Now that former Olympic canoeist David Hearn’s criminal case has been dismissed, the Trump Justice Department’s moment of reckoning is approaching.

On Tuesday, prosecutors face a deadline to respond to Hearn’s request to bury the case “with prejudice,” preventing it from being revived at a later time. Prosecutors all but admitted that there would be no legitimate reason to consider charging Hearn again, blaming contractor Atlantic Industrial Coatings for damaging the reflecting pool through a “rushed and botched installation.”

“Had [the Department of the Interior] been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro wrote on July 31.

Despite gutting the heart of the case — and acknowledging it shouldn’t have been brought — prosecutors have asked permission to preserve that option, and Trump keeps agitating for that outcome. Trump has attacked Pirro, claiming that she “choked,” “folded like an umbrella,” and “made a terrible mistake.”

Pirro’s response to Trump’s pressure campaign will slide into public view as the week begins, and Hearn’s attorneys will be watching.

“The public political pressure campaign being conducted through the Executive Branch in this case shows that the government cannot be trusted to properly exercise its prosecutorial discretion,” Hearn’s attorneys Mary Dohrmann and Norm Eisen wrote.

Don’t expect to see sudden flashes of independence from the Justice Department, which continues to follow a pattern of strict obedience to Trump’s demands — often, with humiliating results. Pirro has racked up significantly more defeats in front of grand juries during her tenure than the entire Department of Justice reported in 2016, including in the cases of ICE protester Sidney Reid, so-called sandwich guy Sean Dunn, and six Democratic lawmakers targeted for accurately stating that military personnel can refuse illegal orders.

The Trump Justice Department’s ongoing pattern of slavishly following the whims and interests of the man whose face hangs outside its office in ways that are likely to remain in the news cycle in the week ahead.

All Rise News regularly compiles previews of the stories to look for in the courts and opportunities for civic engagement. Those listings start below.

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In the Courts

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago has opened up a criminal investigation into the public relations firm that employed the daughter of the judge who presided over the case that made Trump a convicted felon.

According to the article, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros issued a subpoena last August to Authentic Campaigns Inc., which employed Loren Merchan, the daughter of Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.

Before his criminal trial, Trump sought to discredit the judge by baselessly claiming that his daughter stood to profit from the proceedings because her employer represented Democratic politicians. Trump’s recusal motions failed in every court, which discredited his allegations.

But Boutros has shown a willingness to try to revive Trump’s failed legal battles with the weight and force of his office, including a probe of Loren Merchan’s employer and another reported investigation into LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman’s financing of E. Jean Carroll’s litigation. Boutros has been leading the office that saw the spectacular collapse of the cases against the ICE protesters known as the Broadview Six, whose defense attorneys have sought accountability for grand jury misconduct.

Meanwhile, keep an eye out for the following events:

• On Monday morning at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time, the Supreme Court is expected to release a list of summer orders. (High-profile emergency docket decisions — including over Trump’s mail-in voting executive order and East Wing ballroom litigation — likely to be handled on a separate date.)

• On Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. will hear oral arguments seeking to prevent Trump from painting the Eisenhower Executive Office building white.

• On Wednesday at 1 p.m. Central Time, a federal judge in Alabama will hold an arraignment on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s latest indictment.

• Finally, sometime on Friday, Trump will be forced to file a written response to the BBC’s request for a federal judge to enforce its subpoenas seeking to depose Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner about his responsibility for the Jan. 6th insurrection.

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On the streets

From faith leaders to the 50501 Movement, the worlds of civic engagement are in election-preparation mode.

Black churches are continuing “Freedom Summer,” a series of organizing events across 15 cities to prepare for the midterm elections, and this week promises a revival on Wednesday in Jackson, Miss.

Here’s how organizers describe their goals and ambitions:

“From Juneteenth through the midterms, we’re gathering Black churches and people of faith into one sustained season of prayer, fasting, revival, and organized action.

We’ll begin with 16 days of fasting and devotion from Juneteenth to the Fourth of July, grounding people spiritually each day as we prepare for the work ahead. From there, daily prayer calls, Justice Revivals, and The Freedom School gatherings in churches and communities across the country will carry the work through the summer and into the fall.”

Indivisible, together with the 50501 Movement, have virtual election protection training sessions this week for those who are concerned about attacks on the upcoming election — and want to channel their energies by making sure that they run fairly. Register for the sessions here.

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On the phones

Although the August recess continues, congressional phones are still ringing.

Last week’s leading topic focused on opposing ICE arrest quotas, wrongful detention and excessive force.

At a close second was advocating for the 5,000 service members aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, who were deployed as part of the counter-blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has written off reports of dire conditions about the ship, but Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) has sounded the alarm, pressing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the plan to protect the soldiers.

Last week’s Top 5 topics on the app were:

1. “Fight Unlawful ICE Enforcement Tactics” (3,051 calls)

2. “Protect the USS Abraham Lincoln Crew” (2,243 calls)

3. “Demand Repeal of Harmful SNAP Changes” (1,856 calls)

4. “Ban AI Data Centers on Public Lands” (1,534 calls)

5. “Stop Trump’s $1.8B Political Slush Fund” (1,485 calls)

The group’s weekly dashboard can be found here.

In back-to-back setbacks for the civil rights group, a federal judge refused to conduct an inquiry into whether the Southern Poverty Law Center had been vindictively prosecuted, and the Trump Justice Department criminally charged the group’s former employee days later.

The developments could have heavy ramifications for any criminal defendant seeking to prove being the target of a political prosecution during Donald Trump’s second term.

Consider the evidence on the SPLC’s side: Long before any trial, Trump declared the legendary civil rights group guilty on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” claiming that the criminal allegations against them were adjudicated facts. His former criminal defense attorney turned Attorney General Todd Blanche then spread misinformation about the SPLC on live TV, only to be forced to backtrack on those claims later. Former Trump election lawyer turned Associate Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon admitted to having a “personal” grudge against the SPLC and claimed the group attacked her friends.

U.S. District Judge Emily Marks, a Trump appointee, found that it would “stack speculation upon conjecture” to believe that this parade of pretrial prejudice was evidence of a plan to vindictively prosecute the SPLC.

“After filtering out the noise, the Court is left to decide only whether the Government’s decision to prosecute the SPLC was constitutionally impermissible,” Judge Marks wrote in a 36-page memorandum opinion. “On this record, the SPLC is not entitled to discovery or dismissal of the indictment.”

For the judge, the sole question was whether the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama brought the case for inappropriate reasons, but her ruling ignored a whistleblower report alleging that there was a pressure campaign to rush to an indictment despite “serious concerns” about its strength.

Earlier this week, All Rise News explored what this ruling means for anyone seeking to prove being the target of a politicized Trump Justice Department prosecution in a video showing the clips of what the SPLC described as the “media blitz” against them.

Successful vindictive prosecution motions are vanishingly rare, and Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s victory is perhaps the exception that proves the rule.

In the SPLC’s case, Judge Marks found that an open and shameless campaign of vilification from the top of the federal government does not even merit an investigation.

You can watch my breakdown on Legal AF's All Rise News playlist, and paid subscribers can watch the videos ad-free below.

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That was the salient quote from Senior U.S. District Judge Emmett Sullivan that former federal prosecutor and I kept returning to during a conversation about today’s Epstein files hearing.

Read a breakdown of what took place at the hearing on All Rise News here, and watch our conversation at the top of this newsletter.

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During a blistering hearing on Thursday, a federal judge skewered the Trump Justice Department’s justifications for withholding the Epstein files and warned that he has a history of holding government attorneys in contempt.

Senior U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan described himself as reluctant to do so — but willing to if necessary.

“That isn’t a threat,” Sullivan said. “That’s a promise.”

Attorneys for journalist , who filed the lawsuit demanding the disclosure of the documents, requested a finding of contempt if the government continues to stonewall the release or unredact the Epstein files.

Sullivan made his mission clear: “I’m here to ensure compliance with the law that Congress passed and the President enacted.”

Throughout the hearing, Sullivan tried to pin down the government on when the documents at issue would be released, including publishing any written justifications for withholding any of the files on the Federal Register. The government, represented by senior Justice Department lawyer Andrew Block, repeatedly refused to provide even a broad outline of when those justifications would be published.

Judge Sullivan, audibly frustrated, replied: “The public demands a time-frame — not just me.”

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Trump DOJ did ‘not comply’

Exactly one week ago, Judge Sullivan had ordered the government to be prepared to answer questions about categories of files that he would privately review in his chambers in camera, and he accused the Justice Department of flouting his directive by claiming to have withheld victim information without documentation.

