Or what monster Trump will try to replace Sammy Alito with. (Note NPR posted, then removed an announcement he is retiring.)

I’ll link some of the analysis I’ve seen.

But in the meantime, I’ve been thinking that prior to any fix for SCOTUS, including expanding the court, there’s a whole lot of political work that needs to be done to explain the stakes for people. I woke up this morning envisioning a graphic novel or podcast, explaining it in ways that are meaningful to normies.

How did Sammy Alito go mad watching Fox News for three decades?

How do that creepy gym teacher demanding to inspect your daughter’s genitalia explain why equal protection is important?

How did John Roberts dilute your vote and expand Elon Musk’s platform?

So have at it: Discuss the atrocities, or brainstorm what kind of messaging might help fix this?

The post What Would a Graphic Novel Explaining the Stakes of SCOTUS Fix Look Like appeared first on emptywheel.

It was suddenly reopened during the Trump Administration at least as early as September 2025. The question before the Court is why.

[snip]

To put it succinctly, the Justice Department’s justification for opening a “Full” investigation into the SPLC in October 2025—that led to the indictment in April 2026—appears to be a rehashing of a letter sent by conservative groups to Stephen Miller complaining about being designated as hate groups by the SPLC. Equally troubling is whether the investigation into the SPLC lacked independent predication altogether and instead was based upon copying or common sourcing from a political advocacy letter seeking Executive Branch action.

[snip]

As part of this investigation, which began at least as early as September 2025, the FBI interviewed leaders of some of the referenced organizations and collected documents from them.  [emphasis original]

Instead, it pointed to the extent to which the predication of the investigation cut-and-pasted directly from that letter, accepting the premise of the letter as legitimate basis for a criminal investigation.

The judge in the case, Emily Marks, noticed that SPLC was making new arguments in its reply memo, and so invited DOJ to file a sur-reply, which it did, yesterday.

In the sur-reply, AUSA Kevin Davidson was furious, accusing SPLC of falsely insinuating the tie to Stephen Miller, while hiding the context via which the letter came into DOJ’s possession.

The defendant apparently chose to cherry-pick the Letter to insinuate that “the facts suggest” Miller was directing the investigation. In fact, the defendant knew that the Letter was nothing more than an attachment to a report duly recording email correspondence from a potential victim in an investigation. How do we know the defendant knew this? Because the government provided them this evidence in discovery. In fact, the Bates stamps show that the government provided them this evidence in context. The FBI “Import Form” memorializing the correspondence with Liberty Counsel is Bates number 2025R00327-0000579. Gov’t Exh. A. The email from Liberty Counsel attached to this was provided as Bates stamps numbers 2025R00327-0000580 through 581. Gov’t Exh. B. The Letter that the defense made so much of came immediately after as Bates numbers 2025R00327-0000582 through 584. Doc. 74-2. Then, following this, the email was again attached, Bates numbers 2025R00327-0000585 through 586. Gov’t Exh. C. In other words, the context of how the Letter came into the FBI file in the first place was laid out in the discovery in the surrounding Bates numbers. The Letter was sandwiched in between it.

Here’s the context Davidson wants to give you (and, more importantly, Judge Marks):

• 2025R00327-0000579: On October 16, 2025, a slovenly FBI Agent introduced into evidence what were described as two separate pieces of email correspondence from Liberty Counsel (misspelling it four times as “Council”), which they considered a “victim.”
• 2025R00327-0000580 through 581: On October 15, one FBI Agent forwarded another — probably the person who approved its entry — a letter, dated September 26, from someone at Liberty Counsel describing that “It was good to make your acquaintance on the call today,” (that is, September 26) and attaching the letter, described as “a recent coalition letter that Liberty Counsel and other adversely affected organizations, including Turning Point USA, sent to the White House regarding SPLC’s false and fraudulent ‘hate group’ designations.”
• 2025R00327-0000582 through 584: The letter to Stephen Miller.
• 2025R00327-0000585 through 586: Davidson describes this: “the email was again attached.” It was the very same email, both marked as sent from SP, the recipient of the email from Liberty Counsel, to someone in the same (Missouri?) Field Office, ZK, at 10:38AM on October 15.

Davidson offers no explanation for why a slovenly FBI agent introduced the same email twice, nor, for that matter, why they did not include the letter to Stephen Miller as a listed enclosure.

