Some weeks ago, DOJ attempted to bigfoot Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s malicious prosecution claim, arguing that it had to be dismissed right away.
Today, his attorney, Yael Bromberg, (who recently took over the suit) responded, accusing Ricky Patel of lying on his arrest complaint.
On May 9, 2025, the Mayor, accompanied by his security detail, including Newark Police Department officers, was undisputedly permitted entry by a GEO Group guard, who allowed passage through the secured gate surrounding the outer perimeter of Delaney Hall. Forty minutes later, Defendant Ricky J. Patel arrived on the scene with approximately 20 heavily armored agents, joining various security guards already present there. Patel suddenly threatened the Mayor with arrest should he not depart from property which Patel is neither an owner nor a representative of. 4 Although the congressional representatives objected to his ejection, the Mayor advised Patel that he would leave, and he immediately did so peacefully. The charging document, signed by Defendant Patel, includes false statements that the Mayor “unlawfully entered and remained” on the property, and key omissions of fact that Patel already knew: that the Mayor was allowed onto the property by GEO, who opened the gate for his entry and allowed him to stay there for forty minutes, and that he exited the property willfully. Defendant Habba immediately propagated a false narrative, before the Mayor was even transported from Delaney, and then on national television, claiming that he “storm[ed]” Delaney Hall “joined by a mob of people,” and that he “broke into a detention facility.” (Am. Compl. ¶ 39, ¶¶ 34-41).5
[snip]
Nor does this litigation concern a new Bivens context, as Defendants argue. “[F]ollowing [the United States Supreme] Court’s precedents, the Districts Courts and Courts of Appeals have decided numerous cases involving Fourth Amendment claims under §1983 for malicious prosecution.” Thompson v. Clark, 596 U.S. 36, 42 (2022) (string citation omitted). “[N]early every other Circuit has held that malicious prosecution is actionable under the Fourth Amendment to the extent that the defendant’s actions cause the plaintiff to be ‘seized’ without probable cause.” Id. (reference omitted). Claims of malicious prosecution must show that the proceedings were initiated “without probable cause” and that the defendants “acted maliciously for a purpose other than bringing the plaintiff to justice.” Zimmerman v. Corbett, 873 F.3d 414 (3d Cir. 2017). Those circumstances are immediately present here.
Remember how I argued that DOJ might actually be trying to get no-billed in the Jim Comey case? I argued that if the case were charged, it could put Todd Blanche, especially, in a really awkward position.
These leaks make it far more likely that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer will get no-billed (meaning they’[d] vote against indicting Comey). And that may be the point. Indeed, her law license may be among a handful that get saved in the process.
Consider how this would look to Todd Blanche.
Blanche may not have noticed that DC added Ken Chesebro yesterday to the growing list of former Trump lawyers who’ve lost their license to practice law. But he’s no doubt aware of how common it is for Trump lawyers to lose their law licenses.
In her order, Garnett specifically directed Todd Blanche to clean all this up.
[snip]
Blanche’s personal exposure in the LaMonica McIver case goes far deeper. He is at once:
The official who ordered DHS personnel to arrest Ras Baraka even after he had left Delaney Hall property, creating the physical confrontation in which McIver was charged, and as such, part of the law enforcement team and implicated in a potentially unlawful arrest
The person whose office conducted the prosecutorial review previously done by career prosecutors in Public Integrity Division after that got shut down
Because Alina Habba continues to play US Attorney after being unlawfully retained, the person in charge of the prosecution
If McIver’s own selective and vindictive prosecution claim gains any traction, we may learn far more about Blanche’s effort to criminalize a co-equal branch of government for conducting lawful oversight.
According to a recent CNN story, there’s good reason to believe I was right! DOJ gave her no support to get the indictment, but the FBI prepared her just enough to get the job done.
DOJ headquarters declined to provide lawyers to assist Halligan, and FBI agents and lawyers working to prepare her were denied their request for a para-legal professional to assist in the presentation, according to two people familiar with the matter.
“Lindsey was set up to fail,” one of the sources familiar with the discussions said. “She was the lamb sent to slaughter.”
[snip]
Last Tuesday, Halligan began a crash course to prepare. Justice officials told her that the deputy attorney general’s office didn’t have lawyers to help her, and that it was against federal rules of criminal procedure for one of the attorneys from Justice headquarters to be in the grand jury room, one source familiar with the discussions said.
An administration official pushed back on the sources’ contention that Halligan did not have help from the Justice headquarters. Officials argued that Halligan was in touch personally with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche multiple times, including visiting the Department of Justice for meetings during the week leading up to her presentation, even if she lacked support from lower level attorneys with more experience in the grand jury room in Alexandria. The source added that Halligan and Blanche spoke after the indictment was issued.
Blanche and Attorney General Pam Bondi had earlier expressed qualms about the case, citing concerns raised in a memo produced by prosecutors who had spent months on the case, according to people familiar with the matter.
Instead, Halligan spent hours preparing with a group that included FBI attorneys and the agents who had led the investigation, the sources said.
Halligan participated in a number of “practice runs” and spent hours going through the exhibits in preparation, the sources said.
[snip]
But that Halligan succeeded in getting two counts handed up surprised Justice officials, who nonetheless immediately sought to celebrate.
Shortly after Halligan emerged from the courtroom Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a statement on X, declaring: “No one is above the law.”
In an administration where being quick to post on social media is prized, the move irritated Halligan and FBI officials who felt that top Justice officials were seeming to take credit for an indictment some believed they had sought to doom, according to sources briefed on the matter.
Well, Lindsey Halligan managed to convince barely enough grand jurors to approve the case to get an indictment. Which may be the worst of all worlds for DOJ, because however DOJ tried to insulate themselves, they failed the primary task but also made it easier to dig into the FBI (where Kash Patel lurks).
Meanwhile, Michael Feinberg provides some insight onto who the FBI personnel were who got her across the line. One, he describes as “John Durham’s factotum and enforcer,” a reference to Jack Eckenrode, whom Devlin Barrett told us — without understanding the egregious conflicts involved — was involved in the WDVA investigation. (Feinberg confirms this by pointing to the Eckenrode quote in this article.)
I learned the identities of the two primary investigators who developed the case against Comey.
One of the persons was unsurprising: A former special agent in charge, who has freelanced in a number of overly politicized matters since retiring—he served as John Durham’s factotum and enforcer, is now apparently back at the Hoover Building working in a similar capacity for Patel.
Things are about to get interesting, given that Eckenrode worked with Pat Fitzgerald on the Scooter Libby case. And that’s on top of the fact that Eckenrode kept chasing Russian disinformation for two years after he had reason to understand it was fabricated.
We can add Eckenrode to the list of people who could be criminally implicated by this investigation!
The other investigator is someone Feinberg believes is a really good investigator, leading him to wonder how the fuck someone could be involved in this.
It was the second name that completely undermined my composure. I used to supervise this agent, and, at times, I would like to believe I served somewhat as a mentor to him. We overlapped on the squad I led for only a year or so, but it was not uncommon for him to sporadically reach out when he faced a career decision and needed counsel. He was an outstanding investigator, a natural leader, and someone whom I wanted to see rise in the organization; it goes without saying that I would make time for him when he needed advice.
These two identities were not provided by any friends remaining in the FBI or the Justice Department—they would have known of the latter relationship and attempted to cushion the blow—but through a journalist’s tweet innocently forwarded by a Lawfare colleague. (I’m not providing a link to the post; the point of this article is not to name and shame someone but, rather, to use the situation as illustrative of how otherwise good people at the FBI, either voluntarily or by force, are being corrupted by its current leadership and overt weaponization.) Seeing my former agent’s name, though—once the shock subsided—made me think about the erosion of the rule of law once again not in terms of political theory or legal philosophy, but on a more human level: How does a special agent become involved in such a blatantly politically motivated revenge operation?
It hints at a really interesting possibility: that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer relied on evidence in EDVA from the investigation at WDVA (basically a theory that Durham materials were put in burn bags to protect Comey rather than to hide Eckenrode’s own incompetence and reliance on Russian disinformation) that would present evidentiary problems, such as relevance problems, that an experienced prosecutor would know to avoid, but might convince jurors. That’s precisely what happened to John Durham’s prosecutions, and there, there were experienced prosecutors involved. They proceeded by wishcasting, just assuming they’d get evidence that was obviously inadmissible admitted at trial.
Here, there’s no experienced prosecutor to weigh those issues.
In any case, the statute of limitations on the charges have expired now, so we shall see whether and if so how Comey challenges Halligan’s appointment as a US Attorney. I mentioned the reason why this is probably true here, but Ed Whelan lays out the reasons she probably is only play-acting as US Attorney here.
4. As I explained in my initial post, the defect in a purported appointment of Halligan under section 546 arises from the fact that Erik Siebert had already served a full 120-day term as AG-appointed U.S. Attorney. Section 546 is best read to mean that the Attorney General cannot make a second interim appointment under section 546 after the first interim appointment has expired. Instead, the authority to make an interim appointment then lies with the district court. This has been DOJ’s own longstanding position, set forth in a 1986 Office of Legal Counsel opinion by then-deputy assistant attorney general Samuel Alito.
It turns out that (contrary to what I thought on Friday) Alito’s OLC opinion is publicly available. Here are some key excerpts (underlining added):
The statutory plan [for section 546] discloses a Congressional purpose that after the expiration of the 120-day period further appointments are to be made by the court rather than by the Attorney General….
Thus, it would appear that Congress intended to confer on the Attorney General only the power to make one interim appointment; a subsequent interim appointment would have to be made by the district court. At most, it could be said that the district court has the primary authority to make subsequent interim appointments, and that the Attorney General may make such appointments only if the district court refuses to make such appointments, or fails to do so within a reasonable period.
In a footnote, Alito explains that Congress has constitutional authority to “place restraints on a statutory authority to make interim appointments.”
But even if they have, knowing there’s an investigation at WDVA with presumably less inexperienced prosecutors involved, it might be better to blow this investigation out of the water via other means, by using the publicity and Halligan’s screw-ups to getting it deemed vindictive.
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Update: Per ABC, a grand jury indicted Jim Comey on two of three charges.
Attorney General Pamela Bondi
@AGPamBondi No one is above the law. Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.
Yesterday, there was a flood of leaks describing that Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s insurance lawyer turned defense team looker turned EDVA US Attorney, is going to present an indictment to a grand jury, probably today, charging Jim Comey with lying to Congress.
