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Remember when Brad Lander Caught Kristi Noem Stealing $80 Million?

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It’s perhaps a timely moment to recall that Brad Lander has tangled with Kristi Noem before.

Back when DOGE and DHS clawed back $80 million awarded to New York City to house migrants, Lander was the guy who called them out — and insisted on suing.

New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander said the abrupt decision was an illegal diversion by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency of money used to house asylum-seekers admitted to the U.S. under President Joe Biden.

“President Trump and his crony Elon Musk illegally executed a revocation of $80 million in congressionally-appropriated FEMA funding from New York City’s bank accounts,” Lander said in a statement. “This highway robbery of our funds directly out of our bank account is a betrayal of everyone who calls New York City home.”

Lander’s statement came after the Trump administration claimed the city had received disaster relief funds to house migrants in luxury hotels. Musk posted that his DOGE “discovered” the funding on Monday, calling it “a gross insubordination to the President’s executive order.”

The funds were administered by FEMA, a subagency of the Department of Homeland Security. A 2024 report from Lander’s office found that the city paid an average rate of $156 a night for hotel rooms booked through an agreement with the Hotel Association of New York City.

The seizure of funds could result in cuts to city services.

“We can’t recover money we already spent on shelter and services for asylum seekers, so it would require cutting $80 million of some other city expenses,” Lander said.

This happened the very week that Eric Adams was cozying up to Tom Homan — which Dale Ho judged was evidence of a quid pro quo.

Lander took a shot at Mayor Eric Adams for not standing up to Trump, saying that “If instead Mayor Adams continues to be President Trump’s pawn, my Office will request to work in partnership with the New York City Law Department to pursue aggressive legal action.”

Adams said Wednesday that he is in talks with the White House about recovering the money, and that he’s requested an emergency meeting with FEMA to resolve the matter. “The Corporation Counsel is already exploring various litigation options,” he added, in a statement on X.

Adams is scheduled to meet Thursday with Trump border czar Tom Homan, who demanded cooperation from the Democrat during a radio interview Tuesday, saying, “Either he comes to the table or we go around him.”

Adams didn’t insist on getting the money back. On the contrary, Trump’s Administration has continued to steal from New York City.

In fact, the day before Kristi Noem’s goons detained Brad Lander on his third visit accompanying migrants, New York’s lawyers amended their complaint about the theft — to update the Acting FEMA Administrator, to capitalize the words, “Money Grab” (to distinguish it from several other newly alleged harms), to describe the further arbitrary attempts to justify stealing the funds, first by terminating the program six weeks after DOGE took the money, then by launching an onerous investigation.

20. Then, with the purported compliance review apparently uncompleted, FEMA announced on April 1, 2025, that it was terminating SSP entirely. FEMA stated that it was terminating the City’s SSP award for the entirely different reason that the grants “no longer effectuate [] the program goals or agency priorities” (quoting 2 C.F.R. § 200.340(a)(2) (2020)). But the regulation FEMA cited does not permit a federal agency to cancel a grant program funded by Congressional appropriation simply because it has changed its mind and now opposes the program.

21. Not only that. While FEMA’s termination letter provides for a closeout process at the end of which FEMA will determine whether any additional SSP grant funds are owed the City, all SSP funds that were awarded the City and that would have remained available to make any such payment were apparently zeroed out on USASpending.gov more than six weeks earlier.

22. Collectively, these events make plain that Defendants determined to overturn the Congressional appropriation, deny the City SSP funds, and re-take any funds they could find a way to lay their hands on.

The amendment also catches FEMA making false representations to Rhode Island Judge John McConnell and in this lawsuit.

125, Despite Defendants’ representations — to the District Court in Rhode Island on February 11 and, as set forth more fully below, a week later in the Remedy for Noncompliance Letter — that the SSP funds were merely being “paused” or “temporarily” withheld pending a further review, Defendants had elsewhere already recorded the funds as no longer available at all.

The amended suit also describes that — as Trump did with Harvard — FEMA has also launched an onerous investigation into the city, and asks questions similar to the ones demanded of Harvard.

221. Joseph N. Mazzara, Acting General Counsel for defendant DHS, sent City OMB a letter dated June 4, 2025 announcing a “Notice of Investigation and Demand for Records: Shelter and Services Program Grant Awards” (“Notice of Investigation”). Under the guise of investigating the City’s expenditure of SSP funds, the Notice of Investigation sets forth a series of document demands and “interrogatories” that reach far beyond the scope of anything related to the City’s expenditures of federal SSP funds

[snip]

222. The scope of the demand far exceeds anything related to the administration of SSP. For example, the demand seeks, without apparent limitation or connection to immigrants served under SSP:

  • “All documents related to Your compliance with 8 U.S.C. g 1324.”
  • “All documents related to any instructions, guidance, suggestions, or recommendations for aliens to consider” in completing immigration or other government forms or interacting with any federal or state government officials.”
  • “All documents related to Your cooperation with law enforcement (including immigration officials) concerning aliens whom You have encountered'”
  • “All documents related to instructions, guidance, or recommendations, made available to aliens, regarding how to interact with law enforcement.”
  • A list of al “categories of information You have collected about any aliens.”

223. Despite the exceedingly broad scope of the demands, the Notice of Investigation provides just 30 days within which OMB “must produce” the records and information sought.

Admittedly, the lawyers are the ones now driving this fight, not Lander.

But the fight is about money Lander caught Kristi Noem stealing.

Lander’s detention thus bears a third similarity with that of Ras Baraka: both men had sued DHS, both arrests constituted — per Emil Bove’s representations to Dale Ho — election interference, and in both cases, Noem’s goons premeditated the arrest.

