When I told my taxi driver I was in Dublin to go to a No Kings rally at the American Embassy, we had quite the chat. He came from a big Republican family, he explained, before he went on to catalogue how many of his relatives had been shot during the Easter Rising in 1916 and at which of the locations we were driving by.

No Kings rings a bit different here in Dublin.

According to the organizer, we had about 400 people — 100 more than they had in the summer — representing almost every state. Some of us live here, some just showed up to protest in the middle of vacations of varying lengths.

We were right on a main road, with lots of people honking in solidarity.

We had maybe 6 frogs, one dancing dinosaur, and one chicken over the course of the protest, including a frog from Portland.

There were Epstein signs and LGBTQ flags and one Good Trouble sign and some fancy artwork.

The signs that really got me were held by kids, like these siblings who scolded, “Masked warrantless ICE agents are not American” and demanded, “stop holding back my future.”

Another sign read, in Irish, “Freedom for Palestine, Freedom for America.”

I’m used to seeing the Gaelige used to support Palestine. I had not seen the US lumped in alongside before.

I posted a few more pictures in this thread.

Over a century after Ireland itself declared No Kings once and for all, this was safe and easy. May your No Kings rally today be as safe!

Tell us about it in the thread.

Donald Trump’s weaponization of government against his adversaries is a catastrophic assault on rule of law.

But in those efforts, he continues to do things that may backfire. I’ve noted repeatedly how poorly he chooses the political martyrs he creates. Just the other day, for example, Tish James got rock star treatment when she introduced and endorsed Zohran Mamdani.

In addition, Trump is conducting his vengeance tour in such a ham-handed fashion that that one after another after another after another after another after another after another prosecutor quit or resigned to much notice. Each will be available as witness to the politicization of DOJ.

Aside from LaMonica McIver (whose arrest the chattering class seem to have forgotten), Trump bolloxed the timing — the sequencing of his attacks — as well.

He indicted the well-lawyered Jim Comey, thus far the shoddiest case, first, and did so in EDVA’s rocket docket. That means that those who follow will benefit from the work — and possibly even precedents — Comey obtains. By the time Attorney General James is arraigned on October 24, for example, both Comey’s motion to disqualify Lindsey Halligan and his motion for selective and vindictive prosecution will be public.

And yesterday, with Trump’s commutation of George Santos’ prison sentence, he botched the timing again.

Trump’s clemency has already featured in motions for selective and vindictive prosecution. Both McIver and Sean Dunn (the sandwich guy) have invoked the Jan6ers that Trump pardoned as people who viciously assaulted cops but were freed. But in McIver’s case, as I laid out here, the government claimed — partly by placing an auto-pen in Trump’s hand — that prosecutors who dismissed the pending cases were left with no discretion after Trump issued his order.

McIver’s claim faces a threshold, insurmountable defect: the January 6 Defendants cannot be considered similarly situated because they all were pardoned. As a consequence, their ongoing prosecutions had to be dismissed without regard to the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, and they could not be prosecuted for January 6th related crimes thereafter. Because a similarly situated individual is someone that “could have been prosecuted for the offenses for which [the defendant was] charged, but were not prosecuted,” and the January 6 Defendants on their face do not meet those basic criteria, McIver’s motion must fail. See Hedaithy, 392 F.3d at 607 (quoting Armstrong, 517 U.S. at 470); see also Armstrong, 517 U.S. at 469.

But in Tish James’ case, the guy most responsible for her charges — the guy who has been literally stalking her in a dirty old man trench coat — also happens to be the guy who exercised discretion in the commutation of George Santos. Indeed, Eagle Ed Martin, who in addition to serving as Trump’s weaponization czar, also serves as Pardon Attorney, boasted of his role in the commutation.

To be sure, the kinds of fraud with which Eagle Ed charged Tish James are different than the kinds to which Santos pled guilty. Eagle Ed and Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer are effectively attempting to criminalize James’ generosity, her provision of a $137,000 home to her great niece. Even if she did what is alleged (and all the evidence suggests she did not), any benefit to James herself would be less than $19,000.

Meanwhile, Santos defrauded identified victims — some of them vulnerable seniors — of almost $375,000, along with $200,000 in ill-gotten gains himself. The victims include:

• The Republican Party (which matched funds Santos hadn’t earned)
• Donors whose credit cards he defrauded
• Redstone Strategies investors
• New York State’s Unemployment Insurance
• Congress

Whereas Trump claims that the fraud for which James prosecuted him had no victims, because the banks ultimately got paid back (true of the loans James obtained as well), Santos’ crimes had a number of real victims, victims who have not yet been made whole.

And Donald Trump made no secret why he sprung Santos from prison: in crafting a false comparison with Richard Blumenthal, Trump declared that, “at least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!”

Alleged Democratic fraudsters get charges whereas far more dangerous Republican fraudsters win a Get Out of Jail Free card. It couldn’t be more clear.

It’s certainly possible that, if James used Santos as a comparator (along with other Republicans, like Ken Paxton, who haven’t been charged), DOJ would claim Trump may not have known about the various kinds of financial fraud Santos engaged in.

But if he doesn’t know that, it’s the fault of the Pardon Attorney.

The guy in the dirty old man trench coat, who has been stalking New York’s Attorney General all the while.

DOJ might claim that they can’t share any details of Santos’ commutation.

Too late!

In DOJ’s response to McIver, they already exhibited a willingness to share details of the treatment of specific pardons.

10 On September 2, 2025, the undersigned Assistant U.S. Attorneys spoke with the Deputy Pardon Attorney from the Office of the Pardon Attorney who confirmed that: (i) the January 6 Defendants with then-pending cases received pardons under the Pardon and were eligible to receive certificates of pardon, and (ii) that any January 6 Defendant was still considered pardoned even if a certificate of pardon was not requested. Additionally, the Deputy Pardon Attorney provided examples of certificates of pardon issued for January 6 Defendants with previously pending cases who requested a certificate.

I’m sure it seemed very clever, putting Eagle Ed in charge of both hunting Trump’s enemies and freeing his friends. But in this particular case it might get tricky.

At the very same time Eagle Ed was stalking Tish James up and down the Eastern Seaboard, desperately trying to find some crime to charge her with, he was also busy finding a way to free a much bigger, confessed fraudster from prison.

On Nicole’s podcast today, I said that many of the criminal issues that will arise from Trump’s politicization of DOJ won’t be all that controversial at SCOTUS (and SCOTUS is least awful on criminal justice issues). But I said one area would likely break new ground: selective and vindictive prosecution.