MSNBC rushed the scoop first (and as a result continues to have inaccuracies). ABC has led the pack with the most important details, including a description of the declination recommendation presented to Halligan this week, which may be why the newly hired partisan but onetime AUSA Maggie Cleary (referred to here as Lindsey’s deputy) has reservations about going forward.
Earlier this week, prosecutors presented Lindsey Halligan — Trump’s former personal attorney whom he appointed to lead the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia — with a detailed memo recommending that she decline to bring perjury and obstruction charges against Comey, the sources familiar with the memo said.
A monthslong investigation into Comey by DOJ prosecutors failed to establish probable cause of a crime — meaning that not only would they be unable to secure a conviction of Comey by proving the claims beyond a reasonable doubt, but that they couldn’t reach a significantly lower standard to secure an indictment, the sources said.
According to Justice Department guidelines, prosecutors are generally barred from bringing charges unless they can prove a defendant will “more likely than not be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by an unbiased trier of fact and that the conviction will be upheld on appeal.”
Despite their recommendations, Halligan — who has never prosecuted a criminal case in her career as an insurance lawyer — plans to present evidence to a grand jury before the statute of limitations for the alleged offense expires next week, the sources said.
[snip]
According to sources, Halligan’s deputy — a prosecutor who was briefly assigned to lead the office just a day before Trump appointed Halligan to the high-profile position — has also expressed reservations about bringing the politically charged case.
Trump has pushed Bondi repeatedly in private in recent days to bring charges against Comey, even as she has expressed reservations about the case, people familiar with the discussions said.
NYT, NBC, CNN, and WaPo all have versions of the story. Lawfare has a really good summary of why any decision to attempt to indict Comey would be stupid.
There are even some hints that EDVA is not just presenting an insufficient case to a grand jury — some grand jury — but that it won’t be in the Alexandria office, presenting the likelihood of venue problems if a grand jury approves the charges.
The publicity may be the point. Even more partisan Republicans in a grand jury someplace like Norfolk or Newport News would have heard of this story by now, possibly even including notice of the prosecutorial memo saying there wasn’t evidence to charge this. So while Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer might be craven enough to move forward, a grand jury sworn to uphold the law may not be.
These leaks make it far more likely that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer will get no-billed (meaning they’ve vote against indicting Comey). And that may be the point. Indeed, her law license may be among a handful that get saved in the process.
Consider how this would look to Todd Blanche.
Blanche may not have noticed that DC added Ken Chesebro yesterday to the growing list of former Trump lawyers who’ve lost their license to practice law. But he’s no doubt aware of how common it is for Trump lawyers to lose their law licenses.
In her order, Garnett specifically directed Todd Blanche to clean all this up.
Accordingly, the Government is directed to respond to those portions of the September 23 Letter by October 3, 2025, and to include with their response a sworn declaration from a person of suitable authority (i.e. at least Ms. Houle or Mr. Buckley, in his capacity as Acting U.S. Attorney for this matter, if not an official at Main Justice) that explains to the Court how these violations occurred, despite the Court’s April 25 Order, and what steps are being taken to ensure that no future violations occur. The Government is also directed to advise the Deputy Attorney General, for dissemination within the Department as appropriate, that future violations may result in sanctions, which could include personal financial penalties, contempt of court findings, or relief specific to the prosecution of this matter. The Government’s declaration shall also include confirmation that this message has been conveyed to the Deputy Attorney General. [my emphasis]
This order follows Judge Dale Ho’s observation that Pam Bondi and Chad Mizelle (who is leaving DOJ in coming weeks) had violated local rules by blabbing their mouth in the Eric Adams case. DOJ also has to know they’ll face worse admonishments for DOJ officials — starting with Kash Patel but including Blanche personally — for running their mouths if they ever charge Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer in Federal court, which they should not do, because it would endanger the Utah case.
Blanche’s personal exposure in the LaMonica McIver case goes far deeper. He is at once:
The official who ordered DHS personnel to arrest Ras Baraka even after he had left Delaney Hall property, creating the physical confrontation in which McIver was charged, and as such, part of the law enforcement team and implicated in a potentially unlawful arrest
The person whose office conducted the prosecutorial review previously done by career prosecutors in Public Integrity Division after that got shut down
Because Alina Habba continues to play US Attorney after being unlawfully retained, the person in charge of the prosecution
If McIver’s own selective and vindictive prosecution claim gains any traction, we may learn far more about Blanche’s effort to criminalize a co-equal branch of government for conducting lawful oversight.
Meanwhile, Jim Comey’s daughter Maurene has filed a lawsuit alleging that she got fired for no other reason than that she is Jim’s daughter. If her lawsuit survives a motion to dismiss, Ms. Comey will be able to start demanding discovery not just about the people at Main DOJ who invoked the President’s Article II authority to fire her along with some proof that Trump was actually involved in that decision, but also — unless DOJ provides another credible explanation for her firing, like that she prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell — discovery about the witch hunt against her father, including his prosecution in EDVA. Admittedly, that’s a higher bar than some other developments and will take forever, but it presents a credible threat that documentation of everything that occurred before her firing in July will one day become public.
That’s all before you get to the specific circumstances of Trump’s insistence to go forward with the indictment regardless of the evidence.
In what may have been leaks attempting to stave off precisely this development, NYT reported that both Bondi and Blanche defended then-US Attorney Erik Siebert before Trump, but lost that argument to Bill Pulte — who’s little more than a troll who benefitted from a whole lot of nepotism.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who runs the day-to-day operations of the Justice Department, had privately defended Mr. Siebert against officials, including William J. Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who had urged that he be fired and replaced with a prosecutor who would push the cases forward, according to a senior law enforcement official.
Mr. Pulte’s power far outstrips his role as the head of an obscure housing agency. He has gained Mr. Trump’s favor by pushing mortgage fraud allegations against perceived adversaries of the White House, including Ms. James; a Federal Reserve governor, Lisa Cook; and Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California.
Mr. Pulte has made use of his influence and access to a president who prefers advisers who are willing to push boundaries. He had told Mr. Trump directly that he believed Mr. Siebert could be doing more, according to several officials with knowledge of the matter.
But Mr. Blanche, like Mr. Siebert, questioned the legal viability of bringing charges against Ms. James, according to current and former department officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about internal discussions.
And, WaPo added predictably, also to Eagle Ed Martin, who in theory reports to someone at DOJ.
They added that Ed Martin, the Justice Department official who is overseeing criminal investigations based on Pulte’s allegations, also pushed for Siebert to be removed.
Having lost this battle to Eagle Ed creates real chain of command problems for DOJ, both in terms of Blanche’s credibility with the actual professionals who work there, and legally, as there are a slew of things that senior DOJ officials must approve (including politically sensitive prosecutions).
All that’s before, in recent days, it became clear that Eagle Ed had sent a menacing letter to the FBI agent who first responded to the Sandy Hook shooting as a favor for Alex Jones, which Blanche made Eagle Ed retract.
So to sum up so far: Blanche’s DOJ, and Blanche himself, already face multiple kinds of ethical scrutiny. Having been personally involved in reviewing this case, Blanche advised Trump not to do this, but Trump ignored him (and Bondi), siding instead with two men who are not prosecutors but who told Trump what he wanted to hear. That has badly undermined Blanche’s authority at DOJ and created all kinds of ethical exposure for the real lawyers involved.
And then, Trump tweeted out a signed confession, making his personal interference and malice in this plain as day.
If this gets charged, it will be child’s play for Comey to mount a vindictive prosecution claim — we all saw it plain as day — and with it to demand evidence like the declination memo that ABC described Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer seeing this week! And, in addition, Comey (who used to have Blanche’s job), will be able to demonstrate that this prosecution violates ethical rules that bind attorneys.
As ABC laid out, they cannot charge a case they know they can’t win. And someone very close to Blanche has let it be known in the press that the people with actual prosecutorial experience, including Blanche himself, don’t believe DOJ can win this.
Prosecuting this case would very likely end up in credible bar complaints targeting everyone involved.
And on top of the procedural and ethical reasons this prosecution would pose a problem for Blanche, the only other basis by which this would be legal would be John Roberts’ rash language in Trump v. USA granting the President personally special province over prosecutorial decision-making.
Investigative and prosecutorial decisionmaking is “the special province of the Executive Branch,” Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U. S. 821, 832 (1985), and the Constitution vests the entirety of the executive power in the President, Art. II, §1. For that reason, Trump’s threatened removal of the Acting Attorney General likewise implicates “conclusive and preclusive” Presidential authority. As we have explained, the President’s power to remove “executive officers of the United States whom he has appointed” may not be regulated by Congress or reviewed by the courts. Myers, 272 U. S., at 106, 176; see supra, at 8. The President’s “management of the Executive Branch” requires him to have “unrestricted power to remove the most important of his subordinates”—such as the Attorney General—“in their most important duties.” Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 750 (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted).
See this great column on how Roberts, in response to arguments from Blanche!!, set up this problem.
Succeeding in getting an indictment won’t be good for Halligan, Blanche’s former colleague representing Trump in Florida, because she’ll be exposed to ethical scrutiny.
And it doesn’t even help Trump, as he has signed a confession that he’s doing this maliciously.
And in the background, Maurene may one day get proof of all of this, at least everything that happened before she was fired.
Whereas if Halligan presents a case to the grand jury and gets no-billed — just one more no-bill in a growing pile awarded to Trump’s most partisan US Attorneys — then it’s likely that Comey will never get to argue how fucked up all of this is (unless he is charged in one of the other jurisdictions Kash has people chasing geese). And Eagle Ed gets slapped with his first big humiliation.
This entire situation is a disaster for Todd Blanche. And only if Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer gets no-billed will he have a way to staunch the bleeding.
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It is, no doubt, terrible that EDVA US Attorney Erik Siebert was forced out yesterday because he refused to charge Tish James with fraud when there’s little evidence she engaged in mortgage fraud.
But there are aspects of the firing that make it epically incompetent and, like the quid pro quo with Eric Adams and the effort to send hundreds of men to a concentration camp beforehand, may backfire going forward.
ABC, which was the first to report on the firing, confirms that Seibert received notice that Trump wanted to fire him on Thursday, which presumably is how both ABC and NBC reported he was expected to be fired in advance of that happening.