This is beginning to look like a pattern.

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LaMonica McIver and Schrödinger’s Baraka

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As I noted the other day, Alina Habba rushed to announce the indictment of LaMonica McIver, which names Ras Baraka as Individual-1, at 6:56PM on Tuesday night, an hour before polls closed in the election in which Baraka won the second-most votes. But it took most of a day before the indictment was docketed, meaning most coverage of the indictment relied on Habba’s press release. As a result, that coverage didn’t point out some of the gaping holes and contradictions in the story AUSA Mark McCarren, which Habba’s presser identified as part of a “Special Prosecutions Division,” told to get a grand jury to approve the charges (NPR addressed a few of the issues on Wednesday).

Those gaping holes and contradictions surely explain why McIver continues to express confidence she’ll be exonerated.

The facts of this case will prove was I was simply doing my job and will expose these proceedings for what they are: a brazen attempt at political intimidation. This indictment is no more justified than the original charges, and is an effort by Trump’s administration to dodge accountability for the chaos ICE caused and scare me out of doing the work I was elected to do. But it won’t work–I will not be intimidated. The facts are on our side, I’ll be entering a plea of not guilty, I’m grateful for the support of my community, and I look forward to my day in court.

The holes in the indictment — about permitting concerns raised by Newark, about GEO Group’s ownership of Delaney Hall, about the property lines at the facility, about McIver’s completion of an inspection after she allegedly assaulted several cops — obscure the complexity about who had authority to do what at the facility.

The ways in which DOJ has changed its story about key events will undermine key witnesses, starting with alleged victim Ricky Patel and extending to a guard whose story appears to have changed three times.

And the key disputed facts, about where Mayor Ras Baraka was, when — whom DOJ treats like he is Schrödinger’s cat — may blow this entire case out of the water.

The government has told more than six versions of the story about what happened at Delaney Hall on May 9:

In addition, WaPo did a comprehensive analysis of what happened, and Baraka included a detailed timeline in his complaint against Patel and Habba. I’ve tried to document those competing stories in this table.

Start with several key details that do not appear in the McIver indictment — and so may not have been shared with the grand jury.

Unlike the complaint Victim-1 Ricky Patel swore out against Ras Baraka, neither the complaint nor the indictment charging LaMonica McIver mention that GEO owns Delaney Hall, the site of the confrontation (see the pink boxes). In the criminal complaint against Baraka, that relationship was a necessary part of claiming that Baraka trespassed on a federal facility, without which DOJ would not and likely does not have jurisdiction.

The Delaney Hall Facility currently operates as a federal immigration facility pursuant to a contract between the GEO Group, Inc., the entity that owns the Delaney Hall Facility, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”). As a result of this contract, the Delaney Hall Facility has been acquired for the use of the United States and is under the jurisdiction of the United States.

That property relationship underlies several key other aspects of the confrontation that don’t show up in either of the McIver charging documents. First, Newark claims that Delaney Hall is not certified for its current use, over which Newark has actually sued the facility. Once you have even a dispute over the certification of the facility, than the Mayor of Newark has official business at the facility.

The fact that GEO, and not ICE, owns the property goes to whether Baraka was even trespassing at all. In the complaint against Baraka, Patel relied exclusively on the normal restrictions on entry — the chainlink fence, the No Trespassing signs, and the guard — to claim Baraka was trespassing. The problem with that is that at one point, a guard employed by GEO invited Baraka in.

The testimony of the guard (yellow boxes) is wildly inconsistent, as follows:

  • McIver complaint: Baraka was originally told he could not enter but was subsequently admitted because “the guard was under the impression that the Mayor was part of the Congressional delegation”
  • McIver indictment: Baraka was originally denied entry when he claimed he was part of the Congressional delegation, but then was let in because the guard was concerned for Baraka’s safety
  • Baraka lawsuit: The guard told Baraka he let him in to “calm the crowd”

That inconsistent testimony is important, because according to Baraka, when Patel told him to leave, Baraka told Patel he was invited on to the property, which the government now concedes but which, in real time, Patel disputed. This is, undoubtedly, a big part of the reason why Habba dismissed the complaint against Baraka. Not only is it not clear she had federal jurisdiction over a private facility in Baraka’s city, but when Patel filed the complaint, he at least knew that Baraka claimed to have been invited onto the property by a representative of GEO, and he may well have known that Baraka was right when he charged Baraka.

In other words, Victim-1 in the McIver indictment, Patel, left out key details in his sworn complaint, if not outright lied  to a judge when claiming that Baraka was trespassing at all.

And that — the good faith understanding from both Baraka and the members of Congress that Baraka was not trespassing — is important background to the biggest discrepancy between the claims Baraka has made, what WaPo shows, and what Special Prosecutions Division AUSA Mark McCarren appears to have told the grand jury.

In the McIver charging documents (which include no timeline), Patel ordered Baraka to leave, he told him to place his hands behind his back, the members of Congress came out and started to make a stink, Baraka somehow exited out the gate, which is where the key confrontation took place.

Even in that story, there are two key discrepancies. The McIver charging documents call the land outside the gate, vaguely, “the unsecured area of the facility” or “just outside the security gate for the facility.” That is, the McIver documents imply that GEO (though they don’t mention GEO) owns the property both inside and immediately outside the gate. But Baraka calls that area, “public Newark property.” DOJ says GEO owns the land where the confrontation took place. The Mayor of Newark says it’s the city’s public land. 

Perhaps the craziest discrepancy — and the reason I’m treating this as Schrödinger’s Baraka — is the description of how Baraka came to leave (green text).

