Welcome to Court Watch #186. Our weekly roundup of the most fascinating federal court filings this week is below, but before that, a quick detour to talk about a previously unreported criminal case.
On Tuesday, the FBI arrested a twenty-something man, Anthony Gagnon, in Florida for allegedly cyberstalking his former high school classmate and her family members. Apart from the extensive vitriol—dating back years and years—that is far too common in cyberstalking cases, another allegation caught our eye. According to charging documents, Gagnon reportedly used Gemini, Google’s A.I. assistant, to try to find out whether his threats to the cyberstalking victim were constitutionally prosecutable. Authorities say he sent a draft of his explicit texts to Gemini before he delivered them to one of his victims. To the LLM’s credit, its first response was that it would likely be cyberstalking.
Screenshot Gemini’s response to Anthony Gagnon’s alleged A.I. prompt on draft threat. Source: U.S. v. Gagnon
Though they came to the same prosecutorial conclusion in different ways (one using court-approved law enforcement investigative tools/the other using billions of gallons of water and dramatically raising your monthly electricity costs), both FBI and Gemini agreed that a charge was warranted for Gagnon’s alleged behavior. But the man’s purported use of A.I. to attempt to find out how far he could push the legal limit, while still carrying out his threat’s purpose, is something our docket- and terrorism-focused eyes hadn’t seen yet (editor’s note: efforts to reach Gagnon for comment were unsuccessful). We can add it to the list of other horrors that A.I. will intensify.
Thankfully, you won’t need to prompt A.I. to check if our docket roundup is legally and morally sound. We assure you, it’s at least one of those things. This week, a federal judge embraces the power of memetic communications, eBay lawyers are quite exacting, an appeals court waters down the most important parts of the English language, SDNY prosecutors may make things awkward for the United Nations, and, when he’s not writing an op-ed with a curious number of em dashes, David Ellison may want to ask et tu, Comcast? Those and other things in this week’s dockets.
The Docket Roundup
Honestly, not nearly enough of you are talking about footnote 51 in this order. We’re not sure how we feel about federal judges being more terminally online than us. The entire opinion by Judge Brantley Starr is a ride, complete with a reference to the greatest Christmas movie ever produced (footnote 37).
A man incarcerated at a federal prison in Oklahoma was indicted on charges of threatening the president and a federal law enforcement officer. His release date for the original crime he was convicted of is currently December 2055.
Baltimore (hon) is now the happy owner of 550 counterfeit car tires.
“I am now hoist on my own petard,” says one federal judge.
A federal judge rules the government violated a preliminary injunction and ordered the release of funding to cover legal representation for migrant children
There’s a clever, Bollywood-inspired copper wire theft scheme in North Carolina.
More J6ers are suing the government under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Your pro se of the week is from a man who claims to be an FBI agent and the victim of a “Brain Computer Interface” the bureau is running. The filing includes an X-ray of his brain.
<whispers> It sure looks like Comcast quietly tried to throw a wrench into the Paramount merger.
A Maryland man lost more than $1.2 million to a pig-butchering scam. The feds have clawed some of it back.
A Pennsylvania man, Eric Holman, was arrested for threatening a series of antisemitic attacks on twitter. His handle ‘jewscantstopme’ is still active on the platform. A search of his home on Wednesday found an end-of-life note.
We’re not saying that this is the best Lacey Act story of the year, but it’s at least pretty close.
A guy who was reportedly caught jumping the turnstiles at the Roslyn metro stop near Washington, D.C., led to a larger ICE case.
The Administration is testing out a new legal strategy to not have union posters at government offices.
Lawyers got nearly half a million dollars in fees for beating the Department of War in the only combat nowadays that Americans routinely get a clear victory on: Lawfare.
It’s not every day that a Wall Street Journal correction triggers an attorney general lawsuit correction.
It’s never a good idea to talk to witnesses when you’re being investigated. It’s an even worse idea to allegedly threaten them.
We couldn’t help but notice that the right honorable U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois has a copy of his own book on his office coffee table. Kind of a boss move to be honest.
