Welcome to Court Watch #137. This week was considerably busier than most. The vast majority of which was self-inflicted. We woke up at 4am and went to sleep at midnight most days because the beginning of our week started with an unprompted, indefensible, and unnerving desire deep in our souls to review every international terrorism criminal case in the last decade. And between finding a Texas case of an ISIS foreign fighter that was quietly charged without a typically accompanying press release or the would-be electrician in New York who wanted a fresh start post-Caliphate, we went far and deep in the dockets. We’ll have more on that in the coming weeks. Some of the sentencing memos got particularly dark in their description of what happens when one decides to join a foreign terrorism organization. So to head off a lifetime of potential therapy expenses, we instead, as always, leaned on the soft rhythmic sounds of a musician or band in the background.
If you’ve been with us since we launched three years ago, or even a casual reader for the last few weeks, you get a sense quite quickly that music plays an integral part in our reporting. When reviewing hundreds of court dockets and trying to maintain a semblance of sanity, you mustn't do it in silence. There’s probably a Fugees’ The Score record playing in our office. Or it’s Counting Crows’ August and Everything After. Maybe we secretly pop on their Somewhere Under the Wonderland LP and in hushed tones far away from the judgments of our Rolling Stone reporter friends, we concede to ourselves that it was truly Adam Duritz’s best album. Perhaps, if we’re feeling particularly nostalgic, we throw on Gaslight Anthem's The ‘59 Sound. And one should never review 700 federal court dockets without Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black guiding your lawsuit coding fingers.
This week, Jason Isbell’s Cast Iron Skillet played quietly in the background with the same line repeating in our head after the vinyl needle lifted.
♪Don't ask too many questions or you'll never get to sleep♪
The best reporting is at its very essence, a determination to solve a puzzle and answer far too many ever-increasing questions. Sleep is but for those other happy content souls who seek rest. Good reporters, at their core, are restless beings. So this week, we sought to solve the unsolvable riddles of some court dockets. Why did the SEC send the privileged documents to the defense counsel? Did the Secret Service charge that homeless guy just to save him from himself? How many lawsuits can Chris Brown be served in one calendar year? Why is a senior trial lawyer for the Main Justice Department’s Money Laundering Unit working a case out of Kentucky? Is there anyone left in the world that has not been sued by Elliot Broidy? How many different countries can one man be charged in for the same terrorism crimes? And didn’t creating Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip cause enough pain that you should just leave Atticus Finch alone?
So throw your favorite playlist on and let’s dive into this week’s roundup.
The Docket Roundup
Kentucky is protective of its locally made branding on salt and pepper shakers.
Ballotpedia is being sued for allegedly not paying its staff writers.
The Trump Organization sued a group of online vendors to stop selling knock-off MAGA merch. A judge ruled they can put some exhibits under seal so as not to tip off the vendors. Also, we’re probably most interested in the law firm the Trump organization chose for representation: Boies Schiller Flexner.
A fentanyl bust, a fake ID, a car chase, and a suicide: Here’s the wild ride of an investigation by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
The Secret Service arrested a homeless man who admitted himself to a mental health facility and allegedly shouted, “I will kill President Trump when I leave the facility,” while a psychiatrist was conducting his intake assessment. The man reportedly suffered from psychosis and previously served thirteen years in prison on a second-degree murder conviction.
Judge Paul Engelmayer wants specifics from the Justice Department about what Epstein-related grand jury testimony and exhibits the government wants unsealed.
Attorneys representing President Trump fear Rupert Murdoch might not live through discovery in their lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal.
Several people who protested a Pride Parade in Georgia are suing over their purported arrests for violating a city ordinance on assemblies.
A district judge corrected the Solicitor General’s math.
Speaking of math, a pro se litigant argued that because President Trump says he won the 2020 election, he’s ineligible to serve a third term under the 22nd Amendment.
The IRS is the proud new owner of a “gold necklace with a diamond Michael Jordan ‘In the Bag’ pendant.”
If you know anything about the “Tea App” (and if you don’t, ask a Gen Z kid), this seemed somewhat foreseeable.
A man in Virginia pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges for shooting two Latino men at a gas station after asking about their immigration status in 2024.
The Justice Department announced the seizure of $225 million worth of crypto that was stolen from over 400 victims.
A former associate is suing McDermott Will & Emery LLP over claims of discrimination.
Two protestors who were arrested during a rally in support of Palestine argue that the NYPD violated their civil rights and has an inconsistent protest enforcement policy.
An Ohio man was arrested for allegedly calling a House member’s office and threatening them over potentially losing his Medicaid.
The NCAA has a tennis problem of class certification proportions.
A swimwear company, Breezy, is suing singer Chris Brown – a/k/a Chris Breezy – for selling his own Breezy bikinis.
Welp, that’s a unique court order.
We found this seizure notice in New York related to money laundering Argentinian peso fascinating, so naturally we pulled the underlying indictment in Kentucky. There’s a story to be written here.
Friends, let’s do a stripped down acoustic set for the song of the week.
There’s a case in Illinois about cannabis companies failing to warn that their weed pens and edibles have a lot of THC.
It’s buried a bit, but a BigLaw firm says it used generative AI to create their motion in the Northern District of Texas. We’d note the law firm represented OpenAI in their trademark win last week.
More former Twitter employees are suing X over lost promises of severance pay.
Whoops. The SEC accidentally turned over privileged documents in a civil case. A judge ordered the defendants to destroy all copies. A background on the mistake is here.
We’re slightly biased, but this may be the greatest thing to happen to the human race ever.
An update from our 2023 story about five kids from Virginia facing double jeopardy terrorism charges. The last defendant was arrested this week and the feds say they’re working out a deal.
Judge Lamberth reached a breaking point over his belief that the administration has dodgy answers regarding the future of Voice of America.
The Justice Department had a brief thrown out in the Eastern District of Texas after they replied to a habeas petition with twice the number of pages allowed and too small a font. We once tried this in college, and the professor had a similar reaction of annoyance.
Two Virginia men were indicted for allegedly breaking in and taking all the letters in the mail collection box at a Post Office.
Judicial Watch sued the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for not replying to a FOIA submission for records mentioning a Republican operative who is currently a special assistant to interim U.S. Attorney for DC Janine Pirro.
An undocumented man was charged with attempted murder of a federal officer after he allegedly resisted being placed under arrest and put an agent in a chokehold. An ICE agent wrote that the agency suspects him of being a member of Tren de Aragua.
“Johnny Dangerous” is coming after Beyonce.
Elliott Broidy seems upset that American Express won’t issue him an Amex card and customer service gave him the run-around.
So many layers to unpack in one ISIS-Somalia related case.
An appeals court says Aaron Sorkin is allowed to continue to ruin To Kill A Mockingbird for us.
We learned about “rent-a-tribe” loan sharking this week. You should too.
Ffs, Delta. We have no words.
Thanks for reading. Enjoy your weekend, just make sure to have some music playing.