When Letitia James submitted her vindictive and selective prosecution motion on November 7, DOJ’s efforts to cover up Bill Pulte’s FHFA shenanigans got relegated to a footnote in the section in the request for discovery.
Any remaining doubt about the existence of DOJ’s possession of material that might go towards establishing AG James’ vindictive or selective claims was obviated by the Government’s November 4, 2025, filing of its Notice of Reasons for Not Providing Pre-Vindictive/Selective Prosecution Motion Related Discovery. See DE-46. The Government’s filing states that it “bears no such obligation until a defendant ‘overcomes a significant barrier by advancing objective evidence tending to show the existence of prosecutorial misconduct.’” Id. at 1 (quoting Wilson, 262 F.3d at 315).68 AG James has exceeded that burden, and more.
68 If the Government did not believe it possessed “vindictive/selective prosecution-related discovery,” DE-46 at 4, the Government could have so stated, without filing notice of its intent not to produce such discovery. Yet the November 4 Notice seemingly contradicts what the government has previously suggested, which is that it has in its possession some discovery relevant to the defense’s prosecutorial vindictiveness argument that would be produced. Id. at 2. The Government started that process of producing such discovery, and on October 30, produced just seven news articles about the James investigation or case. That is all. Then, in a move suggesting the Government found additional items which it did not want to reveal or produce, the Notice followed on November 4, suggesting more such discovery exists. Public reporting from the day before also indicated that FHFA’s acting inspector general, Joe Allen, was fired from his role on November 3 “after he made efforts to provide key information to prosecutors in [Ms. Halligan’s] office, according to four sources. The information he turned over was constitutionally required, . . . [or] potentially relevant in discovery.” Sarah N. Lynch et al., Exclusive: Trump ousts watchdog of US housing regulator involved in mortgage probes of his foes, sources say, Reuters (Nov. 3, 2025), https://perma.cc/56J2-V7VZ (emphasis added). The defense is left guessing at what other prosecutorial vindictiveness discovery exists in the government’s hands.
5. Since the initial appearance, the government has produced a significant amount of electronic discovery to the defense, spanning five production volumes containing, in total, more than 17,000 documents and 115,000 pages. The latest production (Vol. 05) alone, received on Wednesday, November 12, included nearly two terabytes of data.
Additionally, the government is likely already in possession of discovery relating to Director Pulte’s conduct that has not been produced to AG James. Specifically, there is reason to believe that documents reportedly turned over by former FHFA Acting Inspector General, including the internal complaint about Director Pulte’s access to AG James’s loan file, have not been produced. Based on metadata (including filename/file path) and the presence of an additional Bates stamp (FM_EDVA_122_), over 100 pages of discovery likely turned over by the former FHFA Acting Inspector General has not been produced.
Accordingly, in addition to the communications listed above, AG James specifically requests that the government be ordered to produce:
Any internal complaints filed against Director Pulte related to AG James.
All documents bearing a “FM_EDVA_122_” Bates stamp, including:
FM_EDVA_122_0000015–FM_EDVA_122_0000023
FM_EDVA_122_0000042–FM_EDVA_122_0000055
FM_EDVA_122_0000099–FM_EDVA_122_0000107
FM_EDVA_122_0000113–FM_EDVA_122_0000125
FM_EDVA_122_0000144–FM_EDVA_122_0000155
FM_EDVA_122_0000574–FM_EDVA_122_0000579
James’ outrageous action motion also focused on comms among others in Trump’s administration.
The current record of “outrageous conduct” is more than sufficient to dismiss this indictment. But even if this Court finds that AG James should be required to point to more to meet her burden to prove outrageous government conduct, the basis for discovery and an evidentiary hearing has been well established. The facts outlined above merit, at the very least, fulsome discovery into the government’s conduct in bringing this case, including all communications among and between President Trump, AG Bondi, Ms. Halligan, Mr. Martin, Director Pulte, and their staffs regarding AG James.
That comes, of course, mere weeks after Judge Jamar Walker ordered a litigation hold in response to Lindsey Halligan’s stalking of Anna Bower.
The defendant presents evidence that government counsel communicated with a member of the media about this case using an encrypted messaging app that enables automatic deletion of messages. See generally ECF No. 21-1. The Court is not asked to decide now whether any communications between the government and media are or will become discoverable. But in the event that such communications take place and are discoverable (or are subject to a judicial determination about discoverability), it is important that the government preserve the evidence of those communications. Cf. Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963) (“suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution”). Accordingly, the Court ORDERS a litigation hold preventing the deletion or destruction of any records or communications having to do with the investigation or prosecution of this case. This hold shall be in effect until further order of the Court.
And yet James may have to follow up on that order, given a letter from Jamie Raskin to Eagle Ed Martin demanding that he stop using Signal chats to weaponizing government against Trump’s adversaries.
My staff have received credible allegations that you have been using personal devices, platforms, and applications that do not adhere to federal laws and DOJ policies regarding records retention to conduct official DOJ business. This deliberate evasion of relevant rules of record retention appears to be part of an effort to conceal the Weaponization Working Group’s activities and your own conduct. Such conduct violates not only the Federal Records Act (FRA) and DOJ policy but also potentially relevant criminal statutes.4
The FRA requires all federal agencies and their employees to “make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency.”5 This obligation applies to all recorded information, “regardless of form or characteristics.”6 DOJ policies reinforce these statutory requirements. DOJ Policy Statement 0801.04, for instance, states that personal email and other electronic accounts should not be used for DOJ business except under “exigent circumstances,” and when used, employees must comply with FRA requirements by forwarding communications to official accounts.7
Instead of preserving those records, however, you are reportedly concealing and potentially destroying them. As you are well aware, as one of America’s top-ranking federal lawyers charged with supervising enforcement of these laws, you are obligated to follow the law yourself and preserve messages related to your DOJ work in the official DOJ systems. Your purported failure to do so is not only illegal but it also suggests that you are knowingly covering up incriminating conversations that you need to keep off the books.
It’s unlikely that Lindsey’s single Loaner AUSA will ever be able to prove the case against James, 2TB of data and all.
But along the way, she and her co-conspirators are leaving a trail of corruption and crime a mile wide. They’re doing it in the same courthouse where Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s conduct is already the focus of scrutiny.
Trump’s DOJ won’t prosecute this, and Trump will pardon all of his minions at some point. But they decided to perform their corruption for judges, and that may not work out the way they want.
Share this entry
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-09-at-13.03.04.png406394emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2025-11-18 05:58:022025-11-18 05:58:02The Rolling Corruption behind the Letitia James Prosecution
Vindictive and selective prosecution cases are always nearly impossible to win, because of how narrowly the precedent draws the analysis. To prove vindictive prosecution, the defendant has to prove that the prosecutor who made a charging decision harbored animus to the defendant.
But of course, in Jim Comey and Letitia James’ case, the playacting prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, is just doing what her boss installed her to do. She didn’t act out of animus towards Comey and James, except insofar as such animus is a litmus test for belonging in Trump’s tribe (though her brief stint at the Smithsonian also exposed her as a dumb bigot, which could be relevant in James’ case). She acted out of a corrupt willingness to do anything her boss tells her to do.
To start, the relevant analysis is whether the “prosecutor charging” the offense “harbored vindictive animus.” Wilson, 262 F.3d at 316; see United States v. Gomez-Lopez, 62 F.3d 304, 306 (9th Cir. 1995) (noting that the focus “is on the ultimate decision-maker”). Here, that prosecutor is the U.S. Attorney. Yet the defendant doesn’t present any evidence that she harbors animus against him. Instead, he says that he doesn’t need any such evidence because his claim “turns on the animus harbored by the official who prompted the prosecution.” See Def. Mem., Dkt. No. 59 at 21. And, according to him, that is the President. See id. As discussed below, the President does not harbor vindictive animus against the defendant in the relevant sense. Before reaching that issue, however, the Court should determine whether the defendant has offered sufficient evidence to find that the President displaced the U.S. Attorney as “the ultimate decision-maker” in bringing this prosecution. See Gomez-Lopez, 62 F.3d at 304. The only “direct evidence” on the issue says otherwise. See Wilson, 262 F.3d at 314.
The defendant’s argument relies on the imputed-animus theory. The Fourth Circuit has never adopted that theory. In fact, when a defendant asked the Fourth Circuit to impute animus from investigating law-enforcement agents, the Fourth Circuit categorically rejected the theory. See United States v. Hastings, 126 F.3d 310, 314 (4th Cir. 1997) (“We will not impute the unlawful biases of the investigating agents to the persons ultimately responsible for the prosecution.”); see also United States v. Cooper, 617 F. App’x 249, 251 (4th Cir. 2015). That is consistent with other circuits’ application of the theory in that context. See, e.g., United States v. Gilbert, 266 F.3d 1180, 1187 (9th Cir. 2001) (“In all but the most extreme cases, it is only the biases and motivations of the prosecutor that are relevant.”); United States v. Spears, 159 F.3d 1081, 1087 (7th Cir. 1998).
When courts have entertained the imputed-animus theory in other contexts, they have required a significant evidentiary showing: there must be “evidence that the federal prosecutor did not make the ultimate decision to bring the indictment.” Spears, 159 F.3d at 1087.
It is true that Comey and James (in a filing submitted Friday) both did ultimately say Trump ordered up their prosecutions, relying heavily on his tweet ordering Pam Bondi to install Lindsey Halligan to do so.
But they took a different approach in laying out the weaponization of DOJ. Comey, relying on a 60-page exhibit of Trump tweets to demonstrate the President’s animus, focused relentlessly on Trump. He didn’t even mention the now-FBI Director’s equally rabid animus.
Tish James had her exhibit showing how obsessively Trump hates her too; it includes not just tweets, but also speeches, and at 113 pages is almost twice as long as Comey’s exhibit.
But James also focused on the way the Trump Administration, more generally, has been (literally) stalking her, notably in the form of Eagle Ed Martin, as well as Pam Bondi, Stephen Miller, and Bill Pulte (this section is where James includes the Reuters report about firing the FHFA IG to prevent him from sharing information with prosecutors; that footnote and others are at the bottom of this page).
AG Bondi took the President’s mission to heart, and on the first day of her appointment, established DOJ’s “Weaponization Working Group,” with the stated objective to examine “[f]ederal cooperation with the weaponization” by “New York Attorney General Letitia James” to “target President Trump, his family and his businesses,” among other top priorities. 15 Ex. C. The goal was to retaliate against the President’s perceived political enemies, including AG James.
In March, President Trump also issued a Presidential Memorandum, “Rescinding Security Clearances and Access to Classified Information from Specified Individuals,” specifically calling out AG James, claiming “it is no longer in the national interest” for her, along with fourteen of his other perceived political opponents, to have a security clearance or access classified information. Ex. D.
The retribution campaign against AG James had only just begun. Around the same time, another federal agency, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), led by Director William Pulte, was also looking for dirt to use against AG James. By April 14, they had concocted it. Mr. Pulte delivered a criminal referral “[b]ased on media reports” to DOJ against AG James, claiming she had “in multiple instances, falsified bank documents and property records to acquire government backed assistance and loans and more favorable loan terms.” Ex. F at 1. The criminal referral cherry-picked documents to claim fraud over three properties—one even going back to 1983—none of which was the Peronne Property at issue in the indictment.16 The referral asked DOJ to open a criminal investigation into AG James. See Ex. F at 1. Mr. Pulte also coordinated with Edward Martin—the self-described “captain” of DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group who is President Trump’s close confidante and would later also be named a Special Attorney.17 Reporting even indicates that President Trump had been bypassing his senior DOJ lead regularly telephoning Martin for updates on his work, leaving [DAG Todd] Blanche ‘frustrated and annoyed,’” according to sources.18
Standing outside the White House on the day the referral was released, one of the President’s aides, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, told reporters AG James “is one of the most corrupt, shameless individuals ever to hold public office” and “is guilty of multiple, significant, serial criminal violations” for having “persecute[d] an innocent man,” referring to President Trump.19 President Trump also did not withhold his views about FHFA’s criminal referral to DOJ, attacking AG James directly in several social media posts discussing the referral:
Turns out you can’t have your principal residence in Virginia and be AG of New York. You can’t say your dad’s your husband. Or claim a five-unit is a four. But that’s what Letitia James did—while going after Trump for the same thing. You’ve got to be kidding me
Ex. A. at No. 334;
Letitia James, a totally corrupt politician, should resign from her position as New York State Attorney General, IMMEDIATELY. Everyone is trying to MAKE NEW YORK GREAT AGAIN, and it can never be done with this wacky crook in office.
