While the public focuses on the sexual and physical abuse that Ventura allegedly suffered at Sean “Diddy” Combs’ hands, the charges necessitate proof of who enabled his conduct.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
So just to be clear, DOJ policy prohibits personnel from offering “any opinion as to the defendant’s guilt” except during the proceeding itself or after a conviction. There is no exception for media appearances. FIN.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
And yet, in service of what they call responding in kind, this DOJ doesn’t seem to care a lick about complying with the department policy they claim the preceding administration ignored. 4/
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
That claim was thoroughly dismantled by a federal judge, even after the Justice Department scoured prosecutors’ emails and texts for proof of their purported misconduct. 3/
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
Weren’t the public statements of then-SDNY U.S. Attorney Damian Williams a large part of their claim that the charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams were politically motivated? 2/
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
I am struggling to understand why, when as the Deputy Attorney General acknowledged, it is not appropriate to comment on a pending criminal investigation, it is ok to disparage Newark’s mayor, who now faces charges under a federal criminal complaint, on national TV. 1/
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
So it’s Friday night and Rumeysa Ozturk is out on bail, Ras Baraka is in Homeland Security custody, and Stephen Miller is casually toying with suspending habeas corpus. Do I have that right?
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
NEW: News of the passing of retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter made me think immediately of . . . the Federalist Society. Why? Read my latest for @msnbc.com: www.msnbc.com/opinion/anal...
msnbc.com
Without David Souter, the Federalist Society might’ve remained on the fringe
More than any decision he authored, the justice’s legacy was how he surprised legal conservatives, galvanizing a movement to prevent the nomination of federal jurists like him.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
"The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing. The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing." FIN.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
"He says the early petal-fall is past When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers On sunny days a moment overcast; And comes that other fall we name the fall. He says the highway dust is over all. 3/
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
"There is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. He says that leaves are old and that for flowers Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. 2/
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
According to @washingtonpost.com, a deflated Justice Souter gave his law clerks the Robert Frost poem "The Oven Bird" on the day Bush v. Gore came down. I didn't know it, but it's lovely and worth sharing: 1/
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
If prosecutors are genuinely interested in the truth, we are prepared to meet false claims with facts." FIN.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
". . . just days after President Trump publicly attacked Attorney General James. This appears to be the political retribution President Trump threatened to exact that AG Bondi assured the Senate would not occur on her watch. 2/
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
NEW: On public reports that NY Attorney General Tish James is under federal investigation, her lawyer Abbe Lowell gave a statement to MSNBC: "These baseless and long-discredited allegations, put to rest by my April 24th letter to the Department of Justice, are suddenly back in the news . . . ." 1/
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
But first, Boasberg has to determine the precise contours of the discovery plaintiffs will take to confirm that the U.S. has "constructive custody" over the men in CECOT. And he'll likely outline that in a further order one week from today. Stay tuned. 4/
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
Boasberg's next sentence is stark: "Those claims, if ultimately borne out, would show that Respondents have violated federal law and Petitioners’ due-process rights." 3/
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
The petitioners say they've "been removed from the United States under the authority of an illegal Proclamation, denied any opportunity to challenge that removal, transferred by U.S. authorities to a foreign prison under contract with the U.S. Government, & held there indefinitely without trial." 2/
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
Judge James Boasberg has not ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the release and return of those non-citizens now imprisoned at CECOT. But if the discovery he has authorized through a new order backs up their lawyers' claims, it sounds like he's heading there. 1/
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
Trump has just nominated Joshua Divine to serve as a federal district court judge in two federal districts. There is a statute suggesting a judge's commission can cover more than one district, but as a practical matter, any legal historians know when this last happened?
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Reposted by Lisa Rubin
MS NOW @ms.now · 06/05/2025
OPINION by @lawofruby.bsky.social: Lisa raises the question why ex-ballerina Ksenia Karelina was released from a Russian prison, but Harvard scientist Kseniia Petrova remains in ICE detention. READ MORE: www.msnbc.com/opinion/anal...
msnbc.com
Trump's treatment of 2 Russian women highlights a flawed immigration policy
Ex-ballerina Ksenia Karelina was freed from a Russian prison, but Harvard scientist Kseniia Petrova remains in ICE detention. Why?
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
NEW: Ksenia Karelina and Kseniia Petrova are young, Russian-born, and ran afoul of Russian authorities. But the Trump administration rescued one and has started deportation proceedings against the other. Why? My latest @msnbc.com: www.msnbc.com/opinion/anal...
msnbc.com
Trump's treatment of 2 Russian women highlights a flawed immigration policy
Ex-ballerina Ksenia Karelina was freed from a Russian prison, but Harvard scientist Kseniia Petrova remains in ICE detention. Why?
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
NEW: D.C.-based law firm Perkins Coie wins its case against the Trump Administration with Judge Beryl Howell invalidating Trump's entire executive order punishing the firm. Her 102-page opinion holding the EO unconstitutional is here: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
storage.courtlistener.com
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
NEW: There’s hardly a major legal fight against the Trump administration that doesn’t involve the @aclu.org. So join me and the ACLU’s national legal director, Cecilia Wang, for the latest “Can They Do That?” with a focus on 3 of the biggest brewing legal clashes. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BAX...
youtube.com
Trump’s power grab: The 3 legal clashes to watch in the next 100 days
YouTube video by MSNBC
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
NEW: Plaintiffs fighting against Trump policies, executive orders, and firings have won roughly 100 injunctions in the first 100 days of his presidency. But is the relief all it's cracked up to be? And will it last? My latest for @maddowblog.msnbc.com: www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...
msnbc.com
Trump keeps losing in court. But the relief isn’t always what it seems and might not last.
A flouting of court orders, recent Supreme Court rulings and a new congressional budget season could hamper efforts to rein in the administration.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
NEW: Is the Trump administration’s college crackdown legal? Find out on the latest episode of “Can They Do That?” with Columbia Law School professor @jamalgreene.bsky.social, one of the most thoughtful people I know. youtu.be/d-CWuO3KSpo?...
youtu.be
'Students are very afraid': Is Trump’s college crackdown legal?
YouTube video by MSNBC
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Even though I am not a Christian, much less a Catholic, I found Pope Francis’s generosity inspiring. As the world mourns him, this piece from the @nytimes.com captures why: www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Pope on Panhandling: Give Without Worry (Published 2017)
Francis offers a permanently applicable solution to dealing with outcasts: give.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
And then let’s assume the Court grants a stay of those injunctions. That won’t be the end of the litigation; it will just allow the birthright citizenship EO to take effect while the underlying appeals of those injunctions continue. And the result could be chaos. FIN.
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Lisa Rubin @lawofruby.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
But putting the minute data set aside, there’s also the nature of the application: a request to stay each of three injunctions, all of which apply nationally, or at the least, to restrict their application to the specific jurisdictions in which they were granted. 4/
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