(Photo by Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
We know most of the moving parts of what’s happening with the coup against Pauline Newman at the Federal Circuit. Her colleagues are trying to bypass the constitutionally approved way of impeaching judges — a vote of impeachment by the House and a trial and conviction by the Senate — and instead decided to withhold cases from her after she didn’t bow out and take senior status. As you would expect of a panel that’s acting as judge, jury, and executioner, they want to toss Newman’s lawsuit aiming at reinstatement. But as we talk about the case’s progression, it would be in good form to update our reporting with the information that has come out over time. From Bloomberg Law:
Federal Circuit Chief Judge Kimberly A. Moore launched the fitness probe in late March in the wake of Newman allegedly suffering a cardiac incident—the details of which have been hotly contested—and amid concerns over her productivity.
Given that the original accusation — that the judge had a heart attack and had stents put in her heart — was disproven by a scan and her medical records, it is hardly fair to refer to this as “hotly contested.” If anything warrants the phrase, maybe it’s the doctor who took the panel to task for “distorting” the medical report that gauged Newman’s mental acuity. Someone lied under conditions that are damned close to being under oath and has faced no real consequences.
Her colleagues allege Newman’s no longer able to perfom [sic] simple tasks, lacks focus and has accused the court’s IT staff of hacking her computer.
Is attending and speaking at conferences a simple task? Because she seems to be knocking those out of the park. Lacking focus? Again, unless there are some substantive issues with Dr. Rothstein’s assessment, reporting on this should advise the reader to take it with a grain of salt. As far as the hacking is concerned, I can’t say for certain that this is what they are referring to, but it sounds pretty similar to something Pauline mentioned during my interview with her. Here is an excerpt from that conversation:
Chris Williams:
There was one thing I heard, I wanted to get your side of it. One of the things that was said was you either did or threatened to call the police on a clerk at one point. Did that ever happen? Did anything like that happen?
Judge Pauline Newman:
Not quite, but I’ll tell you what happened.
Because I know they got the fellow who was involved in this exchange to file an affidavit in which he said I threatened him. He said I threatened him with thievery or stealing. So this was May 15th. And the reason it was May 15th was because that is the due date of the judge’s financial disclosure form.
It was a Monday. And meanwhile they had taken away my secretary. About two or two or three weeks before that, they also took my computer, the chamber’s computer, and they refused to give it back.
I said, I need my computer. It’s got my personal information on it. And they said, we’ve transferred everything you need. And I said, well, let me see. There’s a lot of stuff that I need. And they said, no, we’re not going to give it back.
Then comes May 15th, and I have to file my financial disclosure form. I have only one source of outside income other than my salary, and that’s my piece of the royalties of a case book of Golden and Kieff and me and a couple of others. They send me royalty statements and the royalty statements I give to the secretary to save, so that when I file my financial disclosure form for outside income, I add up the royalty statements. So I said, I need my computer, my chamber’s computer, because it’s got my personal information on it. And so they sent up somebody from the IT staff. So he says, I’m here to show you how to fill out the financial disclosure form on your computer. It’s a nine-page form. And, because I think I also said that I don’t know how to do this, which is true, I don’t know how to fill out forms on a computer. And I said, no, I need the information on my computer. And he says, I’m here to show you — well-chosen words — I’m here to show you how to fill out the form.
He used exactly the same words about 20 times. After about 15 minutes, I ended the conversation and they disappeared. Then he files this affidavit saying I threatened him with thievery. Well, probably I did, in a way, because he had been the same person I had understood who had carried away the computer.
His instruction came from the chief judge. And this is a digression, but it’s pretty clear to me there were things on that computer that they wanted, whether it was back and forth with the person who had been my secretary at the time, who they gave another job to, or what, I don’t know.
I assume switching out computers and not being able to access my files got “heard it through the grapevined” into hacking. While the committee may very well be referring to a different incident, I wanted to at least show my cards. The Bloomberg article continues:
The outbursts detailed in filings “were only the tip of the iceberg,” according to Friday’s reply brief. “While those significant concerns about Judge Newman’s fitness persist today, the circumstances surrounding her amended complaint do not. Judge Newman has steadfastly re-fused to comply with the Special Committee’s common-sense requests that she undergo specified cognitive testing, provide specified medical records, or even participate in an inter-view with the Committee.”
Yeah, about those “common-sense requests.” From the very beginning, Judge Newman has argued, rather persuasively, that submitting this information to a panel full of people accusing (and in the case of the heart attack, outright lying) her of physical and mental health deficiencies is a clear conflict of interest and a due process issue. The common-sense request was her initial one — that a different circuit do the evaluation.
As the story develops, try to keep an eye out for Special Committee parroting that’s being passed off as an objective relaying of facts.
Deny Oldest US Judge’s Case for Reinstatement, Colleagues Argue [Bloomberg Law]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.