Department of Justice

* The DOJ sent a newsletter to the nation’s immigration judges including links to a white nationalist website. Bill Barr is running a real crackerjack organization. [Buzzfeed News]

* A deep question and answer exchange with Penn Law’s Amy Wax and she comes off just as loony as you’d expect. [New Yorker]

* It looks like Michael Avenatti is going to put Nike on trial in his upcoming extortion suit. [Law360]

* A Brad Pitt role holds the key to being a good prosecutor. It’s not Tyler Durden and that’s a little surprising. [ABA Journal]

* Weil Gotshal may have cost investment bankers millions, leaving them mere multimillionaires. [NY Post]

* Ed Whelan seems to have no idea how law review articles are written in this tortured effort to defend Trump circuit appointee Steve Menashi’s reputation. Essentially, Whelan says because Menashi’s controversial article was cited by real academics it must be real scholarship — as opposed to a 2L randomly inserting Menashi into a string cite. [National Review]

* Nicholas Sparks won that fight he’s been having with the former headmaster of his vanity school. [Deadline]

* In his final days, accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein surrounded himself with lawyers in a private meeting room for up to 12 hours a day, emptying vending machines, if only to escape his cramped, vermin-infested cell. [New York Times]

* The Trump Justice Department wants the Supreme Court to deny civil rights protections for transgender employees, but the EEOC doesn’t agree and its general counsel refused to sign the DOJ’s brief to the high court. [National Law Journal]

* Per a leaked Brexit document, U.K. officials are trying to avoid a “catastrophic collapse in the nation’s infrastructure” (e.g., food, fuel, and medicine shortages; port gridlocks; and civil unrest) if Britain is unable to leave the EU with a deal. [NPR]

* Will other Biglaw firms with similar parental leave policies face scrutiny in the wake of the reverse discrimination lawsuit filed against Jones Day? We’ll have to wait and see if this reproduces additional legal claims. [American Lawyer]

* Milbank just scored a major lateral coup after scooping up some talented IP litigators from Irell & Manella, including David Gindler, the firm’s managing partner. Gindler was Irell’s third managing partner in just a few years. [Big Law Business]

* President Trump and the RNC sued over a new California law that requires presidential candidates to release five years of tax returns to get onto the 2020 primary ballot. We were wondering when this “naked political attack against the sitting president of the United States” would happen. [New York Times]

* Former FBI agent Peter Strzok has filed suit against the Justice Department over his firing, claiming that being dismissed from the investigative agency for sending text messages disparaging Donald Trump violated his constitutional right to private political speech. [Wall Street Journal]

* From the demise of your favorite toy store to the destruction of one the most recognized luxury stores, Kirkland & Ellis is making a killing when it comes to representing the death of our brick-and-mortar retail economy. [American Lawyer]

* William Brown, a former Navy SEAL who currently works as an associate at McCarter & English, recently led the first-ever sanctioned swim across the Hudson River with 30+ other SEALs to raise money for veterans. Congrats! [Big Law Business]

* Meet Jeffrey Morgan, one of the lucky few lawyers to have had his federal student loans discharged through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Unfortunately, he still owes $67,987.09 in private student loans. [MarketWatch]

* With a no-deal Brexit now on the horizon, lawyers able to practice in Ireland pose about the only path to save the hefty revenue streams of London’s Biglaw behemoths. But Ireland isn’t sure Irish law can be practiced from afar. [International]

* Donald Trump wants all the credit from the First Step Act releasing non-violent drug offenders — meanwhile the Justice Department that he runs is trying to put the people getting released right back in jail because this whole thing is just a publicity stunt so he can have photo ops with Kim Kardashian. [Reuters]

* Baker McKenzie gets out of Brazilian malpractice suit. [American Lawyer]

* Courts are trying to push sexual harassment back into arbitration where it can be quietly covered up like the old days. [Law360]

* Cryptocurrency investor’s suit against AT&T moves forward. [Courthouse News Service]

* Just a former judge being dragged out of a courtroom to serve six months — totally normal. [CNN]

* A divided House of Representatives voted to “strongly condemn[] President Donald Trump’s racist comments” that were recently lodged against four Democratic congresswomen of color “that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color.” [NBC News]

* Plaintiffs in the census citizenship case are seeking sanctions against the Department of Justice for committing “fraud on the court” after allegedly hiding the truth about the case’s origins during trial. This should be interesting, considering the Supreme Court seemed to agree… [Reuters]

* Which Biglaw firms are playing host to 2020 Democratic presidential candidates? Quite a few, actually! From Milbank to Kirkland to Paul Weiss, these politicians are getting cozy with their future lawyers. [American Lawyer]

* Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has Pennsylvania Supreme Court to declare the death penalty unconstitutional because he claims it’s arbitrary and racially biased. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

* Salary news you can use: If you’ve got a law degree and you work in a compliance role, you can expect to make more money than your colleagues without JDs at each and every stage of your career. [Corporate Counsel]

* Retired Justice John Paul Stevens, the former leader of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court, RIP. [New York Times]

* The 2020 Census case is officially moving forward as the DOJ attempts to “re-evaluate all available options,” and the judge on the case is allowing plaintiffs to focus on whether the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question was “steeped in discriminatory motive.” [NBC News]

