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Is the Department of Justice getting closer to indicting the perpetrators of the Russia collusion hoax? A shake up in the team leading the criminal investigation into so-called Russiagate in Florida appears to indicate so.

On Monday, Joe diGenova, a former U.S. Attorney and current political commentator, will be sworn in as counsel to the attorney general to take the reins of the existing investigation based in Fort Pierce, Florida—the home of U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over Special Counsel Jack Smith’s documents case against the president until she tossed the indictment in July 2024 after determining Smith’s appointment violated the Constitution. A grand jury has been empaneled in Fort Pierce since January; Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Southern Florida who has overseen the investigation out of Miami since late last year, will administer the oath to diGenova.

DiGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, are longtime legal advisors to President Trump; the Biden DOJ seized Toensing’s cell phone in April 2021 as part of a retaliatory investigation into Rudy Giuliani for allegedly working with the Ukrainians to dig up dirt on the Biden family.

The addition of DiGenova isn’t the only retooling. Earlier this week, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche removed the career prosecutor previously in charge of the investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, who played a key role in concocting the Trump-Russia collusion scheme in 2016. According to CNN, assistant U.S. Attorney Maria Medetis Long was ousted “after she resisted pressure to quickly bring charges against the former CIA director and prominent critic of President Donald Trump.” Meditis Long notified lawyers representing several individuals who have received subpoenas or interview requests related to the investigation that she was off the case, the New York Times reported on Friday.

And Blanche recently dispatched one of his top aides, Christopher-James DeLorenz, to southern Florida to bolster the investigative team. DeLorenz clerked for Cannon during the documents case.

This movement on the Treasure Coast is a positive sign following the exit of Pam Bondi earlier this month. President Trump fired Bondi as attorney general after his growing frustration at the lack of progress in the Russiagate investigation finally hit its peak. In a fiery press conference a few days later, Blanche, immediately appointed acting AG by the president, defended the DOJ’s plans to pursue the lawfare perpetrators including Brennan. “The president has said time and time again that he wants justice,” Blanche told a hostile group of reporters, many of whom helped perpetuate the Russiagate hoax, on April 7. “If you look at what happened to him, his family, his administration, the agents who protected him, people who just happened to walk by him on a given day, they got subjected to…massive investigations by this department.”

Blanche, of course, knows this firsthand having represented the president in both the documents case and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s so-called “hush money” case.

Brennan Already is Nervous—This Move Should Make Him Apoplectic

The DOJ has handed down indictments against a handful of lawfare perps including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James but those charges were tossed after a judge declared the appointment of Lindsey Halligan, the acting U.S. Attorney who brought the cases, unlawful. That ruling is currently on appeal in the Fourth Circuit.

But as I wrote here, the president and his supporters want blood—and while watching Comey and James lawyer up brought some temporary measure of gratification, the MAGA base demands more.

An indictment of Brennan, arguably enemy number one on the Trump lawfare most wanted list, seems imminent. Brennan received a subpoena related to his 2023 Congressional testimony denying that the Steele dossier played a role in the creation of his 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment claiming the Russians interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win.

In fact, Brennan is so nervous about potential charges that his lawyers sent an extraordinary letter to the chief judge of the 11th Circuit, which encompasses Florida, begging her to prevent the investigation from proceeding in Fort Pierce, a more Trump-friendly area than Miami, and prohibiting the involvement of Judge Cannon. “The numerous past decisions by Judge Cannon that could reasonably cause the prosecutors to believe that hers would be an accommodating courtroom for an investigation and possible prosecution of President Trump’s perceived political adversaries,” Brennan’s attorneys wrote to Chief Judge Cecilia Altonaga last December. “The United States Attorney’s efforts to funnel this investigation to the judge who issued this string of rulings that consistently favored President Trump’s positions in previous litigation should be seen for what it is. Viewed in their totality, the above circumstances clearly indicate that the United States Attorney is attempting to steer this matter toward Judge Cannon in direct alignment with [Article III Founder] Mike Davis’s prosecution plan and the President’s mandate to use the courts to punish his perceived political adversaries.”

“Perceived,” LOL.

Plenty More Targets on the Prosecutorial Table

And if diGenova now assumes not just the Brennan inquiry but a broader “grand conspiracy” investigation stretching from the origins of Russiagate to January 6 to the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago and the actions of the illegal special counsel, he has more targets ripe for the picking. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Jordan (R-OH) referred Thomas Windom, one of Smith’s top henchmen in the Jan. 6 case against the president, to the DOJ for criminal prosecution related to his obstructive conduct during Congressional depositions last year. Windom worked on both criminal probes into the president prior to being assigned to the special counsel’s office in November 2022.

A criminal referral for Cassidy Hutchinson, the January 6 Select Committee’s “star witness” who manufactured a story about a confrontation in the president’s vehicle on the afternoon of January 6 and repeated the false story under oath numerous times, also is sitting at the DOJ. And this week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard referred two Trump saboteurs—former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson and former intelligence analyst Eric Ciaramella, the so-called “whistblower” in the matter—for unlawfully colluding to bring the Ukrainian “quid pro quo” allegations against the president in 2019, which resulted in Trump’s first impeachment.

Both men have corollary ties to Russiagate architects; Ciaramella worked for Brennan at the CIA and Atkinson served as a top DOJ official during the Russiagate era.

It also appears that Jack Smith is not out of the woods yet. CBS News just revealed prosecutors in Florida are “reviewing documents in connection with former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Trump.” And as I argued on social media and here, Smith additionally should face investigation for lying to Congress and for contempt of court as he defiantly represented himself as special counsel on court documents months after he was disqualified by Cannon in July 2024.

DiGenova, who does not appear anywhere close to 81 years old, could bring the juice and the jaws needed to finish the job in Florida.

Jeb Boasberg is now the Rory McIlroy of the D.C. Circuit Court—but the Obama appointee won’t receive a green jacket or a lifetime membership at Augusta National.

Instead, Boasberg, the chief judge of the D.C. district court, just earned another black mark on his ignominious judicial record as the winner of back-to-back writs of mandamus related to his 13-month crusade to hold the Trump administration in contempt of court.

In a 2-1 decision handed down on Tuesday, the D.C. appellate court issued its second writ of mandamus to once and for all shut down the contempt investigation that Boasberg opened in March 2025. For more than a year, Boasberg has claimed Trump officials willfully ignored his so-called “oral order” to return two planes carrying more than 100 illegal Venezuelans subject to the Alien Enemies Act, which had been enacted by President Trump on March 15. (My first piece on Boasberg’s contempt trap is here.)

A writ of mandamus “commands” another party—usually a government agency, official, or judge—to do something it’s not doing. Or in Boasberg’s situation, to stop doing something unconstitutional, unlawful, and in clear violation of previous court orders.

According to Supreme Court case law, a writ of mandamus is considered an “extraordinary remedy” because it allows a court to usurp the authority of another government entity. Statistics are hard to find but most studies indicate the success rate for those seeking a writ of mandamus against the federal government is very low.

And the likelihood of a plaintiff—in this instance, the Trump Department of Justice—winning two writs of mandamus in less than a year against arguably the most powerful district court judge in the nation is roughly around the same chance that Justin Rose will someday win the Masters.

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

The first writ of mandamus against Boasberg came in a separate 2-1 panel decision last August; the D.C. appellate court granted the Trump DOJ’s request for mandamus relief and vacated his April 2025 “probable cause” finding of criminal contempt. At the time, Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, called the matter an “extraordinary, ongoing confrontation between the Executive and Judicial Branches.”

Judge Neomi Rao, also a Trump appointee, noted that the Supreme Court had already overturned Boasberg’s initial temporary restraining order in the case, which served as the corollary basis of the disputed “oral” order, and acknowledged the unprecedented nature of Boasberg’s conduct. “This case is highly unusual, and I have found no other like it, perhaps because no district court has threatened criminal contempt against Executive Branch officials as a backdoor to coercing compliance with an order that has been vacated by the Supreme Court,” Rao wrote.

With that, Boasberg’s contempt findings were null and void. Perhaps—following rebukes by both the Supreme Court and his colleagues on the D.C. circuit—Boasberg would have abandoned his scheme.

But nothing stopped him. Boasberg reopened the contempt proceedings a few months later and identified former DHS Secretary Kristy Noem as his newest target.”[The] Court is not prepared at this juncture to terminate its inquiry. Instead, it must determine whether Secretary Noem or anyone else should be referred for potential contempt prosecution,” Boasberg wrote in November 2025.

He then scheduled a mini trial against Noem and the Trump administration, hoping his unprecedented gambit would result in at least one top Trump official sent to prison. In December, Boasberg went so far as to order live testimony from Erez Reuvini, the self-proclaimed “whistleblower” who made unsubstantiated allegations against then acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove (now an appellate court judge) and from Drew Ensign, the DOJ prosecutor who has handled the case from the start. “Both sides shall appear in person at such hearings and will have the opportunity to question witnesses,” Boasberg wrote.

Once again, the D.C. appellate court a few days later had to halt Boasberg’s crusade, issuing an emergency stay to his inquisition against the Trump DOJ—eventually resulting in Tuesday’s decision officially ending it for good.

‘Intrusive,’ ‘Antagonistic,’ and ‘Unwarranted’

Judge Rao, who sat on the first panel, demonstrated her own contempt for Boasberg’s behavior in her 32-page spanking of an opinion. Rao, joined by Trump appointee Justin Walker, lambasted Boasberg for ignoring both the spirit and the law of higher court orders; misrepresenting his own conduct in the case; repeatedly violating the separation of powers; and intruding on executive branch territory such as national security and foreign affairs. (Biden appointee Michelle Childs authored an 80-page dissent.)

“As these shifting and expanding proceedings demonstrate, the district court has assumed an improper jurisdiction antagonistic to the Executive Branch,” Rao wrote. “Mandamus is appropriate again to forestall unwarranted judicial intrusion into Executive Branch decisionmaking regarding matters of national security [and] to halt the district court’s inquest.”

Rao accused Boasberg of “disregarding the reasons for the first writ of mandamus” by accelerating his “intrusive” contempt pursuit. “Despite this court’s admonition to respect the separation of powers in this sensitive inquiry against senior Executive Branch officials in the conduct of foreign affairs, the district court not only chose to squarely pursue criminal contempt but also expanded the scope of its investigation.”

Walker plainly noted that Boasberg’s written temporary restraining order related to the deportation of the illegals, posted about an hour after his alleged “oral” order to return the planes, on the evening of March 15 did not reflect his verbal statements made in court. “That is enough to resolve this case. From the time between the oral order and the written order, the Government did not violate the oral order. Then, once the written order superseded it, the Government did not violate the written Order. The upshot is that because the Government didn’t violate an order, there are no witnesses to subpoena, no reasons to prosecute, and no people to hold in contempt.”

