Welcome to Court Watch #172. These are heady days. A 169-year-old magazine was sued by the FBI Director for a quarter of a billion dollars. A nonprofit organization created to combat racists is being criminally charged for allegedly bankrolling racists to stop racists. Reporters are being investigated for doing normal reporter stuff.
Left is right. Right is left. Purple is blue. Up is sideways. The old norms are dead. Welcome to the Thunderdome. There is no rhythm or reason to it all. We have no idea what the next seven days in the courts will bring us, but it’s a safe guess that it won’t be what is expected.
And sure, we could casually note in passing that this week has taught us that defamation cases by Administration officials don’t tend to work out, that discovery in that Alabama case may get spicy for the government, or that a reporter not asking questions would be antithetical to being a reporter.
There are plenty of news and analysis sites on the internet that can help one get a deep understanding of the choppy unprecedented waters of our time . But there is only one place that quickly can do that on the margins while also noting that Article III this week gave us an unreported foreign coup, a judicial sanctions smackdown, a rap video triggering an indictment and a BigLaw firm learning what happens when you get charged thousands of dollars an hour for your lawyer to use Claude. And all while wondering if a former attorney general secretly wants to join us as Indieheads.
The Docket Roundup
We got second-hand lawyer anxiety just reading this.
The second circuit is out here casually upending decades of legal precedent when it comes to terrorism prosecutions.
The age-old question: If a U.S. Army major attempts a foreign coup and no other reporter notices, does it actually count? We can’t keep single-handedly carrying the fourth estate on this stuff, folks.
This lawsuit has been a wild ride, “Delta’s counsel then asked Jones “whether [Jones] was feeding information into [ChatGPT] as the deposition was progressing” and Jones refused to answer, “citing attorney/client privilege as the reason for refusing to answer.”
Laura Loomer’s defamation case against Bill Maher and HBO is over, at least for now.
A Minnesota federal judge wants to get to the bottom of why people released on habeas petitions keep getting arrested again by ICE, despite court orders.
The President has ended another war. It appears MAGA Burger settled with Trump Burger, who all settled with the Trump Organization.
Well, this is awkward. A former Director of Talent Acquisition at the Department of the Treasury was indicted for <checks notes> allegedly not paying his federal income taxes.
One of the accused plotters of the Abbey Gate bombing is on trial this week in the Eastern District of Virginia. It’s a case that would’ve drawn dozens of reporters to the Rocket Docket 10 years ago but is relegated to the back pages today. The defense filed a motion days before it kicked off, asking a judge to compel the government to disclose the extent of U.S. involvement in the defendant’s and his family’s arrest in Pakistan. And on Sunday, the judge rejected an evidentiary defense motion.
Accidentally clipping the mirror of a cop’s car at a traffic light resulted in uncovering a kilo of cocaine.
It’s the clip art of a clown car that did it for us in this Missouri motion (Hattip, Ryan).
“He recently appeared in a video, brandishing firearms – some with extended magazines and machine gun conversion devices – in a manner that glorifies firearms and the carnage they cause,” says one criminal complaint. We were curious, so here’s the rap video where the defendant “glorifies firearms.”
The Chicago founder of a pro-ISIS media organization was sentenced to 25 years in prison for material support for terrorism. He was convicted at a bench trial last year.
A U.S. Army soldier was charged for allegedly making $400,000 by using classified information to place bets on Polymarket before the Maduro operation. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which we weren’t quite sure they even had any lawyers left there post-DOGE, would like the money back.
Prosecutors never forget. A 2014 sanctions case involving Iran was unsealed just last Friday.
Flying under the radar: Bankruptcies in federal court increased 11.9 percent in the last year.
Our editor was named one of Washingtonian Magazine’s “Most Influential in D.C.,” which will make him both insufferable at cocktail parties and somehow unemployable at the Washington Post.
An Oregon judge had some strong words for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Our friend Gigi Liman wrote about the ACLU’s attempt to file Reconstruction-era civil rights statutes to challenge federal immigration enforcement over at Lawfare.
The feds say they busted a strip club that was actually operating as a prostitution ring in St. Thomas.
A lawsuit wants Nintendo to pass along the tariff refunds to customers.
A former employee at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia was sentenced to 18 months of supervised release for $49,999 worth of PPP fraud.
These threat cases over sports betting are really getting out of hand.
Speaking of threats, a man from California was indicted for allegedly threatening ICE.
