The Bolton Indictment

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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.

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Revenge of the “Lib Tard:” Jeanine Pirro Wins First Humiliating Acquittal

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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:

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.”

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Tick Tock, Tick Tock: Lindsey Halligan’s Filter Follies

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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,

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.

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How City of Chicago Beat Back Stephen Miller’s Shoddy Propaganda … So Far

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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.

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France’s Political Crisis: Sebastian Lecornu Goes All In

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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.

Lecornu in front of two skinny mics, mouth open in mid-speech

Lecornu speaking before the National Assembly, eying the left side of the room.

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.

Marine Le Pen looking on with crossed arms and pursed lips. A banner below her says Lecornu: We are in a period of crisis

Marine does not approve this message.

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.

Lecornu speaking, and the people who will decide his fate tomorrow.

 

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.

A map of the National Assembly showing Lecornu with 303 of the 289 seats he needs, all from center to left of center.

As of right now Lecornu just barely has enough votes to stay in post as Prime Minister. But it’s a long night ahead.

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.

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The Fascist Dragnet To Avenge Charlie Kirk’s Honor

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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.

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Mayor Ras Baraka Reaffirms Malicious Prosecution Claim

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Some weeks ago, DOJ attempted to bigfoot Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s malicious prosecution claim, arguing that it had to be dismissed right away.

Today, his attorney, Yael Bromberg, (who recently took over the suit) responded, accusing Ricky Patel of lying on his arrest complaint.

On May 9, 2025, the Mayor, accompanied by his security detail, including Newark Police Department officers, was undisputedly permitted entry by a GEO Group guard, who allowed passage through the secured gate surrounding the outer perimeter of Delaney Hall. Forty minutes later, Defendant Ricky J. Patel arrived on the scene with approximately 20 heavily armored agents, joining various security guards already present there. Patel suddenly threatened the Mayor with arrest should he not depart from property which Patel is neither an owner nor a representative of. 4 Although the congressional representatives objected to his ejection, the Mayor advised Patel that he would leave, and he immediately did so peacefully. The charging document, signed by Defendant Patel, includes false statements that the Mayor “unlawfully entered and remained” on the property, and key omissions of fact that Patel already knew: that the Mayor was allowed onto the property by GEO, who opened the gate for his entry and allowed him to stay there for forty minutes, and that he exited the property willfully. Defendant Habba immediately propagated a false narrative, before the Mayor was even transported from Delaney, and then on national television, claiming that he “storm[ed]” Delaney Hall “joined by a mob of people,” and that he “broke into a detention facility.” (Am. Compl. ¶ 39, ¶¶ 34-41).5

[snip]

Nor does this litigation concern a new Bivens context, as Defendants argue. “[F]ollowing [the United States Supreme] Court’s precedents, the Districts Courts and Courts of Appeals have decided numerous cases involving Fourth Amendment claims under §1983 for malicious prosecution.” Thompson v. Clark, 596 U.S. 36, 42 (2022) (string citation omitted). “[N]early every other Circuit has held that malicious prosecution is actionable under the Fourth Amendment to the extent that the defendant’s actions cause the plaintiff to be ‘seized’ without probable cause.” Id. (reference omitted). Claims of malicious prosecution must show that the proceedings were initiated “without probable cause” and that the defendants “acted maliciously for a purpose other than bringing the plaintiff to justice.” Zimmerman v. Corbett, 873 F.3d 414 (3d Cir. 2017). Those circumstances are immediately present here.

Bromberg plans to amend the complaint. Given the video showing Ricky Patel operating on instructions from Todd Blanche (which Bromberg cites), I would be unsurprised if he added Blanche to the suit.

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“Sensitivities and Exposure:” Six Stupid Things about Lindsey Halligan’s First Filing

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I already noted that, after Judge Michael Nachmanoff issued an order setting Monday as the deadline for prosecutors to provide Jim Comey all the discovery in his case, prosecutors submitted what they fashion as a Motion for a Discovery Order.

I was going to leave the filing well enough alone. Either Pat Fitzgerald or Judge Nachmanoff will respond later today, when things will get interesting. But there are a number of stupid things about the filing I can’t shake.

1) First, the prosecutors (it was submitted by Gabriel Diaz) do not fashion this as a motion for reconsideration. They just … pretend that Nachmanoff’s order doesn’t exist, and pretend they’re submitting this for the first time. That seems like a spectacular way to infuriate a judge.

