Welcome to Court Watch #145. The legal and reporter world’s gaze was directly focused on the Eastern District of Virginia all week, trying to see if a man who loves Taylor Swift and walks on the beach would catch criminal charges. Late Thursday night, he did.
And that will lede for every other news site today. But we took our editorial inspiration from his instagram account and 86’d that approach. Instead, we present to you the most eclectic Court Watch issue in our history. We have NSA car chases, Charlie Kirk memorial threats, legally hacking Telegram, al-Qaeda insider threat, children’s hospital pushing back on DOJ subpoenas, joining the Ukraine military to avoid a federal charge, and Meta being barred from telling the government about that anonymous online account tracking immigration enforcement. Among so many other things.
Additionally, if you stick around long enough in this issue, we’re gonna make you insufferable at backyard BBQs with all the inane knowledge we’ll impart on you about what legally makes something a tequila.
The Docket Roundup
Here’s the Comey Docket. Now, argue amongst yourselves.
A woman was detained at an airport after a search of her checked bag revealed illegal drugs. The rub? She didn’t check a bag. And thus begins a lawsuit over whether American Airlines employees have been smuggling drugs under the names of passengers on flights. American Airlines’ press shop has been dodging our inquiries on this.
A pro-se defendant in an SEC lawsuit figured out that the SEC lawyer wasn’t technically permitted to practice in New York.
The feds say a Maryland man drove onto the NSA’s campus in Fort Meade and started a brief car chase before crashing into a police cruiser.
A man traveling cross-country on his motorcycle to attend Charlie Kirk’s memorial was charged with threatening a “former governor near the state of New York” who was also set to attend.
Radio waves, Camp Pendleton trespassing, lit flares, and a worried Marine aviator all wrapped into one criminal complaint.
A North Carolina man is accused of taking a bribe to try to get inmates out of jail sooner, along with some COVID loan fraud for good measure.
Citing, in part, Telegram’s general refusal to respond to law enforcement requests, a U.S. Attorney’s Office sought and received remote access to Telegram servers to investigate a child exploitation case. (editor’s note: We have made the editorial decision to not include a link because there is personally identifiable information throughout the filing.) However, here’s the nut graph from DOJ: “In particular, I request approval for law enforcement to use a remote access search technique to send one or more communications to the servers of the online company Telegram Messenger, Inc. to access the account of Telegram User ID: [redacted by Court Watch]…Each such communication is designed to cause the servers to transmit information to law enforcement, including “[redacted by Court Watch]” communications and other information from the Subject Account on Telegram. Once that information is downloaded to a computer in this district and/or the Subject Phone in this district, law enforcement will not attempt to gain access to the Subject Account without approval from the Court through further legal process, if necessary.”
We’ve been looking at dockets for twenty years, and we’ve never seen this charge before. There’s a rich history to the case.
A tenured professor at the University of South Dakota is suing the school after he was fired following comments he made on social media after Charlie Kirk’s passing. A judge ordered him reinstated.
Checkmate, Al Capone. Imagine catching a terrorism charge for selling scammy timeshares.
Federal prosecutors in Oklahoma conceded in a dismissal filing that an important federal gun statute is toast if it comes up for Supreme Court review.
Come to the Kari Lake deposition for the refusal to admit electoral defeat, stay for whether she believes a federal judge is going to throw her in jail.
Eastern District of Virginia dockets look a lot like this post-court hacking.
The Trump Organization and some knockoff march sellers told the court that they had settled.
A freedom of the press foundation is suing DNI Tulsi Gabbard for records after she fired her chief FOIA officer for turning over records about Venezuela’s ties to drug cartels.
Welcome to the seedy underbelly of grocery store wine selling.
Arguing in part that the signs warning about entering the Pentagon were too small, a judge overturned a magistrate judge’s decision and acquitted a man accused of possessing a firearm.
Judge Faruqui of the D.C. District Court has had some memorable lines the past few weeks, winning over the hearts and minds of the small but mighty legal nerd community. In this week’s edition, he intervened on behalf of an indigent defendant who literally spent all the money he had to attend trial, which led the defendant to nearly have to sleep on a park bench during trial until his public defender insisted on paying the cost out of pocket. In his ruling ordering the government to pay the cost of the defendant’s hotel housing, Faruqui concludes, “Poor defendants are not characters in Oliver Twist meant to beg the courts: Your Honor, I want some more [basic necessities], please.”
The Wall Street Journal has ensured that one purported letter from the President will live on in permanent court records, regardless of the outcome of the defamation lawsuit.
We really didn’t expect to read this week that people are selling weed named “Michelle Obama,” but here we are.
The purported creator of Captcha was charged with threatening a man he’s suing.
A man accused of shooting at the local ABC station in Sacramento was apparently upset about the Epstein files.
Turns out, federal judges don’t really love it when you Tweet and do cable news hits through an ongoing investigation (Luigi Mangione edition).
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is trying to quash a Justice Department subpoena for records involving transgender procedures at the facility.
If you ever wanted to get a sense of how millions of cartel money is laundered, we have the court filing for you.
Folks sued by Twitch/YouTuber Ethan Klein are pushing back on his effort to unmask them.
Law enforcement made quite the bust in California in 2021, netting more than six hundred thousand dollars in suspected drug money. The suspected dealer, who somewhat understandably wanted it all back, tried to recoup his losses by showing the agents a fake invoice.
A judge denied Avelo Airlines’ motion for a preliminary injunction against a group of organizers protesting the airline’s contract with ICE.