Unfortunately, it appears those will not be the last words related to the ongoing proceedings in the case. Boasberg is still attempting to force the government to return the illegal Venezuelans deported that night based on the alleged deprivation of their “due process” rights. (I explain here.) That also is on appeal; Boasberg has put a hold on his own order demanding that the Trump administration figure out a way for the illegal Venezuelans tied to Tren de Aragua to make their habeas claims—even though they are not in U.S. custody—as the matter is kicked back once again to the D.C. appellate court.

Given his recent track record there, Boasberg looks more like Chinese golfer Haotong Li than McIlroy.

It appears the jockeying to replace Pam Bondi, the former attorney general fired by the president earlier this month, has begun.

After losing the president’s support and earning the ire of the MAGA base, Bondi is now headed back to private life. As I wrote here, her tenure represented a disappointing chapter in the president’s first year in office despite some success in the face of nearly insurmountable obstacles.

But President Trump and his supporters want blood and Bondi failed to produce. The Weaponization Working Group she created more than a year ago has yet to issue a report; at least two individuals recently resigned from the group.

Fortunately, the president has a strong roster of replacements to consider. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is the acting attorney general for now; he held a fiery press conference this week defending the department’s work and reminding selectively amnesiac reporters how the Biden Department of Justice relentless pursued the president, his associates, and his supporters for four years:

Blanche is moving into the AG’s fifth-floor office on Monday. On Thursday, according to CNN, Blanche distributed a series of memos to notify DOJ employees that “President Trump has promised a safe America and will continue to deliver on that promise.”

A safe America, as Blanche undoubtedly knows, also requires accountability for those who abused government power to destroy the lives of their political opponents. And that simply has not happened in any meaningful way, hence the president’s justified frustration. Could a good old-fashioned internal rivalry among potential AG candidates turn on the jets at the DOJ, invigorating a demoralized MAGA base currently fearing history will repeat itself—that a Trump DOJ once again comes up empty in the retribution category just like his first term?

Blanche could be the guy to finally produce some results. After all, he defended the president in both Special Counsel Jack Smith’s documents case and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s so-called “hush money” indictment. He held a front-row seat in watching Smith’s team of thugs consistently mislead Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida, misrepresent evidence, and throw one temper tantrum after another when they didn’t get their way. Hard to imagine that experience is a distant memory, rather than an animating force, in Blanche’s mind.

Smith, of course, is at the top of MAGA’s hit list; his recent Congressional testimony, in addition to his overall conduct in the documents case, provides plenty of fodder to represent the basis of a criminal indictment. In fact, the DOJ is still sitting on a criminal referral for Thomas Windom, Smith’s lead prosecutor in the January 6 case in Washington. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Jordan referred Windom last November for obstruction after he repeatedly refused to answer questions related to his involvement in the case.

Activist Judges and Juries Still the Biggest Obstacle

Indicting Windom seems like an easy early victory for Blanche. Ditto for Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney in Washington, who would actually hand up any indictment against Windom. She, too, is in the running although Pirro’s string of bad luck with D.C. grand and trial juries—by no fault of her own, as I explained here—may not restore much-needed confidence among the base. Pirro’s office has only won half of the criminal cases brought before D.C. juries this year, adding to an already mediocre record.

A former prosecutor who previously worked at the office claims Pirro has “lost the jury pool,” which is a nice way of placing the blame on Pirro’s prosecutors rather than acknowledging that the residents of the most Democratic city in the country are engaged in flagrant jury nullification to deny the Trump DOJ any wins in court.

Which will remain a massive problem regardless of who permanently takes the reins of the department. Can a bold, creative attorney general figure out how to circumvent the most hyper-partisan courthouse in the nation (this includes nearly every judge, too) and seek indictments and trials outside of Washington?

If Trump looks outside of existing DOJ officials, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin is a solid option. Zeldin, a former Republican Congressman who made an impressive showing against Kathy Hochul in the 2022 New York governor’s race, hit the ground running at the EPA by uncovering the $20 billion climate scandal initiated by the Biden administration right before the 2024 election. (My backgrounder here. More from EPA here.)

An attorney and former military man, Zeldin, 46, made arguably the most consequential decision of Trump’s presidency so far: rescinding the Obama-era “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases. The move essentially represented the end of the climate change movement, impacting government, academia, and private industry in a way no other policy decision could.

Zeldin’s hard-knuckled approach, intelligence, and political sensibilities provide the right combination in moving fast against the president’s lawfare antagonists.

Others are in the running as well: Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon (who appears to be backing Blanche according to her X post to me this week), Senator Mike Lee, and White House Counsel David Warrington. All require Senate confirmation.

So the president should move quickly to avoid a similar quagmire created by other expired temporary appointments in the DOJ. Further, the midterm election is less than seven months away; mixed views on the Iran war, infighting among MAGA-aligned influencers, and a less-than-stellar economy has much of the MAGA base rattled, if not wholly disillusioned. An ass-kicking AG handing down long-desired indictments this summer could be the elixir Trump and his supporters need.

One of the more consequential achievements of the Trump administration is the rewriting of federal law strictly limiting who is allowed to get behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound semi trailer truck and drive on America’s roadways. A series of fatal crashes in 2025 and 2026 exposed the largely unknown practice of foreigners, many here illegally, obtaining what’s called “non-domiciled” commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) in several states.

Most of those states now are following the lead of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who last year proposed new federal guidance that prohibited states from issuing CDLs and commercial learner’s permits to a broad range of immigrants. Last week, the state of Indiana revoked all non-domiciled CDLs; those drivers must obtain one of three visas identified in Duffy’s new guidance. Non-domiciled CDL holders in the Hoosier state must also demonstrate proficiency in English; companies who knowingly hire a foreign truck driver without the proper documentation will face a $50,000 fine.

Idaho revoked its entire non-domiciled CDL program in March. Tennessee lawmakers are considering legislation that would make it a crime for an illegal immigrant to hold a CDL and would allow Tennesseans injured by an illegal truck driver to sue their employer for damages.

While states are codifying, even expanding on, Duffy’s successful efforts to take CDLs out of the hands of unqualified immigrant drivers, a D.C. appellate court may once again undermine his plans.

Duffy introduced an emergency interim rule last September that drastically reduced the category of immigrant drivers eligible to receive CDLs; the emergency action came in response to what Duffy described as the “disturbing” results of a nationwide audit that revealed many states were not following federal law in issuing non-domiciled CDLs. At least 25 percent of non-domiciled CDLs in California and at least 20 percent of non-domiciled CDLs in Illinois had been issued unlawfully.

But a few months later, in a 2-1 decision, the D.C. court of appeals put a hold on that emergency rule. In response to a lawsuit filed by labor unions and a few truck drivers impacted by the new rule, the court ruled in November 2025 that the Department of Transportation had not “demonstrated any safety benefit from the rule” and that the agency had acted “arbitrarily and capriciously.” But after the required public comment period ended in February, the rule—published by the DOT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration—became final on March 16.

At least for now.

Will Democratic Judges in D.C. Once Again Torpedo a Popular Policy Because Trump?

The same litigants are asking the D.C. appellate court to halt ongoing implementation of the final rule, which could result in the revocation of at least 200,000 non-domiciled CDLs across the country. In a filing last month, two labor unions—the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the American Federation of Teachers—demanded an expedited schedule on the matter, claiming irreparable harm to the disqualified haulers. “There is a strong and compelling public interest in expeditious review of the Rule, which threatens to destroy the livelihoods of the individual driver Petitioners, numerous members of the union Petitioners, and tens of thousands of drivers across the country,” they wrote. “The Rule also threatens harm to numerous families, employers, schools, and local and state governments that depend on the work of commercial drivers.”

Duffy responded by arguing the best interest of the public, not the unlawful drivers, is at risk if the court blocks the rule. “”As a baseline matter, an order prohibiting the government from complying with its statutory mandate to ensure safe operation of commercial motor vehicles inflicts per se irreparable harm,” the Department of Justice wrote on behalf of the DOT. On Monday, Duffy’s office submitted a 546-page document listing all records related to the implementation of the rule, including thousands of comments made by the public—many with foreign-sounding last names, presumably opposed to the rule—in accordance with federal law.

The D.C. appellate court has not yet responded to the latest filings but the judges on the panel don’t exactly instill confidence that the rule will remain intact. Judge Florence Pan is on the existing three-judge panel overseeing the case; she also sat on the panel last November that put the brakes on the emergency rule. (Pan also is married to a longtime Democratic activist who is opposing the president’s plans to reduce the federal workforce.) Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee and frequent thorn in the president’s side, also sits on the panel.

Duffy’s attention to the significant danger posed by unqualified, illiterate, and in many instances, illegal immigrants sitting behind the wheel of semi trailer trucks has garnered nationwide, and even bi-partisan, support. Sadly, that means nothing to the hyper-partisan judges in the nation’s capital working hand in hand to sabotage the president’s policy goals—even if it means keeping dangerous drivers on the roads. There is a slim chance the judges will do the right thing and allow the popular rule to remain in place; but it is more likely another hit job against the administration is incoming.

A decision is expected sometime this month.

After a year of turmoil, Pamela Bondi is out as attorney general. The president’s long-rumored dissatisfaction with Bondi finally resulted in her ouster this week; Trump confirmed her firing in a Truth Social post on Thursday afternoon, referring to Bondi as a “Great American Patriot and a loyal friend.” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will fill in as the president considers Bondi’s replacement.

Her dismissal arguably represents the most frustrating chapter of this presidency so far. If you had asked Trump supporters in November 2024 which presidential appointment was the most important for the president to get right, the overwhelming majority would have said the Attorney General. After observing nearly a decade of vicious lawfare, even by Trump’s own Department of Justice during his first term, it was table-turning time for the president and thousands of family members, lawyers, advisors, aides, and voters who had been relentlessly targeted by the DOJ during the Biden regime.

The transition team floated a number of impressive names early on: Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, and former White House counsel Mark Paoletta to name a few. MAGA faithful lined up behind Matt Gaetz, a Florida congressman at the time, who voluntarily pulled his name from consideration in anticipation of a bruising, and possibly unsuccessful, confirmation fight.

President Trump then settled on Bondi, a former county prosecutor, Florida Attorney General, and member of his legal team during the first impeachment. Confirmed by the Senate in a 54-46 vote, Bondi took the oath of office in February 2025. While some questioned whether Bondi, a lobbyist and Fox News contributor at the time, had the chops to take over the reins of arguably the most corrupt agency in the federal government, the president appeared to have full faith and confidence in her ability to do so.