2) They’re asking for two deadlines — October 14 for the things pertaining to the vindictive prosecution motion and October 20 for everything else, a transparent attempt to keep things from Comey that might be pertinent to his vindictive prosecution motion.

Part of their justification for filing this is that the parties had not reached an agreement and so they were following Nachmanoff’s order to submit competing versions on Monday.

On October 8, 2025, the Court ordered “the parties immediately confer regarding the entry of a joint discovery order” and further ordered “that if after good faith discussions the parties are unable to agree on and file a joint discovery order by Friday, October 10, 2025, . . . the parties shall each submit a proposed discovery order by Monday, October 13, 2025, at 5:00 p.m. D.E. 24.

But then, in a high school debate-worthy footnote, they suggest that Monday couldn’t be the deadline because it’s not five business days before the first pretrial motion deadline, since it’s a holiday.

Following the Court’s orders regarding discovery at docket entries 28 and 29, the Government conferred with Defense as to what the discovery deadline is. The Defense position was that, per the Court’s Order, discovery could have technically been due on Friday, October 10, 2025. But the notion that discovery was due prior to the Court entering a discovery order is not plausible. Alternatively, the Defense identified October 13, 2025, as the due date. This date is a Federal Holiday and is also inconsistent with the discovery order from this Court that lists discovery as due five business days before the pretrial motion deadline.

You’re already treating Monday as a business day!! Your entire premise here — that Fitzgerald should have held off on filing until Monday — is that you’re working on Monday.

3) Elsewhere — apparently in an attempt to suggest they were being really nice by letting Comey submit a second set of pretrial motions on October 30 — they describe that the default pretrial motion deadline going into last week’s hearing would have been October 22.

The defendant requested, the government agreed, and the Court ordered two motions Deadlines, October 20, 2025, and October 30, 2025. Notably, EDVA Local Criminal Rule 12 states that pretrial motions should be filed within 14 days of the arraignment. Here, the 14 day deadline would have been October 22.

This amounts to a confession that the default deadline for discovery going into last week’s hearing would have been five business days before October 22, or October 17. Prosecutors provide no explanation why they need an extra three days simply because Comey has two sequential pretrial motions.

4) They describe that Comey wouldn’t discuss the discovery order on October 7 when — for the first time in the 12 days since Comey had been indicted — prosecutors first reached out, because Comey’s team first demanded to know who the people described in the indictment were.

At that time, the government discussed with the defendant the proposed standard EDVA discovery agreement and a discovery protective agreement. At the initial discussion the defendant would not agree until the government provided information on the U.S. Attorney’s appointment and the identities of PERSON 1 and PERSON 3 on the Indictment.

Remember: Pat Fitzgerald said three different times in the arraignment the next day that he still hadn’t been told who these people were. So Diaz is effectively confessing that prosecutors wouldn’t — perhaps couldn’t — describe who these people were.

5) The only justifiable reason they give for delay is that the two sides have yet to agree on a protective order, which they claim is really important because of “the sensitivities and exposure associated with this prosecution.”

Additionally, the parties have yet to agree on a discovery protective agreement. Considering the sensitivities and exposure associated with this prosecution, a discovery protective agreement is a vital part of the overall discovery plan.

[snip]

On the afternoon of October 9, 2025, the defendant emailed back the government’s proposed protective agreement with significant proposed edits.

[snip]

Consistent with the Court’s direction at arraignment, the parties have also conferred regarding a discovery protection agreement. The government provided a past template used in the Eastern District of Virginia. The Defense made substantial edits, and the government agreed to those edits in large part. However, the parties still lack agreement as to whether the discovery can be provided and retained by the Defendant.

But they don’t provide the protective order (AKA “protection agreement”) with this filing. By their logic, they’re refusing to turn over discovery until they have one. By not turning it over, they’re ensuring that they cannot meet the currently set deadline of Monday.

6) Finally, they spelled North Carolina wrong.

Update: Corrected (from five to three) how many more days prosecutors are trying to get off what would have been the original October 17 due date.

Update: Here was Comey’s response (which noted that the government was just trying to change the terms of the discovery order after Comey signed it). And here’s Nachmanoff’s order rejecting the government bid.

