American towns, big and small, are once again besieged by “No Kings” rallies this weekend. With days to go before the midterm election, Trump haters are out in full force to rile up the Democratic Party base by falsely claiming (for the umpteenth time) that the only way to halt King Trump is to boot Republican leadership out of the halls of Congress.

But as recent disclosures—and my reporting over the past several years—demonstrate is the real unchecked authoritarian power in Washington resides not at the White House or the U.S. Capitol but inside the E. Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse located on, ironically, Constitution Avenue. While the media demands unfettered access to the president, federal judges enjoy almost complete insularity from similar scrutiny; working outside the public eye, judges—armed with lifetime appointments and a collective sense of superiority over the political branches of government—have established an imperial judiciary that continues to shred the separation of power boundaries and, in some instances, create mad tyrants raging from the bench in a manner akin to the behavior of a diseased monarch from the Middle Ages.

Judges coast to coast treat the president, his cabinet members, and Department of Justice officials like subjects rather than representatives of a co-equal branch of government. Prosecutors routinely face threats of contempt of court even over minor paperwork snafus; those threats come with potential fines and even jail time.

An Arizona judge this month sanctioned a DOJ attorney for his alleged “bad faith” and “frivolous” accusations against an immigration attorney representing a deportee. Judge Diane Humetewa, an Obama appointee, ordered the DOJ attorney to attend “one hour each of continuing legal education on…the special role of United States Attorneys and…the need for evidentiary support for all factual contentions.”

LOL, can we please get this for all government lawyers?

The Shroud of Secrecy Does Not Include the Media

Judges are so emboldened by their untouchable status that some are going directly to sympathetic news organizations to air their grievances over the president’s policies. Attorney General Todd Blanche recently filed a misconduct complaint against seven Minnesota federal judges, including former chief judge Patrick Schiltz (my coverage here) for going on the record with a New York Times reporter last month to blast the White House’s deportation efforts. Blanche accused Schiltz and others of “flagrantly violat[ing] the Code of Judicial Conduct with their improper and unethical comments to the New York Times.”

Schiltz, who recently stepped down as chief judge but remains on senior status, and his colleagues should recuse themselves, according to Blanche, from pending immigration matters because the “public reasonably questions their impartiality in cases involving immigration.”

And lest we forget the revived effort at the D.C. appellate court to hold Trump officials, perhaps former DHS Secretary Kristy Noem, in contempt for violating Judge Jeb Boasberg’s “oral command” to return planes carrying suspected gang bangers here illegally from Venezuela back to the United States in March 2025.

The list of monarchical moments played out in federal courtrooms goes on and on. A recent incident, however, in the D.C. courthouse deserves, and is getting, special attention.

Judge Turned Golf Course Superintendent Loses It

Judge Ana Reyes, appointed to the D.C. District Court by Joe Biden in 2023, just suffered another emotional breakdown related to a presidential policy on which she disagrees. Her animus toward the administration is well-documented; last year, the DOJ filed a misconduct complaint against the Uruguayan-born jurist for interrogating a prosecutor over his religious beliefs and forcing him to sit down because he attended the University of Virginia law school, calling UVA grads “liars [who] lack integrity.”

Since February, Reyes has been handling a lawsuit brought by Trump lawfare perps Abbe Lowell and Norm Eisen to halt the reconstruction of the East Potomac Golf Links in Washington; the president, working with renowned golf course architect Tom Fazio, pledged to turn the current sub-par 36-hole course into “one of the Greatest Golf Courses anywhere in the World.”

The plaintiffs claim that rebuilding the course, which sits on federal property, violates several statues and will “physically alter and degrade a recognized historic resource, fundamentally transform the character of the park, and significantly affect the human environment, in flagrant disregard of the statutory safeguards enacted by Congress.” Reyes gave standing in July to two men who (allegedly) regularly play East Potomac by concurring that the golfers will suffer “irreparable harm” if a new course takes its place.

As the litigation moved through the process—Reyes did not enter an injunction as administration officials pledged to keep her apprised of any developments—National Park Service (NPS) employees began cutting down hundreds of trees at the course over Columbus Day weekend. The Trump administration, which had notified Reyes of the work before it began, said the removals were part of a 2019 NPS plan to fix the aging course and not part of the proposed course renovations.

“[Successive] decades have led to the introduction of additional trees to the course, which have altered the feeling of the course, moving the character of the links-style courses closer to parkland-style courses,’ and that the ‘encroachment of vegetation has altered strategy and obscured intended views within the course,” according to the report. (A video posted by a golfer a few months ago shows the course’s overall poor condition.)

Facts notwithstanding, Reyes flew into (another) fit of rage at the thought of Trump officials doing anything without her consent. She held an emergency hearing on Oct. 12, which stretched over four hours. During that time, Reyes unleashed a public tirade that for any other individual would have resulted in an urgent call to authorities for her transport to the loony bin.

Another Day, Another Extrajudicial Mini Trial

Often questioning the intelligence and integrity of Trump officials with her voice raised, Reyes conducted a mini trial of sorts without any notice to the government. She ordered the immediate testimony of Frank Lands, deputy director of the National Park Service, on the Columbus Day holiday. “Did you get that, Counsel? You had better figure out how to get him on the phone…that is not a suggestion. That’s an order. I want him on this phone as soon as possible,” Reyes shouted in her best Jeb Boasberg impersonation.

Lands complied, calling in from his car to discuss the tree maintenance project, but Reyes was not satisfied. Not only did she enter an emergency order preventing park service employees from “fell[ing]” any more trees until the end of the month, she scheduled another hearing for Monday morning, demanding more testimony from Trump officials.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward entered an appearance in the case and quickly sought Reyes’ recusal. “Mr. Lands was forced to testify under oath, under the penalty of perjury, and without having any opportunity whatsoever to reasonably prepare or consult with counsel—all from his vehicle, on a federal holiday,” Woodward wrote in a motion to disqualify her. “This Court has now violated bedrock separation of powers principles by demanding that high-ranking Department of the Interior officials be subject to wide-ranging cross-examination without any showing of exceptional circumstances. Judge Reyes’s conduct rises to the level of deep-seated and unequivocal antipathy toward the Trump Administration.”

Woodward, who defended one of the alleged co-conspirators in the classified documents case and numerous J6ers, also asked Reyes to authorize the release of the hearing’s audio recording. (To her credit, Reyes has made hearings in this matter available on a public line but recording any proceeding at the district court level is against the law.)

Where is C-SPAN When You Need Them?

Publishing the audio file is the least Reyes should do; proceedings at the D.C. appellate court and the Supreme Court not only are accessible in real time but a catalog of oral arguments is available on both courts’ websites. C-SPAN routinely airs high-profile proceedings as well.

If Congressional Republicans are too afraid to either impeach rogue judges or drastically cut funding to a rogue federal court system, particularly in Washington, they should pass legislation to require live audio access to all proceedings. Further, recordings of every hearing should be available on each district court’s website; if it’s good enough for SCOTUS, it’s good enough for Judge Reyes and every other lower court judge.

The shroud of secrecy around the federal court system must end. Like everything that happens in the dark, this opaqueness continues to breed an unconstitutional organism no one, except the most ardent Trump hater, wants.

The Congressional-style mockumentary about the events of January 6—performed on live television in 2021 and 2022 by political actors sitting on the January 6 Select Committee—long ago faded into the public’s collective memory except for one episode: the bombshell testimony of low-level White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.

Hutchinson, who worked for then chief of staff Mark Meadows on Jan. 6, shocked the world with her account of an alleged incident inside the presidential SUV that fateful afternoon. Prompted by questions from ex-Representative Liz Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the committee at the time, Hutchinson melodramatically recounted an alleged conversation she had had with a fellow staffer after the president returned to the White House against his will following his speech at the Ellipse:

The purpose of that moment was clear: to paint the former president as a deranged maniac who assaulted his own security detail on January 6 over his refusal to take Trump to the Capitol to help the “insurrectionists” overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Without questioning the outlandish nature of her testimony, Democrats and NeverTrump “conservatives” went gaga over the telegenic witness. National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, who frequently dives head-first into any anti-Trump charade concocted by the Left only to later find himself apologizing for being duped, called Hutchinson’s testimony “spellbinding,” “compelling,” “stunning,” “riveting,” and “devastating” to President Trump. In a column that helped him eventually earn a coveted spot on the New York Times opinion page, David French called Hutchinson’s performance “the most extraordinary congressional testimony I’ve ever seen.”

Few people, however, were as glowing in their praise for Hutchinson than podcaster Tim Miller. “This afternoon a 26-year-old former assistant showed more courage and integrity than an entire administration full of grown-ass adults who were purportedly working in service to the American people, but had long ago decided to serve only their ambition and grievance,” Miller blogged following her June 2022 testimony. “Cassidy Hutchinson did so at risk to her safety. Her social circle. Her career. And she overcame all of the self-serving rationalizations that prevented the powerful, whose manhoods she held in her palm, from stepping to the plate.”

Leave Our J6 Queen Alone!

Which could explain Miller’s outburst at reports that the Department of Justice is looking to indict Hutchinson for lying to Congress; the Civil Rights division presented evidence to a grand jury last week, according to Punchbowl News. “This is deranged,” Miller bleated on X.

Miller is not alone in his private hell while thinking about his onetime heroine potentially posing for a mugshot soon. Fellow Bulwarker Sarah Matthews called Hutchinson “an American hero” and claimed “she has shown more courage, patriotism, and integrity than the Republican politicians who had far more power, far less to lose, and still chose to remain silent.”

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who joined Cheney at the Congressional unemployment line following his participation on the committee, posted “You don’t hate this administration enough” in response to an article on Hutchinson’s possible indictment. There is no evidence that he cried while writing that post, like he did during the first J6 Committee performance:

Of course, the major difference between Hutchinson and her ardent defenders, Cheney and Kinzinger, is that the latter two received full pardons from Joe Biden before he left office. So, too, did her fellow perjurious committee witnesses, the so-called J6 celebrity cops. Hutchinson, however, is not so lucky.

After Retaining a Cheney-Backed Attorney, Hutchinson Changed Her Story

Which is why—assuming a D.C. grand jury can forego partisan activism for a moment—Hutchinson faces real legal liability over her sworn public testimony, which still fits within the five-year statute of limitations. As I explained in my investigative report here, none of the White House officials named by Hutchinson as having been involved in the encounter or any post-incident discussion corroborated her testimony. In fact, they all directly refuted her account of what happened.

She also might be in hot water for her closed-door transcribed interviews with the committee; Hutchinson’s story dramatically changed after she fired her Trump-paid lawyer, Stefan Passantino, and hired a new attorney at Cheney’s suggestion. Hutchinson’s new attorneys filed a 15-page “errata” sheet shortly thereafter that added the explosive new allegations.

Not only did her revised testimony include the alleged incident in the “Beast,” she suddenly recalled references to dangerous weapons, including guns, carried by protesters near the Capitol that day. For example, Hutchinson was asked during her February 2022 interview with the committee whether she had heard about the presence of “firearms” at the rally; she responded, “not that I can recall specifically.” But in her fourth interview—and accompanied by her Cheney-referred lawyers—with the committee, Hutchinson suddenly remembered “reports of firearms at the rally site.”

