#115: The Wizarding World of U.S. Courts

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Welcome to Court Watch #115. We’ll get to Pebble Beach golf fraud, dead courtroom experts, fishy weed, and Elvis Presley, among other things in this week’s roundup. But first, we should break some major news.

A young wizard, Harry Potter, is beloved by the residents of Hogwarts for ridding the wizardly world of He-Who-Should-Not-Be-Named. A hero to many, his legacy may be in jeopardy as he faces federal charges that could land him in prison for two decades.  

On Sunday afternoon, the U.S. Court of the Virgin Islands created a new docket – United States v. Harry Potter. The docket was sparse on details, only noting that the Quidditch sports star was facing two counts of 18 U.S.C. 545 – smuggling goods into the U.S. If convicted, Potter faces up to 20 years in federal prison. Sources familiar with the docket refused to comment on whether the Justice Department is considering more serious charges, given Potter’s murder of Tom Marvolo Riddle, formerly a ward of Wool's Orphanage in London.

While not confirmed, it is possible that Mr. Potter is facing charges for assisting two peers at school, Ron Weasley and his brother Charlie, with the smuggling of dragons. We don’t know if Potter’s beloved teacher, Severus Snape, has turned state’s evidence, but given his storied history of vacillating loyalties, it’s a possibility. Such illegal activities were well documented at the time by a terminally online British author who lives in a castle. According to the docket, the case is being worked by a seasoned Assistant U.S. Attorney who has run point for the office prosecutions involving firearm charges, fresh off his appointment as the district’s election threats coordinator. The docket, which was only available for a short period on Sunday, has since been removed from PACER.

It is entirely possible  – fine, 100% likely – that this was all just a simple effort by the court’s clerk to test the online filing system on a quiet Sunday when no one should be watching. After all, Beyonce probably didn’t sue Rihanna that same day, either. Especially since RocNation denied the reports of a civil action. And prosecutors likely did not try to arrest Santa last year. Though with the errant ‘E’ at the end of Claus(e), Tim Allen may need to seek legal counsel. 

Efforts to reach Mr. Potter’s past counsel, Albus Dumbledore, were unsuccessful. A Justice Department spokesman declined an easy opportunity to set the record straight on whether federal prosecutors are pursuing charges against Mr. Potter. Yes, we actually asked. No, we probably won’t be invited to the next DOJ Office of Public Affairs Christmas party. 

For its part, the District Court of the Virgin Islands issued a statement, saying that an “incident resulted from an internal error that caused misleading information to be placed on the public docket. When the issue was identified, the Court took swift action and resolved the issue. The Court has taken corrective measures to ensure the accuracy of our testing process moving forward and we regret any confusion or disruption this may have caused.”

Court record-keeping, especially on a system as antiquated as PACER, can be a joyless task. It’s a shame that the court clerks are barred from having some fun in the future. And even more disheartening that Harry’s alleged victims won’t receive justice through our criminal justice system.

Having sufficiently monitored the happenings of the Virgin Islands’ federal court system, let’s take a look at the rest of the districts in this week’s roundup of all the most fascinating filings. And for the record, every bullet below is based on actual real filings. We are not running a test on our subscribers.

The Docket Roundup

• Honestly, we love the font size choice, and the use of highlighter was chef’s kiss. 

• Molotov cocktail and spray painting “f*** elon” and “Nazi” at a Tesla dealership resulted in federal charges in Colorado.

• The Associated Press is suing a number of White House officials to be allowed access to cover the Administration after being barred for Gulf of Mexico/Gulf of America/Gulfgate. A judge denied the temporary junction motion, though the hearing seemed to indicate that a preliminary injunction was not off the table. 

• A group of families whose relatives were killed in the October 7th terror attack on Israel is suing Al Jazeera for its coverage of the conflict under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

• A purported unlicensed gun dealer in Arkansas appears to have also run a summer camp.

• The FBI arrested a Tajik man living in Brooklyn on charges of conspiring to provide material support to ISIS and ISIS-K. He was also charged with immigration fraud.

• Nearly 800,000 dollars in cash was wrapped in foil, concealed in a Gucci bag, and placed into the cardboard box of an air fryer was found inside a storage unit purportedly tied to a human trafficking ring in Georgia.

• Federal prosecutors in Texas handling immigration enforcement cases need to find a new building to work out of due to DOGE.

• The Secret Service says crypto scammers are now impersonating Apple and Goldman Sachs employees.

• This docket in DC was unsealed for a few minutes on Saturday. More to come soon. 

• President Trump and Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-1, R) are suing pollster J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register.

• Police officers in Georgia grew suspicious after a property that “was used to catch and process fish into fish cakes” purportedly smelled nothing like fish but a lot like marijuana. The DEA seized the alleged weed-growing operation.

• A golf trip to Pebble Beach resulted in federal charges. 

• Fourteen people were indicted, and another eight were arrested for allegedly running a smuggling operation across the southern border.

• The Cranberries sued their record company for allegedly underpaying the band over a million dollars worth of royalties.

