Last year, the international sports world sat on edge for weeks waiting for Alexander Ovechkin, captain of the Washington Nationals professional hockey team, to surpass the all-time scoring record held for 26 years by Wayne Gretzky, nicknamed “The Great One.” When Ovechkin scored his 895th goal on April 6, 2025, hockey fans and sports enthusiasts around the world cheered the Russian’s history-making achievement; the National Hockey League proclaimed in a social media post the “passing of the torch” from Ovechkin to Gretzky, a consummate gentleman and sportsman who had attended the game to watch the moment in real time.

Commentators did not question whether Ovechkin should have received such glowing accolades as his homeland continued to attack Ukraine in a conflict Russia initiated in 2022. Competitors and teammates did not refuse to shake his hand over the war—or over his personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he calls “my president.” (Ovechkin’s Instagram profile photo is of himself and Putin.) To the contrary, athletes and celebrities fawned over Ovechkin’s feat in a video montage. “I’m very happy for you,” said tennis great Roger Federer, who won the men’s Roland Garros title in 2009. “I hope you can hold the record forever.”

There is no indication, however, that Federer has offered a word of congratulations to Mirra Andreeva, the Russian teenager who won the women’s title at Roland Garros last weekend. Not only was Andreeva, 19, denied anything close to the Ovechkin treatment by her colleagues, celebrities, and the sports media, she was snubbed by her Ukrainian competitors and tournament organizers in general.

Sniping over the war proved as problematic for the prestigious two-week tournament, considered one of the four “Grand Slams” in tennis, as the withdrawal of fan favorite Carlos Alcarez and the early exit by top-ranked men’s player Jannik Sinner—and the tension appears contained to the women’s side since seven of the top 20 women’s players are of either Russian or Ukrainian descent. (I can’t find any evidence of men tennis players refusing to shake the hand of Russia’s Danill Medvedev, the 8th ranked men’s player in the world.)

It represents an ongoing cat fight that has no place in professional sports.

And How Exactly Will This End the War?

Following a policy enacted by each professional tennis organization shortly after the start of the war in 2022, the Russian flag could not be displayed next to the name of Russian players, including Belarus-born Aryna Sabalenka, the world’s number one women’s player, during any Roland Garros broadcast. (This is true of every televised tennis tournament.) Displaying the Russian flag is verboten on professional tennis websites; during Andreeva’s trophy-winning match at Court Philippe-Chatrier in Paris on Saturday, stadium officials seized Russian flags being waved by a few spectators.

After her decisive victory, the French Tennis Federation refused to play Andreeva’s national anthem, a tradition at Roland Garros, to honor the Russian’s achievement. (She is the first teen to win the tournament since Monica Seles in 1992.) And so far, Novak Djokovic and Maria Sharapova are the only tennis greats on record praising Andreeva’s win.

Unfortunately, antics by Ukrainian players continue to threaten the watchability of what is currently one of the most exciting periods in the sport, especially for women players. There is nothing wrong—in fact, it’s entirely appropriate—for an athlete to use his or her stardom to advance a political viewpoint or defend their homeland off the court: donate their winnings, meet with officials in their own government, visit front-line fighters, produce ads blasting the bad guys, plead for peace. All good.

What’s wholly inappropriate is an athlete personally attacking competitors whose only tie to the war is their place of birth. Take, for example, comments made on May 27 by Oleksandra Oliynykova, who suggested Russian-born players are Putin propagandists. (She sounds like a Democratic member of Congress!):

Time for a Warning From the Chair for Unsportsmanlike Conduct

One of the worst offenders is Marta Kostyuk, the Ukrainian-born world ranked #12 who currently lives in Monte Carlo. Similar to Oliynkova, Kostyuk just accused Russian players of aiding the war:

She refuses to shake the hand, another tennis tradition, of any player tied to Russia after a match. After Andreeva beat her in the Roland Garros semi-finals on June 4, Kostyuk walked off the court without acknowledging her opponent.

