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The Inaugural Donald J. Trump Awards

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The Inaugural Donald J. Trump Award Trophy, awaiting the engraving of Donald J. Trump’s name and massive accomplishments.

It’s been quite a year, which is just the way Donald Trump, a narcissist the likes of which the world has never seentm, wants it.

Almost.

Can’t you just hear him: “I do, I do, and I do some more, more than anyone else ever, and yet I don’t get all the accolades I deserve. Haters.”

Now sure, he got the inaugural Gianni “Human rights problems? What human rights problems?” Infantino FIFA Peace Prize. But he wanted more, as he believes is only his due. Sadly, so many other awards have been somehow given to other clearly underdeserving folks, and still other awards are just begging to be given but no one has had the imagination or chutzpah to actually award them.

Until now. May I have the envelopes, please?

The Donald J. Trump Award for Narcissistic Rebranding goes to . . . Donald J. Trump for The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. And how dare any mere jazz musicians object to this.

The Donald J. Trump Award for Nationalistic Rebranding goes to . . . Donald J. Trump for the Gulf of America. All the haters at the AP and elsewhere can just get a life.

The Donald J. Trump Award for Interior Decoration goes to . . . Donald J. Trump for the over-the-top golden decorations, the “live, laugh, love” style signage, and the stunning — really absolutely stunning — renovations of the Lincoln Bathroom at the White House. The Presidential Walk of Fame with its image of Biden the AutoPen and the jawdropping plaques recounting each president’s achievements is truly beyond belief.

The Donald J. Trump Award for Architectural Salvage goes to . . . Donald J. Trump for his efforts to save the nation from the abomination that was the White House East Wing and replacing it with a much more appropriate Donald J. Trump White House Ballroom. Specific plans for the ballroom remain vague – I believe the phrase “we have a concept of a plan” fits this project, among others – but simply removing the East Wing was something that clearly needed to happen. And why does FLOTUS need any office space anyway?

The Donald J. Trump Award for Services to the Legal Community goes to . . . Donald J. Trump for his amazing record of presidential appointments to remake the legal system. From his SCOTUS appointments at the top to his appointment of judges like Emil Bove in the middle and Aileen Cannon at the bottom, as well as his appointment of prosecutors like Jeanine Pirro and Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer, he has truly installed only the best peopletm and that would be enough to earn him this award. But Trump didn’t stop there. Add to this the way in which he pushed out career DOJ staffers and the manner in which he got Big Law to bend the knee in the private sector, and this award is a slam dunk.

The Donald J. Trump Award for Medical Advancements goes to . . . Donald J. Trump for his efforts to dismantle and destroy the World Health Organization. Reading what Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health describes as WHO’s role in the world, it is obvious that WHO is a clear nuisance that needs to go:

The WHO plays many roles—the visible, apparent roles that many people are familiar with, and the roles that are less visible. This includes:

  • Detecting, monitoring, and responding to emerging health threats, pandemics, and diseases of importance; we saw that during the COVID-19 crisis.
  • Gathering and evaluating data and information from all over the world in order to understand the status of health globally and detect emerging problems. This includes acute crises as well as larger trends in health—which issues are causing a higher burden of disease and which ones we’re making progress on and should sustain efforts to address.
  • Setting standards and developing guidelines that help people around the world, including here in the U.S., deal with various health threats and crises—not only infectious diseases, but all sorts of health issues.
  • Providing commodities and goods to improve health around the world, including vaccines and drugs for many diseases. The U.S.’s withdrawal from WHO impacts not only the people who receive those goods, but also the supply chain for them, which includes many people in corporate America.
  • Assisting with humanitarian response, which has important implications both for the populations who are affected by those crises and for global diplomacy and the role of our humanitarian responses in improving global diplomacy around the world.
  • Providing very important technical assistance to governments and partners around the world to be able to respond to health challenges. The U.S. plays a very important role in providing this technical assistance.

Yeah. Who needs all that? (The “Bloomberg” in the name of the school was a clear giveaway as to JH’s unreliable wokeness.)

