🌞 Good morning from The Legal File! Here are today's top legal stories:

⚖️ U.S. DOJ asks for stiff sentences for straw gun buyers, despite racial disparities

Gary Restaino, a U.S. Department of Justice official urged a panel to swiftly comply with a congressional directive to increase prison sentences for so-called straw purchasers of guns, despite concerns that doing so might disproportionately impact Black people.

Restaino told a bipartisan panel in Washington, D.C., that increasing penalties for straw purchasers - people who buy guns for individuals barred from owning them or for those who do not want to be tracked - would "reflect the danger their conduct poses to public safety."

The U.S. Sentencing Commission is obliged to increase sentences for those defendants under a provision of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the major gun safety measure that President Joe Biden signed into law in June.

"We think the time is right to do it now to address the rising problem of gun violence, particularly in many communities across America," Restaino testified on behalf of the department.

🇺🇸 U.S. Senate confirms three more Biden judicial picks as momentum slows

The U.S. Senate signed off on three more of President Joe Biden's judicial nominees, even as the Democrats' push to reshape the federal judiciary has shown signs of slowing following the confirmation of more than 100 judges.

The latest nominee to win the Democratic-controlled Senate's approval was Arun Subramanian, a litigator at the law firm Susman Godfrey, with a 59-37 vote. He is set to become the first South Asian judge to serve on Manhattan's federal court.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who championed Subramanian's nomination on the Senate floor, called the son of Indian immigrants "the epitome of the American dream and a history maker."

Since 2021, the Senate has confirmed 114 of Biden's judicial picks as Senate Democrats look to surpass the 234 justices and judges confirmed during former Republican President Donald Trump's four years in office.

💻 Gibson Dunn partner denies conflict of interest in Qatar hacking case

Zainab Ahmad, a partner at law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and former U.S. Department of Justice prosecutor, denied that she had a conflict of interest in defending a man accused by a former Donald Trump fundraiser of hacking his emails on behalf of Qatar.

Gibson Dunn last August withdrew from the defense of former CIA officer Kevin Chalker and his company Global Risk Advisors in a 2019 lawsuit brought in Manhattan federal court by Elliott Broidy, who raised money for Trump and pleaded guilty in October 2020 to an unrelated illegal lobbying charge.

Broidy had accused Gibson Dunn partner Zainab Ahmad, who was working on Chalker's defense, of having a conflict because she investigated the alleged hacking while working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Between 2017 and 2019, Mueller probed Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

Broidy, an outspoken critic of Qatar's government, said in the lawsuit that the Middle Eastern country's government hired Global Risk Advisors to hack his emails, some of which were leaked to the media. Qatar, Chalker, and the company have all denied his claims.

📝 Column: In Dominion v. Fox, a disputed legal theory has sweeping implications

In the epic $1.6 billion defamation fight between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox, each side insists that it is battling for good journalism and the First Amendment. But each side has widely divergent ideas about what serves those goals. 

Alison Frankel's latest column examines a Fox legal theory that, according to the company, should spell the end of Dominion's defamation claims as a matter of law. Fox argues that under a well-established "neutral reportage" doctrine, the First Amendment broadly shields news organizations from liability when they report on newsworthy allegations about matters of public interest.

Dominion counters that First Amendment precedent offers no such blanket immunity (and that Fox's election fraud reporting doesn't qualify as "neutral reportage" even under Fox's own theory). So far, Frankel writes, Fox hasn't gotten much traction for its theory, but the Dominion case will be its most consequential test.

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