Kostyuk did the same in Brisbane earlier this year after she beat Andreeva.

In 2022, shortly after the war began, Kostyuk suggested she wanted to “physically” harm her Russian competitors:

The current eight-ranked women’s player in the world, Elina Svitolina, also of Ukraine, is helping fuel the controversy. Svitolina, who also refuses to shake the hands of her Russian opponents, had this to say:

All the drama recently forced Sabalenka, perhaps the most popular player on the tour, to defend herself:

So, what gives? The generous explanation is that Ukrainian (women) players truly want to use their platform to denounce a war with no end in sight. The more sinister explanation is these same players are using the conflict to get into the heads of their fiercest competitors, put Russian players (and others) on the defensive, and poison public sentiment against popular players.

Whatever the case—each tennis organization and tournament should put an end to such antics before the general public switches off. At least the women’s matches.

President Trump ended a testy (is there any other type?) interview this weekend with Kristen Welker, the host of NBC News’ '“Meet the Press.” The pair clashed over the prosecution of January 6 protesters and whether any or all are entitled to some form of restitution for being politically targeted by Joe Biden’s Department of Justice for four years. Last week, Senate leaders again reiterated their opposition to the “anti-weaponization” fund announced by the administration in May; Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters the fund is “off the table.”

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Sympathy poured in from all corners of the press and social media Thursday on behalf of E. Jean Carroll, the crazy woman who accused the president of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s. (I won’t get into the details of her alleged account or her successful lawsuits but plenty on the public record for those interested or uninformed.)

Last night, CNN posted an “exclusive” report claiming Carroll is the subject of a Department of Justice investigation based out of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois (Chicago) office. “The investigation is focused on whether Carroll committed perjury in testimony tied to her two civil lawsuits against the president,” three CNN reporters wrote in a May 27 article. “Prosecutors’ theory hinges on a 2022 deposition statement by Carroll, 82, that she received no outside funding for her lawsuit, though it was later revealed that billionaire Reid Hoffman had paid some legal fees and expenses.” The reporters further claimed that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche recused himself from the matter since he had handled appeals related to the Carroll case.

CNN’s claims immediately spread like a Karen Bass-style California wildfire on X-verse and cable news. Roger Parloff, a legal analyst for Lawfare blog, run by Trump hater and James Comey whisperer Ben Wittes, lamented the cruelty of it all. “Doesn’t get worse than this. DOJ probes 82 yo who is enemy & adjudicated victim of Trump,” Parloff posted on Thursday morning. Never mind that President Trump was indicted twice at age 77 by the Biden DOJ and, had Parloff gotten his way and the president had lost the election, he very well could have been imprisoned at age 80 on Jack Smith’s J6 indictment.

Every major news organization followed hot on CNN’s trail. The New York Times described the investigation into Carroll as “the latest chapter in Mr. Trump’s retribution campaign, which has been carried out by Justice Department officials.” ABC News, Reuters, Time magazine (yes, it’s still around), the Associated Press, “Good Morning America,” and local Chicago press diligently regurgitated the reporting. Democratic lawmakers and their influencers pack piled on:

The most gullible and eager NeverTrumper also preached about the injustice of it all:

Even Mark Zaid, the Disney-loving attorney who imagines a crime in every Trump move, defended Carroll:

You get the drift.

But on Thursday evening, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros shot down those claims:

Boutros, a Trump appointee, made for an easy target of the anti-Trump machine. He has been the subject of recent media fire for his office’s handling of the so-called “Broadview Six” case brought against several anti-ICE protesters last year. Although the investigation was apparently mishandled by a longtime DOJ prosecutor who quickly left the office post-indictment and then detailed to the Democratic side of the Senate Judiciary Committee (and just fired for her role in the questionable grand jury proceedings called out by a Chicago judge as I posted here), the media is making Boutros the fall guy. (In response to what he’s uncovered at his office, Boutros this week announced a series of reforms.)