The Donald J. Trump Award for Services to the Environment goes to . . . Donald J. Trump’s decision to shut down the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. As climate scientist Kim Cobb told PBS,

“We’re talking about unique, one-of-a-kind facilities like supercomputers, ticked-out [sic, should be tricked-out] airplanes, and most importantly, a staff of over 800 people who are at the top of their game in innovating in weather and climate science for public good, putting out data that is on every single climate scientist’s computer around the country, if not around the world, and a nexus of collaboration as well that is important training grounds for the next generation of leaders.”

Yeah. Who needs all that when we’ve got The Weather Channel, amiright?

The Donald J. Trump Award for Service to Diplomacy goes to . . . Donald J. Trump for his muscular engagement with Nigeria, Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Somolia, among other nations. (Simply renaming the US Institute of Peace as the Donald J. Trump US Institute of Peace seems hardly enough of a recognition for Trump’s breathtaking diplomatic work.)

The Donald J. Trump Award for Economic Excellence goes to . . . Donald J. Trump for his truly amazing grasp of the power of tariffs. Just ask the Kentucky Bourbon industry, US soybean farmers, and the members of the chambers of commerce in cities and towns along the US/Canada border.

The Donald J. Trump Award for Civil Rights goes to . . . Donald J. Trump for his dismantling of anything that smacks of a lack of racial harmony throughout American history. The Stonewall Riots, the Civil War, and anything having to do with Native Americans are merely the tip of the iceberg on the list of things that need to be forgotten, for the good of the nation. Trump is Making America Great Again by going back to the basics. As the faculty senate of Haskell Indian Nations University put it, Trump’s cuts to Native American education “represents a continuation of the trail of broken treaties” that is all too familiar to Native Americans. (Rumor has it he is working on how to get the women back in the kitchen (barefoot and pregnant), the gays back in the closet, and the blacks back in the fields, but those are clearly just rumors. I think. I hope.)

And that’s just a start.

I’m sure there are awards I am missing, but I trust that the imaginative and creative Emptywheel commentators can add to the list. Because really, Alfred Nobel has six prizes with his name on them, and what did he do, really, except invent dynamite? Trump surely deserves many more awards with his name on them than Nobel’s six. or the few that I have listed here.

Trump is truly in a league of his own.

Happy New Year’s, everyone. May next year be better (OK, that’s a low bar, but I’ll take it.).

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Brian Cole’s Lawyers Admonish Jeanine Pirro for Yapping Her Mouth

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When DOJ released its detention memo for accused January 6 pipe bomber Brian Cole, the MAGAts showed almost no interest; they’re too busy claiming to have discovered benefits fraud in Minnesota first charged under Merrick Garland’s DOJ.

But Jeanine Pirro did. She want on social media and repeated the apparent miscitation of Cole’s own words I laid out here, treating a comment made in the present tense this month — “I really don’t like either party at this point” — as if it were a comment about his mindset on January 5, 2021.

Unsurprisingly, Cole’s attorneys took note, arguing in their bid for bail that the “government-induced excitement” around Cole’s arrest should not factor into bail consideration and in fact is a violation of local rules about prejudicing a case.

The government-induced excitement around the arrest of Mr. Cole should not take this Court’s focus away from two essential principles of law that govern bail hearings.1

1 Indeed the U.S. Attorney has made numerous comments in contravention of Local Criminal Rule 57.7(b), specifically concerning the “existence or contents of any confession, admission, or statement given by the accused” ((b)(3)(ii)) and “opinion[s] as to the accused’s guilt or innocence or as to the merits of the case or the evidence in the case” ((b)(3)(vi)). See https://abcnews.go.com/US/pipe-bomb-suspect-disappointed -2020-election-results-us/story?id=128157568 (U.S. Attorney Pirro telling the media that based on the evidence, it is “unmistakable” that Mr. Cole is guilty and that “[t]his guy was an equal opportunity bomber.”); see also https://www.facebook.com/judgeje aninepirro/posts/my-office-has-filed-court-documents-that-brian-cole-jr-accusedofplacing-pipe-b/1424070829083142/ (U.S. Attorney Pirro posting on Facebook that Mr. Cole “has admitted that he was responsible for the devices and gave a detailed confession to the charged offenses”).

The rest of their opposition memo provides mere hints of how or whether they might defend this case.