One potential explanation would be if the Liberty Counsel person BCCed it to someone.

But note what Davidson did not explain?

What happened between 2025R00327-0000585 through 586 — the second version of that email — and when an FBI agent cut-and-pasted the letter into an incident report with Bates stamp 2025R00327-0000705 through 708 that, with Davidson’s own October 10 concurrence, seemingly opening a full investigation, “[t]o determine if a federal crime has been or is being committed,” into SPLC based on this theory of fraud:

The SPLC uses the hate map as a key component for it’s [sic] overall fundraising strategy. The hate map capitalizes on fears, and the SPLC creates a sense of urgency to give based in part of [sic] fraudulent representations as outlined herein. The SPLC uses the hate map as a scheme to defraud by making false representations which are transmitted in interstate commerce through their website. The fraudulent representations entice donors all the while making the SPLC wealthy to the violent and financial detriment of those wrongfully designated. Simply stated, the SPLC makes fraudulent statements specifically targeting a victim entity for the purpose of causing financial harm and ultimately destroying that entity (per previously referenced admission). Other entities, be it through conspiratorial actions with the SPLC or in reliance on the SPLC representations then took direct action against the victims in various actions to include removal from charitable programs, impact to insurance premiums, and de-banking. The actions of SPLC caused interstate communications in form of letters and the Internet. [my emphasis]

To be clear: The evidence of fraud comes from this Bob Moser column and this response from Nathan Robinson cited by the letter, both of which focus on the then-recent Morris Dees’ 2019 firing and his emphasis on fundraising. The former directly contradicts one premise of this predication, noting that groups identified as hate groups themselves raise a lot of money off of it.

The annual hate-group list, which in 2018 included a thousand and twenty organizations, both small and large, remains a valuable resource for journalists and a masterstroke of Dees’s marketing talents; every year, when the center publishes it, mainstream outlets write about the “rising tide of hate” discovered by the S.P.L.C.’s researchers, and reporters frequently refer to the list when they write about the groups. As critics have long pointed out, however, the hate-group designations also drive attention to the extremists. Many groups, including the religious-right Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom, raise considerable money by decrying the S.P.L.C.’s “attacks.”

The latter does accuse the SPLC of inflating the number of hate groups to juice fundraising.

This whole SPLC set-up strikes me as fraudulent in the extreme. I don’t know how else to describe it. They have a team of people investigating these groups. They have to know that they’re inflating the danger. They know that when they report “over 1,000” hate groups in America, they’ve deliberately excluded membership numbers in order to sound as scary as possible. They’re perpetrating a deception, because they don’t want you to know that groups like the “Asatru Folk Assembly (http://www.runestone.org/)” are no political threat. The SPLC has continuously sent out terrifying lies to make old people part with their money. They’ve become fantastically wealthy from telling people that individual kooks in Kennesaw are “hate groups” on the march. And they’ve done far less with the money they receive than any other comparable civil rights group will do. To me, this is a scam bordering on criminal mail fraud. If you tell people things that aren’t true so that you can take their money and then not use that money for the thing you said you would use it for, you’re a fraudster. I hestitate to say that because I know lots of great people who have worked at the SPLC, and good work is done there. But the Morris Dees model is a scam: It finds as much “hate” as possible in order to make as much money as possible.

But as SPLC’s reply noted, neither Robinson in his column nor the FBI in its investigation tested whether SPLC’s hate map was what it said it was: a list of groups that fit a certain criteria, criteria that closely mirror the FBI’s own.

The FBI did not interview anyone within the SPLC about the investigative journalism that supported the designations. To be clear, these designations are based on the SPLC’s definition, which closely tracks the FBI’s definition of a “hate crime.”6 But the FBI did not try to obtain documents from the SPLC to evaluate whether the designations were supported by good faith evidence and thus not misrepresentations at all.

6 The SPLC’s website defines a “hate group” as “an organization that—based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities—has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” See Methodology: How hate groups are identified and categorized (Mar. 18, 2020), The Southern Poverty Law Center, https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/methodology-how-hate-groupsare-identified-and-categorized/. The SPLC includes a group on the Hate Map if it “vilif[ies] others because of their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity.” Id. This definition tracks the FBI’s definition of a hate crime. See FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (defining hate crimes as “crimes motivated by offenders’ bias against race, gender, gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and ethnicity”). https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-servicesand-information/ucr (accessed June 15, 2026).