Siebert was notified of the president’s intention to fire him Thursday, sources said, and Trump said Friday afternoon in the Oval Office that he wanted Siebert “out” of his position.
That meant that the reason for the firing — the refuse to indict James — was public before it happened.
And even though Trump has reversed engineered a different reason for the firing — it’s not that he’s firing Siebert because Siebert won’t prosecute Tish James, it’s that he was backed by both Virginia’s Democratic Senators, which was true and apparent when Trump nominated Siebert — in the same breath he insisted that Seibert had not quit, but instead Trump had fired him.
Today I withdrew the Nomination of Erik Siebert as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, when I was informed that he received the UNUSUALLY STRONG support of the two absolutely terrible, sleazebag Democrat Senators, from the Great State of Virginia. He didn’t quit, I fired him! Next time let him go in as a Democrat, not a Republican.
Particularly given ABC’s report that Siebert would like to stay on at EDVA as an AUSA, this text, demanding credit for firing Siebert, changes Siebert’s legal options going forward, and the impact of the firing on cases Siebert wouldn’t charge.
Both NYT and WaPo report that Todd Blanche (and Pam Bondi, NYT adds) tried to save Siebert’s job.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who runs the day-to-day operations of the Justice Department, had privately defended Mr. Siebert against officials, including William J. Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who had urged that he be fired and replaced with a prosecutor who would push the cases forward, according to a senior law enforcement official.
Mr. Pulte’s power far outstrips his role as the head of an obscure housing agency. He has gained Mr. Trump’s favor by pushing mortgage fraud allegations against perceived adversaries of the White House, including Ms. James; a Federal Reserve governor, Lisa Cook; and Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California.
Mr. Pulte has made use of his influence and access to a president who prefers advisers who are willing to push boundaries. He had told Mr. Trump directly that he believed Mr. Siebert could be doing more, according to several officials with knowledge of the matter.
But Mr. Blanche, like Mr. Siebert, questioned the legal viability of bringing charges against Ms. James, according to current and former department officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about internal discussions.
WaPo added the unsurprising bit that Ed Martin, who works for Bondi and Blanche, also weighed in to get Siebert fired.
They added that Ed Martin, the Justice Department official who is overseeing criminal investigations based on Pulte’s allegations, also pushed for Siebert to be removed.
Todd Blanche is Trump’s fixer, neck deep in an effort to make Trump’s sex-trafficking problems go away. He has not shied, at all, from enacting Trump’s campaign of revenge. And yet somehow it got reported that Blanche, “questioned the legal viability of bringing charges against Ms. James.”
The firing creates all sorts of headaches for Blanche. All of DOJ knows that Eagle Ed, along with Bill Pulte (who is not a lawyer and whose primary career skill has been benefitting from nepotism) got Siebert removed over Blanche’s objections. But it’s also public that even Blanche agrees there’s no case against James. Who is in charge of DOJ if Eagle Ed, never a prosecutor and prone to embarrassing gaffes when he tries to play lawyer more generally, can override Blanche’s personnel and prosecutorial decisions?
And it’s not just the James prosecution that will be difficult to charge in EDVA, though I can imagine judges there will be very skeptical of this investigation going forward. NYT also reports that Dan Richman, whose testimony prosecutors obtained in an effort to charge Jim Comey for statements he made four years and 355 days ago (meaning the statute of limitation expires in coming weeks), didn’t tell them what they wanted him to.
Mr. Richman’s statements to prosecutors were not helpful in their efforts to build a case against Mr. Comey, according to two people familiar with the matter.
It’s not clear that firing Siebert will achieve the ostensible objective — to install someone who will charge James and Comey, in spite of the evidence. If that were to happen, it might well blow up in epic fashion.
And whatever happens, this badly undermines Blanche’s hold on DOJ (even as various MAGAts have it in for Bondi and/or Kash).
Plus, some Republicans in Congress were already uncomfortable (anonymously) with Pulte’s tantrums.
“I think he’s a nut,” one House Republican said of Pulte. (Like others in this story, the lawmaker was granted anonymity to speak candidly about sensitive dynamics within the Trump administration.)
“The guy’s just a little too big for his britches,” said a second GOP lawmaker, who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees housing policy and the FHFA. “I’ve got great respect for Bessent for taking him on.”
Partly that’s concern for the Fed, but it cannot have escaped their notice how easy it is to claim people engaged in mortgage fraud, not to mention the way such concerns could influence Ken Paxton’s challenge to John Cornyn in the Texas Senate primary.
None of that mitigates the dangers of this kind of weaponization. They just make it more likely that efforts to weaponize DOJ will create larger and larger problems for Blanche and possibly even for Trump.
Update: Reuters reports that a woman once investigated, but not charged, for involvement in January 6 has been appointed Acting US Attorney.
A former federal prosecutor who once claimed former President Joe Biden’s administration targeted her for being conservative told colleagues in an email on Saturday that she has been named to replace a top prosecutor who resigned on Friday after President Donald Trump had said he wanted him out.
In an internal email seen by Reuters, Mary “Maggie” Cleary told attorneys she has been “unexpectedly” tapped to be acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. She did not immediately respond to an email from Reuters seeking comment.
Update: Trump has sent (two times, I think) a post berating Pam Bondi for not prosecuting his enemies, and then announced he’ll nominate Lindsey Halligan, the insurance lawyer who served as local counsel in ihs Florida case.
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After Brayan Ramos-Brito was arrested for being assaulted by a Border Patrol officer, after he was held in pretrial detention for a week based on several claims that DOJ later admitted were lies (including that he said he was going to grab guns and shoot the agents, when he actually said he was going to fuck up the border patrol agents), after the initial felony assault charge was dismissed and then charged as a misdemeanor (first on something inaccurately called an indictment, and only later as an Information), and after getting several adverse rulings on motions in limine, Ramos-Brito was acquitted on Wednesday.
According to LAT, a juror said Ramos-Brito was acquitted because the government presented no video evidence showing the assault. Which means senior Border Patrol official, Gregory Bovino, destroyed his credibility for naught.
U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino — the brash agent who led a phalanx of military personnel into MacArthur Park this summer — was called as a witness Wednesday in a federal misdemeanor assault case against Brayan Ramos-Brito, who was accused of striking a federal agent.
Bovino, who flew in to testify from Chicago, the latest city targeted for an immigration enforcement surge, said he witnessed the alleged assault committed by Ramos-Brito in Paramount on June 7.
Bovino was questioned by the defense about previous comments he made referring to undocumented immigrants as “scum.”
[snip]
On a cross-examination, federal public defender Cuauhtemoc Ortega questioned Bovino about being the subject of a misconduct investigation a few years ago and receiving a reprimand for referring to undocumented immigrants as “scum, filth and trash.”
Bovino said he was referring to “a specific criminal illegal alien” — a Honduran national who he said had raped a child and reentered the United States and had been caught at or near the Baton Rouge Border Patrol station.
“I said that about a specific individual, not about undocumented peoples, that’s not correct,” he said.
Ortega pushed back, reading from the reprimand, which Bovino signed, stating that he was describing “illegal aliens.”
“They did not say one illegal alien,” Ortega said. “They said you describing illegal aliens, and or criminals, as scum, trash and filth is misconduct. Isn’t that correct?”
“The report states that,” Bovino said.
Not only did Bovino lead the staged invasion of MacArthur Park (which featured in Charles Breyer’s opinion ruling that DOD had violated the Posse Comitatus Act), but he’s the one who tried to menace Gavin Newsom during his announced plan to redistrict California. And he was caught lying to a jury.
Among the things Ramos-Brito was not permitted to do was conduct attorney-led voir dire to find out if anyone had seen Acting US Attorney Bill Essayli’s false propaganda about the arrests, posted on Xitter the day of the incident and still posted today, even after the dismissals and acquittal — yet more lies DHS and DOJ have told about the assaults that DHS officers have caused.
Sydney Reid
Meanwhile, in DC, DOJ asked to prevent Sydney Reid, who was accused of assaulting FBI agent Eugenia Bates while she was filming the ICE arrest of two people at the DC jail, from introducing the following evidence at trial:
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”
The government appears to have no complaint if Reid introduces Bates comment that she said of her “boo boos:” “I sacrificed life and limb for the mission. I think it’s worth a trump coin,” which Reid included in her response.
Still, DOJ badly wants to prevent Reid from presenting evidence that not even Bates believed this was an assault.
Brad Lander
Yesterday, the government arrested Brad Lander, again, along with dozens of others, once again for protesting the treatment of ICE targets inside Federal Plaza.
At least 11 elected officials were arrested Thursday while protesting conditions at an immigration holding facility in Manhattan where a federal judge this week extended a court order requiring the government to shape up its treatment of detainees.
The officials, including Comptroller Brad Lander, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, State Senator Julia Salazar and Assemblywoman Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas, were among dozens of people detained during protests at 26 Federal Plaza. The government building, home to immigration court, the FBI’s New York field office and other federal offices, has become a hotbed of arrests and detention amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
Several officials were arrested inside the building while attempting to inspect holding rooms on the 10th floor that are the subject of ongoing litigation alleging squalid conditions and overcrowding, according to a coalition of politicians, advocates and faith leaders involved in the protest.
The arrests came in the wake of an order from Judge Lewis Kaplan requiring that DHS treat those being held at 26 Federal Plaza humanely.
The Court’s preliminary injunction will not prevent defendants from pursuing the policies they have set. It merely will require that they conform to the demands of the Constitution in doing so. It is up to defendants to choose whether they wish to expend resources to conform 26 Fed to those requirements, or to alter the rate at which they are funneling arrestees into 26 Fed and other facilities, or to select or obtain facilities where detainees can be held in a humane and constitutional manner.
Here, plaintiff has demonstrated clear and imminent irreparable harm in the absence of a preliminary injunction and a likelihood of success on the merits of his First and Fifth Amendment claims arising from the substandard conditions and barriers to attorney-client communication at 26 Fed. Because the injunction would halt ongoing constitutional injuries while merely requiring adherence to standards defendants have already adopted for their immigration detention facilities across the country, the balance of the equities and the public interest decisively favor plaintiff.
This time, Lander wasn’t assaulted as he was arrested, and the government released those protesting with summonses.
But DHS continues to try to criminalize opposition to its abuses.
LaMonica McIver
Which is why two aspects of the LaMonica McIver response are notable.