It describes the evidence against Cole as circumstantial evidence of past guilt, not proof of ongoing risk at issue in the present.

The government’s showing is entirely retrospective and circumstantial. Even if credited, the government’s evidence describes an isolated window on a single evening nearly four years ago. It does not point to a “pattern of troubling activity” that would typically warrant detention in other cases. Klein, 539 F. Supp. 3d at 155. No device detonated, and the government has not alleged any comparable conduct or dangerous affiliations in the years since. This circumstantial proof—absent a direct forensic tie or evidence of ongoing threats—cannot overcome the Bail Reform Act’s default in favor of release subject to appropriate conditions. See Munchel, 991 F.3d at 1283 (The “threat [to the community] must also be considered in context.”).

It describes the pipe bombs as having “weapon characteristics,” perhaps questioning whether they really were functioning bombs at all.

According to the affidavit, both devices were rendered safe by the U.S. Capitol Police and later assessed by the FBI Laboratory to have “weapon characteristics,” with components consistent with improvised explosive devices.

It cites relevant DC Circuit opinions on pretrial release that just happen to be January 6 cases, here, Federico Klein — the former Trump State Department official with ties to Argentina’s fascist governments who was released on pretrial bail but ultimately sentenced to 70 months in prison — and Eric Munchel (AKA the Zip Tie Guy), whose pretrial release set the standard for many other January 6 defendants, but who was ultimately sentenced to 57 months in prison. Elsewhere the filing cites Bruno Cua, who was sentenced to just a year in prison after his pretrial release, largely because he was so young and impressionable during the events at hand.

All three, of course, have since been pardoned.

But Cole’s attorneys don’t mention those back stories to the detention precedents which must be applied to Cole too. Nor do they explain what they mean when they say the specific conditions that led young Bruno Cua to stalk the halls of the Capitol created a “specific risk profile for Mr. Cole,” just like it did Cua.

Finally, the unique conditions surrounding January 5–6, 2021, are unlikely to recur in a way that would present the same risk profile for Mr. Cole.

But that comment suggests they’re skeptical — perhaps have already seen reason to be skeptical — that Cole was telling the truth when he asserted there was no tie between his alleged planting of the pipe bombs and January 6, as the government’s detention memo asserts but does not quote directly.

They have reason to do that, of course. If planting the pipe bombs was part of January 6, then Cole may already have been pardoned, just like Klein and Munchel and Cua.

They do, however, confirm that Cole has been diagnosed with being on the spectrum.

Mr. Cole is an African American adult who has been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Level 1 and with obsessive compulsive disorder;

And like most bail memos, they include letters from character witnesses.

The only sign that today’s combined detention hearing and preliminary hearing, scheduled for 1PM before a Magistrate Judge who presided over only a (relative) handful of January 6 cases, might harbor some surprises is a repeat of their more explicit demand in a different filing that DOJ prove probable cause.

The defense understands that the detention hearing will begin with preliminary discussions that concern whether a rebuttable presumption that Mr. Cole should be detained arises in this case. The defense’s position is that the government cannot continue to keep Mr. Cole in custody absent a valid finding of probable cause.

One reason to do that is it raises the bar on pretrial detention.

True, the Bail Reform Act creates a rebuttable presumption “that no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure . . . the safety of the community if . . . there is probable cause to believe that the person committed” one of an enumerated list of crimes. 18 U.S.C. § 3142(e)(2). But for purposes of making that determination, “[a] grand jury indictment, by itself” is what establishes the probable cause “to believe that a defendant committed the crime with which he is charged.” Taylor, 289 F. Supp. 3d at 62 (quoting Stone, 608 F.3d at 945); see also United States v. Smith, 79 F.3d 1208, 1210 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (“[T]he indictment alone would have been enough to raise the rebuttable presumption that no condition would reasonably assure the safety of the community.”)

But who knows. There might be more.

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Jeanine Pirro Got Curiously Silent about What Brian Cole Did on December 14, 2020

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DOJ has submitted its detention memo for accused January 6 pipe bomber Brian Cole.

It largely tracks his arrest affidavit, only includes nifty maps and tables to show how his cell phone movement and his purchases showed his actions in preparation for and laying the pipe bombs.

