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By Matthew Russell Lee, Video; Patreon here

SDNY COURTHOUSE, June 18 – In the states' case against US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, formerly of One West Bank, for the $10,000 cap on the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes (SALT), U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge J. Paul Oetken on June 18 asked Mnuchin's DOJ lawyers if a tax on New York Yankees apparel would constitute impermissible targeting of tri-state residents.

  It is these three states, along with Maryland, which are suing, saying that the SALT cap targets them. The DOJ attorneys countered that Congress would be free to target rich New York bankers. In fact they argued there are almost no limited on Congress' discretion in taxing, unless it become "commandeering."

  Judge Oetken said, in the course of a question, that while the cap on the SALT deduction might not be a gun to the head, it could be a rope around the necks, squeezing the four states.

 The cases cited by the states' lawyer Olson ranged from NFIB v. Sebelius 567 U.S. 519 (2012) to, in the brief, the significantly lesser known Principality of Monaco v. Mississippi, 292 U.S. 313 (1934). This decision will come out at some point: it's New York v. Mnuchin, 18-cv-6427 (JPO).

Back in May Steven M. Calk of FDIC-regulated Federal Savings Bank was indicted for financial institution bribery for corruptly using his position with FSB to issue $16 million in high-risk loans to Paul Manafort in a bid to obtain a senior position with the Trump administration, namely Secretary of the Army. He is to be presented before Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman in the SDNY later on May 23.

  FDIC OIG Special Agent-in-Charge Patricia Tarasca said in a statement, “Today’s indictment charges Stephen Calk with misusing his position as Chairman and CEO of a bank for his own personal gain.  The FDIC Office of Inspector General remains committed to investigating cases where bank officials cause multimillion-dollar losses to a financial institution and undermine its integrity.” (The FDIC stands to be the lead regulator of BB&T whose money laundering enforcement action was just terminated by the Federal Reserve to facilitate merger with Suntrust, click here for that and Inner City Press' FOIA request and appeal.)

  The indictment was unsealed the day after President Donald J. Trump lost his bid to stay the House of Representatives' subpoenas to two other banks, Capital One and Deutsche Bank. After the May 22 ruling in Trump v. Deutsche Bank by SDNY Judge Edgardo Ramos, Trump lawyer Patrick Strawbridge headed to the elevators in the windowless lobby outside the courtroom.

  He was disinclined to comment and even take questions from the press. When reporters got on the elevator with him, he got off, saying sacrastically but not bitterly, Much as I'd like to be asked questions in the elevator...

   Downstairs in front of the Thurgood Marshall courthouse there were demonstrators will a long Impeach Trump banner and the small black Congress Has A Right To Know signs, three of which had been quickly raised in the courtroom, and just as quickly taken down when Judge Ramos requested it.

  The SDNY Court Security Officers spoke to the sign holders but did not eject them, during the 10 minute recess Judge Ramos took to put the finishing touches on his 25-page decision.

   TV crews from CNN and Univision were set up across the street, and a gaggle of photographers set up on the sidewalk to wait for Strawbridge and the House of Representatives' lawyer Douglas Letter.  As time passed others passing the courthouse, and coming out of it, stopped to ask as so often happens, Who are you waiting for?

   While few had heard of Strawbridge and the House lawyer named Letter, the mention of Trump drew a range of reactions. The sight of long lens cameras -- Inner City Press had this day retrieved it, from the seemingly overflow Press Room in the basement of 40 Foley Square -- attracted others with cases in the SDNY.

  Accompanied by a trio of children in wheelchairs on a day when the disabled entrance on Pearl Street to the Thurgood Marshall courthouse was closed were lawyers in Abrams et al v. Carranza, one in a series of Federal lawsuits against campaigning NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio's Education Chancellor RIchard Carranza. They had a flier and expressed hope that SDNY Judge Alison Nathan would, as indicted, issue a ruling in their case within the week.

