Welcome to Court Watch #165. With the world and the stock market freaking out about a newsletter that suggests artificial intelligence will replace us all, we thought we’d feed a draft of this docket roundup into the computers and see how ChatGPT would write the lede.
Here’s its attempt:
This week’s Court Watch ricochets across the federal courts with its usual mix of secrecy fights, judicial eccentricities, and outright absurdity: from prying open a long-sealed National Security Letter dispute and watching a defamation lawyer test the limits of court patience, to cartel leaders catching terrorism charges, judges pushing punctuation norms, and election lawsuits piling up ahead of the midterms. The filings also deliver impostor judges, AI-assisted stalking, prison smuggling schemes, tariff-fueled influencer litigation, drunken judges on paid leave, sloths in subzero Michigan, and a sobering slate of fraud, espionage, labor trafficking, and child exploitation cases. In short, it’s another reminder that the federal docket remains an inexhaustible source of both high-stakes law and low-brow chaos—sometimes in the very same order.
Admittedly, we’ve written worse ledes. But we also have been known to write better ones. Occasionally, we prefer the Edna Buchanan approach to hook readers. So let’s try it.
A dad went for a walk and ended up in federal prison.
The benefit of the Buchanan-type lede is that it is so succinct that it somehow makes a person curious enough to keep reading the rest of the piece. This is all to say, the computers won’t replace us quite yet.
The Docket Roundup
It took a phone call with a lovely clerk, but we successfully got a docket made public which revealed a fight by a credit card company against a 2019 Justice Department National Security Letter. There are just a few details in the filings, but it was the principle of the thing to get it unsealed. You’re welcome, privacy advocates. But maybe someone who cares about public access should try a motion to unseal entry #13?
Laura Loomer’s defamation lawsuit attorney first ghosted the court and then had his own field day about proposed sanctions.
A Sinaloa cartel leader caught a terrorism charge.
The former President of Venezuela is nonplussed about facing criminal prosecution.
Apparently, federal judges aren’t allowed to drive drunk in Michigan but can still go on paid leave.
The midterms are coming up, which means election-related lawsuits are in full swing. A federal judge in Utah rejected a Republican-backed effort to block the state’s Congressional map.
A Bronx nursing home is suing the government over the loss of funding that came in response to their alleged poor handling of COVID.
Judge Richard Leon denied a preliminary injunction to stop the construction of the White House’s new East Wing. In case you were wondering, we counted eight exclamation points in the order. You may recall one from a few weeks ago in Senator Mark Kelly’s case against the Pentagon that featured even more. While we have a zero exclamation points style guide here at Court Watch, we commend Judge Leon for not being bound by the stuffy canons of judicial punctuation.
This is a new one! (editor’s note: damn it) Here’s a dissent from “the wonderful Circuit of Wackadoo.”
Five people were charged with impersonating immigration judges, law enforcement, and lawyers as part of an alleged fraud scheme in New Jersey. The Justice Department says three were arrested while trying to board a flight to Colombia.
Tom Goldstein, the founder of SCOTUSblog, was convicted by a federal jury of tax evasion and mortgage fraud.
An ICE officer says a suspect he was chasing in Virginia repeatedly hit his car.
Investigators reportedly caught a high-dollar pimp as he flew through JFK after he allowed them to look through his phones. Turns out he was an Assistant Principal in the Big Apple.
In this week’s edition of Peter plugging South Carolina, the influencer daughter of an affluent plaintiff’s attorney, who’s also known as “Extreme Akim,” sued FedEx and UPS for the economic harm she suffered under the Trump administration’s now invalidated tariffs.
Speaking of the Palmetto State, an incarcerated man was indicted for allegedly threatening to kill President Trump in an antisemitic laced letter to the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
Okay, fine, just one more from the iodine state. A personal injury attorney with the prominent plaintiff’s firm, Motley Rice, pleaded guilty to stealing $1.5 million from the firm.
Flying under the radar: There’s a criminal case from February 20th of a Chinese national who’s accused of taking photographs of a U.S. military base.
Raised eyebrows emoji There’s a conspiracy case out of California involving three Iranian men and Google.
Will the real MAGA burger please stand up? The Trump Organization is now weighing in.
“I’ve been sending emails and making phone calls for a year trying to get arrested” may be a peak Florida man line.
Shoutout to one of our subscribers for creating an AI-generated themed music video based on our roundup last week.
But if you want a real human song, let’s give some love to a band that will undoubtedly go viral after this week’s roundup. If you’d prefer something with a mainstream vibe but not yet playing on the radio, we humbly suggest ‘here.’ It took us two full listens to quell our doubts and haters, please hear us out – the new Mumford & Sons album can be a transformative experience when listened to in one sitting while editing a newsletter.
Three men were arrested after allegedly forcing immigrants into unpaid labor in Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida.
A judge ruled to allow an assistant U.S. attorney to continue prosecuting a FARA case against an ex-member of Congress after the defense raised his wife’s ties to a lobbying firm at the heart of the case.
The Grand Ole Opry doesn’t want its name touched by a small business. They did not respond to a request for comment, but maybe a Tennessee reporter wants to try? Regardless, we’ve found that Dolly has better PR instincts.
Here’s an interesting case that offers a window into a prison smuggling operation.
The feds won’t be able to search a Washington Post reporter’s devices. The judge wrote in his order, “Given the documented reporting on government leak investigations and the government’s wellchronicled efforts to stop them, allowing the government’s filter team to search a reporter’s work product—most of which consists of unrelated information from confidential sources—is the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of the Washington Post’s henhouse.” To be fair, the British guy fired everyone at the Post who was in charge of the henhouse, so it’s just a bit unguarded at the moment.
An alleged $6 million Jamaican fraudster known as “Ghost” was arrested.
Surely we can all agree that sloths weren’t meant to live in negative 22-degree weather in Michigan.
The inventor of the “Squatty Potty” was charged with receiving child abuse material. The FBI had been reportedly monitoring him since 2021.
Shout out to Fix The Court for staying on the case to get the audio files of the Supreme Court announcing its opinions last term.
The FBI is investigating a man whom agents say stalked the husband of a woman he worked out with and used Grok to create 200 inappropriate videos of her. We have a piece with 404 Media on the case.
A patent examiner agreed to pay $500,000 after she was accused of having a conflict of interest in approving patents for companies in which she owned hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock. A trademark attorney denied our application for ‘Court Watch’ last year. We may have to dig a bit to see if they hold stock in sunlight.
Five Philly police officers sued the city over the department’s diversity policies.
One federal judge has had enough of the government not following the court’s orders in immigration cases, writing, “It ends today.”
A president might be lucky enough to get a public defender.
Thanks for reading. In keeping with the opening section of this newsletter, in this weekend’s The Rabbit Hole, we look at how artificial intelligence is affecting the U.S. Courts.
We’d also note that this Sunday’s issue will mark three months publishing for The Rabbit Hole. We’re biased but we think there is a space for long-form deeply reported stories involving the courts. We have enjoyed publishing the series, which has looked at such topics as News Deserts to the lack of consistent funding for court-appointed defense attorneys. And this recent piece went damn near viral. It’s but one of many stories that would have been untold without subscribers like you. To read past The Rabbit Holes and support future ones, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. If a monthly subscription isn’t in the financial cards or if you like it so much you really want to go above and beyond on support, there is also a one-time donation option.