* And the lawyers who had been representing the administration in the case are being swapped out — which could mean that some of them were having legal or ethical concerns about their continued involvement. [Washington Post]

* “You know that woman is lying, don’t you?” According to a new book written by Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino, that’s what Melania Trump allegedly said to Donald Trump of Christine Blasey Ford’s Senate Judiciary Committee testimony against Justice Brett Kavanaugh. [New York Post]

* ““I do not regret my vote in the least,” says Senator Susan Collins in reference to her controversial vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. She might regret it if that’s what gets her kicked out of her Senate seat… [The Hill]

* Billionaire playboy Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on Saturday and charged with one count of sex trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors, crimes which could could put him behind bars for up to 45 years. [New York Times]

* Reed Smith counsel Mark Goldstein imagined the worst case scenarios that could have happened after he told the legal world about his depression, but he was “heartened” by all of Biglaw’s progress in terms of lawyers’ mental health. [American Lawyer]

* Okay, fine, whatever, the Trump administration is apparently going to look for a way to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. We’re governing by tweet these days, and this is the latest information on this debacle. [Washington Post]

* And it looks like the way President Trump is thinking of adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census is through an executive order. The Justice Department has until this afternoon to straighten this out. [ABC News]

* Nope, you still can’t use money that was supposed to go to the Defense Department to build a border wall. The Ninth Circuit upheld an injunction on the use of these military funds just before the holiday. [Los Angeles Times]

* Which Biglaw firms have received the most money from presidential candidates’ 2020 election campaigns? As you might have guessed, lawyers from Jones Day have gotten a lot to Republicans, and lawyers from Perkins Coie have gotten a lot to the Democrats. [National Law Journal]

* Prosecutors have dropped the manslaughter charge filed against an Alabama woman who was five months pregnant and lost her unborn child after being shot in the stomach. Congratulations, Alabama! Way to be normal! [CBS News]

* If you’re interested in going to law school, you should know that the average debt for the class of 2018 was pretty hefty at $115,481 — that’s $130,900 for private school graduates and $89,962 for public school graduates. Good luck paying it off! [Nerdwallet]

* Matthew Benedict, a student at Buffalo Law, RIP. [New York Law Journal]

* “Everyone in America counts in the census, and today’s decision means we all will.” The Justice Department has officially confirmed that in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision, a citizenship question will not be added to the 2020 Census. [Washington Post]

* Has Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg handed off the high court’s liberal torch to Justice Elena Kagan? Based on the fact that the Notorious RBG assigned the dissent in the partisan gerrymandering case, it sure looks like it. [NPR]

* Dozens of prominent Republicans plan to submit an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of a “common sense, textualist” ruling that the Civil Rights Act outlaws discrimination against LGBT people in the workplace. [New York Times]

* Allen & Overy and O’Melveny & Myers are still in merger talks, but this has been going on for more than a year now and it seems like it’s taking forever for anything to happen. [American Lawyer]

* Michael Avenatti, the Lawyer of the Year accused of bank fraud and embezzlement, is refusing to give up his desktop, iPhone, and iPad passwords to federal prosecutors in New York. [Big Law Business]

* Hope Hicks, Donald Trump‘s former communications director, will testify today before the House Judiciary Committee, which is leading an investigation into the president’s possible obstruction of justice. The closed-door hearing could last all day. Let’s see how this one goes… [Reuters]

* Thanks to some intervention by the DOJ, it looks like Paul Manafort won’t be going to Rikers after all. He’ll remain in federal custody during his state proceedings. [ABC News]

* In the wake of the Kozinski sexual harassment scandal, the Ninth Circuit has hired a workplace relations director and adopted some meaningful changes to its dispute resolution policy and its confidentiality policy. Plus, communications skills training will be mandatory all employees, including judges. [Big Law Business]

* In case you missed it, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg won the Best Real-Life Hero at the MTV Movie & TV Awards. She was also nominated in the Best Fight category for her fight against inequality, but lost to Captain Marvel’s fight against Minn-Erva. [The Hill]

* A student from Florida A&M Law has filed suit against the school, claiming that FAMU didn’t respond appropriately after an admissions counselor allegedly sexually assaulted and harassed her. We’ll have more on this later. [Daily Business Review]

* “It’s very simple. There was no crime. I did nothing wrong.” President Trump continues to believe that former special counsel Robert Mueller absolved him of any crimes, so that’s special. [POLITICO]

* And as for the 1000+ former prosecutors who say that Trump would have been indicted for obstruction of justice were he not a sitting president, per Trump, “They’re politicians. … And these are all — many of ’em are Trump haters.“ [This Week / ABC]

* With just two weeks left, tensions are high as the legal community awaits the Supreme Court’s decisions in the 24 cases that remain on this term’s docket. What fresh hell will be unleashed upon society this week? [The Hill]

* The Justice Department claims that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin didn’t break the law when he refused to turn over President Trump’s tax returns to Congress because he was just protecting their confidentiality. [Reuters]

* Trump intends to nominate a Biglaw partner to the board of directors for the Legal Services Corporation, the organization whose budget he keeps trying to cut. [Big Law Business]