Hutchinson continued to contradict her own earlier testimony, conveniently recalling chants of “Hang Mike Pence,” which she had denied hearing before, and oddly took ownership of a note that represented dictation of the president’s proposed tweet about the protest:

In reality, the author of the note was Eric Hershmann, one of President Trump’s lawyers. It is baffling why Hutchinson claimed to have written the note when she did not.

Perhaps that is one of many head-scratching aspects of the entire Hutchinson drama that a federal grand jury is examining. But no matter how compelling the evidence against her or how damaging her public testimony was to the president and those around him—especially Passantino, who was fired and faced misconduct complaints filed by Cheney stooges before both the D.C. and Georgia bar associations—Hutchinson will always have her deluded cheerleading section behind her.

Dressed like a parental chaperone at Coachella trying way too hard to look cool, Jack Smith slowly traversed through a crowd attending a Maryland music festival over the weekend—and doing his best to get noticed. The disgraced special counsel sported a “No Kings” t-shirt and mustard-colored cargo-ish pants while carrying a beer as he attempted to get toward the front of the crowd to watch washed up rockers such as Bruce Springsteen and Tom Morello rage against the president.

A handful of spectators swooned over Smith’s appearance at the event:

David Grohl, lead singer of the Foo Fighters, referred to Smith as his “hero” and “new friend.”

But to everyone familiar with the former special counsel’s dirty, corrupt, and unconstitutional operation, Smith wearing a “No Kings” shirt represented the height of hypocrisy; for two years, Smith led a tyrannical crusade—assisted by his higher-ups at the Biden Department of Justice or federal judges responsible for stopping such unabated power—to trample individual rights, constitutional protections, and the “rule of law” that Smith so often pretends to demonstrate his fealty to in a massive effort to destroy President Trump and the entire MAGA movement.

Talk about a monarchy.

What is this Creep Looking For?

A steady drip of disclosures by the Trump administration and GOP Congressional committees, however, continue to prove that Smith acted as the unelected and unaccountable leader of his own powerful fiefdom. Taking the reins of an office carved out specifically for him without the consent of the public or members of Congress—an office later declared unconstitutional by a courageous federal judge unbeholden to the DOJ’s chokehold on the American system of justice at the time—Smith wasted no time in creating an elaborate surveillance apparatus that surely would make Vlad Putin, or any other dictator, blush with envy.

In creepy voyeuristic fashion, Smith spied on Trump, his family members, his closest advisors, dozens of White House officials, top Republican leaders in both the House and Senate, and influential members of the media. Even creepier was Smith’s court battle in 2023 to obtain the president’s entire Twitter account including draft messages, purchases made from the account, and deleted posts, which I wrote about here.

Now, thanks to the latest releases out of the White House Government Transparency Task Force, it appears Smith also conducted a massive spy operation against Susie Wiles, Trump’s longtime advisor and the campaign manager for his 2024 presidential run. Armed with a pen register—presumably not the only one—Smith monitored all of Wiles’ phone calls in real time during early 2023 related to the criminal investigation into the president for mishandling classified documents. (I suspect that former DC Chief Judge Beryl Howell, whose dirty fingerprints are all over the lawfare against Trump dating back to Robert Mueller’s probe, signed the first pen register and current Chief Judge Jeb Boasberg authorized follow-up requests.)

While the surveillance did not reveal the content of the calls, it did give Smith and his team of henchmen access to all of Wiles’ phone activity during a critical period when Trump remained under three federal criminal investigations—two of which resulted in indictments—while preparing his run for president.

The call logs contained Wiles’ contact with the president, members of the news media, and several unnamed attorneys over a period of months. Smith’s team interviewed Wiles on April 7, 2023 in Florida; a few days later, according to an FBI memo, agents “reviewed WILES’s (sic) telephonic activity to determine contacts of interest on the date of her FBI interview.”

This Wasn’t About Finding a Few Government Files

In March 2023, the FBI captured the dates, times, and length of calls between Wiles and an unidentified lawyer. The calls occurred a few weeks after the FBI opened “Plasmic Echo,” the codename for the documents investigation. (I speculated on X that the unnamed lawyer might have been Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s defense lawyers in the documents case and the current Attorney General.)

Records also show that the Biden DOJ then Jack Smith, who took over the investigation in November 2022, ordered tech companies to preserve email records for Wiles, Kash Patel, and a separate unidentified lawyer.

This means that the DOJ spied on Trump’s 2016 and 2024 presidential campaigns by using corrupt, partisan actors—from James Comey and John Brennan to Jack Smith and his collection of thugs—to criminalize the political activity of the leading Republican candidate for president and his campaign team. (Biden’s DOJ also successfully criminalized Trump’s, and others, conduct related to the 2020 election.)

Speaking of Brennan, it appears Smith might again have landed himself in some hot water. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley pointedly asked Smith during his sworn testimony whether he had received any “consultation or counsel” from the former CIA chief, who is currently under investigation himself in the “grand conspiracy” matter ongoing in southern Florida.

Smith’s response:

But as usual, slippery Smith was too cute by half. Smith’s top prosecutors in the documents case, according to an FBI memo, met with Brennan at CIA headquarters in November 2023. The purported reason for the meeting was to “discuss expert testimony to National Defense Information in the forthcoming trial.”

That trial, thankfully, never happened. Cannon dismissed the documents indictment against the president in July 2024, sparing the country more grungy appearances by attention-hungry Smith and more abuses by him and his henchmen.

Smith’s appearance at the weekend music fest does appear to signal he may not be too worried about consequences for his actions. Let’s hope he’s wrong again.

Jack Smith said it so quietly that everyone on the Senate Judiciary Committee appeared to miss it.

Under intense questioning by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) during a committee hearing on Tuesday, Smith, the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022, admitted his office had investigated “false statements” related to the 2020 presidential election.

Watch:

He continued to dig his hole:

Those answers confirmed his sweeping albeit depraved plan to indict hundreds of Republican lawmakers, Trump White House officials, conservative organizations, online influencers, and anyone tied to MAGA world for exercising their free speech rights in the run-up to January 6, 2021 under the so-called “Arctic Frost” investigation opened in April 2022 by then Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco; Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) continues to produce a trove of records from the special counsel’s office demonstrating the corrupt, unconstitutional, and truly unhinged nature of Smith’s crusade to destroy the MAGA movement via “Arctic Frost.”

For roughly four hours, Smith tried to once again portray himself as a hero— a selfless defender of democracy and the “rule of law” unfairly under attack by the president and his allies. He lamented the poor treatment of his former henchmen in the special counsel’s office and insisted prosecutors and investigators tied to the four criminal indictments against President Trump were fired “illegally” by Trump Department of Justice officials.

While there is nothing illegal about ousting DOJ employees who had abused their authority for political purposes, one could safely argue that Smith and his team of thugs acted unlawfully on several fronts. (I listed just some of Smith’s lies and potential crimes here.) A criminal referral against Smith for making false statements to Congress—and a separate referral against Thomas Windom, one of Smith’s top prosecutors in the J6 case, for obstruction of Congress—have been sent to Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Was the Iowa Grandmother Who Donated $1 Under Investigation, too?

But Grassley published more shocking revelations this week. For example, Smith subpoenaed donations made by nearly 5,000 Americans to Trump and related political action committees. What for? Smith didn’t say, but it’s safe to assume those donors were slated to be harassed and perhaps charged by Smith had Kamala Harris won the 2024 election.

Perhaps most infuriating, and in a move with major Fourth Amendment and executive privilege implications at the very least, Smith did an end-around the standard litigation process to quickly obtain the phone records of 87 Trump White House officials including President Trump. According to email traffic between Windom and Gary Stern, the National Archives general counsel at the time, the agency produced those records to the special counsel’s team in August 2023 in response to a subpoena.

Some of the White House officials included in the request were Dan Scavino, Kash Patel, and Mark Meadows; Smith also got his dirty hands on the phone activity of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. (This was in addition to subpoenas to cell phone providers accessing so-called “toll records” of several GOP senators along with nondisclosure orders prohibiting the companies from notifying the lawmakers.)

But there was more to Smith’s NARA demands than meets the eye. The records produced a gold mine of text messages between Trump officials and members of Congress; Grassley recently disclosed that text messages belonging to 44 lawmakers including himself were swept up in the production. Smith, the vaunted “rule of law” defender, ignored Speech or Debate Clause protections for lawmakers; after all, Biden’s DOJ had already successfully fought Speech or Debate Clause considerations related to most of the data swiped off the cell phone of Rep. Scott Perry, who had his device snatched out of his hands in August 2022 while on family vacation, thanks to then D.C. Chief Judge Beryl Howell.

No Media Outrage Over Smith’s Collection of Reporters’ Text Messages

Grassley further disclosed the NARA production contained text messages from dozens of reporters from top news organizations including CBS, NBC, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal. Sean Davis, the CEO and co-founder of The Federalist, which Grassley also named, issued a lengthy statement. “Corrupt cop Jack Smith spied on The Federalist and accessed our communications during his lawless anti-Trump witch hunt. We are still working to determine which of our reporters were targeted by Jack Smith and which journalistic communications he and his thugs seized.”

What recourse news outlets and reporters have is anyone’s guess. Ditto for Republican lawmakers or conservative organizations targeted by Smith. (Sen. Marsha Blackburn today filed a lawsuit against Smith for violating her Constitutional rights and challenged his appointment as special counsel, which was tossed in the documents case by Judge Aileen Cannon in July 2024.)

What the country cannot tolerate is Smith—who spent at least $50 million in tax dollars over the course of two years—getting off without any consequences. A false statements charge is the bare minimum he should face; the DOJ needs to get moving before it’s too late.

In the meantime, enjoy this takedown by Darline Graham:

Last month, five Venezuelan migrants were arrested for stealing $2 million in merchandise from an Indianapolis jewelry store. According to police reports, three men and two teenagers conducted the brazen armed robbery in the middle of the day, tying up the owner with duct tape then leading police on a cross-county chase that ended in their capture. Indiana law enforcement officials say the perpetrators, who reside in Chicago, are members of Tren de Aragua, the notorious multi-national gang designated a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration last year.

Unfortunately, the migrants—all five now have detainers courtesy of immigration officials—were protected from summary deportation after a series of federal judges determined the president’s Alien Enemies Act (AEA) proclamation violated the due process of the gang bangers; in March 2025, President Trump signed the AEA ordering the immediate removal of Venezuelan illegals suspected of ties to Tren de Aragua. That same day, James Boasberg, the chief judge of the D.C. District Court, signed a restraining order halting the president’s proclamation. The matter, now 18 months later, is still stalled in the federal court system.

It’s hard to determine how many crime victims would have been spared if the president’s proclamation had remained intact without interference by judges across the country. (The issue is headed back to the Supreme Court, which claimed last year the AEA did not provide “due process” rights for the illegals.) Attorney General Todd Blanche recently announced that at least 350 Tren de Aragua members have been arrested since Trump took office; crimes range from murder and kidnapping to sex trafficking.

But the final word on the lawfulness of the AEA isn’t the only thing hanging around—so, too, is the ludicrous contempt case initiated by Boasberg in April 2025. The full D.C. appellate court will hear arguments on Tuesday as the Trump DOJ again asks the court to shut down the contempt proceedings once and for all, or force Boasberg to submit the written criminal referral he has threatened for months.

As I covered here and here, Boasberg continues to insist that administration officials defied his “verbal” order to bring back two planes carrying TdA members out of the country on the evening of March 15. While some AEA subjects were not removed that weekend as planned, the departed planes, which were over Central America when Boasberg made his demand, were not returned.