That is, neither the FBI nor Davidson tested whether that claim of fraud had any merit before opening a full investigation.

Davidson dismisses SPLC’s point that the FBI opened this investigation as a fraud investigation only to abandon the theory that predicated the investigation without once denying that he approved this investigation based off the complaints from his so-called victims.

The defendant spends considerable time on the case classification numbers used during the FBI’s investigation. Doc. 74 at 2. The relevance of which code was used is marginal at best, but the following points ought to be made if only for the record: the case classification number for this report is 196D. Gov’t Exh. A. This is the classification number for general fraud / “frauds and swindles.” Shortly thereafter, as discussed below, the investigation was converted into a 44 case classification number for potential civil rights violations. There is nothing unusual about this. It is not uncommon during investigations for the FBI to convert to a new case classification number or even to spin off cases with new case classification numbers, all according to where the evidence leads. Given the nature of the complaints from the potential victims that were being investigated, it is entirely unsurprising that FBI began its investigation into the defendant’s alleged misuse of the hatemap (leaving to one side the defendant’s self-serving characterization of the contexts of the complaints in the Letter). Far from showing a nefarious effort to chill protected speech (see doc. 74 at 2, 9) or that the “case was not motivated by a genuine investigation of any statutory ‘financial crimes’” (id. at 10), this shows that the investigation simply went where the facts led.

No, Kevin Davidson!! You have just confessed that you did, indeed, approve a full investigation into whether the Hate Map was fraudulent without bothering to test the methodology of the list. You have all-but confessed that the predication of this investigation came from “a political advocacy letter seeking Executive Branch action,” which is what SPLC alleged.

Though to be fair, both SPLC and DOJ are fibbing. Neither the reply nor the sur-reply mention the name Charlie Kirk and the reply only references TPUSA in passing. But both the email from Liberty Counsel, which mentions that the letter “includ[ed] Turning Point USA” — a tell that Charlie Kirk was discussed in the phone call — and the predication, do mention him. The predication explains,

As to the recent assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, his name was appeared [sic] on the SPLC website in numerous posts. Kirk’s image was on stories and in a report entitled “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024,” Kirk’s name appeared 18 times. In fact, one day before he was shot and killed, Kirk was specifically named in the SPLC’s “Hatewatch” newsletter under the title of militia and antigovernment movement activity. Specifically, the September 9th article, providing the following: “Turning Point USA (TPUSA) continued the hard right’s attack on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at an event over the summer where one speaker implied violence was necessary.

Taken in tandem with the comment about “conspiratorial action” in the predication (bolded above), this focus on Charlie Kirk’s murder gives away the game. This investigation used the far right organizations’ claims of fraud to test whether SPLC could be held accountable for Kirk’s murder.

The FBI was calling a bunch of far right groups targeted by SPLC in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder and the day after Trump’s September 25 Executive Order purporting to “Counter … Organized Political Violence,” which ordered DOJ to look for conspiracies, which Trump (or more likely Stephen Miller, who reportedly writes every one of Trump’s EOs) claimed “dehumanized specific targets to justify murder.”

This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society. A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required.

These campaigns often begin by isolating and dehumanizing specific targets to justify murder or other violent action against them. They do so through a variety of fora, including anonymous chat forums, in-person meetings, social media, and even educational institutions. These campaigns then escalate to organized doxing, where the private or identifying information of their targets (such as home addresses, phone numbers, or other personal information) is exposed to the public with the explicit intent of encouraging others to harass, intimidate, or violently assault them. As in the case of several ICE agents in Los Angeles being doxed, the goal of these campaigns can be to obstruct the operations of the Federal Government as well as aid and abet criminal activity the Federal Government is lawfully pursuing. These campaigns are coordinated and perpetrated by actors who have developed a comprehensive strategy to achieve specific policy goals through radicalization and violent intimidation.

The fraud claim was just an excuse to open the investigation, to look for a crime without first testing the most basic theory behind it.

And as such, Davidson has effectively confessed to doing what MAGAts insist was a crime when Christopher Steele, based on a real concern about Trump’s chumminess with Russia and without the approval of Hillary Clinton, shared the dossier, or when Michael Sussmann, based on a genuine concern about real ongoing cyber attacks on his client and Donald Trump’s public request that Russia conduct more of them, shared the Alfa Bank anomalies.

