#124: The Filing With The Dragon Tattoo

Welcome to Court Watch #124. We’ll talk about the title of our email in a little bit. We assure you it’ll both make complete sense and also feel quite senseless. We’ll also have a discussion on nakedness, threats, burning Teslas, DOGE getting into the DOJ game, the Baltimore Ravens, and some smuggled Parakeets for good measure. But first, let’s go back 157 years. 

The Curious Journey of a Stolen 1868 Rifle

The FBI has spent the last two and a half years tracking down an 1868 Springfield carbine rifle that disappeared from the Springfield Armory run by the National Parks Service in Massachusetts. The rifle, which was one of only four manufactured as a prototype for the U.S. Army Cavalry, went missing from the Springfield Armory sometime in the early 1980s, beginning a fits-and-starts search that lasted more than four decades and concluded this week.

In 1994, several collectors reported to the National Park Service that another gun collector was in possession of the stolen 1868 carbine and that its serial number had been obliterated to prevent identification. According to court records, law enforcement reportedly reached out to the collector but were rebuffed. After the collector passed away, a family member sold the gun in 2015 at the Baltimore Gun Show to another collector, who also passed away, leaving the rifle to end up in the hands of a third collector who bought it at an auction for $5,000. 

The FBI eventually traced the sale to the third collector, who agreed to let them examine the gun. According to an affidavit, analysts at the FBI’s laboratory in Quantico, a private university, and the Springfield Armory’s Curator were able to match characteristics of the 1868 carbine to the stolen rifle. 

On Tuesday, the government moved to put the rifle back into its possession, which a federal judge agreed to on Wednesday. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts told Court Watch they have no comment on the case. 

The arc of historical gun investigations can be quite long, but it does bend toward justice. Now onto the rest of this week’s dockets. 

The Docket Roundup

• Listen, call us old school but if your law firm is named ‘Dragon Lawyers,’ it damn well better have a cool logo. And once you acquire such awesomeness, it would be morally reprehensible not to share that logo with the world by putting it on every page of your client’s lawsuit. A judge unfortunately disagreed with us.

• A routine traffic stop allegedly led to a man emailing threats to a Virginia police officer along with pictures of the cop’s house. Police say they then found child sexual abuse material on the man’s laptop after seizing it during his arrest for the threat charge.

• Floyd Mayweather is suing a journalist with Business Insider over an article about a $400 million real estate deal.

• Judge Faribiarz’s favorite pastime is burying left hooks and jabs in footnotes. 

• Two Chinese nationals and a Californian man pleaded guilty to money laundering charges for their participation in a $40 million Chinese drug money laundering operation.

• Thanks for the kicker hat tip, Rochester’s Democrat and Chronicle. We adore local reporters who’ve covered the courts for decades. Also, pick up the journalist’s book, Seven Million. It’s a hell of a read.

• (Allegedly) burning a Cybertruck but forgetting to burn the map of your plan to burn a Cybertruck is something.

• Do Supreme Court Justices have to pay PACER fees, too, or did they find the perfect life hack by making the circuit courts send them the documents? It’s like the elites’ version of RECAP. 

• A man from Mexico was arrested after reportedly trying to smuggle 12 protected Orange Fronted Parakeets through a Border Patrol checkpoint. According to law enforcement, the man stuffed the birds into a seat cushion and the boots he was wearing, which one Border Patrol Agent found unseemly.

• The Gateway, a student paper at the University of Nebraska Omaha, took a hard look at one of the richest men in the world and his ill-fated purchase of a cherished local paper, the Omaha World-Herald. The reporting also noted that the Gateway now has more full-time reporters (cubs, but still) than the World-Herald. And a growing newsroom needs to have the proper journalistic tools to keep comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Which leads us to a humble ask, with your help, last year we sponsored a few Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) memberships for Gateway reporters. Membership with the IRE opens up a field of opportunities and trainings for budding reporters. Now that the Gateway has grown in size, we intend to do it again. If you’d like to join us on that support by sponsoring the $25 dollar membership for student journalists, drop us a line. If we exceed the number of memberships needed at the Gateway, we’ll pick another student paper and continue until every student reporter in America has one. 

• We’re curious what changed for a Massachusetts federal judge to suddenly recuse himself last night after weeks presiding over 2 of the more than 300 Trump Administration-related lawsuits.

• A new lawsuit claims Disney purportedly stole the ideas behind a Lion King-themed ride at Disneyland Paris.

• A Florida man was charged with threatening to kill President Trump on X/Twitter. Doing our journalism due diligence, we checked, the threatening tweet is still up. It’s just a bit buried before a stream of pictures of naked men tweets. Never change, Florida. (Editor’s note: no need to check our work, we have a proven track record on questions like these).

