Here is some of the legal news making the headlines this week:

The Supreme Court adopted its first-ever Code of Conduct.

  • On Monday, the Supreme Court announced it would formally adopt an ethics code.  In a statement, the justices said, “The absence of a Code [ ] has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules. To dispel this misunderstanding, we are issuing this Code, which largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct.”
  • The Code has been criticized for appearing to lack an enforcement mechanism and for using weak language that implies the rules are merely suggestions. 

Hunter Biden asked the judge in his federal gun charges case to issue subpoenas to Donald Trump and former DOJ officials William Barr, Jeffrey Rosen, and Richard Donoghue.

  • In September, Special Counsel David Weiss indicted Hunter Biden on three felony gun charges.
  • In the motion, Biden’s lawyers write: “Mr. Biden seeks specific information from three former DOJ officials and the former President that goes to the heart of his defense that this is, possibly, a vindictive or selective prosecution arising from an unrelenting pressure campaign beginning in the last administration, in violation of Mr. Biden’s Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution.”  
  • The requested subpoenas cover any documents in possession of the recipients that reflect communications, formal or informal, pertaining to the investigation or prosecution of Hunter Biden.  

In his federal trial, David DePape was found guilty in the violent attack against Paul Pelosi, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

  • The jury found DePape guilty on two counts: attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assault on the immediate family member of a federal official.

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