“The Defendant’s assertions do not comply with the Court’s Order, which requires documentation to support the assertions,” Sullivan wrote on Aug. 6. “The Defendant shall be prepared to discuss what documentation he will provide to support his assertions.”

Sullivan pressed Block on this point at the start of the hearing, and the government attorney said that he would hand the judge a second binder to inspect privately, filled with “sensitive” victim information that’s under a protective order in the Southern District of New York.

One of the categories of documents demanded in the lawsuit was a batch of FBI interviews with a woman who alleged that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein abused her as a minor. Certain summaries of those interviews have been made public, but the handwritten notes have not.

The government has claimed that is because those notes are “duplicative” and difficult to redact, an answer that didn’t satisfy Sullivan.

“I’m not exactly sure what your honor is looking for,” Block told the judge.

“I’m just looking for corroboration,” Sullivan said. “I’m just looking for evidence.”

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‘I really mean it this time’

Time and again, the government attorney invoked protecting the privacy of Epstein victims to justify withholding information.

“The relief that they are seeing — and the order they are seeking — would unmask victims,” Block claimed.

Attorney Emily Gilman, who is representing Phang on behalf of the Public Integrity Project, said that the plaintiff’s team shares the concern of protecting “genuine victim information” — but doesn’t trust that is actually the government’s goal.

“They just don’t want to produce those documents,” Gilman said.

The government’s attorney emphatically denied that, adding that he could be more candid in speaking to the judge in private.

Sullivan then explained why he convened the hearing to be public rather than sealed.

“The public has a right to know what the hell is going on in this case,” Sullivan said. “The victims have a right to know.”

In June, Katie Phang won a groundbreaking victory in the case when Judge Sullivan found that she suffered “informational injury” from the government’s refusal to release the files, giving her the right to sue in her capacity as a reporter. The judge’s accompanying order demanded that the government provide the requested emails and FBI interview notes with certain redactions lifted; initiate a review of foreign-language documents; or show cause why the government could not do so.

At one point, Block suggested that the judge could issue an order clearly directing what the government must do.

“I’ve done that,” Sullivan shot back. “Do you want me to issue another order and say, ‘I really mean it this time’?”

After a lengthy recess, Sullivan addressed the plaintiff’s motion to hold the government in contempt, and he pointed out his history of famously holding prosecutors in contempt in the case of the late Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. One of the prosecutors, who was under investigation for failing to disclose exculpatory evidence, died by suicide in 2010.

“I’m probably the only judge in this Circuit who has held the Justice Department attorneys in civil contempt,” Sullivan said, adding that he has “no desire to go down that road again.”

Explaining the reason for his comments, Sullivan said that he wanted to put the parties “on notice.”

“I think it’s important to know how far a federal judge has gone to enforce judicial orders,” he said.

Sullivan put the hearing on the court’s public phone line, which reportedly reached its maximum capacity, leaving some callers unable to connect.

Beyond being “profoundly corrupt,” the lawsuit argues that it violates the First Amendment.

“It's blatantly unconstitutional,” the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s chief of editorial Kirstin McCudden told All Rise News.

To oppose the so-called “Truth API,” The Freedom of the Press Foundation joined forces with The Intercept, a news organization that declared itself “both unable and unwilling” to shell out six-figure monthly tributes for Trump’s inside information.

“This scheme is extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional, and Plaintiffs bring this case to stop it,” the lawsuit begins.

The Truth API, short for “Application Programming Interface,” is a paywalled feed that delivers faster access to the platform’s most popular accounts: primarily Trump, the White House, and high-ranking government officials like Vice President J.D. Vance, FBI Director Kash Patel, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and others.

Truth Social is owned and operated by Trump Media. Trump is its largest shareholder and is contractually obligated to publish certain social media posts exclusively on that platform first.

Read the lawsuit in full here, and watch the archived video of the full conversation at the top of this newsletter.

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From $400 million in private donations to a court-blocked East Wing ballroom to his billions of dollars in cryptocurrency schemes, Donald Trump’s second term has been filled with increasingly audacious money grabs and self-dealing.

Even by his standards, however, Truth Social’s gambit to charge $100,000 a month for early access to Trump’s “market-moving” posts is “profoundly corrupt,” a new lawsuit says.

Brought by a news organization and press freedom group, the federal lawsuit attacks the so-called “Truth API” program as an “out-and-out plan of extortion,” putting timely access to vital government information behind a sky-high paywall that’s out of reach for the press and public.

Former Jan. 6th prosecutor Brendan Ballou, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Public Integrity Project, torched the program as “comically corrupt.”

“I don’t think any of us have seen this … kind of public corruption in the information sphere in American history,” Ballou told All Rise News.

Ballou said that it’s also a First Amendment issue, and his clients include the Freedom of the Press Foundation and The Intercept, a news organization that said it’s “unwilling and unable” to pay for Trump Media’s pricey product.

On Wednesday, the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s chief of editorial Kirstin McCudden joined an All Rise News live-stream to discuss the case.

Look out for extended video interviews with McCudden and Ballou, and read the lawsuit here.

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‘The sacred guarantee of the Citizenship Clause’

Civil rights groups returned to federal court to block Trump’s new birthright citizenship order, noting that the 14th Amendment stays the same no matter how many times Trump tries to overrule it by fiat.

“If the President issues 100 orders seeking to create new exceptions to the sacred guarantee of the Citizenship Clause, all 100 will be equally illegal,” the American Civil Liberties Union’s attorney Cody Wofsky wrote in the brief. “And nothing requires this Court to countenance the continued assault on this foundational constitutional principle or issue an endless string of EO-specific injunctions.”

Trump’s renewed push to ban certain types of birthright citizenship purports to cobble together a list of exceptions to the constitutional guarantee.

It instructs agencies not to recognize the children of “an alien enemy,” “a foreign government employee,” and alleged birth tourists, written with language that sweeps naturalized citizens in its reach, the rights groups warn.

“Indeed, standing alone the new order would appear to apply to people who have lived their entire lives as citizens, potentially going back generations; to children of permanent residents; and even to naturalized citizens (for example a naturalized citizen whose parent was employed by an embassy),” the motion states.

The case returns to the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Joseph LaPlante, a George W. Bush appointee who issued the initial injunction that the Supreme Court upheld.

The ACLU, leading the civil rights coalition, said that an important principle is at stake.

“Birthright citizenship ‘is no light trifle to be jeopardized’ in such a cavalier manner,” the ACLU wrote in the motion. “‘The very nature of our free government’ refutes the notion that those ‘temporarily in office can deprive another group of citizens of their citizenship.’”

Read that motion here.

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Ex-CIA Director Brennan pushes counteroffensive

Another person on Trump’s enemies list isn’t waiting for an indictment to protect his rights.

The target of at least two federal grand jury investigations, former CIA director John Brennan has been pursuing a lawsuit to order the government to preserve all evidence that will allow him to defend himself during potential prosecutions that he regards as “preordained” and “vindictive.”

“To ensure that he can effectively challenge any unconstitutionally vindictive and selective criminal charges, Director Brennan has sought injunctive relief ordering the government defendants to preserve the internal government records and communications that will demonstrate the retributive motivations behind an eventual prosecution,” Brennan’s attorney Ken Wainstein wrote on Tuesday.

Brennan notes that the lawsuit asks the government to do nothing more than fulfill its existing legal obligations, and his defense calls the Trump administration’s response telling.

“Rather than simply stipulating to uphold that constitutional obligation, however, the Defendants devote their responsive pleadings to arguing the limits of that obligation and disputing when and how Director Brennan has the right to enforce it,” the filing states. “This concentration on technical arguments only underscores the merits of Director Brennan’s concerns and reinforces the due process imperative behind his request for injunctive relief.”

Read the filing here.

Ex-SPLC employee indicted

The Trump Justice Department’s indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center listed the nonprofit entity as the sole defendant — until now.

On Wednesday, the government unsealed an indictment that criminally charged one of the legendary civil rights group’s former employees: Heidi Beirich, the former director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project.

The superseding indictment follows a sensational New York Post article reporting that she had a romantic relationship with an informant.

In June, investigative journalist Phil Williams and I analyzed that article on Legal AF, which previewed this latest development. Our earlier conversation is embedded above.

Check out his analysis of the new indictment here.

Beirich’s arraignment is scheduled for Aug. 19.