Id. at No. 333.
On the heels of the referral to DOJ, in May, Mr. Martin admitted that he planned to use his authority to expose and discredit opponents of the President whom he believes to be guilty. 20 He made plain that it did not matter if there were no facts to back up President Trump’s accusations or even if a charge had no merit: “If they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them. And we will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, there should be people that are shamed.”21 Discussing targets for criminal investigation, Martin stated that the Weaponization Working Group’s prerogative included “Letitia James.”22
And to support this additional prong of animus, James included a second, 12-page exhibit, which includes (among other things), all the creepy pictures Eagle Ed has posted of himself stalking James, including pictures showing him reviewing files with Halligan just before she indicted James or just randomly chatting up someone at FHFA.
It also documents Eagle Ed’s juvenile trolling on Xitter.
It may be an awkward time, for Eagle Ed, to have such a focus on his trollish obsessions.
That’s because he is currently involved in equally pathetic troll campaign targeting a woman that right wing nutjobs have decided must be the Pipe Bomber based off gait analysis — I guess they’ll get around to using phrenology? — and their dislike of how she testified against Guy Reffitt, the first Jan6er to go to trial.
Anna Bower has been spending her weekend documenting how Eagle Ed first posts, then deletes, tweets trying to gin up the frothy mob. In the first such instance, someone — maybe Todd Blanche — made Eagle Ed affirmatively deny the gait-analysis claims as a “fake.”
These tweets show not just that a key cog in the James prosecution — the guy who accepted allegations from Bill Pulte and then ferried them to the woman playacting as US Attorney — is a wild conspiracy theorist happy to magnify any kind of bullshit he gets from frothy right wingers, but also that some babysitter at DOJ knows he is, and is attempting to rein him in.
I’m not sure whether Comey’s more focused approach or James’ wholistic one works better. Given that prosecutors dismissed Comey’s comparators because none had precisely the same role he once did, he certainly has an opportunity to use the opening memo that Tyler Lemons submitted last week which led to these charges to show that the current FBI Director lied his ass off to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he told Mazie Hirono that he had no intention of revisiting history to prosecute Comey.
The broad or narrow scope may not matter. Indeed, unless the cases get dismissed because Lindsey was just playacting as US Attorney, there’s a non-zero chance these arguments will be appealed through the Fourth Circuit together, which is presumably why Comey had loaded his team with appellate lawyers and scores of people are submitting amicus briefs.
These vindictive and selective prosecution arguments may make new precedent, about whether the President can repurpose the Department of Justice to prioritize jailing his political adversaries.
But Eagle Ed has now made clear that one element of that repurposed DOJ is seizing and stoking baseless conspiracy theories to rile up the base.
15 Ryan Lucas, New attorney general moves to align Justice Department with Trump’s priorities, NPR (Feb. 5, 2025), https://perma.cc/WLU8-FPBL.
16 Mr. Pulte’s conduct demonstrates how far allies of the President would go to carry out his “get James” orders. Public reports indicate that Mr. Pulte “skipped over his agency’s inspector general when making criminal referrals” against President Trump’s political enemies. Reports also indicate he may have bypassed ethics rules in doing so. Marisa Taylor & Chris Prentice, Exclusive: Trump official bypassed ethics rules in criminal referrals of Fed governor and other foes, sources say, Reuters (Oct. 6, 2025), https://perma.cc/HK6Y-LJVR. The FHFA has no generalized crimefighting or anti-fraud authority. It does not even have an express authority to make criminal referrals besides those granted to the FHFA’s Inspector General under the Inspector General Act of 1978. In addition to violations of the act itself, Mr. Pulte may have failed to comply with the FHFA’s own Privacy Act regulations, which require FHFA to “ensure” that records containing personally identifiable information are “protected from public view.” Domenic Powell, Are Pulte’s “Mortgage Fraud” Investigations Legal?, Yale J. Reg.: Notice and Comment (Nov. 1, 2025), https://perma.cc/2U6G-S46X.
17 Alan Feuer et al., Trump Demands That Bondi Move ‘Now’ to Prosecute Foes, N.Y. Times (Sept. 20, 2025), https://perma.cc/FC9R-U8TK.
18 Andrew Feinberg, Trump ally probing rivals’ ‘mortgage fraud’ speaks directly with the president – and skips typical DOJ hierarchy, The Independent (Aug. 29, 2025), https://perma.cc/4LXUUUAC.
19 Statement of Stephen Miller, White House Homeland Security Adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, to Reporters outside the White House (Apr. 18, 2025), https://perma.cc/9X5GX7YB (emphasis added).
20 U.S. Attorney Ed Martin Holds News Conference, C-SPAN (May 13, 2025), https://www.cspan.org/program/news-conference/us-attorney-ed-martin-holds-news-conference/659817.
Share this entry
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-09-at-13.03.04.png406394emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2025-11-09 07:54:392025-11-09 08:49:22Letitia James Highlights Eagle Ed Martin Just Before He Goes on a Conspiratorial Rant
I suppose I should not have doubted that Abbe Lowell would file a request for relief based on Lindsey Halligan’s stalking of Anna Bower.
I mean, I didn’t doubt it.
But I was impatient. I should also have considered the optimal timing for Lowell to do that: the evening before the arraignment.
What a way for Lindsey Halligan to start out on the wrong foot with Judge Jamar Walker, with both the request to make Lindsey follow the rules on public comment and notice that Attorney General James (as Lowell refers to his client throughout) intends to move — tomorrow — to disqualify Lindsey on a schedule that will coincide with Jim Comey’s parallel attempt.
The request itself makes ample use of the opening Lindsey gave James to mock her inexperience. It refers to her as the “purported interim US Attorney” (or similar) five times.
Although the government sought and filed the indictment in this case on October 9, 2025—signed only by purported interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan—articles issued before the charges were filed indicated that charges would be brought.
What precipitates this motion now is a digital messaging exchange that occurred after the government brought charges, between purported interim U.S. Attorney Halligan and Anna Bower, a senior journalist for Lawfare, published on Monday, October 20, 2025.
[snip]
After confirming Ms. Halligan’s identity, Ms. Bower asked the purported interim U.S. Attorney what she was “getting wrong,” and Ms. Halligan replied: “Honestly, so much. I can’t tell you everything but your reporting in particular is just way off. I had to let you know.”
[snip]
These extrajudicial statements and prejudicial disclosures by any prosecutor, let alone one purporting to be the U.S. Attorney, run afoul of and violate the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the Code of Federal Regulations, this Court’s Local Rules, various rules of ethical and professional responsibility, and DOJ’s Justice Manual.
[snip]
Ms. Halligan’s initiation of contact, and then repeated exchanges, with the journalist—a mere two days after filing charges—appear to have violated several of the above-cited rules and codes of professional conduct. As the purported chief law enforcement officer for this District, as well as the individual who alone presented evidence to the grand jury in Alexandria and signed the two-count indictment of Attorney General James, 12 Ms. Halligan should know that she is prohibited by the federal, local, and Department rules governing extrajudicial statements and media contacts from engaging with a journalist about the substance and merits of a charged criminal case and the purported strength of the evidence put before a grand jury. [my emphasis]
It describes how even someone with absolutely no prosecutorial experience like Lindsey should know basic rules.
No prosecutor is exempt from following those rules, but they should be followed to the letter by anyone trying to lead a prosecutor’s office. Rather than follow DOJ’s rules protecting non-public, sensitive information obtained in connection with a criminal case and investigation from disclosure, Ms. Halligan opted to use an encrypted app to text with a journalist and discuss the case, certain evidence, and her views on the strength of the charges brought, while ignoring any concerns of prejudice to the defendant, a fair trial, and rules against extrajudicial statements and pretrial publicity.
It has been reported that Ms. Halligan has no prosecutorial experience whatsoever. But all federal prosecutors are required to know and follow the rules governing their conduct from their first day on the job, and so any lack of experience cannot excuse their violation. While the oftquoted phrase “the bell cannot be unrung” is true for that which has already occurred, the Court can require the government to follow the law going forward by entering Attorney General James’ requested Order and preventing further disclosures of investigative and case materials, and of statements to the media and public, concerning this case and any parties or witnesses.
It lists the many rules Lindsey broke:
Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e)
28 C.F.R. § 50.2
A variety of local rules, starting with Local Criminal Rule 57.1, Free Press – Fair Trial Directives
American Bar Associations Model Rule 3.8, Special Responsibilities of a Prosecutor
Various parts of the Justice Manual, starting with Justice Manual (JM) 1-7.100
And then there are three footnotes which, as footnotes often do, have the meat of the argument.
Though the body of the motion does not mention Federal Records Act, Footnote 11 notes that Attorney General James will pursue the apparent violation of 44 U.S.C. § 2911 (violations of which require disciplinary action) “with the appropriate offices.”
11 In addition to apparently violating the rules addressed in this section, Ms. Halligan admitted in her exchanges with the journalist to a likely violation of the federal records laws and rules around using unapproved electronic messaging accounts. See 44 U.S.C. § 2911 (restricting officer or employee of an executive agency from sending messages using a non-official electronic messaging account). Ms. Halligan acknowledged she was using an unofficial messaging application, Signal, with its “disappearing messages” feature enabled and set to automatically delete after eight hours. Trying to delete the paper trail of improper communications does not mean they did not occur. For this reason, Attorney General James also asks the Court to order government attorneys and agents involved in this case to follow relevant laws around records retention, and to impose a litigation hold preventing the deletion or destruction of any records or communications having anything to do with the investigation and prosecution of this case. Attorney General James will pursue this apparent violation of the law with the appropriate offices.
As for the grand jury secrecy violations, Footnote 5 notes that a court can prosecute or hold someone in contempt for violating grand jury secrecy.
5 The government can and does prosecute knowing violations of Rule 6(e) pursuant to district courts’ contempt powers under 18 U.S.C. § 401(3), as well as pursuant to multiple felony criminal statutes. See Justice Manual, CRM 156 (observing that disclosure of “grand jury material with the intent to obstruct an ongoing investigation . . . may be prosecuted for obstruction of justice under 18 U.S.C. § 1503,” and that an individual who “improperly disseminates grand jury materials may be prosecuted for the theft of government property under 18 U.S.C. § 641”) (collecting cases).
But, Footnote 6 describes, Attorney General James is not asking for that kind of relief — that is, prosecution.
6 Attorney General James is not at this time formally moving for relief pursuant to FRCrP 6(e).
At least, “not at this time.”
And honestly, Lindsey may not be the real target here. One of the things Lowell requests is a log of all contact between “any government attorney or agent on this case and any member of the news media” on this case.
3. Directing government counsel to create and maintain a log of all contact between any government attorney or agent on this case and any member of the news media or press concerning this case.
Lindsey hasn’t been doing the bulk of that. Eagle Ed Martin has.
And because Lindsey blabbed her mouth, Eagle Ed may, as a result, have to catalog all the times he has leaked about this case.
Share this entry
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-04-at-12.21.55.png750948emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2025-10-23 18:07:262025-10-24 06:05:50A Tale of Three Footnotes for “Purported Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan”
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.
Share this entry
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Stalker-Eagle-Ed.png14662022emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2025-10-18 05:41:492025-10-18 12:51:05Eagle Ed Martin and George Santos Just Proved Tish James’ Vindictive Prosecution Claim
Back on Friday, before Women’s World Cup Rugby distracted me for a long weekend, I started this post with the claim, “As of this moment, both Kilmar Abrego and John Bolton are free men.”
That claim, of course, has been overtaken by events.
Friday started with a search of Bolton’s Maryland home, reportedly in a renewed investigation into the mishandling of classified information that went into his book (see Ben Wittes’ first hand account here). In an interview taped (and partially released that day), JD Vance revealed not only that he was part of the investigative decisions targeting Bolton, but effectively admitted this was a fishing expedition, basically a search of the Trump critic’s home to find out if they could target him with a crime.