Who Actually is Guilty of Contempt?

That infuriated Boasberg; the following month, Boasberg determined that “the Government’s actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its Order, sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.” He informed the DOJ that he would “purge” the contempt proceedings if the men, who were detained in El Salvador at the time, were brought back to the U.S.

The DOJ fought the contempt findings and refused to return the illegals. The battle continued, resulting in two separate rulings by D.C. appellate court panels to vacate Boasberg’s contempt case. Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, admonished Boasberg for creating a “‘constitutional confrontation’ between the Executive and Judicial Branches.” (Keep in mind, the Supreme Court had already reversed Boasberg’s restraining order, determining he did not have proper authority to do so.)

But Boasberg marched onward, undeterred. Concluding a sworn declaration by then Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem related to her decision-making process was insufficient—and engaging in his own sort of contempt of court—Boasberg issued yet another order to schedule an interrogation of the top prosecutor in the AEA case as well as a self-described “whistleblower” who claimed top DOJ officials conspired to ignore court orders related to immigration enforcement. Boasberg even authorized cross-examination by the illegals’ ACLU-based lawyers.

“No authority exists for a federal judge to hold a mini-trial dedicated to uncovering and assessing evidence of criminal intent,” the DOJ wrote in its appellate brief. “The investigation and prosecution of crimes is an Executive Branch prerogative. Such a freewheeling, quasi-inquisitorial, quasi prosecutorial inquest is wholly foreign to centuries of Anglo-American law and our separation of powers, and the [DC appellate] panel was right to put a stop to it.”

Whether the full court, where Democratic appointees including the chief judge enjoy the majority, agrees is another story. But the mere fact that this charade continues more than 18 months later speaks not just to Boasberg’s deep partisanship but the lack of higher courts to successfully rein him in.

I will update this article soon with tidbits from today’s hearing.

Jack Smith, the disgraced and disqualified special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022, is once again set to testify before Congress next week. This time, Smith will face members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday during a hearing on “Smith’s abuse of authority and targeting of Republicans.”

Smith’s testimony coincides with the release of a report by the House Judiciary Committee detailing the rogue, unconstitutional nature of the special counsel’s team—namely, the production of cell phone records belonging to dozens of Republican lawmakers in Washington. At the same time Smith’s team successfully pursued two federal criminal indictments against then-former President Donald Trump in 2023—investigations that had been underway at the Biden Department of Justice since early 2021—prosecutors also sought evidence to tie several top Republican representatives and senators to the president related to the events of January 6 in the so-called “Arctic Frost” inquiry.

By obtaining the cell phone records, “Special Counsel Smith and his deputies ran roughshod over the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which protects Members’ communications from compelled disclosure,” according to the report.

Subpoenas to cell phone providers were accompanied by non-disclosure orders signed by federal judges that prohibited the companies from notifying those members that the government wanted their data; in some instances, Smith claimed the targets—including newly-elected Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy—represented a “flight risk,” meaning McCarthy might have fled the country if informed about the subpoena, a preposterous allegation that was nevertheless approved by a court. (This was the same argument initially used by Smith in adding a nondisclosure order to the subpoena for Trump’s Twitter file, as I covered here in 2023.)

Communications between Smith’s top prosecutors appear to confirm what I have suggested for years: the Biden DOJ planned to indict several powerful Republicans related to Jan. 6 if Trump had lost the 2024 presidential election. (In addition to the report, House Judiciary released this week transcribed interviews with a few of Smith’s top henchmen that further exposed the team’s lawlessness.)

The FBI had already snatched Republican Congressman Scott Perry’s cell phone out of his hands while on a family vacation the day after the armed raid of Mar-a-Lago and successfully obtained hundreds of files off his device, which I covered here.

Perry, a former combat pilot during the Iraq war who currently represents a swing district in Pennsylvania, seemed to be at the top of Smith’s hit list. But he was in good company. In addition to McCarthy, Smith’s team was circling former chief of staff Mark Meadows, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), Rudy Giuliani, and John Eastman, who was an unindicted conspirator in Smith’s J6 indictment against the president.

This email from Timothy Duree, Smith’s number three guy at the special counsel’s office, appears to confirm those targets:

One can only imagine what the country would be witnessing right now if Kamala Harris had won the White House. Not only a surefire conviction of Trump on at least two charges in Washington, but one indictment after another handed down against key Republican figures in Congress. Disclosures over the past few years confirming widespread misconduct by Smith’s team—in addition to their total disregard of the Constitutional boundaries between the executive and legislative branch—show the DOJ’s dirty determination in prosecuting not just the president but everyone around him, the Constitution be damned.

And as I have noted for years, and did so recently on X, federal judges were—and would have remained so if the 2024 election turned out differently—all too eager to help.

So, what does this gradual build-up against Smith signal? Hopefully it means that an indictment is forthcoming. In July, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Jordan sent a criminal referral to the DOJ on Smith for making false statements to Congress. (More from my reporting on the matter here.) Other charges, such as obstruction of Congress or even conspiracy against rights, may be considered as well.

But one thing at this point is safe to assume: Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee targeted by Smith, including Senators Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz, will have a field day with their one-time tormentor on Tuesday.

Side note: A motion filed in the dormant classified documents case this week revealed that former FBI employees involved in the Mar-a-Lago raid have received subpoenas to appear before the Florida grand jury hearing evidence in the wide-ranging “conspiracy” case against Trump’s lawfare perpetrators. Prosecutors, according to the filing, expect the former feds to “testify about their work on the classified documents investigation beginning from the date the matter was referred to the FBI, up to and including the execution of the search warrant.” Their attorneys want Judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed the documents indictment against the president in July 2024 after determining Smith’s appointment violated the Constitution, to clarify whether their testimony violates her order prohibiting any public disclosures of Smith’s report on the documents case. (It does not.)

More to come!

Like all dignified coups, it began with a lunch.

In correspondence to his higher-up last January, Patrick Schiltz, the chief judge of the federal district court in Minnesota at the time, said he planned to host an emergency lunch meeting with his judicial colleagues the following week. The purpose of the get together, Schiltz claimed in a letter to the chief judge of the appellate court, was to discuss the Department of Justice’s request that he overrule a Minneapolis magistrate judge’s decision to deny several arrest warrants related to the storming of Cities Church that month; one of the warrants the magistrate judge—whose wife is a top aide to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison—refused to sign was for former CNN host Don Lemon.

Schiltz, however, balked at reversing the decision, insisting Lemon and the others had not “committed any acts of violence” despite video evidence to the contrary. Feigning uncertainty that he had authority to overrule the magistrate (he did), Schiltz said he would “discuss the issue with my colleagues” at a January 27 lunch meeting.

But it now appears that more than turkey sandwiches and hot tea were on the menu that winter afternoon. In a lengthy—-and unprecedented—interview with the New York Times published yesterday, Schiltz seems to admit that he had summoned his colleagues to instead scheme over how to sabotage the government’s deportation efforts related to Operation Metro Surge. And regardless of one’s views of that operation—I wrote at the time that the Department of Homeland Security should abandon the effort given entrenched public, political, and judicial resistance and the death of two anti-ICE protesters—it’s hard to view Schiltz’s latest disclosures as anything other than a coordinated judicial plot to undermine what is largely the sole purview of the executive branch: to carry out the removal of migrants here illegally.

Another Day, Another Contempt Trap Set by Activist Judge

In fact, the day after the judicial luncheon ostensibly to get advice on how to proceed in the Lemon matter, Schiltz filed a headline-making order that accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement of having violated nearly 100 court orders in Minneapolis since the start of the new year. Here is the telltale from Schiltz: “The list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges,” Schiltz revealed in a January 28 order, which threatened to bring contempt charges against ICE officials. That means the list— I debunked several of the alleged violations here—was prepared in a matter of hours in a collective effort to deceive the public.

Schiltz continued. “ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence,” he said, without evidence.

By following in the footsteps of DC Chief Judge James Boasberg, who had made false accusations that the DOJ violated his court order related to the return of suspected Tren De Aragua gang members in 2025, Schiltz’s claims of contempt furthered the view that the Trump administration was willfully defying court orders.

But in the Times interview, Schiltz backed off his click-bait allegations. “Judge Schiltz said that many of the government’s violations of his court orders appeared to be inadvertent, the result of sloppiness and a lack of legal staffing to accompany the immigration surge,” Times reporter Mattathias Schwartz wrote. (Nonprofit legal groups had flooded courts across the country with habeas petitions; the number surged from a handful in early 2025 to more than 1,000 in early 2026 in the Twin Cities.)

If You Are Married and Own a Home—Thank a Judge?

That tidbit represented only one of many eye-popping statements made by Schiltz in the 90-minute on-the-record interview. (The reporter, in fact, admitted an interview with a sitting judge was “unusual” and “rare.”) A clerk for late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia 40 years ago—a talking point often used by the media to give Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee, undeserved conservative cred—the judge portrayed himself as part martyr, part victim, and part vanguard of democracy.

Tension between the administration and Minneapolis judges represented not a feature of democracy but instead “created a grave threat to the rule of law,” Schiltz said. “The rule of law to democracy is like oxygen to a human body. It is something that you absolutely need to survive, and yet it’s something that people just take for granted.”

Schiltz’s rantings about judicial power extended to basic rights and privileges enjoyed by all Americans. He told the Times that “obedience to court orders…is why people feel secure owning a home, saving money, getting married and having children. You walk down the street, and you assume you’re generally safe because of the law.” (One can safely assume Schiltz does not walk down the same streets that many Americans do.)

And then the kicker, a favorite of all anti-Trump actors. “It’s the rule of law. If you don’t have it, you have either anarchy or you have authoritarianism. You have Russia or you have China or you have North Korea.”

Quite the leap after he conceded most of the alleged mistakes were paperwork and manpower deficiencies rather than overt attempts to subvert the “rule of law.”

“Dear ______, You Are Free”

But Schiltz’s disclosures to the Times revealing how he and his colleagues collaborated--conspired?--to use the federal bench to cripple the executive branch calls out for further examination if not a DOJ or Congressional investigation.

“District court judges work alone, but as the number of cases ramped up, the judges recalled seeking one another’s counsel, meeting regularly and consulting in running email threads,” the Times reveleaed. “Eventually, some of their clerks made an informal spreadsheet showing whom to consult on particular legal questions. Some judges built templates of legal orders so they could respond quickly to some of the detention issues that were arising again and again.”

In other words, regardless of the individual nature of each habeas claim—which judges are required to consider independently— they instead created “go to” responses often issued with little to no input from the government.

Minneapolis judges “stayed glued to their devices, fearful of missing a petition,” the Times reported. “Judge Katherine M. Menendez said she responded to one request on her iPad from the coat room of a restaurant. At dinners with friends, Judge Schiltz said he would apologetically explain why he needed to check his phones constantly. ‘The cost of me enjoying a movie could be somebody waking up in New Mexico the next day when they shouldn’t have,’ he recalled.”

So much for judicial restraint.

The Times Forgot a Few Things…

I also noted here how judges had set intentionally unreasonable deadlines for responses from the DOJ related to the whereabouts of deportees. In addition to an historic flood of habeas petitions, prosecutors also were dealing with in some cases a 24-hour turn around time ordered by activist judges setting contempt traps for the DOJ. In fact, a ProPublica analysis found that Minnesota had one of the quickest habeas resolution timeframes in the nation, with a median time of 12 days versus several weeks in other busy jurisdictions.