After Boutros’ statement, the media backtracked. Turns out, the investigation is targeting longtime Trump nemesis Reid Hoffman—the billionaire founder of LinkedIn and funder of several anti-Trump causes—who bankrolled Carroll’s lawsuits to the tune of $7 million. His “nonprofit,” as the media generously describes it, is based in Chicago. CNBC reported Hoffman is the subject of a money-laundering operation.

CBS News best demonstrated the change in tone of the inquiry, as I posted here:

‘Some” of her legal expenses?? Hoffman has boasted about his funding of the case:

And Carroll, once again, blamed her faulty memory for the “oversight” of Hoffman’s financial backing:

So what to make of this media op? A set up by the DOJ to smoke out leakers? A coordinated effort to redirect attention away from Hoffman, a generous benefactor to the lawfare against the president, and immediately discredit the investigation by claiming it’s aimed at one of Trump’s “perceived enemies?” Just another example of a dangerous and dishonest echo chamber not just to damage the DOJ but contribute to what we know is ongoing jury nullification in big cities?

Further, this is not to say Carroll’s false statements are not under review by another jurisdiction. Even an all-Democratic appellate panel in 2024 acknowledged her “misstatements” but determined they were irrelevant. (Opinion here.)

As we await more developments, this onslaught is yet another example of the media’s complicity and corruption.

As usual, it took less than a hot minute before some of the biggest promoters of the January 6 “insurrection” narrative began blowharding about the newly-created “anti-weaponization fund” for victims of government abuses, including hundreds of January 6 defendants.

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This week Democrats and their conjugal media chorus are loudly criticizing President Donald J. Trump’s plan for a $1.7 billion fund to compensate victims of Biden-era lawfare. They’re calling it a “vast political slush fund” in reliably liberal outrage organs like the New York Times.

Full disclosure: Our family is first in line:

(https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5887557-anti-weaponization-fund-criticized/amp/)

But let me get this straight. When the U.S. Department of Treasury quietly cut big checks from the federal Judgment Fund to Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, two FBI bureaucrats who conspired to destroy an elected president by working a hoax they knew was false, that was fine. Strzok and his mistress strolled away with a combined two million taxpayer dollars in settlement.

This was not unique. President Obama paid Iran’s ayatollahs $1.7 billion in cash out of the same Fund and paved their path to The Bomb. Washington won’t even tell taxpayers how much President Biden paid Dr. Rick Bright, a disgruntled HHS employee who undermined the Trump team’s Covid response, constantly leaked to the press, then cried retaliation when he was fired for it.

But when actual victims - Trump supporters whose lives were torched by Strzok, Page and other weaponized feds - might finally see a dime, suddenly it’s an ethical crisis? I am physically incapable of rolling my eyes enough.

The loudest faultfinders are the same geniuses who shrugged while families lost homes, savings were sacrificed to lawyers, kids got bullied out of school, and divorces and suicide attempts and stress-triggered cancers ravaged people who dared support Donald Trump. Some of the critics hilariously identify as journalists.

My Racket News piece from December 2024 laid it out: careers ruined, businesses destroyed, families ruined, one colleague dead from the “Crossfire Hurricane plague.” That wasn’t a conspiracy theory; that was reality for hundreds of us.

Sure, Strzok and Page spent their time playing hide the salami at work in the FBI headquarters, just betraying their spouses. But they also met regularly with other politically weaponized demons in Director Robert Mueller’s seventh floor conference room to plot the ruin of innocent souls - betraying their country.

Now the media howls because President Trump wants to use the same Judgment Fund the Biden administration tapped for its own payouts to cheaters and coup plotters. Suddenly that permanent pot of money is sacred. Funny how that works.