Encouraging Signs—and Then, Disaster

She immediately released a series of memos aimed at fulfilling the president’s priorities related to cleaning up the DOJ and bringing accountability for past injustices. Bondi created a “Weaponization Working Group” to investigate Special Counsel Jack Smith, the prosecution of January 6 protesters, and the Biden DOJ’s surveillance of practicing Catholics and parents speaking out at school board meetings. “The reconciliation and restoration of the Department of Justice’s core values can only be accomplished through review and accountability,” Bondi wrote.

That was music to MAGA’s ears. Visions of lawfare perps in handcuffs danced in the collective head of Trump supporters. It was only a matter of time, most believed, until Jack Smith and Merrick Garland, and Chris Wray and Lisa Monaco were hauled before a judge facing numerous federal charges and headed to jail.

Expectations ran high, too high in some instances, in all fairness. Few anticipated the locked-armed resistance by federal judges from coast to coast to halt nearly every presidential policy, which forced Bondi to defend her boss in dozens of unexpected cases. Senate Republicans refused to break protocol, the outdated “blue slip” process, to confirm the president’s nominees for U.S. Attorney in several offices, creating internal chaos and opening the door for Trump-hating judges to instead pick the top prosecutor in their jurisdiction. Activist groups are coaching prospective grand jurors how to reject indictments sought by Bondi’s DOJ, resulting in an unprecedented and politically-damaging number of “no true bills” returned by grand juries in blue cities.

With so many powerful forces working against her—a ruthless entrenched bureaucracy consisting of 100,000 employees spread across 93 U.S. Attorney’s offices, a rogue federal judiciary, spineless Republicans in Congress, and a national news media rooting for her failure—everything had to be flawless. No mistakes could be made—no unforced errors, no gaffes, no embarrassing interviews or appearances. Fair or not, perfection had to be the daily goal.

But within days of her confirmation, Bondi instead pulled a PR stunt that haunts the president to this day: the infamous “Epstein Binder” briefing. On February 27, 2025, Bondi assembled more than a dozen top MAGA influencers at the White House to distribute documents allegedly representing “phase one” of the Epstein files. Most of the material, however, was old news, leading to Democrat-fueled speculation that Bondi planned to run a coverup operation to hide any damaging ties between Epstein and Trump.

Bondi soon raised the stakes, claiming privately and publicly that the FBI was reviewing “tens of thousands of videos” of Epstein with children or involved in child pornography; those files were never identified or released to the extent they even exist.

The missteps produced ammo for the president’s biggest enemies in Congress and the media; even some Republicans made the “Epstein files” a rallying cry, tainting the president’s first-year victories and creating a black cloud that still lingers over the administration. The debacle created internal division, too; Bondi and former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino were involved in a heated clash in the White House last summer over her handling of the files.

“The problem is that she can’t escape Epstein and hasn’t done enough on his enemies to satisfy the president,” one top DOJ official told me. “Now people are just wondering what happens next.”

Wilting Under the Heat

Bondi’s public performances also did not serve the president well. While Trump appreciates fire and feistiness, especially in his defense, the American people still expect the nation’s top law enforcement officials to demonstrate poise and professionalism. Unfortunately, as Bondi increasingly felt the heat, her Congressional appearances became more and more unproductive, even unbecoming. Her shrewish combativeness during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in February produced cringy social media posts that likely contributed to today’s involuntary exit.

But all may have been forgiven had Bondi made significant progress on her “Weaponization Working Group,” which went the same way of the “Weaponization Select Committee” formed by House Republicans in 2023: nowhere. While several J6 and Trump lawfare prosecutors were fired, or forced to resign, and documents have been released providing more insight into the nefarious conduct of Biden DOJ/FBI officials, no one has faced significant criminal liability for their actions.

Sure, James Comey and Tish James had to lawyer up to face relatively minor offenses—and both have been saved so far by the Trump-hating establishment. But bigger fish—particularly Jack Smith and his team (a criminal referral against Smith henchmen Thomas Windom was made in November 2025 but no indictment yet)—remain off the hook.

Bondi is not entirely to blame, but she bears a fair share of it. So, too, does the president for sticking with her as valuable time ticked away. It is not too late to leverage what minimal power the current DOJ has in bringing accountability for what happened to the president, his people, and the country under the previous DOJ. But the sand in the political hourglass is running out. Bondi’s successor must be mistake-free—and work fast.

The parents, sister, and grandparents of Sheridan Gorman laid her to rest in New York on Saturday, ten days after the Loyola University freshman was executed on a Chicago beach by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela.

Sheridan’s obituary emphasized her love for her family, her friends, her hometown of Yorktown Heights, and the college she chose to attend 800 miles away from home. “[She] loved Loyola University Chicago, where she had begun building the next chapter of her life, embracing it with the same excitement, warmth, and spirit that defined everything she did.”

At the same time Sheridan’s devastated loved ones and friends gathered to mourn her brief but impactful life, the city of Chicago hosted not a similar vigil in her honor but rather another collective temper tantrum over President Donald Trump. Thousands gathered throughout the city and suburbs to participate in well-funded “No Kings” rallies; apparently the other “No Kings” rally held just five months ago in the city didn’t result in the desired outcome of—what exactly, no one knows.

City and state officials took the stage in Grant Park to bleat more tiresome grievances about Trump, ICE, Congressional Republicans, and the usual bogeymen of the modern-day Left. They made the same empty promises that have yet to come to fruition in a city under siege on a daily basis by random acts of crime—while purposely avoiding the murder of Sheridan Gorman in the process.

Here is Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, cheered on by Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, pledging to “protect every single person in this city”:

Sheridan Gorman was not available for comment.

Another speaker, to more applause, called for the abolishment of ICE and for lawmakers to oppose any funding bill that would “keep this dangerous administration in business”:

In an interview with an MS NOW reporter, Mayor Johnson again avoided the murder of Sheridan Gorman to instead denounce “attacks against immigrants”

All of this came one day after Sheridan’s killer, Jose Medina, appeared remotely—he reportedly has another case of tuberculosis—in a Chicago courtroom as prosecutors sought, and received, his continued detention following his March 21 arrest. Medina’s public defenders portrayed their client as a victim of random crime himself; his mother claimed Medina had suffered a severe head injury when he was robbed and shot while riding his motorcycle in 2018 in Columbia. (The mother also claimed the two had fled their home country of Venezuela after she was allegedly raped and the Venezuelan government threatened to take their “home.”)

Public defender Julie Koehler told the judge that the alleged attack left Medina “severely brain damaged and disabled” and with the “brain development of a child.” Medina’s mother, who somehow joined her son in Chicago near the Loyola campus after he illegally crossed the border in 2023 under the Biden administration, produced a photo allegedly showing the damage to his skull.

But Medina had his wits about him enough to shoplift items from a downtown Macy’s store a month after he illegally entered the country. He also knew enough not to show up for his court appearance for the crime. Medina also possessed enough damaged brain power to cover his face, lie in wait, and successfully fire a bullet into the back of Sheridan Gorman as she attempted to flee with friends, who had gathered to take photos of the Northern Lights in the early hours of March 19.

The irony—or rather, the outrage—is that every single participant of Saturday’s “No Kings” rally in Chicago would have fought tooth and nail to keep Medina in this country had he been the subject of an ICE arrest. Which is why no one had the guts, or the humanity, to speak Sheridan Gorman’s name today. There were no signs in the crowd decrying her murder, no photos of her face, no promises for justice on her behalf.

And as if to prove the point, “No Kings” protesters descended on the ICE facility in suburban Broadview to again demonstrate their support for illegals like Medina.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people quietly gathered in a small town in New York to remember Sheridan Gorman. RIP.

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In a city becoming anesthetized to daily incidents of random, violent crime, the execution of Loyola University freshman Sheridan Gorman has hit Chicagoans—and the rest of the state and country—hard. A vibrant young girl of deep faith, Gorman, who resides in New York state, chose to attend Loyola, situated near a long stretch of Lake Michigan beach on the city’s northernmost side, only to have her life ended by an animal here illegally under Joe Biden’s open borders policy.

It is one thing for elected officials responsible for allowing these vile monsters into our communities to ignore such a travesty—it is another for the media, including the once respectable Chicago Tribune, to downplay the murder for days. As I just noted on X, today is the first day the Tribune gave front-page coverage to what happened to Gorman and the status of her killer. The once-respectable Trib opinion pages only has TWO editorials on the murder. I didn’t even have enough time to calculate how many op-eds the paper ran during Operation Midway Blitz or the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

My analysis here for Real Clear Politics this morning.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2026/03/24/sheridan_gormans_murderand_chicagos_silence_153971.html

As I have reported for months, the Trump Department of Justice is having a hell of a time securing criminal indictments from D.C.-based grand juries. Not only is Washington, D.C. the most Democratic city in the nation—a voter base from which grand jurors are selected without any vetting process to eliminate biased panelists—but activist groups host regular seminars in the nation’s capital advising potential jurors how to reject indictments sought by the DOJ.

Which is why the issuance of two grand jury subpoenas in January related to the DOJ’s investigation into the Federal Reserve represented a major score for Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Prompted by a U.S. Senate inquiry into excessive cost overruns for the prolonged renovation of two Fed buildings in Washington, Pirro’s office initiated a separate probe into potential fraud for the $2.5 billion-and-counting project in addition to misrepresentations made by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, a persistent Trump nemesis, to Congress on the matter last year. (My backgrounder on the scandal here.)

In December 2025, Pirro twice emailed the Fed’s Board of Governors “in a collaborative manner,” according to her office, seeking records on the renovations. Pirro also offered to meet with Fed officials the first week of January to provide more details on the nascent investigation.

The Fed never responded. (Go ahead and try that at home, folks.) Left with few choices in the face of rebuffs by the so-called “independent” agency, Pirro pursued a completely appropriate legal process to compel the production of the necessary records.

No One is Above the Law. Just Kidding.

To that end, a grand jury returned two subpoenas, which were served on the Fed on Jan. 9.; Powell disclosed the existence of the subpoenas to the public in a squirrelly video statement a few days later.

Insisting the investigation represented retaliation for the Fed’s refusal to lower interest rates—something the president routinely condemns in strong, and sometimes personal, language aimed at the longtime Fed chairman—Powell nonetheless admitted that “no one, certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve, is above the law.”

That, however, does not appear to be the case. Not only did the Fed refuse to respond to Pirro’s entreaty for voluntary cooperation—despite his self-proclaimed fidelity to “accountability in our democracy”—it refused to comply with the deadlines listed on the subpoenas. (Again, try that at home and see how it works out.)