Jim Comey’s prosecution — and that of everyone else Trump is pursuing — fits poorly in the existing precedents for selective and vindictive prosecution, even while they clearly are vindictive.

Plus, I noted, that Trump’s penchant for yapping about legal cases even as DOJ attempts to protect him from liability in them conflicts with the language of Trump v. USA that — recklessly — puts the President in a prosecutorial function.

And the Executive Branch has “exclusive authority and absolute discretion” to decide which crimes to investigate and prosecute, including with respect to allegations of election crime. Nixon, 418 U. S., at 693; see United States v. Texas, 599 U. S. 670, 678–679 (2023) (“Under Article II, the Executive Branch possesses authority to decide ‘how to prioritize and how aggressively to pursue legal actions against defendants who violate the law.’” (quoting TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U. S. 413, 429 (2021))). The President may discuss potential investigations and prosecutions with his Attorney General and other Justice Department officials to carry out his constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Art. II, §3. And the Attorney General, as head of the Justice Department, acts as the President’s “chief law enforcement officer” who “provides vital assistance to [him] in the performance of [his] constitutional duty to ‘preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.’” Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U. S. 511, 520 (1985) (quoting Art. II, §1, cl. 8).

Investigative and prosecutorial decisionmaking is “the special province of the Executive Branch,” Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U. S. 821, 832 (1985), and the Constitution vests the entirety of the executive power in the President, Art. II, §1. For that reason, Trump’s threatened removal of the Acting Attorney General likewise implicates “conclusive and preclusive” Presidential authority. As we have explained, the President’s power to remove “executive officers of the United States whom he has appointed” may not be regulated by Congress or reviewed by the courts. Myers, 272 U. S., at 106, 176; see supra, at 8. The President’s “management of the Executive Branch” requires him to have “unrestricted power to remove the most important of his subordinates”—such as the Attorney General—“in their most important duties.” Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 750 (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted).

Either Trump is properly in a prosecutorial role, in which case he needs to be at the center of these cases (and interventions like the Eric Adams bribery case), exposed to discovery. Or, his interventions are improper.

The current state of affairs, where DOJ claims the President is immune from discovery, permitted to speak endlessly about criminal cases, yet order up criminal prosecutions, is fundamentally inconsistent with rule of law.

Which is why I’m interested in four people Comey has added to his defense team (while also getting permission to submit a 45-page selective and vindictive prosecution brief, 15 pages extra).

Comey has added:

• Elias Kim, a Cooley Associate with an appellate focus
• Ephraim McDowell, a Cooley Partner focused on appellate issues
• Rebekah Donaleski, a Cooley Partner who, while at SDNY, was on the Lev Parnas/Rudy Giuliani team, including the Special Master process that exploited all of Rudy’s phones
• Michael Dreeben, one of the best SCOTUS litigators out there, who worked on both the Mueller and Jack Smith teams

Donaleski is interesting enough, not least given the loaner AUSA bid to play games with filter teams. Plus, she would have overlapped with Maurene Comey at SDNY (and with some of Jim Comey’s old pals when she first got there, probably).

But the others, especially Dreeben, signal that Comey is going into this with a plan and the expectation that he will have to argue this case before SCOTUS.

This team is a signal that Comey intends to reverse some of the damage done by Trump v. USA.

Listen on spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

Link to Tim Miller interviewing Robby Roadsteamer

Link to ICE officer being an asshole to cops

The John Bolton indictment is a substantive document. If the claims about classification levels stand up, it is as substantive as the indictment against Trump (though with less sensitive documents and none of the obstruction).

For each of 8 charged documents (each was charged twice, once for transmission and once for retention) it describes Bolton sending the information to one of his family members via an AOL account that got hacked by Iran, then keeping it such that it was found when the FBI searched his house earlier this year.

Importantly, none of these are marked classified documents, like Trump’s stolen documents were. They are his excerpts. So there will be an enormous contest over the classification determinations, especially since Kash and John Ratcliffe were involved.

There are ten charged retained documents (that is, the same 8, plus two more). The latter two may be marked — they may be the old Iraq documents Bolton referred to.

The indictment describes someone — presumably from Iran — attempting to blackmail Bolton (at which point he told the FBI that he had been hacked).

It also quotes Bolton mocking Pete Hegseth for sharing classified information on Signal.

There are defenses to this case (including that Trump won’t prosecute Hegseth). But it is a solid case.

Update: Bolton is quoted referring to “diaries” throughout this indictment.

One of the FBI Agents on this case reportedly was involved in the Joe Biden case.

In that case, Biden fairly argued that DOJ was applying a different standard to him than DOJ had applied to Reagan in Iran-Contra.

It’s Hur’s analysis of Biden’s diaries that I find most interesting, and troubling. Hur’s approach to these diaries is one of the most obvious flags of political bias in a report full of them.

Take his use of language. The word “diaries” appears 103 times in the report [note: someone with interns should replicate this work, as it is inexact]. In about five of those instances, Hur quotes the people around Biden referring to these notebooks as diaries. Two instances discuss the Presidential Record Act’s language treating diaries as personal records, exempt from PRA. Maybe ten or so appear in a section where Hur envisions that Biden would describe these as diaries as a defense, but the word is always put in Biden’s mouth. Hur adheres to using “notebooks” here.

Mr. Biden will likely say, he never believed his notebooks, which he thought of as his personal diaries, fell within that arrangement. He treated the notebooks markedly differently from the rest of his notes and other presidential records throughout his vice presidency, for example, allowing staff to store and review his notecards, but not his notebooks. 914 This treatment, he will argue, and the extremely personal content of some of the notebooks, shows that he considered them to be his personal property. Mr. Biden’s notebooks included gut-wrenching passages about his son’s death and other highly personal material. 915 His claim that he believed he did not need to send what he considered to be his personal diary to be stored at a government facility will likely appeal to some jurors. 916

We expect Mr. Biden also to contend that the presence of classified information in what he viewed as his diary did not change his thinking. As a member of the exclusive club of former presidents and vice presidents, Mr. Biden will claim that he knew such officials kept diaries, and he knew or expected that those diaries-like Mr. Reagan’s-contained classified information. 917 He also understood that former presidents and vice presidents took their diaries home upon leaving office, without being investigated or prosecuted for it. [all emphasis mine]

But the overwhelming bulk of those remaining 85 or so uses of the word “diaries” describe Reagan’s (or in two cases, other Presidents’) diaries.