Their hand-wringing gets even more outrageous when you remember the scale. Thousands of Trump supporters - January 6 cases, Mar-a-Lago raid victims, Russiagate targets, public health officials, and more - all destroyed by a bureaucracy clearly weaponized by Democrats. Yet when President Trump suggests maybe, just maybe, some restitution is in order, the same pols and scribes who cheered every leak and every indictment scream “self-dealing!”

This is weak spin, at best. The President himself will not get paid a dime in this scenario. The IRS must issue a public apology for letting a rogue contractor leak his taxes to friendly media. That’s not a slush fund. That’s basic accountability - something the previous administration treated as optional.

The constant critics’ real panic isn’t about taxpayer money, it’s about the possible precedents set here. For one, this ends the bogus Russia Hoax. Once the federal government officially admits the weaponization happened and starts making victims whole, the entire Democrat narrative collapses. You can’t keep pretending Russiagate was legit while writing checks to its casualties.

But here’s an idea to help bring Democrats and their media along with normal Americans on the President’s path of mercy and healing: use this same compensation process to fund desperately needed mental health care for those still suffering from advanced Trump Derangement Syndrome. Now that frequent document releases expose their lying plots and the Trump haters are completely defeated, they deserve mercy, too - and probably heavy medication.

For nine years, across two politically weaponized FBI investigations, our family was destroyed. The details of these attacks are important to us, but a decade into this my girls and I want to focus on the thousands of other families destroyed by criminal Democrats and their conjugal media.

Our message to these families, torn up and alone, survivors of political weaponization: President Trump has real mercy in store, and you and your children are not alone. Join us, apply for restitution and reimbursement today.

A longtime advisor to President Trump, Michael R. Caputo served on the 2016 and 2024 Trump campaigns and as an HHS Assistant Secretary during the COVID response. A recent cancer survivor, he was an original Russiagate target in 2015. The FBI was forced to finally end its investigation of his family in December 2025. They found nothing.

TGIF!

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https://open.substack.com/pub/juliekelly/p/reparations-set-for-j6ers?r=4yy1i&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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Are J6ers on the verge of finally receiving some measure of compensation for enduring years of torment by the Biden Department of Justice? It appears an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service just laid the groundwork to establish restitution fund to make J6ers and others at least partially whole for the life-destroying abuses inflicted by the federal government.

On Monday, the president’s attorneys filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss his lawsuit against the IRS for the unlawful disclosure of Trump’s tax documents to the New York Times in 2019, which resulted in a bombshell Times article just weeks before the 2020 election that claimed the president was a tax scofflaw. An IRS contractor, Charles Littlejohn, was indicted on minor charges in 2023 for stealing and sharing thousands of IRS files to the Times and ProPublica; he was sentenced to five years in prison.

Earlier this year, the president—in addition to Eric Trump and the Trump organization—sued the IRS for $10 billion in damages related to the disclosures. “Mr. Littlejohn’s unlawful disclosure of Plaintiffs’ tax returns and related information to The New York Times and ProPublica caused reputational and financial harm to Plaintiffs and adversely impacted President Trump’s support among voters in the 2020 presidential election,” his attorneys wrote in the lawsuit. They also cited prosecutors in the Littlejohn case, who accused the IRS worker of “[seeking] to influence an election and to reshape our nation’s political discourse and political process.”

Shortly after filing the dismissal notice—since the president in effect represents both the plaintiff and the defendant, no action is needed by the judge according to a footnote in today’s filing—Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the creation of an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” in the amount of $1,766,000,000 in honor of the country’s founding in 1776. “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” Blanche said in a press release. “As part of this settlement, we are setting up a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.” As part of the agreement, the president also will drop administrative claims against the DOJ for damages related to the Russiagate hoax and the 2022 FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.

According to ABC News, a five-member commission will handle claims filed by weaponization victims; four members will be appointed by Blanche. Money will be held in the government’s existing judgement fund.