It also includes details of his Mirandized, videotaped confession.

The description of his motive confirms he was a Trump supporter, but then explains he just planted the pipe bombs at both the DNC and RNC because he hated both parties — it had nothing to do with January 6, the filing claims (without quoting him).

The defendant stated that he does not align politically with his family members and did not tell them that he “was going to a protest in support of [then President] Trump.”

[snip]

When the interviewing agents returned to the defendant’s motive, he explained that “something just snapped” after “watching everything, just everything getting worse.” The defendant wanted to do something “to the parties” because “they were in charge.” When asked why he placed the devices at the RNC and DNC, the defendant responded, “I really don’t like either party at this point.” The defendant also explained that the idea to use pipe bombs came from his interest in history, specifically the Troubles in Ireland. The defendant denied that his actions were directed toward Congress or related to the proceedings scheduled to take place on January 6.

But there are two holes in the detention affidavit.

First, it describes Cole taught himself how to make explosives from YouTube, and used Google Maps to decide where to plant the bombs.

According to the defendant, he learned to make the black powder from a video game that listed the ingredients, and he also viewed various science-related videos on YouTube to assist him in creating the devices.

[snip]

The defendant explained that he had used Google Maps to look up these locations in advance.

Both of those details should show up in a Google warrant.

The detention memo makes no mention of them (or of any Google warrant).

More stunning, the detention affidavit drops a key detail from the arrest affidavit: That he was on Capitol Hill on December 14, 2020.

The FBI has analyzed COLE’s purchase history associated with the Accounts. Between January 2018 and January 2021, COLE made a total of five purchases within Washington, D.C. on or about the following dates: January 13, 2018; January 16, 2018; October 31, 2019; December 5, 2020; and December 14, 2020.

Approximately three weeks before the pipe bombs were placed, on or about December 14, 2020, COLE made a purchase at a restaurant located near First and D Streets, Southeast. The restaurant is located across the street from the entrance to Rumsey Court on D Street, Southeast.

What the detention affidavit does reveal is that — starting on December 15, 2020 — the day after being on Capitol Hill and a full three weeks before planting the pipe bombs, Cole started factory resetting his phone.

A Samsung cellular device was seized from the defendant’s person at the time of his arrest. A forensic review of the device’s contents showed that between December 2020 and December 2025, the device recorded 943 events identified as a “factory reset” or “wipe,” including a “wipe” event approximately three hours before the defendant’s arrest on December 4, 2025.2

2 The first “factory reset” or “wipe” event took place on December 15, 2020. The next such event did not occur until July 15, 2022. From that date, the “factory reset” or “wipe” events occurred at least once a week. On some days, the device appears to have been wiped multiple times in the same day.

The alleged pipe bomber started exercising operational security the day after that trip to Capitol Hill, the scene of his alleged crime.

And now, Jeanine Pirro doesn’t want to talk about the trip he made there at all.

Update: Cole’s attorneys complain that DOJ is attempting to push his first appearance out to January 7 or 8, which would be past any 5-year statute of limitation (though his charged crimes have a longer 10-plus year statute of limtiation).

2. On December 28, 2025, when pressed on the question of proceeding with the preliminary hearing on December 30, the government asked to push the preliminary hearing to either January 7 or 8. That request comes too late and does not meet Rule 5.1(d)’s rigorous standard. The Court should confirm that December 30 is the preliminary hearing and detention hearing and direct the government to be prepared to present its evidence in support of probable cause.

[snip]

4. In its email to defense counsel, the government has identified no extraordinary circumstances; rather, the reasons referenced are ordinary scheduling matters and the possibility of a forthcoming indictment. Rule 5 “does not allow the [preliminary] hearing date” to be extended merely “to accommodate the pace of the grand jury investigation.” United States v. Gurary, 793 F.2d 468, 472 (2d Cir. 1986). And where the defendant does not consent—as he does not here—Rule 5.1(d) imposes “far more rigorous criteria” than the Speedy Trial Act’s ends-of-justice standard. Id. at 473; see also United States v. Fortenberry, 2014 WL 6969615, at *2 (D. Nev. Dec. 9, 2014) (“Rule 5.1 does not permit continuance solely to enable the government to avoid a preliminary hearing by securing an indictment.”) (citation omitted).