Other senior Justice Department officials joined the pile-on, as did sitting FBI director Kash Patel. A whistleblower alleged that there was a pressure campaign inside the district that ultimately charged the SPLC to rush through an indictment despite “serious concerns” by prosecutors in that district.

On Friday, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Alabama — U.S. District Judge Emily Marks — found that none of that was enough to even investigate whether the SPLC has been targeted for a vindictive prosecution.

“After filtering out the noise, the Court is left to decide only whether the Government’s decision to prosecute the SPLC was constitutionally impermissible,” Judge Marks wrote in a 36-page memorandum opinion. “On this record, the SPLC is not entitled to discovery or dismissal of the indictment.”

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‘President Trump’s rhetoric’

During a Substack Live conversation, investigative journalist Phil Williams described how Trump seemed to get a pass for trampling on the presumption of innocence through the “crazy uncle view of the President's rantings.”

“Essentially, [Judge Marks] was saying, ‘Well, he says all sorts of crazy stuff. There's no evidence that the people who worked for him were following those crazy notions,’” said Williams, who investigates extremist groups in his newsletter .

In fact, there was evidence that prosecutors within the Middle District of Alabama felt political pressure from Main Justice to indict the SPLC — in the form of a whistleblower report submitted to the House Judiciary Committee earlier this year.

“According to whistleblower information provided to this Committee, Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh ordered your office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama, to rush through the indictment of the SPLC, despite serious concerns about the strength of the case,” the Committee’s top Democratic member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) wrote in a letter then-Acting U.S. Attorney Kevin Davidson in May.

Singh, a Blanche deputy, was one of the senior Justice Department officials whose involvement in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia led to its dismissal for vindictive prosecution.

Judge Marks didn’t cite or discuss the whistleblower report anywhere in her ruling, which set the stage for a trial against the SPLC in October.

“Judge Marks has really not even given much consideration to the arguments being made by the Southern Poverty Law Center in their attempt to get further investigation about whether this is a case of vindictive prosecution,” Williams said.

The judge wrote off Trump’s attacks against the SPLC with a euphemism for the record books.

“President Trump’s rhetoric is (rather famously) wide-ranging, and he has undoubtedly been critical of the SPLC,” she wrote. “However, the SPLC fails to establish that President Trump’s statements evince animus on the part of the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama.”

For the judge, it would “stack speculation upon conjecture” to draw a line on the government-wide media blitz against the SPLC and the group’s prosecution, and the evidence available wasn’t enough to justify any further investigation.

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‘Partisan smear machine’

The felony case poses a major threat to the SPLC, a legendary civil rights organization that bankrupted the Ku Klux Klan in a groundbreaking series of civil lawsuits in the 1980s.

Since that time, the SPLC has burnished a reputation as one of the nation’s premiere anti-hate watchdogs, but it’s wound up in the crosshairs of the Trump administration for its criticism of prominent conservative figures. Conservative opposition to the group intensified after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, whom the SPLC previously criticized for his rhetoric.

“The SPLC has faced criticism from more moderate people for being a little too broad in using the word ‘hate,’ and so that has engendered a lot of controversy within the conservative movement,” Williams noted.

Although the SPLC denounced the political violence that ended Kirk’s life, the controversy continued: Patel labeled the civil rights group a “partisan smear machine” and ended the FBI’s historic cooperation with the SPLC in disrupting crimes by extremist groups late last years.

Then, federal prosecutors revived an investigation into the SPLC’s history of hiring paid informants inside the KKK, neo-Nazi groups and other extremist organizations. The SPLC frequently shared information obtained through the program with federal and local law enforcement, but the Trump Justice Department’s case alleges that the SPLC’s money to informants, in Blanche’s words, were a way of “manufacturing” racism to keep the donation dollars flowing.

The indictment charges the SPLC with wire fraud for supposedly misleading donors about how their money was spent and money laundering for obscuring the payments to informants through corporate entities. But litigation has revealed that information obtained through the SPLC’s informant program disrupted crimes and a would-be terrorist attack on a synagogue and LGBTQ bar in Las Vegas.

The SPLC alleges that the government is withholding exculpatory evidence about its historic cooperation with the FBI, which the defense needs for a trial scheduled for Oct. 5.

“Documents showing the SPLC’s coordination with law enforcement exist, and the government could readily collect and produce them,” the SPLC’s attorneys wrote. “That should have happened without the need for a request or this motion. It did not.”

All Rise News will continue to follow the case closely.

Read the judge’s ruling here, and watch the full conversation at the top of this newsletter with deep analysis about the case.

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In the wee-small hours of Saturday morning, Attorney General Todd Blanche finally secured the Senate’s stamp of approval for his confirmation following weeks of pretending to address the concerns of Republican holdouts.

Throughout that period, a pantomime of the advice and consent process took place: Republican senators demanded Blanche meet conditions that he either ignored or superficially addressed. For example, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) wanted Blanche to meet with Epstein survivors, but those survivors wound up being dissatisfied by what they described as a box-checking session where their concerns were ignored. Tillis, however, was satisfied.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) couldn’t have been clearer: Blanche needed to modify the purported settlement agreement in Trump v. Internal Revenue Service to rescind the $1.776 billion slush fund that he called a “payout pot for punks” — and restrain Donald Trump’s sweeping tax amnesty for himself, his family and his associates. Cornyn achieved nothing close to that and cast his vote for Blanche, anyway.

Once Blanche cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee, a third departing Republican senator cast the deciding vote: Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the physician who previously smothered his qualms about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine views to install him as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Cassidy recognized what he called Blanche’s “poor judgment” and “episodes of apparent lawfare — DOJ bringing suits against political enemies.” Cassidy also appeared to choke up while explaining his vote for Blanche, as his voice quaked. (He claimed on Sunday that the “incredible privilege” of representing his state and nation got him emotional, not the second surrender of his convictions on a confirmation vote.)

Ultimately, three GOP senators leaving public life paved the way for Blanche’s confirmation. In doing so, they gave cover to Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine to oppose Blanche, preserving their political careers before the midterm elections without blocking Trump’s nominee.

Blanche’s confirmation became official when most of the United States was asleep: at 4 a.m. Eastern Time on Saturday morning.

Now, Blanche jumps out of the frying pan into the fire during an upcoming hearing this week in a lawsuit filed by .

On Thursday, the Trump Justice Department will have to defend withholding the release of certain Epstein files before Senior U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who has expressed heavy skepticism about the nondisclosure. Sullivan warned that the Trump Justice Department did not “comply with the Court’s order” to provide documentation supporting their positions.

In his three-page order, Sullivan asked questions that appear to answer themselves. For example, the government claimed to be unable to produce handwritten notes of FBI interviews with witnesses, known as 302s, because it was supposedly harder to redact the names of victims from the documents.

Sullivan, reasonably, wants an explanation, writing: “The Defendant shall be prepared to explain why the handwritten notes cannot be redacted manually, or why the redactions cannot be accomplished in another way.”

The Epstein Files Transparency Act required the Trump administration to provide written explanations for all withheld files on the Federal Register, which never happened. Sullivan ordered the government to be “prepared to discuss his timing for complying with this requirement.”

What’s more, Judge Sullivan has allowed any member of the general public to dial-in to a toll-free phone line to listen to him interrogate the government about these failures.

At the time of Blanche’s confirmation, the Justice Department that he led lost roughly a quarter of its employees, who were either purged or resigned. It lost high-profile cases against Trump’s targets, including James Comey, Letitia James, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, six Democratic lawmakers, and immigration protesters from coast to coast. Federal judges found Blanche’s Justice Department forfeited the presumption of regularity in more than 40 cases, a finding that would have been scandalous if found once during a previous administration. Blanche has been enmeshed in scandal over his soft-glove treatment of Ghislaine Maxwell and pattern of rewarding Trump’s allies and punishing his enemies.

Republican senators almost uniformly endorsed that record — unless, of course, a couple are seeking reelection in competitive jurisdictions.

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That was the principle affirmed on Friday by a 2-1 majority of the D.C. Circuit, affirming a lower court’s preliminary injunction blocking construction of a proposed ballroom in the East Wing of the White House.

“The bold assertion that the Executive can act with utter lawlessness, destroying treasured national landmarks and harming the interests of individuals, and that no court can stop it flouts our constitutional order,” U.S. Circuit Judges Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia wrote. “And it is no basis on which to claim the favor of courts’ equitable judgment. While this court accords great weight and deference to invocations of national security and the safety of the President, such arguments are not an automatic get-out-of-law-free card.”