Relief Finally on the Way, Unprecedented Abuses to be Exposed

The four-year targeting of Americans who protested at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 by Joe Biden and his DOJ represented the largest criminal investigation and prosecution in U.S. history. Nearly 1,600 individuals were hunted down by the FBI, mostly on petty misdemeanor charges. The DOJ’s unprecedented use of a post-Enron accounting fraud statute, 18 USC 1512(c)(2) resulted in felony indictments for more than 300 J6s in June 2024, the Supreme Court ruled the statue had been applied illegally.

Matthew Graves, the Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, charged on average one J6er per day during his reign of terror at the most powerful U.S. Attorney’s office. His prosecutors not only piled on charges against Trump supporters but then sought excessive prison sentences; in fact, their abuses were so brazen that the D.C. appellate court twice overturned sentencing practices pursued by prosecutors related to misdemeanor cases and a sentencing enhancement for those convicted of the unlawful 1512(c)(2) charge.

Judges in Washington worked in lockstep with the Biden DOJ to inflict maximum damage to J6ers and their families. Several nonviolent offenders were nonetheless denied release and held in a special prison in the nation’s capital. Many judges adopted the false language of the Biden DOJ, referring to the events of January 6 as an “insurrection” and imposing terror enhancements usually reserved for legit terrorists not U.S. political protesters. Several judges claimed police officers had been killed that day and insisted protesters attempted to “overthrow democracy” on January 6.

Hundreds of J6ers were sent to federal prisons even on low-level misdemeanors. At least four J6ers committed suicide rather than continue to endure the torture inflicted by the government and the news media.

Never before has the full force of the three branches of government—the January 6 Select Committee played a key role in demonizing J6ers and influencing the jury pool in Washington—collaborated in such an unconstitutional, unlawful, and inhumane way to destroy the lives of so many American citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights.

The president took the first step in attempting to undue the damage by pardoning all but a handful of J6er on his first day in office.

J6ers Applaud the President

“Having lived through political prosecution, persecution, punishment, public vilification, and efforts to silence dissent, I understand firsthand what happens when the weight of government, media narratives, and political hostility converge against ordinary Americans,” Christopher Kuehne, a retired Marine Corps captain and Purple Heart recipient, told me following the announcement of the fund. Kuehne was subjected to an armed FBI raid in February 2021 for his minor participation in Jan. 6; the trauma of the raid caused his pregnant wife, Annette, to miscarry the next day.

“Families were torn apart. Reputations were destroyed. Livelihoods were threatened. The proposed $1.7 billion weaponization fund represents, at a minimum, a start in the right direction toward restoring faith for those who were politically targeted, persecuted, or unfairly punished. This is not about revenge. It is about restoring trust, accountability, and the principles that separate a constitutional republic from systems driven by fear, selective enforcement, and political retaliation.”

Sharon Caldwell, the wife of Thomas Caldwell, another decorated military veteran subjected to a dangerous FBI raid then indicted on nonviolent offenses, told me they are “grateful” to the president for creating the fund. “It could be a creative way to compensate weaponization victims for what they suffered. But, it’s nowhere near enough money to fairly compensate just the J6ers alone for their losses. So many lost everything: savings, homes, businesses, marriages, lives & more. It’s a good start, but more is needed.”

One of two men falsely accused of trying to kill Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick told me that clearing his name in the incident is the most important thing to him.

“I was framed by the FBI from start to finish,” George Tanios, who was held in the D.C. gulag for five months related to the “attack” on Sicknick before the D.C. appellate court overturned Judge Thomas Hogan’s detention order in 2021, told me today. Tanios eventually pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in 2022. “The Biden Administration and the judges that oversaw our cases threw every norm out the window and came at J6er with a heavy hand. It broke just about all of us and killed some. It’s time to remedy this great injustice that was done to so many great Americans. God Bless President Trump and this great Nation.”