VICE PRES. JD VANCE:
We’re in the very early stages of an ongoing investigation into John Bolton. I will say we’re going to let that investigation proceed. What I can tell you is that, unlike the Biden DOJ and the Biden FBI, our law enforcement agencies are going to be driven by law and not by politics. And so if we think that Ambassador Bolton has committed a crime, of course, eventually prosecutions will come. But as you know, Kristen, this is all part of gathering evidence, trying to understand something that we’re worried about. And, of course, I’ll let the FBI comment on the next stage of the investigation.
KRISTEN WELKER:
What’s at the root of this? Is this about classified documents?
VICE PRES. JD VANCE:
Well, again, I’ll let the FBI speak to that. Classified documents are certainly part of it. But I think that there’s a broad concern about, about Ambassador Bolton. They’re going to look into it. And like I said, if there’s no crime here, we’re not going to prosecute it. If there is a crime here, of course, Ambassador Bolton will get his day in court. That’s how it should be. But again, our focus here is on did he break the law? Did he commit crimes against the American people? If so, then he deserves to be prosecuted.
This was heavy handed dick-wagging, the White House making it clear they were personally directing searches of Trump’s defectors.
Meanwhile, Abrego was free on Friday when I started this post. He was released from pre-trial detention in Tennessee, only to be detained at an ICE check-in on Monday. Judge Paula Xinis has ordered the government not to deport him — to Uganda — until she can review the evidence of retaliation for his decision to contest first his illegal deportation and then the Tennessee charges against him. He has formally requested to be deported to Costa Rica.
Abrego’s very good attorney, Sean Hecker, described how much courage it took Abrego to fight this fight:
One of Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, Sean Hecker, said after the detention that the threat of deportation came even as Costa Rica was willing to take him in as a refugee. “The government’s campaign of retribution continues because Mr. Abrego refuses to be coerced into pleading guilty to a case that should never have been brought,” he said.
After the Bolton search, a number of people claimed it represented some new low in Trump’s efforts to demonize his opposition. Such claims always depended on misrepresenting the Durham investigation and ignoring the way Bill Barr’s DOJ framed Joe Biden. But after the confirmation that Durham chased Russian disinformation for two more years after concluding the underlying pretext for his investigation was fabricated, such assertions border on pathology.
That said, the Kilmar Abrego treatment is new; in the first Trump term, after all, DOJ would simply reverse wrongful deportations. So, too, is Trump’s claimed firing of Fed Governor Lisa Cook after Bill Pulte snooped in her mortgage records and conjured up a mortgage fraud referral. This is an Administration pushing the means by which it attempts to criminalize its opponents — but that overreach may (and in Abrego’s case, arguably already has) backfire.
I want to write a series of posts on how and what he is doing.
In this post, I will lay out a kind of topology of what he is doing — and how various executive authorities overlap in them. These attempts are efforts to push the bounds of criminal prosecution, sometimes by forgoing the actual prosecution, sometimes by fabricating evidence.
In a second post, I will discuss the players. It matters that Todd Blanche has been named in two separate vindictive prosecution filings, particularly given the ruling that Alina Habba was not properly acting as US Attorney during the period when DOJ claimed not to have body cameras for two of the key witnesses in the LaMonica McIver prosecution. It matters that Kash Patel, who harbored a grudge against Bolton going back years and included him in his enemies list, gleefully tweeted as the search of Bolton’s home began. It even matters that Pulte appears to be trawling the financial records of Trump’s enemies, even while Trump’s other policies harm the housing industry.
In a third post, I’ll consider outcomes. Trump is doing this for more than just his desire to attack his enemies. But it’s not clear whether, particularly after purging the Department of Justice of competent prosecutors, he can achieve his objectives. As I’ve noted in the past, Trump is trying to satisfy a mob of rabid conspiracy theorists. While I believe the Hunter Biden prosecution raised real concerns, in general, the criminal justice system still adheres to basic laws of gravity. And those rules may thwart Trump’s effort to redefine “justice.”
In a fourth post, I’ll review John Roberts’ opinion in Trump v. US. The opinion did more than immunize Trump’s own crimes; it created conflicts that will soon land before SCOTUS.
Immigration
It is my belief that, on top of being a raging white nationalist, Stephen Miller identified immigration law as an area where the expansiveness of Presidential authority provides ready tools for fascism. After all, Miller plotted for years to use the Alien Enemies Act as a way to send hundreds of men to a concentration camp with no due process, an effort that was thwarted (for now, at least) by the Continuing Resolution that kept government open over the weekend of March 14, Chief Judge James Boasberg’s willingness to work while on vacation, and key disclosures about the lies on which the effort was based.
From that expansive authority, DOJ has explicitly tried to criminalize support for migrants. Last week, for example, Acting Los Angeles US Attorney Bill Essayli crowed that he convinced a grand jury to indict Adrian Andrew Martinez, the kid whom CBP assaulted after he called out their detention of an old guy in his Walmart parking lot. While his indictment (from nearly a week ago) is not yet docketed, the complaint against him claims Martinez was blocking the CBP vehicles. Before charging Martinez, DOJ attempted to subpoena his contacts with media, as if the media will be implicated in this conspiracy.
The charge against Martinez — conspiracy to impede a federal officer — is the same DOJ has used against David Huerta, the President of CA’s SEIU, who also was assaulted at a protest. That case keeps getting continued, which could reflect that it is one of the cases that prosecutors are having a hard time getting a grand jury to indict, or could indicate that politicized prosecutors are using the initial charge to rifle through SEIU coffers to try to substantiate something larger.
There are four other cases where Trump’s DOJ has attempted to criminalize Democrats with a crime for countering DHS’s dragnet.
I suspect that Brad Lander, who was violently detained days before the NYC Mayoral Primary, would have been charged if not for Emil Bove’s prior statements about how even prosecuting Eric Adams was election interference.
Trump’s other key targets — Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, and Newark Congresswoman LaMonica McIver — all did have official purpose to do what Trump is trying to criminalize. But on top of that official purpose, as all three cases moved to discovery, the accused caught the government in apparent false claims. Dugan, for example, claims that DOJ falsely accused her of sending the undocumented man before her down a stairwell (the more damning alleged facts in the case against Judge Shelly Joseph, whom Trump charged in his first term).
2 On this small detail, Judge Dugan follows the government on one of its forays outside the scope of the indictment. It is undisputed—and indisputable, given the video evidence—that E.F.R. entered the public hallway about 15 feet to the right of the usual courtroom door, where two agents watched him emerge. So Judge Dugan never “optimized” the man’s avoidance of federal agents. Contra Dkt. 46 at 28. On the government’s own witness statements, she certainly never directed E.F.R. “to access a stairwell.” Dkt. 46 at 21. To the contrary, she pointed him to the public hallway. None of this is dispositive now, one way or the other, especially because the magistrate judge found these acts part of a judge’s job, Dkt. 43 at 30, and the government does not dispute that finding. But it begs the question why the government overstates or misstates its evidence.
In the Baraka and McIver case, the sworn affidavit of Ricky Patel in the Baraka case does not match the alleged facts in the McIver indictment — and that’s before you get into the missing Body Cam footage in McIver’s case.
Which is to say that Trump’s DOJ is having to make shit up in their quest to criminalize oversight for immigration enforcement.
Revenge
The criminal case against Ksenia Petrova — the Harvard researcher first detained, then arrested, for bringing frog samples into the country — is unclear. Speedy Trial should have expired on that case.
With Abrego, of course, is it much more clear. Rather than move Abrego back to the US and initiate a deportation procedure to a third country, they instead immunized and freed people who’ve committed the crime they’re alleging against Abrego. Two judges reviewed the evidence and both found it so flimsy that it didn’t merit detention. Then, after he accused the government of classic vindictive prosecution — the filing of charges because he availed himself of his rights under the Constitution, they tried to coerce him to plead guilty in order to win deportation to Costa Rica instead of Uganda.
That’s why the stakes on Abrego’s case are so high. He is challenging the government’s bid to ratchet up legal jeopardy when anyone fights for their rights. While so many others lay low in hopes they’ll avoid further targeting, Abrego — perhaps out of necessity — has pushed to vindicate rule of law.
Data dives
Meanwhile the head of Fannie and Freddie, Bill Pulte, appears to be trawling through mortgage records to find dodgy paperwork to refer to Trump’s Director of Weaponization, Eagle Ed Martin. Thus far, Pulte has referred Tish James, Adam Schiff, Lisa Cook, and two more unnamed people.
As Abbe Lowell noted in a latter to Martin regarding his stalking of Attorney General James, somehow Pulte missed that Ken Paxton has one more “primary residence” than Pulte claims that his Dem targets do.
This conclusion is supported by your other appointed title, Special Attorney.Whileprofessing to be acting to address “mortgage fraud,” Attorney General Bondi and you have statedthat your targets are Ms. James (Democratic Attorney General of New York) and Adam Schiff(Democratic Senator of California).Notably, absent from your mandate is Kenneth Paxton(Republican Attorney General of Texas). Given that the same news reports raising questions aboutMs. James and Mr. Schiff have reported that, somehow, Mr. Paxton has three different properties that he claims to be his “primary residence,”3it seems to indicate your title ought really be,“Special Assistant for Mortgage Fraud [Alleged Against Democrats Adverse to President Trump].”
3 Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Senate hopeful, claimed 3 homes as his primary residence,Associated Press (July 24, 2025), https://apnews.com/article/paxton-mortgages-trump-primary-residence-homestead-deduction-bd259b6bd122afcaf4f11eac5a3a152e.
One thing that’s missing from all of this, however, is that Ed Martin is the one receiving these referrals, not a competent prosecutor (note, too, that the metadata of an earlier letter Martin sent Lowell showed that Jared Wise, an FBI agent who incited January 6 rioters to kill cops, was the author of the letter).
These are men who stated their job was to name and shame, not prosecute.
Ed Martin described himself at a press conference as the “captain” of the group that is investigating prosecutors who launched past investigations into Trump and his allies.
“There are some really bad actors, some people that did some really bad things to the American people. And if they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them,” Martin said. “And we will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed. And that’s a fact. That’s the way things work. And so that’s, that’s how I believe the job operates.”
[snip]
“I will say that the prosecutor’s role, and at this moment in our history, is to make clear what the truth is and to get that out,” Martin said. “It can’t be that the system is stifling the truth from coming out because of some procedure.”
Martin said he would have a “more public-facing” role as director of the Weaponization Working Group.
“When I was asked to switch over here, I was told, you know, this job, you need to be out more and talk about what’s going on. So I think we’ll be a little bit more outward facing in terms of talking about what’s happening,” Martin said.
Trump has now claimed to have fired Cook — in spite of a recent Supreme Court ruling that explicitly said the President can only fire Governors for cause, even though Pulte chose to share the referral with someone who brags that he is not conducting himself according to DOJ guidelines.
The extralegal nature of this is of particular concern. In a matter of ten days, a partisan official offered up a Black woman to target, and Trump responded by firing her without the due process he was afforded.
And I expect that Pulte is just the tip of what will soon become an iceberg. Trump has done completely unprecedented consolidation of government-held data (indeed, there’s a new allegation that DOGE is mishandling Social Security data). So we should expect more such attempts to criminalize Trump’s adversaries as his minions data mine more data.
Counter-investigation
Meanwhile, Trump is trying to find a way to claim those who investigated him are themselves criminals.
To be sure, he has already gutted DOJ and FBI of experience by purging those who worked on Trump’s cases (which by purging the really talented prosecutors, might make it harder to succeed with other edge cases DOJ is pursuing).
But Eagle Ed Martin claims to be search for a way to prosecute Tish James. There are hints that DOJ is trying to pursue people like Liz Cheney.
And rather than concerning himself with Trump’s coddling of Russian and China, Tom Cotton referred Jack Smith to Office of Special Counsel for investigation. According to a NYT report, OSC has not contacted Smith or his team at all (suggesting that under Trade Rep Jamieson Greer, the office is not working according to normal protocol). This may be just another attempt to document dive — beyond what Trump himself attempted — to try to invent conflicts where none exists.
Conspiracy theories
Then there’s the at least third attempt to do what John Durham spent four years attempting to do, but failed — to find some way to claim that the counterintelligence and criminal investigation of Trump in 2016 was itself criminal.
