Welcome to Court Watch #168. This week, terrorism played yet another tragic outsized role in our country. Two young men from Pennsylvania were charged with supporting ISIS when they threw bombs into a crowd of protestors in New York. Yesterday, a former national guardsman who spent a decade in federal prison for his plot to kill fellow veterans on behalf of ISIS murdered a soldier at Old Dominion University. That same day, a Michigan man drove his car into a synagogue and was prevented from committing mass murder on Jewish children by a hero security guard.
Having spent the last two decades in various positions both inside government and academia trying to understand and ultimately stop terrorism in the United States, these types of attacks have always been on the forefront of our minds.
Indeed, in the case of the Old Dominion University shooter, we had been thinking about him for some time. The shooter, Mohamed Jalloh, was a focus of a chapter of our book on ISIS in America. We spent a considerable amount of time looking at the criminal case, pouring through documents, and interviewing people that both knew him and investigated him. An excerpt of that chapter is available here but we’ll note the kicker:
“I didn’t sleep a lot during the three months of the Jalloh investigation,” one seasoned FBI agent told us. “There’s a lot of times where we’re busy and don’t sleep a lot, but this time I couldn’t get to sleep because I was worried about what could happen. This case kept me up at night.” Mohamed Bailor Jalloh was eventually charged with attempting to provide material support to ISIS. In October 2016, he pleaded guilty; in February 2017 a judge sentenced him to 11 years in federal prison — slightly under the average sentence for most people charged with material support. “My only hope,” the FBI agent who investigated Jalloh told us, “is that Mohamed can make it through his prison sentence and come out as a functioning member of society. If that happens, nobody will be happier than me.”
At the time of his 2016 arrest, Jalloh was a tier one suspect for the Bureau who meant near round the clock surveillance and a dedicated team on the case. And having met said dedicated team, we can confidently say they were immensely comptetant. At sentencing, the Justice Department asked for 20 years. A judge landed on 11 years. A lot has changed in that decade. The extremism landscape has shifted dramatically, whereas ISIS is now but many ‘preeminent threats’ facing the United States. Agents and analysts have retired, many have been fired, and even more reassigned to new Administration priorities including some who investigated the original Jalloh case. There may well be a future after-action review of what took place after Jalloh’s release from prison in December 2024. However, Jalloh is an outlier. Academic studies routinely find that recidivism for terrorism convicts is rare, and much lower than the recidivism rate of the general criminal population. But that speaks more to the fact that many of those sentenced and finally away from online influences quickly became disillusioned with the ideology, or simply became unable to do what they could have done when they were younger ( as is in the case of one New Yorker turned al-Qaeda member who once remarked to us: “My biggest regret is my back … I can’t hold up an RPG anymore”).
But if you told a random person on the street that a convicted terrorist was able to commit a terror attack after his incarceration, they’d rightly look with abject confusion. There are weighty policy questions to be asked about if the current approach to counterterrorism should be adjusted. Do we have enough agents and analysts assigned to priorities that align with the threats? If someone serves their time, what predicate can or should exist to continue monitoring post-release? If so, for how long? Could that violate inherent civil rights and civil liberties of Americans, regardless of their type of conviction? And in the age of disparate but persistent threats, what resource and personnel tradeoffs of existing counterterrorism cases are you willing to give to do so? There are a countless number of policy questions that can be examined after a terror attack. We doubt they will be asked. And if they are, we equally doubt the answers will be heard.
Our concern about the lack of introspection is steeped in years of watching partisan echo chambers of social media and online rabblerousers who require a new violent event or political outrage every few hours to survive, with all the past ones summarily unremembered. In this toxic information overload environment, the terror attacks this week will quickly fade into the background, much like the other one last week that far too many would quietly admit they’ve already forgotten took place.
We can’t solve all this in a newsletter. But we didn’t want to forget to remember that some complex and difficult questions require more than a fleeting examination.
The Docket Roundup
Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback might not be able to keep his Tesla.
Mr. Beast has reached “an agreement in principle” to dismiss a lawsuit against a former employee he sued for allegedly stealing company data.
An Indiana man is set to plead guilty to making antisemitic threats.
Keep an eye on this gun case out of Hawaii. It’s one of two from the Aloha state recently that could have appellate consequences.
The feds say a non-citizen voted in Pennsylvania for the 2024 election. It’s one of many new cases that are starting to bubble up in the dockets, reflecting a new prosecutorial push.
If you’re curious what our take is on the U.S. Courts’ announcement that it will modernize PACER, our general view is anything, and we mean anything, is better than the status quo.
Laura Loomer’s now former defamation lawyer, Larry Klayman, is really not picking up the vibe.
Here’s the criminal complaint from the case of the two men who allegedly tried to set off explosives during a protest outside of Gracie Mansion in New York City.
The early frontrunner for best pro se case of the year is this plaintiff who caught an assistant U.S. Attorney’s artificial intelligence case hallucinations in a brief. The AUSA has since resigned.
