Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Posts tagged ‘Darren Smith’

Justice Department Files Complaint Against Board Members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Accused of Usurping Office


By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor | July 17, 2025

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2025/07/17/justice-department-files-complaint-against-board-members-of-the-corporation-for-public-broadcasting-accused-of-usurping-office/

On Tuesday the Justice Department petitioned for a writ of Quo Warranto against three individuals having served as board members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting who were fired by President Trump yet allegedly continued to hold and exercise their office.

The complaint states “[s]ince April 28, 2025, Defendants Laura G. Ross, Thomas E. Rothman, and Diane Kaplan have been usurping and purporting to exercise unlawfully the office of board member of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (the “CPB”)… President Donald J. Trump lawfully removed each Defendant from office on April 28, 2025. As recent Supreme Court orders have recognized, the President cannot meaningfully exercise his executive power under Article II of the Constitution without the power to select—and, when necessary, remove—those who hold federal office. Personnel is policy, after all.”

According to Defendants, they “received an email from Trent Morse, the Deputy Director of Presidential Personnel for the Executive Office of the President, purporting to notify the board members that their positions on the Board of Directors for CPB were terminated… The Correspondence stated, in full:

‘On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.’”

Immediately after President Trump’s effort to remove the board members from their positions, the three “immediately sought a preliminary injunction against the president and other officials, seeking to enjoin the government from completing their firing. See Corp. for Pub. Broad. v. Trump, Civ. A. No. 25-1305 (RDM) (D.D.C. Apr. 29, 2025). Their effort was unsuccessful as the court held that their claim the president lacked authority to remove them from office was unlikely to succeed.’

“The Justice Department’s complaint accused the three defendants of continuing to usurp the office of Board Member of the CPB by “participating in board meetings, voting on resolutions and other business that comes before the board, and presenting themselves to the public as board members. All of this [was] manifestly unlawful.”

The board members’ original complaint, argued that the CPB was created by Congress to be “a private corporation [to] be created to facilitate the development of public telecommunications and to afford maximum protection from extraneous interference and control.” They specifically argued the following:

  • CPB is not a federal agency subject to the President’s authority, but rather a private corporation. See Id. at § 396(b) (“[CPB] will not be an agency or establishment of the United States Government. The Corporation shall be subject to the provisions of this section, and, to the extent consistent with this section, to the District of Columbia Nonprofit Corporation Act.”);
  • CPB’s Board members are not officers of the United States, and thus are not within the removal provisions of Article II of the Constitution. See Id. at § 396(d)(2) (“The members of the [CPB] Board shall not, by reason of such membership, be deemed to be officers or employees of the United States.”);
  • CPB Board members cannot be affected, controlled, or disturbed by the actions of the government. See Id. at § 398(c) (forbidding “any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] …”);
  • CPB Board members forfeit their membership in only one scenario, not present here. See Id. at § 396(e)(7) (“Members of the Board shall attend not less than 50 percent of all duly convened meetings of the Board in any calendar year. A member who fails to meet the requirement … shall forfeit membership.”);
  • The Act omits the typical statutory provision when creating a federal agency that the Board members serve at the pleasure of the President.

The board members sought in their complaint declaratory relief, and alleging “Violation of the Administrative Procedure Act Not in Accordance with Law/In Excess of Statutory Authority, Violation of Separation of Powers/Ultra Vires Presidential Action, Violation of the Presentment, Appropriations, and Take Care Clauses.” They also sought relief in having the court declare the e-mail terminating their position to have no legal effect and a temporary restraining order “prohibiting the Defendants from taking any action which gives effect to the Correspondence or otherwise seeks to interfere with or control the governance and operations of CPB” along with legal fees and any other relief the court might grant.

In its quo warranto filing, the Justice Department countered, “Although the Public Broadcasting Act provides that “[t]he members of the Board shall not, by reason of such membership, be deemed to be officers or employees of the United States,” 47 U.S.C. § 396(d)(2), and that the CPB “will not be an agency or establishment of the United States Government,” id. § 396(b), the Act and other statutes provide many levers of government control and influence over the CPB:

[in partial list for brevity]