FBI raid of Kuehne home:

Perpetrators of the decade-long lawfare against President Trump and the Deep State saboteurs of the current administration are taking their latest sob stories to sympathetic cable news anchors in an orchestrated attempt to accelerate the smear campaign against the Department of Justice, now under the leadership of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

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A political earthquake is hitting California right now—and considering the reaction by both Republicans and Democrats, this tremor lands somewhere near the top of a figurative Richter scale.

Spencer Pratt, whose family lost their home in the Palisades inferno last year, is seeking to unseat first-term Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat with more than 20 years in elective office including in Congress; his sudden ascendancy has shaken Democrats from coast to coast and prompted the GOP to contemplate the earth-shattering prospect of an avowed Republican winning the mayorship of the nation’s second largest city.

Best known for his role in an early 2000s reality TV show where he met wife Heidi Montag, Pratt is using inventive ways to portray the cruel reality faced by most Angelenos on a daily basis. Pratt’s trope-free messaging brings a breath of fresh air to the at least 17,000 homeowners still smoked out by the unprecedented fires and others choking on Los Angeles’ drug, homelessness, and mental health crises. “I’m not a politician,” Pratt wrote on his campaign website. “I’m a husband and father who watched my home burn because the system failed us. We don’t need more government programs. We need common sense, accountability, and a Mayor that shows up for everyone.” He’s even going after massive fraud in the city and the open abuse of animals.

The campaign’s AI-generated advertisements, which immediately go viral, not only represent the stark 30-year age difference and elitism gap between Pratt and Bass but also are the envy of the political world, with copycats undoubtedly studying how to use similar creativity in upcoming national elections. The ads reflect Pratt’s all-or-nothing approach to winning the June 2 non-partisan primary, a strategy that must be embraced by other common sense candidates on the political right if they want to prevail over radical progressives turning many of the country’s biggest cities into disaster zones.

Here are just a few:

Beyond Good Campaign Ads

Pratt is even more candid—and refreshing—on the stump. He speaks like the native Angeleno and father of two young boys that he is, someone heartbroken and fed up with the escalating disintegration of the city he loves. “When people have passion and they care and they have common sense and they have humility to know ‘I don’t know everything,’ but what I do know is all these very smart, successful people in Los Angeles want to get around me, get behind me, and make sure that LA is the number-one city in the world,” Pratt said during a recent CBS News interview. (I posted the interview in full at the end of this piece. After Pratt publicly accused CBS executives of dramatically editing his one-hour interview at Bass’ behest, the network aired the whole thing.)

His Substack offers more detailed criticism of the Bass administration and proposals to undo the damage.

What’s even more enviable, and equally as dangerous to the political establishment’s thinking on both sides of the political aisle that cautions white male candidates on being too tough on women of color, Pratt is pulling no punches against Bass, who is black, and his other top opponent, Nithya Raman, a city councilwoman and self-described democratic socialist of Indian descent who is attacking Bass from the Left.

Pratt confronted both women on their leadership failures and empty promises during a debate last week:

Debate viewers overwhelmingly selected Pratt as the winner, prompting Bass to back out of a mayoral forum hosted later this week by the League of Women Voters. (Oh, the irony!)

Laying Bare California’s ‘Dysfunction’ at the Hands of Progressive Leaders Could Impact Future Races

Pratt’s surge could not come at a more inconvenient time for California Democrats, who are fending off a tough Republican gubernatorial candidate in former TV personality Steve Hilton. As Axios noted post-debate, “[the] two most consequential races in California have devolved into twin spectacles, with years of visible dysfunction hollowing out Democrats’ case for competent leadership.” California, reporter Zachary Basu continued, should represent “the Democratic Party’s proof of concept — a diverse, economically dominant liberal stronghold designed to prove progressive governance could deliver at scale. That vision has unraveled, ground down by an affordability crisis, homelessness, bureaucratic paralysis and a botched response to the worst wildfires in California history.”

