Welcome to Court Watch #155. We’re gonna level with you. It was a relatively quiet week in the dockets. But it was more about what didn’t happen than what did. The Justice Department didn’t continue its corruption case against FIFA officials, a Trump theme restaurant didn’t see the President’s trademark lawyers coming, a judge didn’t sanction HBO at Laura Loomer’s request, and an attorney didn’t check his work before filing. All this among other fascinating things that did or did not happen this week in the U.S. courts.
There is beauty to be found in the absence. And with that, let’s dive into the dockets.
The Docket Roundup
A twenty-three-year-old from Florida pleaded guilty to posing on Snapchat as a woman to extort three Alabama high school football players.
Another Florida man allegedly threatened to kill the family of a state government official after the FBI was already investigating him for threats.
Law enforcement cracked the case of a nationwide massive <checks notes>... used cooking oil theft ring. Our favorite part was the car accident that spilled grease on the roads.
Plaintiff attorneys for FBI Director Kash Patel still want five years' worth of discovery from a former high-ranking FBI official. The former official thinks that’s bunk.
Speaking of Mr. Patel, the FBI arrested a North Carolina man for threatening his girlfriend.
Speaking of his girlfriend, a former FBI agent is moving to dismiss her defamation lawsuit against him.
Speaking of ourselves, covering all the legal proceedings that touch on the Bureau’s Director is exhausting.
We reported a few weeks back about a lawsuit involving a Texas restaurant named MAGA Burgers suing another restaurant for selling Trump Burgers. In an epic plot twist neither of the Texas restaurants expected, one of President Trump’s companies has now intervened in the case to sue both entities for trademark infringement.
A fugitive on the run, thirteen guns with obliterated serial numbers, and fleeing to Guadeloupe round out this criminal complaint in Florida.
An Amazon warehouse worker, who is anemic and deaf, says she was denied short breaks required under law. She then had a pulmonary embolism mid-shift.
Calling the behavior uncharitable, but not sanctionable, a judge denies Laura Loomer’s lawyer request to chide HBO’s lawyer’s actions during a deposition.
The Justice Department unceremoniously dropped their corruption case against two FIFA officials. Perhaps to give peace a chance?
The ACLU would like more information on the military strikes of drug boats.
James Comey’s friend would like the government to have less information on him.
This may be the most Utah federal case ever.
By leaps and bounds, the most interesting court record to us this week came from Colorado. In a seizure notice, law enforcement lays out a wide-ranging investigation into a series of arcades which had something called “Fish Games”. We can’t do the description proper justice so here’s how prosecutors describe it: “One popular version of the Fish Games requires players to sit around a large table that allows multiple players to play on the same game at the same time. Each version of the Fish Games operates slightly differently, but the basic game mechanics are usually similar. Generally, during game play, the player sets the value of a shot; the higher the value of the shot (wager or bet) the higher the potential payout. The player then shoots at a variety of fish on the screen as they swim by.” Here’s the kicker, you can get paid out by the arcade's own personal digital coin.
A Puerto Rican man traveled to Langley to get arrested by the CIA.
One of the influencer defendants facing an Ethan Klein lawsuit issued an apology and settled. We touch too much grass to care about any of these things but know there may be a few of you that feel differently.
A group of protestors in Oregon can keep protesting outside of a federal building, a judge ruled this week.
We needed an upbeat, positive song for this week; a band from Montana delivered.
The feds charged two alleged hackers with running a ransomware operation overseas.
Someone at the Justice Department dropped the ball.
A scammer impersonating crypto influencer Tiffany Fong stole hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The family of a man killed by an off-duty FBI agent on a metro is suing the Bureau for millions.
The New York Times is gonna wait a little bit longer for some grand jury transcripts.
Another ‘hallucinated cases’ filing results in sanctions for a lawyer.
FBI employees who were fired for kneeling during a Black Lives Matter protest compared themselves to George Washington while suing the Bureau.
The state of West Virginia is suing United Healthcare for the opioid crisis.
In the worst of human news, a man allegedly received online “badges and elevated statuses” for how many child exploitation images he shared on the internet. We hate it here.
A romance scam in Michigan netted millions in ill-gotten cryptocurrency.
We believe this is the first civil lawsuit about the designation of Antifa as a terrorist organization.
A treasury agent wanted to see if a Pennsylvania man was serious when he threatened to burn down the IRS over a tax refund. He reportedly very much was.
The elasticity of a presidential pardon continues to be tested.
In a civil lawsuit, a man on a cruise ship is accused of violently attacking his romantic partner and threatening to throw her bags in the ocean.
A PBS local station in Florida is suing Pensacola State College over the station’s donor funding.
Here’s the first civil lawsuit over the Netflix/Warner Brothers merger.
A Florida teacher is suing Moms for Liberty over being disciplined for her Charlie Kirk social media posting.
A former CIA senior intelligence officer filed a lawsuit to release his book about WMDs in Iraq and the agency’s informant ‘Curveball.’ He is represented by a lawyer who typically take these cases on but they snuck this line into the lawsuit towards the end: “Upon information and belief, the undersigned legal counsel Bradley P. Moss, holds a valid and current security clearances that would permit a review of the relevant information. Attorney Mark S. Zaid would normally serve as the primary legal counsel with respect to classified disputes but his security clearance was unlawfully revoked, particularly without being afforded any due process, by the Trump Administration in or around April 2025. That decision, which is causing Mr. Watson’s present harm as of the result of being deprived of his choice of legal counsel.” We assume it’s a clever attempt to set the stage citing this lawsuit in Zaid’s own security clearance lawsuit to prove irreparable harm in that case.
The Jeffrey Epstein grand jury documents can be released.
Thanks for reading. A final note, if you’re so inclined, we did a long interview about the history of Court Watch and our origin story. Come for the headline, stay for us sneaking in a few nice words about our Peter.