During a discussion on Substack Live, former federal prosecutor Harry Litman and I explained why this fight is highly likely to go up to the Supreme Court, which will likely focus on a theory of standing that can dramatically expand Trump’s power.

That became clear during oral arguments: Flouting a hypothetical, Judge Millett asked whether any court could intervene if Trump decided to raze the Statue of Liberty. The government’s position was clear: No judge could block such an action. Archconservative dissenting Judge Neomi Rao appeared to agree with that position, and the Roberts Court could be asked to weigh in on the question soon.

Later in the conversation, Harry Litman and I discussed the dismissal of the indictment against Olympic athlete David Hearn and what comes next.

Watch the archived video at the top of this newsletter, and read the D.C. Circuit’s ruling here.

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Senior U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan’s pointed questions in his order set the stage for the government to receive a drubbing — and for , who brought the lawsuit, to likely sail to victory in the district court.

During a Substack Live conversation, former Florida State Attorney and I went point-by-point through Sullivan’s three-page order and explained why his questions answer themselves. This development also ratchets up the stakes of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing, which hasn’t yet been firmly set on the calendar for a vote on the Senate floor.

Read Judge Sullivan’s order here.

The conversation also touched upon other significant Epstein-related developments this week, including a report by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) detailing the results of his follow-the-money investigation about Epstein’s finances and a lawsuit filed by state authorities in New Mexico.

All Rise News covered both developments in newsletters earlier this week.

Watch the archived video of the Substack Live at the top of this newsletter.

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During a Substack Live conversation, and I discussed why that effort thrives on spinning and obscuring the historical record.

All Rise News explained the background of this development in Wednesday’s newsletter, which is republished below.

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‘Wittingly or unwittingly’

Throughout Trump’s second term, a pattern has emerged.

The White House or its allies release a stash of once-sensitive or declassified documents, claiming that the files support popular MAGA conspiracy theories, damage one of Trump’s enemies, or both. Then, upon scrutiny, the documents reveal information damaging to Trump and his conspiracy theories.

Disgraced journalist John Solomon, a figure from Trump’s first impeachment who is now serving on a White House task force, gave a prime example of the practice on Wednesday. He released declassified documents revealing that the FBI feared Trump had been “wittingly or unwittingly” manipulated by the Russian government.

The FBI investigation described in the documents has a quirky code name: “Oxferd comma,” intentionally misspelled for undisclosed reasons.

Dated one day before Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel, the declassified FBI memo found “an articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald J. Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States.”

“The goal of the investigation is to determine if President Trump is or was directed by, controlled by, and /or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation in a manner constituting a threat to the national security of the United States and / or a violation of federal criminal statutes,” the memo continues. “In addition, this investigation will also seek to determine whether President Trump and others yet to be named obstructed and /or conspired to obstruct any associated FBI investigation.”

Mueller ultimately did not find enough evidence to charge Trump with a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government, but his findings fell far short of Trump’s claim of “COMPLETE AND TOTAL EXONERATION.”

“Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” the Mueller report found.

Mueller found that the Trump campaign “welcomed” the Kremlin’s election interference, charged 34 people and three companies in connection with his investigation, and convicted eight of them. The report showed that Trump’s campaign shared internal polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the GOP-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee described as a Russian asset.

The former special counsel also found that Trump may have obstructed justice at least 10 times, but he declined to reach a traditional prosecutorial judgment because he couldn’t indict a then-sitting president. The FBI memo cited Trump’s firing of James Comey as one of those possible instances of obstruction which prevented prosecutors from getting a “complete picture” from the investigation.

“Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” the report concluded.

Even though the FBI’s memos were consistent with Mueller’s findings and evidence, Solomon suggested that the declassified memos could support an ongoing “grand conspiracy” investigation into Trump’s enemies.

You can read the memo in full here.

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Despite his cascade of lies surrounding the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Donald Trump turned out to be right about one thing.

Someone actually took a knife to the sealant, but it wasn’t Olympic athlete David Hearn. It wasn’t any “vandal,” and there was no criminal conspiracy. As it turns out, a National Park Service engineer cut off a stretch of loose liner to mitigate the damage of a botched installation job, Hearn’s lawyers have just revealed.

“On July 13, the USAO-DC special agents photographed damage throughout the pool, accompanied by a National Park Service (NPS) engineer who informed the agents that he had personally cut loose liner or coating with a knife to prevent further peeling,” Hearn’s attorneys wrote in a 28-page filing.

Hearn explained that there was a good reason for that: “The government’s own engineer determined that it was better to cut off the peeling sections than to let them flap around.”

The U.S. Attorney’s office for Washington, D.C., led by ex-Fox personality turned top prosecutor Jeanine Pirro, asked a judge last week to dismiss Hearn’s indictment. Prosecutors also have dropped cases against others accused of similar crimes. The government admitted that a “rushed and flawed installation process” by contractor Atlantic Industrial Coatings was to blame, not vandalism.

Despite those admissions, prosecutors asked to dismiss Hearn’s indictment “without prejudice” — meaning that the government could pursue the charges again later.

Hearn’s attorneys opposed that request on the grounds that it would let the government revive a “politically motivated prosecution,” and they noted that Trump has been clamoring for that outcome.

“That is particularly true when the President of the United States has already voiced his vigorous disagreement with USAO-DC’s dismissal of the case against Mr. Hearn — saying that the U.S. Attorney ‘choked,’ ‘folded like an umbrella,’ and ‘made a mistake,’ and doubling down on the false claim that the damage was caused by vandalism — and has previously not hesitated to insinuate himself into cases that historically have been the exclusive province of the DOJ,” the filing states.

On Tuesday, The New York Times revealed the backstory of Pirro’s Oval Office meeting with Trump and Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum. Prosecutors blamed the Department of the Interior for allegedly providing “less than fulsome information” about the case. Burgum continued to defend Trump’s discredited theory about vandals, and Pirro brought a white box of evidence into the White House to defend the decision.

Hearn’s defense team took on the narratives of both parties, slamming Pirro’s “unprofessional and unethical” actions and stating that the Justice Department and Interior Department worked “hand-in-glove” on the investigation.

Before Hearn ever visited the pool, prosecutors had access to photographs and videos of damage to the reflecting pool, and they received a “Damage Assessment” showing peeled sealant far away from any area Hearn touched.

Hearn’s filing suggests that Pirro has bigger concerns than holding her job, stating that she “wholly disregarded DC Bar and DOJ ethics rules” by violating the defendant’s presumption of innocence by opining on his guilt and discussing the evidence during a press conference and on her old right-wing cable network.

If the judge doesn’t immediately dismiss the case with prejudice, Hearn seeks a ruling opening up the grand jury records.

Watch my video breakdown of this development here.

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New Mexico sues Blanche over Epstein probe

During his recent confirmation hearing, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche swore under oath that he would cooperate with a criminal investigation by state prosecutors in New Mexico into Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme.

“We’re continuing to work with them,” Blanche testified.

The state’s Attorney General Raúl Torrez apparently has little confidence in Blanche’s response, filing a federal lawsuit against him and the Justice Department that he leads seeking access to evidence needed for their investigation.

“New Mexico has a duty to protect survivors and investigate crimes committed in our state so that perpetrators can be held accountable,” Torrez said in a statement. “We asked the Department of Justice to cooperate by providing access to records that may be critical to identifying victims, witnesses, and additional criminal conduct at Zorro Ranch. Their delay is actively hurting our criminal investigation and delaying justice Epstein survivors deserve.”

Epstein’s Zorro Ranch outside of Santa Fe was one of several properties in which survivors reported sexual abuse.

In a 40-page federal lawsuit, Torrez emphasizes that several administrations failed victims, and he describes the Trump Justice Department’s noncooperation with New Mexico authorities as their third betrayal.

First, prosecutors reached a 2008 non-prosecution agreement with Epstein that hid the lenient terms from survivors, and then there was the bungled rollout of the investigative files, exposing sensitive victim photographs and information while filling other documents with excessive redactions.

Now, Torrez said: “USDOJ and Acting Attorney General Blanche are refusing to facilitate the investigation of state law crimes by hiding information about Epstein and his co-conspirators from Attorney General Torrez and state law enforcement, when New Mexico is one of few jurisdictions that still may have an opportunity to hold Epstein’s associates accountable or otherwise provide some sense of justice to survivors.”

The lawsuit states that federal prosecutors asked New Mexico to stand down in 2019, the year of Epstein’s indictment in New York.

This past May, New Mexico sent a formal demand for evidence — known as a Touhy request — seeking, among other things, unredacted versions of certain documents released from the Epstein files.

