Welcome to Court Watch #179. This week, the U.S. legal system raised deep philosophical questions:
Can you really get upset that your opposing counsel cited A.I.- hallucinated cases if your filings did too?
Do Utah twitter followers really matter?
Is it ok that a federal judge gave the plaintiffs a roadmap of where to file a winning lawsuit?
Should you defend your political enemies in court if it may protect your edgelord social media posts later?
And, for the S.E.C. lawyers, isn't the concept of time just an antiquated social construct?
We might not have all the answers to those, but like first year philosophy majors cribbing Emerson, we believe the journey of docket discovery is more important than the destination.
The Docket Roundup
Taj Tarsha, Web3 and NFT guy and founder of ‘Few and Far’ (FAR) coin, was arrested for stealing money from investors. You can still watch an interview with him explaining his business model as part of CoinDesk’s sponsored content.
An ex-DOGE staffer at the Pentagon took The Guardian to court over an embarrassing report which said he bungled a leak investigation.
A federal judge in Massachusetts put Texas’ Ken Paxton’s investigation into ActBlue on pause.
One defendant’s case was set to go to trial just as the government shutdown began. The trial ended up being postponed, and the SEC, which is prosecuting the case, never moved to reschedule it. He’s now motioning to dismiss the case for failure to prosecute.
Secret Service says a Brooklyn man used the White House’s “Contact Us” page for all the wrong reasons.
A legal ethics question for your Friday morning. If both sides use AI case hallucinations in opposing briefs, do they cancel each other out?
A Manhattan investment analyst allegedly used insider information to make $350,000 in biomedical and health investment trades.
One has to appreciate a federal judge using a footnote to give the plaintiff a hint on where else to shop their lawsuit.
The Trump administration successfully defended anti-Trump Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove against Matt Taibbi. The Department of Justice intervened in order to protect federal immunity clauses after Taibbi sued Kamlager-Dove for defamation. We’re only passing experts on federal immunity, but it seems like Taibbi’s case may have inadvertently expanded the legal precedent to include mean congressional social media posts. This won’t spell trouble for our country in the future.
Speaking of Matt Taibbi, in a separate defamation lawsuit, reporter Eion Higgins filed another brief arguing why Taibbi should have to pay attorney fees for his now-dismissed defamation suit.
Four men, three of whom were reportedly known as “Yanna,” “Dink,” and “Juice,” allegedly bribed a U.S. mail carrier to help them steal checks in Virginia.
Prosecutors say two clerks at a Utah state courthouse helped folks flee from ICE.
The family of an epileptic man who died in a San Bernardino jail awaiting trial sued the county, alleging that jail officials failed to note the man’s medical needs.
If you’re a journalist heading to next week’s Investigative Reporters and Editors conference, come swing by our training session.
One can kind of get a sense the ruling is not going to go your way when the judge writes “Give me a break” in his opinion.
A judge, who previously ordered attorneys for Southwest Airlines to attend a religious training run by the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, changed his mind. He now says that an apology is good enough.
One Michigan doctor is suing after an agent with the Department of Health and Human Services falsely accused him of Medicare fraud.
The Department of Justice announced an indictment against eight pro-Palestine protesters with ties to the University of Michigan. The activists are charged with conspiracy to transmit threats, conspiracy to tamper with a witness, and destruction of property allegedly related to activities on Michigan’s campus.
The Florida magistrate judge, whom President Trump’s attorneys asked to recuse herself for representing a previous party in litigation with Trump, declined to recuse herself. Meanwhile, his attorneys replied to an order to show cause why they shouldn’t be sanctioned for failing to meet filing deadlines.
Good fences make good neighbors? An Ohio man allegedly showed off his sawed-off shotgun and pipe bombs he built from his kitchen sink to a neighbor who came over to borrow some stuff. Law enforcement says he then threatened the neighbor with them when he didn’t bring his stuff back.
Two college football players sued the NCAA over a cap on NIL earnings.
A conservative former Senate candidate whom FBI Director Kash Patel’s girlfriend sued for defamation is trying to get the case dismissed arguing that Utah isn’t terminally online.
If you need a pep talk about how you’re doing, here’s our song of the week
In what’s probably our favorite headline this week, the City of Des Moines wants to end an alleged monopoly on fire trucks repairs.
Vercel, a U.S. cloud storage company, entered into an agreement with the Department of Justice for a stipulated dismissal of its civil contempt proceedings. The contempt proceedings were initiated after Vercel failed to respond to a federal search warrant.
For our natsec nerds, it was a big week for 2339b, the statute prohibiting material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Two men in California and a third in Kansas were charged for allegedly swearing oaths and attempting to join ISIS. In New York, a 50-year-old former Taliban commander was sentenced to 42 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to 2339b and other charges. And in its neighbor in the tri-state area, the FBI arrested a man in New Jersey accused of pledging an oath and attempting to travel to join ISIS.
A member of the “Goodfellas” gang in Georgia was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for a drive-by shooting that wounded three people, including a 14-year-old and a six-year-old.
The FBI and the Department of Justice announced that they had disabled 13 websites operated by suspected Chinese agents seeking out former and current U.S. government officials with security clearances for “consulting” contracts. We wrote about how foreign intelligence agencies are targeting more U.S. officials in the Rabbit Hole last month.
Here are the transcripts from the grand jury in the Broadview Six case.
California is taking on an immigration detention center over environmental guidelines.
The lawsuit attempting to put a stop to the UFC fight at the White House called it “a volcano of corruption.”
A new shareholder suit says the finances at Beyond Meat, the vegan, plant-based protein company, aren’t all they’re made up to be.
Apple fought a gag order preventing it from informing a republican congressional staffer that the Department of Justice had seized their information as part of investigation into foreign influence. Hat tip to Forbes for catching it first.
In honor of hurricane season being upon us, here’s a dispute between a county in Pennsylvania and a disaster clean-up company after FEMA reportedly decided not to deliver full disaster aid because the contractor may have demolished a park and protected habitats.
Several disability rights organizations sued to block New York’s new assisted suicide law.
A guard is in hot water for allegedly helping smuggle hundreds of vapes into a Colorado federal prison.
A China-based tech company is fighting the Pentagon’s designation of it as a “Chinese military company.”
Thanks for reading. A final note, we’re taking a flyer on a court hearing this morning. We give it a 50/50 chance it ends with a story that gets picked up by every news organization in America. We’ll let you know how it shakes out.