The latest incarnation stems from Tulsi Gabbard’s adoption of an obvious conspiracy theory, one based on provably false claims about the shift in the intelligence review in 2016, the content of the Intelligence Community Assessment, and John Clapper’s view of the Steele dossier briefing to Trump.
And then finally there’s the old news — the attempt to mine from prosecution declinations — of Jim Comey under Bill Barr in 2020 and of John Bolton under Merrick Garland sometime in the last four years. Both these investigations attempt to criminalize the men for the same thing Trump was himself charged with: mishandling classified information. They aspire to do so with declination decisions from past prosecutors.
Security clearance
The second area in which Trump is exploiting expansive Executive authority is in security clearances. He started his term by stripping security clearance from any of the 51 spooks who truthfully said that the Hunter Biden hard drive packaged as a laptop had the hallmarks of a Russian influence operation. A move to strip the security clearance of anyone in the Big Law firms he targeted is the one aspect of those Executive Orders that might survive on appeal (Trump has appealed all those decisions, on delayed basis). There were select cases of targeting — perhaps most importantly, Mark Zaid, since Zaid is one of the defense attorneys with most experience adjudicating clearance issues. And then in recent weeks, Tulsi started stripping the clearance of top spies based on her conspiracy theories.
The expansiveness of Presidential power on this issue will matter in criminal cases insofar as it prevents someone like John Bolton from enjoining the witch hunt into him.
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-26-at-4.21.41-PM.png450448emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2025-08-26 12:03:532025-08-26 12:10:00Two Maryland Men and a Michigan Woman: A Topology Trump’s Witch Hunts
Donald Trump, who was charged for obstructing the certification of Joe Biden’s vote on January 6, 2021 and who pardoned 1,500 of his fellow Jan6ers — hundreds of whom assaulted cops — on his first day on the job, will hold a press conference today to announce he will put criminals in DC in jail where they belong. “The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong. It’s all going to happen very fast.”
Trump also promises to evict the unhoused — people like Taylor Taranto, who was living out of his van when he took the address for Barack Obama that Trump posted on Truth Social and started stalking Obama’s Kalorama neighborhood. Trump pardoned Taranto’s January 6 trespassing charges, but not the weapons charges tied to Obama.
Trump must, then, be promising to oust Cory Mills.
Back in February, police responded to a call at Congressman Mills’ home and found (one of) Mills’ girlfriends with “visible injuries.”
The first police report, provided to News4 by a source and confirmed by a second source familiar with the investigation, said: “(Her significant other for over a year) grabbed her, shoved her, and pushed her out of the door.” The report says she showed the officer “bruises on her arm which appeared fresh.”
The first report goes on to note that during a phone call between the significant other and alleged victim, she “let officers hear Subject 1 [now identified by MPD as Mills] instruct her to lie about the origin of her bruises … Eventually, Subject 1 made contact with police and admitted that the situation escalated from verbal to physical, but it was severe enough to create bruising.”
When police arrived, the woman was in the lobby of the Salamander hotel next door. The report says an officer was “able to immediately identify [the alleged victim] out of all other patrons in the lobby by her demeanor: physically shaking and scared.”
According to the report, the responding police officer told the subject he would be placed under arrest. But then the woman approached police and recanted the details, including where the bruises came from. News4 reached out to the responding officer but has not heard back.
After the girlfriend, Sarah Raviani, backed off the allegations, the US Attorney’s Office — then led by Eagle Ed Martin– refused to sign an arrest warrant.
A spokesperson for MPD said Monday the department sent the U.S. Attorney’s office a warrant for Mills’ arrest, but that warrant was never signed.
When asked about it, Eagle Ed — who was made head of DOJ’s weaponization after Republicans refused to confirm him as US Attorney, has espoused a “name” and “shame” approach for Trump’s political enemies who cannot be charged — declined to comment, stating, “it is improper to discuss cases before criminal charges are filed.”
Cory Mills denies the assault allegations in DC.
The assault allegations in DC led another of his then-girlfriends, Lindsey Langston, to break up with Mills. In a complaint filed in Florida, she alleges that Mills has threatened to release revenge porn against her.
Mills continued to harass Langston for months, she reported to police last month, despite repeated requests to be left alone. As part of a police report she made on July 14, 2025, she provided local and state investigators with timestamped digital evidence to support her allegations, which she also shared with Drop Site.
“The threats from Cory intensified over time,” she told Drop Site. “From emotional manipulation, to physical violence against whoever I date in the future, to threats of having me stripped of the Miss United States crown… something I worked extremely hard for and a dream that was placed in my heart long before I even knew who Cory Mills was.”
The evidence covers months of interactions and includes text messages in which Mills—who says he separated from his wife in 2022—warned Langston he posed a threat to anyone she wanted to date in the future (“Strap up, cowboy,” he said in one text) and threatened to release private images shared in the context of their relationship. Langston submitted the evidence to back up an incident report she filed with the Columbia County sheriff’s office last month.
“Since February 20th of 2025 Cory has contacted Lindsey numerous times on numerous different accounts threatening to release nude images and videos of her, to include recorded videos of her and Cory engaging in sexual acts,” the police report says.
Drop Site sent a detailed comment request to Mills, who said the accusations were untrue. Before he replied to Drop Site, Mills called Langston from Raviani’s number, then sent several text messages asking her to take back her allegations, saying, “Only you can stop this,” and “I understand you [sic] mom is going through a lot of mental health issues.”
Trump mostly is making today’s announcement because Ed “Big Balls” Coristine was assaulted recently after some teenagers attempted to steal his girlfriend’s car.
DC’s Metropolitan Police did arrest two of Big Balls’ alleged assailants.
But if Trump wants to pretend to care about crime in DC — the kind of crime he has personally stoked — then surely he’ll at least oust Cory Mills?
Share this entry
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Cory-Mills.jpeg561547emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2025-08-11 04:13:392025-08-11 05:37:44“Strap Up, Cowboy:” Will Donald Trump Oust Cory Mills?
As part of an Executive Order ordering Pam Bondi to start a witch hunt against Joe Biden’s aides, Donald Trump implied that the only reason Joe Biden was not prosecuted for harboring classified documents was “his incompetent mental state.”
The Department of Justice, for example, concluded that, despite clear evidence that Biden had broken the law, he should not stand trial owing to his incompetent mental state.
That’s a wild misstatement of the record, starting with the fact that the only documents that Robert Hur showed Biden wittingly took — his notebooks and a memo he sent to Barack Obama about withdrawing from Afghanistan — Biden believed he could take based on DOJ’s treatment of Ronald Reagan.
But let’s take the premise on its face.
Donald Trump — who was charged by a Special Counsel appointed on the same basis as Hur was — claims that Joe Biden would have been legitimately prosecuted if only he weren’t senile.
Wow, Donny, you just said that Aileen Cannon was wrong for dismissing the case against you!!!
Let’s go, baby!
This whole thing (especially the order to David Warrington to review which orders Biden signed with an autopen) is a grotesque nuisance. As with Trump’s apparent waiver of Biden’s Executive Privilege invocation on his own Special Counsel interviews, it presents a troubling breach of Executive equities of precisely the kind of that Trump never stopped wailing about when he was investigated.
But I really think this order, like so much of Trump and Eagle Ed Martin’s push to review what Biden did while serving as President in his late 70s, could backfire in spectacular ways.
For example, Trump is trying to criminalize White House aides lying to the public about the mental and physical state of the President.
Investigation. (a) The Counsel to the President, in consultation with the Attorney General and the head of any other relevant executive department or agency (agency), shall investigate, to the extent permitted by law, whether certain individuals conspired to deceive the public about Biden’s mental state and unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the President. This investigation shall address:
(i) any activity, coordinated or otherwise, to purposefully shield the public from information regarding Biden’s mental and physical health;
(ii) any agreements between Biden’s aides to cooperatively and falsely deem recorded videos of the President’s cognitive inability as fake;
(iii) any agreements between Biden’s aides to require false, public statements elevating the President’s capabilities; and
(iv) the purpose of these activities, including to assert the authorities of the President. [my emphasis]
We don’t even have to consider what Trump has done — the incidences of mental breakdowns — in the past five months to get to things that Trump wants to treat as a crime. After all, Trump’s White House went to great lengths to lie to the public about how COVID nearly killed him. All the reports from Trump’s physicians are riddled with obvious false claims.
This order would make it a crime to lie about how fat Donny is!!
Plus there are a number of things — starting with the Alien Enemies Act declaration — that Trump claims he did not personally do. This EO would make it a crime for whoever did make that declaration (cough).
And the push to review whether Biden was cognizant for the pardons of his family members? Have at it. Particularly given some obvious errors made in the pardon for January 6ers (such as a commutation for Jeremy Bertino, who had not been sentenced), we’ll just start chipping away at the pardons for Trump’s cop assailants and adjudged terrorists.
The entire premise of this EO is that things Trump and his White Houses have done — from lying about his weight and height to his theft of classified documents — must be prosecuted.
Share this entry
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Screen-Shot-2022-08-31-at-6.40.53-AM.png11481718emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2025-06-05 09:24:212025-06-05 09:33:48Donald Trump Declares He Should Have Faced Trial
The lawsuit [docket] by nine FBI agents attempting to prevent the public release of a list of the names of all agents who worked on January 6 has detoured into a debate about Eagle Ed Martin’s frustrations with rule of law.
That debate provides useful background to something going on more generally — the Trump Administration’s effort to sustain the conspiracism that fuels MAGAt in the face of judges and a law built around evidence.
After Eagle Ed failed to secure Senate confirmation to be US Attorney and was instead moved to head DOJ’s Weaponization and Pardon offices (in the latter of which he is considering freeing the men convicted of plotting to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer), Eagle Ed went on a media blitz promising to name and shame those he had long targeted as villains, but whose villainy consisted of no more than substantiating the crimes that Trump and his mob had committed.
There are some really bad actors. Some people that did some really bad things to the American people. And if they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them. And we will name them and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are shamed. And that’s a fact. That’s the way things work. And so, that’s how I believe the job operates. [emphasis original]
Plaintiffs pointed to this appearance, arguing that Eagle Ed’s promise to name and shame his targets confirmed the concerns of the plaintiffs that a list compiled in the first days of the Administration would be released to help freed insurrectionists retaliate against FBI agents. The government responded by claiming that Eagle Ed would follow DOJ rules (as if Pam Bondi’s DOJ follows even court rules about public comment!). Plaintiffs replied by quoting still more appearances from Eagle Ed’s media tour, including his complaints that he can’t get what he calls the truth out in Article III courts.
Mr. Martin’s comments during his May 15, 2025 interviews lead to several conclusions. First, he views his perceived mandate to “name” and “shame” as a legitimate alternative to following basic standards of federal criminal procedure. Second, he has indicated he is unconcerned about the consequences if he improperly or unlawfully “names” and “shames” government employees. (“Watch me” and “let the chips fall where they may.”) Third, he believes that the trigger to “name it and shame it” is when something does not personally “make sense” to him. This is particularly troubling when considering Mr. Martin’s frequently publicized views about the events of January 6, 2021, which includes his own representation of several criminal defendants and his dismissal of one of those cases as United States Attorney. 5
For example, on or about May 14, 2025, Mr. Martin sat for a one hour, twenty minute broad-ranging interview with television personality Tucker Carlson.6 On the January 6 riots, he lamented that “[m]illions of Americans are falling victim to the hoaxes, one after the other, and if you fall victim to the January 6th hoax, that it was an insurrection, armed, and this close to the end, then you might . . . rant and rave and things like that.”7 To say the least, this indicates a vast departure from the Department of Justice’s previous position that the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol was not a hoax, and in fact involved the commission of serious, violent crimes. Far from enjoying the presumption of regularity, today’s Department of Justice is anything but regular. Al-Hela v. Biden, 66 F.4th 217, 237 (D.C. Cir. 2023) (“[The presumption of regularity] can be rebutted if a petitioner demonstrates internal inconsistencies or inconsistencies with other evidence.”).
After discussing his suspicions about the FBI’s involvement in January 6, including in the FBI’s investigation into the pipe bombs found near political party headquarters that day, Mr. Martin again addressed his frustration with Article III courts, and emphasized why publicizing private information is preferable to going through established procedures:
Mr. Martin: And by the way, one of the reasons why I say information is so key, you can’t, we can’t win the Article III battle fast enough. We can fight it, and we can eventually win lots of them, you can’t win it fast enough to get the progress we need, in terms of our, so you’ve got to be doing the information from . . .
