Court Watch #102: Giving Thanks to the Dockets.

We did anything to distract us from the Bears. Plus: We humbly ask is the Justice Department Anti-Dentite? And: Oculus Robbery, Supermax, Amtrak corruption, and nonprofit sunshine.

Photo by Dipanjan Chatterjee on Unsplash

By Seamus Hughes and Peter Beck

Welcome to Court Watch #102. We had all intentions of skipping our newsletter this holiday week but the Chicago Bears’ play clock management was so numbingly bad that we needed to do something that made us feel anything. Reflecting that a football game is only three hours long to search dockets, this will be an abridged version of our weekly roundup. But unlike Caleb Williams, we used our time to do something productive and not mindlessly waste precious seconds on the clock.

We trust that our abridged roundup is still better than whatever corporate garbage Black Friday deal emails you’re having to shift through right now. (Unrelated Editor’s note: Here’s a link to a Black Friday sale on Court Watch subscriptions).

Despite our best effort to only write for ourselves, we clocked a respectable 180,000 views this month on our site. Which is approximately 179,000 more than this time last year. This is to say, you all seem to like reading us, or at the very least ‘hate-reading’ us. Which, to be honest, is the best and only pure way to read. Or at least how we read anything by Rudyard Kipling (let’s be honest folks, ‘If’ is trite). So we feel obligated to give the people what they want. Turkey comas be damned, the dockets need us.

This week, North Korea pays a small seizure tax, a nonprofit’s donors meet a harsh ray of sunshine, Amtrak corruption, Supermax gets reshuffled, Oculus has a blind spot for robbery, Saffron spice fights, and an angry man was re-arrested on the day of his prison release. Finally, we ask the tough journalistic question that is on everyone's mind: Is the Justice Department an anti-dentite?

The Docket Roundup

• An Arizona man under a protective order who tried repeatedly to buy guns was charged with threatening to kill President-elect Trump.

• We genuinely look forward to reading pro-se complaints. They’re always so raw and personal. So when a sitting judge files a pro-se suing fellow judges, we’ll read the hell out of it. Alas, we’d love to link to the complaint but it was so many pages that it was in four different parts. Here’s the full docket and exhibits.

• There’s an investigation in Ohio into whether a subcontractor who did maintenance at U.S. Post Offices systematically overcharged for 1,300 work orders.

• The feds seized roughly 3 million dollars in crypto of 34 million dollars in total reportedly stolen by North Korean hackers.

• A woman is suing the rapper formerly known as Kanye West and Universal Music with claims that the rapper sexually assaulted and strangled her on a music video set fourteen years ago.

• Attorney General Garland has perfected the DOJ’s version of a FAFO quote: “After making vile threats to execute and sexually assault FBI agents and employees, state and local law enforcement officials, and other public servants, Michael Tomasi told the FBI to ‘come to my house and see what happens’ — what has happened is that he will spend 15 months in federal prison.”

• The largest Muslim American civil rights organization in America got some uncomfortable news from a federal judge. An opinion in Minnesota sets the stage for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) to disclose its donor list to a former employee who is suing them over defamation charges. The former employee alleges, among other things, that CAIR has received foreign funding despite public proclamations that it hasn’t.

• A county in Kansas is suing major plastics companies arguing they’ve vastly oversold how recyclable their products are.

• A New York man arrested for trespassing was released and then allegedly FaceTimed the arresting police officer threatening him.

• If you want to get a sense of how our brain works to find court records, here’s the unvarnished process. Oh, there’s President Biden on CNN → Biden’s term is ending → Biden likes train→ He’ll probably ride a train around the country when he retires → Trains are fun → Maybe he’ll ride an Amtrak train → Sometimes fun is illegal → Is it illegal to love trains? → Wonder if there’s Amtrak criminal cases? → Where does a lot of Amtrak money go? → Philadelphia? → Check Eastern District of Pennsylvania → Find an unreported newly filed criminal case in Philadelphia involving bribes to an Amtrak employee. It’s related to a previous story we broke last Spring. (We once broke the corruption scandal at the LA city council because the Rams game was boring)

• In other Biden-esque news, prosecutors' use of air quotes on “consultant” was a bit mean.

• On Thanksgiving, you probably put a lot of things down your kitchen sink. But did you ever want to know the rich history of garbage disposals? Or perhaps the seedy underbelly of what horsepower truly means for destroying leftovers? We have a court filing for you.