In making their defiant position official, a team of white shoe lawyers including former special counsel Robert Hur, who let Joe Biden off the hook for keeping classified documents, then sought to kill the subpoenas. “The purpose of the Subpoenas is to dictate the Federal Reserve’s setting of monetary policy—specifically, to harass, pressure, and punish the Federal Reserve and Chair Jerome Powell until they set monetary policy the President wants,” the Fed’s legal team wrote in a Feb. 3 motion to “quash” the subpoenas. “Thus [Pirro], through the abuse of the criminal process, seeks to help the President achieve indirectly what the law prohibits him from doing directly.”

Fortunately for Powell, the case ended up before D.C. Chief Judge Jeb Boasberg, another Trump nemesis who is still trying to force the Trump administration to return Tren de Aragua gang bangers deported to their home country of Venezuela last year. Last week, Boasberg issued an extraordinarily rare (aren’t they all in the Trump era?) order granting the Fed’s request to quash the subpoenas.

The Boas Strikes Again

The Obama appointee, per usual, punctuated his order with clickbait conjecture that had nothing to do with the substance of the pending investigation. “Being perceived as the President’s adversary has become risky in recent years,” Boasberg wrote on March 13. “In his second term, Trump has urged the Department of Justice to prosecute such people, and the Department’s prosecutors have listened.” (A particularly rich statement coming from the judge who signed an unknown number of nondisclosure orders on subpoenas sought by the Biden DOJ and Special Counsel Jack Smith for the cell phone activity of sitting Republican senators.)

While Boasberg spent 27 pages going back years to recount all the perceived threats the president made against Powell, the judge intentionally overlooked one very important part of the timeline: a proposed quid pro quo to make the investigation go away.

According to a filing by Pirro’s office, Powell’s personal attorney and an attorney representing the Fed made a “peculiar suggestion” to the government during a January 29 meeting about the subpoenas. “Chair Powell’s lawyer suggested to [Pirro] that Chair Powell would be likely to step down from the Board when his term as Chairman expires—but only if the Subpoenas were withdrawn and the Chair was no longer under investigation,” her office disclosed in February.

In other words: Pirro needs to drop the criminal investigation into his client or Powell will remain an influential and constant thorn in the side of the president until January 2028, when his full term as a member of the Federal Reserve Board expires. (His term as chairman expires in May.) “Ironically, it is the Board that has cynically attempted to inject politics into this matter by strongarming [Pirro].” (The Fed’s lawyer claimed her description of the meeting was “irrelevant” and “inaccurate.”)

Boasberg apparently was unmoved by such a mob-like, and potentially unlawful, suggestion to the top law enforcement officer in the nation’s capital. Did that suggestion rise to obstruction, or even bribery?

Further, it appears that Boasberg, who continues to pursue his bogus contempt case against the Trump administration, was unbothered by the Fed’s ignoring two grand jury subpoenas before he stepped in to make it official. Contempt, at least in Boasberg’s courtroom, is in the eye of the beholder.

Pirro responded with justified fury following Boasberg’s decision, calling him an “activist judge” and accusing him of “neutering” the grand jury’s ability to investigate crimes.

She said her office plans to appeal his decision. Watch here:

It bears repeating—over and over and over—that the events of January 6, 2021 were intended not only to result in the imprisonment of Donald Trump but also to deliver a fatal blow to the entire MAGA movement. No other day in American history, not even 9/11, has produced more media coverage, more investigations, more arrests (that is certain), more indictments, and more political grist for anti-Trump forces than the mostly nonviolent four-hour protest on a Wednesday afternoon more than five years ago.

Democrats, as such, acted with impunity, emboldened by a collective belief that Donald Trump never would return to the White House. Any abuse of power, any outlier court ruling, any audacious tactic by Congress, any extreme represented an historical one-off with no opportunity for Republicans, let alone Donald Trump, to flip the script in the future.

And no one tempted that fate more than Joe Biden. Working his revenge tour through cutouts in his Department of Justice, Democrats and NeverTrumpers in Congress, and various federal agencies to try and put President Trump behind bars, Biden personally aided the process by becoming the first president in history to deny his predecessor’s executive privilege claims.

The treachery started in October 2021 when Trump asserted executive privilege to prevent the January 6 Select Committee from obtaining thousands of presidential records; Chairman Bennie Thompson had sent the National Archives a 16-page letter to demand the production of a massive trove of documents—consisting largely of the president’s communications with dozens of White House officials, personal attorneys, family members including his wife and children, campaign advisors, and conservative influencers—dating back to April 2020.

Dana Remus, Biden’s White House counsel, immediately notified the National Archives that Biden had “determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States.” Remus continued to explain Biden’s thinking in the matter. “[The] insurrection that took place on January 6, and the extraordinary events surrounding it, must be subject to a full accounting to ensure nothing similar ever happens again.” (Biden twice more denied Trump’s privilege claims related to the committee’s investigation.)

Who is the King Now?

Trump immediately filed a lawsuit; he called the J6 committee’s request “a vexatious, illegal fishing expedition openly endorsed by Biden” and accused Biden of participating in “a political ploy to accommodate his partisan allies.” The lawsuit landed on the desk of Tanya Chutkan, the Obama appointee who later presided over Special Counsel Jack Smith’s criminal J6 indictment against Trump.

Chutkan hastily denied Trump’s request. “[Presidents] are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,” Chutkan, per her usual habit of flouting her contempt for Trump whenever possible, wrote in November 2021. Chutkan repeatedly argued that the incumbent president retained sole authority in determining the right of executive privilege and criticized Trump for not “[acknowledging] the deference owed to the incumbent President’s judgment.”

A D.C. appellate court panel, which included future Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, upheld Chutkan’s decision less than a month later; soon thereafter, the Supreme Court declined to take up the issue. Thousands of presidential records landed in the dirty hands of Trump’s most vicious foes in Congress including Liz Cheney and Adam Schiff.

And rest was history. Or so everyone thought.

History is indeed repeating itself—just not the way Joe Biden, the D.C. courts, and the January 6 committee ever envisioned.

Eating Their Own Words

In a full circle moment that truly defies imagination, Biden sent letters to the Archives last year asserting executive privilege related to several Senate investigations into his administration and his family. The letters, according to Fox News, were sent in October and December.

White House counsel David Warrington quickly informed the Archives that “President Trump has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States,”—the exact same words Remus had used in 2021.

But Warrington wasn’t done making Biden eat his own words while at the same time mocking Biden’s disparate “signatures” now under investigation.

Remus letter followed by Warrington’s December 2025 letter:

This week, according to Fox News, the president again rejected Biden’s executive privilege claims. In doing so, Warrington again cribbed part of Remus’ 2021 letter: “[The] abuse of the autopen that took place during the Biden Presidency, and the extraordinary efforts to shield President Biden’s diminished faculties from the public, must be subject to a full accounting to ensure nothing similar ever happens again.”

And one more jab: “President Trump instructs you to provide to these congressional committees the pages identified as privileged by the former President.”

Biden’s team did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

What could they have said in response? “You reap what you sow?”

“What goes around comes around?”

“Payback is a bitch?”

“Elections have consequences?”

“The hunter is now the hunted?”

Sorry, Joe—this time, the joke’s on you.

This is a guest column by Dr. John Eastman, a Senior Fellow at The Claremont Institute, and former longtime professor of constitutional law.

It has been a little over a week since U.S. military forces, acting pursuant to direct authorization from President Donald Trump as Commander-in-Chief, began a large attack, coordinated with Israeli military forces, on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Islamic Republic’s top leadership, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been killed, its navy entirely destroyed, its air defense systems decimated, and much of its ability to counterattack severely (though unfortunately not entirely) undermined. Freedom-loving Iranians the world over, both inside and outside the country, have been exuberant at the prospect of restoring their beloved country to the ranks of respected, peaceful, and prosperous nation states.

One would think that such a potentially transformative action would draw praise from both sides of the political aisle in the United States. Iran, after all, has been the leading state sponsor of terrorism ever since its current ruling junta took control in 1979. That’s 47 years of terrorist attacks against the United States (which it describes as the “Great Satan”), our key ally in the Middle East Israel (“Little Satan”), and others. And the Islamic Republic has made clear, repeatedly, that it intends to acquire nuclear weapons and to use them. A decisive effort to put an end to this ongoing threat is therefore long overdue and should be applauded.

Alas, not so. Prominent voices on both the left and the never-Trump or isolationist right are crying “foul,” claiming that the President had no legal authority for these actions. Only Congress has the constitutional power to declare war, they contend, and absent that or some specific statute authorizing the use of force, the President is impotent to respond to the ongoing threat that the Islamic Republic posed.

Presidential Authority in Such Matters Dates Back Centuries

Never mind that throughout our nation’s history, as thoroughly described in a 2014 report by the Congressional Research Service, Presidents have relied on their own constitutional authority to deploy the military in response to threats from abroad. Thomas Jefferson’s deployment of the U.S. Navy and Marines in 1801 to fight the barbary pirates before any authorization for the use of force by Congress, memorialized in the “to the shores of Tripoli” line in the Marine Corps’ hymn, is a famous example.

In fact, of the nearly 500 deployments of the military into conflict or potential conflict, only five (which cumulatively included 11 declarations) have involved formal declarations of war by Congress—and none since the Second World War. Another 150 or so can be tied to the 12 statutory authorizations for the use of force that Congress has approved (such as the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964, albeit years after Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson had successively deployed U.S. troops to Vietnam), but that still leaves about 300 military actions undertaken on the President’s constitutional authority alone. Given the Islamic Republic’s 47-year history of attacks against the United States, that authority and precedent is more than sufficient, particularly in light of credible evidence, among other things, that Iran has been working on nuclear warhead adaptations for nosecones of its ballistic missiles.

But there is statutory authority as well.

Most of the commentators, pro and con, have focused on the War Powers Resolution adopted by Congress in 1973. Although every president since has contested its constitutionality, most have nonetheless complied with its terms. Perhaps the most notorious example to the contrary was Operation Odyssey Dawn, authorized by President Obama against Libya in 2011 despite acknowledgement that there was no imminent threat against the United States or its allies. That military action resulted in the overthrow and death of longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi but also prolonged civil war and instability in the region and is generally viewed as a massive strategic failure. State Department Legal Advisor Harold Koh laughably contended that Congress’s War Powers Resolution, which requires the withdrawal of troops from hostilities after 60 days, did not apply because Libya really had no ability to engage in “hostilities” against U.S. forces in response to U.S. attacks, including drone strikes.

The WPR purports to allow the President’s exercise of his constitutional powers as Commander-in-Chief “only pursuant to 1) a declaration of war, 2) specific statutory authorization, or 3) a national emergency created by attack on the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” It requires the President to consult with Congress “in every possible instance … before introducing” U.S. forces into hostilities, and absent a declaration of war, to submit a written report to congressional leaders within 48 hours after the deployment explaining the circumstances that necessitated the deployment, the constitutional and legal authority for it, and the estimated scope and duration of the engagement. The use of the military must be terminated within 60 days (or an additional 30 days if the President certifies such is necessary to protect the safety of US troops in effective a prompt removal of them from hostilities) unless Congress has in the interim declared war or passed a specific statutory authorization.