By contrast, there are 461 uses of the word “notebook” in Hur’s report. That’s the word Hur uses to refer to what he quotes people around Biden calling the President’s diaries.

Reagan had diaries. And as a result, when DOJ discovered them, they remained untouched.

Biden has notebooks. By calling these notebooks, Hur permitted himself to do with Biden’s most private thoughts what DOJ did not do with Reagan’s: review them all.

Mr. Biden’s notebooks, which contained, among other things, his handwritten notes taken during classified meetings as vice president, presented a challenge. None of the pages contained classification markings but investigators assessed some of the content was potentially classified. Classification review by intelligence agencies of unmarked information is more challenging and time-consuming than for marked documents. We therefore reviewed all of Mr. Biden’s handwritten notes and selected thirty-seven excerpts totaling 109 notebook pages to submit for classification review. Investigators selected entries they believed were most likely highly classified and that a jury of laypeople would find was national defense information under the Espionage Act. [my emphasis]

I assume Bolton will make a similar argument.

Update: Because people are asking, here’s a really rough comparison of Bolton’s indictment with Trump’s.

Sydney Reid, who was arrested in July after a tussle as she was filming an ICE arrest, was just acquitted by a jury.

This was a case that should never have been charged, one of at least dozens just like it. Pirro and her prosecutors have been damaged over and over in trying to bring it to trial.

First, three grand juries no-billed the case. Pirro charged it as a misdemeanor Information anyway.

Then, the government unsuccessfully tried to exclude evidence that damaged their case and the credibility of their primary “victim,” FBI Agent Eugenia Bates.

• That Bates called her “boo boos,” “boo boos”
• That Bates twice complained that she had to turn this thing into an assault charge:
  • “I’m going to the attorneys [sic] office for a bystander that I tussled. Dinko arrested her for ‘assault’ ughhh”;
  • “Do you want the arrest EC separate from the ‘assault’ or am I good to put it in together in one 302”
• That she called Reid a “lib tard”
• That she declared “I sacrificed life and limb for the mission. I think it’s worth a trump coin,” after the incident

Then Reid presented evidence that prosecutors had not provided — or even collected — a video she believed would be exculpatory, an issue that Judge Sparkle Sooknanan spent several days last week considering, only to have the government’s story keep getting worse.

While I haven’t reviewed the trial transcript, in her instructions, Judge Sooknanan gave three adverse instructions against the government:

• Inconsistent testimony from Special Agent Bates
• Late disclosure of evidence
• Self defense

This is a case that DOJ should have given up when they were no-billed. But because Jeanine Pirro is a stubborn bully, she persisted, and now both the DC US Attorney’s Office (for the evidentiary fuck-ups) and Agent Bates (for the inconsistent testimony and bias) will be tainted by the process.

And most of all, it was an example of Federal Public Defenders — Eugene Ohm and Tezira Abe — doing superb work ensuring Reid had a vigorous defense.

We will see many more bullshit cases in months ahead. But this acquittal matters just as much as the flashier cases, because until the government stops trying to prosecute people because thuggish cops beat them up, this will keep happening.

Update: CBS’ local affiliate appears to have been the only outlet that covered the trial. It describes that Bates didn’t even turn over all her text messages.

Bates was the sole witness called by prosecutors and spent more than five hours on the stand across two days. Much of the questioning centered on her text messages following the incident, where she downplayed it and disparaged Reid as a “libtard.” She didn’t turn over additional text message evidence until early Wednesday morning, and in the middle of cross examination, Abe discovered one message was missing.

“Conveniently, the most damning one wasn’t there,” Abe said. “… Agent Bates’ story is riddled with holes.”

 

Update: Reid’s comment is spectacular.

Reid, in a statement through her attorneys, said the verdict shows “that this administration and their peons are not able to invoke fear in all citizens.”

“I feel sorry for the prosecutors really, who must be burdened by Trump’s irrational and unfounded hatred for his fellow man,” she said. “Knowing that I can stand in front of 12 of my fellow citizens and be found not guilty for standing up for basic human rights makes me feel like, despite the scary times we live in, we have hope for the future.”

The court filings submitted since Jim Comey’s arraignment have set the stage for several possible prosecutorial disasters.

After loaner AUSA Tyler Lemons made a transparent bid at the arraignment to slow Eastern District of Virginia’s rocket docket with both discovery and the invocation of the CIPA (Classified Information Procedurs Act) process, Judge Michael Nachmanoff,

• Enforced a discovery deadline of Monday over prosecutors’ attempts to stall
• Adopted Comey’s preferred protective order, rejecting prosecutorial efforts to limit Comey’s own access to discovery
• Approved a CIPA schedule that resolves by December (and therefore would not delay the January 5 trial date)

Meanwhile, Comey noticed his intent to challenge Lindsey Halligan’s appointment as US Attorney, so Judge Nachmanoff can refer the question to Fourth Circuit Chief Judge Albert Diaz, who will pick a District Judge from another District to preside over the challenge. Assuming Judge Diaz responds in timely fashion, Comey will submit that motion on Monday, along with his Selective and Vindictive prosecution claim, the latter of which is likely to be rather, um, illuminating.

There’s no sign, yet, that Halligan’s loaner AUSAs failed to meet Monday’s deadline, though they did file something under seal on Tuesday. If I had to guess, that might be the first bid to hide Trump’s role in the selective prosecution under claims of Executive Privilege, though I also imagine prosecutors may try to explicitly prevent the involvement of Maurene Comey (who is suing on closely related issues) or Troy Edwards (who presumably knows details of the turmoil at EDVA) on Comey’s defense team. Right wing propagandists are hinting that it might be a bid to claim Pat Fitzgerald has a conflict stemming from his past representation of Comey; but the CIPA filings, filed by prosecutors on October 13, are predicated on the assumption “that attorney Patrick Fitzgerald receives his security clearance, or interim clearance, within a reasonable time,” suggesting prosecutors have no complaint about Fitz’ involvement.

But there’s another filing that hints at far more turmoil ahead.

On Monday, after Judge Nachmanoff ordered prosecutors to turn over all discovery that day, prosecutors submitted a motion for a filter protocol. According to the filing, the government seized a whole bunch of computer devices — a hard drive, an iCloud account, an iPhone, and an iPad — from a lawyer in a past investigation, and they want to access it for this investigation.