Davidson approved using a flimsy “political advocacy letter seeking Executive Branch action” to go hunting for a crime, any crime.

And the notion that Stephen Miller, presumptive author of Trump’s September 25 EO ordering DOJ to chase conspiracy theories to explain Charlie Kirk’s murder, was not a part of that is farcical.

The post SPLC Prosecutor Kevin Davidson Admits He Went Looking for a Crime Based on a Flimsy Political Advocacy Letter appeared first on emptywheel.

In my last post I discussed Alasdair MacIntyre’s definitions of practices and virtues. A practice is a complex cooperative human activity that results in internal goods as we work to achieve its standards as best we can. Tic-tac-toe is not a practice. But playing tic-tac-toe with a child? Well, raising children is a practice. Playing the game with a child is part of that practice, and gives internal rewards, as we watch the child learn and grow.

Virtues are acquired human qualities which are developed through practices, and without which we won’t ever achieve the excellence in the practice. Child-rearing requires the virtue of patience.

Human Life

MacIntyre says Aristotle taught that human life moves from its beginning towards a telos, a final end. The telos of humans is to live a good life. We might describe this view as a narrative that runs from birth to death, as a seamless whole, like, say, Remembrance Of Things Past. The virtues are necessary if we are to achieve our telos.

Aquinas also saw human life as a single arc, from its disordered beginning in original sin through the teachings of the Church to achieve worthiness of eternal salvation.

This view of human life as a single narrative is at the foundation of pre-Enlightenment understanding. The Enlightenment removed both the beginning and end of the narrative of a human life. As this reshaping of the arc of life sank into all of us we gradually lost sight of our own lifelong narrative, just as we lost the purpose, the telos of our lives.

The 19th and 20th Century saw the rise of Existentialism, the ultimate in the loss of the narrative view of life. Consider Camus’ The Stranger, or Sartre’s No Exit. Individual people are removed from all social context and left to work out an existence on their own.

Neoliberals agree with Existentialists: we are all on our own, struggling in a hostile world for resources, and for no other reason than survival. Instead of a narrative there are events and behaviors assembled like a collection of essays.

Look at the life of a typical working mother. Rising early, she gets ready for work. Then she hustles the kids off to school. Then she commutes to work. She works. then She commutes home. Then she tends to the children. Then she has a bit of time to herself and her partner, which she frequently fills with other work or entertainment or outside commitments. Then she prepares for bed and sleeps.

In this life, where one moves from one activity to the next solely to survive, is there time for engagement in practices? Perhaps in the area of “other commitments”. Maybe she goes out to her garden, where her mind comes to rest and she can see something beyond the struggle for time and resources. Maybe she finds that rehearsing and performing in community theater, where she can look beyond herself and her responsibilities to her family and her job.

But maybe not. Maybe she comes to see her life as a group of segments, not as a lifelong novel, but as a group of essays on different subjects. The virtues that try to exist in each essay live a shrunken existence limited to that essay. The patience that she might be able to develop in child-raising or coping with weirdo work conditions stays strictly and mutely in the mother essay or the work essay. There is no transfer of patience to her self-care or her commitment to her partner.

Morality

It seems to me that morality means living out the virtues necessary in a given society. MacIntyre describes several lists of virtues from different times and societies, Homer, Aristotle, Aquinas, the New Testament, Benjamin Franklin, and Jane Austen.

Those of us raised in Catholic Schools will recall lists of virtues. There are the Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. There are the Theological Virtues: Faith, Hope, and Charity. There are the Capital Virtues: Chastity, Temperance, Generosity, Brotherly Love, Meekness, Humility, and Diligence.

That Catholic list and MacIntyre’s short list (Justice, Honesty, and Courage) are focused on how we as individuals cope with people we encounter in our day-tp-day lives. Some of these are among the Civic Virtues, but there are others in that group, virtues needed to support the practice of maintaining our society. These include respect for others, toleration of differences, willingness to participate in the life of the community, loyalty, sensible compromise, and more. No democratic society can function without the Civic Virtues.

Civic virtue flourish only when we participate in the practice of maintaining our communities. They provide goods internal to the practice and only with them can we achieve the growth and betterment of our society at every level.

MAGA morality

I’d guess MacIntyre would explain MAGA Morality as an example of emotivism, which MacIntyre says is the dominant form of morality today.