Trump Followed Federal Law in Launching the Attack

The first claim that President Trump violated the WPR was the contention that he did not consult with Congress before the attacks began. That quickly unraveled when it was revealed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had in fact brief the “gang of eight” leadership in Congress prior to the attack.

The next claim of violation is based on the contention that there was no imminent threat to the United States, and hence the third statutory trigger was not met. Yet there have clearly been numerous attacks by Iran and its proxies against the United States, its territories (including its embassies), and its military over the past 47 years. That those attacks have largely gone unanswered by prior administrations does not eliminate the fact that they were attacks.

As The Hill newspaper recently summarized, they have included the 1983 suicide car bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon (killing 63), the October 1983 truck bomb at a Marine barracks in Beirut (killing 220 US Marines and 21 other service personnel), the June 1996 attack on the U.S. Air Force housing complex, Khobar Towers, in Khobar, Saudi Arabia (19 American deaths, 500 people injured), the August 1998 attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (224 dead, thousands wounded), the January 2020 Iranian missile attack on U.S. forces at the Ain al-Asad airbase in Iraq (more than 100 U.S. troops with traumatic brain injuries), and, as documented in a recent report by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, more than 180 attacks against U.S. forces between October 2023 and November 2024 (more than 180 wounded, 3 killed).

Perhaps the claim is that these were not “emergencies” because they happened a while ago. But as recently as last June, three U.S. bases in Syria and two in Iraq were attacked with missiles or drones, likely by Iranian-backed militias. One is left to wonder when the naysayers would consider that the cumulative impact of this long string of attacks against U.S. Embassies and military personnel would rise to the level of “emergency” triggering the use of force under the WPR.

But that is not the only statutory authority. The second category that authorizes the President’s use of force under the WPR is “specific statutory authorization,” and there is one, although most commentary on the present conflict omit it.

It is the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), enacted in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. It authorizes the President “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

That’s pretty broad – if, that is, Iran had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. Here, we don’t need to rely on a presidential determination, as a federal court in New York already found, in a thorough 2011 opinion with 276 separate findings of facts based on well-document sources and sworn expert affidavits, that the Islamic Republic of Iran provided “material support and resources to al Qaeda for acts of terrorism” generally. Even more significantly, the Court held that the Islamic Republic of Iran “provided direct support to al Qaeda specifically for the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Washington D.C. (Shanksville, Pennsylvania), on September 11, 2011.”

Such support included “planning, funding, facilitation of the hijackers’ travel and training, and logistics, and included the provision of money, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, and/or transportation.” held the Court. The Court’s decision in the case, Havlish v. Usama Bin Laden et al. (aka In re Terrorist Attacks on Sept. 11, 2001), 2011 WL 13244047 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 22, 2011), is readily available here. The several expert affidavits are also available at Court Listener—the one by former CIA Directorate of Operations officer and counterintelligence specialist Clare Lopez is particularly enlightening.

Why is it important to rely on the AUMF instead of just the WPR itself? The latter’s 60-day limitation on the use of armed forces provides a huge incentive to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and what remains of the religious and secular leadership in Iran to hold out until the U.S. has to withdraw its forces.

While we all hope and expect that President Trump’s prediction that this conflict will be resolved in weeks rather than months or longer is correct, it is simply folly to provide the enemy with a date certain for withdrawal. The AUMF has no such end date and therefore removes any last-gasp holdout incentive for the dying regime.

So I just did a couple of interviews on this topic. Benny Johnson this morning, War Room yesterday, a couple more scheduled, but I wanted to get a video to you guys quickly related to my post the other night in response to reports that the auto pen investigation and launched by the Trump DOJ, D.C. US attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office apparently has hit a snag, and I’m not really sure why.

Read more

The ink was barely dry on President Trump’s executive order drastically curbing the privilege of birthright citizenship when a federal judge in Washington state stepped in and immediately blocked it. In response to a lawsuit filed by a handful of states claiming the order would cause “irreparable harm” to children born on American soil to noncitizens, U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour issued an emergency temporary restraining order on January 23, 2025—less than 72 hours after the inauguration, prohibiting the Trump administration from enforcing the new policy.

Two weeks later, Coughenour, appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, issued a nationwide injunction (hold) on the president’s order. “Citizenship by birth is an unequivocal Constitutional right,” Coughenour, ignoring caveats in both the Citizenship Clause and case law suggesting the opposite, wrote on February 6. “It is one of the precious principles that makes the United States the great nation that it is. The President cannot change, limit, or qualify this Constitutional right via executive order.” (During a hearing that day, Coughenour took numerous pot shots at the president in front of Department of Justice lawyers. “It has become ever more apparent that to our President the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain,” the judge harangued. He further claimed, without evidence, that the rule of law was “especially vulnerable” under President Trump.)

A few months later, the Supreme Court overturned Coughenour’s broad injunction, finding his decision had “exceed[ed] the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.” The high court is expected to make a final determination on the question of automatic birthright citizenship—and the legitimacy of Coughenour’s view—this summer. (Oral arguments in the matter are set for April 1.)

That looming decision, however, is not stopping Coughenour from publicly defending his turf as the self-proclaimed last word on what is Constitutional and what is not. Further, the judge/-who took senior status in 2006 but refuses to retire despite turning 85 this July—claims “threats” to the federal bench pose the greatest danger to constitutional order, not hasty rushes to judgment by him and his colleagues to sabotage the president’s agenda and, by default, the will of the American people.

Coughenour was one of three federal judges featured in a nauseating propaganda segment on 60 Minutes that aired Sunday night. The segment is part of the nationwide media’s ongoing attempt to portray the president and his supporters as the perpetrators, rather than the victims, of political violence. Coughenour told CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker that armed sheriff deputies recently arrived at his home amid an alleged report that the judge had murdered his wife. (This is known as “swatting,” something that has happened to several Republicans lawmakers and influencers over the past few years.) The judge said he has received “dozens if not hundreds” of death threats since his birthright citizenship ruling.

A One-Sided ‘Investigation’

Coughenour’s sob story was part of what Whitaker described as the show’s “investigation” into federal judges now “under siege” by the president—apparently public comments and social media posts calling out partisan, rogue judges, many of whom are later reversed by higher courts, represent a “threat” in the world of hack journalists and lifetime appointed jurists including some who’ve been on the bench longer than the average American has been alive.

John Jones, a retired federal judge appointed by George W. Bush in 2001, warned it’s only a matter of time before a judge is murdered, presumably by a devotee of Donald Trump. “People are taking arms,” Jones, without evidence, claimed. (He now leads a “bi partisan” group of judges to lambast the president over any criticism of the bench and appears regularly on CNN.) Trump’s name calling, Jones alleged, is “an attempt to delegitimize the federal courts.”

Courts, however, are doing a very good job of that themselves. The Trump administration is facing at least 600 lawsuits filed in nearly every jurisdiction across the country; judges overwhelmingly have sided against the administration, particularly related to immigration policies. Court orders are often accompanied by political diatribes designed to make headlines and advance what Coughenour declared just two weeks into the new presidency—that Donald Trump and his handpicked officials will break the law to advance his wishes. Threats to hold top officials in contempt for imaginary violations of court orders, once a rarity, has become de rigueur at the federal judiciary.

But oddly enough, the show’s “investigation” into threats against federal judges failed to mention Aileen Cannon, the judge who presided over the classified documents case in southern Florida. Cannon has been the target of a nonstop barrage of threats and accusations since she first took on the special master lawsuit filed by the president in the aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago raid in 2022. The onslaught got so bad that the chief judge of the Florida appellate court in May 2024 halted acceptance of misconduct complaints against Cannon, calling the flood of demands to remove her from the case “an orchestrated campaign.”

A few months earlier, a Texas woman was sentenced to three years in prison for making repeated death threats against Cannon, warning the judge that she was “marked for assassination” and would be shot in front of her family.

But the 60 Minutes team apparently did not feel the need to acknowledge the sustained attacks on Judge Cannon. Perhaps even more outrageous is how the show buried a mention about the 2022 attempted assassination of Brett Kavanaugh at the ten-minute mark of the 13-minute segment, noting the incident in one brief sentence.

Those intentional omissions, however, apparently did not raise any objections by Bari Weiss, the newly installed editor-in-chief of CBS News. Weiss not only refused to pull the segment, as she did over concerns about an immigration related piece last December, Weiss reposted a clip of Coughenour’s outlandish allegations that if he and his colleagues don’t enforce the Constitution, “it becomes like the Constitution of Russia.”

HUH?

Perhaps no one better demonstrates the TDS suffered by most federal judges than Esther Salas. Just a stunning statement to make:

How does the Trump DOJ ever answer to someone like that?

This is a guest post by Danielle Chaffin, the Founder of Highway Veritas. Danielle also works in trucking fraud & risk analysis. Her Substack is MaybeDanielleee https://substack.com/@maybedanielleee

America’s trucking industry is in crisis. Fatal crashes involving unqualified, illegal drivers dominate headlines. A four-year freight recession has bankrupted hundreds of trucking companies and forced freight rates to historic lows.

When a crash happens, the truck driver takes the spotlight. Yet long before the collision, a series of less conspicuous decisions determines which trucking company is awarded freight, at what rate, and under what standards.

Freight doesn’t always move directly from a shipper (seller, manufacturer, or supplier) to a trucking company. Licensed intermediaries, known as freight brokers, sit in the middle. They do not own trucks or employ drivers. They match freight with capacity inside a system that rewards speed and price, with limited accountability.

There are good brokers and bad brokers, just like there are good and bad trucking companies.

Deregulation & Proliferation of Brokerage

The Motor Carrier Act of 1980 fundamentally reshaped trucking, as Jimmy Carter prioritized deregulating transportation.

Pre-1980, rates and routes were heavily controlled by the federal government. Entry was limited, and collective rate-making operated under antitrust protections, allowing carriers to coordinate pricing within a stable framework. Competition existed, but inside guardrails designed to maintain market stability.

The 1980 Act dismantled much of this framework. Barriers to entry plummeted, the independent freight brokerage was formalized, and competition intensified. The increase in trucking companies underscores the scale of the transformation. In 1975, ~18,000 trucking companies operated in the United States. By 2018, that number had reached roughly 758,000 registered motor carriers. Today, it exceeds one million.

The intent of deregulation was to increase competition and reduce costs. In many respects, it succeeded, but open markets struggle to self-regulate when confronted with massive public safety risks, rampant opportunities for fraud, and reckless operators who undercut responsible ones.