If Pratt reaches a run-off—the top two candidates advance to the November general election if no one earns 50 percent of the primary vote—the reverberations will be felt nationwide. Donations will pour into Pratt’s coffers from around the world, likely leading to his position as the immediate front-runner with potential ramifications for both the gubernatorial election and key Congressional races in the Golden State.

And a Pratt victory could impact mayoral races in other blue cities next year. Democratic incumbents are up for re-election in Chicago, San Antonio, Jacksonville, Columbus, and Denver. With the exception of Chicago, few other cities are in worse shape than Los Angeles, however, a straightforward message by an authentic outsider could turn the heads of even the most diehard Democratic voter.

Polymarket now has Pratt with a 30 percent chance of winning, nearly double his standing when he announced in January. Bass is still the odds-on favorite but with Pratt surging and early voting underway, her hold on the lead appears tenuous. A union labor ad, intended to bolster Bass’ fledging campaign, actually amplified Pratt’s message about inefficiency and government corruption in the city, prompting social media mockery.

Desperate to stop Pratt’s momentum, Bass and Raman are of course attempting to demonize him as a Trump sycophant. In mocking Pratt’s description of Los Angeles as a drug-riddled, dirty, and dangerous metropolis, Raman said “this is a MAGA Republican’s idea of what Los Angeles looks like” in the May 7 debate. Those attacks are expected to escalate as Democrats seek a wedge between Pratt and residents of a city that voted for Kamala Harris by a more than 2-1 margin in 2024. (Pratt, for his part, is not shying away from Trump comparisons, even promising to bring back the “golden age” of Los Angeles and demonstrating Trump-like personality traits on the debate stage and in interviews.)

Will it work? Angelenos—and the rest of the anxious political world—will know in about three weeks from now.

CBS News Interview

All-In Podcast Interview

Dr. Eastman, himself a target of lawfare since his representation of President Trump challenging illegality in the 2020 election, is a senior fellow at The Claremont Institute and a former, long-time professor of constitutional law.

The Racketeer Influences and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly known as “RICO,” was passed by Congress in 1970, part of that year’s Organized Crime Control Act. It was designed to reach not just the foot soldiers of organized crime organizations, but the crime bosses themselves.

Although it did that directly by allowing charges to be brought against the leaders of “criminal enterprises,” it also did so indirectly by allowing prosecutors to go after low-level criminals and even drivers, doormen, etc. with threats of hefty, 20-year felony sentences and offers of reduced-sentence plea deals in exchange for turning state’s evidence against the mob bosses.

Such tactics work. Faced with the potential of decades in prison, many “loyal” foot soldiers – particularly those who merely observed rather than engaged in crime – find that the price of continued loyalty is simply too steep. So they sing. They implicate mid-level mobsters, who then sing even more loudly to implicate the bosses. The most famous example of this is the Five Families case in New York in the 1980s, prosecuted by then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani, which led to the conviction and imprisonment of several top Mafia bosses.

The mob bosses didn’t take too kindly to foot soldiers who sang, however, and many of those who auditioned by singing for reduced sentences ended up “swimming with the fishes.” So in 1982, a new statute was passed, imposing severe, 20- or 30-year criminal penalties for witness intimidation. That statute is codified at 18 U.S.C. § 1512. Following the Enron scandal, the statute was amended in 2002, adding subsection (c), which imposes criminal liability on “whoever corruptly … alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding.” The crimes covered by subsection (c) carry the same 20-year prison sentence that is applicable to the witness intimidation prohibited in the prior subsections of the statute.

Twenty years is a hefty sentence, and it should provide prosecutors with ample leverage to apply to get a lot of low-level operatives of nationwide conspiracies to start singing and exposing the leaders of the conspiracies. Moreover, unlike RICO, ex ante proof of a criminal enterprise would not be required.