Evidence in the government’s custody includes PPM because the evidence was obtained from an attorney. Currently, the quarantined evidence includes an image of a computer hard drive, an iCloud download, the backup of an iPhone, and the backup of an iPad (the “quarantined evidence”). The quarantined evidence was obtained through judicial warrants in a previous government investigation. After obtaining the quarantined evidence, and prior to any review, the attorney in question reviewed the quarantined evidence, withheld purported privileged material, and provided a privilege log to the government. However, the government is not aware of any involvement by the Defendant, or other putative privilege holders, in this prior review.

The devices are exceedingly likely to belong to Dan Richman, who is at least reported to be the person whom Comey is accused of authorizing to serve as an anonymous source in the indictment.

Indeed, the possibility that DOJ, under Bill Barr, seized a whole bunch of content from Richman explains something about the 2021 memo closing the investigation into Richman for leaking (which Comey likely received in unredacted form on Monday). One paragraph of the memo describes that Richman told the FBI that Comey had never asked him to talk to the media, followed by a two-paragraph redaction that must describe some reason why the FBI believed that to be false.

It was clear from the memo that the FBI obtained proof of what Richman said to Mike Schmidt, and while Barr tried to go after NYT directly for this investigation, they had limited success, so that evidence would have come from Richman. Plus, the closing memo is pretty clear that Richman was a confirming source for Schmidt (it says that the government has not previously charged people for being a confirming source, though I believe that’s inaccurate), which Richman admitted.

So if all those assumptions are correct, let’s consider what this motion for a filter protocol confesses.

First, prosecutors launched a bid to get access to this information to use at trial on the day that discovery was due, the day after Judge Nachmanoff ordered that all discovery be provided by October 13. They seem really unconcerned about how badly that will piss off Nachmanoff, which seems reckless.

The proposed filter itself is obnoxious in two ways. It proposes a team (which it says does not include EDVA or EDNC prosecutors, but does not address whether it includes prosecutors from WDVA or another of the far-flown parts of DOJ where Kash Patel has parked his witch hunt) will review the data for a set of narrow filter terms.

2 The Filter Team is comprised of Two Assistant United States Attorneys, and their support staff, from a separate federal district from the Eastern District of Virginia and the Eastern District of North Carolina. The Filter Team has a separate reporting and supervisory chain from the Prosecution Team and are not part of the Prosecution Team.

But aside from things explicitly marked privileged, they would get access to everything. Comey would only get a say over stuff triggered by those filter terms.

You can tell how unusual this protocol is for the citations — none of which is from EDVA, and only one of which is from the Fourth Circuit — the loaner AUSAs give to pretend it is not.

Of note, courts in the Fourth Circuit have entered similar protocols to the one proposed by the Filter Team in this case to handle the segregation and disclosure of PPM. See, e.g., United States v. Reifler, No. 1:20-cr-512-1, 2021 WL 2253134 (M.D.N.C. June 2, 2021).

Further, courts in other jurisdictions, including in the Third, Fifth, Sixth, and Eleventh Circuits, among others, have also entered similar protocols to the one proposed here. See, e.g., United States v. Farizani, No. 4:21-cr-62, ECF No. 153 (S.D. Tex. Feb. 16, 2024); United States v. Fletcher, No. 2:21-cr-64-DLB-CJS, 2022 WL 1118042 (E.D. Ky. Mar. 8, 2022); United States v. Siefert, No. 2:21-2-DLB-CJS, 2021 WL 3076940 (E.D. Ky. July 17, 2021); United States v. Salahaldeen, No. 3:20-cr-839, 2021 WL 2549197 (D.N.J. May 7, 2021); United States v. Lloyd and Strong, No. 9:25-cr-80015 (S.D. Fla.), United States v. Martinez and Vazquez, No. 24-cr20343, ECF No. 49 (S.D. Fla. Sep. 24, 2024); United States v. Blackman, No. 23-cr-20271, ECF No. 105 (S.D. Fla. Apr. 3, 2024); United States v. Waxman, No. 21-cr-60253, ECF No. 105 (Aug. 12, 2022).

These cases charged insurance fraud, healthcare fraud, distribution of controlled substances by a doctor, a combination of both fraud and controlled substance abuse, health care fraud, more healthcare fraud, and still more medicare fraud. They’re not only out of district, but inapt to this case.

They hide what prosecutors are probably attempting to do: to get to materials privileged to Richman in which he spoke about Comey.

This is something I predicted prosecutors would try to do in a post and video on the lessons from the Durham investigation. This is an attempt to use this proceeding to get to stuff privileged to Richman that they could use in their conspiracy fever dream.

The other reason this is wildly inappropriate goes to something Nachmanoff seems to be attentive to. As I noted, in his order approving Comey’s preferred protective order, Judge Nachmanoff noted that cases brought by Pat Fitzgerald, Robert Mueller, and under the supervision of Jack Smith did not adopt the punitive standard the Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s loaner AUSAs are attempting.

1 The Court observes that protective orders entered in numerous other high-profile false statements cases, within and outside of this judicial district, do not contain such limitations. See, e.g., Protective Order, United States v. McDonnell, et al., ECF 46, No. 3:14-cr-12-JRS (E.D. Va. Feb. 6, 2014); Protective Order, United States v. Kiriakou, ECF 32, No. 1:12-cr-127-LMB (E.D. Va. April 13, 2012); United States v. Libby, ECF 22, No. 1:05-cr-394-RBW (D.D.C. Nov. 23, 2005); Protective Order, United States v. Blagojevich, ECF 67, No. 1:08-cr-888-JBZ (N.D. Ill. April 14, 2009); Protective Order, United States v. Manafort, et al., ECF 46, No. 1:17-cr-201-ABJ (D.D.C. Nov. 15, 2017).

If one were to adopt the attorney-client review standards used in the Trump cases, the attorney in question — Rudy Giuliani, and John Eastman, among others, in the Trump cases, and Richman here — would be involved to speak to their own privilege, a process which created months and months of delay. The loaner AUSAs are pretty transparently trying to find a way around that process.

For now, Comey is adopting a different approach. As prosecutors describe it, Comey plans to challenge the warrant accessing this data in the first place.

First, the defendant has not explicitly objected to the protocol. As the government understands it, the defense prefers to challenge the underlying search warrant first before any review takes place. This two-tiered process is unacceptable in the government’s view because it risks delay.

It makes sense. The closing document in the investigation into Richman found that there was not sufficient evidence to charge either Comey or Richman, including for the false statements with which Comey has now been charged.

The investigation has not yielded sufficient evidence to criminally charge any person, including Comey or Richman, with making false statements or with the substantive offenses under investigation.