How Brokers Operate

To operate, a freight broker obtains authority from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and must maintain a $75,000 surety bond. Beyond that, regulatory obligations are minimal compared to those imposed on motor carriers.

At its core, a freight brokerage is a high-speed, volume-focused sales organization. On the customer side, brokers secure freight from shippers through established relationships, negotiated contracts, or competitive spot market bids. On the carrier side, brokers source capacity (trucks) through similar channels: relationships, contracts, or load board postings and competitive spot rate negotiations.

Technology supercharges this process. Digital load boards, API-driven carrier onboarding, and vetting platforms verify authority status, insurance filings, and safety data in seconds. If the system confirms active authority and valid coverage, the load is booked automatically.

This technology means conversation with a dispatcher, let alone the truck driver, is often unnecessary. The crucial human layer that once introduced friction, intuition, and screening has largely been replaced.

Theoretically, this streamlined, frictionless process increases efficiency, lowers costs, and speeds up the supply chain. This model functions well when carriers use professional, safety-conscious drivers and keep up high standards, and when brokers diligently select fleets to move the freight. Regrettably, this ideal scenario is frequently absent.

How Brokers Make Money & The Race to the Bottom

Brokers hold the money. A food distribution company needs a truckload of goods moved from Baltimore, Maryland, to Chicago, Illinois. They agree to pay the freight broker $1,900. The broker finds a carrier that can handle the load and agrees to pay them $1,500.

The broker tracks the truck from pickup to delivery, invoices the shipper, and later pays the carrier. The shipper pays the broker $1,900, then the broker pays the carrier $1,500.

The $400 difference is the broker’s “margin” and is the economic incentive structure of the transaction.

In competitive markets, that margin is constantly under pressure. Shippers push for lower transportation costs. Brokers compete aggressively for volume. As cheap, excess capacity floods the market, as it has in recent years, shipper rate expectations reset downward.

That cheap capacity often comes from trucking companies that exploit drivers with substandard pay, deferred maintenance, recycled operating authorities to dodge scrutiny, and operate with minimal training or regulatory compliance.

Since 2019, the market flooded with non-domiciled CDL holders, significantly increasing capacity. This influx gave brokers a wealth of low-cost options, helping to sustain margins even amid falling costs. These operators dramatically undercut rates, effectively establishing a new, lower pricing floor for the industry.

Corner-cutting competitors offer rock-bottom rates that consistently price out carriers who invest in safety, training, and compliance. The responsible carriers simply cannot compete without eroding their own viability.

Brokers, squeezed by thin margins, gravitate toward the lowest-cost option, despite the safety risks. After all, the lower the cost of the truck, the better the margin.

The Accountability Gap

Brokers don’t drive the truck, but they do choose which carrier hauls the freight. Unsafe carriers stay in business because someone continues to give them freight.

The U.S. Supreme Court is evaluating whether the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA) preempts state negligence claims against brokers for selecting unsafe carriers in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC. A ruling either way will resolve jurisdictional chaos and potentially reshape broker risk exposure when giving freight to questionable carriers.

Meanwhile, the chameleon carrier epidemic is real and rampant. Fraudulent operations shut down one company only to reincarnate with a new name, and the system allows it. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) must step up aggressively to purge bad actors from the system and block re-entry.

Recent FMCSA actions show promise, but fall short of the decisive hammer needed. Under Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy and Administrator Derek Barrs, the agency has ramped up enforcement.

• English-language enforcement was tightened in May 2025.

• In February 2026, the agency finalized stricter limits on non-domiciled CDL issuance and renewal.

• Hundreds of non-compliant “CDL Mills” have been removed from the federal Training Provider Registry.

• Proposed rulemakings target chameleon carriers through identity verification, automated fraud detection, and registration reform.

Securing the Freight Chain

Although many brokers operate with discipline, verify beyond the minimum, and refuse questionable capacity, the system incentivizes speed and price over safety.

Every truck on the road represents a chain of decisions made long before it’s driving on the highway. Shippers are responsible for the partners they use, whether broker or carrier. Brokers are responsible for the carriers to whom they assign freight. Carriers are responsible for the drivers they put behind the wheel and the safety of their equipment. States are responsible for the drivers they certify with a CDL. The FMCSA is responsible for authorizing which carriers get to operate.

Achieving safer highways across our country depends upon shared commitment and accountability from all parties involved: shippers, brokers, carriers, State agencies, and the FMCSA.

As federal judges continue to manufacture—and corporate media regurgitates without a modicum of scrutiny—contempt of court accusations against the Trump Department of Justice, a legitimate example of a federal prosecutor who flouted the law for months is routinely defended by those same reporters and “legal analysts”: the contemptuous misconduct of Special Counsel Jack Smith in the so-called documents case against President Donald Trump.

And while nearly all of the present-day contempt allegations against the Trump DOJ consist of nothing more than paperwork snafus, minor deadline delays, and reasonable errors related to an extensive nationwide deportation operation, Smith’s sustained and intentional violation of an historic court order represents one more reason why he belongs in handcuffs.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over the documents case in southern Florida brought by Smith in 2023, once again reminded the public about the treachery of the special counsel and his team of thugs. Calling Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 to take over two ongoing criminal investigations into the president, an “unconstitutional government actor,” Cannon denied a request made by two leftwing activist groups to release Smith’s “report” on the documents investigation. Cannon described the report as the “unlawful work product” of a prosecutor she disqualified and a federal indictment she dismissed in July 2024.

Detailing a series of actions Smith took after he was disqualified, Cannon called Smith’s continued involvement in the case “a concerning breach of the spirit of the Dismissal Order…if not an outright violation of it.” (As I have reported, Smith signed his name and title on briefs in the case for months leading up to his resignation in Jan. 2025. That sort of thing recently prompted a federal judge to threaten a contempt finding against former acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan in the Eastern District of Virginia, despite the fact the president had nominated Halligan—which was not the case in the Smith appointment.)

Smith’s preparation of the report, Cannon suggested, represented a clear case of contempt. “[Rather] than seek a stay of the [dismissal] Order, or clarification, Special Counsel Smith and his team chose to circumvent it, for months, by taking the discovery generated in this case and compiling it in a final report for transmission to then-Attorney General Garland, to Congress, and then beyond. The Court need not countenance this brazen stratagem or effectively perpetuate the Special Counsel’s breach of this Court’s own order.”

It wasn’t the first time Cannon has blasted Smith for his attempted end-around her order and his effort to make the documents “report” public after the election. Following Trump’s victory, Smith begrudgingly moved to drop the appeal of Cannon’s disqualification order, which was pending at the time, and the separate indictment in Washington related to the events of January 6, he nonetheless pushed to release “reports” on both investigations before Inauguration Day.

Garland released Smith’s J6 report, consisting largely of rehashed allegations covered by the January 6 Select Committee, on January 14, 2025 but a week later, Cannon upheld the release of Smith’s documents report, in large part arguing its publication would have denied the due process of the president and his two co-defendants, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Olivera.

Cannon also slammed Smith and the DOJ for taking such an unprecedented step. “Never before has the Department of Justice, prior to the conclusion of criminal proceedings against a defendant—and absent a litigation-specific reason as appropriate in the case itself— sought to disclose outside the Department a report prepared by a Special Counsel containing substantive and voluminous case information. Until now,” Cannon wrote in blistering order on Jan. 21, 2025. “Prosecutors play a special role in our criminal justice system and are entrusted and expected to do justice. The Department of Justice’s position [in urging the release of the report] has not been faithful to that obligation.”

But two activist groups—American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University—have since stepped in to take up Smith’s fight. The groups are currently asking the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Cannon’s decision barring their involvement as parties in the matter; they are expected to also seek an appeal of her order issued today.

Regardless of the outcome at the appellate court, Cannon’s latest opinion gives House Republicans more fodder to pursue charges against the former special counsel. As I detailed here last month, a long list of misconduct in both cases is enough to support criminal referrals to the DOJ against Smith and at least a few of his henchmen. (A criminal referral against Thomas Windom, one of Smith’s deputies in the J6 case, for contempt of Congress is pending at DOJ.)

And in a bit of good news for a beleaguered DOJ systematically sabotaged by partisan activists on the bench and sitting on both grand and trial juries in blue cities, a case against Smith can be run out of the southern district of Florida rather than in Washington, D.C.. Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Jason Redding Quinones reportedly is working with grand juries in that jurisdiction, including out of the Ft. Pierce courthouse run by Judge Cannon, on conspiracy investigations.

Let’s hope Cannon’s latest opinion helps move that inquiry along.

An horrific crash in Indiana earlier this month brought to the forefront what transportation industry observers warned for years represents an urgent public safety threat on America’s roadways: the proliferation of illegal immigrants and non-English speaking drivers behind the wheel of commercial trucks.

And it’s a danger both President Trump and the Department of Transportation have attempted to address since the early months of the administration—starting with an April 2025 executive order mandating an English-language requirement for commercial motor vehicle drivers—despite interference by one federal court and foot dragging by state licensing agencies.

On February 3, a man from Kyrgyzstan driving a semi-trailer truck crossed into oncoming traffic on State Road 67 near the Ohio border on February 3, killing 50-year-old Henry Eicher, his two sons, Menno (25) and Paul (19), and Simon Gilrod, age 23. All four men were members of the Amish community in Bryant, Indiana.

The driver of the truck, Bekzhan Beishekeev, resides in Philadelphia. He entered the United States in 2023 on the CBP One cell phone app, instituted during the Biden administration, under which nearly one million migrants seeking asylum or “humanitarian” relief crossed the border. (President Trump deactivated the app on his first day in office.)

That deadly collision is the latest in a string of recent high profile wrecks involving illegal immigrant truck drivers; Harjinder Singh, an Indian national here illegally, attempted to perform a U-turn in the middle of the Florida turnpike near Fort Pierce last August, immediately killing three Florida residents traveling in a minivan. Singh subsequently failed an English proficiency test given by investigators after the incident.

From Zero to 200,000 in a Few Years

Both men had obtained what’s called a non-domiciled commercial driver’s license (CDL), which several states issue to foreigners who don’t meet residency requirements but claim various immigration status including asylum. Singh had received a non-domiciled CDL from the state of Washington after flunking the written portion of the test at least ten times, according to reports, and then received an additional CDL from the state of California.

Beishekeev received a non-domiciled CDL from the state of Pennsylvania in 2025, which expired in 2029, a time period longer than it takes to settle most asylum claims. They are currently in ICE custody facing criminal charges and deportation.