• We may be old school, but if you’re going to send a subpoena to the President of the United States, at least use his full name. 

• A Wisconsin high school and its students were the victims of a series of anti-semitic rants and a bomb threat. 

• Buried a bit in the filing, but the Associated Press says it has paid more than $120,000 in litigation support tools to defend itself against allegations that it knowingly hired Hamas-linked freelancers for its Israel/Gaza coverage. The hearing last week was quickly sealed once we entered the previously open Zoom proceeding. 

• A federal judge in Colorado declined a motion to recuse himself because he used the preferred pronouns of a plaintiff, writing, “The Court is duty-bound to show respect and courtesy to all involved in, or affected by, these judicial proceedings. It will continue to do so. And no party should continue to confuse the Court’s show of respect and courtesy for bias and prejudgment. The Court meant what it said twice before—first on November 20 and again on November 21— the parties may refer to the alleged transgender woman however they choose so long as they remain respectful; the parties should not construe the Court’s use of she/her pronouns as any indication that the Court has prejudged any issues in this case." 

• Three people in Mississippi were charged with shooting at a DEA agent tailing them. 

• There’s lots of litigation involving President Trump’s Executive Orders. We’re keeping a tally here. (Editor’s Note: We’re also working on a fancier one with the NYTimes). But for our money, we’re most interested in a seemingly random case from Virginia where an IRS agent was let go because she was a probationary employee. As part of the filing, we got a window into the types of emails managers sent to employees when both parties knew a firing was about to occur, but they couldn’t put it in writing. 

• Goya Foods, fresh off a CEO tea week, is being sued over whether it’s actually ‘Made in America’

• We’re curious why the Justice Department is dropping a 12-year international kidnapping case.

• If the prosecutor doesn’t end his sentencing argument with “Thank you, your honor. Thank you very much,” with a slightly raised lip in this case, it’ll be a real missed opportunity. 

• Leave your Meta glasses in the car next time, lawyers.

• A Homeland Security Investigations agent identified an alleged international gun smuggler apparently through his love for his GNC Denali.

• Here’s a half-million-dollar pro se lawsuit over alleged defamatory statements made about participation in a “quasi-professional football league.”

• The Israeli owner of an international freight-forwarding company was sentenced to two years and ordered to forfeit more than $2 million for violating sanctions by shipping airplane parts to Russia.

• An Indiana man was indicted for threatening to cut former President Biden into pieces.

• Eric Adams’ attorneys filed a brief arguing that District Court Judge Dale Ho should dismiss his case with prejudice, a change from what they agreed to with the Justice Department in the hearing for dismissal last week.

• A lawyer submitted an expert report signed by a man who died ten months earlier. The court was not very happy about it (hat tip to a reader on that one).

• Might need to find a new spot to buy your Brazilian sausages.

• The FBI Cleveland Office will not use any no-no words to describe a 4 million dollar crypto scam. (Paragraph 31 of the seizure)

• The family of a deceased famous photographer would like Snoop Dogg to knock it off. 

• A security camera purportedly captured a defendant in a gun trafficking case carrying a box of guns in South Carolina. The guns allegedly ended up in New York and were found at a number of crime scenes. 

• A judge in DC awarded a $181,526 judgment in an anti-SLAPP case involving two protest leaders and a rabbi. The two protest leaders had accused the rabbi of stalking them after the rabbi filed a lawsuit alleging he had been assaulted during a protest reportedly led by them outside of the Israeli embassy. The rabbi’s lawsuit alleged protestors “used a combination of loudspeakers, bullhorns, and sirens, in unison, to drown out” a prayer for the hostages taken in the October 7th attack, causing the rabbi to suffer acute ear damage.

• Leaving a voicemail on a victim’s phone saying you just crossed state lines and are going to kill that person makes a ‘transmitting a threat in interstate commerce’ charge pretty easy to bring.

• The feds busted a ring of construction workers from Ireland who allegedly ripped off elderly victims of hundreds of thousands of dollars for shoddy construction work.

• A seventy-one-year-old man from Alabama was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to shipping industrial equipment for oil and gas production to Iran.

• The company behind the OKX cryptocurrency admitted to violating U.S. anti-money laundering laws and agreed to pay more than half a billion dollars in penalties.

• We’re curious how Stringer Bell would feel about voice memos.

• A defamation lawsuit brought by the White House’s Presidential Envoy for Special Missions against a former Trump staffer turned Never Trumper was dismissed without prejudice by a federal judge in Virginia yesterday. According to filing documents, the lawsuit was funded, in part, by a foundation controlled by FBI Director Kash Patel. The judge offered the President of the Kennedy Center another opportunity to file an amended complaint in the next two weeks. 

Thanks for reading. A final note, this week’s story on a judge’s sweeping ruling about the Fourth Amendment was our highest opened post in Court Watch’s history. And because of that interest, we checked: The Justice Department hasn’t filed a notice of appeal yet – which is news in and of itself. We asked Main Justice if they planned to do so in the future, but they declined to comment. 

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