“NMDOJ’s Touhy request informed USDOJ that NMDOJ is currently ‘investigating potential felony offenses’ under New Mexico’s state criminal code, ‘including but not limited to homicide, kidnapping, criminal sexual penetration, criminal sexual contact, and human trafficking,’” the lawsuit states, referring to an unverified anonymous tip that two girls were strangled and buried at Zorro Ranch.

New Mexico authorities allege that some of the requested files conceal information at the heart of their investigation, including notes from an FBI interview with a witness stating: “The first assault happened in New Mexico; EPSTEIN and [REDACTED] were both there in the room.”

Read the lawsuit in full here.

‘Wittingly or unwittingly’

Throughout Trump’s second term, a pattern has emerged.

The White House or its allies release a stash of once-sensitive or declassified documents, claiming that the files support popular MAGA conspiracy theories, damage one of Trump’s enemies, or both. Then, upon scrutiny, the documents reveal information damaging to Trump and his conspiracy theories.

Disgraced journalist John Solomon, a figure from Trump’s first impeachment who is now serving on a White House task force, gave a prime example of the practice on Wednesday. He released declassified documents revealing that the FBI feared Trump had been “wittingly or unwittingly” manipulated by the Russian government.

The FBI investigation described in the documents has a quirky code name: “Oxferd comma,” intentionally misspelled for undisclosed reasons.

Dated one day before Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel, the declassified FBI memo found “an articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald J. Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States.”

“The goal of the investigation is to determine if President Trump is or was directed by, controlled by, and /or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation in a manner constituting a threat to the national security of the United States and / or a violation of federal criminal statutes,” the memo continues. “In addition, this investigation will also seek to determine whether President Trump and others yet to be named obstructed and /or conspired to obstruct any associated FBI investigation.”

Mueller ultimately did not find enough evidence to charge Trump with a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government, but his findings fell far short of Trump’s claim of “COMPLETE AND TOTAL EXONERATION.”

“Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” the Mueller report found.

Mueller found that the Trump campaign “welcomed” the Kremlin’s election interference, charged 34 people and three companies in connection with his investigation, and convicted eight of them. The report showed that Trump’s campaign shared internal polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the GOP-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee described as a Russian asset.

The former special counsel also found that Trump may have obstructed justice at least 10 times, but he declined to reach a traditional prosecutorial judgment because he couldn’t indict a then-sitting president. The FBI memo cited Trump’s firing of James Comey as one of those possible instances of obstruction which prevented prosecutors from getting a “complete picture” from the investigation.

“Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” the report concluded.

Even though the FBI’s memos were consistent with Mueller’s findings and evidence, Solomon suggested that the declassified memos could support an ongoing “grand conspiracy” investigation into Trump’s enemies.

You can read the memo in full here.

Two days after securing the support of his lone GOP holdouts, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee in a 12-10 party-line vote on Tuesday.

Republican Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina initially demanded that Blanche revise a purported settlement agreement to eliminate an arrangement that Cornyn called a “payout pot for punks.” They also wanted restraints on sweeping tax amnesty for Trump and his family, which Forbes estimated could erase more than $600 million in potential liabilities.

Blanche ultimately provided neither concession, leaving the purported settlement — slammed by one federal judge as a sham — completely untouched.

The Trump Justice Department is seeking to overturn federal rulings forbidding its use in any court. Blanche frequently insists that the $1.776 billion fund to reward Jan. 6 rioters and other Trump allies is “dead,” but the agency he leads continues to fight legal roadblocks to enforcing its terms.

Although Blanche rescinded an order that would have set the fund into effect, multiple Senators noted that the initial contract between Trump and the government he leads is in place.

Addressing Cornyn directly, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) told the Texas Republican that his supposed deal with Blanche was “all hat and no cattle.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) pointedly asked: “What’s left of this Committee?”

“What’s left of this Committee when we don’t demand straight answers from witnesses?” Whitehouse repeated, citing the Justice Department’s refusal to turn over information about what happened to the $50,000 that the FBI reportedly handed to Tom Homan in a bribery sting.

Whitehouse added that FBI director Kash Patel “virtually certainly lied to this Committee sitting in front of us.”

“I don’t know where this Committee goes after it stops being taken seriously because all you have to be is on the right partisan side to get this Committee to roll over and play dead,” he said.

In press interviews following the hearing, Cornyn struck a fatalistic note about his power to check the executive branch.

“There’s nothing we can do to rein in the President when he says he likes the fund and wishes that it still exists,” Cornyn said.

He then added, inaccurately: “But the fact of the matter is it’s dead.”

Tillis skewered the Trump Justice Department’s case against former FBI director James Comey for posting a photograph of seashells spelling out “86 47” on a beach: "Some bonehead in North Carolina thinks that that's a crime."

Blanche, who will advance to the full Senate chamber for confirmation, announced and stridently defended the case against Comey when it was unsealed.

Trump DOJ extends voter-data losing streak

In one of the growing list of ironies concerning Blanche’s path to confirmation, the Acting Attorney General cleared Committee on the same day that reports emerged about his 20th consecutive defeat in a spate of litigation.

The Justice Department hasn’t won a single victory in the series of 30 lawsuits seeking sensitive voter data from 29 states and Washington, D.C.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, a former Trump election lawyer turned Civil Rights Division chief, has led the spate of litigation, losing in every court that she entered.

Blanche and Dhillon cited the Civil Rights Act in order to obtain the data, floating an interpretation of the law rejected by judges appointed by presidents across the political spectrum, including several Trump appointees.

In June, a Sixth Circuit judge said that the Trump administration had turned the purpose of the law on its head.

“Back then, the government used this power to ensure that everyone who had the right to vote could freely exercise that right,” Sixth Circuit Judge Andre Mathis wrote. “But today, the government invokes Title III for an inverse purpose—to ensure that some people have not voted.”

The sensitive voter information varies state by state, and the latest defeat happened in Colorado, where nonpublic information includes date of birth, address, last four digits of the voter’s social security number, and driver’s license number, according to the ruling.

“The authorities cited by the United States do not support its position,” U.S. District Judge Phillip Brimmer, a George W. Bush appointee, found.

Read Brimmer’s ruling here.

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A ‘60 Minutes’ Epstein probe never aired

Earlier this year, “60 Minutes” caught wind of a hot story.

Its then-top correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi sat down with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee who had been pursuing a follow-the-money investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s financial transactions.

On Tuesday, Wyden disclosed the fruits of his investigation in a 67-page report titled “Looking the Other Way.” The document revealed the existence of his unaired interview with CBS for the first time and delivered bombshell findings about Epstein’s business relationships with major banks and billionaires.

“Bank of America likely violated federal anti-money laundering laws by failing to properly screen and report $170 million in payments from Leon Black to Jeffrey Epstein,” the report charges.

Wyden described Black, the billionaire of Apollo Capital Management, as “Epstein’s single largest source of funding.”

“Epstein relied heavily on large payments from Black to bankroll his sex trafficking activity,” the report states.

Wyden also found that J.P. Morgan Chase likely violated federal anti-money laundering laws.

Epstein survivors filed scores of lawsuits seeking compensation for alleged complicity in the sex trafficking conspiracy, resulting in large settlements from Black, Epstein’s estate, J.P. Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of America adding up to more than $900 million.

“These settlements may have been reached in order to preempt depositions of ultra-wealth individuals or high-ranking bank executives,” the report states. “These settlements also prevented damaging information from coming out through litigation.”

Wyden’s report explains how “60 Minutes” missed the scoop.

“On March 26, 2026, Senator Wyden sat for a taped interview at a Senate Finance Committee hearing room with former 60 minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi. The interview was part of a broader segment being prepared by 60 minutes regarding the conduct of Wall Street banks and the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands with regard to Jeffrey Epstein and his associates. Over the course of the interview Senator Wyden answered questions related to his multi-year investigation into transactions financing Epstein’s sex trafficking operation and potential consequences for banks over potentially willful violations of federal anti-money laundering laws.

However, shortly after the taping of the interview with Senator Wyden, CBS News Leadership led by Bari Weiss made the decision to fire Sharyn Alfonsi. As a result, the interview with Senator Wyden will not be aired and it is unclear whether Bari Weiss and CBS News leadership will allow the broader segment to ever be aired.”

Months before that interview, Alfonsi sharply criticized Weiss and other network leadership over their last-minute stalling of a segment about torture inside El Salvador’s CECOT prison, a story delayed following objections from the White House. Alfonsi accused the network of censorship and was fired months later.