“The recent tragic crash in Indiana, which claimed the lives of four innocent individuals, was entirely preventable,” Shannon Everett, co-founder of American Trucker United, told me. “These drivers often lack adequate training, qualification, or thorough vetting under federal standards. Every day that such non-compliant operations are permitted on America’s roadways increases the risk of further devastating incidents and the tragic loss of American families.”

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), a sub-agency under the Department of Transportation tasked with overseeing trucking safety standards, estimates 200,000 non-domiciled CDLs are in active circulation. (Some states do not track the number of non-domiciled CDLs issued; FMCSA filed a proposal last month that would require all states to “retain all documents involved in the licensing process for non-domiciled CLP and CDL holders for a period of no less than two years.”)

While the initial purpose of a non-domiciled CDL was to allow a U.S. resident with a CDL in one state to apply for a license in another state, several states started extending the offer to foreigners. “This licensing category expanded to include non-U.S. residents, sometimes without proper work permits,” Craig Fuller, the CEO of FreightWaves, a trucking industry data company, wrote in October 2025. “This evolution went beyond the original intent, creating a situation in which licenses were issued to individuals who may not have met all legal requirements for employment in the United States.”

An investigative report based on open records requests to all 50 states by Overdrive, a trucking watchdog website, supports those findings. Every state showed an increase, and in some cases dramatic, in the issuance of non-domiciled CDLs. For example, all of the 1,403 non-domiciled CDLs issued by the state of Indiana in 2025 went to non-U.S. citizens. In Oregon, only 11 non-domiciled CDLs were issued in 2020 but that number rose to 382 in 2024.

FMCSA regulations require a non-domiciled CDL seeker to present an unexpired employment authorization document (EAD) issued by the United States Customs and Immigration Service or an unexpired foreign passport accompanied by an approved I-94 form. Written tests in many states are given in both English and Spanish, however, the field test is federally mandated to be performed in English only. For example, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the licensing agency in that state, offers the written test in both English and Spanish and prohibits the use of interpreters during the driving portion of the exam.

But a multi-state operation last month led by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy removed from the road at least 500 truckers over a three-day period who failed field proficiency tests, raising questions as to whether states are even following their own rules. Social media videos regularly show truck drivers struggling to understand basic questions from police officers and fellow truckers.

And state licensing agencies are notorious for corruption; last year, law enforcement authorities in Florida exposed a bribery ring that caught DMV employees accepting cash from illegal immigrants in exchange for both commercial and passenger driver’s licenses without taking required tests over a two-year period. The operation involved at least $120,000 in bribes paid to brokers and the DMV employees, who then issued “hundreds, if not at least a thousand” unlawful licenses, Bay County Sheriff Tommy Ford said during a June 2025 press conference announcing the bust. “Putting untested, unqualified drivers, especially those with commercial licenses, on our roads is an unacceptable risk to every family in this state,” Ford said.

Some States and DC Appellate Court Fight to Keep the Status Quo

In response to rising concerns over illegals obtaining CDLs, particularly in the aftermath of the Biden administration’s open border policies, Duffy announced a nationwide “compliance” audit in June 2025. Duffy tasked FMCSA with “[examining] state procedures for issuing non-domiciled CDLs to identify and stop any patterns of abuse and ensure federal standards are being met across the country.”

The results of the audit determined that several states including California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, and Washington were violating federal law in issuing non-domiciled CDLs; Duffy threatened to withhold federal highway funds for states that refused to come into compliance. The state of California—where an illegal truck driver from India caused a major pile up on a San Bernardino freeway last October, killing three innocents—revoked 17,000 non domiciled CDLs in response to Duffy’s threat.

Duffy announced this week that an audit of the Illinois Secretary of State’s office revealed that at least 20% of all non-domiciled CLDs were issued unlawfully. CDL seekers did not furnish the required documents and some SOS employees issued CDLs that extended beyond the immigrant’s documented work authorization (to the extent those papers were legit.) Illinois has 30 days to come into compliance or risk the loss of $126 million in federal highway funds. Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias indicated in a statement that he will challenge the findings.

Duffy also narrowed the category of immigrant workers eligible to receive non domiciled CDLs. In September, he issued an emergency interim final rule in that permitted non-domiciled CDLs only for those holding H-2A agricultural worker visas, H-2B temporary non-agricultural worker visas, or E-2 treaty investor visas. “This interim final rule closes gaps in how states issue CLPs and CDLs to individuals from outside of the United States. It tightens eligibility, strengthens safeguards, and makes clear when these licenses must be canceled or revoked, delivering a more secure system and safer roads for all Americans,” Duffy said in his announcement.

A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, put a hold on Duffy’s proposal in November in response to a petition for review filed by two public employee unions and a DACA owner-operator. While two Democratic appointees downplayed the risks posed by non-domiciled CDL holders, Judge Karen Henderson, appointed by George W. Bush, (a frequent critic of the Trump administration), strongly disagreed with her colleagues’ view. “It should go without saying that our Nation’s roadways are safer the fewer people there are operating eighteen-wheelers, buses and delivery trucks with unchecked driving histories,” Henderson wrote in her dissent. “FMCSA also backed that common-sense proposition with facts, citing five recent fatal crashes caused by foreign-domiciled CDL licensed drivers—three of whom had previously received citations for speeding or failing to obey traffic signals and another who had failed his initial CDL-skills test for similar offenses.”

One can only wonder whether the lives of Henry Eicher, his two sons, and Simon Gilrod would have been spared had the court not intervened to stop immediate implementation of Duffy’s rule.

Regardless, on February 11, Duffy issued a final rule after following the required public comment period, which resulted in at least 8,000 responses. “This rule will ensure no unqualified foreign drivers are able to get a license and operate a big rig — full stop. Now this piece of the puzzle has been addressed, our efforts to crackdown on bad actors, fraudulent carriers, and sham licensing schools that threaten the safety of our roads will only intensify from here,” a DOT spokesman told me via email. It could result in the revocation of nearly all of the estimated 200,000 non-domiciled CDLs in circulation. Absent litigation, which some state officials are already threatening, the rule goes into effect on March 16.

On February 3, Indiana State Police responded to a collision involving a semi-truck bearing a triangular logo. The driver, 30-year-old Bekzhan Beishekeev of Philadelphia, swerved instead of braking, crossed into oncoming traffic, and struck a Chevrolet van head-on.

The van was driven by Donald Stipp, 55, of Portland. With him were members of Bryant, Indiana’s Amish community: Henry Eicher, 50; his sons Menno, 25, and Paul, 19; and a family friend, Simon Girod, 23.

Henry, Menno, and Paul were pronounced dead at the scene. Simon died later at the hospital.

Dash cam footage:

The crash was not random but rather the tragic result of a regulatory structure that allows trucking companies to create new identities on demand, separating themselves from past safety performance while continuing to operate. In the industry, they are known as chameleon carriers.

Chameleon carriers collapse under various forms of oversight—enforcement actions, lawsuits, fraud allegations—then reopen under a different company name and a new U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) number. The USDOT identifier is supposed to tie a company to its inspection, insurance, and crash history. When the identifier changes but the operation does not, accountability and oversight dissolve.

If that sounds like corporate identity theft, it is. And this is a textbook case of it.

Following the Logo on the Truck

Photos from the Indiana crash showed a semi-truck bearing a distinctive triangular logo. To the average viewer, it was just another gray semi-truck. To those who closely track safety and compliance in the trucking industry, the logo was immediately recognizable.

The symbol has surfaced repeatedly across a cluster of carriers that are legally separate yet appear to function as one. Determining which company controlled the truck should have been simple, but it wasn’t. When a company operates under multiple USDOT authorities, everything becomes complex.

The logo leads to Sam Express Inc. of Palatine, Illinois. Federal filings name Saipidin Tutashov as the primary officer.

Connected entities include Tutash Express Inc., Tutash Express 1 LLC, KG Line Group, AJ Partners LLC, and others. Officer listings across them repeat: Tutashov. Zhalaldin Uulu. Musaev. Murzapazylov. Arystankulov. In response to online posts by myself and others related to this network, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced a formal investigation into AJ Partners and these related entities.

Sam Express’s public materials display Kyrgyzstan’s country code, +996, alongside American and Kyrgyz flags.

The driver in the Indiana crash, Bekzhan Beishekeev, is also Kyrgyz. He crossed the U.S. border in 2023 using the Biden-created CBP One phone app and received a non-domiciled commercial driver’s license (CDL) from the state of Pennsylvania last year:

At some point, coincidence strains credibility. For clarity, this article refers to the interconnected companies as the KGZ Outfit.

From One Truck to 500

In a recorded interview, the owner recounts coming to the United States as a student and growing the company from a single truck in 2019 to a fleet of more than 500 trucks by 2025. The story is framed as an immigrant success narrative: hard work, growth, and a business built from the ground up.

Growth at that speed is not illegal. But in an industry that, over the last few years, has seen freight rates collapse, thousands of small and mid-sized carriers exit the market, and widespread bankruptcies, rapid expansion on that scale invites trouble and demands intense scrutiny.

Another company video offers further insight into how that growth was sustained regarding driver recruitment: “Drivers from the CIS countries often work harder and push themselves more, and they reach their goals faster than the average American. I’m proud of that.”

Taken together, the videos outline two pillars of the model: fast fleet growth and a defined labor pipeline. What sounds celebratory also reveals the stress behind it. In this industry, pushing harder often becomes extended duty time, narrower safety buffers, and compliance programs stretched to their limits.

Combine that with equipment, authorities, and liability quietly rotating behind the curtain, and the risk is no longer abstract. It materializes on public roadways.

A Network Built to Shift Risk

Federal registration data shows how closely the KGZ Outfit companies are linked.

AJ Partners LLC shares 127 VINs with Tutash Express Inc. The same trucks were inspected under different carriers 127 times. Many of those VINs also appear under KG Line Group.

Image from SearchCarriers.com

Image by SearchCarriers.com

A review of the network’s history shows the public safety hazard posed by their presence on the road. Out of 2,775 inspections, AJ Partners received 1,454 violations and 414 out-of-service orders. Drivers were involved in 80 crashes. Those figures exceed national averages for both vehicle and driver out-of-service rates.

Images from SearchCarriers.com

Inspectors also documented 50 instances in which drivers were removed from service for failing to meet English-language requirements.

• Tutash — 12

• KG Line Group — 2

• AJ Partners — 9

• Bitsharp Corporation — 17

• Globe Transportation — 10

Image from SearchCarriers.com

Also of concern, and something that should catch the eye of federal investigators, is that several companies report their headquarters at residential properties. KG Line Group, for example, lists a single-family home in suburban Illinois while claiming hundreds of trucks and drivers.

For an operation of that size, regulators expect the personnel machinery of compliance to be in place; that would include employees tasked with records management, maintenance oversight, insurance coordination, and people available to receive regulators and/or attorneys upon arrival.