  • Baraka complaint: He never left!
  • McIver complaint: “the Mayor was then moved outside the gate”
  • Habba presser: “the Mayor was escorted outside the secured gate” (in context, suggesting HSI did it)
  • McIver indictment: he “was escorted by his security detail”

Both Baraka’s lawsuit and the WaPo describe something totally different: he walked out, “arm-in-arm” with Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (Baraka’s lawsuit mentions that first he retrieved her phone from one of her staffers), by all accounts a successful effort by members of Congress to deescalate the situation.

In none of these scenarios was Baraka moved outside the gate by HSI. He left, whether arm-in-arm with Watson Coleman or escorted by his detail, of his own accord.

And then he was arrested.

He was ordered to leave, he left (even though he believed he had been invited by the property owner), and then he was arrested for trespassing.

Those discrepancies would be bad enough. But there’s a far bigger one. As the McIver charging documents tell it, the attempted arrest, Baraka’s departure, and then the successful arrest were one continuous event: Ricky Patel orders Ras Baraka to leave, attempts to arrest him, is thwarted by McIver, then proceeds outside the gate immediately to conclude the arrest. The effort by members of Congress to deescalate is instead portrayed as the beginning of an effort to thwart the arrest.

WaPo (and Baraka’s lawsuit) say it happened in two phases. First HSI ordered Baraka to leave, the members came out from the GEO waiting room, attempted to de-escalate, he left, then the members returned inside only to hear HSI premeditating a plan to arrest him even though he had already left the facility, after which they re-joined Baraka, this time in that area that DOJ claims is the unsecured property of GEO (only they don’t tell you it is GEO) and that the Mayor of Newark claims is public property.

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.

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.

According to Baraka’s timeline, five minutes elapsed between the time he left, HSI plotted his arrest, and then everyone came out and had that confrontation. And the members of Congress knew (this detail doesn’t make any DOJ documents and it’s likely they don’t have testimony from any of them) that HSI planned Baraka’s arrest even though he had already left. Or at least left the secured property, whatever the property status of the land outside the gate.

Here I am 1,700 words into this post, and I haven’t even gotten to several other key discrepancies in the documents.

The McIver charging documents mention that McIver was at Delaney Hall “allegedly to conduct a congressional oversight investigation,” but they don’t provide much detail, aside from Patel’s comments distinguishing Baraka from the members, about the legal protection for such things. They certainly don’t mention how long DHS kept the members waiting, which Baraka alleges (and WaPo backs) was over an hour. They claim that the Democrats planned a protest, but Baraka says that, instead, McIver invited Baraka for a press conference after the members toured the facility, which would have happened just before 2PM, over 40 minutes before the alleged assaults, if DHS hadn’t kept the members waiting.

That is, the McIver charging documents totally obscure her right to be on the premises.

Crazier still, even though both the complaint and indictment claim that McIver was “allegedly” there to conduct an inspection, neither explains that she did, in fact, conduct that inspection, nor do they explain that she did so — she was allowed back inside Delaney Hall — after she allegedly assaulted two different officers outside it.

This is how DOJ describes the second alleged assault: “McIVER pushed past V-2 while using each of her forearms to forcibly strike V-2 as she returned inside the secured area of Delaney Hall.” But then the story just ends. It appears that Special Prosecutions Division AUSA Mark McCarren didn’t bother to tell the grand jury that she didn’t just allegedly show up for an inspection, she did in fact conduct that inspection, with the victims’ permission, after she allegedly assaulted them.

Maybe I’m skeptical of cops who lie, but if I were in the jury, I’d acquit on all charges in less time than DHS left the members of Congress waiting that day.

Meanwhile, there’s unrest in Delaney Hall because — detainees say — they’re getting fed shitty food at irregular hours, precisely the kind of problem that oversight from Congress and Newark might have avoided.

Francisco Castillo, a Dominican immigrant who has been held at Delaney Hall since last week, said in a phone interview from the detention center on Tuesday that the facility was so overcrowded when he arrived that some detainees had to sleep on the floor. He said on Tuesday that the crowding issue had been recently resolved.

But he said detainees were being served dismal meals at irregular hours, an issue that was particularly affecting detainees who are diabetic and need to eat at regular times to control their blood sugar levels. He said detainees were often served small cartons of expired milk for breakfast. Dinners were sometimes not served until around 11 p.m., he said.

The living conditions grew so bad, he said, that a group of about 30 detainees had begun drafting a petition detailing the conditions that they could get to the public through their relatives and lawyers.

“Every day is a disaster with the food here,” Mr. Castillo, 36, who was detained by ICE at an immigration courthouse in New York City on June 4, said in Spanish.

At about 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, a woman who lives in Elizabeth, N.J., said she got a call from her partner, who has been detained at Delaney Hall since early last month. He was crying, she said, and described rising tension within the facility linked to frustration over food.

To her great credit, McIver remains on the case, issuing the following statement about the rising unrest at the facility.

I am carefully monitoring the situation unfolding at Delaney Hall, and am in contact with local and state law enforcement and officials. I have serious concerns about the reports of abusive circumstances at the facility. Even now, as we are hearing reports from news organizations and advocates on the ground about a lack of food and basic rights for those inside, the administration appears to be stonewalling efforts to learn the truth. My office has reached out to ICE for answers. ICE has not yet provided them.

This case is dogshit, and it looks likely that Mark McCarren only succeeded in getting his indictment by keeping key details from the grand jury. But it may not even survive to trial, because when laid out side by side, there’s far more evidence of DHS lying to judges than there is of crimes by Democrats trying to fulfill their jobs as Mayor and Members of Congress.