One of McIver’s motions was to get DHS to take down a series of egregiously false claims that DHS and its propagandist, Tricia McLaughlin, had made about the incident at Delaney Hall. The government’s response to this was similar to that offered in the Kilmar Abrego case — that DOJ did not control DHS.
As an initial matter, it should be noted that the U.S. Attorney’s Office does not exercise authority over DHS even at a local level. Nevertheless, this Office has communicated with DHS to request that DHS remove the postings to which Defendant objects. To the extent that DHS does so, McIver’s motion will be moot.
But while DHS had not removed the offending propaganda before the court filing, they now have done so.
Nevertheless, DOJ cited some of those very same propaganda posts, which McIver also cited in her selective prosecution filing, in arguing that threats against DHS have gone up astronomically. (I’ve color coded the three references so you can see how they correspond.)
Since then, and as reflected in the multiple press releases and articles referenced by McIver, assaults and threats against DHS officers have increased exponentially.12 According to DHS, ICE officials faced an 830 percent increase in assaults between January 21 and July 14, 2025, compared with the same period in 2024.13 Seemingly recognizing the dangers that DHS officers have been uniquely facing, McIver “introduce[ed], as her first bill in Congress, the DHS Better Ballistic Body Armor Act, which would increase the availability of protective body armor designed to fit the bodies of female agents.” ECF 20-1, at 8. DHS also introduced a new policy for the protection of law enforcement officers requiring notice for a visit to its facilities, noting that the policy was “made in response to ‘a surge in assaults, disruptions and obstructions to enforcement, including by politicians themselves.’”14 In response to the DHS policy, on July 30, 2025, 12 Members of Congress filed a civil Complaint against ICE objecting to the new policy and seeking injunctive relieve.15 McIver, who was at Delaney Hall to conduct oversight, is neither a named plaintiff nor mentioned in the Complaint.
12 See, e.g., ECF 20-1, at 13 n.23 (article quoting DHS official that ICE law enforcement officers faced a 413 percent increase in assaults against them at the time), n.25 (DHS press release claiming “[a]ttacks and smears against ICE have resulted in officers facing a 413% increase in assaults”), n.26 (DHS press release discussing alleged disclosure of an ICE agent’s information by Democratic Congressman Salud Carbajal, and a subsequent alleged assault on that agent during an enforcement action); see also n.23 (article discussing incident involving Senator Alex Padilla where U.S. Secret Service purportedly “thought he was an attacker’” during a DHS press conference).
13 Id. at 13 n.27 (Press Release, Department of Homeland Security, DHS Announces ICE Law Enforcement are Now Facing an 830 Percent Increase in Assaults (July 15, 2025) (emphasis omitted), available at https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/07/15/dhs-announcesice-law-enforcement-are-now-facing-830-percent-increase-assaults).
14 Michael Gold, ICE Imposes New Rules on Congressional Visits, N.Y. Times (June 19, 2025), www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/us/politics/ice-congress.html; ECF 20-1, at 14 n.28; see also Homeland Security (@DHSgov), X (July 11, 2025, at 6:28 PM) (posting on X that “sufficient notice to facilitate a visit . . . is essential to keep staff and detainees safe”), https://x.com/dhsgov/status/1943799482342109463?s=46&t=-VXhB76r-zYF5BuEUXYkQ.
15 Complaint, Neguse v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 25-CV-02463, ECF. No 1 at 64 (D.D.C. July 30, 2025).
McIver cited these links not for the truth, but to demonstrate that as part of an effort to evade oversight, DHS was lying its ass off.
The events at Delaney Hall marked the first of three times ICE forcefully detained officials investigating its activities in the course of a month.23 And DHS has since pursued a press strategy to undermine congressional oversight authority over its facilities. Even before the end of the May 9 visit, DHS issued a press release falsely describing Congresswoman McIver and the other Members as having “stormed the [Delaney Hall] gate and broke[n] into the detention facility,” calling the visit “a bizarre political stunt.”24 A week later, DHS issued a news release to “[d]ebunk” the notion that the visit to Delaney Hall “was ‘oversight’”—“it is actually trespassing and put ICE officers and detainees at risk.”25 DHS renewed this rhetoric in July, issuing a third press release related to Congresswoman McIver, this time suggesting that her actions were “just another case of Democratic lawmakers labeling political stunts as oversight while they endanger the safety of ICE personnel.”26 DHS doubled down on that framing the next day, stating in yet another new post that “Democratic members of Congress,” including “Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ),” have “been caught red-handed doxing and even physically assaulting ICE officials.”27
23 Compl. ¶¶ 31-32, 43 Baraka v. Habba, 25-cv-06846 (June 4, 2025), ECF No. 1; Michael Williams et. al, US Senator Forcefully Removed From DHS Event in LA, Triggering Democratic Outcry on Capitol Hill, CNN (June 12, 2025), https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/12/politics/alexpadilla-removed-noem-press-conference; Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Brad Lander Is Arrested by ICE Agents at Immigration Courthouse, N.Y. Times (June 17, 2025), https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/nyregion/brad-lander-immigration-ice.html.
24 Press Release, DHS, Members of Congress Break into Delaney Hall Detention Center (May 9, 2025), https://perma.cc/G6MH-2KXF.
25 Press Release, DHS, DHS Debunks Fake News Narratives About Law Enforcement During Police Week (May 16, 2025), https://perma.cc/9XKE-3K3U.
26 Press Release, DHS, ICE Employee Attacked by Rioters After Congressman Doxes Him to Mob at California Marijuana Facility (July 14, 2025), https://perma.cc/3GNL-PWE6.
27 Press Release, DHS, DHS Announces ICE Law Enforcement are Now Facing an 830 Percent Increase in Assaults (July 15, 2025), https://perma.cc/7YZP-PGWS.
The only one of four withdrawn press releases that DOJ did not cite here is the one falsely claiming that members of Congress arrived to Delaney Hall on a bus. They’ve also subsequently posted another bullshit post (which repeats a false claim McLaughlin made about the ICE assault of Christian Enrique Carias Torres, whose case has also been dismissed), to make sure their slander of Congressman Carbajal remains accessible.
DOJ’s use of these false (and now withdrawn) press releases creates the illusion that the new policy, unlawfully requiring a week’s notice before members of Congress conduct oversight at a detention facility, was set up in response to the assault alleged against McIver.
To claim there is “clear evidence” of discriminatory intent supporting her selective enforcement claim, McIver points to three areas: 1) press statements issued by DHS that are sharply critical of her conduct on the day she arrived at Delaney Hall to conduct an unscheduled inspection tour; 2) the implementation of a new DHS policy after the charges were against her were filed that applies to all Members of Congress requiring them to give seven days prior notice of an oversight inspection tour of certain immigration facilities; and 3) the detention/interaction by law enforcement with three Democratic politicians including Defendant within the space of approximately one month. See ECF 20-1, at 13-15, 22-23.
[snip]
Relatedly, Defendant points to the DHS policy enacted after the events at Delaney Hall on May 9, 2025, requiring Members of Congress to give at least seven days’ notice in advance of conducting an oversight inspection tour of an immigration detention facility. Defendant believes this is somehow evidence of discriminatory intent in conducting an “enforcement action” against her even though the policy was enacted after McIver had been charged. The logic of this claim is elusive, especially when the policy, at least in part, furthers the legitimate purpose of avoiding situations like that which occurred on May 9, 2025, by ensuring that appropriate security measures may be taken in advance of such an oversight visit.
All of this, of course, is an attempt to narrow the issue to what happened after Todd Blanche ordered Ricky Patel to arrest Newark Mayor Ras Baraka even after Baraka left Delaney Hall, rather than include details of the decision — from the guy now in charge of this prosecution team — to criminalize someone who had followed the orders of a cop.
To the contrary, the jury will hear such details only if McIver introduces them over the Government’s Rule 401/403/jury nullification objections. But even if those objections are overruled, the speech or debate analysis focuses on what the Government has alleged (and, thus, how the Government will prove it), not on how the defendant hopes to defend herself. Here, to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that McIver violated 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1), the Government will prove that on May 9, 2025, she used her forearms to forcibly strike a federal Agent who was attempting to arrest someone outside the gate to Delaney Hall, and she used her hands to forcibly grab and pull at that agent’s jacket. ECF No. 1 at 5, ¶¶ 13,14 and 16. Nothing about that touches on oversight activities.
This goes to the heart of separation of powers issues, which is why McIver’s attempt to rely on Trump v. US has real merit. Todd Blanche ordered agents from a different agency to arrest someone — Newark’s Mayor — trying to conduct oversight, even after he had left the premises. After discovering that arrest was based off false claims, they’re now trying to criminalize the physical conflict — including what McIver said in real time was an assault of her — that resulted. And in this filing, they rely on that effort to criminalize conducting oversight to excuse their unlawful attempt to evade oversight with the week notice requirement.
Over and over, DHS has been caught lying about assaults on its officers, presenting assaults of arrestees as instead assaults on their officers.
And in McIver’s case, they’re trying to double down on withdrawn propaganda to claim the problem that Todd Blanche caused can be pinned on Congressional oversight.
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The Brits have finally found some people to arrest in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal: at least four people who projected images of Epstein and Donald Trump onto Windsor Castle.
Kaitlan Collins used that event as a pretext to grill Todd Blanche about his so-called proffer with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
Todd Blanche’s responses were an incredible insult to survivors.
When Collins dug in, repeating her question, Blanche then effectively said — more than seven weeks after the interview — that he has never tested the credibility of Maxwell’s answers (which would be hard to do given the firing of Maurene Comey).
Todd Blanche confessed that he had moved Ghislaine Maxwell to comfier digs without first vetting the answers that Maxwell gave him.
Perhaps realizing how stupid that confession was, Blanche then said something even more astonishing. He claimed the entire point of the “proffer” was, “to give her an opportunity to speak, which nobody had done before.”
It’s rank bullshit that no one has given her an opportunity to speak. She had the right to testify in her own defense at trial, a right she declined. The day before Blanche did this “proffer,” the Oversight Committee subpoenaed her, in response to which she delayed testimony.
But even if it were true that poor Ghislaine Maxwell has never had a chance to tell her side of the story, has never had a chance to make claims her attorneys didn’t make in cross-examination during her trial, why in god’s name is the Deputy Attorney General of the United States wasting two days of his time, with neither adequate preparation to hold her accountable nor a prosecutor familiar with the case, giving a convicted sex trafficker a special opportunity to tell her story?