Unlike Biden DOJ’s (Unlawful) Use of 1512, Trump DOJ Has Plenty of Evidence to Support 1512 Charges

Think about how 1512(c) might have been (and still might be) used against the “Russia, Russia, Russia” hoax scandal from the 2016 election. Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty to one count of making a false statement and received a sentence of only one year probation and no prison time. But his false statement was based on his altering a document that was used to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page, an advisor to the Trump campaign that year. In other words, he “corruptly… alter[ed] … a … document … with the intent to impair the [document’s] integrity or availability for use in [the] official proceeding” before the FISA Court. 1512(c) is directly applicable, and one can only imagine how willing Mr. Clinesmith might have been to trade a potential 20-year felony sentence for exposing the scope of the conspiracy that is only now getting exposed.

Or how about using 1512(c) to target whomever was responsible for hiding classified and sensitive investigative records from Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s efforts to target President Trump in burn bags which were then placed in obscure rooms, apparently to prevent their discovery, as the House Judiciary Committee recently disclosed. “Corruptly … concealed,” seems to be the case. Indict for that 20-year felony, and whoever concealed those documents will likely have a lot to say about why that was done, and at who’s request.

Then there is the 2020 election controversy itself, and lots of potential uses of 1512(c) to begin rolling up the chorus of singers in that case such as files deleted in Georgia that would expose the duplication and counting of ballots. Software upgrades in Colorado that destroyed election records in that state long before federal law permitted (and the exposing of which Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was convicted and egregiously sentenced to nine years in prison despite being a whistleblower for that federal crime).

Or just recently, the disclosure by investigative reporter John Solomon that the 20,000 or so phony, Chinese-made driver’s licenses seized upon entering the country at O’Hare airport have been destroyed, likely in an attempt to prevent that documentary evidence from being used to charge the document destroyers with a 20-year felony—a huge inducement to squeal about the election fraud purpose of those phony drivers licenses and who orchestrated it.

Another recent scam likely fits under the 1512(c) umbrella as well. Just last week, Senator Joni Ernst exposed internal documents from the Small Business Administration depicting that SBA employees allegedly used a code word—Benghazi—to hide the fact that the SBA was illegally providing Covid Paycheck Protection Program grants to Planned Parenthood affiliates who were ineligible to receive such funds. In other words, “corruptly … concealed” the true recipients of the grants.

The common thread for all of these examples is just that – a thread. A proverbial loose thread that, if pulled, can unravel the entire sweater or, in these cases, the entire conspiracy.

The Department of Justice and its U.S. Attorneys across the nation should start with the low-level folks who altered, destroyed, or concealed the relevant documents. Indict them under 1512(c) and its potential 20-year prison sentence, and then be ready for all the information that they will undoubtedly and quickly be willing to offer up, implicating the more senior culprits in the several criminal conspiracies. That’s how Rudy Giuliani successfully prosecuted those mob bosses in New York nearly half a century ago using RICO. Section 1512(c) is the new RICO. Time to deploy it against the lawfare, election illegality, and other nationwide conspiracies that have targeted President Trump and his supporters in their efforts to Make American Great Again.

JP Cooney may not be a household name, but it should be. While other names—Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, Lisa Monaco, Jack Smith—top the list of better-known abusers of the law to try to destroy President Trump and the MAGA movement, Cooney’s prissy fingerprints stretch all the way from Mueller’s special counsel team and numerous investigations under the Biden DOJ to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s J6 indictment against the president.

Here is just one example of what a little worm (snake?) he is:

Cooney recently admitted he plans to help lead the effort to impeach the president if he’s elected in the newly-drawn 7th Congressional district in Virginia. (Odds are against higher courts maintaining the map.)

More here on Cooney and two other anti-Trump prosecutors running for Congress in my latest for Real Clear Investigations.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2026/05/05/from_doj_to_ballot_box_the_rise_of_lawfare_candidates_1180641.html

Criminal investigations are popping up like tulips all over MAGAland—and the developments are as welcome as the warmer weather and longer stretches of daylight.

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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.