Update: This was just beginning to be reported when I first posted this post. But four detainees at Delaney Hall escaped through an external drywall wall.

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Pam Bondi’s Four Political Prosecutions

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Alina Habba announced the indictment of LaMonica McIver at 6:56PM on Tuesday night, an hour before polls in the New Jersey gubernatorial primary — in which Ras Baraka, referred to as Individual 1 in the indictment, ended up being the second-highest vote-getter — closed. The timing was dictated by a hearing scheduled for the next day, not the primary, but after being admonished by Magistrate Judge André Espionsa, it was an inappropriate rush to announce her trophy before polls closed, particularly since it took almost a day to get the indictment docketed.

There was a lot of shitty reporting based on Habba’s press release about the arrest.

I’ll unpack the indictment (which adds a misdemeanor instance of the two felony charges, 18 USC 111, that were announced in the complaint). The story Alina Habba tells about Baraka keeps changing, and that’s before you consider the parts of the story she doesn’t tell (and undoubtedly didn’t tell the grand jury that indicted the case).

But first I want to lay out elements of a pattern.

This is the fourth instance where Pam Bondi’s DOJ has charged a Democrat who did not meekly collude in DHS’ immigration gulag: Milwaukee Judge Hanna Dugan, Baraka, McIver, and David Huerta (they had to dismiss the charges against Baraka, and he is suing for malicious prosecution).

A pattern is emerging.

All of these cases were charged as complaint, even though both the Dugan and McIver case had time to go before a grand jury.

In the three assault-realted cases, Homeland Security has attested them; these may be men moved from their day job hunting international crime to carrying out Stephen Miller’s gulag.

In all cases, Pam Bondi’s people did something — posting a picture of Hannah Dugan handcuffed, Habba making false claims about Baraka and McIver on her personal Xitter account and then announcing the McIver indictment before polls closed in New Jersey, Acting US Attorney Bill Essayli posting about the Huerta assault before it was charged — that violates DOJ’s media guidelines. In the assault related cases, HSI arguably assaulted a Democrat doing something legal (Congressional and Mayoral oversight in the New Jersey case, peaceful protest on a public sidewalk in Huerta’s case), and charged them for it — though DHS has done that with non-public citizens as well.

None of this means these cases (Baraka’s excepted) will fail. It means the people Bondi keeps charging even after being admonished in the Baraka case (and the Eric Adams case) will be able to point back to an increasing pattern.

Hannah Dugan docket

Ras Baraka criminal docket

Ras Baraka civil docket

LaMonica McIver docket

David Huerta docket

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Banging on a Gate: Pam Bondi Found a Cyber Investigator Who Doesn’t Check Phone Logs!

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Less than three weeks ago, Pam Bondi’s DOJ got admonished by a Magistrate Judge for charging first, investigating latter.

When dismissing Ras Baraka’s charges on May 21, Magistrate Judge André Espinosa scolded the AUSA present — and by proxy, DOJ — for arresting Newark’s Mayor before doing basic investigation.

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.

It’s precisely that commitment to rigorous 19 investigation and thoughtful prosecution that has 20 characterized the distinguished history of your Office, Mr. Demanovich, particularly over the last two decades. The bench and the bar have witnessed in that period, the diligence and care demonstrated by prior U.S. attorneys in New Jersey, whose leadership has consistently upheld the highest standards of prosecutorial ethics and professionalism. Their legacy is one of careful deliberate action where charges were brought only after exhaustive evidence gathering and a thorough consideration of all facts That bedrock principle, consistently honored by your predecessors, is the foundation upon which the credibility and effectiveness of your Office rests.

So let this incident serve as an inflection point and a reminder to uphold your solemn oath to the people of this District and to your client, Justice itself, and ensure that every charge brought is the product of rigorous investigation and earned confidence in its merit mirroring the exemplary conduct that has long defined your Office.

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.

But just 18 days later, Pam Bondi’s DOJ charged another prominent Democrat — this time, SEIU CA President David Huerta — via complaint, without first doing basic investigation. The complaint, which was released before Huerta’s initial appearance yesterday, charges Huerta with one count of conspiring to impede an officer, a felony (h/t to Meghann Cuniff for releasing the complaint).

The incident occurred outside of this fast fashion factory, where officers were conducting a search.

As Bondi’s DOJ did with Ras Baraka (the charges that were dismissed) and LaMonica McIver (she has a hearing tomorrow), ICE team members physically grappled with their target, and then arrested them for the interaction. In this case, agents picked up Heurta and knocked him over, knocking his head into a curb and wrenching what he said was a bad shoulder in the process of cuffing him. He went to the hospital for treatment during his weekend detention.

There are two elements that have to be proven to convict Huerta of this felony: first, that the defendant used force, intimidation, or threats to induce a US official to stop doing his job. When this same charge was used against January 6 militias, prosecutors relied on actual assaults of cops, threats to spray them, military formation and kit, and threats to assassinate members of Congress. All of it threatened physical violence and even death.

The closest such threat to these guys was someone — no tie to Huerta is alleged — who told officers to shoot themselves.

As a crowd gathered outside of the vehicular gate, individuals in the crowd began screaming expletives at law enforcement officers through the gate in an attempt to intimidate them. For example, one individual yelled “I want you to kill yourself! Go home and drink a lot of vodka and shoot yourself with your own god damn revolver!”

As to Huerta specifically, the affiant of this complaint claimed that Huerta’s banging on the gate to the facility was an “attempt to intimidate us,” and pointed to Huerta’s repeated taunts about his mask and claimed that this was necessarily an attempt to dox and intimidate the officers “in the future.”