Now the government is dicking around with the protective order, trying to mandate that the former Director of the FBI have a babysitter while reviewing discovery.

Update: Here’s Comey’s response and his proposed protective order.

Update: Judge Nachmanoff adopted Comey’s preferred protective order. In his order, he included this footnote.

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).

As you all likely know, Libby was a Fitz case. So were Blagojevich and Kiriakou — the latter of which was in EDVA.

Manafort, of course, was Mueller. And McDonnell, also in EDVA, was under the supervision of Jack Smith.

So a tidy way of saying, “Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer is trying to treat Comey worse than the investigations Trump is trying to avenge.”

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We’re in La Plus Stupide Ligne de Temps

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Every Manny for Himself

(Apologies for the delay, Macron ran out my work day, went into my Saturday, but damn it, this is still France)

After a mean girl spat, in which the leader of the ever-more-trending-hard-right Le Republicans, Retailleau, said he can’t be in a government with that bitch Bruno Le Maire, Lecornu  gave up on proposing a budget at all. He went for a good four day sulk. By the end of the week, he was summoned to an audience with Macron to work it out.

Friends, he did not work it out.

Macron and His Warrior Monk

Sébastien Lecornu

These are the eyes of a loyal fighting monk, I guess.

Macron is not on speaking terms with either reality or France. He gave himself Friday to fix France’s government. It was mostly silence all day, because there was no rational way of resolving this political crisis without making compromises and talking to all the parties. Then, in the evening, instead of deciding anything at all, Macron doubled down on the fantasy he’s acting outright now. He re-appointed Sébastien Lecornu to the job that Lecornu had been forced to quit on Monday. All it needed was a chimney on the Elysee palace and a puff of shit-brown smoke, for this re-run of the most tragically useless ministerial episode in modern French history.

There was some talk that Macron might try to pull a PM from the center Left, after exhausting his centrist talent pool, but it was not to be. There was some thinking that he could even pull from the more moderate Right, and just admit the direction he’s been drifting since his days as a fresh-faced socialist. (Albeit with maybe just a few royal aspirations that he would mention from time to time in the early days of his presidency.)

Sisi and Macron in a crowd of security dudes

Look at those happy boys, so very not in France.

Unsurprisingly the crisis spilled into his Saturday. But don’t worry about Macron, he will be on a plane Monday morning to Egypt. There he will be doing something or other on the Gaza Ceasefire deal, which France is not involved in. Probably some waving, maybe some getting his picture taken, perhaps even some talking to people, as long as they’re not French.

Lecornu doesn’t get to jet off to Egypt. Lecornu remains loyal to a fault. After chatting with his president behind closed doors he has declared publicly that he is Macron’s warrior monk, and doesn’t seem at all embarrassed by saying it. He’s going back to Parliament for a do-over. He won’t be changing much anything because the French are wrong, and Macron is always right.

“But, Wait, What if We Did nothing?!”

Next week he’s bringing mostly the same budget to the same Parliament that signaled they would slapped him down less than a week ago, forcing him to quit. If the definition of insanity really is doing the same thing over again and hoping for a different result, Lecornu, Macron, and France in general, is completely insane.

After he drops his budget turd on parliament, his next task will be trying to form a government. No one who wants any kind of political future will want to be in it. But Macron’s people are either all in or keeping quiet. Even the ones that hope to succeed him are standing there, trying to look normal. All the president’s men have lost their marbles.

What About Everyone Else?

Both the French Right and Left are largely out of the picture for the moment, despite having the second largest (The Right Lead by the convicted and ineligible Le Pen) and largest block (The Left lead by who even knows?)

The Le Pen family

Marine Le Pen at home with family, where she’s staying whether she likes it or not.

Right now the right is still nominally lead by Marine Le Pen, despite the fact that she’s currently a convicted felon who can’t hold office for years to come. Le Pen is in politics for the good of Le Pen, and she would tear her whole party down if it was standing in the wrong place. She’s unlikely to use her resources to promote someone else to be the vanguard of the Right and take her place as the RN’s presidential candidate. There’s always her meat puppet, Jordan Bardella, but he is too afraid of girls to realistically run for the presidency.