Unlike grand juries (where we can assume Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer neglected to tell grand jurors about all the conclusions there was not evidence to charge this), affiants for warrants are required to tell judges of all material information, such as that prosecutors already decided there’s no crime here. This is what the entire stink about the Carter Page FISA warrants was about. And the only thing that has changed since FBI presumably obtained warrants for Richman’s devices in 2019 is that Richman testified, twice, that Comey didn’t order him to leak to the press, and also that three sets of prosecutors (including those who reviewed the material in 2019) concluded there was no crime they could charge.

So if whoever got a new warrant to access this material for use in this investigation failed to disclose the prior prosecutorial decisions, that would make for an easy Fourth Amendment challenge. (I would be unsurprised if agents in WDVA already accessed this material, using precisely this protocol, which is one reason I find the language excluding EDVA and EDNC from the filter team but not identifying who would conduct it suspect.)

But understand what else is going on. The loaner prosecutors say they need to use an inapt filter process that treats both Comey and Richman like fraudsters because allowing them to participate in the process — or even pausing for a Fourth Amendment challenge — “risks delay.” But this is EDVA, home of the rocket docket, and in EDVA, you don’t wait until after you’ve indicted to obtain material you think might be helpful to your case.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.

As far as I understand the posture of this, unless Judge Nachmanoff orders differently, Comey will not have to respond to the October 13 request for two weeks — October 27, with a reply a week later, after all of Comey’s initial pretrial motions are submitted (he might file a Fourth Amendment challenge for the second deadline, October 30, or just file it on October 26).

Nachmanoff seems unimpressed by either this motion or the sealed filing.

Which is to say, unless something changes, this purported filter process wouldn’t even start for another month, resulting in the provision of any relevant materials to Comey months after the discovery deadline.

If this is a bid to access this material for this trial, it will likely fail. And, because this is EDVA, if that’s what prosecutors are trying, it may not work as well for investigators (including Jack Eckenrode, from John Durham’s team) as it did during the Michael Sussmann trial.

No one has confessed they were wrong that JB Pritzker’s late August messaging was enough to stave off an invasion.

Shortly after Pritzker had that press conference on August 27, Trump announced he was going to invade New Orleans instead of Chicago, implying that he wanted to be invited to invade.

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he may deploy federal troops to New Orleans next, not Chicago, and is waiting for governors to ask for help — a shift in his rhetoric about moving into major U.S. cities uninvited.

“We are making a determination now: Do we go to Chicago? Or do we go to a place like New Orleans where we have a great governor, Jeff Landry, who wants us to come in and straighten out a very nice section of this country that has become quite – quite tough, quite bad?” Trump said during an Oval Office meeting alongside Poland’s new president.

“You have New Orleans, which has a crime problem. We’ll straighten that out in two weeks, easier than D.C.,” Trump said.

That was a walk-back of his declaration just 24 hours earlier that “we’re going in” to Chicago, a city he has long maligned for violent crime but has a Democratic governor who opposes Trump’s deployment of federal troops in his state.

That led to a wave of wishcasting that Pritzker’s strong words (particularly as compared to what Gavin Newsom had done) were enough to stave off invasion.

They weren’t.

The details in Illinois’ lawsuit that has, thus far, at least, halted the invasion by the National Guard, reveal that even as lefties were celebrating the effect of Pritzker’s firey rhetoric, ICE was laying the groundwork to create the excuse to send in troops.

On September 2, 2025—as President Trump was repeatedly threatening a troop deployment in Chicago—ICE’s Chicago Field Director Russell Hott and Assistant Field Director Jimmy Bahena met with Broadview’s Chief of Police, Thomas Mills.76 In that meeting, Director Hott informed Chief Mills and his staff that, beginning the next day, a large number of federal agents, including approximately 250 to 300 CBP agents, would begin arriving in Illinois to assist with a ramped-up immigration enforcement campaign in the Chicagoland area.77 Director Hott stated their goal was to make large numbers of immigration-related arrests and stated that the ICE facility in Broadview would be the primary processing location for the operation.78 Director Hott stated that the facility would operate continuously, seven days per week for approximately 45 continuous days.79

Director Hott also informed Chief Mills that ICE officials expected numerous protests, including potential property damage and assaults against law enforcement personnel, similar to what had occurred in Los Angeles earlier in the year. 80 ICE officials also expected there to be impacts on traffic and businesses in the immediate vicinity of ICE’s detention center, located at 1930 Beach Street in Broadview. 81 [my emphasis]

Broadview Police Chief Thomas Mills described in a declaration how the arrival of agents in tactical gear changed the tone of the crowd.

21. At around 10:00 a.m. that morning, 20-30 federal agents parked their vehicles in the parking lot on the opposite side of Beach Street and began to walk across the street toward the ICE facility. The agents were dressed in camouflage tactical gear and had masks covering their faces. September 12 was the first day that I recall seeing federal agents on scene dressed in that manner. It was a very noticeable shift in my mind.

22. As agents approached the ICE facility that day, September 12, the tone of the crowd of protestors changed. The crowd grew louder and began to press closer to the building. Broadview Police officers positioned ourselves on the public way, between the 1930 Beach Street building and the crowd, attempting to keep the crowd on the public way and off of ICE’s property. When the federal agents went into the building, the crowd calmed down, and Broadview Police officers relocated to the outer perimeter of the crowd.

For 44 days and counting, Stephen Miller’s goons have been trying to create a pretext to federalize law enforcement in Chicago.

Along the way, they’ve engaged in a whole bunch of propaganda: making false claims of assault to explain away ICE assaults, setting up dramatized attacks on an entire apartment building, deliberately creating “shitshows” that result in arrests that almost all get dismissed.

And at least thus far, it has not worked.

When Judge Amy Perry ruled against the National Guard deployment last week, she found that all three government affiants claiming there was unrest in Chicago that justified an invasion lacked credibility.

