Fraud

* Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who was paid six figures in exchange for not spilling the beans about her affair with Donald Trump, is now suing him, claiming that the “hush agreement” she entered into prior to the election is invalid because he never signed it. [Washington Post]

* File this under Not Top Ten: Former ESPN legal analyst and sports anchor Adrienne Lawrence, a onetime associate of Greenberg Traurig, Arent Fox, and McGuireWoods, has filed a sexual harassment suit against the sports network, claiming that SportsCenter anchor John Buccigross constantly harassed her. [American Lawyer]

* Not only will the government be able to seize more than $7.3 million of disgraced pharma bro Martin Shkreli’s assets — including his one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album — but prosecutors want to throw him behind bars for no less than 15 years. [New York Law Journal]

* Attorney General Jeff Sessions will announce today that the Justice Department will be filing suit against California over its “sanctuary state” laws. As alleged in the complaint, the Golden State’s laws — AB 450, SB 54, and AB 103 — were all created to impede immigration laws. [USA Today]

* “When I heard the gun went off accidentally, that just didn’t ring true. Someone has to pull the trigger. They just don’t accidentally discharge.” Prospective jurors in former Biglaw partner Claud “Tex” McIver’s murder trial weren’t exactly buying his defense. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

* Forget about the egregious law school tuition you’ll have to pay in the future, because it can cost quite the pretty penny to apply to law school in the first place. You may want to look into fee waivers so you can save yourself some cash. [U.S. News]

* Billy McFarland, the millennial entrepreneur who organized the disastrous Fyre Festival, has taken a plea deal after defrauding the investors who bought into the failed event. He’s looking at sentence of eight to 10 years in prison. [Big Law Business]

* Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is trying to raise funds to pay for his legal bills thanks to the numerous investigations into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia. His legal tab could range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to about $1 million. Someone, anyone, please tell this man to set up a GoFundMe account. [Bloomberg Politics]

* Earlier this week, Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was in favor of completely reinstating President Trump’s travel ban from six majority Muslim countries, regaled a group of newly naturalized citizens with his thoughts on the importance of tolerating different viewpoints during “polarizing” times, even if it’s difficult to do. We are living in very strange times. [Associated Press]

* The law school brain drain continues to wreak havoc, with a 45 percent drop in applicants with LSAT scores of 160 or above over the past six years. How in the world can law schools convince these people to apply? Eleven leaders offered their (painfully obvious) ideas, with many of them saying tuition costs must be lowered in light of the state of the weak job market. Gee, ya think? [Law.com]

* According to a study released by Yale Law School and the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, Asian Americans may be the fastest growing minority population in the legal profession, but they seem to have hit a “legal glass ceiling” when it comes to attaining leadership positions in private practice, academia, and public service. We may have more on this. [Washington Post]

* “I hope to see you and your four children homeless. I will do whatever I can to assure this.” Martin Shkreli is such a peach. A letter the pharma bro allegedly sent to a former employee’s wife was entered into evidence earlier this week during testimony on the manipulation of Retrophin, one of the eight fraud charges Shkreli is currently facing at trial. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Everyone in the Trump administration who is in some way related to the Russia probe has now lawyered up with outside counsel, including the attorney general. AG Jeff Sessions is being represented by Chuck Cooper, a longtime champion of conservative causes. If you recall, Cooper also prepped Sessions for his confirmation hearing. [USA Today]

* Let’s not go crazy: Earlier this week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and outside counsel Keker & Van Nest were denied certiorari on the Lenz v. Universal Music case — perhaps better known as the “dancing baby” case. Thanks to the SCOTUS decision, or lack thereof, we’ll not know “whether or not the DMCA includes meaningful protections for online fair uses” anytime soon. [Law.com]

* Judge Gonzalo Curiel will not make a Trump University settlement objector post a $146,888 bond to pursue an appeal. Sherri Simpson, a Florida bankruptcy lawyer, paid $19,000 for Trump U. seminars and mentorship, but now she wants out so she can sue the president over the alleged fraud. [POLITICO]

* Concerned Veterans for America, a political action committee that’s funded by the Koch brothers, is running an ad in support of a Penn Law Professor Stephanos Bibas’s nomination to the Third Circuit. “Generally a candidate would have to be pretty inflammatory or at risk to justify this kind of spending,” said election law attorney Adam Bonin. [Legal Intelligencer via ABA Journal]