Speaking of pro se cases, enjoy this wild ride that starts with the Vatican bank and ends with Nvidia.
The FBI and the Justice Department are trying to quash a subpoena from Bank of America for information to use in its defense against a group of Epstein victims suing the bank.
A tax firm called Team All Trust apparently turned out to basically be a sovereign citizen scheme in Minnesota.
Two ex-NYPD officers were charged with federal civil rights violations for allegedly breaking into the home of a sexworker and assaulting her while on duty.
A 4chan user/Florida man caught a charge for allegedly threatening the president.
The courts may now get to sort out whether Kalshi has to pay for bets about Ayatollah Khamenei’s death.
In honor of the Ides of March, a New Jersey federal judge said in a 130-page ruling that the Justice Department can’t install a triumvirate to lead a U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Another week and another fake online girlfriend crypto scam.
Meta is being sued over claims its AI glasses record without people’s consent.
An organization of volunteer firefighters in Los Angeles wants people to stop using its logos.
One North Carolina woman lost her lawsuit over her purported First Amendment right to take “ballot selfies.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced a civil case against a town that reportedly wouldn’t allow a rehab facility to open.
Level with us. Would you come to a Court Watch sponsored happy hour? We’re scouting locations for July 2026.
We joined our friend Jacob Ware to talk about nihilistic violent extremism and 764 on Lawfare’s podcast.
Welcome to the world of alleged fertilizer monopolies.
Prosecutors charged an man in the Eastern District of Virginia with impeding ICE after he reportedly jumped out of the back window of an ICE agent’s moving car as the agent was driving to take him into custody.
A Minnesota judge did not grant a preliminary injunction to stop immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis from racial profiling, citing in part the departure of federal officers from the city.
Last day to get a hell of a deal. We’ll send out details on the trainings next week.
The chief judge of the Northern District of Texas ruled that threats against ICE don’t need to mention specific officers to be legitimate threats.
Our song of the week has 464 views on YouTube and 9,000 total streams on Spotify. But it slaps particularly if you let it get to around the one minute mark, and we have a soft spot in our newsletter for underreported items. Consider this song to be the scoop of the week.
Responding to a job call on a TikTok video took one Texas man on a ride to jail.
Binance sued the Wall Street Journal for defamation.
A group of pro-Palestine student protestors sued Cornell University after they were arrested at an academic panel.
One California judge asked litigants to please stop sending him stuff.
A coffee shop called Beauty and the Bean is fighting the good fight over alleged selective zoning enforcement in North Carolina.
The ICE lawyer to candidate in a democratic primary for Congress pipeline has just one person, but it’s weird that it exists at all.
Discovery can continue in President Trump’s defamation case against the New York Times.
A contraband phone found in prison reportedly led law enforcement to bust a human trafficking ring in California.
The Rocky Hill Pharmacy in Tennessee allegedly stole almost $33 million from insurance fraud schemes, including almost $1 million from a “fraudulent rectal creme scheme,” which are words we wouldn’t ever imagine writing until now and will understand if that triggers this email ending up in your spam folder.
One vexatious litigant in Florida wants to be able to file claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act against the Florida State Bar and the Florida Supreme Court.
Folks are allegedly impersonating employees at the Government Publishing Office now.
An employee at a Tesla planta sued the company over sexual harassment claims.
Prosecutors dropped their case against two of the people who were arrested during a protest outside of a Chicago immigration detention center. The remaining four defendants, including congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, are still facing charges.
Two family members were indicted by a California grand jury for purportedly running an illegal TV and movie streaming site, which appeared to be named after one of them.
Enrique Tarrio and other J6ers suing the government want to know whether they have to turn over the emails of the people who donated to cover their legal bills.
The cases over tariff reimbursements continued this week. This time it was about Costco.
A hardwear company is trying to get some of its money back after the government seized a bank account tied to a fraud scheme that the company had paid ransom to get out of.
The ATF decided to arrest both men who allegedly shot at each other in the middle of a Cincinnati, Ohio, night club for possessing firearms as felons. For what it’s worth, at least one of them has a decent case for self defense.
Uh oh. As part of a Homeland Security Investigations case, an “analysis revealed that, in December 2024, Massachusetts [Department of Transitional Assistance] issued SNAP benefits to approximately 495 identities simultaneously receiving SNAP benefits in Puerto Rico.”
Here’s some good drama for the entertainment law world, featuring Fat Joe and a flashy lawyer from the Northeast.
We admittedly sometimes struggle with deadlines too, but delivering a written opinion 32 days after issuing an injunction feels a little much.
The SEC dropped a case against a crypto company. It’s part of a pattern.
The saddest filing of the week.
Thanks for reading. A final programming note: In this Sunday’s The Rabbit Hole, we look at Iranian-government linked criminal cases in America. A final final note, we’re heading to the land of 10,000 lakes next week. We’ll have more to report on that later but if you’re from the Twin Cities, drop us a line about restaurant recommendations.