An Ohio man allegedly crashed his car into barriers outside a federal courthouse in Columbus in the middle of the night and then threw a trash can through the courthouse’s glass door before entering it for almost three hours until he was arrested.
In similar news, a man from Pennsylvania was indicted for purportedly ramming his car into barriers outside an FBI building and saying, “sic semper tyrannis” during his arrest.
Godspeed, 404 Media.
“A federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment alleging that 26 defendants participated in a Sinaloa Cartel sourced drug distribution pipeline originating in Mexico,” says the DOJ
Ruth Bader Ginsburg nerds got a fun surprise this week.
“Drug trafficking requires dealers, suppliers, and co-conspirators communicating in secret. Marijuana possession requires money and a metro card.” One former Assistant U.S. Attorney turned federal judge has some choice words for a new D.C. arrest.
Some judges take local filing rules more seriously than others.
Everyone seems to be talking about paper bags of cash, so here’s one in a grey duffel bag.
Some email addresses are more annoying to type in than others. For instance, in this swatting case, the suspect reportedly used the Gmail account “jaiaisyysusisiydyeueiei563737” to scare some poor folks at a Maine boarding school.
A man in Virginia was arrested for allegedly threatening the then-mayor of Alexandria over a Pride parade in June 2024.
We don’t really know what all this is about, but there’s someone suing over withdrawal side effects from a psychedelic plant being sold in Alaska called the “Ultimate Kratom.”
Our song of the week reminds us that Ticketmaster got sued.
Authorities put the wrong date and year in their search warrant against a man accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at Jewish Americans, so they had to file a new search warrant.
Things we learned this week: there’s a Mexico-based nonprofit named the Consejo Regulador Del Tequila that’s “the only body accredited and approved under Mexican law to inspect, analyze, and certify” tequila. By the way, our Spanish is a little rough, but they have a cool slide deck of statistics about tequila production on their website if anyone’s curious.
Here’s some bitcoin ATM tea. And another guy who was taken for a lot of money. Also, unicoins are facing a lawsuit. We so wanted it to be unicorns. We’re still mad at them for not getting on Noah’s big boat.
The FBI says a Virginia man joined the Ukrainian army in order to evade child exploitation charges.
Law enforcement arrested a shirtless, ranting D.C. man with a laser pointer, arguing they prevented a crash on Marine One. He reportedly apologized to the President.
Judge rules against Peter Strzok.
A bit of a tour de force of a filing in D.C. “Petitioner, however, is all but forgotten at Guantanamo…Moreover, many counsel for Respondents at the Department of Justice who have long handled this and other Guantanamo detainee habeas cases opposite undersigned counsel are now gone, as are those senior officials within the Department of State who have been responsible for negotiating detainee transfers throughout many administrations. Indeed, undersigned counsel are informed and believe there is no one in a senior leadership position at any agency within the current administration tasked with responsibility for law-of-war detentions at Guantanamo, let alone Petitioner’s transfer.”
Um, the <checks notes> International Animal S*men Bank would like a word. (We redacted ever so slightly to trick your email filters.)
An emergency room physician is suing the Sacklers for deceptive marketing of opioids.
A fifty-seven-year-old man was sentenced to eighty years for building and shipping two bombs to the federal courthouse in Alaska and the Department of Justice building in DC while he was incarcerated in a Georgia state prison. The man was serving a life sentence dating back to the early 90s for kidnapping and other charges.
The feds say a Tulsa, Oklahoma, National Guardsman was an al-Qa’ida sympathizer and tried to sell 3D printed guns to an undercover agent posing as a member of the terror group.
If you lost mail in the Northern District of Texas in December 2023, be sure to hit us up.
A guy in Kentucky pleaded guilty to threatening a local district attorney.
Sure, the FBI are pretty good at tracking down a suspect, but they’ll never be a Postal Inspector-in-Oregon-good.
“And it is not enough that the government “stamp[s] the word ‘EMERGENCY’ on the front cover of its stay application,” says appellate judges about a one-paragraph request to stay a collective bargaining ruling.
The ATF says a Florida man set fire to a Jewish community center.
Ken Chesebro can no longer practice law in D.C.
Thanks for reading. There’s one last docket that is worthy of a longer write-up than just a bullet. The worst case this week is one from South Carolina that’s flown mostly under the radar, save for a few local articles by some endearing veteran reporters. Last week, Stephen Gosnell, a magistrate judge in Charleston County, was arrested by agents with Homeland Security Investigations on charges of possessing child abuse materials, which he reportedly confessed to during a search of his home after asking agents if they “knew who he was.”
The judge previously made national headlines when he presided over a bond hearing for Dylann Roof and made controversial comments expressing sympathy for Roof’s family. It came to light soon thereafter that he had been reprimanded for using the n-word in court and that he had participated in Civil War reenactments on the side of the Confederacy.
In anticipation of a detention hearing scheduled for this week, federal prosecutors further outlined their case and detailed their preliminary findings from a search of Gosnell’s electronic devices. The prosecutors now say they fear the judge traveled around the country and internationally to abuse children, which he documented by taking pictures to send to other pedophiles. Prosecutors also wrote in their detention memo that Gosnell appeared to discuss a plan with another pedophile to travel to Florida to murder an infant.
Gosnell waived his detention hearing shortly after prosecutors filed their memo. Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Attorney’s Office are asking for help to identify possible victims. Gosnell is now being held in the same jail that’s part of the grim, cinderblock complex where he presided over Charleston’s preliminary court for decades.