A private residence does not automatically mean wrongdoing; in fact, many small carriers legitimately run one or two trucks from home. However, with hundreds of trucks, the address can indicate a gap between what is on paper and what is in practice.

All of this comes from public FMCSA data. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), the agency that regulates interstate trucking, maintains a public database of carrier registrations, inspections, crashes, and enforcement actions that the industry relies on to measure safety and legality. Taken together, the record shows repeated warning signs that went unaddressed.

What Sam Express Says

In Sam Express’s promotional material on YouTube, a company far removed from what appears in federal records is on display. (The company’s YouTube videos were made private following the crash.)

By its own description, Sam Express Inc. is driver-first, built by people who “lived the driver’s life,” grounded in respect and transparency. The video shows showers, halal meals, hotel-style rooms, lounges, and even a gym. The promise is more than employment, it’s a route to the American dream!

“That’s why our mission has always been simple. Take care of our drivers the way no one else did for us. … We treat our drivers like family… we stand beside our drivers, offering real support and clear opportunities for growth.”

Those claims are designed to build trust, to attract more drivers. But when that narrative is placed alongside federal data and court filings, the contrast is stark.

Current Litigation Tells More of the Story

Months before the crash, companies tied to Sam Express Inc. were named in a federal civil action in the Northern District of Illinois. This case is not built around a tragic accident but raises the question of whether companies presented as separate businesses operated as a single enterprise, controlling drivers like employees while classifying them as independent contractors on paper.

The complaint alleges the enterprise rotated drivers and equipment among multiple USDOT authorities, including Tutash Express, Inc., and KG Line Incorporated. This is the chameleon carrier framework described earlier, which allows operations to continue while reducing scrutiny, avoiding blacklists, and limiting exposure to liability.

Sam Express recruits drivers with familiar promises: high pay percentages, dispatch support, compliant operations, and valid insurance coverage. The plaintiff says he was promised 88% of the revenue from each load he hauled. According to the lawsuit, however, the documents needed to confirm that pay was never provided.

Federal Truth in Leasing regulations require transparency in these arrangements. When compensation is tied to a percentage, the driver must be able to verify the figures used to calculate pay, typically by accessing rate confirmations or comparable freight documentation.

Without those documents, a driver has no independent way to determine what a shipment actually paid or whether the promised percentage was honored. The entire compensation system rests on information controlled by the trucking company.

Despite that, the complaint says deductions continued to appear in weekly settlements. Charges were taken for fuel, insurance, dispatch services, repairs, and electronic logging systems. The driver alleges that many of these amounts were withheld without the required receipts or supporting documentation under federal rules.

One example cited in the filing involves approximately $14,000 in fuel deductions over roughly seven weeks. Based on the mileage reportedly driven and average diesel prices during that period, the totals do not align with what the truck could reasonably have consumed.

Labor advocates, regulators, and attorneys say conflicts like this surface repeatedly in parts of the industry. They argue that some 1099 drivers can become responsible for layers of expenses that steadily shrink, and, in some cases, overwhelm expected earnings, particularly when the company maintains strict control over the underlying revenue records.

Another core allegation addresses how trucks and drivers moved through the web of companies. The complaint says drivers were moved between operating authorities, with loads dispatched under one carrier while insurance policies and electronic logs were tied to another.

According to the filing, drivers were not always sure which company they were legally working for at any given time or whether the coverage they were paying for would hold if a crash happened. The trucks, however, kept moving.

Insurance is the last barrier between a wreck and financial devastation. The lawsuit contends those policies, funded through driver deductions, could be disputed or denied if the vehicle operated outside the authority named on the paperwork.

If proven, the consequences would not stop with the carrier. They would ripple outward to drivers, shippers, and the public sharing the highway.

The lawsuit also targets the integrity of the electronic logging devices, or ELDs, used across this network. ELDs are designed to automatically record when a truck is moving, how long a driver has been behind the wheel, and when mandatory rest breaks occur. Regulators treat them as a primary defense against fatigue, one of the most studied risk factors in serious crashes.

The complaint, however, alleges that back-end access allowed records to be changed. Across the trucking industry, safety officials have long warned that digital logs can be manipulated. From resetting hours to give the driver a fresh shift, to adding a co-driver who is not actually in the cab. On paper, everything looks compliant, even as illegal driving continues.

Set beside the company video referenced earlier, in which an owner of Sam Express, Inc. praised drivers for pushing harder and reaching goals faster, the allegation prompts a broader question. When companies celebrate speed and long hours, what happens to public safety if the federal rules meant to protect it are blatantly ignored?

When legal notices needed to be served, process servers reportedly ran into trouble. Some addresses led to empty offices. At others, no one seemed certain who was responsible. Service failed for multiple defendants. By itself, that may prove little.

Placed within the larger pattern alleged in the case, it’s familiar. Available to haul freight, harder to pin down when accountability arrives.

Network of Companies, Network of Issues

Foreign-born drivers are not the sole issue, nor is where a CDL is issued. International recruiting is legal, and nearly one in five U.S. drivers was born abroad. But when overseas hiring appears beside shared trucks, rotating authorities, revoked carriers logging miles, high out-of-service scores, and a rising crash count, coincidence becomes a difficult defense.

When a federal system allows companies like Sam Express to operate as they do, tragedies like Jay County become much more likely.

By the time of the crash, the red flags on this operation were clearly visible.

Four people died anyway. They didn’t need to understand trucking regulations to be affected by them. They didn’t need to know what a DOT number was or how chameleon carriers operate.

They only needed the system designed to protect them to work.

It did not.

Some federal lawmakers also want to investigate chameleon carriers. Here is Wyoming Representative Harrier Hageman last week:

After nearly one year of trying every trick in the judicial book including threats to hold Trump officials in contempt, Judge James Boasberg finally did it; he officially ordered the return of Venezuelan nationals deported last year.

On Thursday morning, Boasberg, the Obama-appointed chief judge of the D.C. district court, issued another opinion filled with loathing for the Department of Justice mixed with sympathy for the 137 Venezuelans who were flown out of the country pursuant to President Trump’s Alien Enemies Act. The men, here illegally, also were accused of ties to Tren de Aragua, a multi-national crime racket now designated a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration.

Accusing the Trump administration of telling him to “pound sand” related to his nonstop barrage of unreasonable demands to get the illegals back on American soil, Boasberg, who has acted as illegal Venezuelans’ personal guardian since the case first hit his docket on March 15, 2025, directed the government to provide for the physical return of those who currently reside in a third party country and to arrange remote hearings for those still in Venezuela so they can begin habeas proceedings. (The illegals were first sent to El Salvador for processing then flown to Venezuela. During a court hearing on Monday, the ACLU, which is representing the illegals in this case and several AEA lawsuits, informed the judge that some of their “clients” had left Venezuela.)

And Boasberg wants taxpayers to pay for it all.

A Hot Towel and Champagne Before We Take Off, Sir?

“[Mindful] of the flagrancy of the Government’s violations of the deportees’ due-process rights that landed [the illegal Venezuelans] in this situation, the Court refuses to let them languish in the solution-less mire Defendants propose,” Boasberg wrote in response to the administration’s level headed arguments against their return including the judicial branch’s overstepping into foreign affairs. “In other words, it is up to the Government to remedy the wrong that it perpetrated here and to provide a means for doing so. Were it otherwise, the Government could simply remove people from the United States without providing any process and then, once they were in a foreign country, deny them any right to return for a hearing or opportunity to present their case from abroad.”

Of course, the “right to return” not only is silly judicial gobbledygook—Boasberg routinely cites the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland papa “wrongly” deported to El Salvador, his home country, but was not removed under the Alien Enemies Act—those imaginary “rights” come with a price tag for American taxpayers. During a hearing on the matter Monday morning, Boasberg asked Lee Gelernt, the ACLU attorney representing the illegals, if he “would request a government plane” to return them. (I covered the hearing here on X.)

While not giving a direct answer, Gelernt unequivocally stated that “if they do come back, the government should pay for it.” His “clients” want to return to the U.S., Gelernt further claimed, “to clear their name.” Boasberg also advised Gelernt to force the government to prove the deportees were indeed members of TdA when they were removed, even mocking the idea that TdA gang members don’t have tattoos—an identifier the Trump administration routinely cites in filings as proof of membership.

To that end, and per usual, Boasberg gave Gelernt everything he wanted. By the end of the month, Gelernt must inform the court as to “the number of [illegal Venezuelans] who wish to travel independently to a U.S. port of entry or who wish to be flown from a third country to the United States for their court proceedings.” (They will be detained upon arrival, Boasberg said, although petitions for release undoubtedly are already in the works.) Forcing the government (U.S. taxpayers) to pay for their travel represented a “reasonable request,” Boasberg concluded. “It is unclear why [the illegal Venezuelans] should bear the financial cost of their return in such an instance.”

Might one suggest the well-funded ACLU, with $26 million in assets, foot the bill instead? Alternatively, the illegals could establish GoFundMe accounts similar to Abrego Garcia, who has raised $280,000 so far.

What Will a TdA Reunion in U.S. Custody Look Like?

In a rare moment of clarity, Boasberg acknowledged that “the situation in Venezuela remains in flux” and admitted that returning anyone still there would be nearly impossible—but nonetheless will permit those remaining in Venezuela to file another pleading “to show that the Proclamation under which they were deported unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act and/or that they are not members of Tren del Aragua and thus not subject to the Proclamation.” Remote hearings, Boasberg noted, will be the next step with “logistics of such hearings…determined at a future date.” One can only imagine what that will look like.

And in a full circle moment, Boasberg set a March 13 deadline for the DOJ to file a report “explaining how and when it will transport any Plaintiff seeking return to the United States from a third country. In that Status Report, the Government shall also inform the Court as to the feasibility of returning Plaintiffs still in Venezuela who wish to return for their proceeding.”

That date is two days shy of the one-year anniversary of Boasberg’s “return the planes” moment on the evening of March 15, 2025—an oral order that Boasberg insists to this day represents the Trump administration’s defiance of his wishes. Judge Boasberg will go to any extreme at any cost, including to American taxpayers, to win this fight against a president and a DOJ he despises.

The DOJ is expected, and warned as much in its latest filing, to ask Boasberg to put a hold on his own order pending appeal. (He won’t.) That leaves the DOJ to make yet another trip to the D.C. Circuit Court, which has already reversed Boasberg at least twice, to seek relief from Boasberg’s increasingly dangerous and costly grudge match.

Meanwhile, barely a peep from Republicans on moving forward with impeachment.

Since I, presumably like many of you, am not watching the Super Bowl, I thought it would be a good time for a new Bits and Pieces column, which is long overdue!

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