“It is remarkable that sitting federal judges are giving on-the-record interviews attacking this Administration’s policies rather than ruling from the bench,” a DOJ spokeswoman told me via email. (Six other Minnesota judges also spoke with the Times.) “If judges followed the law in adjudicating cases, there wouldn’t be an ‘overwhelming’ habeas caseload. Judges who have made public comments on pending or related matters should consider whether recusal is warranted going forward.”

And while the Times ran a lot of interference for Schiltz, it did omit some relevant information. For example, the Times failed to note that Schiltz is a longtime supporter and donor of a Minnesota nonprofit that provides legal assistance to undocumented migrants.

Or that Schiltz took the extraordinary step—which is not so extraordinary these days—of quashing DOJ subpoenas targeting top Minnesota officials over their involvement in organized protests. “The dominant purpose of the challenged subpoenas is to coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration law and to harass and retaliate against them for failing to do so,” Schiltz wrote in June. “No community should be expected to accept harmful policies without objection. And no administration should use the tools of law enforcement to silence dissent.”

One thing we know is that Judge Schiltz does not suffer in silence. The question now remains--what should, or will, be done about such an egregious act of judicial overreach by an entire federal bench.

Well, that didn’t last long.

After less than five months on the job, Joe diGenova resigned from the Department of Justice last week; diGenova, a longtime ally of President Trump, took on a senior advisory role at the DOJ in April and was quickly dispatched to southern Florida to take the reins of an ongoing “grand conspiracy” investigation into perpetrators of the decade-long lawfare operation against the president.

Todd Blanche, then acting attorney general, posted a photo of himself and diGenova—also joined by U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quiñones and others—on X following the announcement:

Reports indicated smooth sailing with diGenova’s team recently issuing several subpoenas seeking testimony and documents from some of the worst lawfare offenders including former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and Jim Comey whisperer Dan Richman presumably related to their roles in the Russiagate hoax. (Brennan will appear before a grand jury in southern Florida next month.) Feds who were involved in the August 2022 raid of Mar-a-Lago also are getting heat. “It was not immediately clear why investigators want to question FBI officials in connection with the Mar-a-Lago search, but the act has long infuriated Trump, who decried it as an invasion of privacy,” the Associated Press reported last month.

But diGenova’s abrupt resignation on September 10 jolted the appearance of behind-the-scenes comity in the sprawling matter. His cryptic comment to the New York Post that day—”If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem”—bolstered the unfounded accusation that Trump’s DOJ is rushing politically-charged cases to please the president. (DiGenova’s wife, Victoria Toensing, had also joined the team in Florida. She resigned as well.)

Trouble at the Top?

In a phone call with NBC News legal reporter Ryan Reilly the following day, diGenova disclosed more reasons for his departure. “We were moving smartly, and I underscore we were moving smartly, and then things, you know, got where they got,” diGenova said. He further hinted that “lanes got crossed” and that he had “no doubt that I was going to be able to take every one of these cases across the finish line because we had put them in the perfect posture to proceed.” DiGenova commended both the prosecutorial and investigative teams in southern Florida as well as FBI Director Kash Patel.

That praise, however, did not extend to Blanche. And a CNN report published Monday indicates that rising friction between the pair, capped by a “tense” phone call on September 9, prompted diGenova’s exit. “The final clash centered on diGenova’s effort to block lawyers dispatched by Justice Department headquarters from assisting the probe, following broader disagreements with top Justice officials over its pace,” CNN revealed.

While the specific nature of the disagreement remains unclear, it appears their dispute centers on how to pursue Brennan, who has been the subject of the investigation for more than a year, with Blanche seemingly preferring a narrow set of charges and diGenova preferring a broader indictment.

The kerfuffle is obfuscating what otherwise is encouraging news in the probe with diGenova’s departure coming on “a busy day for the inquiry, as investigators were presenting a witness for testimony to a grand jury in the probe,” CNN noted. While the shake-up might temporarily pause some forward motion in Florida, “officials at Justice Department headquarters had anticipated possibly seeing the first charges to come as soon as this month.”

Who gets nabbed first is anyone’s guess but charges against Brennan for making false statements to Congress in 2023 might be a good bet. (My reporting last year on the perjury inquiry is here.) If so, that may not be the end of it for Brennan.

In a court filing last week, Brennan’s lawyer acknowledged receipt of a grand jury subpoena, signed by diGenova, and suggested Brennan’s testimony is unrelated to the false statements inquiry. (In July, Brennan filed a motion before D.C. Judge Jia Cobb seeking a preliminary injunction forcing the government to retain all documents and correspondence related to the investigation so Brennan can use the materials for a future vindictive and selective prosecution lawsuit.)

John Brennan: A Target and a Witness

During a conference call the day after diGenova’s resignation between Kurt Olsen, a prosecutor on the grand conspiracy case, and Brennan’s lawyers, Olsen tipped the hand of the DOJ.

“Mr. Olsen fielded our inquiries and indicated there are multiple ‘viable’ grand jury investigations, including a ‘far-reaching’ investigation in Fort Pierce that includes ‘issues at Mar-a-Lago and beyond’ into whether President Trump had his civil rights violated,” Brennan’s attorney disclosed. “Mr. Olsen also confirmed there continued to be an additional investigation relating only to Director Brennan’s statements before Congress in the District of Columbia. Mr. Olsen explained that Director Brennan was a ‘target’ of the narrower investigation, and the investigation for which he was now being subpoenaed was the ‘more wide-ranging conspiracy,’ as to which our client was a ‘subject.’ However, he explained that the narrower investigation was ‘still viable,’ and that the issues in the narrower investigation might also be part of the larger investigation, such as being overt acts.”

So, what does all this mean? That Brennan’s central role in concocting the phony Trump-Russia election collusion narrative—beginning with Situation Room meetings in the Obama White House during the summer of 2016 and capped by his corrupt January 2017 “intelligence community assessment” report accusing the Russians of meddling in the presidential election to help Trump win—is part of a “conspiracy against rights” investigation stretching over more than eight years. A sustained conspiracy involving Russiagate, January 6, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and both criminal indictments handed down by Special Counsel Jack Smith in 2023 and based on a pattern of government misconduct by the same players would require proof of “overt acts” within the five year statute of limitations.

The Mar-a-Lago raid, which was the subject of internal disagreements at the Biden DOJ, fits comfortably (so far) in that range.

So while the resignation of diGenova is disappointing news, his exit does not appear to jeopardize the entire endeavor. And it could be just a matter of time before the first shoe drops near the shore of Ft. Pierce, Florida.

In another shocked-but-not-surprised disclosure related to President Trump’s election integrity executive order, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin just revealed that several states shared sensitive motor vehicle information with non-governmental groups prior to the 2020 presidential election. Archived with a group formed by Pew Charitable Trust, private data including social security and drivers license numbers were then shared with a nonprofit named after the wife of Mark Zuckerberg; the then-Facebook founder led a $400 million nationwide operation to boost voter registration favoring Democratic candidates, particularly Joe Biden, that year.

“This sharing and resharing of Motor Vehicle Agency data among NGOs may not qualify as a permissible use of [that] data,” Mullin explained to Attorney General Todd Blanche in a letter last week. “This category of data regarding potential voters is extremely valuable to political parties and campaigns.”

But my, how times have changed.

Some of those same states are currently fighting the administration’s attempt to obtain millions of files related to the holders of commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs). For example, Mullin busted Colorado, Washington, and Pennsylvania for sharing motor vehicle and voter registration files in order to register non-qualified residents including illegals—but those states now are parties in a blue-state lawsuit to prevent the Department of Transportation from acquiring a database containing the files of 17 million truck drivers. The move is the latest in the DOT’s crusade to rid highways of unsafe, and in some instances illegal, truck drivers behind the wheel of 80,000-pound rigs; Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy initiated the effort following the deaths of several American citizens by illegal immigrants.

Who Owns the Data?

In June, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), a subsidiary agency of the DOT, sent a letter to a nationwide nonprofit that manages motor vehicle records to ask for identifying information pertaining to all commercial drivers license (CDL) holders across the country. That request was accompanied by a subpoena for the same information by the Department of Homeland Security the following month; the nonprofit, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA), indicated it would cooperate. The subpoena was withdrawn.

But after several weeks of foot-dragging by AAMVA, who insisted individual states deserved a say in the matter, DOT officials pushed back. “States have no veto over the production of records that AAMVA is holding on DOT’s behalf, that DOT has statutory authority and responsibility to maintain, and that are urgently needed for the federal government to help prevent fatal trucking accidents involving the many drivers to whom States have improperly issued Commercial Driver’s Licenses,” a DOT lawyer wrote on August 11. “This is not ‘state data,’ and State laws and choices cannot override DOT’s statutory authority or AAMVA’s obligation to produce DOT’s own records to DOT.” The previously-withdrawn subpoena was re-issued and DOT threatened to pull $10 million in federal funds that pays for the very same database that the federal government wants access to. (All correspondence is here.)

In response, 22 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit to halt the production of the requested records. “If…AAMVA were to yield to the threat and turn over the sensitive personal information of millions of drivers, that disclosure would breach the confidentiality of millions of individuals by divulging personal information that Plaintiff States promised to keep private, subject to narrow exceptions, damaging public trust in the States and foreseeably deterring many people from applying for CDLs, which would deprive the States of revenue and potentially cause some to attempt to drive without valid licenses,” the August 13 lawsuit warned.

That same day, Virginia Judge Anthony Trenga—a George W. Bush appointee who has ruled against the Trump administration at least a dozen times since 2025—halted the production of the data. Trenga then issued a temporary restraining order claiming that while the AAMVA holds all CDL records, the data is “owned by the states.” Trenga now is considering a preliminary injunction to further delay the process.

Duffy opposes the preliminary injunction on a number of grounds including jurisdiction and Trenga’s claims that the request related to immigration policy. “[The] Court’s conclusion that DOT’s request was a pretext for immigration enforcement ignored the agency’s genuine interest in promoting commercial motor vehicle safety and unfairly faulted it for having ‘other unstated [or stated] reasons’ for acting.”

The fight for CDL records comes on the heels of another spate of fatalities caused by non-domiciled long haulers. An illegal from India killed an Ohio woman in a head-on crash last week; it appears a non-domiciled CDL holder killed a New York woman in a separate crash over the weekend after he attempted to back up on a busy highway.

More here:

As I have been covering for months, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is leading a nationwide effort to remove dangerous truck drivers from American roadways. The deaths of several American citizens at the hands of illegal truck drivers prompted Duffy to initiate a full scale audit into the practices of several states, mostly blue, related to the issuance of commercial drivers licenses (CDL) and learning permits, particularly to noncitizens.

Duffy’s final rule, which drastically tightened the requirements for noncitizens to receive a CDL, took effect earlier this year after a court battle over a lawsuit brought by a few CDL holders and union organizations. (That battle is not quite over, more to come.) Some states have refused to cooperate with the DOT, resulting in threats to cut federal highways funds and even the revocation of the state’s entire CDL program.

But Duffy’s hands were tied in terms of holding drivers, their employers, and state licensing agencies accountable. Until today.