Emotivism is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character. Pp. 11-12.Emotivism is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character. Pp. 11-12.

This is a violent shift from pre-Enlightement morality. In earlier times morality was based on a describable set of virtues which were approved by society, and which were seen as essential to being a good person. Aristotle and Aquinas laid these qualities out, and put them in the context of individual and social lives, lives lived as wholes.

True, different people understood the virtues somewhat differently; true, the definition of some virtues changed over time; and true, the virtues did not always guide human activity. But generally people were judged to be acting rightly or wrongly in terms of a shared reasoned understanding of the meaning of virtue.

But if it’s is nothing but individual feelings or vibes, morality is unhinged from our shared reasoning and even from our control. We are easily manipulated by others if we have no way to use our reason to respond to their manipulation.

But this view accords nicely with the neoliberal view of human life. Virtues are connected to the segments of a life, and do not carry over into other segments. They shift as needed to win the struggle for resources. Reasoning is not anchored to life, but to perceived needs, and loses its coherence.

Evidence

As evidence for this speculation, I offer the Parable of The Good Samaritan. If MAGA Christians took this parable seriously they would not act as they do towards other nations.

They would not celebrate the destruction of USAID, which saved lives around the world, and not incidentally, significantly reduced the spread of diseases like Ebola. They would not tolerate the murder of people on the high seas, whether drowning sailors or alleged dope smugglers.

As further evidence, I note that MAGAts do not display any of the Civic Virtues. They do not respect others, they show no tolerance for different views, and they do not participate in the project of improving our society. Instead they see government as a tool for imposing their will on an unwilling majority.

Their version of morality is repugnant to me.

The post MAGA Morality appeared first on emptywheel.

She also captured the light drizzle yesterday which Trump used as an excuse to close the Fair, which avoided a weekend day of commentary about how almost no one showed up, though others captured the sign that misspelled Freeedom, and still others have been monitoring Fox News’ attempts to claim there are somewhere thousands of attendees when their cameras show merely dozens.

This is becoming as big a scandal as Trump’s reflecting pool (which Moore has also been covering closely), and as with that scandal, Trump is making shit up to deny he’s a loser.

And while we’re going to have some interesting discussions about how event organizers failed to pull of an event the likes of which most states and many large counties put on every year, I don’t think the problem is ignorance.

Event Strategies can put on a good show. They did put on a good show, with little advance, on January 6.

But they are years into an arrangement where they not only get no bid contract after no bid contract, which David Fahrenthold (here, with Andrea Fuller) has been tracking:

The Trump administration has bypassed regular procedures to award more than $13 million in contracts to the company that helped organize President Trump’s rally on Jan. 6, 2021, repeatedly creating hidden business opportunities that only one firm could win.

Those contracts have transformed Event Strategies Inc., staffed by veterans of Mr. Trump’s campaigns and first White House, from a minor federal contractor into the government’s highest-paid event planner. The firm has arranged celebrations of the Navy’s 250th birthday and a Treasury Department event to tout new savings accounts for children, called “Trump accounts.”

By law, federal agencies are generally supposed to seek competing bids before awarding contracts, to get the best value for taxpayers. Event Strategies won contracts that were particularly lucrative, the kind that other companies say they would have liked to win.

In at least five cases, other firms never got the chance.

[snip]

When Mr. Trump was re-elected, he wrote on his Truth Social network that he was rewarding Mr. Caporale with an unusual role as the White House’s “Executive Producer for Major Events and Public Appearances.”

“Congratulations Justin,” Mr. Trump said. “Keep up the GREAT work!”

But Mr. Caporale is not on the government’s payroll. He remained at Event Strategies.

Wired’s earlier story on Event Strategies’ boondoggle describes a GSA contract that may extend for decades.

Contracts reviewed by WIRED in the System for Award Management database show that by September 2025, the company had signed its first contract related to the celebrations: a $5 million contract for work related to Titans of the Sea, an event designed to celebrate the Navy’s 250th anniversary. Weeks later, the company signed another contract for a $2.1 million deal for “AMERICA 250 – EVENTS.”

More recently, Event Strategies signed a contract valued at $333,084 with the General Services Administration at the beginning of February for “FREEDOM 250 DESIGN AND CONTENT SUPPORT SERVICES.” Freedom 250 is, according to the White House, a “public-private partnership” related to America 250.