* UNC Law’s budget has officially been cut by the state Senate, but it’s not as bad as the $4 million budget buster that was previously proposed. The law school will have to do without $500K in state appropriations if the legislature approves the move. Yes, that’s the sound of your tuition going up. [News & Observer]

* Eli Manning might be getting burned by discovery. [ESPN]

* The Covington & Burling report on sexual misconduct at Choate that is rocking the world of elite boarding schools. [New York Times]

* Aaron Hernandez found not guilty of a 2012 double murder. Don’t worry, he is still serving a life sentence for a 2013 murder. [Deadspin]

* Did Donald Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, misplace $350,000? [Buzzfeed]

* If only this was what really happened behind the scenes at SCOTUS. [Huffington Post]

* DOJ gives up on HB2 litigation. [Slate]

* The civil rights of students are… probably not in good hands. [Salon]

Uh-oh! Trouble in paradise? It looks like Martin Shkreli’s lawyer — who also happens to be his co-defendant — has turned on him.

* Florida has released the results from its administration of the February 2017 bar exam, and they were not pretty. The percentage of those who passed dipped a bit since 2016, but students at both Orlando law schools were more likely to have failed. But which law school did the worst of all? We’ll have more on this later. [Orlando Sentinel]

* Trouble in paradise? Martin Shkreli’s former lawyer, Evan Greebel — who also happens to be his co-defendant — has turned on him, accusing the pharma bro of submitting false documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and engaging in illegal stock trading. Greebel, of course, now wants to be tried separately from Shkreli. [Bloomberg]

* “I never in my wildest dreams imagined I would be back.” Five women who once worked at Davis Polk and had been gone for at least two years to raise their families have returned to the firm for one-year stints with a program called “Davis Polk Revisited.” If all goes well, they may be able to return for a longer period of time. [WSJ Law Blog]

* A former Hunton & Williams partner who spent 20 years on the lam as a fugitive has finally been caught. Scott Wolas, who was disbarred in 1999, was most recently accused in a $1.5 million real estate investment fraud scheme. Over the course of his alleged criminal career, Wolas reportedly assumed a number of other aliases. [Am Law Daily]

* Each year around Easter, the ABA Journal hosts a Peeps in Law diorama contest. It’s time to cast your vote for your favorite, and this time around, the competition is pretty stiff. We’re particularly partial to the entry that’s been dubbed “State of Peepington v. Trump,” but “Peepsburg and Sugarmayor” is also very cute. Vote! [ABA Journal]

* General Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser to President Trump, has offered to testify before Congress on the campaign’s alleged Russian connections in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Remember back in September when Flynn said on Meet the Press that “when you are given immunity that means you’ve probably committed a crime”? This is absolutely wild. [Wall Street Journal; NBC News]

* The chairman of Bethune-Cookman’s criminal justice department defends the HBCU’s affiliation with Arizona Summit Law, even though it’s on probation, saying that because $12.5 million in scholarship money is at stake, “it would be irresponsible not to provide this opportunity as an option for B-CU students to obtain a legal education without incurring excessive student loan debt in the process.” [DealBook / New York Times]

* It looks like President Trump is planning to sign off on a repeal of Obama-era internet privacy rules that were promulgated by the FCC in October. As noted by Senator Chuck Schumer, this is “[t]errible for American [people], great for big [business].” Next on the agenda seems to be the decimation of net neutrality, so you might want to prepare yourselves to pay more for an internet connection that’s quicker than a snail. [Reuters]

* More than half of the 6,000 former students of Trump University have submitted claims to be part of its $25 million fraud class-action settlement. They’ll recoup 80 cents for every dollar they spent on President Trump’s real estate seminars. Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who Trump once accused of being biased due to his “Mexican heritage,” will likely approve the settlement over the objections of two former students. [Big Law Business]

* Guess which law school created a class based on Baltimore crime drama “The Wire”? It’s U. Pitt., which has a three-credit course called “Crime, Law and Society in ‘The Wire.'” This seems like it’s one of those “Law and [Insert Noun Here]” classes, where 3Ls are hoping to get another A to add to their GPAs before they graduate. This would’ve been more relevant if a Maryland law school had offered the class. [Huffington Post]

* Many law school deans are opposed to the ABA’s proposal to require 75 percent of graduates sitting for a bar exam to pass it within two years, but this is perhaps one of the more absurd arguments offered against the rule: “Nobody looks at what percentage of Ph.D.s end up as college professors, or […]