Effectively, Todd Blanche described that his DOJ is running a special service for select sex traffickers who have damning information on Blanche’s client, Donald Trump, where they get the privilege of telling their story in a venue largely free of repercussions. There’s no conceivable purpose for such a “proffer” besides to keep her silent.
KC: We’re here at Windsor Castle and tonight images of him with Jeffrey Epstein were actually projected on the castle behind me. People were arrested as a result of that. But this comes after you sat face to face with Ghislaine Maxwell for nine hours. Do you believe her?
TB: I mean, listen, I think that people are gonna do what they’re gonna do, they’re gonna say what they’re gonna say. And there’s a lot of important work that we’re doing every day. And so the fact that that is still what we’re focused on today in the wake of everything that’s happening and the week of the work of what President Trump’s doing over the next several days is incredibly unfortunate. But we’re gonna keep on doing our job and keep on doing what we need to do.
KC: But when you met with her did you find her to be credible?
TB: It’s an impossible question to answer. I met with her for two days. To determine whether a witness is credible takes weeks and weeks and weeks. I asked her questions that I believed all of us wanted answered. And she answered them. She answered them, I didn’t — the point of the interview was not for me to pressure test every single answer she gave. Of course not. The point of the interview was to give her an opportunity to speak, which nobody had done before. And so she had been — she had been in prison for many many years. And she had offered to speak on many many occasions. And she was never given that opportunity. And so what I did is I gave her that opportunity to speak, it was recorded, my questions were there, and whether her answers were credible or truthful, there’s a lot of information out there about Mr. Epstein, about her, and whether what she said is completely wrong, or completely right, or a little of both, is for — that’s the reason why we released the transcript, that’s why we were transparent about the questions I asked, and the answers shes [sic] gaves [sic] is because it’s really up to the American people to determine whether they believe that her answers were credible. Or whether they found her not credible.
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There’s a footnote about a quarter-way through DOJ’s omnibus response to LaMonica McIver’s package of motions to dismiss the criminal case against her, in which two AUSAs purport to explain something funny that happened with the January 6 pardons: That pending defendants, whose cases Trump ordered to be dismissed, also got pardons.
10 On September 2, 2025, the undersigned Assistant U.S. Attorneys spoke with the Deputy Pardon Attorney from the Office of the Pardon Attorney who confirmed that: (i) the January 6 Defendants with then-pending cases received pardons under the Pardon and were eligible to receive certificates of pardon, and (ii) that any January 6 Defendant was still considered pardoned even if a certificate of pardon was not requested. Additionally, the Deputy Pardon Attorney provided examples of certificates of pardon issued for January 6 Defendants with previously pending cases who requested a certificate.
The two AUSAs in question are Mark McCarren, the only DOJ attorney who has filed a notice of appearance on the case and Benjamin Bleiberg, whose name appears as author in the document properties, but who hasn’t filed a notice of appearance, a tactic that at least one, more senior, DOJ attorney has used to pretend to remain ignorant of case events in other politically sensitive cases.
The men offer no declaration — from either the Deputy Pardon Attorney or themselves — to substantiate this claim. Just a footnote: Yep, January 6 defendants, all of them, got pardons.
The footnote is a crucial part of the larger argument the men use to rebut McIver’s claim of selective prosecution. As I noted (thinking she was being clever), the comparator McIver used to say that others would not have been charged for the actions alleged against her, she argued that the January 6 defendants were not even prosecuted for much more egregious instances of assault. “A substantial number of those brave officers were seriously injured. Yet, the Department of Justice has dropped the charges against over 160 individuals accused of that conduct.” But this section, the entire response to McIver’s selective prosecution claim, adopts an even more clever approach.
The Jan6ers didn’t have their cases dismissed, as McIver claims, the DOJ response says, but instead were all pardoned.
All of them.
Now, before I explain this argument, I should explain something else.
In addition to McCarren — who filed a notice of appearance — and Bleiberg — who did not, Todd Blanche is on the filing, presumably because Alina Habba has been found, by multiple judges, to be serving unlawfully as Acting US Attorney. Unlike the other cases on which Blanche is signing off, as far as I know, Blanche is intimately involved in this one.
For example, the filing confirms a claim McIver made: that before a bunch of ICE officers including the alleged victim Ricky Patel — all of whom report to Kristi Noem — moved to arrest Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Patel announced “I am arresting the mayor . . . even though he stepped out, I am going to put him in cuffs . . . per the Deputy Attorney General of the United States.”
The SAC then gathered more than a dozen of the ICE officers and agents and announced that after consulting with the Deputy Attorney General, the group would be proceeding out the gate to effect the arrest of the Mayor.
That consultation, followed by Blanche’s inclusion on the prosecution chain of command, creates all sorts of conflicts with this case, not least the claim that ICE’s decision to turn on (some, but not the most important) bodycams before the arrest of Baraka was a decision unrelated to McIver’s oversight role and unrelated to any prosecutorial decision, an argument the omnibus makes in its attempt to rebut McIver’s selective enforcement claim.
None of this establishes that any law enforcement action taken against her was motivated by her Congressional oversight role or her policy views on immigration. But before addressing each of these enumerated claims, however, any “enforcement action” taken against McIver was quite limited, consisting of capturing video footage of her actions via body worn cameras, reviewing that footage and making it available to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for review regarding prosecutorial decisions. The most important of these “enforcement actions” was, of course, the decision to capture the footage depicting McIver’s actions on May 9, 2025. Most of the actions taken thereafter essentially involved reviewing that footage and interviewing prospective witnesses.
Significantly, the DHS agents’ decision to make the body-worn video recordings, which contained the core evidence against McIver, had nothing to do with an “enforcement action” directed at her. Rather, their purpose was to document the arrest of the Mayor. That these recordings captured the illegal actions allegedly committed by McIver was purely serendipitous from law enforcement’s perspective. When DHS officers turned on their body-worn cameras, no one knew that Defendant would barge out of the gate of Delaney Hall and attempt to forcibly interfere with and impede the arrest of the Mayor, for yet a second time, as described in the Indictment. In short, the video documentation of McIver’s allegedly criminal behavior was gathered inadvertently because of her unanticipated and surprising actions, and not because of some illicit motive on the part of DHS agents. That alone defeats her selective enforcement claim, because McIver cannot show “clear evidence” of discriminatory purpose towards her in the agents’ decision to document the Mayor’s arrest.
Worse, a long section addressing the decision to halt Public Integrity consultations — which happened by May 9, because Habba’s office tried to consult PIN on what they claim is something else that same day — reveals that in lieu of such consultations, Habba consulted … Todd Blanche’s office.
Despite the change in policy, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office did in fact consult with ODAG about the Defendant’s case. The substance of that consultation is, of course, privileged.
So Todd Blanche ordered another agency’s men to carry out the Baraka arrest, he or his office provided the “privileged” advice to the prosecutorial team he now leads on whether to charge McIver, and oh by the way why did the AUSAs consult the Deputy Pardon Attorney about what happened at the beginning of the Trump Administration instead of the Pardon Attorney?
Two simple reasons. First, because Blanche fired the Pardon Attorney, Elizabeth Oyer, on March 7, which has itself led to a (FOIA) lawsuit. And, after the Senate refused to confirm Ed Martin — who had been acting as US Attorney for DC even while still representing a January 6 defendant — DOJ made Martin the Pardon Attorney.
All that is interesting because of some discrepancies in the description of what happened, legally, to the January 6 defendants.
A longer passage describes that Trump granted a blanket pardon for “offenses relating to events at or near” the US Capitol on January 6, and “in addition to including almost all of the January 6 Defendants who were convicted and sentenced,” Trump also “broadly pardoned all defendants associated with January 6 who were charged and awaiting trial or sentencing.”
On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued a Proclamation granting a blanket pardon or commutation of sentences “for certain offenses relating to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021” (the “Pardon”).4 According to President Trump, “[t]his proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation.” Id. In an executive order issued the same day (the “Weaponization Executive Order”), President Trump asserted that “the Department of Justice has ruthlessly prosecuted more than 1,500 individuals associated with January 6, and simultaneously dropped nearly all cases against BLM [Black Lives Matter] rioters,” as an example of “weaponization of prosecutorial power” under the prior administration that the administration aimed to address.5
In addition to including almost all the January 6 Defendants who were convicted and sentenced, President Trump, “[a]cting pursuant to the grant of authority in Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution of the United States,” also broadly pardoned all defendants associated with January 6 who were charged and awaiting trial or sentencing, and directed the Attorney General to dismiss any pending indictments. See Pardon; see also ECF 20-1, at 19 n.30 (citing NPR article stating “Nearly every defendant, including those who assaulted police and conspired to plan the attack, received a pardon. In 14 cases, Trump granted the defendants a commutation, ending their prison sentence, but leaving the felony on their records.”). Because the Pardon did not give the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) any discretion to continue prosecuting any of the still-pending cases for the pardoned January 6 Defendants, prosecutors immediately began filing motions to dismiss the remaining cases, including the six exemplar January 6 cases McIver cites in her brief. See ECF 20-1, at 5, 18.6
4 Granting Pardons and Commutation of Sentences for Certain Offenses Relating to the Events at or Near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, Proclamation No. 10887, 90 Fed. Reg. 8331 (Jan. 29, 2025), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-01-29/pdf/2025-01950.pdf.
5 See Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Exec. Order No. 14147, 90 Fed. Reg. 8235 (Jan. 29, 2025), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR2025-01-28/pdf/2025-01900.pdf.
6 Citing United States v. Warnagiris, No. 21-CR-0382 (D.D.C.); United States v. Ball, No. 23-CR-160 (D.D.C.); United States v. Boughner, No. 22-CR-20 (D.D.C.); United States v. Lang, No. 21-CR-53 (D.D.C.); United States v. Amos, No. 24-CR-00395 (D.D.C.); and United States v. Adams, No. 24-MJ-337 (D.D.C.)
The filing claims to be relying on the pardon itself for the claim that defendants with pending trials were pardoned. But that’s not what the pardon said. It created 3 categories:
Some but not all of those convicted of sedition, who got commutations but not pardons
“[A]ll other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” who got pardons
Individuals with pending indictments, about whom the pardon instructed only to dismiss their cases with prejudice.
