Welcome to Court Watch #178. Forty two years on this earth and humans still have an ability to surprise us. Whether it's an Oregon man who took on (and mostly won against) the U.S. Mint, or that FIFA officials thought it was a good idea to ruin art, or that union bosses refuse to shed their stereotypes, or that the world’s first soon-to-be trillionaire’s ‘record setting’ government fine was … $1.5 million.
Surprise is the spice of life. As such, we’ve hidden a few of those in this week’s issue.
The Docket Roundup:
Not nearly enough of y'all are talking about a pro-se litigant in Oregon who successfully convinced a federal judge to put the U.S. Government on notice if they tried to mint a 24-karat commemorative Trump coin it wouldn’t necessarily end the way they wanted it to. We called the pro se plaintiff, James Rickher, late last night and talked for some time about his suit. On why he filed the lawsuit: Rickher said, “If we let go of the little things, we let go of the big things.” So he learned the obscure history of the U.S. mint and commemorative coin act and wrote a lawsuit, ponied up 405 dollars in filing fees, argued his case against a DOJ prosecutor and sorta persuaded a judge. Wherever you fall on the political spectrum, people and the things they decided to do when they get an idea in their head are absolutely fascinating.
It seems clear that Islamic Relief Worldwide is quite worried about what Islamic Relief USA may reveal.
A federal judge in D.C. unsealed records related to a decades-old adoption proceeding, allowing a 77-year-old to find out who his biological parents were and that he has a half-brother.
The opening line of this sanctions opinion makes it clear it’s gonna be a doozy. Not to be eclipsed, the Ninth Circuit also entered the sanctions chat.
California officials won the right to inspect health conditions at a local privately run ICE detention center.
A federal judge won’t require the FBI to release more documents related to monitoring social media during the 2020 election.
A homeless man whom the State Department helped bring home from a Belarusian train station doesn’t want to pay back the loan the government gave him for the flight.
We have questions. A French man in the United States for a few days is accused of trying to mail high-capacity magazines overseas. Law enforcement searched his car and found a bulletproof vest and aerial photos of JFK airport.
A comedian was indicted for calling in a bomb threat after his open-mic session.
Bloomberg is fighting for more Epstein-related records.
Yucatán box turtles, baby crocodiles, and Mexican beaded lizards were among the 1,700 animals a California man smuggled into the U.S. He’s now been sentenced to 65 months in federal prison.
The former president of Venezuela picked up one of P. Diddy’s lawyers for his criminal case.
FBI Director Kash Patel’s girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, sued MS Now (editor’s note: that’s never not a weird name for a news org) for defamation.
There was a big drug bust at a Charlotte motel last week. The FBI says the motel employed a “security team” that actually used the motel as a base of operations.
The feds have accused two men of separately assaulting ICE agents during a high-profile protest at a New Jersey immigration detention center.
A Russian citizen in Finland was charged with trying to evade U.S. sanctions on Russia and procure satellite equipment from American companies.
Texas state election officials gave a list of potential cases to the FBI to help law enforcement in a voter fraud case.
The feds seized half a million dollars from a trucker who couldn’t keep it between the lines, believing the money to be part of a cocaine smuggling ring.
An Arkansas man was indicted for threatening federal judges in the Southern District of New York
A new filing in an immigration case in Massachusetts says the government is struggling to follow a preliminary injunction: “One agent, confronted with the existence of the preliminary injunction, told a plaintiff: ‘Ok, I can’t do anything about that. It’s between you, USCIS, and the judge.’”
Recently, we’ve been drawn to music with a healthy dose of chaotic energy. If your puritanical sensibilities can power through the first fifty seconds and stick around for the saxophone two and a half minutes in, it makes for an earworm of a song of the week.
It was quite the week in Maine.
Elon Musk and the SEC appear to have agreed for Musk to pay a “record setting” $1.5 million fine. To put the fine in context, it’d be equivalent to one of our 10,000 subscribers becoming a paying supporter. As long as that one billionaire existing subscriber made the jump to a paid subscription we’ll be Mavs fans for life.
The Department of Justice obtained a superseding indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center but now prosecutors are accused of tipping off a few reporters about closed grand jury decisions.
Matt Taibbi filed a motion arguing why he shouldn’t have to pay the attorney fees of the reporter he sued unsuccessfully.
A Washington man was sentenced to 54 months in prison for a hate crime for stabbing a Black woman on a bus.
As journalists flock to cover a politician’s purported abuse scandal in one coastal state, another one is brewing in an unexpected and senator-less territory: Guam.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York was sued by a former longtime employee for purported discrimination.
Victims who were shot during the assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, sued the Secret Service for negligence. (Here’s the second lawsuit.)
An incarcerated man representing himself pro se has some words to say about January 6th.
The journalist who was accused of acting as a foreign agent on behalf of China pleaded guilty yesterday.
Some national media org should swoop in and write up this story about unlicensed weight loss drugs leading to the feds taking possession of three new houses.
A guy from Ohio allegedly sent threatening emails to two police officers. The FBI says he admitted to sending the emails in a voluntary interrogation with local police.
Speaking of threats, a Florida man was indicted for reportedly impersonating a CIA agent and threatening to kill a federal judge. And then, on the other end of the spectrum, a New York man caught a charge after he reportedly tried to give law enforcement intelligence on “jihadist activities and narcotics dealers.”
FIFA painted over a well-loved mural of a whale in Dallas as part of its preparations for the World Cup. The artist is now suing FIFA.
The D.C. Circuit held that the Pentagon’s policy removing transgender service members from the armed services was fueled by unconstitutional animus.
A photographer sued the NYPD over his arrest during a protest in 2023. The photographer claims officers retaliated against him for using flash on his camera.
Oh me oh my oh. A union treasurer is accused of embezzlement in Ohio.
The Washington Post wants a judge to unseal records about an National Parks officer-involved shooting in Alexandria in 2017.
A Reagan-appointed Texas judge ruled that a prison civil rights suit filed by a group of transgender prisoners can advance under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The CEO of an Iran-based tech company was arrested. Prosecutors say he helped smuggle equipment from the U.S. that was used in Iran’s nuclear program.
PETA and the D.C. metro have beef, though PETA probably wouldn’t like us using insensitive animal language to write that.
The government ticked off a judge in a tariffs case after he ordered them to build a portal that they then appealed and took credit for building.
If you’ve ever wondered who would (allegedly) bring a firework to the airport, well, here you go. I guess it’s illegal to celebrate 250 years of freedom. We thought this was America
In an affidavit in Kansas, the feds say they have access to cache data from a man’s account on the encrypted messaging app Signal. The filing reads a bit clunky, so we’re assuming they just unlocked his phone and grabbed stuff before the messages disappeared and not actually the cache thing. But we asked Signal for a comment, waiting to hear back.
Thanks for reading. A subscriber note, on Sunday’s The Rabbit Hole, we reveal a way to uncover 50,000 dockets that are not available on PACER. You don’t want to miss that.