I told HUERTA that if he continued to block the gate, he would be arrested. HUERTA replied “I can’t hear you through your fucking mask.” Others in the crowd repeatedly asked me and other law enforcement officers to take our masks off and attempted to film our faces and badges in an apparent attempt to intimidate us. Based on my training and experience, I know that protestors often do this so that they can publish identifying information about law enforcement officers online.1 That way, others can harass or threaten the law enforcement officers in the future.

The affiant’s name is redacted in several places in the affidavit, but not in the section where he introduces his background. He doxed himself, while citing the imagined threat of doxing as the intimidation necessary to sustain these charges.

But it’s the conspiracy part of this that is particularly nutty. Prosecutors need to show that Huerta entered into an agreement with at least one other person to intimidate an ICE team to stop them from doing their job.

As a threshold matter, the complaint presents no evidence that Huerta or anyone else knew what the law enforcement officers were doing — executing a judicial search warrant rather than conducting a raid based on an administrative warrant. That may matter to proving intent.

More importantly, the affiant just points to person after person and says, well maybe that indicates a conspiracy.

A woman provided details of the law enforcement presence into her phone. Maybe that was a conspiracy.

Protestors who arrived at the site — video-taped by an undercover officer!! — were communicating with each other. Maybe that was a conspiracy.

Huerta was “apparently typing text into his digital device while present at the protest.” Maybe that was a conspiracy.

Huerta lives nine miles away from the garment factory, so had to have learned of ICE activity from someone “coordinating a protest at this location.” Maybe that was a conspiracy.

Someone — no tie to Huerta is alleged, and there’s no indication he was arrested — attempted to padlock the gate. Maybe that was a conspiracy.

Huerta said, “What are you going to do, you can’t arrest us all,” which the affiant presents as proof that “he and the others had planned in advance of arrival to disrupt the operation.” Maybe that was a conspiracy.

Nowhere does the affiant even allege that Huerta and the others entered into a conspiracy to intimidate the beleaguered ICE officers standing behind a 7-foot steel fence, which protestors didn’t try to breach when it opened, remaining all the time on a public sidewalk. Rather, he alleges a conspiracy to disrupt what the protesters might have thought was an ICE raid, meaning any attempt to provide proof of a conspiracy to impede officers by intimidating or threatening them is almost nonexistent. And he repeatedly calls this a protest, even while describing Huerta using the language of protests and pickets.

One of the nuttiest parts of this is that the affiant — the guy who cited the threat of doxing as proof of intimidation and then doxed himself — is a senior HSI Agent pulled off his normal duty conducting cyber financial investigations, the kind of thing that normally targets international crypto-facilitated crimes.

I am a Supervisory Special Agent (“SSA”) with the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”), Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”). I currently supervise the Cyber Financial investigations group at the HSI Los Angeles office.

The bread and butter of cyber investigations are digital tracks: cell phone, social media, and financial records.

The FBI collected reams and reams of such things before charging the aforementioned 18 USC 372 conspiracies against Jan6 militias. There were Signal and Telegram chats, Parler posts, saved communications from walkie-talkie chats during the riot, reported conversations from a number of cooperating witnesses, on top of the actual assaults of cops and weapons and direct threats.

And this guy, whose forté is to collect such things … hasn’t. He refers to Huerta’s digital device twice, but doesn’t say whether he tried to exploit it. He refers to social media posts (even while assuming the woman who first reported from the scene was using a videoconference app rather than just posting to TikTok or something), but he doesn’t cite a single post. He doesn’t even have phone records — available via subpoena even on a weekend — to identify with whom, if any, of the other protestors Huerta was really communicating.

Ryan Ribner, who wouldn’t have gotten where he was in his day job without highly developed skills at collecting and analyzing digital tracks, hasn’t (claimed to have) done any of that.

Another instance of charge first, investigate later.

There are several indications that may be the point.

First, there’s that undercover officer, who was filming the entire time but apparently didn’t produce a single video that could substantiate a conspiracy. This protest was miniscule. Why was there an undercover officer present at all? Did it have everything to do with Huerta’s presence (the undercover, as described, seemed focused on Huerta)?

Our trusty cyber expert also suggests that the van entering the gate of the facility — the predicate for making Huerta move and therefore the predicate to tackling him, injuring him, and then arresting him — may not, after all, be the only entrance. He describes that “as far as I was aware,” it was.

As far as I was aware, this gate was the only location through which vehicles could enter or exit the premises.

I wonder whether his awareness has changed over the weekend.

As this goes forward, it’s likely that our intrepid cyber investigator will actually subpoena some phone records, do the kind of thing he has been doing for over a decade. It’s likely he will then try to substantiate a conspiracy for which he has presented no more than speculation. Given his conflation of what he himself calls a protest and the intimidation and physical force contemplated in 18 USC 372, given the calls — including from Trump — to substantiate some organized background behind the larger protests in a city of 10 million, he may well imagine a conspiracy in SEIU’s organized protests.

Protests are what unions do, and SEIU is an enormously important union with close ties to the Democratic party. Will official and private communications among SEIU personnel planning protests look like plans for protests? Yes, of course. And DOJ will claim that banging on a gate is so intimidating to a bunch of armed law enforcement officers standing behind it that those plans for protests amount to a felony.

Pam Bondi’s DOJ first assaulted and injured, then charged, a very important labor leader with a conspiracy charge the evidence for which they didn’t even bother to look for.

Yet.

And that seems to be the point.