I further direct the Attorney General to pursue dismissal with prejudice to the government of all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Note, there are a number of ways to show that DOJ did exercise discretion. For example, Jeremy Bertino, one of the 14 whose charges were purportedly only commuted, had to have his charges dismissed because he had not yet been sentenced. And for defendants accused of January 6 crimes plus other things — like CSAM possession found in conjunction with searches of their phones or stalking Barack Obama after getting his address from Donald Trump — DOJ has exercised a great deal of prosecutorial discretion in deciding which of those other charges to hold Trump’s mob accountable for. In short, the pardon was a legal shitshow, and DOJ has spent the months since them making shit up — another word for prosecutorial discretion.
So while I have no doubt that the pardon was treated, in part by current Pardon Attorney Ed Martin and in part by current Third Circuit judge Emil Bove (who is not mentioned in this filing even though McIver quoted him as exercising prosecutorial discretion in her own filing), as if it extended to the pending defendants, while there’s no doubt that the Pardon Attorney has been handing out pardon certificates like candy to any Jan6er who asks, that’s not actually what the pardon says.
It likely doesn’t matter for the argument, and the selective prosecution claim is likely not McIver’s strongest challenge to this indictment.
But amid James Comer’s fevered conspiracy theories about the impropriety of old man Biden’s pardons, this detail ought to get a mention.
Fox News has a long article today claiming — albeit with wildly conflicting evidence — that Kash Patel’s job is in jeopardy. One of Kash’s crimes, according to the article, is firing Brian Driscoll and others in such a way that exposes Trump to have to sit for a deposition.
On the same day Kirk was shot, three former high-ranking FBI officials filed a lawsuit accusing Patel, Bondi, and their agencies of unlawfully firing them as part of a political purge directed by the DOJ and the White House – something Patel promised against in Senate confirmation hearings.
The larger concern, according to those familiar with the litigation, is Patel allegedly wielded authority belonging solely to the president, citing Article II of the Constitution in dismissal letters he signed. The misstep, they say, creates a legal minefield for the FBI, DOJ, and Executive Office of the President.
“Either way, it’s bad: Kash cannot exercise the powers of the president, and the president can’t fire these officials,” a source with direct knowledge of the lawsuit said.
The filing reads, “Article II of the Constitution and the laws of the United States do not vest any such authority with the Director of the FBI. Article II provides authority for the President, and the President alone, to appoint principal officers, concomitant with the power to remove them “at will.” None of Plaintiffs are principal officers and, more importantly, the FBI Director is not the President.”
A senior law enforcement official said, “The admin could very well lose in court, and it will be because of Kash’s big mouth, making the president look like an ass.”
I made a similar point about Kash stupidly yapping his mouth, but not about the Article II invocation. If the Article II thing were a problem, I noted, it would mean Pam Bondi would be badly exposed for firing Maurene Comey, among others, on the same basis.
Well, ask and you shall receive Maurene Comey just sued Bondi and DOJ for her firing. And indeed, Ms. Comey does cite that Article II firing in the lawsuit.
52. OPM issued a Standard Form (“SF”) 50, “Notification of Personnel Action,” to Ms. Comey shortly after her receipt of the July 16, 2025 memorandum. (Attached hereto as Exhibit B, the “SF-50,” redacted.) Section 5-D of Ms. Comey’s SF-50 is titled “Legal Authority.” This section states: ART II CONSTITUTION.
53. Section 45 of Ms. Comey’s SF-50 is titled “Remarks.” This section states: REASON(S) FOR REMOVAL: ARTICLE II OF THE CONSTITUTION.
54. The July 16 memorandum terminating Ms. Comey indicated twice that she was being “removed from federal service.” This term was not defined in the letter. However, 5 U.S.C. § 2101 defines the “civil service” as “consist[ing] of all appointive positions in the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the Government of the United States, except positions in the uniformed services.”
One of Ms. Comey’s attorneys, Margaret Donovan, is also among the attorneys representing Driscoll et al. And the lawsuit bears similarities to the FBI lawsuit. Whereas the Driscoll lawsuit focuses on former FBI agent Kyle Seraphin’s role in getting FBI agents, especially Spencer Evans, fired, this lawsuit blames Laura Loomer, dedicating at least eight paragraphs and several pages to Loomer’s interminable rants.
8. On May 18, 2025, Ms. Loomer called for Mr. Comey’s “liberal daughter” and her “Democrat husband” to be “FIRED from the DOJ immediately” “for being a national security risk via their proximity to a criminal [i.e., Mr. Comey] who just committed a felony by threatening to assassinate the President.”5 Ms. Loomer also declared that, “under [Attorney General Pamela] Blondi [sic], every Deep State Operator is being emboldened,” and she “question[ed] the impartiality of Maurene and Lucas [Maurene’s husband] in their prosecutorial roles, especially in high-profile cases, due to the undeniable bias and influence stemming from James Comey’s public criticism of Trump and the ongoing investigation into his Instagram post.”6 After Ms. Comey’s termination, Ms. Loomer boasted that the decision “c[a]me[] 2 months after my pressure campaign on Pam Blondi [sic] to fire Comey’s daughter and Comey’s son-in-law from the DOJ.”7
Ms. Comey alleges that she was fired solely for her association with her father. If this lawsuit were to survive, Ms. Comey might be able to access details of Trump’s witch hunt targeting the former FBI Director.
Of course, that allegation doesn’t match the timeline. As Loomer herself noted (even while claiming credit in a way that is very helpful to this lawsuit), Loomer’s rants were in May, two months before Ms. Comey was fired on July 16, right in the middle of Todd Blanche’s efforts to engage in a sex trafficking coverup. Ms. Comey’s firing was crucial to Blanche’s efforts to be as ignorant as possible when he conducted his so-called proffer with the convicted sexual predator. And sure enough, Ghislaine Maxwell made all sorts of statements in the proffer that obviously conflicted with the known public record.
Which is why I’m actually more interested in the references to Ms. Comey’s role on the Epstein and Maxwell prosecution teams than Loomer’s rants. Her role in the Maxwell prosecution appears throughout the complaint, most notably where she describes receiving the Director’s Award for her work on the trial (an important detail in case Todd Blanche tries to claim that poor Ghislaine Maxwell was treated poorly by Jim Comey’s daughter).
38. In addition, in May 2023, the Director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys awarded Ms. Comey and her team the prestigious Director’s Award for “Superior Performance by a Litigative Team” with respect to the Maxwell trial.
Descriptions of the Epstein and Maxwell cases appear among a long line of other cases she worked (including supervising the Robert Menendez prosecution). In these sections (and elsewhere in the complaint), Ms. Comey notes that she was closely supervised on the cases, including by Trump US Attorney Geoffrey Berman and his successor, Audrey Strauss.
32. With her significant experience prosecuting matters involving violence and sexual exploitation, her SDNY supervisors assigned Ms. Comey to work on the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein in the spring of 2019. She was part of the team that conducted grand jury proceedings and secured an indictment against Mr. Epstein for sex trafficking and conspiracy; Mr. Epstein was arrested on July 6, 2019.10 Ms. Comey was one of three prosecutors who then represented the United States in Mr. Epstein’s criminal case, successfully defeating his request for bail pending trial. Mr. Epstein died in federal jail on August 10, 2019, while awaiting trial; as a result, the charges against him were ultimately dismissed. Geoffrey Berman—then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, serving in the first Trump Administration— supervised Ms. Comey’s work on the investigation and prosecution of Mr. Epstein at all times.
33. At the direction and under the supervision of SDNY leadership, Ms. Comey and her team continued to investigate Mr. Epstein’s criminal operation after Mr. Epstein died. They uncovered details that implicated Mr. Epstein’s former girlfriend and collaborator, Ghislaine Maxwell. On or about July 2, 2020, the SDNY, through Ms. Comey and her team, obtained an indictment charging Ms. Maxwell with enticing a minor to travel to engage in criminal sexual activity, transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, conspiracy to commit both of those offenses, and perjury in connection with two sworn depositions.11 Ms. Comey and her team subsequently obtained a superseding indictment additionally charging Ms. Maxwell with conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of a minor and sex trafficking of a minor.
34. At the direction and under the supervision of SDNY leadership, Ms. Comey successfully led the investigation and prosecution of Ms. Maxwell, including serving as one of the lead trial lawyers in a month-long trial, and secured justice for many victims of Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell. On December 29, 2021, a jury convicted Ms. Maxwell on five counts, including sex trafficking of a minor, conspiracy, and transportation of a minor for illegal sexual activity. Ms. Maxwell was sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years in prison for her role in the sex trafficking scheme.12 U.S Attorney Berman and later Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss— both serving in the first Trump Administration—were deeply involved in supervising the investigation and prosecution of Ms. Maxwell during their tenures.
10 See https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1180481/dl
11 See https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1291491/dl?inline
12 See https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/ghislaine-maxwell-sentenced-20-years-prisonconspiring-jeffrey-epstein-sexually-abuse
Note that Ms. Comey doesn’t describe that Epstein killed himself; she describes that he died in custody.
The complaint disclaims the import of her role in the Maxwell prosecution to explain her firing by noting that none of the other AUSAs on the prosecution team have been fired.
Nor could the explanation plausibly be that she mishandled her high-profile cases; she received accolades related to her work on some of those high-profile cases, and, on information and belief, among the at least fourteen AUSAs who participated in the prosecutions of Epstein, Maxwell, Hadden, and Combs, Ms. Comey was the only one who was terminated.
Except some of the Epstein and Maxwell prosecutors were already gone. One left at the end of the Biden Administration, at least one more was part of the Eric Adams purge.
All that said, the hypothesis that Loomer got Maurene fired because of who her father is, which has a better chance of surviving a motion to dismiss, might give DOJ a choice: explain, instead, that Todd Blanche had a sex trafficking cover-up to carry out, a cover-up which Ms. Comey’s continued presence at SDNY might threaten.
Or give Ms. Comey a whole bunch of discovery on Trump’s longtime targeting of Maurene’s father.
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When Manu Raju challenged Mike Johnson on Trump’s claim that the Jeffrey Epstein scandal was a hoax, Mike Johnson didn’t deny knowing that Trump had said that (even during the survivors’ press conference), the tactic he almost always uses when asked to condemn Trump’s atrocities. Instead, he claimed that, “when [Trump] first heard the rumor, he kicked him out of Mare-a-Lago, he was an FBI informant to try to … take this stuff down.”