  • As noted above, all CPB board members are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Id. § 396(c)(1).
  • Congress set forth specific qualifications for board members, including that no more than 5 members will be of the same political party, that board members must be “eminent in” relevant fields, and that the Board contain members who represent licensees and permittees of public television stations and public radio stations. Id. § 396(c)(1)-(3).
  • Congress restricted the compensation of CPB officers and employees based on a federal employee pay scale. Id. § 396(e)(1).
  • Congress authorized the CPB to take various actions “[i]n order to achieve the objectives and to carry out the purposes of” the Act. Id. § 396(g); see also id. § 396(a) (listing those objectives and purposes). The CPB funds “public telecommunications . . . programs,” assists “in the development . . . of interconnection systems” and “public telecommunication entities.” 47 U.S.C. § 396(g)(1). And the CPB is empowered to make grants, hire staff, make payments, and to “take any other actions” necessary to support its congressional purposes. Id. § 396(g)(2). Congress also “prohibited” the CPB from owning or operating broadcast stations or producing its own programming. Id. § 396(g)(3).
    The CPB is primarily funded through annual Congressional appropriations. Id. § 396(k)(1). For example, in 2024, Congress appropriated $535 million to the CPB for fiscal year 2026. See Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024, Pub. L. No. 118-47, 138 Stat. 460, 696, § 407.
  • […]
  • Congress imposed various requirements on recipients of grants from the CPB, including that they hold open meetings, that public broadcast station grant recipients establish a community advisory board, and that employees of the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio cannot “be compensated in excess of reasonable compensation” while those organizations receive grants. Id. § 396(k)(4), (8), (9).
  • […]
  • The CPB is a “designated Federal entity” under the Inspector General Act, 5 U.S.C. § 415(a)(1)(A), which means it has an Inspector General who conducts investigations and audits of CPB operations and issues reports to Congress, the CPB Board and management, and the public, see Office of the Inspector General, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, https://perma.cc/AAD4-G5DL (the CPB’s Office of the Inspector General “conduct[s] independent audits, evaluations, and investigations” and “report[s] to Congress and the public about our activities”).
  • Congress holds oversight hearings regarding the CPB. See, e.g., House Committee on Energy & Commerce, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Hearing: “Examining Accusations of Ideological Bias at NPR, a Taxpayer Funded News Entity,” https://perma.cc/W284-W8GW (May 8, 2024).

Specific allegations against the board members, state the three held board meetings on May 2nd, 13th and June 10th and 11th where they voted in their official capacity, adopted resolutions, and acted as if the preliminary injunction they sought had been held in their favor. Also, the President under his Article II powers has:

“[a]mple authority, both longstanding and recent, [to] establish that the power to appoint someone to a position presumptively carries with it the incident power of removal, absent a clear restriction on that removal authority. “ citing also Lebron v. National Railroad Passenger Corp., 513 U.S. 374 (1995). The Supreme Court held that the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (commonly known as Amtrak) was “an agency or instrumentality of the United States for the purpose of individual rights guaranteed against the Government by the Constitution,” even though the federal statute creating Amtrak structured it as a corporation and provided that Amtrak would not be a government agency. The Supreme Court held “that where, as here, the Government creates a corporation by special law, for the furtherance of governmental objectives, and retains for itself permanent authority to appoint a majority of the directors of that corporation, the corporation is part of the Government for purposes of the First Amendment. Lebron involved a First Amendment claim, but the Supreme Court later applied similar analysis to hold that Amtrak is also “a governmental entity for purposes of the Constitution’s separation of powers provisions.” Dep’t of Transp. v. Ass’n of Am. R.Rs., 575 U.S.43, 53-54 (2015).”

The government requested the court “enter judgment that Defendants “be ousted and excluded” from the office of board member of the CPB. The Court should also grant appropriate ancillary relief, including return of any salary or payment Defendants have unlawfully taken by virtue of their usurpation of office” and that any official actions taken by the Defendants since their termination be nullified

Judge Randolph Moss of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, who presides over both the Board Member’s and the Justice Department’s complaints found it “difficult to fathom that Congress intended to provide the members of the Corporation’s Board with essentially irrevocable tenure.”

By Darren Smith

The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility. – JonathanTurley.org

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

AI Generated Police Reports: A Tool for Law Enforcement or a Potential Concern?


By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor to jonathanturley.org | July 15, 2025

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2025/07/15/ai-generated-police-reports-a-tool-for-law-enforcement-or-a-potential-concern/

The expanding adoption of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is finding utility in nearly all areas of human thought and expression. Its speed, increasing sophistication and accuracy promises not only unique ideas but shows ability in automating ordinary processes which hopefully afford people savings in time and resources, enabling them to focus on the bigger picture and more important duties. There are however some worrying trends that can come up on the reliance of such technology in areas it is not yet suited. This article will focus on one area: police and criminal justice reporting.

A common complaint expressed in the law enforcement world and for that matter many other professions, is that an officer spends more time on paperwork than performing actual duties. In recent years, one solution promises a fundamental change to reduce the amount of time devoted to report writing through GenAI. The technology has developed to such a degree that industry offers law enforcement agencies the ability to use video recordings provided by body cameras or dash cameras to not only transcribe what was said by persons in the video (via voice recognition) but assemble the pertinent audio and video information into an actual police report that can be reviewed, corrected if necessary, and signed off by a commissioned law enforcement officer as his official report of the incident.

The promise made by GenAI is that officers will spend less time on overhead and can instead devote greater time to patrol and investigative duties elsewhere and thus be more efficient and less interrupted by paperwork.

To understand the problem let’s look at a brief synopsis of some milestones of police report generation over the past forty-five years.

With most agencies in the United States, the early 1980s consisted of sparse use of computer systems by line officers—they were typically database implementations for storing information of persons, vehicles, wanted or stolen records and as communications systems between agencies—rarely used by officers when completing crime reports and such. Most reports and citations were handwritten or typed and because of the amount of time used, especially in the case of handwritten forms, the amount of information conveyed was less, yet the time requirement was high. As the 1980s began to close personal computers began to be adopted by agencies for officer use and eventually the systems became more integrated and greatly more efficient. The speed of report writing not only increased, but the retrieval time and search ability was unmatched. Paper records and microfiche now became archaic.