Update: This is a super minor point. But in the detention memo, DOJ quotes Cole as saying (this month), “I really don’t like either party at this point,” which is at least consistent with him having been a Trump supporter and souring on him.

A few paragraphs later, they change the tense of that, claiming he placed that opinion in 2020.

In his own words, the defendant did so because he did not “like either party,” but “they were in charge” and thus were, in the defendant’s mind, an appropriate target for extreme acts of violence.

And they turn it into a both-sides thing.

By his own admission, the defendant committed these chilling acts because he was unhappy with the response of political leaders on both sides of the political aisle to questions raised about the results of the 2020 election, and “something just snapped.” [my emphasis throughout]

It may well be that something about what Cole said makes it fair to put his animosity to both parties back in time to 2020, but that’s not the tense he used.

Additionally, this is the table DOJ uses to claim they found purchase records for all the components he used to make the bombs.

But this is misleading. While the table includes Lilly Miller sulfur dust, one of the things he said he used to make black powder (and charcoal, another, would be readily on hand), that’s actually a purchase 14 months earlier than any other component, and from a different store. But they didn’t find a purchase record for the potassium nitrate, which they say he said he got at Lowes (from which they have a bunch of other purchase records).

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Trump’s Terrorists

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Things could get a bit awkward with two of Trump’s terrorists in the days ahead. Trump has done such a great job of memory-holing his insurrection, and yet it won’t entirely go away.

Start with Taylor Taranto. I’ve written about the mentally ill Navy veteran who trespassed on January 6 — just one of thousands of Trumpsters who invaded the Capitol — but then took up with the DC Jail crowd in the aftermath, growing increasingly unstable until when, after Trump posted Barack Obama’s address on Truth Social, Taranto started stalking Obama, as prosecutors described in a footnote of a motion to gag Trump this way:

[T]he defendant’s public targeting of perceived adversaries has resulted in threats, harassment, or intimidation. The public record is replete with other examples. See, e.g., United States v. Taranto, No. 1:23-cr-229, ECF No. 27 at 4-6 (D.D.C. Sep. 12, 2023) (affirming detention order for Taranto and explaining that, after “‘former President Trump posted what he claimed was the address of Former President Barack Obama’ on Truth Social,” Taranto— who had previously entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021—reposted the address, along with a separate post stating, “‘See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s’” [sic], and then proceeded, heavily armed, to the area the defendant had identified as President Obama’s address, while livestreaming himself talking about “getting a ‘shot’ and an ‘angle,’” adding, “‘See, First Amendment, just say First Amendment, free speech’”) (quoting Taranto, ECF No. 20).

Like everyone else, Taranto was pardoned for his Jan6 trespass and his gun-related crimes were downgraded along with the rest of America’s defense against gun crimes. Trump appointee Carl Nichols sentenced him to time served on October 30, but not before Jeanine Pirro’s office tried to hide the sentencing memo (and prosecutors) who described Taranto’s role in Trump’s insurrection and Trump’s role in inciting Taranto’s stalking.

So he was free to go home to Seattle and attempt to rebuild his life from the chaos that Trump made of it.

Only he didn’t.

In recent days he has been back stalking DC, and specifically Jamie Raskin. The very same prosecutors who attempted to bury Trump’s role in inspiring Taranto’s crimes were stuck asking he be jailed again.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Travis Wolf said Taranto’s return to D.C., his erratic behavior and renewed livestreaming raised serious alarms that he was “on the path” to the same conduct that led to criminal charges against him two years earlier and urged that he be returned to jail.

Wolf described acute mental health concerns, a series of alleged violations of Taranto’s supervised release conditions, and alarming social media posts, including one from the parking lot of the Pentagon. The prosecutor discussed other details of Taranto’s case during a closed court session.

Trump appointee Carl Nichols tried to give Taranto one more chance to go back to Washington and get some help. But he continues to lurk around DC, figuring he still has time before he has to report to Probation in Washington on Wednesday.

The man needs help, and jail is not going to get him what he needs, but until he leaves DC, he remains a real concern.

He’s a reminder of what Trump does to people, driving around DC broadcasting as he goes.