Mr. Carlson: For people watching, what’s the Article III battle?
Mr. Martin: Yea, the Article III means like, the federal courts, we’re in federal courts, the President says you can’t let people come into the country, and then the courts say nationwide injunction, then you know you’re not allowed to do that, and you’re constantly in court. You know, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. has all of the cases of when the government is sued, and the President is sued, they all come into our office on the civil side, and so you see all that stuff coming in. During the Biden administration, the conservatives were suing in Texas, it was friendlier judges, now it’s in D.C. So you’re in the courts, fighting to get the truth out, fighting to make these things, prosecutions and all, but they take a longer time than just getting the word out, right? Getting the information out. I just, I feel like it’s a different moment in history, and that’s how I was as U.S. Attorney, that’s why you saw, people saw so much outfacing action, because I wasn’t just looking at courts, I was looking at making an argument for the public so they could see the policies.8
5 See Andrew Perez, Trump’s New Federal Attorney Withdrew Jan. 6 Charge Against His Own Client, Rolling Stone, Feb. 5, 2025 and United States v. Padilla, 1:21-cr-214-JDB (D.D.C.), Unopposed Motion to Dismiss Case by USA, ECF No. 125.
6 Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LotMJAdWyOs (last visited May 22, 2025). 7 Id. beginning at approximately 00:09:00. [my emphasis]
Eagle Ed doesn’t want to take the time to build cases. He wants to make an argument.
The problem, of course (besides those pesky rules on public comment), is that Eagle Ed’s “arguments” have no basis in reality, and never have. The problem Article III courts pose for Eagle Ed is they review the evidentiary claims the government makes. And once courts start reviewing conspiracy theories of the sort Eagle Ed favors, they poke holes in them.
A politically fraught investigation opened by the Trump administration into a Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency grant program has so far failed to find meaningful evidence of criminality by government officials, according to people familiar with the matter.
[snip]
While the investigation of some entities that received money through the program is continuing, agents and prosecutors see little evidence of any criminal conduct by E.P.A. officials who oversaw the funding. The vendor portion of the inquiry has yet to yield any strong evidence of criminal conduct, according to people with knowledge of the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Prosecutors and agents have shared their findings with senior political leaders at the Justice Department, according to people familiar with the matter.
When you chase James O’Keefe propaganda, it turns out to be false … what a shock!
Most of Eagle Ed’s complaints were directed at civil cases (where judges do keep catching DOJ in lie after lie after lie). But as Pam Bondi’s DOJ moves to weaponizing DOJ via criminal charges, it will likely become a still bigger problem.
In the criminal cases charging Democratic officials, Judge Hannah Dugan, Ras Baraka, and LaMonica McIver, the facts claimed using criminal complaints rather than grand juries deviate at least partly from reality and the inflammatory claims Trump’s aides have made publicly deviate further still.
For example, county officials released video from Judge Hannah Dugan’s interactions with an ICE team. Among other things, it clarifies that the doorway whence Eduardo Flores-Ruiz reentered the hallway from Judge Dugan’s courtroom was closer to the Chief Judge’s office where Dugan had sent the officers working with ICE than her own courtroom door; if she was really trying to hide him, she did a poor job of it. It also shows two DEA guys (possibly one of the ones she sent away) watch Flores-Ruiz just walk away down that hallway without arrest, undermining the claim that she concealed him (though success at concealing someone is not required to convict).
In New Jersey, the government told a different story in the felony criminal complaint against Congresswoman McIver, sworn out by HSI Special Agent Robert Tansey before Magistrate Judge Stacey Adams, than HSI Special Agent in Charge Rickey Patel swore out in the criminal complaint against Baraka before Magistrate Judge André Espinosa. Homeland Security told one story to a judge on May 9 and another story to a different judge on May 19.
The complaint against Baraka based its claim that Newark’s Mayor knowingly trespassed by pointing to the chainlink fence and No Trespassing signs.
3. The Delaney Hall Facility is surrounded by chain-link fences and is accessible only through granted access. In addition to maintaining security, it likewise displays No Trespassing signage.
But the complaint against McIver confesses that a security guard let Baraka in.
5. Perimeter cameras show that when the security gate of Delaney Hall opened momentarily to allow a vehicle to enter into the secure area of the facility, McIVER and two other members of Congress moved quickly inside the secured area as the gate closed.
6. Once the group entered the secured area, the Mayor arrived thereafter at the facility and was told he could not enter without authorization.
7. However, the Mayor returned with members of his security detail and was able to enter inside the gate because the guard was under the impression that the Mayor was part of the Congressional delegation.
8. While McIVER and the Mayor were in the secured area of the facility, V-1, an HSI agent, approached the Mayor and ordered him to leave the facility’s secure area.
9. V-1 spent approximately five minutes repeatedly ordering the Mayor to leave and issued multiple warnings that he would be arrested if he did not do so.
10. McIVER and the other Congresspersons overheard this conversation and challenged V-1, protesting the Mayor’s removal. V-1 explained to them that “Congress people are different,” indicating members of Congress had lawful authority to be there, and that the Mayor did not.
11. After numerous warnings to leave, and numerous warnings of potential arrest, the HSI agent announced he was going to place the Mayor under arrest. McIVER interjected, yelling “Hell no! Hell no! Hell no!” The HSI agent ordered the Mayor to put his hands behind his back and displayed his handcuffs. McIVER and other members of Congress surrounded the Mayor and prevented HSI from handcuffing him and taking him into custody.
12. McIVER initially remained inside the secured area as the Mayor was then movedoutside the gate.[my emphasis]
These details of the complaint against McIver will be hotly contested. WaPo did a good assessment of what the video evidence shows. It shows Baraka remained unchallenged inside the perimeter of the facility for almost 45 minutes. WaPo describes that after an initial confrontation and after a guard told Baraka to “walk out,” he did (which is consistent with Baraka’s own claims), as compared to the complaint’s description that the Mayor, “was moved outside,” using the passive voice.
For nearly 45 minutes, Baraka remained just inside the secured area, occasionally chatting with members of his security detail, according to time-stamped videos. Then, at around 2:33 p.m., Homeland Security agents exited the building and confronted Baraka. In snippets of the conversation captured in video, agents told Baraka he had to leave because he was not a member of Congress. The three members of Congress joined the discussion as it grew tense.
Minutes later, video shows, an agent took a step toward Baraka, and Watson Coleman can be heard urging calm.
Referencing that moment, the Justice Department’s complaint said a Homeland Security agent ordered the mayor to “put his hands behind his back and displayed his handcuffs.”
McIver grew animated, calling the agent’s intervention “unnecessary” and “ugly.” One of the agents can be heard in videos saying: “All right, then. Walk out.”
At 2:39 p.m., within moments of that remark, and six minutes after agents first confronted Baraka, he turned and walked away, arm-in-arm with Watson Coleman. The guard reopened the gate, and Baraka exited to an area in front of the facility, recessed from the sidewalk.
Then, after Baraka walked out, the guards plotted to arrest him within earshot of Rob Menendez, Jr, who warned Baraka.
With concerns about Baraka’s presence seemingly resolved, the three House members returned to the building for a tour, according to interviews with congressional staffers. The mayor remained outside the gate, speaking with reporters and protesters. Inside the building, congressional staffers said, lawmakers saw agents huddled and overheard them discussing plans to arrest the mayor.
Menendez then quickly exited the building and approached the gate, videos show. He spoke to Baraka through the chain-link fence, warning that agents were going to arrest him.
About a dozen agents then massed behind the fence. Some pulled masks up over their faces, and the group exited the facility gate and approached Baraka with handcuffs.
This was a premeditated confrontation on public land. And, WaPo describes, after Baraka’s arrest, the members of Congress — including McIver — returned to the facility.
After the scrum, agents accompanied McIver and the other House members as they resumed their tour of the facility — part of nearly two hours combined she remained on the grounds.
As Menendez noted in an interview with the Hill, “If you would witness an assault of an officer, you would not bring a group of people in to do a tour for 45 minutes.”
The government’s priorities — first arresting Baraka for trespassing after he left the premises into which he had been freely admitted, then letting McIver back in after she purportedly assaulted two officers — betrays what a stunt this is. And all that’s before you look at Kristi Noem’s typically batshit comments, which DHS did not defend when WaPo inquired about them.
Speaking about the events outside the Delaney Hall detention facility, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem last week testified to Congress that a “mob of protesters including three members of Congress stormed the gate and they trespassed into the detention facility.” Her department published a news release claiming the lawmakers used an arriving “bus of detainees” as a decoy to gain entrance, then “holed up in a guard shack.” A department spokeswoman said lawmakers attacked officers, including “body slamming a female ICE officer.”
The videos examined by The Post did not support those descriptions of the events, and the government did not include them in its charges against McIver. In response to a request for comment, Noem did not directly address The Post’s findings about her remarks but noted in a statement that McIver had been charged. “No one is above the law,” she said.
Noem’s thugs ginned up this confrontation and then she blew them out of proportion. None of their actions — letting Baraka remain uncontested for a period, arresting Baraka after he left, allowing McIver back in after she purportedly assaulted them — make sense. But having ginned up that confrontation, with Noem further escalating them with false claims, DOJ had to do something. They first charged, then abandoned charges against Baraka. Now they’re attempting to prosecute McIver. And if this goes to trial, all the equivocations will be evidence of the unreliability of those behind the arrest.
The clown show has not gone unnoticed.
In comments made while dismissing the case against Baraka, Judge Epsinosa admonished Stephen Demanovich, the AUSA who picked up the Baraka case from a colleague and who is listed as the lead prosecutor in the case against McIver, for charging Baraka before investigating what really happened.
Mr. Demanovich, beyond those 9.5 million constituents and above any individual or agency interests, federal prosecutors serve a singular paramount client: Justice itself.
Your role is not to secure convictions at all costs, nor to satisfy public clamor, nor to advance political agendas.
[snip]
The hasty arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, followed swiftly by the dismissal of these trespassing charges a mere 13 days later, suggests a worrisome misstep by your Office. An arrest, particularly of a public figure, is not a preliminary investigative tool. It is a severe action, carrying significant reputational and personal consequences, and it should only be undertaken after a thorough, dispassionate evaluation of credible evidence.
[snip]
The apparent rush in this case culminating today in the embarrassing retraction of charges suggests failure to adequately investigate to carefully gather facts and to thoughtfully consider the implications of your actions before wielding your immense power Your Office must operate with higher standard than that.
This is something I’ve been anticipating, as Trump and Eagle Ed and Pam Bondi and Noem promise prosecutions: They’re creating the expectation among Trump’s mob that there will be slam dunk prosecutions — precisely the same thing Eagle Ed kept promising but failing to substantiate — but in the process demonstrating the government’s unreliability. “[T]oday’s Department of Justice is anything but regular,” the nine FBI agent plaintiffs argued, because the government has “demonstrate[d] internal inconsistencies or inconsistencies with other evidence.”
I’m interested in this for two reasons: first, the possibility that these prosecutions will backfire, not just by creating sympathetic political martyrs, but also by further exposing Bondi and her top aides as liars violating legal ethics. Just as important, I’m interested in whether, as Trump’s people have to abandon false claims when faced with judges, they’ll lose credibility with Trump’s rubes.
Several people entertained the latter possibility after Dan Bongino and Kash Patel debunked conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein’s death last week.
“Listen, they have a right to their opinion,” Patel replied. But given his own experience and background, he said, “you know a suicide when you see one, and that’s what that was.”
“He killed himself,” Bongino added. “I have seen the whole file. He killed himself.”
Conspiracy expert Mike Rothschild reflected on the event and contemplated the possibility that conspiracists may no longer get away with contradicting their own past claims.
[B]ecause contradiction is inherent to conspiracism, nobody minds if a trusted and cherished influencer says something wildly at odds with something they said another time. Sure, Mike Flynn can support QAnon while also saying QAnon is nonsense, or Alex Jones can get unreasonably excited about Trump seizing total power despite having spent years decrying presidents who sought total power. It doesn’t matter, because these people are trusted. And trust is everything among people who don’t trust anyone.
But that might be changing, and recent adventures in contradiction haven’t gone well for major figures in conspiracism. We might be going back to a time when certain ideas in fringe spheres are so ingrained and taken as infallible gospel to the point where even these trusted figures can’t go against them.