Update: The crack staff in Los Angeles’ US Attorney’s Office finally docketed the case. They asked for Huerta to be detained (which, I guess, is how they got a judge to impose a $50K bond)!

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Lefty Pundits Continue to Drown Out Democratic Actions with their Complaints about Democratic Inaction

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On Tuesday, a small immigration reporting outlet, Migrant Insider, asked Hakeem Jeffries whether the masked ICE officials who had accosted LaMonica McIver and a Jerry Nadler staffer had been identified. Jeffries replied that every single one of them — no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes — would be identified, noting that the US was not the Soviet Union. Jeffries explained that “our first priorities” are making sure that the person on the front line is able to move on, but he also claimed that efforts to deal with the broader policy implications “are underway.”

Of the biggest outlets that picked up the comment, just MeidasTouch, which said “this is exactly kind of the fight that we need to be seeing from our representatives,” served to magnify Jeffries’ comment; their Instagram post got over 43,000 likes. Most of the others — Breitbart, CPAC, Sean Hannity, the Washington Examiner — tried to pitch this as a threat to ICE. Jeffries said something fiery, but while the right wing used it to claim Democrats were attacking cops, left wing pundits either didn’t notice or ignored it.

One probable reason left wing pundits didn’t mention Jeffries’ comment on Tuesday is they were still seething over a comment he made two days earlier — a comment they didn’t have to work to find. Jeffries told Dana Bash that Democrats would respond to Trump’s attacks on members of Congress — Bash mentioned both the charges against LaMonica McIver and the handcuffing of a Jerry Nadler staffer — but “we will make that decision in a time, place, and manner of our choosing.”

The comment from Jeffries has been used all week as an example of the feckless Dems, of their fecklessness on immigration issues, especially.

But Jeffries was right that Democrats have been responding to these issues, to the extent they can in the minority. Since Jeffries made that comment, at least the following has happened:

  • On Monday, Gwen Moore and Mark Pocan did an unannounced visit to a Wisconsin detention center of the sort that turned into the McIver altercation in New Jersey; nothing happened and so it got little notice
  • On Tuesday, Jerry Nadler and Jamie Raskin sent a sternly-worded letter to Jim Jordan demanding 1) He condemn the abuse of separation of powers presented by the ICE detention and 2) he call Kristi Noem for a hearing before the House Judiciary to answer for her “agency’s irresponsible and dangerous actions”
  • On Tuesday (as noted) Jeffries promised to identify the ICE agents involved in such heavy-handed tactics
  • On Tuesday, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka sued Alina Habba for malicious prosecution and defamation
  • Jerry Nadler released a second video of the altercation with ICE agents (who were actually unmasked); it shows that one ICE agent pushed the Nadler staffer before handcuffing her, debunking DHS claims
  • As we speak, Jimmy Gomez is reporting on an atrocious detention situation in Los Angeles (he has demanded to go in)

And all that’s before other victories on detention, such as the release of Carol Hui and the return of an improperly deported man or the order to release details of the Administration’s deal with Nayib Bukele, legal cases that have attracted lefty attention, with or without involvement of members of Congress.

A number of these things — the detention center visit and the sternly-worded letter — are the kind of routine oversight that rarely attracts attention (though I’ve repeatedly been told that members of Congress are not making such detention center visits, so it’s important to mention that they are). I’ve noted that Jeffries’ promise to identify the ICE officers was largely ignored by much of the left — but not the right.

The Baraka lawsuit got a great deal of mainstream attention, but very little attention from pundits. Until this Baraka appearance on Democracy Now today, I’ve seen little focus on its significance.

That’s probably true, in part, because there’s a decent likelihood it gets dismissed based on prosecutorial immunity grounds; there are other lawsuits that are, legally, far more urgent and significant for legal commentators to cover.

But if it is not dismissed then it may turn into a political firestorm. Baraka cited a number of things that may get him beyond the normally very high bar of prosecutorial immunity: he cited Alina Habba’s comments before being confirmed as US Attorney, promising to abuse her authority, he cited Habba’s use of her private Twitter account to make knowingly false claims about his arrest, the false claims both Habba and DHS made about the circumstances of the arrest, and Magistrate Judge André Espinosa’s rebuke of DOJ for its conduct in the case gets past an attempt to dismiss it. If the lawsuit survives, it could be a very powerful political tool to fight back against Trump’s politicization of law enforcement.

But even as a messaging document, the lawsuit is important. It makes clear that Special Agent in Charge Ricky Patel — whom Baraka alleges instructed other agents to “take him down” while they were pushing and shoving the group —  had no basis to arrest Baraka and also disputes claims made in the LaMonica McIver arrest affidavit. Details from the lawsuit — such as that Habba commented publicly even before Baraka was transported from Delaney Hall, or that they fingerprinted Baraka twice, once upon his arrest and once on his initial appearance — make it clear what a political hit job this was. If, as polls show is likely, Baraka doesn’t win New Jersey’s gubernatorial primary, he’ll be able to add the affect of the arrest on his electoral chances to the injury Habba caused to him. Those are all enough to make a stink out of.

All the more so given the obvious comparison with Eric Adams. Pam Bondi’s DOJ dismissed a case against Adams so it would not affect his primary chances, also citing his need to carry out his mayoral duties. But they arrested Baraka while he was carrying out his mayoral duties, trying to ensure the safety of a facility in his city, and did so weeks before a primary. Those are fundamentally inconsistent actions.

If this survives an initial motion to dismiss, then Baraka will have the ability to get discovery (including a comparison of his case with Adams’) and demand depositions.