The tenor of the America 250 celebrations have already proven controversial. Over the last few months, large banners ostensibly tied to the project were seen hanging from federal buildings all over Washington, DC. One banner, which was hung outside the Department of Justice, features the tagline: “Make America Safe Again” alongside a massive image of Trump’s face. The DOJ said the banner was hung to “celebrate 250 years of our great country.” To many, the tagline was an indication that the Justice Department has failed to maintain its independence during Trump’s second term. California governor Gavin Newsom said the banner was “beyond parody,” writing on Facebook: “How many dictatorship-style monuments, building name changes, and fake awards do Americans have to endure?”

[snip]

Event Strategies signed what is potentially its most lucrative contract last fall, a multi-award deal with the GSA that is worth up to $100 million. Of that total payout, contracts totaling more than $10 million have already been signed, including several contracts related to America 250 events. The agreement is presently slated to run through 2030, though there is an option to extend it until 2045. The contract’s exact specifics are vague—it will involve “Conference, Meeting, Event and Trade Show PlanningServices [sic]”—but according to the price list attached to its terms and conditions, Event Strategies will be responsible for onboarding a dozen employees, including an executive director, two project managers, two technical directors, and three A/V lighting technicians.

But there’s more to this story. By dint of their production of January 6, they got among the biggest payoffs from the money Trump raised after the 2020 election claiming to fight for election integrity.

Event Strategies’ quality had already begun to fall off before this humiliating event. They put on the military parade a year ago, which was almost as big a dud as this fair is.

[T]he real mood of the event was shaped less by flare-ups than by a strange quiet.

Tanks lined the streets and a central stage piped in music, but for most of the parade, the crowd stood in near silence. There were no speakers, and outside of the immediate space in front of the stage, there was no music or emcee.

Only the occasional cheer broke the stillness. Soldiers marched largely without musical accompaniment as military bands were notably absent for most of the procession, and long, awkward gaps stretched between units and vehicles.

Unlike the colorful, crowd-pleasing spectacle of something like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, there was little attempt to engage the audience or build any visual momentum.

The only real jolt of energy came at the very end, when a group of cadets marched past singing in cadence. Washington, D.C.’s signature oppressive humidity didn’t help, leaving much of the audience subdued.

Many attendees arrived nearly five hours before the parade began, funneled through TSA-style security checkpoints as part of the heightened lockdown typical for presidential events.

To make matters worse, most of the designated cooling tents failed, and Military.com observed multiple attendees showing signs of heat exhaustion, several of whom had to be medically evacuated.

In an epic Xitter thread, event planner Doug Landry described all the logistical failures of that parade.

Trump not only stuck with Event Strategies after they made his military parade look like shit, but he dramatically expanded their contracts and did so in a way that formalized the public-private nature of it.

I look forward the investigations a Democratic Congress will conduct on all this graft next year (they were asking questions about the Free[e]dom 250 graft no later than February). Because, particularly with the corporate co-sponsorships, these slovenly production standards suggest the event is no more than the excuse to launder money to … someone.

In his review of how we got to this place, Michael Scherer focused on a fight about whether this presentation would offer something for all 350 million Americans, or pivot around that squalid little Victory Arch.

America250 adopted “350 for 250” as its motto around the time Trump retook office, a reference to the congressional mandate to include all 350 million Americans in the semiquincentennial celebration. Trump’s advisers began using a variation of the slogan—“250 for 250”—to promote the construction of a 250-foot-tall memorial arch by Arlington National Cemetery. The planned arch, which is yet to begin construction and is opposed by Democrats, has been included in promotional images for the Great American State Fair.

The mock Victory Arch, held together by staples and no longer safe to use as an arch, was the entire point.

Or maybe the no-bid graft was.

When you’re guaranteed no-bid contracts to make private profits out of Federal money, you don’t waste time making things look nice. You don’t even waste effort bringing in a full set of carnival rides or live farm animals, the kinds of things that make local fairs so fun.

The fair itself is just the facade, the excuse used to launder millions into private profit.

The post Trump Has Made the National Mall a Tribute to His Squalid Corruption appeared first on emptywheel.

In response, Blanche did nothing.

A month after that, Phang asked for a preliminary injunction. Her ask was, on its face, fairly simple: First, to immediately do two things required by law: review the foreign language Epstein files for release and submit a privilege log explaining each individual redaction. And also to either unredact the names in several sets of documents or explain why he was refusing to do so.