Bloomberg News, which first reported the story of Wyden’s findings, reached out to CBS for comment. CBS said that the story on the Epstein investigation wasn’t ready by the end of the last season but the network wouldn’t confirm whether the segment would eventually air.

Read Wyden’s report here.

Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy case dismissed

“Reluctantly,” a federal judge found that he lacked the power to refuse to dismiss the Jan. 6th related seditious conspiracy convictions of Oath Keepers leaders and members.

“This is the last of the prosecutions seeking to hold accountable those responsible for the events of January 6,” U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta wrote in a 15-page opinion and order. “That book is now closed. Today’s epilogue diminishes the gravity of that day, denigrates the work of the prosecutors and law enforcement officers who secured these convictions, and excuses criminal acts that caused a centuries-long pillar of our democracy—the peaceful transfer of presidential power—to buckle. The court cannot write a different ending.”

The order closes the case of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and several other leaders and members of the right-wing extremist group, including Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel, Thomas Caldwell, and Edward Vallejo.

“The government thus asks to absolve these Defendants of crimes against the United States itself,” the order states. “In this court’s view, that is not in the public interest.”

But Mehta, who presided over their trials and over the pending civil cases against Donald Trump, made clear that he believed that the Trump Justice Department’s desire to dismiss the case left him with no other lawful outcome.

“Ultimately, though, this judicial officer’s mere difference of opinion is of no moment,” he wrote. “Courts lack the authority ‘to deny a prosecutor’s Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss charges based on a disagreement with the prosecution’s exercise of its charging authority.’”

The judge made clear that prosecutors didn’t claim that any of the defendants had an unfair trial.

“The government does not say that the charges were legally deficient or that the evidence presented is insufficient to sustain Defendants’ convictions,” he wrote. “It confesses to no prosecutorial misconduct, nor does it assert any denial or compromise of a defendant’s rights. And it does not identify any legal error that resulted in an unfair trial or a wrongful conviction (except perhaps as to the obstruction of an official proceeding counts). Remarkably, then, the government does not maintain that dismissal is in the public interest to rectify a fundamental error or a grave injustice.”

The Oath Keepers trial revealed the full scope of the extremist group’s attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election.

On Jan. 6, 2021, members of the group — styling themselves as a “quick reaction force” — stashed a stockpile of weapons inside a Comfort Inn in Arlington, Va., which they had planned to ferry over the Potomac River to the U.S. Capitol if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act.

Trump never gave that command, and so the firearms remained inside the hotel.

Mehta narrated what happened to their peers who went to the Capitol.

“Meanwhile, a line of roughly ten Oath Keepers, decked out in military gear, had arrived at the Capitol grounds, marched up the eastern steps, and entered the building. A witness testified that Meggs told them all that, once inside, ‘We were going to try to stop the vote count.’ Half of them headed towards the Senate chamber, where they attempted with others to storm past a line of police officers. The other half ended up in front of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Meggs later would brag to a friend, ‘We looked for her.’ Not long after, a second group of Oath Keepers would make their way inside the Capitol, where they clashed with police officers attempting to clear the building. Due to the extraordinary bravery and courage of law enforcement, Congress was able to reconvene later that night and certify President-elect Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.”

Days after the riot, Rhodes still had not abandoned his plan to keep Trump in power, setting up a meeting with an intermediary whom he’d hoped would personally lobby Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, witness testimony revealed. That last-ditch effort also failed.

On a personal note:

In 2022, I covered the Oath Keepers trial on the ground in Washington, D.C., witnessing the testimony and evidence about the planning of the attack on the U.S. Capitol and its aftermath. The proceedings revealed the extreme lengths to which far-right, paramilitary groups went to keep Trump in power. Those revelations received too little attention at the time, and there continues to be an active effort to downplay and bury its history.

The first half of Mehta’s ruling provides a concise and gripping account of the trial. Read it here.

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Two outgoing Republican senators abandoned their core demand standing in the way of Todd Blanche’s confirmation for attorney general.

During his confirmation hearing in mid-July, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas sharply questioned Blanche about whether a purported settlement agreement between Donald Trump and the government agencies he controls would be enforceable without a signed modification.

“Is the settlement agreement enforceable as a contract by the parties?” Cornyn asked.

“Well, yes, it's an enforceable document,” Blanche replied.

After the hearing, Cornyn conditioned his support for Blanche’s nomination on his modifying the purported settlement to eliminate the creation of a fund to reward Jan. 6 rioters. He also wanted the revised agreement to rein in the sweeping tax amnesty to Donald Trump and his family members, valued at an estimated $100 million. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina joined in that demand.

Late on Sunday evening, Blanche announced that he and the senators “addressed any concerns and outstanding questions,” but the documents that Blanche released appeared to fall far short of the senators’ terms. Blanche issued an order purporting to rescind the fund and stated that the relief from tax audits would be retroactive.

Only Blanche’s signature appeared on the documents, and the original terms of the purported settlement agreement had been unaltered. The documents indicate that nothing had changed: “For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in this order is intended to contradict or otherwise be contrary to prior representations of the Department of Justice that the fund is not operative.”

Blanche frequently declared the fund “dead,” but Cornyn previously found those claims hollow without a modification to the settlement agreement, signed by Trump and government representatives.

The gentlemen’s agreement between Blanche and the senators lets Trump keep his enforceable agreement. Trump openly declared that he still wants to carry out its terms, and his Justice Department is actively trying to clear any hurdles standing in the way of that outcome.

On Friday, Trump called Jan. 6 rioters “great American Patriots” and declared that they “should be given compensation.” That same day, the Trump Justice Department formally sought to overturn an obstacle preventing that outcome, appealing a judge’s ruling forbidding the parties from using the purported settlement agreement in “any judicial, administrative, regulatory, arbitration, or any other official proceeding.”

For now, two judicial rulings prevent Trump from moving ahead on the fund. A federal judge in Virginia issued a preliminary injunction preventing the government from taking any action to create the fund or distribute payments, and another federal judge’s ruling in Florida targets the underlying settlement agreement more directly.

Cornyn and Tillis released a statement that they were “pleased” by the “formal order terminating the anti-weaponization fund” and “look forward to voting to advance his nomination.”

But Cornyn previously acknowledged in his questions that such an order has no binding force without Trump’s signature.

“The President of the United States, who was a plaintiff in this lawsuit, has not agreed in writing to delete the weaponization fund, and there’s no guarantee that he or one of the other plaintiffs might raise that issue by way of a lawsuit and a breach of contract lawsuit in the future,” Cornyn said last month.

The Texas Republican’s sharp scrutiny of the Trump v. Internal Revenue Service agreement reflects his training as a lawyer, who previously served as an attorney general and judge in the Lone Star State.

Blanche’s nomination comes to a vote before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times on Wednesday, testifying that Sen. Rand Paul’s “unhinged obsession” with him left little doubt that the goal was entrapment.

Congressional Republicans repeatedly sought to target Donald Trump’s enemies like James Comey and Jack Smith for criminal prosecution, drafting referrals widely viewed by legal experts as weak and politically motivated. Fauci said that Paul’s words and actions make the Kentucky senator’s objectives transparent.

Touting his more than 50 year tenure inside the National Institutes of Health, Fauci noted in his opening statement that he had testified before or briefed Senate or House committees more than 200 times.

“I proved that I believe in and respect the value of legitimate congressional oversight,” Fauci said, noting that he testified under oath during the coronavirus pandemic for several days-long questioning.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, however, was different for Fauci because of its current chairman’s openly declared vendetta against him.

“However, given Sen. Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary, aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion that I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said.

Toward the end of his tenure, former President Joe Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci and others to avoid "unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions."

Republicans contend that Fauci’s acceptance of that pardon strips him of Fifth Amendment protections from testifying about topics covered by the pardon, which covered any conduct in government service from Jan. 1, 2014 through Jan. 20, 2025.

Paul vowed to seek to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress, scheduling a vote before the Committee on Aug. 8.

During the hearing, Paul ordered security to eject Fauci’s attorney David Schertler, who had tried to make a legal point before the Kentucky Republican cut him off, stating that the Committee didn’t recognize him.

By Schertler’s count, Paul has posted more than 600 tweets about Fauci since the pandemic, routinely calling for his prosecution. Schertler said that Paul’s “slanderous” and “outlandish” attacks have resulted in death threats against Fauci and his family members.

“The accusations that Chairman Paul continues to propagate are false and disgraceful, and we will examine all options to hold him accountable,” Schertler said in a statement.

