By Steve Neavling

The first person placed on the Justice Department’s new “Most Wanted Fraudsters” list surrendered Wednesday in Minneapolis, six days after federal officials publicly named him, according to the FBI.

Said Abdullahi Ereg is accused of stealing about $4 million from the Federal Child Nutrition Program during the COVID-19 pandemic. Federal officials said Ereg claimed to be feeding children in need but instead used the money to support a “lavish lifestyle.”

Ereg allegedly operated a Minneapolis grocery store and deli that was enrolled in the program through Feeding Our Future, a Minnesota nonprofit that was supposed to help provide meals to low-income children. Authorities said the business claimed it served more than 1.4 million meals and received $4.2 million in payments.

Ereg was charged in 2024 with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. FBI Director Kash Patel announced the arrest Wednesday, calling it a milestone for the new list.

“Today’s arrest is historic — the first ever arrest of a subject on our Most Wanted Fraudsters List released last week with the White House Task Force to eliminate fraud,” Patel said.

By Steve Neavling

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., refused Wednesday to immediately block the Trump administration from moving forward with a proposed $1.8 billion fund for people who claim they were wrongly investigated by the federal government, saying the Justice Department has repeatedly told the court and Congress that the plan has been abandoned, The Washington Post reports.

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon denied a request by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington for a temporary restraining order, finding the dispute appeared to be moot after acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testified last week that the fund would not be created. Justice Department lawyers later said the same in court filings.

But Leon made clear he would be watching closely if the administration changes course.

“Don’t play possum with this court,” Leon said during the hearing.

He said he would rule later on CREW’s request for a preliminary injunction.

The proposed “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” announced by Blanche in May, drew bipartisan criticism and multiple lawsuits amid concerns that taxpayer money could be used to benefit people convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, including those pardoned by President Trump or whose sentences were commuted.

CREW attorney Nikhel Sus argued the Justice Department’s assurances may not be enough because Blanche’s memo creating the fund has not been rescinded and Trump has not publicly confirmed the plan is dead.

Justice Department lawyer Andrew Block countered that nothing has been done to create or finance the fund.

“The fact of the matter is, no members have been appointed to the fund … [and] no money has been transferred,” Block said.

By Steve Neavling

A senior Justice Department official who helped explain President Donald Trump’s proposed “anti-weaponization” fund to Congress also planned to seek compensation from it, raising concerns among colleagues, Politico reports.

Patrick Davis, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, told others at the Justice Department in May that he wanted to file a claim and asked to recuse himself from work involving the fund because he viewed it as a conflict. Davis previously worked for Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and had his phone and email records subpoenaed while helping investigate “Russiagate.”

The fund was designed to compensate people who said they were targeted by a politicized justice system, but it drew sharp criticism from Democrats and Republicans who warned it could become a taxpayer-funded slush fund for Trump allies. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told lawmakers last week that the department would no longer pursue it.

A Justice Department spokesperson said Davis acted cautiously but later stayed involved.

“Out of an abundance of caution, Davis temporarily recused himself on a precautionary basis and after internal consultation, it was decided that recusal was not necessary for a number of reasons,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added, “As reported years ago, AAG Davis’s personal phone and email records were targeted while he was a congressional attorney investigating the Russiagate hoax.”

One administration official criticized Davis’ request, saying, “It was a hard issue and he just didn’t want to deal with it and didn’t want to be there to address the difficult conversations.”

The official added, “The thing was a cop-out.”

By Steve Neavling

House Republicans narrowly approved a roughly $70 billion immigration enforcement package Tuesday, sending President Donald Trump a major funding bill for ICE and Border Patrol after months of partisan fighting, NBC News reports.

The Secure America Act passed 214-212, with Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California independent who caucuses with Republicans, joining Democrats in opposition. The bill, which cleared the Senate last week, now heads to Trump’s desk and would fund ICE and the Border Patrol through the end of his term.

The vote followed a long standoff over immigration enforcement after Democrats demanded changes to the Trump administration’s tactics, including body cameras for agents and judicial warrants before entering homes. Republicans rejected those conditions, forcing Trump to temporarily use other funding sources to keep ICE and Border Patrol operations going.

The package also survived a last-minute fight over Trump’s proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, which drew Republican backlash over concerns it could lead to taxpayer-funded payouts for Jan. 6 rioters. The administration later dropped the proposal, allowing GOP leaders to move ahead with the immigration funding.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, praised the bill after the vote.

“This is good news for everybody except Washington Democrats,” Johnson said.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, defended Democrats’ push for limits on immigration enforcement.,

“The average man or woman on the street says that those things make sense … and Republicans are listening to Donald Trump, and only Donald Trump,” Thompson said.