The Court therefore must make a credibility assessment as to which version of the facts should be believed. While the Court does not doubt that there have been acts of vandalism, civil disobedience, and even assaults on federal agents, the Court cannot conclude that Defendants’ declarations are reliable. Two of Defendants’ declarations refer to arrests made on September 27, 2025 of individuals who were carrying weapons and assaulting federal agents. See Doc. 62-2 at 19; Doc. 62-4 at 5. But neither declaration discloses that federal grand juries have refused to return an indictment against at least three of those individuals, which equates to a finding of a lack of probable cause that any crime occurred. See United States v. Ray Collins and Jocelyne Robledo, 25-cr-608, Doc. 26 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 7, 2025); United States v. Paul Ivery, 25-cr-609 (N.D. Ill.). In addition to demonstrating a potential lack of candor by these affiants, it also calls into question their ability to accurately assess the facts. Similar declarations were provided by these same individuals in Chicago Headline Club et. al. v. Noem, 25-cv-12173, Doc. 35-1, Doc. 35-9 (N.D. Ill.), a case which challenged the Constitutionality of ICE’s response to protestors at the Broadview ICE Processing Center. In issuing its TRO against DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, the court in that case found that the plaintiffs would likely be able to show that ICE’s actions have violated protestors’ First Amendment right to be free from retaliation while engaged in newsgathering, religious exercise, and protest, and Fourth Amendment rights to be free from excessive force. Id. at Doc. 43. Although this Court was not asked to make any such finding, it does note a troubling trend of Defendants’ declarants equating protests with riots and a lack of appreciation for the wide spectrum that exists between citizens who are observing, questioning, and criticizing their government, and those who are obstructing, assaulting, or doing violence.5 This indicates to the Court both bias and lack of objectivity. The lens through which we view the world changes our perception of the events around us. Law enforcement officers who go into an event expecting “a shitshow” are much more likely to experience one than those who go into the event prepared to de-escalate it. Ultimately, this Court must conclude that Defendants’ declarants’ perceptions are not reliable.6

Finally, the Court notes its concern about a third declaration submitted by Defendants, in which the declarant asserted that the FPS “requested federalized National Guard personnel to support protection of the Federal District Court on Friday, October 10, 2025.” Doc. 62-3. This purported fact was incendiary and seized upon by both parties at oral argument. It was also inaccurate, as the Court noted on the record. To their credit, Defendants have since submitted a corrected declaration, and the affiant has declared that they did not make the error willfully. Doc. 65-1. All of the parties have been moving quickly to compile factual records and legal arguments, and mistakes in such a context are inevitable. That said, Defendants only presented declarations from three affiants with first-hand knowledge of events in Illinois. And, as described above, all three contain unreliable information. [Links added]

One of the most persuasive things Illinois was able to do was to show that at the same time that ERO Field Director Russ Hott was submitting a sworn declaration claiming all manner of horribles, he was sending email saying something totally different to the local cops saying something totally different.

It’s not clear, in this day and age, whether definitively proving that Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem and Greg Bovino and Tricia McLaughlin are just making shit up will be enough. Certainly, the right wingers on SCOTUS have proven just as susceptible to the Fox News propaganda bubble as Trump himself.

But thus far, at least, truth has won out over fabrications.

Update: The 7th Circuit just declined to disrupt Judge Perry’s retraining order. The panel — which included Trump appointee Amy St. Eve — cited Perry’s credibility ruling this way:

After holding a hearing and assessing the preliminary record, the court granted in part plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order and enjoined the federalization and deployment of the National Guard for 14 days. The court withheld judgment on a preliminary injunction and did not extend its order to non–National Guard military forces or the President himself. The district court recognized the substantial deference due a President’s assessment of whether § 12406(2) or (3)’s factual predicates are satisfied, but it concluded nonetheless that, under its factual findings, the statutory requirements were not met. Where the declarations of the administration conflicted with the declarations of state and local law enforcement concerning conditions on the ground, the court made a credibility determination in plaintiffs’ favor. In particular, the court found that all three of the federal government’s declarations from those with firsthand knowledge were unreliable to the extent they omitted material information or were undermined by independent, objective evidence.

[snip]

Even giving great deference to the administration’s determinations, the district court’s contrary factual findings— which, at this expedited phase of the case, are necessarily preliminary and tentative—are not clearly erroneous. The submitted evidence consists almost entirely of two sets of competing declarations describing the events in Broadview. The district court provided substantial and specific reasons for crediting the plaintiffs’ declarations over the administration’s, and the record includes ample support for that decision. Given the record support, the findings are not clearly erroneous. See United States v. Nichols, 847 F.3d 851, 857 (7th Cir. 2017) (explaining that “where the district court’s factual findings are supported by the record, we will not disturb them” under clear-error review).

The opinion was more important for the way it defined rebellion (in part, because the same ruling will be the starting point for discussions of insurrection).

Although we substantially agree with the definition of rebellion set forth by the district court in Newsom, we emphasize that the critical analysis of a “rebellion” centers on the nature of the resistance to governmental authority. Political opposition is not rebellion. A protest does not become a rebellion merely because the protestors advocate for myriad legal or policy changes, are well organized, call for significant changes to the structure of the U.S. government, use civil disobedience as a form of protest, or exercise their Second Amendment right to carry firearms as the law currently allows. Nor does a protest become a rebellion merely because of sporadic and isolated incidents of unlawful activity or even violence committed by rogue participants in the protest. Such conduct exceeds the scope of the First Amendment, of course, and law enforcement has apprehended the perpetrators accordingly. But because rebellions at least use deliberate, organized violence to resist governmental authority, the problematic incidents in this record clearly fall within the considerable daylight between protected speech and rebellion.

Applying our tentative understanding of “rebellion” to the district court’s factual findings, and even after affording great deference to the President’s evaluation of the circumstances, we see insufficient evidence of a rebellion or danger of rebellion in Illinois. The spirited, sustained, and occasionally violent actions of demonstrators in protest of the federal government’s immigration policies and actions, without more, does not give rise to a danger of rebellion against the government’s authority. The administration thus has not demonstrated that it is likely to succeed on this issue.

The panel allowed Trump to keep Guard deployed, sitting in Illinois doing nothing. But they cannot patrol the streets.

Update: Trump has appealed to SCOTUS. Amy Coney Barrett has ordered Illinois to respond by Monday evening, but did not immediately overturn the stay.

Yesterday, French Prime Minister Sebastian Lecornu gave the speech of his life. Tomorrow, he’ll find out if it worked.

Update: It worked.

Sebastian Lecornu survived the No Confidence vote. Next come the hard part: governing France. 

Something shifted in French politics, while Macron was off arm wrestling with Trump in Egypt. Lecornu, self-proclaimed Macron’s warrior monk earlier this week, claimed to be independent of Macron. And surprisingly enough, it might be true. Lecornu seemed to just maybe have broken with Macron, perhaps after being thrown to the wolves, then picked up and thrown at them again.