• The Justice Department says a forty-five-year-old Iraqi man living in New York illegally voted in the 2020 Election. The Department also announced that Elon Musk’s DOGE had assisted with the investigation, which we can confidently say is a first for a DOJ press release.

• We have a few open advertising spots next month if your company wants to reach some of the most influential people in America and our high school friends. 

• A federal judge in Colorado is getting tired of being asked by the defense attorneys to recuse himself because of his use of pronouns. Writing in an opinion, “Rather than operating under purported “stigmas” and “specters,” the Court encourages Plaintiffs to take “yes” for an answer. Countless times now, the Court has told Plaintiffs they may use whatever pronouns they choose in these proceedings. They’ve done so from the start. They’ve done so without sanction or admonishment from the Court. They’ve done so without the Court indicating they are doing anything “wrong” or anyone else is doing anything “right.” And yet, Plaintiffs continue to insist on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory on this issue of the use of pronouns in these proceedings.”

• A USDA employee was a victim of a years-long stalking campaign.

• The Trump Administration is attempting to adapt a Biden-era immigration civil settlement that provided legal representation to families separated by immigration actions. They’d essentially like to move to providing legal services in-house. 

• Two alleged leaders of the nihilistic violent extremist (NVE) group “764,” known as “Trippy” and “War,” were charged with running a child exploitation enterprise. We had a write-up about the new NVE designation and 764 two weeks ago. There were other cases this week, too, which seems like an increased interest by law enforcement to dismantle the worst group ever created on the Internet. 

• President Trump’s lawyers would like $53,000 from the Central Park Five.

• A couple of Ukrainians were arrested for voting in the United States.

• Here’s a federal judge’s play-by-play of the removal timeline of a 2-year-old U.S. citizen.

• Crypto miners in Arkansas had a good week. 

• We are very much here for a petty fight over page length limits in court filings.

• If we’re ever investigated by law enforcement, we pray it’s not by Postal Inspectors. They can run circles around every other agency. 

• A group of Jewish community members at UCLA is suing the National Students for Justice in Palestine and several student leaders of UCLA’s chapter over on-campus protests. There’s a similar lawsuit out of New York.

• A doctor who settled a lawsuit with NBC News over their reporting has set his sights on an academic journal.

• A former Baltimore Ravens coach was sued. 

• Citing the Bible to get out of PACER fees is a novel legal strategy. 

• We sincerely thank the Court for alerting us to a new loophole to get sealed documents.

• Your Gucci bag was probably a fake.

• The PACER filing system is so bad that judges are ordering clerks to lie about the nature of suit codes. 

• A Philly man pleaded guilty to building a bomb.

• Two men were arrested in Serbia at the request of the Justice Department for allegedly harassing and intimidating a Chinese political dissident who lives in Los Angeles.

• A Rhode Island man pleaded guilty to running a cockfighting ring. We thought that was more of a South Carolina thing.

• A few DOGE members assigned to Treasury got TS/SCI security clearances, according to a new filing.

• This one flew way under the radar. Three folks in Arizona were charged with 3D-printing gun parts, as members of a Discord channel entitled “2A Print.”

• A San Jose engineer pleaded guilty to bombing two electrical transformers that caused power outages for roughly 1,500 people. Law enforcement said they found over 300 pounds of materials used for explosives in the man’s home.

• Here’s how that guy allegedly stole the Secretary of Homeland Security’s purse.

• Another day, another media company sues OpenAI for copyright infringement.

• For the song of the week, a story first. Hosting a Summer Olympics viewing party, we asked Siri to play “Olympic Music” on Spotify. Thus began our enjoyment of a random band named Olympic Music with 75 monthly streams. Enjoy.

• Sadly, we learned this week to never look at a picture of a cute dog that a passenger on a plane offers to show you. 

• There’s a copyright suit over the screenplay behind Top Gun: Maverick, which opens with, “Behind every great film is a great screenplay.”

• In bureaucratic processes that costs millions news: Yesterday afternoon, the Middle East Broadcasting Network (MBN) was set to get millions back from a judge’s order that reversed a Trump Administration action to end funding the news organization. Alas, MBN System for Award Management number had expired so it had to be reactivated to get payment. It should have all been sorted by today. But late last night, an appeals court reversed the original decision making the millions dollar transfer question moot. 

• The Justice Department put out a press release about the recent arrests of two state judges. Meanwhile, Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan has picked up quite the defense team, including former Solicitor General and leading conservative lawyer Paul Clement. Dugan’s charging documents are here.

• For those keeping track, President Trump announced his first nomination to the federal bench of his second term.

• A jury in New York convicted two Eastern European organized crime leaders of murder-for-hire for their roles in a scheme to assassinate a journalist in the U.S. for $500,000 from Iran.

Thanks for reading. It’s too nice of a day outside to write a kicker. Enjoy your weekend.