  Other litigatants were less media savvy or directed. Those in a criminal trial before Judge Vernon Broderick admitted the case made it hard for even them to stay awake -- Inner City Press has tried several times -- but noted that the U.S. Attorney's office promotes the prosecution each morning in an e-mail.

  The plaintiff side in an employment discrimination trial in front of Judge Valerie Caproni came out (the defense may have been less willing to approach the press), then Judge Broderick himself, down to earth as ever. It was growing late.

  To put its camera back in the 40 Foley press room, Inner City Press climbed the stairs only to be told, We close at five. Explaining that there is a Press Room next to the cafeteria and that the Trump case had done later was at first to no avail. Finally a supervisor was called who did not acknowledge any right to enter, but said he would allow it this one time. We may have more on this: even in the small strokes, press access rights are important, particularly in a courthouse.

Earlier, before issuing his ruling Judge Edgardo Ramos had asked the lawyers for the two banks that got the subpoenas, Deutsche Bank and Capital One, if they wanted to speak. They did not. This even as House counsel Strawbridge detailed Deutsche Bank's long history with money laundering (and theft during the Holocaust, which didn't come up). Capital One is a rough, too, on predatory auto lending and the Community Reinvestment Act. But the banks lay low.

  Now under Judge Ramos' 25-page ruling, the banks become required to respond to the subpoenas in seven days, on May 29. That's the time during which the House has agreed not to enforce the subpoena, and the time during which Trump's lawyers seem certain to file an appeal and ask again for a stay from the Second Circuit Count of Appeals higher up, in both senses, in 40 Foley Square.

Earlier still in the May in the SDNY, Congressman Christopher Collins (R-NY) waived his right to be present for a May 3 hearing in the criminal insider trading case against him held past 5 pm in the SDNY courtroom of Judge Broderick. On May 10, Judge Broderick started on l'affaire Collins at 2 pm, after a case against BuzzFeed (Inner City Press coverage here). Early in the proceeding, before two shackled inmates were led in leading to a brief suspension of the white shoe SEC Congressman matter, Broderick made a joke about Donald Trump and evasive legal moves. I'm not going there, said one of the participants in Collins, who was an early endorser of Trump. Broderick said, "I should have either - but it is what it is."

   Three hours later, during which Inner City Press in full disclosure went one story down in the courthouse to cover a Fatico hearing about threats in the MCC, Judge Broderick was setting the time for Collins' lawyers to make motions. He arrived on four weeks after he rules on discovery, with the SEC to provide whatever he directs to the defense one week after the ruling. I'm not saying you're going to get anything, Judge Broderick said. Collins' lead lawyer said he is a optimist. More on Patreon; watch this site. 

  Collins' team of lawyers have made a slew of suggestions to Judge Broderick on what discovery to seek from the U.S. Attorney's office, from communications with the SEC to information about real estate, Cameron Collins and Lauren Zarsky and their sales of Immunotherapeutics stock after MIS416, aimed at secondary multiple sclerosis, failed the Drug Trial and Rep Collins made his calls from the White House Congressional picnic.

   On May 3 Judge Broderick was urging wide disclosure by the government, whether characterized as 3500 material or under Brady or Giglio. The notes to be produced, he said, didn't have to been entirely contemporaneous. He had a series of questions for the U.S. Attorney which he did not get through as it approached 6 p.m. and his courtroom deputy had gone for the day.

  Collins' lead lawyer from BakerHostetler, Jonathan R. Barr, directed Broderick to a decision by SDNY Judge Jed Rakoff during the Gumpta case, and Broderick said that he would read it. He confessed he had himself looked up applicable cases on Westlaw, adding that he might have missed some cases.  This case is  USA v. Collins, et al., 18-cr-00567 (VSB). More on Patreon, here.

  Judge Broderick told Collins' lawyers to expect to come back in a week's time on Friday, May 10. One of them said he would only be returning to the United States that morning; another said that he then would be leaving for the same place his colleague had been: Argentina.