Those documents are:

• The names of Epstein’s interlocutors on eight particularly incendiary emails (included as exhibits starting at page 9 and shown above).
• The names of potential co-conspirators in the more expansive draft indictment SDFL did before Epstein got his sweetheart deal (the indictment starts at page 28).
• The backup files to the allegations made by a woman who claimed she was raped by Trump (Phang includes the discovery log for Ghislaine to prove they exist and the 302s, which start at 151).

To repeat: Phang’s key ask didn’t demand these documents be unredacted; it offered DOJ the opportunity to simply explain that the files were redacted to protect victims’ names.

Judge Emmet Sullivan set immediate (and admittedly tight) deadlines, with a hearing scheduled on June 16. In response, AUSA Saifuddin Kalolwala finally filed a notice of appearance, and immediately asked to reschedule the hearing based on a religious conflict (to the AUSA’s credit, they were ready to do the hearing before the observance). On June 2, Sullivan rescheduled the hearing for June 30.

On June 3, Trump announced he was going to nominate Blanche for the full time AG job. On June 8, he did so.

In between, DOJ filed its response and Phang her reply.

The vast majority of DOJ’s response, submitted on June 5, argued that Phang had no business using an APA challenge to make Blanche comply with the ETA. Probably because DOJ spent almost their entire brief making that argument, they didn’t respond to the substance of Phang’s argument that Blanche had failed to comply with the law. Instead, they claimed Phang had another remedy: To FOIA the files.

[T]he Court lacks jurisdiction because Plaintiff cannot invoke the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”). Where an adequate remedy at law exists, the APA’s waiver of sovereign immunity does not apply—and the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) provides exactly that remedy here.

[snip]

Read in pari materia, the Epstein Act and FOIA must be construed as a whole and, indeed, they operate in harmony. The Epstein Act supplements FOIA by imposing additional disclosure obligations with respect to a specific set of records; it does not supplant FOIA or create a parallel enforcement framework. Permitting Plaintiff to circumvent the remedial scheme established by Congress by recasting her claim under the APA would disrupt that harmony and run counter to established precedent.

Here, Plaintiff alleges that the Department’s public disclosures violated the law by failing to produce required records, improperly withholding information, and neglecting to provide adequate justification for any redactions applied. See generally Compl. To that end, FOIA’s remedial scheme is not merely adequate, but is substantively identical to the relief Plaintiff seeks. See CREW, 846 F.3d at 1245-46. Moreover, the “EFTA-FOIA” Crosswalk published by the Department’s Office of Information Policy maps each withholding category under the Epstein Act directly to its corresponding FOIA exemption—further supporting that the redactions and withholding decisions Plaintiff challenges align with FOIA’s exemption framework.1

1 Department of Justice, Off. Of Info. Pol’y, EFTA-FOIA Crosswalk (2026) (available at: https://www.justice.gov/oip/media/1438931/dl?inline) [explanatory link added]

Having failed to contest Phang’s claim that Blanche had not complied with the law, DOJ closed its response by asking Sullivan to stay any injunction he imposed. 60 days should do it, DOJ said, which would put it long past the time when Blanche’s confirmation would be settled.

Finally, to the extent the Court issues any injunctive relief, Defendants respectfully request that such relief be stayed for a period of sixty days so that the Solicitor General has time to consider whether further appellate review is warranted. Alternatively, at a minimum, any such relief should be stayed for a period of seven days to allow the United States to determine whether to seek emergency appellate review.

In her reply (filed the same day Trump formally nominated Blanche, June 8), Phang addressed the APA standing argument DOJ had exclusively argued. But from the start, she also noted that DOJ had not contested, at all, that Blanche had not complied with the law.

Acting Attorney General Blanche’s opposition brief, ECF No. 12 (“Blanch Br.”), runs 22 pages. Yet Blanche does not defend his efforts to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act on a single one. Blanche does not defend redacting the names of Epstein’s associates in salacious emails. Blanche does not defend redacting the names of potential co-conspirators in Department of Justice documents. Blanche does not defend withholding documents containing allegations against President Trump. Blanche does not defend his decision to grant himself an exemption from reviewing and producing foreign-language documents. And Blanche does not defend his failure to publish a redaction log, now more than six months overdue and counting.