According to the standards DOJ has used with ICE protestors, Trump should have been charged right along with Taranto.

Then there’s the possibility that efforts to prosecute alleged pipe bomber Brian Cole will backfire, at least on those — Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino — who crowed about the arrest on Thursday.

Since he was arrested there have been a series of leaks, starting with Ryan Reilly (who literally wrote the book on the January 6 investigation, with all that suggests about his possible sources) followed by Evan Perez (one of the best-sourced journalists at FBI), told the FBI he believed Donald Trump’s bullshit.

The man charged with planting two pipe bombs near the Democratic and Republican party headquarters on the eve of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol told the FBI he believed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Brian Cole Jr., 30, is cooperating with the FBI, NBC News has reported, citing a separate person familiar with the matter. Cole appeared in court Friday, one day after he was charged with leaving pipe bombs outside the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee in the hours before Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Trump has falsely claimed the 2020 election was “rigged.”

Cole confessed to planting the devices outside the parties’ headquarters in the hours before the Capitol attack, three people familiar with the matter told NBC News. A federal prosecutor said in court on Friday that the suspect spoke with the government for more than four hours, but did not reveal the contents of those discussions.

Pirro has been out trying to disclaim the obvious: that Cole is one of Trump’s terrorists, not the insider threat that people like Dan Bongino and Ed Martin have been claiming since the attack.

Anna Bower tracked Martin’s effort to stoke conspiracy theories about the pipe bomber, including this screen cap.

Kash Patel who has fired people for claiming that Jan6ers were a terrible threat to the country, said that when you do what Cole did, “you attack the very being of our way of life”  — and he did so after Pam Bondi hailed his hard work to make the case.

And then Bongino went on Sean Hannity and confessed he was making shit up before.

Hannity, during his interview with his former colleague, gave Bongino an opportunity to criticize prior iterations of the Justice Department and FBI for failing to arrest anyone in the case, and praise his own colleagues for getting the job done. But then he asked Bongino about the FBI deputy director’s own role in promoting conspiracy theories about the bomber during Bongino’s past career as a right-wing commentator.

“You know, I don’t know if you remember this — this is before you became the deputy FBI director,” Hannity said. “You put a post on X right after this happened and you said there’s a massive cover-up because the person that planted those pipe bombs, they don’t want you to know who it is because it’s either a connected anti-Trump insider or an inside job. You said that, you know, long before you were even thought of as deputy FBI director.”

Bongino’s response was astounding. He looked down, as if embarrassed, and replied: “Yeah, that’s why I said to you this investigation’s just begun.” But after hemming and hawing about the confidence he and FBI Director Kash Patel have that they arrested the right person, he got real.

“Listen, I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions,” he explained. “That’s clear. And one day, I’ll be back in that space. But that’s not what I’m paid for now. I’m paid to be your deputy director, and we base investigations on facts.”

And when you peruse the possible explanations about why FBI didn’t find Cole before this week (I suspect it’s because FBI had far less evidence against Cole when they arrested him on Thursday than against virtually every other Jan6er; they just got fucking lucky that they got the right guy), they all feed left wing concerns.

Did Steve D’Antuono take steps to distract from Cole back in 2021, as some right wingers are now suggesting? If so, he did that between the time he took insufficient steps to prevent the attack and those times in 2022 when he attempted to kill any investigation of Trump.

Did Chris Wray intentionally stall this investigation? Then what does that say about the rest of the January 6 investigation?

And what if Cole says he qualifies for one or both of the pardons Trump already gave to people, like him, who responded to Trump’s false claims by attacking the Capitol. After all Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of sedition and adjudged a terrorist at sentencing, was gone from the Capitol a whole day before Cole allegedly placed those bombs, and Tarrio got a full pardon. What is Pardon Attorney Ed Martin going to say to conclude that Cole is somehow different from the hundreds of others, including a good many who brought incendiary devices, who have been running free since January?

It’s still possible Jocelyn Ballantine will manage to bury Cole’s pro-Trump leanings — or at least avoid implicating anyone who worked with Cole to plant the bombs in the precisely perfect place to create a distraction on January 6. Ballantine has played such a role before, and emails that Dan Richman submitted in his bid to get his data back before the FBI can violate his Fourth Amendment rights again suggest she was part of the process that led to that violation in the first place.

