We were supposed to be taking this week off for a vacation. Alas, Judge Brantley Starr of Texas took it upon himself to praise the sanctity of work and cite Proverbs 6:10–11 in his latest judicial opinion. Before we knew it, we were back to court record reporting grind, lest we be thought of as lazy and sinful men in the eyes of the Northern District of Texas.
So with the support of beach cocktails and driven by nagging proletarian guilt, we did a mini-roundup. This week the dockets brought a hoagie arrest, the FBI Director winning a libel case, the SEC waffling, BlueSky threat, clogged toilets of guilt, and Mike Tyson. Plus, Boston University learned that while Baylor probably can’t make it through the second round of tourney, it may be able to field a law firm.
There’s other stuff too. We probably buried half a dozen absolute bangers.
The Docket Roundup:
Come for the breakdown of a major ransom operation, stay for the sticky note letting your crime partner know you took $50,000.
Gucci doesn’t want to be confused with a gun club in Nevada, named “Gucci Gun Club.”
We were as surprised as anyone that Benny Johnson’s show would be accused of plagiarism. Also, we learned on our vacay this week that the ocean is wet.
Here’s the criminal complaint for the DC pink polo sub guy. Side note, and we don’t say this lightly, he has one of the best defense attorneys in America. If we ever catch a federal case for throwing a hero at a court clerk who refuses to print off an unsealed document without checking with the government lawyers to see if it should really be unsealed, we’re hiring Sabrina. (Editor’s note: that example was far too descriptive to be a hypothetical.)
It’s not the transcript everyone was talking about this week, but it is the transcript everyone should be talking about: the exchange that led to Judge Kaplan’s order finding conditions at ICE detention facilities unconstitutional is worth a read.
Okay, now here’s the full 228-page Loomer deposition.
Investors say the executives of Reddit misled stockholders about the impact Google’s AI search result summaries had on the site’s web traffic.
We’d watch the hell out of a post office BravoTV reality show.
A youth baseball camp in Cooperstown is going after a baseball YouTube channel.
One of the leaders of Terrorgram agreed to plead guilty to all the charges she faced.
It’s the battle of the BUs: Baylor is suing Boston University over who gets to use an interlocking BU logo. Nobody tell Butler.
An Ohio man was indicted for a racist, threatening Tweet.
It took a couple hundred dollars in local lawyer fees and a really good pro bono first amendment lawyer but Court Watch filed our first motion to unseal a docket in federal court. We’d link to the filing but it was placed on the sealed docket. We know, that’s some John Yossarian vibes. (Side note, we used all the money we received from paid subscribers so far this month to afford to file it, so maybe make the jump to upgrade so we can continue to be the first, last, and only line of defense against court secrecy.)
FBI Director Kash Patel and his foundation were awarded $250,000 when Jim Stewartson did not respond to his defamation lawsuit.
We’re on vacation, but is it possible that every reporter in America is too? In April, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Patrick Orlando reached a staff-level settlement on the civil charges brought against Orlando for his SPAC that involved President Trump and his social media holdings. Typically, staff agreements are signed off by Commissioners with little fanfare. However, in late July, the SEC quietly noted in a filing that “SEC staff had informed Defendant that the staff no longer believed it could obtain Commission approval for the proposed agreement.”
The Justice Department says George Washington University failed to adequately address complaints of antisemitism.
The New York Times wants the FBI to turn over records about the Bureau’s investigation into who placed a tracking device on one of its reporters’ cars a few years back.
There’s some drama brewing among Georgia Republicans.
Kettering Health is suing a former employee and her lawyer, arguing that they sought to extort the company for a “high eight figure number” in exchange for not alerting the media to purported criminal acts by Kettering. Which of course made us curious about what was redacted in one of the exhibits.
Rolling Stone is being sued by the widow of Eric Carmen over this story.
Instacart got scammed.
Family members of deceased military service members who were killed in an Osprey accident in Japan are suing Boeing, saying the company knew the aircraft had catastrophic issues.
DOJ is seeking the death penalty in this “Zizian” case.
May your pro hac vice motion never go as poorly as this.
A defunct Brooklyn university would like the IRS to give it millions of dollars.
We’ve never seen an injunction that barred folks from installing “industrial style lighting,” but Florida is always ground zero for breaking the mold.
A music producer is suing Mike Tyson over a promo video song.
A Secret Service Agent is suing DHS, saying they discriminated against her when she “advocated for the right of a female colleague, who lost her two children to still birth—to nevertheless have the right to maternity time to care for her two dead children and herself after such a traumatic event.”
“In order to prove its case, the SEC does not anticipate any unusual legal issues. However, during the investigation of the conduct that led to the instant Complaint, Igwealor appeared for testimony twice. At his second testimony, he began speaking in “tongues” rather than answer the Commission’s questions about his failure to provide certain documents,” says a recent SEC filing.
Speaking of the SEC, it turns out one of its lawyers was practicing in New York federal court without being allowed to do so. The defendant is a bit perturbed by that revelation.
A New York man who in 2023 fired two shotgun blasts in the air outside of an Albany synagogue and said “Free Palestine” before trying to tear down an Israeli flag was sentenced to ten years in prison.
The Justice Department announced charges and reward money for the arrests of five purported cartel leaders for their roles overseeing a foreign terrorist organization.
A Bluesky user was indicted this week for threatening the DHS Secretary and ICE agents.
Six members of a cult in Kansas who seemingly ran a camp for children, but instead forced them into unpaid labor, were sentenced to between four and ten years in prison following a 26-day trial.
A Florida toilet clogged with ripped and scammed gift cards from Publix.
Please don’t ship live turtles.
We talked to Editors and Publishers about how annoyingly hard it is to find new readers in the age of search engines being hot garbage.
The Justice Department reached a settlement with the real estate conglomerate Grey Star after the DOJ accused the company of using algorithms to collaborate with other landlord companies to set rental prices.
Thanks for reading. We hope you forgive the brevity but appreciate the mini-roundup. We thought it best to push out a shorter version than wait till next week for a massive one. After all, a few pages before Judge Starr’s favorite footnote line, we’re reminded of Proverbs 3:27 which tells us “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act. Do not say to your neighbor, “Come back tomorrow and I’ll give it to you”— when you already have it with you.”