By Steve Neavling

The U.S. Marshals Service spent more than $18 million on President Trump’s federal law enforcement takeover of Washington, D.C., drawing money and staff from court security, tactical operations and investigations, according to records obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The records, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, show the Marshals Service identified the costs between August 2025 and March 2026 for its role in the “D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force.” The agency pulled nearly $6 million from its tactical operations division, more than $3 million from investigative operations and more than $2 million from D.C. Superior Court security, even as threats against judges were surging.

The deployment was abrupt and required resources from across the country, including Guam and the Virgin Islands, according to CREW. In an Aug. 12 email, a chief in the Tactical Operations Division wrote that the Marshals Service had been assigned to lead the federal effort to “Make D.C. Safe and Beautiful” and that the mission had expanded to “24 hours and 16 agencies.” The email added, “Travel will be tomorrow. Travel order will follow shortly.”

About two weeks later, Stephanie Creasy, then the acting deputy director of the Marshals Service, acknowledged the strain on staffing while urging agency leaders to continue supporting the mission.

“I understand the challenges faced by districts and divisions with staffing and resources and I ask that you continue to support these initiatives and know that Director Serralta and I are working to address these challenges,” Creasy wrote.

She added, “This mission is incredibly important, it i[s] an innovative partnership on a scale we have never seen. It is highly successful and will be the standard for eradicating crime across the United States.”

CREW said the Marshals Service records offer only a partial accounting of the federal takeover, which also included an estimated $332 million in National Guard deployment costs by the end of February. The watchdog group criticized the administration for diverting resources from judicial security at a time when more than 800 threats have been made against federal judges since fiscal year 2025.

FBI Director Kash Patel’s push to build a sweeping criminal case against President Donald Trump’s perceived enemies set off turmoil inside the Justice Department, where prosecutors resisted pressure to bring charges they believed were unsupported by the evidence, The New York Times reports.

The investigation, known inside the administration as “the grand conspiracy case,” was rooted in Patel’s claim that documents found in burn bags at FBI headquarters showed that former officials had plotted across multiple years to damage Trump. Patel first touted the discovery last year on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

“You know how I caught these guys?” Patel said. “Because these guys were so arrogant, they would write everything down, and I found the documents.”

Patel wanted prosecutors to examine former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan over their roles in matters tied to the Russia investigation and congressional testimony. But prosecutors in the Western District of Virginia concluded they had jurisdiction over only one narrow issue, whether documents in the burn bags had been mishandled as part of a criminal scheme. They later drafted a memo explaining why criminal charges were not warranted.

The pressure then shifted to the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, Va, where prosecutors were also pushed to pursue Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Career agents and prosecutors repeatedly raised doubts about the strength of the evidence, but Trump publicly demanded action after neither had been charged.

“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote, adding, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

After Trump replaced U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide with no prosecutorial experience, she secured indictments against Comey and James. A judge later dismissed those cases, finding Halligan’s appointment was unlawful. The episode highlighted how Trump’s demands for prosecutions of his political enemies collided with career prosecutors’ concerns about evidence, jurisdiction and the independence of the Justice Department.

The collapse of President Trump’s proposed “anti-weaponization” fund may not prevent his allies and Jan. 6 defendants from seeking federal payouts through other legal channels, The Hill reports.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has said the nearly $1.8 billion fund is dead, telling lawmakers it was “not be moving forward.” But Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, said people who believe they were wronged by the government already can seek compensation through the Federal Tort Claims Act.

“We have a legal system already in place for people to make claims against the government. That does not need to be reinvented,” Graham wrote on X.

Those claims could be paid through the government’s Judgment Fund, an uncapped source of money used to cover settlements against federal agencies. Many Jan. 6 defendants and others who say they were victims of political “weaponization” have begun filing claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act, according to The Hill.

Michael Caputo, a former spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services during Trump’s first administration, said he is considering filing a claim after applying for compensation through the now-abandoned fund.

“The anti-weaponization fund was a pleasant surprise, but the Republicans in the Senate — who decided that my family did not deserve restitution — will not stop me,” Caputo told The Hill, calling the end of the fund “a brief distraction.”

Rep. Dan Goldman, D-New York, warned that Congress may need to put limits on those claims if lawmakers want to prevent payouts through other means.

“It is conceivable that that is a pathway that they would try to go, and it’s important, I think, for Congress to fully understand that even if they do withdraw — or if Congress prohibits the ‘slush fund’ per se — that unless we also put guardrails around FTCA claims against the government, then they will just do it a different way,” Goldman said.