As Trump 2.0 grinds on, and the brain-rotting of the west accelerates at Ludicrous Speed, even major figures in the world of cranks and frauds are running up against the immovable object of their conspiracies moving past the need for the people who popularized them. The idea is starting to outweigh the person who communicates the idea. And it’s a shift that doesn’t bode well for many major figures in the intersection of politics, conspiracy, and commerce.
[snip]
No matter how much the conspiracy faithful like or trust Patel and Bongino, it’s not enough to override their belief in the idea of Epstein being murdered (probably by the Clintons) and his death made the subject of a coverup. That idea is sacrosanct to them. It is unshakable. And it’s telling that even two of the biggest purveyors of conspiracy theories in American politics didn’t embrace it in an official capacity when they had the chance to.
And now they’ve lost the trust of their audiences, at least for now. They can probably recover from this and sweep it away with some kind of justification, but the two are finding that it’s a lot easier to spout nonsense from the sidelines than it is to have to deal with it personally – particularly when your boss is connected to the guy at the center of the conspiracy theory.
Bump provides a possible explanation why: conspiracy theories are the weapon of the weak, not people in powerful positions like FBI Deputy Director.
“Powerful people can’t use conspiracy theories very well,” Joseph Uscinski, associate professor of political science at the University of Miami and the co-author of “American Conspiracy Theories,” told me in 2017. “They’re tools of the weak to attack the powerful. But what we’ve seen in this instance is … Trump has built his entire machine on conspiracy theories.”
He’s built his machine in that way because reality doesn’t comport with his rhetoric. His claims about immigration or his criminal cases or Joe Biden are indefensible if left to rely on actual evidence. So he relies instead on rumors, lies and baseless claims. It works largely because he’s built a universe of compliant voices — like Bongino’s — in an isolated information environment. He can make obviously false statements and be confident that his supporters will never encounter (much less seek out) the countervailing evidence.
He’s also more adept at keeping the conspiracy theories alive. This is someone who, as president, refused to disavow adherents of QAnon, a bizarre theory about how he was secretly battling a cabal of Democrats and movie stars who were stealing children and extracting chemicals from them. (“I know nothing about it,” he said of the movement at one point. “I do know they are very much against pedophilia.”) He never flatly rejects any idea that his base supports, from theories about Epstein’s death to false claims about vaccines.
Others in his administration can’t do that as readily.
In some cases, reality is rewritten to accommodate the argument advanced by Trump. Experts who rejected a link between a Venezuelan gang and that country’s government were fired. Tattoos on a man sent to El Salvador are presented as reading “MS-13” when they don’t.
In other cases, the can just keeps getting kicked down the road. When Attorney General Pam Bondi (Patel’s boss) attempted to meet the roar of demand for ties between Epstein and prominent people on the left, she invited right-wing social media influencers to the White House and handed them binders of already available material. It was a flop — so Bondi keeps promising more to come. Those promises, incidentally, are one reason that the backlash against Patel and Bongino was so robust.
You can manipulate public releases — Eagle Ed’s preferred tactic — by cherry picking and relying on propagandists. Stephen Miller deliberately pursued a legal tactic, the Alien Enemies Act, he believed afforded him the ability to make shit up about human beings with no pushback.
But, thus far at least, criminal cases are different, because they come with Speedy Trial deadlines, the ability to confront accusers, and — in the case of public events captured by video — compelling proof of government lies or overreach.
For now, until Trump packs the courts with more judges who adopt his conspiracy theories, DOJ will be a uniquely important sphere where Trump officials like Bongino will face the awkward moments where conspiracy theories experience gravity, where even past enthusiastic adherents to conspiracy theories cannot sustain them, where Eagle Ed attempts to resort to name and shame rather than criminally charge the people who arrested thousands of January 6 mobsters. Even Pam Bondi, one of the most rabid parrots of Trump’s propaganda, has earned the distrust of Trump’s rubes with her own failure to deliver proof of the Epstein conspiracy theories.
None of that eliminates the pain and legal risk of those targeted with Trump’s legal conspiracies. Baraka’s lawyer, Rahul Agarwal, cataloged the cost being unjustly charged had had in just two short weeks.
MR AGARWAL Judge the only other thing I’d say and I think it’s worth noting publicly is you know the fact of this dismissal 10 days after the charges were — or lodged nearly two weeks after the charges were lodged does not undo the things that happened over the last two weeks; namely the fact that the mayor was detained for five hours in custody and the fact that he’s been under these criminal charges We can’t erase those things And think it’s worth noting that notwithstanding this dismissal the mayor had to undergo you know public scrutiny and interrogation and detention all because of charges that are now being dismissed.
None of that guarantees the effort to use DOJ as an instrument of Trump’s conspiracies will fail. And we saw in the Michael Sussmann and Igor Danchenko cases — Trump’s prior attempt to weaponize DOJ — that the cost can extend far beyond five hours of detention.
But there’s a way in which Trump and Bondi and Eagle Ed’s abuse of DOJ could backfire. Because it creates a sphere in which the legal claims made in court and the political claims made on Fox News dramatically split. It creates a sphere in which those stoking conspiracy theories, like Bongino, publicly debunk them. It creates the possibility that those seizing power by selling fear of the Deep State become it.
Share this entry
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-26-at-16.51.30.png564472emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2025-05-27 02:09:592025-05-27 02:09:59The Law, Conspiracism, and Gravity
Thom Tillis has made a lukewarm announcement making it clear he would not vote to confirm Eagle Ed Martin to be US Attorney for DC.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) said he informed the White House that he opposed naming Trump’s interim appointee to a full four-year term.
“If Mr. Martin were being put forth as a U.S. attorney for any district except the district where Jan. 6 happened, the protest happened, I’d probably support him,” Tillis, who is up for reelection next year, told reporters. “But not in this district.”
[snip]
“We have to be very, very clear that what happened on January the 6th was wrong. It was not prompted or created by other people to put those people in trouble. They made a stupid decision, and they disgraced the United States by absolutely destroying the Capitol,” Tillis told reporters. “There were some people that were over-prosecuted, but there were some two or three hundred of them that should have never gotten a pardon, and he [Martin] agreed with that.”
There’s wiggle room here. Tillis suggested he would vote for Martin in some other district — perhaps his native Missouri (where Trump nominated a slate of nutjob judicial appointees yesterday). One of Martin’s little hobbies has been to pester medical journals at RFK Jr’s behest to suggest science is an impermissible bias, and there is no more jurisdiction in DC for such things than in Missouri.
And while Chuck Grassley has made it clear he won’t call Martin up for a vote unless he knows it’ll pass, he has also suggested the nomination might not be dead (Lisa Murkowski is a likely no vote; it’s unclear if there are four no votes if the full Senate got the nomination).
In response the MAGAt mob has done what the MAGAt mob does best: froth and threaten. Some have started conspiracy theories suggesting that Tillis’ opposition stems from something other than the insurrection, such as corrupt real estate deals. Others have called to replace Tillis on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Perhaps the most interesting response is a call to have Lara Trump, who is originally from North Carolina, primary Tillis next year.
It’s never a good idea to underestimate the cowardice of elected Republicans. If Tillis holds out until May 20, thought, Trump either needs to replace Martin (some have suggested he should simply replace Martin with Matt Gaetz, which honestly wouldn’t be a horrible trade — that’s how shitty Martin is), or the judges in the DC District will name someone to serve in the interim.
But if Tillis does hold out, particularly if he holds out in the face of primary threats, it will neutralize a lot of the power of these mobs (some of which, led by Laura Loomer, are increasingly focused on internecine fights).
The MAGAt mob only has power so long as Trump can offer the target something of value. If the response here is to make reelection impossible (or to give Tillis the kind of distance from Trump that might be useful in a swing state), then the target in question would be liberated to act on conscience. For example, Tillis could start to honor the needs of the many service members in North Carolina rather than carry water for Trump’s disastrous Secretary of Defense.
It’s still far too early to declare Martin’s nomination to be dead. But one way or another, Tillis’ public opposition to Martin may create space in the Senate that thus far doesn’t exist.
Share this entry
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-08-at-12.30.50 PM.png11561024emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2025-05-08 07:42:302025-05-08 07:42:30The Diminishable Returns of MAGAt Mobs
Last week, I wrote a post about the five ways Trump is sabotaging America. Those included:
The original Project 2025 plan, an Orbanist plot to turn the US into an elected authoritarian government
DOGE [sic], which is often mistaken for Project 2025, but which is far more reckless and destructive and as such has created far more backlash than Project 2025 might otherwise have
Trump’s useful idiots, like the HHS Secretary who is barely responding to a Measles outbreak
The personalization of DOJ, protecting not only Trump, but also his favored criminals
Trump’s capitulation to Russia
As I’ve been puzzling through the, in my opinion, catastrophic distraction of Democratic in-fighting over how to respond to the SOTU, I came to realize one source of the general frustration. A lot of people still don’t understand there’s a natural division of labor in who should fight fascists how, one which is similar to those five areas of sabotage. As a result, there’s a demand that the national Democratic Party (appear to) take the lead on everything, a demand that invites those complaining to outsource their own agency completely, as if they simply hire people to do their politics for them every two or four years.
The demand that Hakeem Jeffries take the lead on issues that really aren’t central to his job breeds passivity and frustration and distracts from stuff being done by others better positioned to do so.
The national Dems are not the best suited for some of this, partly because civil society has more freedom and standing to sue, partly because within the Democratic party, local parties (and future candidates) should take the lead, and partly because polarization is going to be a big barrier to effective mobilization elsewhere. If a Black or Jewish Democrat from New York pushes an issue, those we need to mobilize will be far less likely to respond because their very identities have become defined in opposition to urban America (and all the euphemisms that entails). Moreover, the Democratic Party’s job is to shepherd legislation and win elections, and the fight against fascism is both broader than and more urgent than elections 20 months away.
I want to use this post to lay out what I mean by that, and also as a way to catalog some of what has been done, but also some areas where more needs to be done by precisely the kind of people who spent a week screaming at Democrats.
DOGE [sic]
I make a distinction here between combatting DOGE and other policy considerations. That’s true because — as has been true from the very start, civil society and Democratic Attorneys General and people who’ve been fired are better situated to fight DOGE in the courts, because they can get standing. On the legal front, there has been mixed success, with Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger giving up his termination challenge (but not before helping to save thousands of jobs and creating a precedent that reinforced other legal decisions) after an adverse ruling in the DC Circuit, but with others — most importantly two lawsuits representing USAID providers — surviving the first review from SCOTUS.
Tracking these lawsuits is as overwhelming for people as tracking the actual legal investigations into Trump was, with the result (I suspect) that people don’t see them. The good, the bad, and the promising — it’s all a blur. Plus, legal challenges are slow.
But we’re learning more and more from these lawsuits already, which is having a snowball effect, just a bit of which appears in this post (on this page, I’m tracking lawsuit declarations I find particularly interesting).
The most interesting developments this week may be several different lawsuits challenging DOGE on an Appointments Clause theory, basically that Elon is exercising the kind of authority that would require Senate confirmation.
Because DOGE has been so disorganized, DOJ’s lawyers are being fed garbage to, in turn, feed courts in good faith. And then, over and over, Trump ends up saying things that debunk what the lawyers have been fed to say. Judges are beginning to get fed up, and are granting plaintiffs more discovery. Anna Bower has been tracking this Calvinball relentlessly.
The other civil society success — perhaps the biggest ones so far — are the calls, town halls, and protests that outside groups like Indivisible and Tesla Takedown have organized. These have significantly increased the discomfort of Republicans. While, thus far, that has led only to some pathetic meetings where they ask Elon to stop fucking everything up, the recent focus on the VA and Social Security may raise their discomfort further.
One thing that could be better organized, locally, would be to magnify the stories of those affected by DOGE cuts. As I said last week, rather than turning government workers into villains, DOGE had made the importance of government visible. And the people being arbitrarily and cruelly fired are the daughters and sons of communities that have a distorted understanding of government. This story-telling, done by word of mouth and local press, likely is better served if it has no overt tie to the Democratic party, because otherwise polarization may undercut the lessons of the firings. But it is the kind of thing that can be done in letters to the editor in local newspapers.