The French Left has a fair bit of political talent, but Mélenchon, who is now well into his 70s, still has energy for one thing: getting in the way of anyone trying to unify the patchwork of leftist parties and accomplish something. He’s still the one ordained French leftist for the media, both in the US and France. It is absolutely a crime against humanity that he still has power over the French mainly by being in journalist’s rolodex, and always returning calls. He recently scored an interview with the New York Times. At no point did the journalist ask what his role is in his former party, which was convenient because he doesn’t have one.

Thierry Breton, former European Commissioner made a point of saying there’s something deeply wrong with the the French. He was articulating something we’re all becoming aware of, but no one knows how to fix. (Breton is a proponent of austerity, which we should all remember Literally Never Works.) But he is right that the politics of this country, like so many right now, is fundamentally broken.

There are a lot of reasons, but it’s important to remember that the 5th republic was engineered to work for exactly one man: Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle used the tools built into the 5th Republic to rebuild France in the post war period, that’s the task it was designed for. He died in 1970.

He never saw the Berlin Wall fall, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Iranian Revolution, the internet, The fall of Nixon, the rise of the Dungeons and Dragons media empire, or Labubus. Much like the American system, France’s hardest problem is being trapped in the amber of past ages. Unlike the American system, France is not set up to ignore its problems forever while it falls apart.

What comes next? Probably stasis and political entropy. But things that aren’t sustainable don’t sustain, a lesson that France, like America, has decided to learn the hard way.

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Prosecutors Sucking Lemons in Their Vindictive Prosecution of Jim Comey

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In this post, I noted a paragraph of a recent ABC story that had escaped much notice: one reason prosecutors didn’t think they would succeed in prosecuting Jim Comey was because there would be too much discovery.

Prosecutors further expressed concerns about the department’s ability to take the case to trial quickly due to problems identifying all the relevant materials that would need to be handed over to Comey’s lawyers, sources said.

I speculated that one reason the prosecutors borrowed from Raleigh — Tyler Lemons and Gabriel Diaz — claimed there would be extensive classified information was to stall for time.

Such efforts are already failing. At the arraignment, Judge Michael Nachmanoff ordered the two sides to come up with a discovery order by Friday or submit their competing sides Monday. Yesterday, Comey’s lawyers submitted this filing, explaining that they had immediately signed the standard discovery order, but had yet to receive a signed copy back. As described, the two sides disagreed about one issue, what pretrial motion date would govern: the deadline for his Vindictive and Selective Prosecution claim (so five business days before October 20 — which is Monday), or the one ten days later for his other claims (October 23).

In the course of the parties’ meet and confer, the government sent the defense the standard discovery order attached and the defense signed it with no changes to the government’s proposal and returned it for government signatures on Thursday afternoon, October 9, 2025. To-date, however, the government has not returned a signed copy. While the parties agree to the terms of the standard discovery order, the parties disagree as to an interpretation of one term of the order—specifically, which of the two pretrial motions deadlines prompts the government’s Rule 16(a) production described in paragraph 1, requiring the government to produce certain discovery “no later than 5 business days before the deadline for pretrial motions.” See Exhibit 1 at 1 (emphasis added).

Mr. Comey asserts that the first set of pretrial motions due on October 20, 2025, which the Court ordered at the arraignment hearing, demands that discovery be produced on Monday, October 13, 2025. Naturally, at least some of this discovery will inform the bases for the vindictive and selective prosecution motion that is to be filed on October 20, 2025. As of the date of this filing, the defense has received one page of discovery. The government contends that the term “deadline for pretrial motions” refers to the deadline for the second tranche of pretrial motions, October 30, 2025.

To be able to fully articulate all bases for the first tranche of pretrial motions including the vindictive and selective nature of this case; to be able to effectively defend Mr. Comey; and because it is the plain language of the standard discovery order, Mr. Comey respectfully requests that the Court enter the additional proposed order making clear that “the deadline for pretrial motions” referenced in the standard discovery order is the first pretrial motions deadline of October 20, 2025. [my emphasis]

The part of this that is unmanageable is the requirement that prosecutors provide any statements the former FBI Director made about the matters at issue, which must be epic.

ORDERED that, pursuant to Fed. R. Crim. P. 16(a), no later than 5 business days before the deadline for pretrial motions, the government shall provide to the defense or make available for inspection and copying materials listed below that are in the possession of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

[snip]

any relevant written or recorded statements made by the defendant, or copies thereof, within the possession, custody, or control of the government, the existence ofwhich is known, or by the exercise of due diligence may become known

But the real reason prosecutors attempted this ploy is the requirement that prosecutors provide everything material to Comey’s defense (to say nothing of Brady obligations).