By Steve Neavling

Five FBI employees involved in a controversial 2023 memo about potential threats from Catholic “violent extremists” were fired Friday as FBI Director Kash Patel continues to purge the bureau of employees viewed as out of step with the Trump administration, the Guardian reports.

The terminated employees included four intelligence analysts and a supervisory analyst, according to their lawyer, David Laufman.

“This action is manifestly unjust, completely unsupported by the facts, and subverts standard FBI policy and procedure,” Laufman said in a statement. “These individuals deserved far better for the exceptional and faithful public service they rendered to protect our country.”

The memo, drafted by analysts in the FBI’s Richmond, Va., field office, warned of a possible connection between what it called “Radical Traditionalist Catholic” ideology and racially or ethnically motivated extremists. It also discussed “new avenues for tripwire and source development.”

Republicans seized on the memo as evidence that the FBI under President Joe Biden had targeted conservatives, an allegation then-FBI Director Chris Wray repeatedly denied. The bureau retracted the document and launched an internal review, while former Attorney General Merrick Garland said he was “appalled” by it.

Earlier Justice Department investigations criticized the memo’s analytical work but did not find intentional misconduct by the analysts involved. The firings are part of a broader wave of dismissals under Patel, who has pushed out dozens of employees tied to investigations of President Trump or viewed as insufficiently aligned with the administration.

By Greg Stejskal

In December 2025, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security launched what they described as the largest DHS immigration enforcement operation ever conducted. It primarily targeted the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area and was dubbed “Operation Metro Surge.”

Shooting of Renee Good

It did not target specific individuals, “the worse of the worst,” but was rather a mass roundup of what was believed to be undocumented immigrants, not necessarily based on probable cause or even reasonable suspicion.

There were large demonstrations protesting the operation and groups of protestors were often present during the operation. Two protestors both U.S. citizens were shot and killed by ICE agents. There was also a Venezuelan who was shot and wounded by an ICE agent.

Ordinarily the Department of Justice/FBI would investigate shooting incidents under these circumstances.

Historical Perspective

Before I discuss DOJ/FBI response to the Minnesota shootings, I want to provide some historical perspective.

At the end of the Civil War slavery was abolished and in the South Reconstruction began. During the Grant administration, DOJ was initially established to prosecute laws that were passed pursuant to the 14^th Amendment, which assures that no state deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

As a reaction to Reconstruction, White southerners formed chapters of the Ku Klux Klan that terrorized and murdered emancipated slaves to dissuade them from exercising their rights guaranteed under the 14^th Amendment.

The DOJ aggressively and successfully prosecuted the KKK and obtained thousands of indictments and convictions. (The DOJ was “weaponized” against the KKK.) Enforcement was aided by the then occupying U.S. Army. There was no FBI then.

In 1908 the FBI was formed to provide a dedicated investigative arm of the DOJ. It was originally named the Division of Investigation and was relatively ineffectual.

J. Edgar Hoover (FBI photo)

It wasn’t until 1924 when J. Edgar Hoover became director that the DOI began to develop into the FBI we know today. (DOI was renamed the FBI in 1935.) Director Hoover set high professional standards for hiring agents and conducting investigations. He embraced the use of scientific forensics and championed a national repository for criminal fingerprints which became the National Crime Information Center.

The FBI earned the esteem and trust of the American people through the success it has had investigating cases and providing cooperation and services to other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. The FBI’s record isn’t perfect, but as an agency it has striven to pursue justice and the rule of law without fear or favor. This is the FBI I was proud to be part of for 31+ years.

So, it is disheartening to see what has occurred since January 20^th, 2025, within the DOJ and FBI. The DOJ/FBI response to the ICE shootings in Minnesota are examples of their abdication of the pursuit of justice.

The Minnesota ICE Shootings

Hennepin County Prosecutor Mary Moriarty

On May 29^th, the Minnesota Hennepin County Prosecutor Mary Moriarty announced that Christian J. Castro, an ICE agent, was arrested in Texas by Texas authorities. Castro was charged in Minnesota with four felony counts of 2^nd degree assault and one misdemeanor count of falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 shooting of Julio C. Sosa-Celis, who is from Venezuela.  He was shot in the leg and treated at the hospital. 

Castro is being detained in Texas and has not waived extradition. Prosecutor Moriarty said, “His (Castro’s) federal badge does not make him immune from state charges for criminal conduct in Minnesota.”

It is, however, complicated.