This adopts a favorite tactic right wingers used during the Russian investigation, to claim that Carter Page’s explicit willingness to share non-public information with known Russian spies and his pursuit of money from Russia to support a pro-Russian think tank was no big deal because he was an “informant” for CIA, when in reality he was just an American that the CIA was permitted to talk to learn what Russian spies had done, not someone who was cooperating with intelligence collection.
Indeed, according to Rolling Stone, Johnson’s comment set off a frenzy at the White House as people tried to figure out WTF Johnson was saying.
According to five Trump administration officials and others close to the president, Johnson’s “informant” claim on Thursday sparked widespread confusion within the ranks of Trump’s government, with several senior officials blindsided or just completely perplexed by what the Trump-aligned House speaker could have possibly meant.
For some in the administration, the confusion spilled over into Saturday, with some officials still unsure about whether Johnson was citing some explosive, unheard-of insider information, or if he misspoke or was freelancing extemporaneously.
“What the hell is he doing?” one senior Trump administration appointee told Rolling Stone, after being asked about the Johnson “informant” comment.
Other Trump advisers say it’s their understanding that Johnson was referencing past claims made in the media about Trump; however, these claims did not amount to the idea he was a federal “informant.”
This could even have been a reference to a recent comment: At the presser on Wednesday, survivors’ lawyer Brad Edwards described that when he was first seeking information about Epstein in 2009, Trump was one of the few people who cooperated, though tellingly, Trump appears to have done so without deposition.
I’ll go first and then I’ll let them. They’re much more important than me, but I don’t understand why it’s a hostile act. I can tell you that I talked to President Trump back in 2009 and several times after that. He didn’t think that it was a hoax Then. In fact, he helped me. He got on the phone, he told me things that were helping our investigation. Now, our investigation wasn’t looking into him, but he was helping us then. He didn’t treat this as a hoax.
(01:05:07)
So at this point in time, I would hope that he would revert back to what he was saying to get elected, which is, “I want transparency.” This about face that occurred, none of us understand it. In fact, I don’t understand how this is an issue that’s even up for debate. How do you not stand behind these women after you’ve heard their stories and know that hundreds of them were abused and it was only because files are being kept in secrecy. The world should know who he is, who protected him, and the other people that are out there to be investigated need to be investigated.
So Trump was willing to cooperate, but only in a way in which he managed the information provided (and avoided attesting to his claims under oath).
Josh Marshall contemplates why Trump might have been willing to share information about Epstein after their clash over a West Palm Beach estate. Relying in part on comments from Michael Wolff, who said that Epstein believed Trump narced him out, Marshall adopted the theory that Trump narced out Epstein to undercut Epstein’s threats to expose Trump’s own money laundering efforts.
Epstein was trying to buy a South Florida estate. He brought Trump along to see it one time. A short time later Epstein found out that Trump had gone behind his back and placed a higher and ultimately successful bid on the property. He’d snatched it out from under him with a much higher bid. The problem was that Trump’s entire empire in 2004 was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. It made no sense that Trump was coming up with $41 million to buy this property. Epstein suspected that Trump was acting as a front for a Russian oligarch as a money-laundering scheme. And in fact Trump did purchase and flip the estate two years later to a Russian oligarch named Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million, or a profit of over $50 million dollars.
Epstein was pissed for his own reasons (he wanted the estate). But he also suspected the money laundering scheme. So he threatened Trump that he would bring the whole thing out into the open through a series of lawsuits. Right about this same time authorities got a tip about Epstein’s activities which started the investigation that led to his eventual 2008 plea deal.
That certainly might explain the seeming coincidence of the two conflicting explanations Trump has given for the split. But Marshall misses several known parts of this timeline.
First, remember there were two grand juries in WPB: one, (05-02), convened in what must have been early 2005, and a second, (07-103), convened later in 2007. The significance of this remains unclear. None of the Epstein experts I’ve asked has any insight on whether the earlier grand jury simply reflects the earlier known investigative steps, stemming from a 14-year old girl’s complaint that year, or whether there was an earlier, separate, investigation, in which case the second grand jury might just reflect one read into the evidence of the first one. But the earlier one would more closely coincide with Trump’s split with Epstein (and the real estate deal).
And almost everyone keeps missing the timing of what Trump (as well as a Page Six source from Mar-a-Lago that could be Trump) has already confessed to.
First, Trump explained that Epstein stole a spa girl from him, Trump told him “don’t ever do that again,” and then Epstein did it again.
What caused the breach with him? Very easy to explain. But I don’t want to waste your time by explaining it. But for years I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein. I wouldn’t talk. Because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired help. And I said, don’t ever do that again. He stole people that worked for me. I said, don’t ever do that again. He did it again. And I threw him out of the place. Persona non grata. I threw him out. And that was it.
Trump didn’t confess, here, that he knew Epstein stole his girls to recruit into sex slavery.
But he alluded to as much the next day, when he confessed one of the girls Epstein “stole” was Virginia Giuffre.
Reporter 1: I’m just curious. Were some of the workers that were taken from you — were some of them young women?
Trump: Were some of them?
Reporter 1: Were some of them young women?
Trump: Well, I don’t wanna say, but everyone knows the people that were taken. It was, the concept of taking people that work for me is bad. But that story’s been pretty well out there. And the answer is, yes, they were.
[inaudible]
Trump: In the spa. People that work in the spa. I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world at Mar-a-Lago. And people were taken out of the spa. Hired. By him. In other words, gone. And um, other people would come and complain. This guy is taking people from the spa. I didn’t know that. And then when I heard about it I told him, I said, listen, we don’t want you taking our people, whether they were spa or not spa. I don’t want him taking people. And he was fine and then not too long after that he did it again and I said Out of here.
Reporter 2: Mr. President, did one of those stolen persons, did that include Virginia Giuffre?
Trump: Uh, I don’t know. I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people, yeah. He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know. None whatsoever.
Trump doesn’t confess he knew Epstein was stealing girls for sex, but he does say, “that story’s been pretty well out there,” conceding it is what we think it is.
And in 2007 — in the period when Trump would have been cooperating with the FBI if he did do so — “the Mar-a-Lago” said the following to Page Six even before Epstein had signed the sweetheart non-prosecution agreement.
Meanwhile, the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach last night confirmed a Web site report that Epstein has been banned there. “He would use the spa to try to procure girls. But one of them, a masseuse about 18 years old, he tried to get her to do things,” a source told us. “Her father found out about it and went absolutely ape-[bleep]. Epstein’s not allowed back.” Epstein denies he is banned from Mar-a-Lago and says, in fact, he was recently invited to an event there.
Before the full extent of Epstein’s abuse was public, someone at Mar-a-Lago wanted to make it clear that when Epstein did “procure girls … he tried to get [] to do things.”
We know of two girls Epstein “stole” from Mar-a-Lago. Giuffre in 2000, and this other girl whose father was a member sometime later. And even in 2007, someone who worked for Trump (if not Trump himself, who loved to source Page Six stories) admitted that Epstein “tried to get” this girl “to do things.”
Trump has already all but confessed he learned about Giuffre, did not report it, then learned about another girl, to which he now attributes his break with Epstein in the same period as the real estate deal.
And here’s the thing about Trump and Epstein, which I think helps explain why he continues to flail now.
I tried to imply in this post that Todd Blanche purposely stopped short of getting cooperation from Ghislaine Maxwell. Even if Blanche didn’t know she was lying through her teeth, within days of her proffer, someone, who could even be Blanche, dealt photos to NYT that made it clear her claim there were no video cameras at any of Epstein’s properties was false.
Blanche didn’t get truth from Maxwell. He got leverage over her, fresh lies he could prosecute her for anytime until 2030. He has locked her into the claim (which is carefully caveated so might actually be true) that she was never present when Trump did anything inappropriate with Epstein, which falls far short of her knowing that he (or Melania) did.
DOJ is treating two other Epstein co-conspirators similarly. They were mentioned in a July 16, 2019 letter supporting Epstein’s detention.
In a July 12, 2019 letter, the Government informed the Court that the Government had recently obtained records from a financial institution (“Institution-1”) that appeared to show the defendant had made suspicious payments shortly after the Miami Herald began publishing, on approximately November 28, 2018, a series of articles relating to the defendant, his alleged sexual misconduct, and the circumstances under which he entered into a non-prosecution agreement (“NPA”) with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida in 2007. The same series highlighted the involvement of several of Epstein’s former employees and associates in the alleged sexual abuse. At the Detention Hearing, the Court asked the Government to provide additional information about the individuals to whom these payments appear to have been made.
First, records from Institution-1 show that on or about November 30, 2018, or two days after the series in the Miami Herald began, the defendant wired $100,000 from a trust account he controlled to [redacted], an individual named as a potential co-conspirator—and for whom Epstein obtained protection in—the NPA. This individual was also named and featured prominently in the Herald series.
Second, the same records show that just three days later, on or about December 3, 2018, the defendant wired $250,000 from the same trust account to [redacted], who was also named as a potential co-conspirator—and for whom Epstein also obtained protection in—the NPA. This individual is also one of the employees identified in the Indictment, which alleges that she and two other identified employees facilitated the defendant’s trafficking of minors by, among other things, contacting victims and scheduling their sexual encounters with the defendant at his residences in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida. This individual was also named and featured prominently in the Herald series. [my emphasis]
These are the assistants — not Maxwell — who played a similar role as Maxwell earlier in the scheme, one of whom was suspected of threatening a victim back in 2006.
NBC’s Tom Winter wrote a letter asking that the names — sealed in 2019 to protect potential trial witnesses — be unsealed. But rather than just giving notice to them and asking them to make their own declarations to the court (which would need to be true), DOJ instead informed them, and provided a response on their behalf, opposing unsealing.
Pursuant to the Order, on August 26, 2025, the Government notified Individual-1 and Individual-2 of the Motion and the Order.
On August 29, 2025, the Government received a letter from counsel for Individual-1. The letter, which is attached hereto as Exhibit A, expressed Individual-1’s opposition to the Motion.