An Asheville man was purportedly a huge scary creep to his ex-girlfriend.
We’re not sure TikTok is the right market to sell machine gun conversion devices, but one North Carolina man allegedly gave it a shot.
9,000 emails (allegedly) is honestly way too many before catching a cyberstalking charge.
The Eleventh Circuit floated a PG version of FAFO: “Mess around and find out.” We do not approve of their attempt to dull the best parts of the English language.
Lots of folks only know the Pogues for their Fairytale of New York song, but you’re really missing out on some of their deep tracks. For this week’s song of the week, we went with a slowed-down acoustic cover of one of our Pogues’ favorites. We lowkey had it on repeat while we worked through most of this week’s issue at 10:53 pm on Wednesday evening and 5:37am this morning.
One of us wrote about how we spent last Thursday and how their Court Watch editor always correctly assumes court nerds intuitively understand two-letter no-context texts.
Here’s the criminal complaint against an FBI counterintelligence agent who reportedly admitted to siphoning off hundreds of thousands in stolen crypto proceeds. We’ll say out loud what bigwig lawyers only tell us in disappearing messages: DOJ’s detention argument was quite weak. A judge apparently thought so too and the agent is set to be released pending trial.
We put out the bat signal, and you all answered. We still need a few more paid subscribers to more comfortably support our independent journalism, but we appreciate everyone who was able to step up so far. You can upgrade to a monthly or yearly subscription here or consider making a one-time donation.
Law enforcement in Louisiana is quietly working a multi-million dollar medicare fraud case.
An alleged pedophile reportedly wrote “pedo” in black marker on his body. We feel bad for whoever has to defend it. Content warning on the filing.
OpenAI and the Justice Department reached a settlement about hiring procedures that favored visa holders.
A Georgia man was indicted for threatening ICE agents, though prosecutors may have their work cut out for them with his “I have no specific plans” line.
District Judge to Appeals Judges: Pound Sand.
ICE agents can keep covering their faces in New York.
eBay Lawyers had to explain a judge’s order to the Boies Schiller Flexner lawyers representing Trump businesses suing to enforce trademark laws.
Prosecutors say a cybersecurity consultant won’t help them find the money he stole.
A Georgia man was charged with threatening the head of New Jersey's FBI office. The threatening message makes the implication that his wife works for the Bureau.
Plaintiffs suing over conditions at an ICE detention center want a judge to recuse himself because he’s also a military officer.
The Belarusian leader of the “ransom cartel” was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
A man accused of lighting Tesla chargers on fire in Charleston, SC, pleaded guilty.
We are mildly surprised that no reporter picked up that the Justice Department called Al-Khair Foundation a “sham charity” allegedly connected with raising money for Hamas in a criminal complaint. Side note to material support legal nerds who like hypotheticals: the foundation gave half a million dollars to the United Nations during the time of the alleged criminal offense. (Shoutout to the international body for not yet scrubbing their website).
Capitol One Bank would just like to clarify for the court that it did not shut down President Trump’s financial accounts because of January 6th. Instead, they say they were worried about money laundering in the accounts.
Unrelatedly, POTUS doesn’t have to turn over his financial records to the BBC, at least for now.
Continuing the trend of child abuse cases coming out of the D.C. area the past few weeks, a sheriff’s deputy was charged.
A man in prison who needed (but allegedly did not get) medical care after a hip surgery believes the Bureau of Prisons should have to pay for their neglect.
For folks that are interested in ransomware, this sentencing memo against J.P. Morgan is interesting. (Editor’s note: before we get a cease and desist letter from J.P. Morgan, the company, lawyers, the hacker’s online handle was J.P. Morgan).
A Texas sheriff’s deputy who previously served as part of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force was convicted of tipping off suspected drug traffickers.
Thanks for reading. A final scheduling note: We’ll be taking this weekend and next Friday off for what an honest outside observer could reasonably argue is well-deserved vacation. We will be back with a new The Rabbit Hole on Sunday August 16th involving a federal judge, a U.S. marshal investigation, and a now awkward workplace environment.