But until then, the lesson Dan Bongino just learned could be devastating. When you follow the facts, even the most rabid Trump supporter may discover that Trump’s terrorists are the ones threatening America.

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Jeanine Pirro Covers Up Donald Trump’s Doxing Conspiracy

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If it weren’t for a recent shift in DOJ’s prosecutorial focus, Jeanine Pirro’s wildly corrupt effort to suppress the larger criminal context of Tayler Taranto’s stalking of Barack Obama in 2023 would be no more than a garden variety authoritarian effort to rewrite history.

As ABC and Politico have written, two AUSAs who’ve been prosecuting Taranto, Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, submitted a sentencing memo documenting how the Navy veteran with long-standing mental health issues first participated in January 6 and then, years later, drove his van containing guns and ammunition to stalk Kalorama, looking for Obama while ranting, “Gotta get the shot, stop at nothing to get the shot. This is where other people come to get the shot;”

The language in the memo about the January 6 attack and Taranto’s role in it attracted some press attention.

On January 6, 2021, thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol while a joint session of Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. Taranto was accused of participating in the riot in Washington, D.C., by entering the U.S. Capitol Building. After the riot, Taranto returned to his home in the State of Washington, where he promoted conspiracy theories about the events of January 6, 2021.

And so Pirro (or someone at DOJ) did what all corrupt sycophants would do: put the two attorneys on leave for speaking the truth about Pirro’s liege.

Then, two of the AUSAs who bolloxed the Sydney Reid case, Jonathan Hornok and Travis Wolf, filed notices of appearance and submitted a new sentencing memo, asking for the same sentence. The description of January 6 as a riot, above, was removed (but not a quote of Taranto mentioning it).

More scandalously, the revised sentencing memo excised the description of how Taranto came to be stalking the former President, the passage in red, below: Because Donald Trump, as a private citizen, first doxed Obama.

The next day, on June 29, 2023, then-former President Donald Trump published on a social media platform the purported address of former President Barack Obama. Taranto re-posted the address on the same platform and thereafter started livestreaming from his van on his YouTube channel. Taranto broadcast footage of himself as he drove through the Kalorama neighborhood in Washington, D.C., claiming he was searching for “tunnels” he believed would provide him access to the private residences of certain high-profile individuals, including former President Obama. He parked his van, walked away from it, and approached a restricted area protected by the United States Secret Service. He walked through the nearby woods and stated, “Gotta get the shot, stop at nothing to get the shot.” [my emphasis]

As I said, if it weren’t for a recent shifted prosecutorial focus, criminalizing doxing partly as a way to criminalize otherwise peaceful protest against ICE and CBP, this kind of memory hole would be merely another instance of gross corruption and the human waste of professional careers destroyed because the aspiring dictator refuses to take accountability for his own actions.

But DOJ has recently arrested a number of people for doxing under 18 USC 119, a law that specifically protects law enforcement officers: first Gregory Curcio (who not only posted the address of an ICE lawyer, but invited others to swat her; his indictment included a domestic violence claim). Then Cynthia Raygoza, Ashleigh Brown, and Sandra Carmona Samane, who livestreamed from the house of an ICE officer they followed home.

Here’s how Bill Essayli, who regularly made shit up even before getting exposed for playing dress-up as a US Attorney the other day, said about the latter.

“Our brave federal agents put their lives on the line every day to keep our nation safe,” said Acting United States Attorney Bill Essayli. “The conduct of these defendants are deeply offensive to law enforcement officers and their families. If you threaten, dox, or harm in any manner one of our agents or employees, you will face prosecution and prison time.”

According to the indictment, on August 28, 2025, the defendants followed the victim – an ICE agent – from the Civic Center in downtown Los Angeles to his personal residence. The defendants livestreamed on their Instagram accounts their pursuit of the victim and provided directions as they followed the victim home, encouraging their viewers to share the livestream. Their Instagram accounts used to livestream the event were “ice_out_of_la,” “defendmesoamericanculture,” and “corn_maiden_design.”