The former Capitol Police officer who was falsely implicated in the January 6th pipebomber case is suing The Blaze.
Shoutout to PACER for charging us more than a dollar for pages and pages of blank...pages. Or as we call it, PACER Fees (Taylor’s Version).
A man from Land O’Lakes, Florida, who worked as a negotiator for companies dealing with ransomware attacks, pleaded guilty to plotting the very same attacks. Prosecutors say they’ve seized $10 million worth of assets from him, including in the form of a luxury fishing boat (because it’s Florida) and a food truck.
D.C.’s bicyclists beat the Interior.
Back to the Rocket Docket, Judge Leonie Brinkema was annoyed after prosecutors took too long to seek an indictment in a money laundering case. After Judge Brinkema denied a motion for an extension, the prosecutors finally got around to it.
Noah Kahan’s new album drops today. We’re getting through the playlist while putting the final edits to this morning’s roundup. For the song of the week, enjoy this week’s Tiny Desk with him.
Women still don’t have to register for the draft.
In a very 2026 headline, a Kentucky man who allegedly said he was “filled with political violence” was arrested for threats.
The State of Florida went to the Eleventh Circuit to argue that Ron DeSantis can designate nonprofit organizations as terrorist entities.
The feds want D.C. to do something about its sewage spilling into the Potomac.
Please don’t fly your drones over the Charlotte airport. It’s chaotic enough there.
Here’s a lovely profile about a retired federal judge who’s a real life rock star.
Sullivan and Cromwell had quite the week in New York bankruptcy court.
There’s nothing like allegedly bragging about your fraud on Facebook under the user “Rich Scamma.”
The Justice Department might get a mansion in Beverly Hills from a defense contractor.
A Hawaii judge gets to go on a reverse vacation to L.A. to handle all the district’s habeas cases.
An Eighth Circuit order starts off this way and just gets wilder. Stay for the part where he gets the guy he’s actually impersonating locked up for identity fraud. “By all appearances, a man who went by the name William Woods had turned his life around. Three decades ago, he was homeless and worked at a hotdog cart. But then the man got married and had a child. He opened up bank accounts, received credit lines, and started working at a hospital, where he became ‘the key administrator of critical systems’ and earned more than $100,000 per year. There was just one problem: Although William Woods is a real person, the man is not that person.”
Islamic Relief Worldwide filed a motion to dismiss a case to sever ties brought by its former subgroup, Islamic Relief USA. This lawsuit is headed towards a messy divorce.
The ability of nonprofits to engage in political activity might go up on appeal in the Fifth Circuit.
Thanks for reading. In honor of TMZ’s new D.C. bureau, we’ll end with a postscript from Peter’s only-in-D.C. weekend.
Picture this. You’re about to walk into a concert at the D.C. waterfront venue The Anthem. Two artists who both landed in your 2025 Spotify top five—MJ Lenderman and Waxahatchee—are playing on the same stage together, and you’re pumped to hear their sweet, southern take on indie music. Because bourbon didn’t match the spring vibes and D.C. drink prices ain’t cheap ($13 PBRs… come on), you had a mojito or two at home before leaving. So that when you look up, you’re not sure whether to trust the person that you think is Pam Bondi, the recently unemployed former attorney general, is actually Pam Bondi.
No, Pam Bondi was not at the Wharf because she’s a fan of Katie Crutchfield’s Snocaps or her album Tigers Blood. Nor was she there because she wanted to get in on the action of the ice cream scooper from Asheville, North Carolina, turned indie rock sensation at 25, Jake Lenderman. And we could be wrong, but she really doesn’t strike us as a fan of Lenderman’s other band, Wednesday, which blends punk and alt-rock sounds with Southern Gothic themes. She just so happened to be leaving a nearby restaurant with a companion and her two bodyguards, whose Hawaiian button-down shirts were an odd juxtaposition with their earpieces and sidearms.
But for a fleeting moment in our legal journalist hearts, we could’ve whipped out our phone and stopped her to ask for a reaction to a story in The Atlantic about Kash Patel’s tenure as FBI Director that had broken merely hours before. Perhaps, on that beautiful spring evening, surrounded by alt-country fans, ranging from the Wilco dads to the Zach Bryan Band daughters, she would have finally let loose, telling us all about her short tenure and why she’s no longer with the Administration. Court Watch could’ve had its primetime TMZ moment. If it weren’t for the mojitos…
Alas, maybe we’ll run into her again outside the next Geese concert in D.C.