And all of that makes a criminal case against Congresswoman McIver (which has yet to be indicted by a grand jury) far less viable. Unless and until DOJ gets the Baraka lawsuit dismissed, they will have competing threads of discovery out there, even further weakening an already weak case against McIver.

That should have made it a central messaging vehicle. The same is true of Jerry Nadler’s release of a video that shows DHS lied about the circumstances of the handcuffing of his staffer. With attention, it could create a firestorm by itself. I’ve seen no coverage from the pundit class. No pundit class, no firestorm.

It’s not so much the Democrats are doing nothing. It’s that the people who are best situated to make a stink about what has happened — to publicize Baraka’s competing claims about what happened at Delaney Hall, to generate outrage over how the Nadler video debunks DHS, and yes, even to use that sternly-worded letter to shame Jim Jordan for abdicating the independence of Article I power — are instead spending entire days claiming that nothing is happening except a comment they watched out of context.

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Alina Habba Back in Trouble for (Allegedly) Lying While Lawyering

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One reason — I laid out a week ago — I was interested in the ways that Trump’s DOJ keeps getting caught in false claims, is because they create, “the possibility that these prosecutions will backfire, not just by creating sympathetic political martyrs, but also by further exposing [Pam] Bondi and her top aides as liars violating legal ethics.”

Which Ras Baraka is attempting to facilitate by suing Alina Habba for false arrest and malicious prosecution.

There are several key details about the lawsuit that might sustain it beyond what would normally be prosecutorial immunity, at least far enough to get discovery (discovery that might also sink the prosecution against LaMonica McIver).

First, Baraka showed that even before she was sworn in, Habba made clear that she would abuse the office for political gain.

13. Days before being sworn in, Habba announced on Fox News that she would be “investigating” New Jersey’s Democratic Governor and his appointed Attorney General, claiming New Jersey’s lawful Immigrant Trust Directive is thwarting Trump’s immigration policies. Habba claimed that New Jersey’s Governor and Attorney General were interfering with her effort to take “all criminals out of the country” — apparently except for her former client, convicted felon Donald Trump.

Along with including all the other false claims made about Baraka (an interview Habba did with Fox, a CNN interview DHS propagandist Tricia McLaughlin did, as well as false claims in the arrest affidavit), he included the tweet that Habba sent from her personal Xitter account even before Baraka was charged.

And he described the exceptional efforts to exacerbate Baraka’s arrest, not just by arresting him rather than citing him, but by subjecting him twice to fingerprinting and a mugshot.

One thing Baraka doesn’t mention, however, is the imminent primary for New Jersey’s gubernatorial race. He Baraka was well behind in polls before his arrest, but he will be able to make a plausible claim that the arrest harmed his chances — all the more so given that Pam Bondi’s own DOJ dismissed the charges against Eric Adams precisely because of the damage it would allegedly do to him in the upcoming primary.

As Liz Dye noted on Bluesky, Baraka is represented by the same lawyer, Nancy Smith, who forced Habba into a settlement on behalf of a Bedminster staffer whom Habba tricked into a hush payment in conjunction with being sexuallly harassed. She knows Habba’s tricks well.

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The Law, Conspiracism, and Gravity

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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.

That’s what happened — according to a recent NYT story — to Eagle Ed’s efforts to criminalize EPA grants.

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 moved outside 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.

Phil Bump described what happened here.

Over the weekend [now the weekend before last], Bongino — now the deputy director of the FBI, thanks to the president Bongino championed relentlessly for years — sat down alongside his boss, FBI Director Kash Patel, for an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” Bartiromo, never one to shy away from a right-wing conspiracy theory, asked about Epstein.

“You said Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide,” Bartiromo said. “People don’t believe it.”

“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.”

When he subsequently posted his assessment of Epstein’s death on social media, the response from many of his followers was furious. Who’d gotten to him? Where was the Bongino from the podcast? He was offering a truth about America that wasn’t immune to the facts (as his podcast once promised) and his fans didn’t want to hear it.

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.

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DOJ Reportedly Will Pay Ashli Babbitt’s Estate $5 Million; Claims to Have Charged LaMonica McIver

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One thing even good reporting on Stephen Miller’s attempt to deport hundreds of Venezuelans under Miller’s nested false claims that they are members of Tren de Aragua and that Tren de Aragua is a terrorist group directed by the Venezuelan government to invade the United States misses is that Miller is doing it to aid in false equivalences.

Both Miller and Trump propagandist Mike Davis illustrated this the other day.

Davis falsely claimed that the Supreme Court, in ruling against Trump’s attempt to render detainees over Easter weekend, provided habeas in just 24 hours. But, Davis claimed, it took the same court 30,000 hours to “provide relief” to Jan6ers “persecuted by Biden,” by which he meant those who were prosecuted under 18 USC 1512(c)(2).

Ultimately SCOTUS narrowed the application of the law to those who corruptly tampered with evidence involved in a proceeding. Almost everyone charged with obstruction premeditated their effort to disrupt the vote certification, to deny Joe Biden his victory and his supporters their right to have their vote counted.

Miller called these people who attacked democracy, “innocent Americans.” He, like Davis, called the Venezuelans “terrorists.”

CATO’s David Bier released a report yesterday showing that 50 of the men already sent to to Nayib Bukele’s concentration camp were not only not proven to be terrorists, but had been admitted into the United States legally. Most were detained because of their tattoos.

These legal immigrants include a temporary visa holder and four men who were authorized to travel through the US refugee program. The government vetted these refugees abroad and concluded that they would face persecution, letting them resettle in the United States. The other 45 legal immigrants scheduled appointments using the CBP One app, through which they were permitted to seek entry. Among those with appointments, 24 were paroled into the United States, where they could live and work legally for up to two years, while the other 21 were detained at the port of entry.