Upon arriving at the victim’s personal residence, the defendants shouted to bystanders while livestreaming on Instagram that their “neighbor is ICE,” “la migra lives here,” and “ICE lives on your street and you should know.”

The defendants publicly disclosed on Instagram the victim’s home address and told viewers, “Come on down.”

Ashleigh Brown is the woman whose charges for being assaulted by an FPS officer were dismissed this week after defense attorneys discovered his criminal record. Unlike the Taranto case, there’s no claim the women did or would have been armed.

Mostly, they told this guy’s neighbors he was la migra, one of the men who kidnap workers from outside Home Depot.

Donald Trump’s doxing of Barack Obama was more consequential than what these three women did. Taranto was armed and, not least because of his mental health problems, dangerous.

Donald Trump’s own DOJ says the kind of doxing Donald Trump did should hold a five year sentencing in prison.

And DOJ just took ham-handed steps to pretend Trump didn’t do just that.

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Fridays with Nicole Sandler

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Listen on spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

 

Link to Tim Miller interviewing Robby Roadsteamer

Link to ICE officer being an asshole to cops

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Update: Reid’s comment is spectacular.

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

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

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The Crime Wave Is Coming from Inside the [White] House

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As most of you have noticed, I’ve been trying to do videos summarizing more of my work, because it’s far more accessible than what I do here. As with the Ball of Thread podcast I did last year, I’ve been doing this work with LOLGOP.

He and I are discussing how to keep this effort going long-term. So, in addition to sharing this latest video (which I think is one of our best), I wanted to set up a post for feedback on the videos and — just importantly — to put a tip jar for LOLGOP.

Please consider recognizing his work on these videos with a contribution here. 

Thank you! And thanks to LOLGOP for the hilarious editing of Jeanine Pirro boasting about the subway guy.

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Jeanine Pirro’s Recent Flood of Failures

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In an opinion dismissing the felony cases against two people charged as part of Trump’s invasion of DC, Donisha Butler and Terrance Wilson, Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui tallied how many of the federal cases charged in the last eight weeks (roughly the beginning of Trump’s invasion) US Attorney Jeanine Pirro has subsequently chosen to dismiss.

The term unprecedented is casually bandied about. But as Judge Sooknanan identified, these recent weeks literally have been “unprecedented.” To contextualize how unprecedented things have been, the undersigned had the clerk’s office run the numbers. Specifically, the Court pulled every motion to dismiss filed by the government in cases charged by complaint for 10 years. The results speak for themselves. Of the over 4,000 cases charged by complaint between 2014 and 2024, the government moved to dismiss less than 20 defendant’s cases. In the last eight weeks, the government has charged 95 cases by criminal complaint. And in that time, the government has moved to dismiss 20 defendant’s cases.

In the previous ten years — a period including the flood of January 6 cases, which were especially challenging given the volume of defendants, the national reach, and COVID — DOJ dismissed fewer than 20 of the 4,000 cases they charged, or less than .5%.

In the last 8 weeks, Pirro has chosen to dismiss 20 of the 95 federal cases that actually got charged, or 21%. That’s on top of cases — close to a dozen — that grand jurors have rejected. There is overlap in the cases; at least three of the cases that Faruqui lists as having been dismissed — Nathalie Jones, Edward Dana, and Paul Bryant — were dismissed after the grand jury rejected the charge.

But not all the cases overlap. Some of the cases (such with Sydney Reid, who was charged with assaulting an FBI officer) were refiled in Federal court as misdemeanors. DOJ is choosing to — or having to — dismiss cases for reasons beyond no bills, including because of Fourth Amendment violations, physical abuse of the defendant, or charges of assaulting a Federal officer in which the victim did not qualify as a federal officer (either because they were a DC cop doing DC cop things, or because they were a National Guard person from another state).

Which means Pirro has chosen to dismiss at least a fifth and close to a quarter of the cases since the invasion of DC started. Not all the cases arose out of the invasion. Two were overblown threat cases, and Reid’s predates the surge.

Nevertheless, it is an unprecedented failure, and a failure that cannot be attributed entirely to grand jurors disliking these cases.

Pirro is choosing to pursue felony charges that simply don’t hold up. And for a number of these defendants, she’s detaining them for days in the process.

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