The speech was expansive, Lecornu took on so many topics as to be remaking France altogether. He doesn’t have that kind of power, and the parliament is hopelessly divided. But hey, when they hand you a whole France, go big or go home. He informed the Right that they would be denied relevance as long as he’s there. Most of Les Republicans, the equivalent of the Republicans in America, have also essentially shown their stripes and have joined Le Pen’s fascists, just as our Republicans have dropped the mask of democracy and sought naked power instead.

The Republicans are gone, and might as well sign up for their Gestapo apprenticeships. (The French ones. Ah hell, the American ones can come, too.)

Lecornu did not shy away from important and divisive discussions, he went straight for them. He woke everyone up immediately, starting out with the right to die, fighting racism, homophobia, anti-semitism. He called out a French hunger for security and justice. It was a rare French political shock moment. He was willing to hit hot-button topics, to piss people off. Specifically, National Rally people. (Rassemblement National to the French)

Tuesday afternoon, he looked down the line at the dwindling traditional parties of France, and rejected the the National Rally. Marine Le Pen, the head of the far right party and the Trumpist figure of France, scrolled on her phone and tried to look bored. She looked angry.

At the 7 minute mark of the 30 minute speech he said there would be no more cutting out Parliament from the legislative process in France. He would give them their say, come hell or high water. Lecornu threw away the normal platitudes of French politics and talked plainly about the ways the Republic isn’t working. He listed some crises facing France: social, economic, budgetary, environmental/climate. The damage of the pandemic, the outbreak of war, the need for clean energy, which is also climate. (Though really they are all of a piece with the global polycrisis.)

Early on in the speech he established that he was not going to be a traditionalist. “We are living through a geopolitical shift,” he intoned. “There are those who wish to hold on to the old ways, and they will disappear.” This was likely an shot at Les Republicans, as the once softer right party that has been mostly folded into the obviously fascist National Rally.

Lecornu also promised to pause the unpopular pension reform that pushed retirement from 62 to 64. (That might not seem like much of a concession to Americans, but it’s more complicated than it seems, more on that later.)

“Rejecting the old ways—” That’s where he lost RN, or perhaps kicked them out the door. And the room reacted. Le Pen waved goodbye as if to push Lecornu away, and the left side of the room realized that Lecornu had broken, at least somewhat, from his centristsmasters. It was a thing to see. Everyone seemed surprised, if not all pleased, to watch Lecornu walk out of the consensus he’d lived his whole career in.

The “Dédiabolisation” (what we would call rehabilitation) of Marine Le Pen has been far more successful than anyone left of Satan wants to admit. She remains diabolical to her core, even if she has shaken off much of the taint of her murderous, white supremacist father. But her ideology is still one of exclusion, bigotry, and ultimately, murder of some arbitrary out-group of people. (It doesn’t even much matter which, the violence and fear are the point.)

Lecornu said the thing that needed to be said, that: “We can no longer act as we have acted.” He owned the failures in a way that his president seems incapable of. Will it stick? Will it matter? In national politics, it often takes years to answer that.

“Our fall is not certain, progress is not certain,” he said. That’s what makes this moment so scary, not just for France, but America, and the whole world too. Not that all hope is lost, but that there’s everything to fight for, and no assurance of winning that fight. In this, France and America are in the same situation, and these waning days of the Holocene have no comfort for us, only work to do.

Despite the turn left I don’t think he is a leftist or will become one. There’s certainly nothing leftist in his history, but the Macronistas of the Center are gone, a footnote in French history, killed by Macron himself. The only choices now are side with the left or fall in with the fascists. He nodded left.

Lecornu announced that the government would only act in concert with the National Assembly and the Senate, which means no more pushing things through with 49.3, the most hated provision of the 5th Republic. This was one of the two things everyone was waiting for. (Along with pausing or reversing the pension reform.) Article 49.3 was the tool that let the Macron administration push legislation relating to the budget or social security through, without bothering with any of that annoying democracy stuff.

This provision allowed the Prime Minister to just… ignore everyone. No vote, just a fait acompli, and Macron is the kind of leader who loves to just tell everyone how it’s going to be, democracy be damned. Macron’s PMs have used 49.3 a whole 28 times, ramming the government’s priorities through without regard for the Parliament, or the people it represents. Most of those uses were under former PM Élisabeth Borne, who lasted almost two whole years in post.

Borne’s actions so insulted the representatives of France that they have pretty much wiped out anyone who touched 49.3 with a vote of no confidence since. Governments fell, and with them one PM after another. France was accused of becoming ungovernable by many pundits, but mostly France suffered from being ungoverned. Macron checked out and stopped speaking to the nation he supposedly leads.

The next budget will be hashed out the dirty way, political fighting, infighting, deals, promises, broken or not  the messy stuff of running a nation in opening days of the third millennium. Lecornu has chosen to work with the Socialists. They are basically the equivalent of the Democrats. There’s much further left than that in France.

Lecornu isn’t looking hard left, that’s a task he has to leave to the socialists and softer leftists. “Go get your own and let’s make some laws,” seems to be the message. That could be harder than people realize. I don’t know if the Left can do that, or when it comes down to it, if Lecornu can either.

Many of the leftists favor imposing a Zucman tax, a proposal from French economist Gabriel Zucman to assess a flat tax on households with a fortune of 100m Euros or more, annually. Like America, France’s ultrarich pay next to no taxes as a proportion of their wealth. Lecornu is saying France must cut services to balance the budget, but the people he’s accessing for power are much more inclined to tools like Zucman’s tax to stabilize French finances. Can he roll with that? Can he compromise, or talk the leftists out of such a tax for now? This is just one example of the complexities he’ll face tomorrow, if he’s allowed to stay in post by the parliament.

That’s just one place where there are no easy compromises, and all the fights are ideological as much as practical. I don’t know if Lecornu has the political talent to lead such a factious body back to doing its job, but we’ll find out.

An election right now, or even soon, would likely wipe out the center. It might also debilitate the left, and hand power to Le Pen and her band of weirdos. That also has to be in the minds of the Left, but they may also contemplate that letting Le Pen’s fascists lose on the country for a couple years will boost them in the next presidential election. I wouldn’t count on that if I were them.

Lecornu said “There are too many people entering the workforce too late and leaving it to early.” And this is an interesting point, and an interesting problem for France, and perhaps not only for France.

The other side of pension reform Lecornu put on hold today doesn’t get talked about much, but it should be. There a reason it was largely younger people who protested extending French work life to 64 years. The first function of retirement is to let the older people rest and slow down for their last phase of life, but the second function of retirement is to let new people enter the work force. Youth unemployment in France is close to 19%, just a little better than Greece’s. In Germany, usually considered France’s peer economy, that rate is just 6.3%. If their parents and even grandparents never seem to retire, what chance do the young people who filled the streets protesting last summer have of building careers themselves?

