Judicial Notice (09.29.24): Turkish Delights

A leading prosecutor takes on a top defense lawyer, a circuit judge calls out an AUSA, and another Am Law 100 firm grows by merger.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, breaking down the criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams (photo by Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images).

Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

Zach and I just returned from a wonderful wedding weekend in Natchez, Mississippi. We had a great time, but juggling my newsletter duties with festivities and travel isn’t easy. I usually don’t get much sleep on Saturday nights, as I toil away on Judicial Notice—but this past Saturday, I pulled a full-on all-nighter.

Thanks to everyone who joined last Wednesday’s “virtual lunch.” Attendees from a wide range of fields—including criminal, First Amendment, tax, and trusts and estates law—engaged in lively conversation (and even some networking). Having discovered how easy it is to hold Zoom events with my readers, I think I’ll do more in the future, perhaps in a structured format—e.g., a talk followed by audience Q&A, a webinar with multiple panelists, or a debate.

Now, on to the news.

Lawyers of the Week: Damian Williams and Alex Spiro.

On Thursday, federal prosecutors unveiled a 57-page indictment against Eric Adams. He’s the 110th mayor of New York City, but only the second mayor to face criminal charges while in office. (The first was from more than 150 years ago: A. Oakey Hall, who was indicted—but never convicted—in connection with Tammany Hall corruption.)

The current indictment in United States v. Adams—which some experts believe will be superseded at a later date—contains five counts: one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, solicit foreign contributions, and accept bribes; one count of wire fraud; two counts of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national; and one count of bribery. The gist of the prosecution is that for almost a decade, dating back to his years as Brooklyn borough president, Adams received more than $100,000 in luxury travel perks—e.g., business-class upgrades on Turkish Airlines, a heavily discounted stay at the St. Regis Istanbul—plus illegal campaign contributions. In exchange, Adams performed political favors for the government of Turkey, such as pressuring Fire Department officials into approving a new high-rise Turkish consulate building in time for a visit by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Most folks are interested in the political implications of United States v. Adams, including whether it will bring Adams’s mayoralty to an end. But as a legal-world obsessive, I’m more interested in the face-off between U.S. Attorney Damian Williams of the Southern District of New York, one of the nation’s top federal prosecutors, and Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, one of the country’s leading defense lawyers. (As for the judge, the Adams case was randomly assigned aka “wheeled out” to Judge Dale Ho, a former ACLU lawyer who took the bench last year.)

Williams and Spiro, now the subjects of numerous profiles, have interesting similarities and differences. Both are relatively young superstars: Williams is 44, and Spiro is 41. Both graduated from Harvard College elite colleges in the Boston area: Harvard for Williams, Tufts for Spiro. [UPDATE (9/30/2024, 8:41 a.m.): Amended to fix Spiro’s undergraduate alma mater—from which he graduated summa cum laude.]

They then trooped off to rival law schools: Yale for Williams, and Harvard for Spiro. Both are former line prosecutors: on the federal side for Williams, who served in the office he now leads, and on the state side for Spiro, who worked in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

Can Damian Williams, the high-flying prosecutor who brought down ex-senator Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and former crypto magnate Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), put another famous figure behind bars? Or can Alex Spiro—the renowned defense lawyer who has performed what Law360 called “courtroom miracles” for celebrities like Elon Musk and Alec Baldwin—work his magic yet again?

How will Spiro approach the case? When I interviewed him for my podcast, he emphasized how critical it is to frame a case—to “pick what the case is about” to the jury. As for how he’ll frame this prosecution, we already have some hints from his public comments at Adams’s arraignment, where the mayor pleaded not guilty to all charges. Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse, Spiro said, “This case isn’t even a real case. This is the ‘airline-upgrade corruption’ case.”

In fairness to the prosecution, “other allegations in the indictment are far more serious,” as veteran defense lawyer Ron Kuby noted in The Washington Post. Especially troubling to Kuby are the claims related to illegal campaign contributions, including the allegations of “straw” donors, which he said constitute “a direct assault on basic principles of democracy and sovereignty.”

But proving that Adams received benefits isn’t sufficient. As explained by James Burnham and Yaakov Roth in The Wall Street Journal, “The indictment spends many paragraphs discussing benefits received—many of them travel and entertainment—but is light on official actions promised in return.” So I could certainly see Alex Spiro—who has a background in psychology and excels at getting jurors to think in a practical, common-sense way—arguing to the jury that both the “quid” and “quo” of this alleged “quid pro quo” were pretty weak sauce.

Other lawyers in the news:

• Professor Amy Wax of Penn Law was suspended for a year with half pay, starting in fall 2025, after a faculty hearing committee investigated allegations that she made racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks. She was also stripped of her endowed chair and summer pay in perpetuity.

• The October 2024 issue of the ABA Journal features a profile of Robbie Kaplan, by Anna Stolley Persky: “Formidable Foe: Roberta Kaplan doesn’t back down from tough fights.”

• Florida personal-injury lawyer Dan Newlin has spent $2.8 million—and counting—on television and digital advertising to promote Donald Trump (and himself).

• Already disbarred in New York, Rudy Giuliani was disbarred in D.C. on Thursday.

• Stewart Rosenwasser, a former prosecutor in Orange County, New York, reportedly died by suicide at 72, while in the middle of a shootout with FBI agents who were attempting to arrest him on bribery charges.

Judge of the Week: Judge Reed O’Connor.