Welcome to Court Watch #153. As federal lawyers and court clerks started finally getting a paycheck post-shutdown, it felt like the judiciary dockets had upgraded to their quarter zips and matcha era. Everything was just slightly elevated. In: criminal complaints to make waves. Out: motions to stay pending congressional appropriations. The House of Representatives wants to censure a congresswoman? Well then, federal prosecutors are gonna charge one. Nvidia announces record profits? The Justice Department immediately unseals an indictment regarding smuggling A.I. chips to China. What would normally be a simple attempted murder case, the folks in Chicago made it a terrorism charge.
But at least one appellate judge in Texas was still wearing his Nike Tech as he sought to settle a re-districting beef against his judicial rivals.
The Docket Roundup
Apparently, the pandemic wasn’t a good enough excuse not to properly store your hazardous waste.
The feds say a Florida man threatened to kill conservative commentator Matt Walsh’s wife on social media.
Matt Taibbi is suing a journalist over a book. Though it wouldn’t be a Taibbi-linked lawsuit without some lawyer error in filing.
The Justice Department announced charges against a Democratic Congresswoman from South Florida for allegedly embezzling $5 million in FEMA funds and illicit campaign contributions.
President Trump’s company has reached a trademark settlement with ‘computerman333’ over Trump merchandise.
Be careful who you hire to paint your house in Milford, Connecticut.
Folks, we have the perfect ensemble of characters for the next Oceans movie. It includes an Olympic snowboarder, a Canadian criminal barrister, a reggae artist, and a gangland news reporter, among others.
Keeping with the movie theme, we think the next The Departed should be about a school bus maintenance kick-back scheme in Boston.
Three federal agents got into an altercation with a man who was painting a gate in Puerto Rico.
A grand jury in the Eastern District of New York indicted a man for pretending to be a Field Office Director for ICE.
Revlon sued the Trump administration over tariffs. The people need their hair conditioner.
Two U.S. Airmen allegedly ran an email phishing scam while stationed at Dover, Delaware.
The RNC wants a judge to order New Jersey to turn over its voter rolls.
A Maryland man admitted to sending dozens of threatening antisemitic letters and postcards to Jewish community centers, mostly in the DMV.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which Texas Governor Greg Abbott took the step of labeling a terrorist organization at the state level this week, is now suing over it.
A Florida grand jury indicted a woman reportedly behind the social media account “falasteen8090” for posting, “I wish someone would in alive him.” This may be the most elastic application of 18 U.S.C. 875 we’ve ever seen.
Five hundred lawsuits later, we’re still updating this tracker. Someone please tell us we can stop soon.
This wrongful conviction case out of Savannah, Georgia, is something. Also, if you’re interested in this case and looking for a new book, we recommend Picking Cotton.
We have no words for this depravity other than trigger warning.
On a similarly disturbing note, the FBI arrested another purported 764 leader in New Jersey.
An FTC Commissioner left her gig to become the interim U.S. Attorney for Utah.
Several families who are victims of Hamas-led attacks are suing the Bank of Palestine and a Qatari charity over their purported ties to the group.
Aloha Divorce sued Aloha Law. Definitely not in the spirit of Ohana.
A former litigation specialist at the law firm DLA Piper says he was fired after raising concerns about discrimination and pay disparities.
Kudos to this store owner who thought better than to allow an elderly man to buy $240,000 worth of gold.
A woman living in West Virginia pleaded guilty to lying to conceal her war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Justice Department announced the extradition of three alleged Tren de Aragua members to Chile.
A Virginia man was sentenced to life in prison on federal hate crime charges after admitting to shooting two Hispanic men. Prosecutors say the man asked the two men how long they had been in the country before shooting them.
Elliot Broidy’s fight against Amex over debanking appears to be over.
An Antifa member pleaded guilty to providing material support for terrorism (18 U.S.C. § 2339A). Note, that’s not 18 U.S.C. § 2339B, providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, but that may be on the horizon soon.
For those keeping track at home, we’ve hit the ‘Catholic priests have to sue to give communion’ late-stage of the republic.
A leader of the ‘Maniac Murder Cult,’ a transnational accelerationist extremist group, admitted to soliciting hate crimes against Jewish Americans and encouraging acts of violence around the world.
Stop everything you’re doing right now and read this story. Then share it widely. For the last two years, our editor has been quietly part of an intrepid investigative team at Bloomberg Law that’s been looking at systemic failures in our criminal justice system. We’re in awe of our colleague’s reporting on this. There will be more stories to come quite soon.
After that story, it warrants a sad song of the week choice.
There was a purported fratricide over drug money on a Native American reservation in North Dakota.
A Chinese man didn’t make it past customs at the Fort Lauderdale International Airport after he allegedly couldn’t answer questions on his fake Korean passport.
Luigi got his wardrobe for court next month.
An Afghan man was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for his role in an ISIS-inspired plot to commit a terror attack on Election Day in November 2024.
You good, Fifth Circuit?
We didn’t expect a Florida real estate company to be wrapped up in a case smuggling hundreds of Nvidia chips and ten supercomputers to China, but here we are. Also, credit to Forbes (and The Verge and Semafor) for crediting us. Also, shoutout to CNBC for finding a creative way to describe whatever it is we do around here (“The indictment was first reported by CourtWatch, the court document aggregation news site”)
The feds seized the house of an accountant who died a month ago.
A wrestler at a private high school in Pennsylvania went to court to compete against public school kids.
One Rutgers law student must have missed the class on criminal law and hoaxes.
Chicago prosecutors brought terrorism charges against a man accused of setting a train passenger on fire.
It was always gonna end like this.
A lawyer got dinged for using AI. Footnote 1 is a friendly reminder for others.
If you’re the opposite of us and want to read another Kari Lake deposition, here you go.
NPR settled with the Trump Administration for 35 million.
We’re quite curious why prosecutors quietly dropped an indictment against a number of individuals accused of being international drug dealers.
An Uber driver was charged with sexually assaulting his passenger. We asked for a reaction from Uber, here’s their statement: “The reported details are deeply disturbing. We take reports of this nature very seriously and violence has no place in the Uber community. We removed the driver’s access to the app as soon as this was reported to us and stand ready to support law enforcement with their investigation.”
It was a big week for legal news in the Lone Star State, but our favorite case by far was about free speech and The Alamo.
Call us foreign corrupt practices nerds, but we found this to be the most fascinating civil lawsuit this week.
TikTok, Mohammed Atta, and Upside Triangles wrap up today’s roundup.
Thanks for reading. Don’t forget, our favorite new weekly series, The Rabbit Hole, will be hitting your inboxes this Sunday morning. However, there won’t be a Friday roundup on November 28th given that most U.S. federal court districts will be closed half the week for the Thanksgiving holiday. The Rabbit Hole will also take a brief break but will be back for your first Sunday of December.
We hope you have a relaxing holiday — one filled with quarter zips, matcha, and Dallas Cowboys losing their football game.