During a press conference in Detroit this morning, Duffy—joined by Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration chief Derek Barrs, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and White House Fraud task force vice chairman Andrew Ferguson—announced the creation of an interagency group to expose fraud in the nation’s trucking industry. Those agencies include the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and Homeland Security Investigation.

“The initiative focuses on CDL fraud, unauthorized employment, identity-document fraud, financial crime, money laundering, labor exploitation, and potential links to human smuggling, drug trafficking, and cartel activity,” Duffy said. The press conference coincided with a “synchronized surge” at more than 200 driving schools across 23 states to ensure the schools were following federal law; the DOT has already shut down hundreds of CDL schools for issuing permits drivers who did not meet English proficiency standards or employing unqualified instructors.

Since early 2025, according to Duffy, the DOT has removed 28,000 truck drivers from the roads for failing to speak English, a federal requirement. The move followed an executive order issued by President Trump last year to enforce the English language law for truck drivers.

A separate initiative entitled “Crossroads of America” focuses on four states: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. All nine U.S. Attorneys from those states will task investigators and prosecutors with enforcing the laws and bringing charges if needed. Jerome Gorgon, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, pointed to the busy nexus of I-75, I-65, and I-94 stretching from Ohio to Illinois as a hot spot to find illegal truck drivers, with more than 2 million trucks passing through each year. “Many of these trucks are driven by foreign nationals and illegal aliens who lack the proper training to safely drive 40 tons of truck and cargo across America on our highways,” Gorgon said.

More clips of today’s presser here:

Vice President JD Vance also weighed in:

“I’ve done this a long time and haven’t seen one quite like this one, I have to say.”

So said U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth, who has sat on the D.C. federal court bench since Ronald Reagan appointed him in 1987, last April.

What exactly stumped the senior judge that day? Another pending mistrial in the government’s prosecution of two of MS-13’s most notorious gang leaders.

For the second time in five months, a D.C. jury refused to convict Moises Rivera-Luna and Tokiro Ramirez on two racketeering conspiracy counts originating from a 2011 federal indictment (read: brought by the Obama DOJ, not Trump’s) for criminal gang activity in Washington, D.C. and surrounding areas. It appears from the official court docket that the pair became fugitives before the case could go to trial back then.

But in March 2025, the Trump administration extradited Rivera-Luna from Guatemala to finally face his day in court; Ramirez had been extradited from Honduras in 2022.

“Rivera-Luna is alleged to be an international leader of MS-13 who was sending orders and advice to an MS-13 clique operating in the Washington area via cellular telephone calls from his prison cell in El Salvador,” a March 2025 DOJ press release stated. “The indictment alleges that he and another alleged MS-13 leader… also incarcerated in El Salvador directed a coalition of MS-13 cliques to be formed in the Washington area. They advised local clique members that the coalition’s aim was to seek and kill MS-13 members who were found to be cooperating with law enforcement officials.” The indictment also accused the defendants of “narcotics distribution, extortion, [and] robberies.”

Both men pleaded not guilty; the first trial began on December 2, 2025, just a few weeks after the shooting of two D.C. National Guardsmen, which resulted in the death of one, amid strong public opposition of the Guard’s presence in the nation’s capital. The start of the trial also coincided with nationwide anti-ICE protests including in Washington. And a group called “Free DC” at the time was hosting online seminars as part of its Trump 2.0 resistance operation, advising D.C. residents how to serve on juries to “influence outcomes and help create a more equitable legal process.”

Free MS-13 to Show Trump!

Jury deliberations in the Rivera/Ramirez case began December 15, 2025. In a note to Judge Lamberth the following day, the foreperson informed the judge that despite “robust debate,” the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict. “One juror has expressed an inability to be impartial in their review of the facts and an unwillingness to continue deliberations in a productive manner,” the foreperson disclosed.

Lamberth declared a mistrial on December 17, 2025. Vive la résistance!

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, immediately sought to retry the pair. The second trial started on April; jury deliberations began on April 15. History, however, would repeat itself with a note from the jury foreperson just a few hours later, disclosing that the panel was “divided and unable to come to a consensus.” They continued to debate but the situation worsened in the jury room:

Lamberth responded with bewilderment, admitting the situation raised profound legal questions. “It’s an odd note because their disclosure of the split, assuming that’s what it is, is disclosing jury misconduct that would entitle an inquiry into the misconduct of the juror and possible replacement and restart of jury deliberations,” he told prosecutors and defense attorneys during an April 17 hearing. “A juror who says at the outset they will not have any problem with never agreeing on a verdict has a problem with me.”

The judge released the jury for the weekend and asked both sides to research how to handle such an impasse. But the jury came back with another blow to the government on April 20:

Lamberth called the foreperson into the courtroom to ask what was going on. “For one of the counts, we were in agreement and then this morning, we weren’t,” the foreperson disclosed. “And then I know we have one juror who is very firm on their stance and doesn’t really want to deliberate further on the others. But there are two different jurors, if that makes sense.”

Lamberth declared another mistrial that day.

Pirro v Graves: Not Even Close…and Lamberth Knows Exactly Why

So despite breathless headlines declaring Pirro a loser in court once again, it appears the jury in both cases was prepared to convict but prevented from doing so by activist jurors who unabashedly declared their intention to sabotage a guilty verdict. (It is unclear why Lamberth, seeing this happen yet again in the case, did not make an Allen charge to the jury or open an investigation into the rogue jurors. But as part of the ongoing judicial coup against the president, Lamberth possibly wanted to hand the Trump administration another loss.)

Further, Lamberth knows exactly why he hasn’t seen “one quite like this.” Because it never happened prior to Trump winning the 2024 election and proceeding to use his DOJ, rather than being hijacked by saboteurs like the first time around, to pursue his policy agenda and round up bad guys, white collar and otherwise.

Compare the outcome of Pirro’s cases before DC juries to the track record of Matthew Graves, her predecessor in the Biden administration. Not only did Graves secure a 100 percent conviction rate of January 6 defendants before DC juries, those guilty verdicts were returned in record time. Graves won easy convictions in the misdemeanor cases against Trump advisors Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, resulting in prison time for both.

But the same office now struggles to win convictions in those same courtrooms—and the only thing that has changed is the name on the letterhead. Not only have DC juries acquitted or declared a hung jury in at least seven federal cases since her tenure began (not including this one), the DC grand jury has rejected Pirro’s pursuit of several indictments including charges against the so-called “Seditious Six.”

And no one knows this massive disparity more than Judge Lamberth, who presided over dozens of J6 cases and sent many to federal prison. His feigned shock as to why juries--both grand and petit--are letting criminals off the hook is nothing more than a hollow attempt to pretend the judicial system in Washington, DC resembles anything close to fair, apolitical proceedings.

Lamberth, and Pirro, will get another chance to convict the dangerous gang lords next month. Is the third time a charm? Inside the grotesquely partisan courthouse sitting in the heart of the nation’s capital, the answer is probably, no.

Regardless of what one thinks about the Department of Justice’s prosecution of disgraced former FBI Director James Comey over posting a threatening seashell formation in May 2025—gotta admit, this case is pretty wild so far.

And it’s fitting for Comey, who has a flair for the dramatic. From hiding in a set of blue curtains in the White House to try to “avoid” President Trump and producing cheesy videos professing his love of Taylor Swift (among other embarrassments) to using his besties to plant positive news stories about himself to complicit reporters, Comey craves attention just like all good megalomaniacs do; Showtime even turned his 2018 memoir into a mini series, where veteran actor Jeff Daniels played the role of Comey. (Remember when Comey was busted for using the name of 20th Century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr for his anonymous email account?)

So it’s only appropriate that the federal criminal case against him now involves a former mob boss; a disgruntled relative cooperating with the government; and revelations that, contrary to Comey’s story, he and his wife likely made the shell formation rather than “stumbled” upon it during a beach walk. In fact, one of his fiction books—where some character usually represents a far better version of Comey himself—is part of the case, with prosecutors tying parts of the plotline to the threat-by-shell.

Another Comey Fabrication? No Way!

The drama began on May 15, 2025. Comey and his wife, Patrice, were vacationing in North Carolina and decided to go for a stroll along the seashore when, low and behold!, the Comeys just happened to notice a bunch of shells assembled to make “86 47.” Comey took a photo of the formation and posted it on his Instagram account—where all totally normal 65-year-old men play on social media—with the caption, “Cool formation on my beach walk.”

The post, according to new disclosures, prompted an unidentified relative of Patrice to finally cut them off.

Comey, allegedly in response to the relative’s text and growing outrage on social media, deleted the post later that day, professing he meant no harm. But the DOJ nonetheless opened an investigation; last April, a grand jury in North Carolina returned a two-count indictment charging Comey with making threats against the president. He was arrested on April 29, 2026.

Comey had this to say in response:

But Comey’s account of what happened that day always sounded suspicious—largely due to the fact it was coming out of Comey’s mouth. (Keep in mind—all of this went down just a few days before the release of Comey’s latest book, “FDR Drive.” The stunt and resulting hubbub resulted in sweet TV appearances so he could plus his latest.)

A filing by the DOJ this week appears to suggest the Comeys may have made the shell formation after going to a remote area of the shore to do so. “[There] is also reason to doubt his story and therefore his overarching credibility,” prosecutors wrote in an August 18 filing to oppose Comey’s request for a special hearing on the lead FBI investigator. “The shells were located four miles down the beach from the beachfront property where Comey was staying, in an area separated from the ocean by a sand dune. And there is no evidence that anyone else arranged, photographed, or even saw the shells.”

Wait, you mean JIM COMEY LIED ABOUT SOMETHING? Impossible.

Further, evidence collected off the Comeys devices showed that Patrice—a hardcore Democrat and bona fide Trump hater who attended the Women’s March in January 2017 with their daughters to protest the the new president despite the fact her husband was FBI Director at the time—looked up the slang definition for “86” and sent a screenshot of it to her husband.

Two minutes later, Comey made his infamous Instagram post.

Comey’s all-star legal team now is asking U.S. District Court Judge Louise Flanagan, a George W. Bush appointee, to dismiss the case on the basis the indictment represents a selective and vindictive prosecution and a omits a “true threat.” (Those defense motions are here and here.) Defense attorneys also pushed back on any suggestion the Comeys made the formation: “Although Mr. Comey did not know who created the arrangement, Mr. Comey came to understand the phrase ‘86 47’ as a clever way of expressing political opposition to President Trump. Mr. Comey’s description of the shell formation as ‘[c]ool’ communicated his admiration for the way in which an anonymous person criticized President Trump.”

Suuuure.

Bring in the Bull

In an interesting twist, the FBI interviewed Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano in May seeking his opinion as to whether Comey would have known “86” represented a threat against the president. Gravano was once the underboss of the Gambino mob family; Comey and his now defense attorney Patrick Fitzgerald led the government’s case against John Gambino as prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York in the 1990s. Gravano turned on the family and became a cooperating witness.

But he had plenty to say about Comey’s potential foreknowledge about the meaning of “86”, which strangely was included in a defense motion. “Mr. Gravano stated his belief that Mr. Comey had to know what the term ‘86’ meant ‘as it related to killing someone,’” Fitzgerald wrote in a July affidavit. “Gravano also stated that he was ‘fairly certain it would be difficult to find the term ‘86’ documented in law enforcement/FBI files because members of organized crime families refrained from using terms such as ‘86’ that were commonly used in day-to-day business in the presence of law enforcement officers.”