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‘Behind the scenes’ bombshells from Comey’s probe

Donald Trump personally demanded updates from the Secret Service and Justice Department about investigating James Comey on the day that the former FBI director posted a photograph of seashells arranged to spell out “86 47.”

“Behind the scenes, the Secret Service was closely coordinating with the DOJ and the President himself,” Comey wrote in a vindictive prosecution motion released late on Tuesday. “The Secret Service sent frequent updates to Air Force One, in response to direct requests from President Trump who wished for an update in advance of speaking to the press.”

The explosive defense filings reveal Trump’s deep involvement in the criminal investigation, as well as federal agents’ awareness that they were taking actions that broke the law.

A Secret Service supervisor admitted that surveilling Comey was “legally” a “bad idea” because there was no belief of “imminent danger to life.”

“Another agreed that it was ‘legally questionable’ but indicated they ‘might do it anyway,’” the vindictive prosecution memo continues. “The next day, the Secret Service conducted that surveillance—following a request by the ‘number three’ person at the DOJ—as Mr. Comey and his wife returned to Washington, including as they stopped to visit the grave of their deceased son.”

Comey’s attorneys also narrated the Trump Justice Department’s mad scramble to support their baseless theory that “86” was mafia code for “to kill,” against every dictionary definition and all of the evidence from its investigation. In that effort, the FBI sought help from dubious witnesses, including an “estranged” associate of Comey’s with an axe to grind and the notorious mobster Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano.

The first, identified in court papers only as “Person-1,” openly hoped Comey “goes to jail,” offered authorities only “speculation,” and disclosed having gone to “rehab” for unspecified reasons that the FBI declined to ascertain.

The FBI used this interview to seek multiple search warrants targeting Comey, and an agent claimed in a sworn affidavit that “Person-1” had “immediately” assigned a violent meaning to the numbers.

In fact, Comey’s attorney said that the interview notes revealed that the FBI’s characterization of the interview was “false” — and potentially, “material perjury.”

“In the two recorded interviews with the Secret Service (May 2025) and FBI (April 2026), Person-1 indicated that their first reaction (‘initial thing’) was to connect the term ‘86’ only to its food-service meaning (‘the only way I ever heard it’),” Comey’s attorneys wrote in a memo seeking a hearing to suppress the evidence.

“Person-1” began to think differently after listening to Rudy Giuliani’s podcast, which claimed that “86” was Mafia code for murder and that Comey, a former mob prosecutor, must have known that.

Giuliani, who was a U.S. Attorney, appeared to be virtually alone in that belief among mob prosecutors. FBI agents searched the Bureau’s Sentinel for any records tying Comey to case records invoking “86,” only to find “inconclusive results.”

The FBI agent who ultimately sought the warrants also scoured the case file for United States v. John Gambino, only to find no reference to the numbers throughout the six-week trial that Comey prosecuted.

In evident desperation, prosecutors contacted “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, a Mafia turncoat who admitted to involvement in 19 murders before testifying against John Gotti. A corrupt mass murderer, Gravano once called Trump a “gangster” as a compliment and term of affection, but his insights also proved unhelpful to Comey’s prosecutors.

“Mr. Gravano did not recall ever discussing the term ‘86’ with Mr. Comey, or otherwise ever hearing the term uttered in connection with trial,” the memo states. “While Mr. Gravano claimed that all law enforcement agents would be familiar with the term’s alternative organized crime meaning referring to murder, he also claimed that a ‘gangster would never use that term’ because they knew that law enforcement knew what the term meant. As with Person-1, Mr. Gravano did not indicate that he understood the seashells post to be a threat by Mr. Comey to carry out violence personally.”

Gravano also recommended that prosecutors reach out to another storied prosecutor of the mob: John Gleeson, who later became a federal judge and submitted a declaration in Comey’s support.

“The claim that ‘86’ is mafia jargon for ‘kill’ is preposterous,” Gleeson swore in an affidavit. “If it weren’t made in the context of seeking to deprive a man of his liberty, it would be laughable.”

On Thursday, All Rise News will host a live-stream with former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner about what these revelations mean for Comey’s seashells prosecution and the government officials who brought it.

Tune in here at 11 a.m. Eastern Time.

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Blanche on the ropes?

Last night, All Rise News shared a deep dive on Sen. John Cornyn’s refusal to commit to confirm Todd Blanche for attorney general without a signed document formally rescinding the $1.776 billion slush fund and reining in Trump’s tax amnesty.

Cornyn revealed today that Blanche hasn’t met his demand, and they canceled a meeting. The Texas Republican separately expressed concerns about Blanche using his office to continue to serve as Trump’s lawyer.

The confirmation vote, initially scheduled for Thursday, has been postponed.

The killings of Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Joan Sebastian Guerrero, and Lorenzo Salgado Arauja sparked mass protests across the country, but those names barely scratch the surface of serious claims of misconduct by federal agents across the United States.

On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union announced that it had filed 54 claims in 17 states seeking redress for violence, abuse and neglect by federal law enforcement.

“What we've seen over this past year is the government's law enforcement agents in immigration enforcement agencies have really turned daily life across this country into a danger zone,” the ACLU’s deputy executive director Yasmin Cader told All Rise News in a video interview. “They've flooded our communities. They're violating people's constitutional rights, and they are using force and intimidation really as a standard operating procedure.”

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‘Chaos and Cruelty’

In an 80-page report titled “Agents of Chaos and Cruelty,” the ACLU reviewed more than 1,200 incidents of immigration enforcement last year across eight states and found 432 incidents of alleged misconduct by federal agents.

“We define misconduct as the use of force or threatened force, the use of intimidation tactics, and retaliatory actions taken against those observing or documenting enforcement,” the report states.

According to the report, agents pushed, shoved or kicked people 418 times; deployed chemical irritants 361 times; pulled people out of cars 76 times; and used lethal force 16 times.

Dozens of these incidents sparked legal actions filed today, including one on behalf of 68-year-old Norma Bowe, a professor, nurse and grandmother assaulted while trying to operate a mobile health clinic in front of Delaney Hall, an immigration detention center in Newark, N.J.

“She was there to provide care,” Cader said, referring to Bowe. “But instead of her being able to do so in a consistent way, she herself was attacked.”

The ACLU also listed other heart-wrenching cases:

“· A mother, who was five months into a high-risk pregnancy when she was held with her four children, including her 11-month-old child, in a CBP facility for approximately four weeks. The family was held in a cell with limited access to clean running water and without any windows to the outside.

· Rodney, from Georgia, who was arrested by ICE agents with guns drawn while his two young children watched, and was later denied needed medical care and accessibility accommodations while in ICE custody.

· Willy, a U.S. citizen in North Carolina, who was on his way back from a restaurant when federal immigration agents racially profiled him, put him in a headlock, and threw him to the ground.”

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“By design”

As incidents like these ticked up, the Trump administration — enabled by a GOP-dominated Congress — set the blueprint for a national deportation force funded by an historic influx of taxpayer cash, which the ACLU illustrated in its report.

Along with money came more than 50,000 new hires, a number that the ACLU notes continues to grow.

But the ACLU emphasizes that the target of its report is authoritarianism, not simply immigration enforcement.

“The tactics and rhetoric of the Trump administration reviewed in this report are straight from the authoritarian playbook,” the report states. “They include suppressing protest through the use of force, intimidation, and retaliation, as well as deploying ICE and other federal law enforcement as an internal security force into cities run by the administration’s political opponents.”

Cader cautions the public not to view these flare-ups of violence through the lens of unintended tragedy.

“It isn’t an accident. It isn’t an offshoot. It is by design,” Cader said. “Because what we’re seeing is this violence going against people from the outset of the interaction. It isn’t happening just in response to resistance. No, it is by design to intimidate and to try to force people to comply immediately. And so, I think that’s a really important element of what we are calling out here because of the danger that it has for everyone in this country.”

Read the report here, and look out for my full video interview with Yasmin Cader later this week.

During his recent Senate confirmation hearing, Jay Clayton couldn’t bring himself to admit that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, and Joe Biden won a free and fair race.

In other words, Clayton passed his audition for Director of National Intelligence, and Senate Republicans rewarded him for it with a 51-47 party-line vote on Tuesday.

Clayton, who has no experience in the intelligence community, previously served as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He never previously served as a federal prosecutor either, but he has the attribute most prized during Trump’s second term: fealty to his boss.