3. The government shall permit the defendant to inspect and copy or photograph books, papers, documents, data, photographs, tangible objects, buildings or places, or copies or portions thereof, which are within the possession, custody or control of the government, and which are material to the preparation of his defense

The rest of the ABC piece makes clear some of what that will include:

There’s Dan Richman’s testimony that, contrary to the claim in the charges, Comey had specifically ordered him not to serve as an anonymous source for the press.

Daniel Richman — a law professor who prosecutors allege Comey authorized to leak information to the press — told investigators that the former FBI director instructed him not to engage with the media on at least two occasions and unequivocally said Comey never authorized him to provide information to a reporter anonymously ahead of the 2016 election, the sources said.

[snip]

When prosecutors met with Richman in September, he told them that he never served as an anonymous source for Comey or acted at Comey’s direction while he was FBI director, sources familiar with his interview told ABC News. In at least two cases when Richman asked if he should speak with the press, Comey advised him not to do so, sources said.

As an earlier ABC story reported, it will also include John Durham’s testimony that, in four years of trying, he never found evidence that Jim Comey lied.

John Durham, the former special counsel who spent nearly four years examining the origins of the FBI investigation into President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and its alleged ties to Russia, told federal prosecutors investigating James Comey that he was unable to uncover evidence that would support false statements or obstruction charges against the former FBI director, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

And it’ll also include the testimony of other prosecutors who spent years investigating Comey that they also did not find any evidence he committed a crime.

The prosecutors also met with a team of lawyers at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., who had investigated Comey for years — including calling him to testify before a grand jury in 2021 — but were unable to identify any chargeable offenses committed by Comey, sources familiar with the meeting said.

It might even include the declination recommendation submitted to Erik Siebert just days before Trump started demanding prosecutions anyway.

Whether or not Comey’s Vindictive and Selective Prosecution succeeds (as Lawfare has laid out, the legal standard for those is a bit inapt for his case), this testimony would nevertheless provide an opportunity to lay out proof of something that right wingers and NYT reporters continue to deny: Donald Trump did investigate precisely the same people he demands be prosecuted now.

For years.

But some very determined prosecutors concluded that there was no probable cause to charge him.

Without waiting to hear from prosecutors, Nachmanoff filed the discovery order — signed by just Comey’s attorneys — to the docket, and issued an order stating that the earlier deadline applies.

The first pretrial motions deadline in this matter is October 20, 2025. This is the pretrial motions deadline to which the discovery order refers and the date that prompts the government’s Rule 16(a) discovery production.

By Monday, Lemons and Diaz are going to have to decide how badly they want to risk their own law license.

They could move to dismiss the prosecution, the ethical thing to do, but one that will get them fired. And even then, now there’s a matter before Nachmanoff that could force the disclosure of all that anyway.

They could admit that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer was not lawfully appointed (the one piece of discovery they did provide is likely her appointment order, which will be enough to prove that she was not lawfully appointed), and therefore the indictment is invalid.

They could turn over evidence to Jim Comey that shows prosecutors knew there was no probable cause to charge him but did anyway.

Or they could stall, putting their own careers at risk in a different way.

This dilemma makes it clear why Comey was all smiles last week. It makes it clear why Pat Fitzgerald, and not Lemons and Diaz, appeared to be the one directing a prosecution Wednesday.

It even makes his two-phase approach clear. Comey’s case is inapt to existing Vindictive and Selective Prosecution precedents. But what Fitzgerald has done is force an immediate disclosure of this stuff, which he can then use to make arguments that effectively put Lindsey Halligan’s — and through her, Trump’s — behavior on trial, what Fitz described as “a grand jury abuse motion, and outrageous government conduct motion.”

Unless prosecutors find a way to make this problem go away, in nine days, we’ll get details (in the Vindictive and Selective Prosecution motion) of how badly Trump has tried to prosecute Jim Comey, and how those efforts failed, until the moment he unlawfully installed his own defense attorney as US Attorney at EDVA.

Update: The government has submitted a fairly contemptuous motion (because it does not recognize Nachmanoff’s order), partly hiding behind protective orders.

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