Gravano told investigators Comey’s “post was a call for violence against President Trump,” he did not believe the post meant “Mr. Comey would personally kill President Trump.”

Gravano, who left the witness protection program in 1995 then got himself arrested and sent to prison again, is now a podcaster.

With such a cast of characters—Comey’s lawyers also attempted to discredit Patrice’s unidentified relative as being a recent rehab patient—one can only imagine the circus that will be Comey’s October trial in North Carolina.

And the attention-starved former fed wouldn’t want it any other way.

It is impossible to calculate how much precious time was squandered during President Trump’s first term as he and his administration fought off bogus allegations of criminal behavior by the president himself, his family, his closest aides, and his Cabinet members. One can safely argue that the first half of Trump 45—from Inauguration Day through the closing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in April 2019—was incapacitated by internal saboteurs, working hand in glove with the media, to falsely portray Trump as a Russian stooge doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin at the expense of the nation’s security.

The treachery began with the opening of Crossfire Hurricane in July 2016—a multi-national, interagency FBI operation that planted the seeds of bogus Trump-Russia election collusion right before the 2016 presidential election. But recently declassified documents released by the White House Government Transparency Task Force, led by longtime investigative reporter John Solomon, reveal the existence of two additional criminal investigations into Trump World intended to result in Trump’s removal from office along with several top officials. And the bureau’s subterfuge continued until the president’s final days in office.

In May 2017, based on nothing more than a letter by two Democratic senators and the FBI’s desire to destroy top Trump officials, the notoriously corrupt Washington (FBI) field office opened a criminal investigation into Attorney General Jeff Sessions for allegedly lying to Congress about his communications with Russian officials. Code named “March Toll” and initiated by the disgraced James Comey a month prior, the investigation centered on Sessions’ Congressional testimony where he (accurately) denied meeting with Russians in 2016 to discuss the presidential campaign. Sessions—who unfortunately recused himself from all Russia related matters on March 2, 2017 under immense pressure from lawmakers and the media—had spoken with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (whom I contend to this day had acted as an informant for the Obama administration, which I covered here in 2019) twice prior to Election Day: once briefly during the Republican National Convention in July 2016 and once during a meeting in his Senate office in September 2016.

Although Sessions insisted his discussions with Kislyak did not involve politics or the campaign, the FBI nonetheless claimed those brief encounters represented “an activity constituting a federal crime or a threat to national security.” The basis for “March Toll,” which began the day after Comey was fired on May 9, 2017, can be found here. Mueller’s office ended the investigation without bringing charges against Sessions on May 8, 2019, two months after the special counsel’s office was shut down. Sessions had resigned in November 2018 after Comey and company succeeded in destroying his reputation; Sessions lost a bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate in 2020.

Comey’s Minions Continued His Bidding After His Overdue Firing

But Sessions—along with Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, and Paul Manafort, the original targets of Crossfire Hurricane—wasn’t the only suspected Russian asset lurking around the White House. A week after Trump fired Comey, two of the FBIs sleaziest characters—FBI general counsel James Baker and FBI counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap—opened “Oxferd Comma,” a criminal investigation into the sitting president of the United States for acting as a Russian agent in booting Comey. “The FBI is opening a full investigation based on an articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald J. Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States,” the pair wrote on May 16. (The opening electronic communication is here.)

That same day, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and acting Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, replacing Sessions in all things Russia, met to discuss the probe. That was the same day Rosenstein suggested to McCabe that the feds could “wire him up” to record conversations with the president.

But contrary to the stated reason for “Oxferd Comma,” no “articulable factual basis” existed. The evidence consisted of rehashed allegations in the debunked Steele dossier and a series of “memos” recorded by Comey following private meetings with the president between January and April 2017. Comey, through his bestie Dan Richman, had leaked those memos to the New York Times shortly after he was fired, which resulted in a May 11, 2017 article disclosing details of his conversations with Trump. Comey later admitted he leaked the memos, some of which the DOJ Inspector General later determined had contained classified information, to prompt the appointment of a special counsel.

Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller on May 17, 2017.

More Grist for the ‘Permanent Coup’

Even after the Mueller report landed with a thud two years later—and Mueller’s July 2019 congressional appearance showed a feeble, forgetful geezer with no apparent grasp of the destructive investigation that had proceeded under his name—the FBI figured it had a surefire winner in branding Republican officials and their alleged media supporters as Russian cutouts.

So to cover up for the international crime family known as the Bidens prior to the 2020 election, the FBI concocted another scary Russian plot. “Round River,” a secret counterintelligence operation, claimed the Russians were using “conduits” (Republicans) to smear “targets” (Democrats) with disinformation about Hunter Biden, Burisma, and a host of other family scandals to promote what the FBI called the “Ukraine Narrative.” According to the new documents, the effort was led by the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), created by former FBI Director Chris Wray in 2017 to perpetuate the idea that enemy states, particularly Russia, were successfully meddling in U.S. elections.

Here is an assessment of the operation contained in the latest document dump:

Prior to Election Day, FBI officials gave what they called “defensive briefings” to members of Congress to warn about the latest version of Russian chicanery. Outrageously, the FBI had designated lawmakers including Republican Senators Charles Grassley and Ron Johnson and House Republicans Devin Nunes and James Jordan as Russian “conduits” peddling “disinformation” about the Biden scandals. A spreadsheet, linked here, created by the FBI listed the purported bad guys and their victims.

In fact, the FBI went so far as to dispatch Nikki Flores, head of the FITF, to meet with Grassley and Johnson in August 2020 under the guise of providing a defensive briefing—right before the release of their damning report on Hunter Biden’s financial dealings with foreign countries and companies. But Grassley and Johnson were not fooled. “With respect to the substance of the briefing, it consisted primarily of information that we already knew and information unconnected to our Biden investigation,” they wrote to Floris in 2022, demanding answers about the probe. “We made clear to you at the briefing that it was not relevant to the substance of our work. In response, you stated that the FBI is not attempting to ‘quash, curtail, or interfere’ in the investigation in any way.”

(A few days after the Floris briefing, Lawfare blog ran the first in a series of articles accusing Johnson of acting as an “enabler of Russian disinformation.”)

The latest Transparency Task Force disclosures also include a letter from FBI Director Kash Patel confirming the use of at least 53 confidential human sources (informants) in “Round River,” 14 of whom reported derogatory information about Hunter Biden. “At my direction, this FBI will take the unprecedented step of providing you with the source reporting from all 53 sources so you can finally see the facts,” Patel wrote to the White House this week. He disbanded the FITF last year.

So what does all this mean? It means the treachery of the DOJ and FBI were far worse than anyone imagined, even those of us reporting on it at the time. It means Attorney General Todd Blanche and Patel are still dealing with a systemically corrupt Department of Justice still heavily populated with Comey, Wray, McCabe, and Floris wannabes. It means President Trump was robbed not only of the first two years of his first term but a run for re-election uninhibited by the same bad actors in 2020.

And unfortunately it means they will all get away with it.

More on “Round River” here:

Sometimes (most of the time?) in politics, the bad guys win.

Such is the case with outgoing Senators Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas). Blinded by bitterness, revenge, and hypocrisy, the pair of sore losers—Tillis last year abandoned his re-election bid amid fear he would lose a Republican primary over his criticism of President Trump, a fate inflicted on Cornyn, who lost his primary election in May after Trump endorsed his opponent—recently joined forces to block the confirmation of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley twice postponed confirmation votes—Tillis and Cornyn sit on the powerful committee—in the face of threats by both senators to vote “no” on Blanche’s nomination.

The reason for the hold-up related to the so-called “anti-weaponization fund” established by the president to compensate American citizens, particularly the participants of the January 6 protest, targeted by the Biden Department of Justice over their political beliefs. Blanche announced the creation of the $1.766 billion fund in May as part of a settlement in response to a lawsuit filed by the president and the Trump Organization for the illegal leaking of his tax documents right before the 2020 presidential election. “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.”

Democrats and some Republicans, including Tillis, immediately denounced the fund, which the lame duck describes as a “payout for punks.”

Cornyn, who is somehow impossibly dumber than Tillis, went so far as to cancel a face-to-face meeting with Blanche. (The four-term senator hasn’t received this level of attention from the Washington press corps since he last time he snuggled up to Volodymyr Zelensky.)

Trump responded last week to Cornyn’s pouting:

For Tillis’s part, as I wrote here, he had pledged to block any nominee who “defended” the events of January 6; he successfully scuttled the confirmation of acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin last year.

So rather than do something constructive for the country, and for their constituents, in the waning months of their forgettable Senate careers, Tillis and Cornyn instead chose to make Blanche their whipping boy. The milquetoast mates—who never met a Ukraine aid package they didn’t support—found their inner mafiosos and made an “or else” offer the administration could not refuse.

On Monday, Blanche confirmed in writing the fund had been shut down for good:

Tillis and Cornyn quickly gloated. (The agreement also limits the IRS’ ability to audit other Trump World figures aside from those named in the lawsuit.)

A committee vote to confirm Blanche is set for Tuesday morning.

But Garland and Monaco Were A-Ok

Their opposition to Blanche not only represented a public relations stunt but also a stunning example of D.C.-level political hypocrisy.

First, as I noted on X, both men voted to confirm Merrick Garland as attorney general. Cornyn offered a full-throated endorsement of Garland on the Senate floor, snookered by Garland’s promises to end the politicization of the DOJ. (His remarks came at the same time Biden’s DOJ began rounding up Cornyn’s constituents for even minor involvement in the Capitol protest.)

Both men also voted to confirm Trump-Russia collusion mastermind Lisa Monaco as deputy attorney general in April 2021; shortly after her confirmation, I described the 98-2 Senate vote as handing matches to an arsonist. Monaco proceeded to not only manage day-to-day management of the sprawling J6 prosecution but both investigations into President Trump including the plans to conduct an armed raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022.

Second, Tillis admitted in a recent X post that many J6ers had been mistreated by the Biden DOJ:

So if, as Tillis acknowledged, the Biden DOJ pursued “vindictive prosecutions,” what is the remedy for the Americans targeted and nearly destroyed in the process? What sort of restitution is due to J6ers investigated, charged, convicted, and imprisoned on the bogus obstruction of an official proceeding statute—overturned by the Supreme Court in June 2024? Or the J6ers sentenced to excessive jail time, from months in federal prison for misdemeanors to 22 years on bogus “seditious conspiracy” convictions? (A charge I strongly believe also would have been overturned by SCOTUS had the case made it to the highest court.)

If Tillis believes the Biden DOJ broke the law by pursuing “vindictive” and politically motivated prosecutions, he should help Blanche make those people whole, not sabotage their last chance for much-deserved relief.

But alas, the final act for Tillis and Cornyn—who once begged former FBI Director Christopher Wray to think up harsher charges for J6ers—represents yet another betrayal of their own constituents in exchange for taking once last whack at the president. In the end, however, Trump gets his attorney general pick and the country gets a hard-charging leader at the top of the DOJ to continue cleaning house, rounding up bad guys, and exposing rampant government fraud.

Hi all - You may have noticed a slight downturn in the number of articles I’ve have posted lately. And I am sorry for slacking and always appreciate your patience and support!

The reason why I’ve been quieter than usual is because I’ve been busy preparing for the launch of my husband’s campaign for Chicago mayor!