• Law enforcement are continuing to investigate the murder of a California man who was kidnapped by five purported drug dealers in Mexico. Luke Harold has a rundown of the last search warrant here.

• A Boston-area man was charged with a firearm offense after he reportedly tried to hit a police officer with his moped before crashing it and wrestling with officers.

• A 77-year-old man admitted that he was secretly shipping things to prohibited companies in China.

• Looks like FBI Houston's open call for victims to come forward resulted in more ICHCoin confidence scam seizures.

• SDNY prosecutors go whale hunting before the bosses change in late January.

• An interesting rundown of how authorities tracked down an alleged bank robber who uses the past tense when the present tense would be more suitable.

• Tether continues to have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.

• Authorities say a crew knocked off millions in Facebook Oculus goggles

• You want the First Amendment Coalition on that wall, you need the First Amendment Coalition on that wall.

• The things alleged in this lawsuit are concerning.

• Oracle is suing Crypto Oracle arguing that the company is not honoring their past trademark agreement.

• There’s a fight over who is allowed to create ‘Make America Great Again’ commemorative coins.

• A protester at the Council of Institutional Investors’s Brooklyn event featuring the NYC comptroller says a Marriott Hotel security guard slammed her into a door fracturing her clavicle.

• We found the American version of Dune. Whoever controls the spice trade controls the dockets.

• The feds want 10 million dollars back from fake Medicare tests.

• A railroad company is very upset that the Army closed one of its bases.

• A lawyer has to pay a fine and go to a class about generative AI for using Lexis AI Claude to write his motion, which in turn made up fake legal cases as citations.

• Affidavit is sealed but the charge and the date seems interesting.

• We’re smart enough to not understand what either of these companies do but also that it’s important that they’re fighting.

• If you ever want to see what a Supreme Court writ of cert looks like.

• Apropos of nothing, Charles Johnson and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed have shared the same lawyer.

• The “Legal Eagle” YouTube channel filed a FOIA suit against the Justice Department to turn over records and emails from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President-elect Trump.

• A Michigan man was arrested for allegedly submitting forms in different people’s names for unemployment insurance 35 separate times and in 21 states. Law enforcement says the man used the same phone number on 30 of the forms.

• There’s a new unit at Supermax in Colorado, according to a letter written by an attorney whose client is incarcerated there.

• The creator of a popular map in Fortnite is suing a man for $708,000 who he claims filed an improper copyright notice to Fortnite in order to get the map taken down and increase user traffic to his map.

• A dual U.S. and Albanian citizen was arrested by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force on charges of attempting to provide material support to ISIS. The man was purportedly planning a “DC sniper” style attack in the U.S. and had shared materials on pro-ISIS networks about how to build explosives.

• The DEA said in an arrest warrant that the Coast Guard successfully interdicted a drug boat carrying cocaine 60 miles off of Panama.

• A man incarcerated at a federal prison in Florida reportedly killed his cellmate with a shiv.

• Two men were charged for purportedly making a series of threats and false swatting calls. Their targets reportedly included multiple synagogues in New York, President Biden, a university, cabinet officials, government facilities, and members of the House of Representatives and Senate.

• A fifty-seven-year-old Indian man living in Oregon was indicted for allegedly plotting to export parts for civilian and military aircraft from the U.S. to Russia.

• Prosecutors charged a man for allegedly making threats against President-elect Trump as he was set to finish his prison sentence for making other threats.

• A former Shen Yun dancer is suing the organization and its bank for forced and unfair labor practices.

• A man from Florida was sentenced to 4 years in prison for conspiring to act as an agent of China. Prosecutors say the man monitored Chinese dissidents and members of the Falun Gong for China’s Ministry of State Security.

• Our working theory is that someone at the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Middle District of Florida DOJ had a bad experience with a dentist as a child. It’s the only reasonable explanation for the need to list the profession of a man who pleaded (editor’s note: pled? We’ve been doing this for 20 years, who can really say. Stay out of this AP style guide.) guilty to sending 100 violent threats to 40 different people, including at least one elected official, via Facebook and Instagram.

• A Massachusetts man says he called in bomb threats at two synagogues. Prosecutors say he also called the Israeli Consulate in Boston 98 times over a four-month period with harassing messages.

Thanks for reading. Unfortunately, the U.S. Administrative Office of the Courts is not offering a 20% discount on all PACER fees this weekend only. But Court Watch is, so take advantage of our deal.