There is a Constitutional doctrine of “Supremacy Clause Immunity.” This limited immunity prevents states from prosecuting federal agents for actions that were reasonably necessary and proper to perform their lawful duties. Agents are generally immune if they act within the scope of their federal authority and had an objectively reasonable belief that their conduct was necessary to carry out their federal duties.

Federal agents can still be charged with and convicted of state crimes such as homicide or assault if the agents act outside their official duties, behave egregiously, or use unreasonable and unlawful force. Supremacy Clause immunity does not apply to federal charges.

Despite what Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and others have said ICE agents do not have complete immunity from state prosecution.

Castro’s Charges

Castro’s charges relate to an incident in which Castro alleged that he had been assaulted with a shovel by the Venezuelan immigrant, Sosa-Celis, who he was pursuing on foot. Castro claimed that in self-defense, he shot the immigrant, wounding him in the leg. At the time, then-head of the DHS, Kristi Noem, described it as “an attempted murder of federal law enforcement.” 

However, a surveillance camera recording of the incident indicates that Castro was never assaulted, and Castro shot the immigrant as he fled into a house. To best of my knowledge there was no federal investigation of this incident.

The immigrant was arrested and charged with assault. That charge was dismissed, and it was determined that he was legally in the U.S.

Castro, if extradited to Minnesota for prosecution, does have the “right of removal,” which means he. has  a statutory right to move his case from Minnesota state court to federal court where a federal judge would preside and would decide whether an immunity claim was valid.

A Minnesota attorney would still prosecute the state charges but before the federal judge in federal court. If there’s a conviction, it would not be subject to a presidential pardon because it would be a state, not a federal conviction.

From the outset this case should have been investigated by the Minnesota authorities with the FBI as they have collateral jurisdiction. This is also how the ICE fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti should have been investigated.

In both the Good and Pretti shootings there were multiple video recordings from different angles. The video recordings have been made public and would seem to at least make a prima facia case that the ICE agents acted “egregiously and used unreasonable and unlawful force.”

The ICE agents arguably have a valid self-defense claim. Still, we’ll never see what justice looks like since there’s no transparency on the part of the government.  

Immediate Threat of Life

The author of the article, Greg Stejskal

“Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.” Brown v. US (1921) This quote from the opinion of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. means the law cannot expect calm, rational decision-making from someone reacting to an immediate threat to their life. Whether that rational applies in these shootings should be decided in a court of law not by investigators who have done cursory or no investigation.

Reportedly there was some investigation by the FBI in the Good and Pretti shootings, but no report has been produced, and the FBI has refused to share any evidence collected with the Minnesota authorities who have formally requested it. This would seem to be tantamount to obstruction of justice – a coverup.

The Trump administration has learned that if no investigation is conducted, it can essentially pull off a passive coverup.

Former AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash (FBI photo)

Trump’s Former Attorney General Pam Bondi did not authorize an FBI investigation into the two Minnesota shootings and indicated she thought that the ICE agents acted lawfully.

Instead, an investigation was opened to determine whether Renee Good or her spouse had any ties to radical left organizations — as if this would justify her being killed. Those investigative decisions resulted in the resignation in protest of several career assistant U.S. attorneys in the Minnesota DOJ office and an FBI supervisor.

FBI Director Kash Patel, who shows no signs of independence from the White House, seems to be averse to conducting any investigations that might reflect negatively on the Trump administration.

But he is willing to push retributive investigations targeting “enemies of Trump” to include “threats” made using seashells.

By Steve Neavling

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi told lawmakers that Todd Blanche, President Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department, oversaw the agency’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files while serving as deputy attorney general, Politico reports.

Bondi made the remarks during a closed-door interview last month with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee as part of its Epstein investigation, according to a transcript released Thursday. She repeatedly said Blanche was responsible for the process and said “Blanche supervised [the] entire process” to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the Justice Department to release materials in the case.

“He was leading the Epstein matter and the release of everything from the beginning,” Bondi said, according to the transcript.

She also told lawmakers that any training for employees completing redactions would have been overseen by Blanche and that he was responsible for deciding whether documents were privileged.

The disclosure comes a day after Trump announced he plans to nominate Blanche to replace Bondi, whom he fired in April. Blanche is already facing scrutiny over the Justice Department’s now-abandoned plan to create a $1.8 billion fund for people who claim they were victims of “lawfare.”

Bondi was subpoenaed in March after five House Republicans joined Democrats to force her testimony over the administration’s handling of the Epstein files. Democrats on the committee quickly argued that Bondi’s comments show lawmakers need to hear from Blanche, raising the possibility of another subpoena fight as his confirmation prospects remain uncertain.