He officially announced his candidacy this week. We feel good about our chances, but it will be a grind! At least eight other candidates are in the race now with more to come; John is running on a law and order platform to make Chicago safe, clean, and attractive to business once again. He is also ready to take on the powerful Chicago teachers union, which has a stranglehold on the city’s political system.

Here is his launch video followed by a recent interview for Chicago’s NBC station. I am also adding his new social media accounts (he has never been on any platform, so we are trying to build his following) if you can kindly add his account to your lists.

I will keep you posted from the campaign trail! And I will continue to cover my usual topics including DOJ reforms and radical judges.

Website: https://johnkellyforchi.com/

Please follow:

X: https://x.com/jkellyformayor/status/2082515969801437569?s=20

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jkellyformayor/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jkellyformayor

My very first article condemning the reckless “science” behind the first round of Covid-related lockdowns appeared in American Greatness on March 19, 2020. Entitled “Dangerous Curves,” linked here, my piece reviewed historical flu data and warned about the threat of locking everyone and everything down with the promise of stopping the spread of the virus. “Americans are willingly surrendering to government their freedom, their livelihood, their long-term economic security, and their mental well-being over unjustified panic about a virus that might have already spread and now is abating. If this is the new normal, where incomplete data and media-fueled panic rule the day, that is an even more frightening prospect than what’s happening right now,” I wrote.

For months, I joined a tiny handful of reporters and influencers challenging the data, the messaging, the media coverage, and the so-called mitigation measures promoted by Dr. Anthony Fauci and others including Dr. Deborah Birx. A few more of my early pieces calling out the shifting goalposts can be found here, here, and here.

In July 2020, I wrote about Fauci’s “fatal conceit”—something that rears its ugly head time and again in Senator Rand Paul’s release of Fauci’s diary entries dating back to December 2019. I wanted to pass along the full 1,141-page document here. And Sen. Paul’s X thread begins here.

What we also knew at the time—but that his diary demonstrates in bright stage lights—is how the fawning, fallacious, feckless (sorry for the alliteration) media conspired with Fauci to perpetuate the most destructive “public health” propaganda campaign in American history.

Just lookie here:

But perhaps no two people became closer during the period of social distancing than Fauci and CNN’s Jake Tapper. Tapper’s name appears 41 times in Fauci’s diary; not only did Fauci appear on his show dozens of times, the pair was building a “friendship,” Fauci noted, exchanging private dinners at each other’s homes in 2020.

July 2020: “Had dinner over Jake Tapper and Jen Tapper’s home in DC. Terrific couple. Friendship building.”

October 2020: “Had dinner at my home with Jake and Jennifer Tapper. Relaxed, good time. Jake clearly believes that Trump is totally nuts.”

Tapper even stroked Fauci’s insatiable ego when duty called. “Hard to believe Paura (sic) Ingraham went to Dartmouth, isn’t it. All of us alumni are very proud,” Tapper texted Fauci in April 2020 after Fauci appeared on her show.

“Jake Tapper woke me up at 11:23 AM (I went to bed early) furius at POTUS for tweeting about the fact that Jake severly questioned Brett Giroir on SOTU CNN show today. Jake was really pissed at the craziness of it all,” he wrote in July 2020. (And yes, Fauci’s diary is filled with misspelled words.)

Here are just a few flashbacks from the coosome twosome:

Fauci received one of Joe Biden’s infamous autopen pardons stretching all the way back to 2014. But of course that won’t shield Fauci from any false statements he may make during his sworn testimony on Wednesday. It would be a travesty of justice if Fauci gets away with destroying the lives of millions, especially children, bankrupting businesses, forcing the dying to die alone, suspending personal freedoms, torching the credibility of the public health/science sector, and significantly altering our way of life—some of which continues to this day.

Hell isn’t hot enough.

Jack Smith, the disgraced former special counsel, is lawyering up and lashing out.

The man often described by the media as “fearless,” “calm,” and “apolitical” during his two-year reign of terror as Merrick Garland’s handpicked lawfare goon is tipping his highly partisan and somewhat jittery hand as Republicans in Washington set their sights on him. Smith’s veil of mystery—CNN actually covered his trip to D.C. Subway shop in July 2023 as “breaking news”—has been voluntarily lifted as he faces Congressional and possible criminal investigations into his handling of numerous inquiries, which ensnared the private communications of sitting members of Congress.

A cleaned-up Smith, who typically presents a raggedy beard and pallid complexion, recently commiserated with MS-NOW’s Nicolle Wallace on a number of topics, including the (LOL) weaponization of the Department of Justice:

Jack Smith is one of the biggest losers (in terms of court rulings) in DOJ history…

The man who has been obsessed with Donald Trump for almost four years claims he doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about Donald Trump…

Mr. Tough Guy…

But Smith’s victim routine isn’t fooling Republican leaders on Capitol Hill. On July 22, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Jordan sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice accusing Smith of misleading Congressional investigators when he denied that the special counsel’s office had obtained text messages belonging to members of Congress. “While testifying under oath, Mr. Smith seemingly made willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact that contradict new documents obtained by the Committee from the Department of Justice (DOJ),” Jordan wrote to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “The Committee is providing this information for the DOJ to investigate a potential violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001.”

Text Messages? What Text Messages?

At issue is Smith’s December 2025 too-cute-by-half testimony related to his subpoenas for the toll records of several Republicans lawmakers. (Toll records show cell phone activity but not the nature of conversations or content of texts.) While Smith accurately answered direct questions about obtaining text messages—texts belonging to 44 members of Congress were swept up in Smith’s collection of messages sent or received by dozens of Trump White House aides, handed over without a fight by the National Archives in 2023—the shady prosecutor failed to separately disclose that fact to investigators:

“The responses provided by Mr. Smith gave the impression that neither Mr. Smith nor his team had access to the content of Members’ privileged text messages. We now know this to be false,” Jordan wrote.

The Ohio Republican reminded Smith that he “was advised of his obligation to provide all necessary information that would make his responses truthful. The Committee specifically instructed him that he could not tell half-truths or exclude information necessary to make statements accurate, and that a deliberate failure to disclose information could constitute a false statement.”

Bring in the Fixers

Smith’s criminal defense team—which includes former Clinton fixer Lanny Breuer, who brought Smith on board as head of the DOJ’s public integrity unit in 2010 during his stint at the Obama DOJ—quickly fired back. “This referral reflects a chilling eagerness to weaponize the justice system by attacking a career, nonpartisan public servant who faithfully and fearlessly performed his duties by following the facts and the law,” Smith’s attorneys wrote to Jordan and Blanche. More LOL.

While Smith, his lawyers, and their accomplices in the media want all of this to look like the latest example of Trump using the DOJ to “retaliate” or seek “retribution” against his political enemies, at least one Democrat has expressed concern over Smith’s reckless handling of investigations into his colleagues. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) conceded that Republicans are “rightly concerned about the possible breach of norms and improper access to email [sic].” Documents also revealed that Smith’s team mishandled privileged material while intentionally ignoring Speech or Debate Clause protections in the collection of members’ cell content—a pattern of misconduct demonstrated by the Special Counsel’s team in the classified documents case and the seizure of Rep. Scott Perry’s cell phone records in 2023.

Jordan’s referral now sits on Blanche’s desk. So, too, does a separate referral against Thomas Windom, Smith’s top henchman in the J6 indictment against the president, for obstruction of Congress related to his stonewalling during a deposition last year.

And while skepticism as to whether anything will happen to either one is certainly warranted—especially considering the hostile grand jury environment Trump’s DOJ faces in the nation’s capital—the fact that Smith is paying high-priced lawyers and groveling to cable news hosts is a gratifying scene for now.

Irony, to no one’s surprise, appears lost on some of the biggest perpetrators of the decade-long lawfare against President Trump, his allies, and the MAGA movement. Those same saboteurs are now attempting to block Senate confirmation of Todd Blanche, President Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, as attorney general.

For example, more than 1,200 former Department of Justice employees signed a letter earlier this month opposing Blanche’s confirmation; the president nominated Blanche, currently the acting attorney general, to permanently fill the position following the firing of Pamela Bondi in April.

The opposition’s letter—released by a group called “Justice Connection,” which, among other things, provides counseling services to recently-terminated DOJ employees—blamed Blanche for unspecified “corruption and abuses” at the department under his leadership. Accusing Blanche of the “degradation of DOJ’s apolitical career workforce” (LOL), the former employees claimed Blanche is “demonizing career employees, undermining their work, and driving them out of the department.” (As I have covered extensively, the dramatic departures of top DOJ and FBI employees over the past 18 months—either forced or voluntarily—have exposed the highly partisan nature of the establishment DOJ.)

Perhaps the most amusing, and encouraging, passage of the letter lamented the fact that roughly 16,000 of the DOJ’s 100,000+ workforce have left since the start of Trump’s term—as the old joke goes about lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, a good start. But not for the signers of the Justice Connection letter, many of whom left the DOJ more than 30 to 40 years ago. “The consequences of Blanche’s attacks on DOJ’s apolitical workforce radiate beyond the halls of Main Justice, affecting the entire country. They’ve meant that much of the department’s vital work isn’t being done, or isn’t being done as well–leaving communities less safe, Americans’ rights less protected, and our national security more vulnerable.” (The missive also again proves that most lawyers are terrible writers.)

Which is rich coming from individuals most responsible for torching the public’s trust in the DOJ by abusing their power in an attempt to destroy Donald Trump and everyone around him—and in the process, redirecting resources away from the real work Americans expect the DOJ and FBI to do.

A DOJ Hall of Shame

Signers of the letter included JP Cooney, Molly Gaston, and David Rody, three of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s top henchmen; Peter Carr, former spokesman for the DC US Attorney’s office and chief propagandist of J6 investigations; Greg Rosen, the former “Capitol Siege” unit chief; Mike Feinberg, a former FBI agent and BFF of disgraced FBI attorney Peter Strzok; J6 prosecutors Mike Gordon and Sara Levine; David Laufman, who helped tank Clinton email investigation and participated in Brett Kavanaugh character assassination campaign; Lisa Monaco senior counsel David Smith; Robert Mueller henchman Aaron Zelinsky; and Biden autopen pardon attorney Liz Oyer.

In fact, Oyer is scheduled to testify this week during Blanche’s confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee; Blanche fired Oyer in March 2025 after she refused a directive by Blanche’s office to restore the gun rights of actor Mel Gibson, who lost that privilege following a misdemeanor domestic battery plea agreement. Oyer, who only offered faint criticism of her former boss’s last minute clemency announcements, including commuting the death sentences of 37 federal inmates and reducing prison time for hundreds of violent criminals, will share her sob story on Thursday. “Through unchecked bullying, the political leaders of the department are forcing out career staff, ripping away ethical guardrails, and offering priority access to government benefits to loyalists and friends,” Oyer wrote after she was shown the door at Main Justice. “I am deeply concerned that the institution created to uphold our laws and protect our civil rights is being destroyed from within by those entrusted to protect it.”

Of course, all of these former DOJ apparatchiks had no concerns when the Biden DOJ under Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco applied the full force and weight of the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency against Americans who protested at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. No qualms about “civil rights being destroyed from within” during the Biden DOJ’s unprecedented four-year crusade to round up nearly 1,600 individuals, charge them with phony crimes, and throw them in federal prison for years for exercising their 1A rights to demonstrate on public property on a Wednesday afternoon.