On September 5, 2025, the Government received an email from counsel for Individual-2. The email, which is attached as Exhibit B, expressed Individual-2’s opposition to the Motion.1
1 Because Exhibits A and B both contain personal identifying information for Individual-1 or Individual-2 and describe certain matters that are highly personal and sensitive, the Government respectfully submits that sealing of both exhibits is appropriate. See, e.g., United States v. Amodeo, 71 F.3d 1044, 1051 (2d Cir. 1995) (The “privacy interests of innocent third parties” should “weigh heavily in a court’s balancing equation” and can be the kind of “compelling interest” that may justify sealing or closure, and “[i]n determining the weight to be accorded an assertion of a right of privacy,” courts must “consider the degree to which the subject matter is traditionally considered private rather than public,” such as “family affairs, . . . embarrassing conduct with no public ramifications, and similar matters.”); cf., e.g., United States v. Silver, No. 15 Cr. 93 (VEC), 2016 WL 1572993, *7 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 14, 2016) (considering “personal and embarrassing conduct [with] public ramifications”).
At least one of these is necessarily (because she was named in the Epstein indictment) one of the people named in Epstein’s grand jury transcript to whom DOJ gave notice of the grand jury request before giving the victims any notice.
That is, both before and after pretending Maxwell provided truthful information and using that as an excuse to move her to comfier digs, DOJ has been solicitous of the other women who helped enslave these girls. And remains so.
Within a month, after two special elections are expected to send two more Dems to Congress, the Khanna-Massie dispatch petition will almost certainly get the required 218 votes.
And Mike Johnson will have to invent yet more false claims to excuse Republican efforts, from the very top of the party, to help Trump keep all these people silent.
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When NYT first ran this story on August 5 — with the two earlier WSJ stories (July 17; July 24), the third story providing unprecedented details on the Epstein scandal during the period Trump has tried to bury his sex trafficking problem — I noted two things about it: The exceedingly weird treatment of Todd Blanche’s visit with Ghislaine Maxwell, in which NYT mentioned neither Blanche by name nor his title.
The White House had pledged to release details about the federal investigations into Mr. Epstein and his associates. But this summer the Trump administration backpedaled. The ensuing right-wing outrage has threatened to splinter the Make America Great Again movement — for whom Mr. Epstein is a central figure in conspiracy theories — and has put Mr. Trump on the defensive like few other issues.
Seeking to quell the backlash, the Justice Department dispatched a top official to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr. Epstein’s longtime associate who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking. On Friday, Ms. Maxwell was moved to a lower-security facility. [my emphasis]
The other remarkable aspect of the story is the absolute dearth of any source description for the photos from Jeffrey Epstein’s brownstone. None appears in the story or credited on the photos.
The refusal to provide any hints as to source carried over to the response that lead reporter David Enrich gave to a question about sourcing:
These are good questions, but I’m afraid there’s not a whole lot I can say because of the need to protect sources who provide us with information. The one thing I feel comfortable sharing is that we published this information as soon as we were able. This is not something we’ve been sitting on.
I fully recognize that it is frustrating as a reader not to have transparency about where/how journalists get information like this, but I hope you can also understand that protecting sources is paramount — people need to be able to trust that we will protect their confidentiality when they come to us with important information.
Viewed in the aftermath of the release of the Ghislaine Maxwell transcripts (July 24, July 25), however, something else sticks out.
First, there’s the number of people mentioned in the story also mentioned in Maxwell’s interview:
There are people mentioned in the story that Blanche did not ask about: Mortimer Zuckerman, Woody Allen, Steve Bannon, Mick Jagger, and Joi Ito.
But of those who are mentioned, at least the Clinton picture suggests a closer relationship between Clinton and Epstein than Maxwell described in her interview (a point made in this analysis of the transcripts).
TODD BLANCHE: Did — and you’re not, I think you said, you don’t — you’re not aware of President Clinton ever going to the island?
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: He never. Absolutely never went. And I can be sure of that because there’s no way he would’ve gone — I don’t believe there’s any way that he would’ve gone to the island, had I not been there. Because I don’t believe he had an independent friendship, if you will, with Epstein.
Did they speak? Did he go? Yes, but that’s very different from going to spend time on an island.
Most striking, however, is how the story — with its attention to the video cameras visible in two rooms — debunks Maxwell’s claim that there were no video cameras in the brownstone, that there was no wiring for such cameras, a claim that Maxwell offered up to substantiate her claim that Epstein could not blackmail anyone.
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: Right. I — I think this is a really good place to start with how this story began.
TODD BLANCHE: Okay.
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: So even, let’s assume that that premise is correct, that he was doing that and he was going to tell everybody, going to say, “oh, you know, you had inappropriate relations with an underage girl.” If you don’t have a video or photograph, photographic evidence, because I — I’m not sure that even the FBI would take that. Well, maybe today, but certainly not back then, would take that seriously.
So you have to have something to say, “Hey, you know, look, I’ve got this video of you doing terrible things and you need to.” So I built those houses, many of them. I decorated those houses. I put the electricians in for the wiring. I never wired, nor saw, a single house that had any type of inappropriate, let’s say, video surveillance.
And I’ll define that for you.
Inappropriate surveillance would mean in a bathroom, in a bedroom, in any private area of a home.
TODD BLANCHE: In a room where there were massages given?
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: Inappropriate. I would say I would define “appropriate” surveillance to be the front door of a house, or potentially, as in 71st Street, the physical plant. Anywhere else would be grotesque.
TODD BLANCHE: So I just want to come back to — I know I’m just hopefully stating the obvious, but when you say “the houses,” you’re talking about his New York —
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: Yes.
TODD BLANCHE: — brownstone?
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: Yes.
There it is in the NYT, proof plain as day, that Maxwell’s claim there were no video cameras at the brownstone is false (though as described, the cameras were only in Epstein’s private space).
Yesterday, the same day Bill Gates quietly met at the White House with Trump, we learned that Gates had defunded Arabella Foundation, and with it a number of left-leaning groups. Gates is the most prominent person reported to be blackmailed by Epstein. If the FBI collected evidence that Epstein had blackmail material on Gates, Trump would now have it.
It was quite clear from Blanche’s interview that he wasn’t interested in meeting with Trump’s sex trafficker buddy to advance any normal investigative interests. He was offering Maxwell something she wanted — a chance to damage the victims again, a chance for cozier digs — in hopes of getting dirt on Trump’s political adversaries, and he was doing so to staunch the stories focusing on Trump’s close ties to Epstein.
Todd Blanche did none of the things a competent proffer would do. He didn’t insist on dates, he didn’t test Maxwell’s answers, he appeared to work mostly from gossip. On the specific question of whether Maxwell “stole” Trump’s spa girls, which Maxwell first denied:
TODD BLANCHE: Do you know whether masseuses from Mar-a-Lago’s spa ended up giving massages to — private massages to Mr. Epstein? I’m not asking for what you may have read, but from — at the time, from your personal knowledge, do you know whether that’s true?
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: I — I don’t — I don’t recall. Is it possible? Yes. But I don’t remember — I don’t remember that. So I don’t want to — I don’t recall that, but it’s possible.
TODD BLANCHE: Do you have a recollection of you ever recruiting a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago spa to give — to go give a private massage to Mr. Epstein?
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember. I can’t ever recollect doing that.
TODD BLANCHE: Okay. So what — what I think we should do now, it’s about 12:15. We’ll take a — we’ll take a break and we will come back in a little bit.
Then, the next day, conceded could have happened but Blanche prodded her for a specific denial that Maxwell recruited Virginia Giuffre there.
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: Some more names did come to me in the night, and I did have some additional memories just for clarity. I believe I said that I couldn’t think of anybody who I may have asked from Mar-a-Lago, but then I realized that I was — the allegation at least is that I met [redacted] in Mar-a-Lago and so I felt that I needed to address that. And I didn’t want to leave that hanging because that seems weird under the circumstances.
And also — but I couldn’t remember anyone and — maybe, you know, it’s a long period of time.
So the issue is not that I’m trying to not say, but I just don’t — I don’t remember anybody that I would have. But it’s not impossible that I might have asked someone from there.
TODD BLANCHE: I don’t — I don’t know exactly what you said yesterday, but I don’t think what you said yesterday is different than what you just said. So, yes. There’s —
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: Okay. I just wanted to be — I just didn’t want to feel that I had said no to something and that it — and —
TODD BLANCHE: [redacted] definitely had has said that she was working at Mar-a-Lago and that you received a treatment of her — from her at some point, and that you recruited her to meet Mr. Epstein.
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: Right.
TODD BLANCHE: Do you know, affirmatively, whether that’s true or false, or do you just not have a memory either way?
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: I really don’t believe it’s true. But I know that I did go to spas and if I met someone, I did ask if they’re (indiscernible) — so I don’t — in the realms of possibility, it could have, but I have no memory of it.
TODD BLANCHE: Okay. GHISLAINE MAXWELL: And I don’t believe that that it’s how it went down, but I don’t want to —
Not only did Blanche get the story wrong (Giuffre was not doing massages, she was working the desk, reading a book about massages), but he went to some length to get a specific denial on the record.
Reporter 1: I’m just curious. Were some of the workers that were taken from you — were some of them young women?
Trump: Were some of them?
Reporter 1: Were some of them young women?
Trump: Well, I don’t wanna say, but everyone knows the people that were taken. It was, the concept of taking people that work for me is bad. But that story’s been pretty well out there. And the answer is, yes, they were.
[inaudible]
Trump: In the spa. People that work in the spa. I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world at Mar-a-Lago. And people were taken out of the spa. Hired. By him. In other words, gone. And um, other people would come and complain. This guy is taking people from the spa. I didn’t know that. And then when I heard about it I told him, I said, listen, we don’t want you taking our people, whether they were spa or not spa. I don’t want him taking people. And he was fine and then not too long after that he did it again and I said Out of here.
Reporter 2: Mr. President, did one of those stolen persons, did that include Virginia Giuffre?
Trump: Uh, I don’t know. I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people, yeah. He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know. None whatsoever.
What Blanche did was not get the truth, but instead lock Maxwell into specific lies.
It was a shameful use of government resources.
But it appears to have achieved Mutually Assured Silence.
Timeline
July 6: DOJ and FBI renege on the promise to release Epstein files
July 8: Trump whines that his base kept talking about Epstein
July 15: WSJ contacts Trump about Epstein book story; Pam Bondi fires Maurene Comey
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-28-at-10.19.40.png13241938emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2025-08-28 06:36:242025-08-28 17:28:03Blackmail and Brownstones: Todd Blanche Locked Ghislaine Maxwell into Her Obvious Lies