Yet with the ease and efficiency of record keeping greatly improved, paradoxically so did the volume of information created, or required. This is certainly not unique to law enforcement as it has also been the case with patient charting with healthcare and in other fields. The efficiency invited the opportunity to create more data, and it was then expected.

Soon it became no longer necessary for a line officer to drive to a station to complete reports as in-car systems became standard practice, eventually replacing such things as paper citation forms given to violators but instead typing it in electronically, filing it automatically with the department and the courts, and printing off a copy for the violator. Nearly all the officer’s paperwork could be completed electronically and in the field.

The next advance began with what is commonly referred to as DashCams and BodyCams, electronic audio and video of law enforcement officer encounters with the world and individuals. Both have proven to be very useful in terms of correctly capturing information for which can be used by the criminal justice system. The cameras are greatly useful in correctly documenting events witnessed by the officer and in most respects are superior to not always reliable memory of those involved. In some ways they have reduced the amount of paperwork since the officer wearing the camera can simply provide a written synopsis in the written report and then reference an attached video as evidence. Or of this is not fully permitted, watching the video while composing the written report served to prompt the officer to write the report completely and accurately as depicted in the video. The GenAI service can take this to a high level of efficiency by generating most of the report in draft form whereupon the attesting officer then makes any corrections and fills in any gaps or external details. Such reports generated by AI mimic that of the conventional standard “style” of a crime report and from a workflow perspective the officer assumes a role that is in some way more of an editor rather than an author.

On a side note, when electronic videos of police cameras came to the attention of the public, the compliance requirement of freedom of information/public disclosure law went far beyond that of ordinary written reports which could relatively easily be redacted and disseminated when appropriate. Now departments must be tasked with being video editors to redact non-disclosable information such as faces, identities, words, addresses and other private information. The storage requirement for hours of video for sometimes hundreds of officers has become costly and added an additional burden.

Any new technology does have concerns that might offset some of the benefits. Some of the concerns are at what point does the AI become the primary author and the officer the rubber stamp approver. I present some open questions on the technology:

Will a low number of GenAI providers of police reports lead to a near monopoly of companies having access and control of information of most law enforcement agencies?

Will reliance on GenAI lead to an atrophy of skill in report writing in the ordinary sense by employees and if accuracy improves make them prone to overlook the occasional but highly consequential errors?

Law enforcement agencies have strict controls over dissemination of records for current or in-progress investigations and intelligence. Is GenAI use a vector by which outside actors can infiltrate police and government agencies? Those who might hack into the GenAI providers could learn of investigations or forewarn wanted persons of an upcoming arrest, or watch the agency via the AI input it submits?

Who controls the data given to the GenAI provider and is it subject to proper oversight? Will there be a temptation to sell the information to third parties?

How can bias be controlled in the GenAI response? The output is only as good as the input or the algorithm. Could the AI develop a bias as a result of incorporating the data it generates?

Are revisions and updates to each report considered work product and/or are they subject to discovery?

If the GenAI report is mostly completed by something other than the officer, how true is the officer’s testimony as to what he believed was happening since his mind did not actually create most of the report?

Is the present implementation of GenAI reports sufficiently efficient to mitigate the time required for necessary corrections and edits by the signing officer?

If the procedure is to plug the video/audio into the GenAI application, receive the generated draft, then make corrections and certify under penalty of perjury that the report is a true and accurate declaration of facts…are officers willing to risk a false swearing or perjury charge if computer generated data was inaccurate and overlooked?

Will GenAI created reports be considered expert analysis and will the output be challenged by the courts?

Are police administrators sufficiently adept and understanding of the artificial intelligence technology to fully understand managing or configuring the software?

Ethically have we fully considered what we are doing with GenAI with regard to justice? Those civilians and others who are subject to the GenAI reports have the most to lose as their lives can be changed markedly for the better or for the worse. Have we become so lazy and indifferent to them that we cannot be bothered to completely write a report ourselves?

What would become of the future of criminal justice if artificial intelligence is incorporated without restraint or consideration of the consequences? I can foresee a few areas where it promising use such as for generating a picture of an unidentified assailant from the descriptions of a witness, analyzing trace evidence, finding trends in data, and such. I do have reservations in what is made of the technology when it can be inexpensively replicated and used in place of a commissioned law enforcement officer.

An example would be incorporating AI into actually enforcing the law, where a camera films a speeding vehicle, a stop light violation, or eventually a strong armed robbery. The AI then identifies the persons involved, generates the report, and makes a charging decision with less and less human involvement. Are we to allow AI systems standing to enforce the law and are we going to question it since we have become so accustomed to its reliability and the fact that it is used everywhere? It might sound like “future shock” but we should consider how far we are willing to accept the convenience of low-cost surrogates of our responsibility.

By Darren Smith

The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.

Category:

Crime, Law, Science

Tagged with:

Tag Cloud