Journalists continue to track DOGE’s bullshit claims of savings (I’m attempting to track such debunkings here). Where we need to get better — and this is something people should do on calls to their members of Congress — is to emphasize the way Republicans have ceded the Federal government to Elon’s DOGE boys even though their claims of savings are fraudulent (to say nothing of the kind of past associations, such as ties to sketchy Russian NGOs, that would disqualify them in any half-serious background check). Think about ways to mock Republicans for being so stupid they keep falling for Elon’s bullshit claims, even as he confesses he keeps misplacing Ebola prevention and similar things.
Entitlements and Funding Government
DC Democrats have to do several things in the days — and it is just days — ahead. First, they have to optimize the outcome of a continuing resolution, either by withholding votes and making Republicans own a shutdown or by joining in a continuing resolution that limits Trump’s ability to ignore Congress’ appropriations (or better yet, adds weight to the legal challenges) going forward.
Republicans are attempting to get a year-long continuing resolution on their own. If they do, it’ll be a first, but could well be the source of contention going forward.
The other thing Democrats need to do is either save Medicaid (and Social Security) or make Republicans own any cuts too, as well as the tax cuts for people like Elon Musk. This provides the opportunity to sow dissension within the Republican party. Charles Gaba has calculations of how many people rely on Medicaid, by district, which can be useful when calling Members.
House Republicans only managed to pass a budget through a gimmick: by ordering House Energy and Commerce to come up with $880 billion in cuts, but without mentioning what those cuts will obviously be: Medicaid. But the Congressional Budget Office this week called that out, holding that the only way they can fulfill the terms of that budget is with the cuts they’ve tried to hide.
The math is impossible. And because it is impossible, Republicans will have a very hard time not taking each other out (or creating useful defections). Meanwhile, they’ll be doing that while justifying tax cuts for the richest man in the world.
Thus far, Trump’s threats have kept Republicans unified. But that may well break down in days ahead (and if it doesn’t, Democrats have to be prepared to make Republicans own the consequences).
DOJ
From the start, I’ve thought two things might lead the corrupt incompetence at DOJ to blow up on itself (on top of the aforementioned good faith lawyers being stuck telling fictions to courts). First, unless key lawyers were willing to tell really outrageous lies in court, reality would debunk many of the conspiracy theories that have been fueling right wing fever dreams for years. And second, their own conflicts would begin to blow up in their faces.
This week, Kash Patel had to quietly debunk a conspiracy theory that George Papadopoulos has been spinning for years, that a female Special Agent who was part of an effort to learn of his ties to Russia was a (sexual) honey pot.
Kash, now the boss of the Agent, had to defend her for simply doing her job.
More spectacularly, Pam Bondi bolloxed an effort to politicize the Jeffrey Epstein files, in part because she stupidly thought the White House wouldn’t worry about such releases, in part because she (unknowingly, apparently) released stuff that was already public, and in part because she created dissension among the propagandist ranks.
When more than a dozen MAGA-aligned activists and social media influencers gathered at the White House last week, they had no idea they were about to be handed binders titled “Epstein Files: Phase 1”– and neither did senior White House officials who organized the event, according to multiple sources familiar with the event.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and her team did not inform White House officials in advance that she planned to distribute the binders, which contained almost no new information regarding convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein — and now the move has ruffled feathers among those closest to President Donald Trump, including his senior White House staff, sources tell ABC News.
The move faced widespread criticism, not only from Democrats but also from some of the president’s most loyal supporters.
White House staff moved quickly to try and contain the fallout, privately reaching out to influencers who were critical of Bondi and the move online, according to sources.
There are a hundred ways reality — as documented in files to which Kash and Bondi now have unfettered access — conflicts with the conspiracy beliefs of these people. Unless they get better at managing expectations of the mob, we should expect similar embarrassing concessions in days ahead, concessions that piss off the most committed MAGAts and make them distrust their own.
More interesting are developments in the corruption of Emil Bove and Ed Martin.
Three entities asked for scrutiny of Bove for the way he coerced lawyers to dismiss the Eric Adams case when serving as Acting Deputy Attorney General (now that Todd Blanche has been confirmed on a party line vote, Bove becomes PADAG, basically the guy running DOJ day to day). A group of ethics experts have asked Judge Dale Ho to consider Bove’s actions as he decides how to resolve that case. Jamie Raskin and Jasmine Crockett wrote Pam Bondi with a series of questions, including whether Bove destroyed evidence (the notes of a January 31 meeting). And Senate Judiciary Dems asked the NY Bar to conduct a misconduct inquiry into Bove. (At least one NGO already filed a bar complaint.)
Then, later in the week, Senate Judiciary Dems filed a bar complaint against Acting DC US Attorney Ed Martin for representing January 6 defendants at the same time as approving the dismissal of their cases. That, too, follows a previous bar complaint (filed in Missouri) for Martin’s conflicts. But (in addition to some of Martin’s other wildly partisan actions) it adds a bit: that Martin allegedly had private conversations with pro se January 6 defendant William Pope, who is still trying to get files he’s sure must exist; this is another conspiracy theory that may blow up in wildly interesting ways, now that Martin has access to all these files.
What I noticed the Court in ECF No. 391 was a completely true and factual statement regarding U.S. Attorney Ed Martin’s telling me that the files I now have are no longer considered sensitive for me to possess. However, since a dubious representative of the government, AUSA Jennifer Leigh Blackwell, is now claiming the opposite of what I truthfully reported to the Court in ECF No. 391 (while she is signing under Mr. Martin’s name), this is essentially a government attack on my integrity. Because AUSA Blackwell has attacked me and because the entirety of her filing (ECF No. 392) is so at odds with President Trump’s directive and the current policy of Department of Justice, I suspect she filed her own rogue and unhinged ranting rather than consulting the official position of the government and her boss, Ed Martin.
This is the kind of complaint that could be written on a near-daily basis about Martin. He recently wrote Georgetown Law imagining he could dictate what a private Catholic university teaches, which elicited a superb response. It’s the kind of thing that lefty pundits should be focused on instead of screaming at each other. It is far more urgent to make Ed Martin’s shenanigans an anvil around Pam Bondi’s DOJ than it is to fight about the stupidest way to distract from Trump imploding.
Plus, that’s not the only trouble Martin has caused.
In the early days of Trump’s attack on DEI, Trump’s flunkies adopted two claims from Elon: That the Biden Administration had misstepped when it appropriated $20 billion in funds to green lenders. And that New York City had spent $80 million on luxury hotels to house migrants.
I’ve already written about the former case: how Bove and Martin forced Denise Cheung out at DC USAO because she found a Project Veritas video insufficient evidence to obtain criminal process clawing back funds. Martin kept trying, in the kind of judge shopping that can really piss off judges. Meanwhile, Mark Zaid, who represents the guy in the PV video, says that his client had nothing to do with the disbursements that EPA has attempted to clawed back. Lee Zeldin is trying to get EPA’s Acting Inspector General to find him an excuse for all this now, which seems rather late given that funds have already been frozen. (Senate Dems also sent Zeldin a letter debunking his claims last month.)
Meanwhile, even as Judge Jennifer Rearden this week denied New York City’s bid to get the $80 million back while the two sides fight about it [docket], one of the people Kristi Noem fired and accused of acting unlawfully, Mary Comans, has sued.
That same day Defendant DHS publicly issued a press release falsely stating that Ms. Comans had been fired “for circumventing leadership to unilaterally make egregious payments for luxury NYC hotels for migrants.” The release also noted that “[u]nder President Trump and Secretary Noem’s leadership, DHS will not sit idly and allow deep state activists to undermine the will and safety of the American people.” Because of the issuance of the press release and other steps undertaken by the Defendants, Ms. Comans’ actions were widely, publicly and falsely condemned as “illegal” and “criminal” by rightwing influencers, to include Elon Musk, on various social media platforms and news outlets, such as shown below:
In a declaration Comans submitted on February 26 in the Does 1-26 suit, Mary Comans debunked much of what DHS has publicly claimed about the clawback, which means Comans’ lawsuit is likely to surface these issues. I had noticed this myself, but in between her healthy obsession about the lies the Administration tells about Elon’s role on DOGE, Anna Bower wrote it up here. Comans is also represented by Mark Zaid; you can support his work helping fired government workers tell the truth about what happened here.
Yesterday, Marisa Kabas reported that the top lawyer at FEMA was forced out, possibly because he refused to sign a declaration retconning this clawback.
Joshua Stanton had served as Acting Chief Counsel at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for less than one week when he was placed on administrative leave Wednesday and reportedly escorted out of the building. Why?
According to people at FEMA privy to the details of Stanton’s dismissal—which was first reported by me via Bluesky Wednesday afternoon—Stanton was asked sometime this week to write a memo stating that the mid-February seizure of $80 million from the city of New York meant for migrant shelters had legal justification; this was despite the fact that it almost certainly did not. The money that was taken back was lawfully obligated by FEMA pursuant to congressionally allocated funds. Stanton reportedly refused to write such a memo, The Handbasket has learned, and then he was put on leave. It’s not clear at this point if the refusal to write the memo is the reason he was placed on leave.
In other words, between the public ousters and and the problematic legal claims, Trump’s flunkies may soon find themselves unable to defend past false claims they made in ways that could blow up in spectacular fashion (as I’ve suggested, the same is true for Pete Marocco, who just got enjoined in an awesome new lawsuit, but I’ll come back to that).
Corruption
There’s one area that has always been difficult to grab a hold of: Trump’s corruption. There has always been so much that it’s hard to focus on any one bit. That’s been even more true now that Pam Bondi has made it clear she’ll never prosecute Trump for bribery. And it has been matched by Elon.
I’m going to catalog just some of the coverage from recent weeks.
First, Wired reported that in addition to all the known kickbacks Trump got before he became President (from tech executives and media outlets), he continues to engage in pay-to-play with a price tag of $5 million for a face-to-face meeting.
Business leaders can secure a one-on-one meeting with the president at Mar-a-Lago for $5 million, according to sources with direct knowledge of the meetings. At a so-called candlelight dinner held as recently as this past Saturday, prospective Mar-a-Lago guests were asked to spend $1 million to reserve a seat, according to an invitation obtained by WIRED.
[snip]
It’s unclear where the money is going and what it will be used for, but one source with direct knowledge of the dinners said “it’s all going to the library,” as in the presidential library that will ostensibly be built once Trump leaves office. MAGA Inc spent over $450 million to elect Trump in 2024, though Trump is not legally permitted to run for a third presidential term in 2028.
Also this week, Public Citizen started tracking what it calls “corporate clemency” — all the corporations whose legal troubles have been dismissed in bulk or specifically.
Now, just over one month into Trump’s second term, it’s clear that the permissive approach to corporate crime and misconduct is returning with a vengeance.
Whole categories of enforcement have come to a screeching halt, including:
All Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cases, seven of which the Trump administration has already moved to dismiss,
Justice Department cases brought by the Civil Rights and Environment and Natural Resource divisions, Investigations and cases under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cases defending transgender and gender non-conforming workers from workplace abuse and discrimination, six of which the administration has already moved to dismiss, and
An increasing number of Securities and Exchange Commission cases against cryptocurrency corporations, two of which have been paused and four of which the administration has moved to dismiss.
Meanwhile Forbes’ Zach Everson has been pulling at some strings on a Nasdaq-listed firm with suspect trading just before Don Jr and Eric Trump were named as advisors. He first laid out the trading pattern.
Between Feb. 12 and Dec. 29, 2024, trading in Dominari Holdings—a Nasdaq-listed firm that specializes in wealth management, investment banking, sales and trading, asset management and capital investment—averaged 11,500 shares a day, never exceeding 71,000 shares, with a price range of $1.10 to $3.20.
On Dec. 30, trading shot up to 358,000 shares, kicking off a surge that saw daily volume average 1.2 million shares a day through Feb. 10, 2025—when it skyrocketed to 23.7 million shares—as the stock price climbed from $0.83 to $6.50.
The price peaked at $13.58 two days later but has since fallen, closing at $6.74 on Tuesday.
Then Everson showed how little evidence there is that the board existed before Trump’s sons joined it.