 Thus is big money, and big politics, law done in the SDNY.

   One story down and just two days before but as if in another universe on May 1 defendant Jesus Lopez walked into the SDNY courtroom of Judge Valerie E. Caproni to be sentenced on May 1 for driving 10 kilograms of cocaine from California to New York.

  He was wearing a suit; he had been allowed out on bond while awaiting sentencing due to his mother having Stage Four cancer. Before the sentencing he uploaded a video directed at Judge Caproni but still online as of this writing on Vimeo, here.

   The courtroom was full, with two U.S. Marshals in the back row, and the two front rows, Inner City Press was later informed by a participant in the proceeding, filled by judges from China. Lopez' lawyer Jeff Greco argued in his sentencing submission for time served, essentially one month.

  But Judge Caproni, after asking Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Rhen why the government wasn't seeking forfeiture of the truck Lopez used to drive the drugs - "there's a lot of equity in there," she said -- looked sternly at Lopez.

   Judge Caproni was not impressed by Lopez' statement that he took drugs because he was bored, that boredom was one of his triggers. She said she did not believe that he had only agreed to drive the drugs in order to feed his own habit. First she sentenced him to 60 month, five years, in prison.

  Then as the U.S. Marshals rustled in the row behind Inner City Press, she said she would be remanding Lopex into custody today. Right now. Her courtroom deputy handed the Marshals an order to that effect.

   Defense attorney Greco said that Lopez' mother could die at any time, and that the Bureau of Prisons would be unlikely to let him out to attend her funeral. Judge Caproni said there was no way to know when his mother would die, and that she had allowed him to remain out on bond pending sentencing so he could spent time with her. The Chinese judges sat as Jesus Lopez took his wallet out of his pants and put his hands out for shackling.

  A well known courtroom artist in the SDNY has told Inner City Press about the time she managed to sketch a similar remand of a higher profile defendant, Bernie Madoff. But there was no artist present for the remand of Jesus Lopez, and cameras are not allowed - only this article. The case is U.S. v. Lopez, part of the larger conspiracy prosecution U.S. v. Soto et al., 18-cr-00282 (Caproni).

  Notably one floor above in 40 Foley Square, a man who pled guilty to stealing $7 million in Medicare and Medicaid fraud has had his sentencing delayed for a year already, and perhaps another year, so that his wife can finish a medical residency program. That case is U.S v. Javed, 16-cr-00601-VSB. Unlike the unpublicized case of Jesus Lopez, the Office of the US Attorney for the SDNY announced the Javed sentencing to the press (but not its subsequent deferral). Click here for that story.

  Which approach is the right one? How can these disparities be explained? These are among the questions that Inner City Press will be pursuing, in the SDNY. Watch this site, and the new @SDNYLIVE Twitter feed.

Background: Even in Judge Caproni's courtroom, there are more positive or lenient stories. When Todd Howe, who pled guilty in the New York State corruption case(s), came up for sentencing on April 5, Judge Caproni was told that Howe is now working more than 12 hours a day in Idaho, on ski slopes and now a golf course. After his guilty plea he had been remanded to the Metropolitan Correctional Center when he disputed to Capital One some credit card charges and the government believed it to be another attempted fraud.

With him out of MCC for seven months, Judge Caproni said it may have just been a mistake. She put off sentencing Howe, instead putting him on five years probation. If he "stays clean" during that time, it all goes away. If not, he faces serious time.

  In the elevator down after Howe's lawyer, in what she called her last criminal sentencing, said Howe still respects government service after his lobbying career meltdown, Inner City Press asked Howe what he thought for example of congestion pricing. He laughed and said it is not needed in Idaho. Meanwhile a shackled prisoner Jones was led into Judge Caproni's now empty courtroom to plead guilty to selling crack in The Bronx and hiding a gun after a 1999 felony conviction. That sentencing is set for August 1. Inner City Press and @SDNYLIVE will be there.

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