Gratuitous Politicking (Again) By Obama Judge

And it’s not just ex-DOJ lifers targeting Blanche. This week, in a flagrant political move intended to provide question fodder for committee Democrats, a federal judge in Florida took several shots at Blanche related to the now-dismissed settlement between the Trump Organization and the IRS for the unlawful leaking of the president’s tax returns right before the 2020 election. Judge Kathleen Williams, an Obama appointee, in May took the rare step of granting a request by 35 former judges—including perpetual Trump grievance peddlers Michael Luttig and Nancy Gertner—who are not parties in the matter to reopen the case based on allegations of misconduct by the DOJ in the original settlement agreement and the now-defunct “Anti Weaponization Fund.”

Williams has since used her bully bench to lob all sorts of accusations at Trump’s DOJ. Her 56-page order issued Monday gratuitously cited Blanche 30 times, even suggesting at one point he committed perjury during recent Congressional testimony. “The Court is extremely troubled by the testimony given by Acting Attorney General Blanche on May 19, 2026,” Williams wrote. “In response to why the ‘settlement agreement’ had not been submitted to this Court for review, he stated that there is no judge’ because the case had been dismissed and, therefore, there was “no mechanism” for reviewing the agreement. While temporally accurate, this answer is, at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous.”

HUH?

Williams then instructed the court’s clerk to send her slanderous diatribe to the New York State and DC Bar associations to review Blanche’s conduct.

Despite the onslaught of belly-whining and pearl-clutching, Blanche appears headed for confirmation. Under his leadership, the DOJ is returning to its core mission—from enforcing immigration law and catching human smugglers to combating fraud and reducing the bloated ranks of the department—and Blanche is on track to do what his predecessors in both Trump administrations failed to do: earn back lost trust in the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency and institute reforms that won’t be easily undone under a future Democratic administration.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Bon entered the U.S. during the Biden Administration in 2024 as a parolee. His parole ended in June 2025 but Bon remained in the country; that same month, Bon received a non-domiciled commercial driver’s license (CDL) by the state of Massachusetts in June 2025. “This tragedy NEVER should have happened. Our prayers are with Trooper Pahira’s family, friends, and loved ones during this time,” DHS’s social media account posted on July 6.

Video of grunting Bon being hauled into a police vehicle went viral:

The president of the Pennsylvania State Troopers Association, Stephen Polishan, issued a statement following Bon’s arrest. “This is not about politics. This is about right versus wrong. Trooper Pahira was a hero, and his family, fellow troopers and the public deserve answers. They need to know why the person accused of this senseless killing, who was in the United States illegally, had been granted a commercial driver’s license in Massachusetts. This individual should never have been driving such a dangerous vehicle on our highways. But he was, and now a good man is dead. Trooper Pahira should be alive today.”

Polishan’s sentiments echo across the country as the death toll of American citizens killed by illegal immigrants driving 80,000-pound death machines continues to rise. The Trump administration, led by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, is rolling back lax federal and state laws that allow noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, to obtain non-domiciled CDLs and commercial learning permits. Last year, Duffy issued a number of reforms aimed at improving truck safety including the announcement of an emergency rule to drastically limit the categories of non-citizens eligible for such licenses. (My backgrounder on this issue is here.) But two Democratic appellate judges in D.C. put a hold on Duffy’s rule in November 2025; as I noted on X, Pahira might be alive today had the judges not intervened in the matter. (Bon’s CDL was renewed in February.)

More Young Men Dead as Blue State Authorities Turn a Blind Eye

Sadly, Pahira’s death is one in another recent spate of tragedies caused by noncitizen truck drivers. A truck driver from Uzbekistan rammed into a vehicle driven by Toby Forsythe, a 21-year-old college soccer star, in Ohio on Sunday, killing him instantly. The driver, Bekhzod Asrarov, failed an English proficiency field test; he also ripped out his dash cam and smashed three cell phones in an attempt to conceal the evidence. Asarov arrived in the U.S. under Joe Biden’s “Diversity Visa Lottery” and obtained a CDL in Ohio. He currently faced one charge of destroying evidence as the investigation continues.

Cook County (IL) sheriff’s police arrested an Indian national on June 29 for killing 23-year-old Sebastian Stone on an Illinois highway as Stone attempted to change his tire. According to news reports, Kuljeet Kang was driving recklessly before he crashed into Stone, “weaving between the second and third lane of travel” then driving on the shoulder of the busy highway where Stone was “struck by the suspect’s front passenger wheel, and dragged under the semi, before being run over by the rear trailer wheels.” Kang fled the scene, increasing his speed as he left Stone to die on the Illinois interstate. (Shocking no one, Chicago area media describes Kang as a “Palatine man.”)

Federal sources told Libs of Tik Tok that Kang’s Illinois CDL had been renewed two months ago. An audit performed by the Federal Motor Safety Carrier Administration concluded earlier this year that one-in-five non-domiciled CDLs issued by the Illinois Secretary of State’s office were done so illegally. (Some reports indicate Kang held a green card, which means he likely obtained a standard rather than a non-domiciled CDL.) However, Kang’s social media posts suggest he may not speak or understand English:

The good news, according to Border Czar Tom Homan, thousands of CDLs across the country have been revoked over the past few months:

The bad news is that hundreds of thousands of noncitizen drivers remain on America’s roads as the administration faces pushback from blue states, unions, and other pro-immigrant interests. In fact, the D.C. appellate court will hold oral arguments in September on a lawsuit seeking to overturn Duffy’s rule; given the Democratic composition and open hostility to the Trump administration on the D.C. appellate court, this fight to remove noncitizens and illegal immigrants truck drivers is not over yet.

More information here from Shannon Everett:

Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a pair of rulings that represented back-to-back defeats for the federal circuit court in Washington, D.C.. In Fischer v. U.S., the Supreme Court determined nearly every D.C. district court judge and two appellate judges had unlawfully applied a corporate fraud statute to help the Biden Department of Justice turn more than 300 January 6 protesters into lifelong felons. The ruling gutted the heart of the DOJ’s J6 prosecution and threw the D.C. courthouse into immediate chaos as defendants, some in federal prison on the charge at the time, and their attorneys sought to vacate convictions and plea agreements.

A few days later, in a landmark ruling on the final day of the term, SCOTUS established a broad swath of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution; four D.C. judges—District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan and three D.C. appellate court judges—had denied all of President Trump’s immunity arguments related to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s J6-indictment, which covered the president’s waning weeks in office. Chief Justice John Roberts took a few shots at the D.C. bench in his accompanying opinion: “Despite the unprecedented nature of this case, and the very significant constitutional questions that it raises, the lower courts rendered their decisions on a highly expedited basis,” Roberts wrote on July 1, 2024.

Deja Vu?

History, in a way, is repeating itself. A pair of SCOTUS decisions handed down in this final week of the October 2025 term again reined in judicial overreach by arguably the most powerful district court in the country.

In a 6-3 decision (the Lilith Fair cohort to no one’s surprise represented the dissent), the Court reversed D.C. Judge Ana Reyes’ halt to end temporary (emphasis added) protected status for Haitian refugees; then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem had announced Haitians’ TPS status—enacted following a devastating earthquake in 2010 and extended on numerous occasions—would expire on February 3, 2026, the last day of the most recent extension. Five Haitians immediately filed suit claiming the decision was based on “racial animus” and violated federal law. (The Haitian plaintiffs, as I noted on X, included a doctor, a software engineer, and a nurse, specialties desperately needed back in their homeland.)

They asked Reyes to prevent the administration from ending the program and initiating deportation proceedings, which the Biden appointee did in her typical inflammatory fashion. Lamenting that President Trump “expressed little regard for Haiti and Haitians,” when taking office the first time in 2017, Reyes accused the president and the administration of unfairly targeting Haitians based on race. “President Trump has made—freely, at times even boastfully—several derogatory statements about Haitians and other nonwhite foreigners,” Reyes wrote in an 83-page diatribe one day before the TPS status expired. Reyes further stated that “no one rationally could” defend the president’s “derogatory statements” about Haiti, including his description of the lawless island nation as a “shithole.”

She did, however, offer a full-throated defense of those who have overstayed their welcome. “The Government does not cite any reason termination must occur post haste. Secretary Noem complains of strains unlawful immigrants place on our immigration-enforcement system. Her answer? Turn 352,959 lawful immigrants into unlawful immigrants overnight. She complains of strains to our economy. Her answer? Turn employed lawful immigrants who contribute billions in taxes into the legally unemployable. She complains of strains to our healthcare system. Her answer? Turn the insured into the uninsured. This approach is many things—in the public interest is not one of them.”

A 2-1 panel of the D.C. appellate court quickly backed Reyes’ decision; two Biden appointees echoed Reyes’ sentiments in the matter, claiming “the termination of TPS would have ‘devastating’ consequences for the plaintiffs, including risk of detention and deportation, separation from family members, and loss of work authorization.” Trump appointee Justin Walker dissented, noting the statute prohibits “judicial review of any determination of the [Secretary] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state.”

Last week, SCOTUS agreed with Walker. Not only did Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the opinion, acknowledge the “judicial-review bar” on such executive branch determinations, he concluded that “[none] of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary was overtly racial, and in substance all ex pressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications.” (Full opinion, including Lilith Fair dissent, is here.) The case now goes back to Reyes, who must reconsider the lawsuit outside of the scope of judicial review or equal protection arguments.

A couple of washed up and washed out Ohio Republicans took great umbrage:

Good Riddance to Bad Case Law

On Monday, SCOTUS handed the D.C. court another L—and in the process, the high court finally inflicted a death blow to Humphrey’s Executor, the SCOTUS decision that recently has been cited, unsuccessfully, by multiple presidential appointees fired by President Trump. (Brief explainer here.) In doing so, the justices re-established executive authority and disabused those who envision a non-existent fourth branch of government that operates “independently” of the Constitutionally-established three.

After the president removed her from the Federal Trade Commission last year, Biden-appointee Rebecca Slaughter filed a lawsuit to keep her position for the remaining six years of her term. Slaughter had argued the president did not follow Humphrey’s Executor guidance by failing to explain any “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” that prompted her firing.

In July 2025, D.C. Judge Loren AliKhan, another Biden appointee, reinstated Slaughter to the FTC, describing the commission as a “specially crafted independent agency.” (Her opinion is here.) Another 2-1 panel of majority Obama-appointed judges endorsed AliKhan’s view and denied the administration’s request to put a hold on her order. “The government has no likelihood of success on appeal given controlling and directly on point Supreme Court precedent,” Judges Patricia Millett and Cornelia Pillard wrote in July 2025. “Specifically, ninety years ago, a unanimous Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Federal Trade Commission Act’s for-cause removal protection for Federal Trade Commissioners,” referring to Humphrey’s Executor.

Millett and Pillard were once again wrong. In another 6-3 decision, SCOTUS reversed the Democratic judges: “Although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the President would prefer to work, neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. “Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.” He continued. “If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, we overrule it. Humphrey’s has for decades been a result in search of a rationale.”

Sort of like the D.C. court system.

So, how many of these wrongheaded decisions will it take before Republicans act? The encroachment by the judiciary onto executive branch authority is most prevalent in Washington courtrooms; their decisions have drastically stymied the president’s agenda on a number of fronts including immigration, the federal workforce, the military, entitlement programs, and foreign affairs.

And no amount of SCOTUS reversals can get that stolen time back.