Welcome to Court Watch #160. With what began as a snowpocalypse about to hit large swathes of the United States but is now turning out to be a regular Sunday in Maine, it reminds us that being a meteorologist on twitter is a lot like being an attorney filing a publicity messaging lawsuit. The type of court record that probably won’t sustain even the lightest of judicial scrutiny but will make life difficult for your opposing counsel’s press team. The point isn’t to win, it’s simply to get the other side’s attention. You throw your most outlandish claims out on the internet or in a court filing and hope the other side gladly settles for something less.
We won’t overhype this week’s docket roundup. In fact, we’d objectively say it’s more of a light dusting than a snowmageddon. But it’s what the courts have given us so we will hunker down and let you sip some warm judicial tea.
The Docket Roundup
Some personal news. Judges in the Eastern District of Virginia posted a hiring notice for the uhhh… newly vacant (?) U.S. attorney position there. If we suddenly go missing in the next few weeks, it’s because we wanted a corner office and free PACER account.
Speaking of the ‘is there a U.S. Attorney or is there not a U.S. Attorney’ drama, a darknet illegal drug case got transferred out of New Jersey because of the conflicts.
We got answers in the case of the Tennessee man who hacked the Supreme Court’s filing system a few years back, and a reminder not to Instagram your crimes, especially not with the username “ihackedthegovernment.”
So it turns out you can trademark how to frost a cake?
Ya’ll don’t talk enough about how Bloomberg Law reporters are quietly mining hundreds of thousands of court records to find important stories.
Tennessee did not beat the shotgun wedding reputation this week (“Defendant is married, reporting that his grandmother held a shotgun to his head during the ceremony. He is currently separated from his wife, with whom he has a child, and she is in a relationship with one of his adopted brothers. Defendant reports that he has fathered five children; he does not know the names or ages of three of them.”) On that note, here’s a deep cut from the king of Americana himself.
Former Trump campaign advisor Chris LaCivita and the Daily Beast are set to agree to dismiss LaCivita’s case.
We’d note that for a brief moment reporter Don Lemon’s name was on a criminal docket in Minnesota. And then the docket disappeared.
A New Jersey college softball coach sued her university for gender discrimination, arguing that it facilitates systemic gender segregation by allowing males to coach female and male athletes, whereas women seldom serve as coaches for men’s teams.
The feds got two new icy chains from an ‘ice’ (meth) bust.
A suspended FBI counterterrorism agent sued to get his job and security clearance back.
Your song of the week, courtesy of Mr. Godwin.
Thanks for the heads up, SEC. We’re on it. (“In the interest of full candor, however, the SEC does note that at least some of the information that Musk seeks to protect has been disclosed in public court filings in multiple different matters…”)
The feds can’t look at a Washington Post reporter’s notes, contacts, and other possessions, at least for now. Though confirming in a court declaration that a source is a source before the government actually indicted the said source for providing classified documents to a reporter because it increases the odds that it’ll help encourage a judge to give back a news organization's laptop, seems less than ideal.
Law enforcement in Ohio reportedly stopped a man sneaking around an area under the Columbus Airport in combat fatigues, body armor, and night vision goggles.
A Chinese company wants to protect the good name of its “Meowant” litter box from bad TikTok reviews.
The FBI is trying to extradite a man accused of murder in Orange County, California, from Vietnam.
Representatives Thomas Massie and Ro Kanna won’t be able to file as amici curiae in the Ghislaine Maxwell case.
Kash Patel’s girlfriend called the ex-FBI agent she’s suing theatrical in a filing.
The Justice Department announced that 37 purported human traffickers, arms smugglers, drug traffickers, and cartel members were handed over to U.S. authorities by the Mexican government.
A YouTube comment, “Be brave. Say it where ever you go. Kill feds,” led to exactly what you’d expect. And here’s another one.
Philly sued the Trump administration to stop removing references to slavery at George Washington’s and John Adams’s old house.
At some point, an organization should stop filing lawsuits that it never truly argues after the initial complaint.
A Ukrainian truck driver is accused of running a pretty elaborate scam.
“In filing this Complaint, Matt Taibbi places himself within the annals of defamation litigation: an upset writer, whose own career depends on the protection of the First Amendment, using the courts to suppress the speech of his political opposite.”
Our friends at 404 Media wrote up a court record we found about a man allegedly Instagramming his crimes.
Haaretz would very much like Elliott Broidy’s lawsuit to go away.
Flying under the radar: DOJ and patients’ parents at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles worked out a deal on health records.
Some inside details spilled out on what’s happening at the Justice Department’s Community Relations Services.
A former NYPD cop fired after being charged with spying for China (then DOJ later dropping the charges) is suing over his termination.
Imagine hiring a lawyer and filing subpoenas, all because you’re a consulting firm mad about an anonymous review online.
Judge Rubin is unhappy with the Justice Department, writing: “The Government seeks to fulfill its policy agenda through compliance born of fear. Moreover, in the view of the court, the Subpoena is the classic impermissible fishing expedition”
<whispers> With the open source collection, self-documenting alleged crimes, the red box over the defendant in still images, the broken glass image at a federal building, this court filing is giving J6 affidavit vibes.
We’re not sure it’s possible for a court record to be more Alaskan than this one.
Your honor, we’re sorry we gave completely wrong information to a federal judge about the personal information of Americans.
You get a sense folks may have poked a bear when they tried to take Mark Zaid’s security clearance away. He clearly made a list and is systemically checking it off.
An Indiana woman was indicted for threatening Representative Nancy Mace.
Thanks for reading. So there it is, just a straight assessment of this week’s court filings. We hope we set expectations better than a meteorologist on Twitter. Stay warm.