[snip]

These people came to the United States with advanced US government permission, were vetted and screened before arrival, violated no US immigration law, and the US government turned around and “disappeared” them without due process to a foreign prison. It is paying the Salvadoran government to continue to keep them incarcerated.

[snip]

Most, at least 42, were labeled as gang members primarily based on their tattoos, which Venezuelan gangs do not use to identify members and are not reliable indicators of gang membership. According to court documents, DHS created a checklist to determine that heavily weights “dressing” like a gang member, using “gang signs,” and, most critically, tattoos. No criminal conviction, arrest, or even witness testimony is required.

DHS’s images of “TdA tattoos” include the Jordan logo, an AK-47, a train, a crown, “hijos,” “HJ,” a star, a clock, and a gas mask. But as the American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin Melnick has shown, all of these supposed TdA tattoos were not taken from Venezuelan gang members but rather stolen by DHS from social media accounts that have nothing to do with TdA or Venezuela. For instance, DHS obtained its TdA “Jordan” from a Michael Jordan fan account in the United States. It pulled its AK-47 tattoo from a Turkish tattoo artist.

Because these men were denied due process, the public had no opportunity to obtain a real accounting of any evidence against them.

By comparison, those charged with obstructing the vote count for January 6 were arrested on criminal complaints sworn out to a judge, given initial hearings, and convicted via a trial or confession. They got due process.

Stephen Miller called them innocent, even those who admitted to willfully attempting to obstruct the certification of Joe Biden’s win.

Monday, SCOTUS lifted the stay on a Temporary Postponement of Kristi Noem’s efforts to deport Venezuelans from whom Trump withdrew Temporary Protected Status. Those with individual challenges can continue their challenges but Trump can move forward with deportations.

As part of the same effort to decriminalize January 6, DOJ has agreed to pay Ashli Babbitt’s estate almost $5 million to settle a wrongful death claim related to Babbitt’s invasion of the Speaker’s Lobby where Congress was trying to escape an armed mob.

The Trump administration has agreed to pay just under $5 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit that Ashli Babbitt’s family filed over her shooting by an officer during the U.S. Capitol riot, according to a person with knowledge of the settlement. The person insisted on anonymity to discuss with The Associated Press terms of a settlement that have not been made public.

The settlement would resolve the $30 million federal lawsuit that Babbitt’s estate filed last year in Washington, D.C. On Jan. 6, 2021, a Capitol police officer shot Babbitt as she tried to climb through the broken window of a barricaded door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby.

The officer who shot her was cleared of wrongdoing by the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, which concluded that he acted in self-defense and in the defense of members of Congress. The Capitol Police also cleared the officer.

This is Trump’s goal, Stephen Miller’s goal; it is how Miller got Trump elected. Trump has always claimed investigations into himself and his mob were unjust, but his own investigations into Joe Biden’s kid and before that Hillary Clinton was a hunt for corruption.

Trump’s power rests on claiming up is down, attacks on the US are noble and the defense of rule of law is a crime, accountability for anyone on his team is unjust.

Finally, today, Alina Habba announced on Xitter (nothing appears to be filed yet) that she is dismissing the petty trespassing case against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka “for the sake of moving forward” — or, more likely, because video evidence shows that when he was asked to leave Delaney Hall, he did so, and only after that was he arrested. But in the same statement, Habba announced she was has charged Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, who was shoved while she was objecting to the arrest of Newark’s mayor, which right wingers describe as an attempt to body slam the cops arresting Baraka. McIver is being charged with the same assault charge used against hundreds of Jan6ers who have since been pardoned for their crimes.

Habba claims she,

persistently made efforts to address these issues without bringing criminal charges and [has] given Representative McIver every opportunity to come to a resolution, but she has unfortunately declined.

Uh huh. McIver probably declined to do what CBS is about to, to falsely admit guilt when there is none. In a statement, McIver called the charges political.

McIver, D-10th Dist., called the charges filed by Habba, an appointee and former lawyer for President Donald Trump “purely political.”

“Earlier this month, I joined my colleagues to inspect the treatment of ICE detainees at Delaney Hall in my district,” McIver said in a statement. “We were fulfilling our lawful oversight responsibilities, as members of Congress have done many times before, and our visit should have been peaceful and short.

“Instead, ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation when they chose to arrest Mayor Baraka. The charges against me are purely political—they mischaracterize and distort my actions, and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight.”

The charge comes amid a WaPo report that Pam Bondi is (was?) considering eliminating the requirement that investigations into Members of Congress and other public officlas involve DOJ’s Public Integrity Division. The Division would have, in this case, warned DOJ officials that in past cases (most notably with people like Scott Perry and Jim Jordan) DOJ determined charges for such actions might violate separation of powers.

Trump not only doesn’t care about things like that, infringing on Congress’ powers is the point.

As I said to Nicole Sandler Friday, Trump was always going to find a way to charge a Member of Congress, just like he found a way to charge a judge. Habba has done so here where McIver has a clear immunity claim, and has done so as someone who clearly has conflicts. Habba’s statement lacks DOJ’s boilerplate comment asserting that charges are just allegations. And the siren in her tweet will add to any claim McIver makes that this violates due process.

Sure, Habba claims she tried to avoid this. But the entire scene at Delaney Hall was designed to elicit such confrontation, to create nesting legal attacks out of which Stephen Miller can spin his lies.

These developments are all of a piece. They are all an effort — one Trump has been pursuing for a decade — to replace rule of law with rule of mob.

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