[B]etween June 10, 2021, when the company was named AIkido Pharma, and Feb. 12, 2025, the day after the Trumps’ involvement was announced, Dominari Holdings did not submit a filing to the SEC on that mentioned an advisory board or board of advisors, except for references in the chief operating officer’s bio stating he had been a member for three months in 2022.
An online search failed to provide evidence of the advisory board’s prior existence: it is not mentioned on any website—including Dominari Holdings’ own—prior to Feb. 11, in a search on Google.
Dominari Holdings also did not file its advisory board agreement with the SEC until Feb. 12, a day after announcing the Trumps’ membership.
This feels not dissimilar to some of the shenanigans relating to the funding of Truth Social (while several of his associates were criminally prosecuted, one is attempting to get an SEC action against him thrown out) or Trump’s Meme Coin, below.
Then, even as Trump has rolled out a crypto strategic reserve (one that many crypto experts hate and one that failed to rally the market), there have been several developments that show how he intends to permit corruption (his own, and others’) via cryptocurrency.
As I keep noting, the SEC, for example, has paused its suit against World Liberty Financial investor Justin Sun, anticipating a settlement. As Judd Legum describes, this follows the Chinese-linked businessman’s multi-million “investment” in Trump’s crypto currency.
In March 2023, the SEC charged Sun and three of his companies, accusing him of marketing unregistered securities and “fraudulently manipulating the secondary market” for a crypto token. The SEC accused Sun of wash trading, which involves buying and selling a token quickly to fraudulently manufacture artificial interest.
[snip]
Sun’s purchase put millions in Trump’s pocket. WLF was entitled to “$30 million of initial net protocol revenue” in a reserve “to cover operating expenses, indemnities, and obligations.” After the reserve was met, a company owned by Trump would receive “75% of the net protocol revenues.” Sun’s purchase covered the entire reserve. As of December 1, this amounted to $18 million for Trump — 75% of the revenues of all other tokens sold at the time. Sun also joined WLF as an advisor. While the purchase benefited Trump, WLF tokens are essentially worthless for Sun, as they are non-transferable and locked indefinitely.
Nevertheless, Sun has since invested another $45 million in WLF, bringing his total investment to $75 million. This means Sun’s purchases have sent more than $50 million to Trump, Bloomberg reported. Sun has also continued to shower Trump with praise. On January 22, Sun posted on X, “if I have made any money in cryptocurrency, all credit goes to President Trump.”
And, as Chris Murphy laid out, he used his Doge Coin to bilk his rubes, again.
Both of these are ways for foreigners to launder cash to Trump. Now that the bribery is happening in plain sight, we need to hammer home the implicatioms of that: If you can’t explain why Trump betrayed America and all her alliances, you cannot rule out old-fashioned bribery, not least given the impossibly lucrative deals Russia first dangled to get Trump’s interest.
Dmitriev has called for the Trump administration and Russia to start “building a better future for humanity,” and to “focus on investment, economic growth, AI breakthroughs,” and long-term joint scientific projects like “Mars exploration,” even posting a highly produced computer graphic, on Elon Musk’s X social media platform, showing an imagined joint US-Russia-Saudi mission to Mars, on board what appears to be a Space X rocket.
With Musk, it’s a two-edged sword. There are the legal investigations that stand to be dismissed, as two of the items on Public Citizen’s tracker have been.
And Elon Musk, the CEO of Neuralink, SpaceX, Tesla, X (formerly Twitter), and xAI, which started the Trump administration collectively facing 17 federal investigations.
Neuralink faces a USDA investigation into alleged misconduct related to the treatment of test monkeys and an SEC investigation alleging unspecified misconduct.
SpaceX has been in the process of negotiating a resolution with the EPA over repeated pollution discharges in Texas, an FAA lawsuit alleging multiple safety violations involving rocket launches in Florida, and an NLRB complaint alleging the company illegally fired workers who criticized Musk. The Trump administration dismissed a DOJ civil rights lawsuit against SpaceX alleging discrimination against asylees and refugees in hiring.
Tesla faces a criminal fraud investigation by the DOJ over exaggerated claims about the “full self-driving” capability of vehicles’ “Autopilot” mode, a related SEC investigation into whether exaggerated claims about “full self-driving” vehicles misled investors, a joint investigation by the DOJ and SEC into Tesla’s plans to construct a private residence for Musk, an EEOC investigation into alleged racial discrimination and workplace retaliation at a Tesla factory in California, four NHTSA investigations into vehicle problems, and seven open NLRB cases alleging unfair labor practices and covering up to 140,474 employees. An OSHA investigation into a worker’s death at a Tesla factory in Texas was closed in January, though no announcement as to whether a citation was issued has been disclosed.
X (formerly Twitter) faces an SEC lawsuit against Musk alleging misconduct related to the CEO’s $44 billion takeover of the company and an NLRB case alleging unfair labor practices.
xAI faces an EPA investigation into air pollution concerns related to its “Colossus” supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee. [my emphasis]
Congressman Greg Casar has been pushing to get details of the death of the Tesla worker, Victor Joe Gomez Sr., released, with a fair amount of coverage in the Texas press.
But even as Casar is having to fight for details that should be readily available, and even as Musk’s private businesses continue to experience spectacular failures, even as Elon cuts off Ukraine, Trump’s government is sneaking deals to Starlink on the side, both in the form of FAA funds and rural broadband.
The degree to which Trump is selling out government, a story fundamental to the story of DOGE, is being covered, though (with the exception of Musk’s conflicts) often by less mainstream outlets: Wired and Forbes and Bloomberg and Judd Legum and American Prospect (NPR got the exclusive on the Public Citizen report).
But this is an area where a story in plain sight needs to be tied back to the destruction of government by the same corrupt people.
Trump is destroying government. But he is getting paid handsomely at the same time. At one level or another, Trump is destroying America because he is getting paid to do so. The better we can convey that, the greater likelihood that some of the rubes who got ripped off on the Doge Coin will come to understand they’ve been betrayed.
Russia
Any pushback on Trump’s capitulation to Russia has been distracted by everything else, starting with Trump’s equivocating trade war with our closest trading partners.
Though ironically, the line from Elissa Slotkin, hailing Ronald Reagan, to which many objected was a longer play on Trump’s attempt to compare himself with Reagan, a comment on Trump’s capitulation.
President Trump loves to promise “peace through strength.” That’s actually a line he stole from Ronald Reagan. But let me tell you, after the spectacle that just took place in the Oval Office last week, Reagan must be rolling over in his grave. We all want an end to the war in Ukraine, but Reagan understood that true strength required America to combine our military and economic might with moral clarity.
And that scene in the Oval Office wasn’t just a bad episode of reality TV. It summed up Trump’s whole approach to the world. He believes in cozying up to dictators like Vladimir Putin and kicking our friends, like Canada, in the teeth. He sees American leadership as merely a series of real estate transactions.
As a Cold War kid, I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s. Trump would have lost us the Cold War.
But while Americans are distracted by Trump’s erratic trade wargaming and the Democrats’ own infighting, the rest of the world is stepping up, most famously in this speech from center-right French politician Claude Malhuret.
There is dissension in Europe: While Giorgia Meloni is joining other European countries, she refuses to be led by France.
I’ve heard of non-public discussions among American national security types and members of Congress. And even Lindsey Graham, who shamelessly betrayed Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the ambush in the Oval Office, is pushing for Trump to demand something from Russia, too.
Thus far, the response to Trump’s capitulation to Russia has been muted. But it is also a topic that unites strange bedfellows, which showed up in the town halls last week.
Trump and his Russian handlers believed this would be easy. Thus far, it doesn’t look it’ll work out that way.
Attention
This post links almost 100 links (thanks, in part, to the linking ethics of Public Citizen and Everson). That’s a testament to the flood of information out there, much of it promising, about efforts to fight back against fascism. That flood is a response to Trump’s own flood. The two together have the means to overwhelm.
I won’t defend everything Jeffries said (or was portrayed as saying, by outlets whose bread and butter lies in stoking dissension among Democrats) this week. But much of what he said and did appear to be guided by a view on attention that is, in my opinion, quite right: Trump always camouflages what he does, including some fundamental weaknesses, with a flood the zone strategy.
Congressman Jeffries said Trump’s many actions to date, including mass firings of federal workers, freezing federal funds approved by Congress, and steps to eliminate critical agencies, are part of a larger strategy to “flood the zone” and distract from actions that Jeffries and other Democrats consistently say will devastate millions of Americans.
“[It’s] designed to create the appearance of inevitability [and] the notion that Donald Trump is unstoppable–he ain’t unstoppable,” said Jeffries, who noted, “Not a single bill connected to Trump’s Project 2025 agenda has passed the House because it’s unified Democratic opposition.” He continued, “But we’re supposed to believe it’s all inevitable…He’s invincible…Show me the evidence.”
This is a war for attention. Trump’s success at that war is the primary reason he won the election — and he was helped then, as now, by the fact that the primary counter-flood Democrats cared to mount was to attack each other.
Similarly, no matter what you think about Slotkin’s response (which was in any case not beset by weaknesses of presentation virtually all of these are) she also said something important. Rather than doom scroll on Bluesky, pick an issue, and start building from the bottom up.
Three, organize. Pick just one issue you’re passionate about — and engage. And doom scrolling doesn’t count. Join a group that cares about your issue, and act. And if you can’t find one, start one.
Some of the most important movements in our history have come from the bottom up.
You don’t have to, nor should you, wait for DC to lead the movement you want. Pick a corner of it and take action.
Leadership
I end with this: We’re seeing that happen around the country, as evidenced by three stories from recent days.
There’s the testimony of Meirav Solomon’s in yesterday’s sanctuary city hearing. Solomon challenged the notion that you shut down antisemitism by policing campuses. Indeed, she focused instead on Trump’s cuts to Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. She pointed to the antisemitism of, “the President’s close advisors [who] raise their arms in fascist salutes.”
We must be honest about the most urgent threat to the Jewish community. It is not student protestors but the bloody legacy of Pittsburgh and Poway, Charlottesville and the Capitol Riot.
There’s how a community responded when the school board of a predominantly white community north of Pittsburgh voted against a young adult book about the Tulsa riots, Angel of Greenwood. The community came together to bring its author, Randi Pink, to town to speak to both students and the community more generally.
After the school board voted against adding Pink’s book to the Pine-Richland School District’s ninth-grade curriculum, the community decided it was time to act.
Macmillan, the publisher of “Angel of Greenwood,” sent Pine-Richland students 100 copies of the book to distribute to the community. Pink also traveled from her small town outside of Birmingham, Alabama, to come to Richland to meet with the community that had so fiercely supported her work.
“The supporters in the community were relentless in making sure I got there. Some people put in $5, $10, even $600. I waived my fee, but the community said, ‘Absolutely not. We’re going to pay you.’ I’m a single mother, so I had to bring my babies with me,” she said. “They said, ‘we’re going to pay for all your way.’
“They galvanized around me. I support them very much for that.”
[snip]
Students and parents raised nearly $6,000 for Pink to come to Pennsylvania, where the author held two talks — one for students of the school district to ask questions and the other was open to all community members.
[snip]
“If more of us are brave enough to step into communities and say, ‘You know what? Let’s just talk. I think we will get a whole lot further like that in all aspects of society.”
There’s Zooey Zephyr, the Montana legislator whose speech in support of drag shows turned the tide against anti-trans votes, as told by Erin Reed.
Something remarkable happened in Montana today. As has become routine, anti-trans bills were up for debate—the state has spent more than half of its legislative days this session pushing such bills through committees and the House floor, with Republicans largely voting in lockstep. But something changed.
A week ago, transgender Representative Zooey Zephyr delivered a powerful speech against a bill that would create a separate indecent exposure law for transgender people. Since then, momentum on the House floor slowed. Today, two of the most extreme bills targeting the transgender community came up for a vote. Transgender Representatives Zooey Zephyr and SJ Howell gave impassioned speeches—this time, they broke through. In a stunning turn, 29 Republicans defected, killing both bills. One Republican even took the floor to deliver a scathing rebuke of the bill’s sponsor.
You reclaim America not in DC, but in talks on campuses, in Montana, and Pittsburgh.
That is happening. You just need to know where to look.
Share this entry
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-27-at-14.25.40.png422502emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2025-03-07 10:38:172025-03-09 04:52:14Attention Deficit and Defiance Division of Labor: There’s Stuff Happening Where You’re Not Looking