This problem hasn’t hit the US as hard, in part because so many young people are seeking college degrees, and delaying entry into the workforce. The flip side of that is our crushing debt levels, which also serve to make us more timid in political expression than the French are. There is little shame in the culture on this side of the pond for being out of work and protesting. The French believe that the system should work for them, not vice versa.

During the last crisis he precipitated Macron went to his beach house and ignored everyone. To Manny, the crisis was clearly everyone else’s fault, Macron took no responsibility. After that he mostly left France and jetted around the world to hang out with other leaders. Anyone, really, but the French. The last time he gave a speech at all to his people was May this year, but even that was a three hour Q&A session with callers on a TV show.

It’s not exactly a forum for bringing the people along on a policy journey. Macron has broken up with France, but doesn’t want to lose the privileges that come with the relationship. He’s just a jerk now, an absent president who doesn’t really care.

Tomorrow is the new Sebastian Lecornu’s first test; there’s a confidence vote for him in the morning. If he fails to get enough support, he will be gone, and the wheel will turn again. But right now, it looks like he will just barely about make it.

I don’t know if Lecornu can live up to his new personality. I don’t know if any of us can meet this moment, around the world.

But if I can convince the French, or any other country, to look to America for a political lesson, it would be don’t let go of education. Before our systems could fall to the idiot king of tacky who now rules our country, we had to spend decades destroying our own education system to the point where we, the original modern democracy, no longer had the skills to maintain any democracy at all. We failed. Maybe not for ever, but for now.

Things fell apart; the centre did not hold. The worst are indeed full of passionate intensity, but perhaps there are still some out there with conviction. Perhaps we can still stop the rough beast from reaching Bethlehem.

Congratulations to the memory of Charlie Kirk. Trump has, in his death, affirmed that Kirk is the same kind of person as his idol, inflammatory bigot Rush Limbaugh, whom Trump also awarded the Medal of Freedom.

To pay tribute to the event, the State Department yesterday announced another assault on free speech, identifying six purported visa holders who — it claims, but the underlying logic is worthy of conspiracy theorist Darren Beattie, currently the State Department head of Public Diplomacy — “celebrated the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk.”

At least two of the six did not celebrate Kirk’s death (these are in reverse order).

One, described as Paraguayan, merely said Kirk was a son of a bitch and he died by his own rules.

This is likely a reference to Kirk’s comment that it was worth having some gun deaths every year, like his own, so “we” can have a Second Amendment.

I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.

The other post that, in my opinion, did not “celebrate” Kirk’s killing is this one, which per Google translate reads, “When fascists die, democrats don’t complain” (or perhaps don’t wail).

Stating that you’re not wailing is different than celebrating.

But the tweet is notable for something else: It doesn’t even mention Charlie Kirk. It’s a subtweet.

So how did Trump find it to attack it? One explanation may be this Facebook post, also in German, which does mention Kirk. It translates this way:

“When fascists die, democrats don’t complain.”

This disgusting quote from ZDF screenwriter and publicist Mario Sixtus, published just hours after the assassination attempt on Charlie Kirk, marks a moral low point.

Anyone who speaks like this exposes themselves: not as a democrat, but as a cynic who tramples on the foundations of our free order. Those who celebrate the death of a political opponent aren’t demonstrating their stance, but rather confirming that they, in truth, have no respect for democracy—because democracy thrives on words, on debate, on the clash of arguments, not on hatred of human life.

Yes, Charlie Kirk held radical positions; yes, he was contentious and uncomfortable. But he sought debate. And as long as debate, speech, and discourse are possible, there is a civilized, legitimate framework. Violence, malice over death, and dehumanization are not part of it.

Therefore, I say clearly: Anyone who rejoices over the death of a person disqualifies themselves as a democrat. Anyone who claims to fight against inhumanity while acting inhumanely themselves is a hypocrite.

This case demonstrates once again how deep the cracks in our society are – and how great the danger is that the self-proclaimed “moral elite” has in fact lost all moral sense.

That is, it’s not that the original poster, IDed here as a German screenwriter, celebrated Kirk’s death. It’s that someone else accused him of doing so (all while ignoring the way Kirk himself dehumanizes people).

Still, how did they find it?!?

Consider what it means that the State Department is proudly IDing claimed visa holders whose speech about Charlie Kirk it condemns. We know how State conducted its prior assault on free speech, that of supporters of Palestinians, in at least some cases a doxing hate group called Canary. Judge William Young described it this way:

AD Hatch was told by DHS leadership (Hatch could not recall who) to review the names of student protestors on the Canary Mission website, which contains a database of over 5,000 individuals. Id., 109-111. Canary Mission’s website purports to “document[] individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond.” See “Our Mission”, Canary Mission, Ex. 229.14 Prior to March 2025, AD Hatch was unaware of the Canary Mission website. Id. 112:18-22.

Within about a week of the early March meeting, a so-called “Tiger Team” was assembled to expedite the preparation of ROAs. Id. 98:8-25–99:3. Hatch confirmed that the Tiger Team’s process was that: (1) the Office of Intelligence would fact find; (2) the National Security Division of Homeland Security Investigations would compile the information and provide it to the State Department; and (3) the State Department would decide on what action to take, if any. Id. 98:20-99:3. The use of the term “Tiger Team” is not pejorative. It is a common internal practice referring to the speed and intensity of the work to be completed. The phrase was not intended to intimidate or, indeed, to be publicly known. Trial Tr. vol. II, 95:17–97:8, Jul. 10, 2025.

But it’s one thing to find Palestinian supporters targeted by a hate group. It’s another thing to find people with an opinion about Charlie Kirk, because one’s opinion about Charlie Kirk has no conceivable tie to national security or even foreign policy.

And to get to this list of four people who celebrated Kirk’s death and two who did not, State would have had to run their own databases against a list that included a whole bunch of Americans who also don’t care for Charlie Kirk either. The original list almost certainly consisted primarily of Americans who would have been affected by Kirk’s hatred and doxing.

That State is doing this in any case is obnoxious and illegal. That they’re doing it with such shoddy vetting that they’re batting 66% accuracy with a selection of just six statements is both offensive and pathetic.

But to have accomplished this hunt would have taken the kind of database scan that fascists dream of, one cataloging the free speech of Americans.