During Trump’s first term, then-U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman testified that Clayton was an “unqualified choice” to serve as his successor, and he refused to step down from his position until his deputy Audrey Strauss could take his place. It turned out that Clayton’s rise hadn’t been scuttled, only delayed until Trump’s second term.

Trump was rewarded for his patience with a U.S. Attorney who went along with what two federal judges described as a “diversion” regarding the Epstein files. Clayton also didn’t stand in the way of purging prosecutors who had fallen out of Trump’s favor, like Maurene Comey, who built the cases against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell — and is the daughter of the ex-FBI director Trump hates.

During his tenure as director of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Clayton built up some bipartisan goodwill, and he was once praised by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. That across-the-aisle appeal evaporated as Clayton became a regular Trump booster on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” using that platform to sow baseless doubt about the recent California elections.

Despite insisting he wasn’t an “election denier,” Clayton repeatedly ducked questions about Biden’s electoral victory in 2020. He acknowledged the basic fact that Biden was “certified” the winner, but he refused to testify that Trump lost the race.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) called Clayton out on the disconnect during heated questioning that sounded the death knell of the then-U.S. Attorney’s ability to secure a single Democratic vote for his promotion. Clayton also dodged questions about whether he would follow in his predecessor Tulsi Gabbard’s footsteps by attending an FBI raid of election facilities.

Days before the government withdrew the subpoenas he authorized against New York Times reporters and their family members, Clayton swore that prosecutors followed all of the usual procedures for grand jury investigations involving members of the news media. A federal judge debunked that claim shortly after the confirmation hearing, leading press freedom advocates to question whether Clayton had perjured himself.

Ultimately, none of these controversies stood in the way of a single Republican vote, putting Clayton in charge of the U.S. intelligence community with the midterm elections approaching.

The Senate confirmation took place hours after another election-related setback, which is covered in the next item of tonight’s legal roundup.

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D.C. Circuit demurs on mail-in ballots

A federal appeals court rejected an effort by national and local Democratic parties to block Trump’s executive order concerning mail-in ballots.

The D.C. Circuit’s ruling, however, was more procedural than final, finding that the legal effort was premature because the Trump administration hadn’t yet taken any efforts to implement the order.

“In particular, Plaintiffs’ request for preliminary relief ‘is premised on the threatened impact’ of the Executive Order after it is implemented and if in violation of federal law,” the judgment states. “In addition, the Executive Order, which is not self-executing, directs the agencies to act only to ‘the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law, including but not limited to the Privacy Act of 1974,’ and so requires compliance with the very legal limitations about which Plaintiffs are concerned.”

“If the defendant agencies take steps to implement the Executive Order in a manner that violates federal law or the Constitution, Plaintiffs can promptly seek relief, which the district court and this court can decide in as expeditious a manner as circumstances require.”

Read the 8-page judgment here.

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Blanche faces an ultimatum

Sen. John Cornyn announced on Tuesday that Todd Blanche hasn’t satisfied the condition required for the Texas Republican to support his confirmation for Attorney General.

“Fake news alert: there is no ‘deal’ on Blanche nom,” Cornyn’s social media account posted today. “They know what they have to do.”

POLITICO reported that Cornyn conditioned his vote on Blanche rewriting the so-called settlement agreement used as the legal basis for the $1.776 billion slush fund and tax audit amnesty for Trump and his family. Cornyn reportedly demanded that Blanche modify the agreement to nix the slush fund and restrict the “scope” of the waiver, though the details remain unclear.

By press time, Blanche hasn’t acceded to Cornyn’s demand, and he will need every Republican vote to advance from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Outcast from Trumpworld, Cornyn will be departing from the Senate after his term expires because Trump endorsed his scandal-plagued opponent Ken Paxton, the twice-indicted and once-impeached state attorney general.

Although Cornyn boasted about voting with Trump more than 99 percent of the time, Trump called him “very disloyal” for being slow to endorse him for a second term. It’s unclear why Cornyn conditioned his support of Blanche on the modification of an agreement that’s been hobbled by two federal judges. One judge blocked the creation or operation of the slush fund, and another barred the use of the settlement agreement in any court or administrative agency.

It’s likewise unclear why Blanche has been so resistant to committing to writing what he testified to repeatedly: that the fund is “dead” and the tax audit waiver isn’t a sweeping immunity agreement from more than $100 million in potential liabilities.

For now, it remains to be seen who will blink first — and whether the outcome will ultimately sink or stall Blanche’s nomination.

Blanche’s nomination heads to a vote on Thursday.

Although it has “no precedent” in U.S. history, the Trump Justice Department’s criminal case against former FBI director James Comey would fit right into the English monarchy of the 1300s.

That’s a running theme of Comey’s motion to dismiss his indictment as incompatible with the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Comey’s lawyers point out that the indictment defies “dictionaries, context, precedent, and common sense,” but it is well-suited for a time when English subjects were “hung, drawn, and quartered for ‘imagining’ the death of the King.”

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‘Treason by words’

Charged with threatening Donald Trump’s life, Comey has been facing a two-count indictment because he photographed a collection of seashells on a North Carolina beach arranged to spell out “86 47” in May of 2025.

“Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” Comey mused in the caption of his Instagram post.

As Comey’s lawyers note, “86” is common restaurant slang for being out of a dish or throwing out a customer. The motion to dismiss cites three major dictionaries endorsing this definition: Merriam-Webster, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, and Oxford Dictionary.

But Comey quickly deleted the post after Trump loyalists claimed that the numbers meant “to kill” the 47th president.

Even if that “implausible” interpretation were true, Comey’s lawyers point out that this would not be a crime under U.S. law because the Founders of the U.S. Constitution rejected a legal regime which harshly punished imagined harm to the English crown.

“Beginning in the fourteenth century, English law made it illegal to ‘compass or imagine the Death of our Lord the King.’ […] That prohibition was interpreted to include ‘treason by words,’ under which ‘[w]ords themselves were regarded as the overt act of treasons.’ […] The treason statute was enforced against citizens who made general statements opposing the King—for instance, that the kingdom would have been better off “if the king had never been born.” […] Likewise, a man was indicted for ‘predict[ing] that the king would ‘soon die, with a view to alienate the affections’ of the people.’ […'] Prosecutions for ‘compassing the king’s death’ thus became a ‘principal instrument’ to ‘suppress a wide range of political opposition.’

The Founders repudiated this British practice.

Comey’s attorneys Joseph Zeszotarski, Patrick Fitzgerald, Ephraim McDowell and Rebekah Donaleski mine through U.S. history and precedent to make that case.

“For example, after George Washington signed the controversial Jay Treaty in 1795, the toast at a Virginia dinner party was to ‘[a] speedy death to General Washington,’” they wrote in their memorandum. “When John Jay returned to the United States after negotiating the same treaty, he ‘reportedly ‘wryly observed that he could have found his way across the country by the light of his burning effigies.’”

In 1835, “Vice President John C. Calhoun called President Andrew Jackson ‘a Caesar who ought to have a Brutus’ just days before an assassin attempted to take Jackson’s life,” the memo continues.

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A ‘radical theory’

Even under the harshest light, Comey’s now-deleted Instagram post was far tamer. Comey didn’t arrange the shells to form “86 47.” He simply photographed it and wrote that he found the image “cool.” He then deleted the post when people claimed to take offense, writing in a follow up post: “I oppose violence of any kind.”

Comey’s attorneys point out that “thousands of items” of merchandise advocating to “86” U.S. presidents are available for sale on the internet. In 2020, a Republican politician formed a political action committee called Eighty-Six Trump PAC, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wore an “86 45” pin during Trump’s first term. Right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec posted “86 46” during Joe Biden’s presidency.

But Comey’s attorneys note that Supreme Court precedent allows explicitly violent political rhetoric about a president that falls short of a “true threat” or incitement.

In the “foundational” decision of Watts v. United States in 1969, the Supreme Court cleared the conviction of a Vietnam War protester who said: “If they ever make me carry a rifle[,] the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.”

Close to two decades later in 1987, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Rankin v. McPherson that a law enforcement official was unconstitutionally fired after remarking about an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan: “If they go for him again, I hope they get him.”

Comey’s attorneys point out that there’s no comparison between the statement ruled lawful by the Supreme Court, Trump’s own history of violent rhetoric, and the post at issue in this case.

“No authority holds that broadcasting to the world another person's expression of a well-known political slogan with at most only an attenuated, obscure, and implausible suggestion of a call to violence can constitute a true threat,” they wrote. “This court should not be the first to endorse that radical theory.”

Read their memorandum in full here, and check out my video breakdown below for Legal AF.