Welcome to Court Watch #69. Lots of happenings in the dockets this week, including but not limited to a far too honest federal courthouse window smasher, Blondie new waving copyrighting punks, Capital One asking what’s in your domain registration, a daycare with $700,000 in drug cash, Denver Broncos box season seats opening up, and apparently cops need helicopters to figure out that folks grow weed in Oregon. And finally, we begrudgingly admit our deepest darkest secret: we’re jealous of the Justice Department Public Integrity Section’s strong facial hair game.
But first let’s get serious for a moment and talk about a previously unreported antisemitic incident in Texas.
In late January, a Texas man posted on Facebook, “these people across the street tryna get killed…go home Jew…hope these f****ing jews die.” One more more later, a husband and wife living in Seagoville, Texas found a bullet hole in their dining room ceiling. Less than a week after that, they heard multiple gunshots and discovered that the front of their house had been shot up. Six days following the second shooting, while out of town, their driveway was spray painted with “GO HOME JEWS” and swastikas.
Their neighbor across the street, Jose Medrano, was arrested last week. A review of his still active Facebook page shows an increasing concern about purported “microwaves” penetrating his head and an obsession with his neighbors. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas, which is prosecuting the case, and Medrano’s defense attorney, did not respond to a request for comment.
A lot is made (rightly so) about the increasing threats against public officials, particularly this week. However, the Medrano case is just one of more than a half dozen threat cases filed in the last seven days related to violence threatened toward regular Americans with no public personas who had little, if any, prior significant connections to the perpetrator. Add to that concerning anecdote a new report out this week by Recorded Future that found that doxing of corporate executives is a rising trendline.
This is all to say, prosecutors will have their hands full in the coming months. We’ll keep an eye on it all, but wish it wasn’t so pervasive. For now, we move onto a roundup of the rest of this week’s court dockets:
Seems Like an Important Thing to Be Able to Detect: A Massachusetts lawsuit says an AI company which does security screening at large public events can’t detect certain guns or knives. Also, it’s the “official security partner” of the Pittsburgh Pirates and used in nearly a dozen baseball stadiums.
Checkmate, Every Political Newsletter: Lots of folks followed Matt Schlapp settling his lawsuit this week, but people may have missed that the American Conservative Union filed another lawsuit yesterday accusing former employees of setting up a similar organization “stealing confidential information.” Lots of tea in this one.
Another one: A former colleague of Hunter Biden who recently testified against him in a congressional hearing is suing a FoxNews host over a comment on whether President Trump’s PAC paid his legal bills.
Squatters: Someone created a bunch of Capital One/Discover domains two days after the two companies’ merger was announced. Capital One is suing for cybersquatting and alleging the ‘fake’ websites install malware when visited.
Smooth Criminal: There’s a fight over the King Of Pop’s shoes (picture)
Export Controls: Operation Southbound took down five suspects accused of buying guns in America for drug cartels in Mexico.
Letter, Meet Spirit: A Florida man set up a table at a gun show last week and sold “gun cleaner filters” which, with one small modification, would be exactly what one would need to make a silencer. He was arrested for possession of a silencer without a serial number
MEV Bot What?: We understood every fourth word in this cryptocurrency scam affidavit (web3 is basically the NextGen of PACER). The part we truly understood was that some of the purported stolen currency was used to purchase football tickets. The U.S. Government is about to be the happy owner of executive box suite tickets for the 2024 Denver Broncos season. Being thorough reporters, we asked the FBI Denver office if they were excited about the prospect of watching a resurgent Broncos team try to regain its past glory. Our money is on Jared Stidman having a record season. We also asked the Denver Broncos comms staff for a comment. Alas, the FBI Denver office declined to comment but we think deep down they wanted to. And Mile High football team also passed on a request for comment. We just hope someone wearing a badge gets to enjoy the “pinnacle of stadium entertainment.”
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