[snip]

Turning from standing to the substantive merits, Phang is likely to prove that Blanche has violated the Epstein Act in many respects. Phang’s opening brief devoted twelve pages to showing those violations. Phang Br. 22–34. Blanche devotes not one word to responding. Accordingly, for purposes of the instant motion Blanche has conceded that he is violating the Act. Texas v. United States, 798 F.3d 1108, 1110 (D.C. Cir. 2015). And for purposes of any appeal, Blanche has likewise forfeited the issue.

She also laid out, across four pages, the reasons why FOIA was not a sufficient remedy to her injuries, going through the items requested in her motion for an injunction, one by one, to show they would be excluded under FOIA exemptions, laying out the differences between FOIA and ETA, then ultimately mocking DOJ’s claim FOIA and ETA were parallel statutes.

First, under FOIA, Phang would be very unlikely to obtain the unredacted Epstein associate emails, which could be redacted under FOIA exemption 6 (personal privacy) and 7 (law enforcement records). Under the Epstein Act, by contrast, her entitlement to have the emails unredacted is so clear that Blanche has not bothered contested it.

[snip]

As the above exercise illustrates, the difference between the Epstein Act and FOIA are legion. To name a few more: The Epstein Act mandates disclosure to the public at large, see Act § 2(a); FOIA generally mandates disclosure only to requestors, see 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3)(A); The Epstein Act mandates production of all material satisfying any of nine express criteria, see Act § 2(a)(1)–(9); FOIA generally mandates production of material only upon request, see 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3)(A). The Epstein Act mandates that production conclude by a date certain (December 19, 2025), see Act § 2(a); FOIA establishes a variety of rolling deadlines tied to the date of the request, see 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(a). The Epstein Act has only five exemptions, see Act § 2(c)(1)(A)–(E); FOIA has nine, see 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(1)–(9). And so on. Quite simply, FOIA is not an “adequate remedy,” Blanche Br. 11, as Defendant claims, because Phang could never get the full range of documents through FOIA that should can under the Epstein Act.

[snip]

Ultimately, the Epstein Act is the most uncompromising disclosure statute ever enacted in American history. It is very different in scope, structure, and kind from FOIA. And “in pari materia” is not a magical incantation that allows Blanche to make such differences—or their effects on Phang’s available remedies—vanish in a puff of smoke.

That’s where things might have stood until a hearing scheduled for next Tuesday. But then Phang filed a notice of supplemental authority, basically showing DOJ blowing off FOIA requests for Epstein material because (they claim) everything subject to FOIA has been released.

Judge Sullivan, who has little patience for government obstruction, ordered DOJ to respond by midday. They did not.

MINUTE ORDER. In view of 14 Notice of Supplemental Materials, Defendant is ORDERED to file a response, without repeating arguments previously made, by no later than 1:00 pm today, June 25, 2026.

He must have had his opinion mostly written already (indeed, it relies heavily on Phang’s rebuttal of DOJ’s FOIA argument, though it does cite the supplement submitted the day before), because by end of day, Judge Sullivan ruled in favor of Phang and denied DOJ’s request for a stay.

In Phang’s original motion, submitted before Trump officially nominated Blanche, she laid out evidence that the Epstein release had already been a factor in mid-term elections.

The Trump-related materials Phang seeks, see supra § I.B.3, are time-sensitive, among other reasons, because of the ongoing midterm elections. Many candidates have highlighted the Epstein Files as part of their campaigns. Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, for instance, made the administration’s handling of the Epstein Files a central plank of his recent primary campaign.43 Massie argued to voters that he “led the charge to expose a bunch of rich and powerful and politically connected men in the Epstein files.”44 But the files at issue in this motion were not available before the primary election, which deprived voters of the opportunity to consider them when assessing Massie’s candidacy. Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff has likewise referred to an “Epstein class,” calling out by name some of the elites who appear in the files.45 And Representative Nancy Mace, who is seeking the Republican nomination for South Carolina governor, has focused in particular on the Department’s broad redactions, arguing that they have deprived “the American people” of “information about co-conspirators.”46

In this context, allegations that Trump and others in his orbit participated in Epstein’s crimes are highly salient. So, too, is pertinent new information, whether it supports or debunks such allegations. But that salience will fade swiftly after the midterms.

DOJ barely addressed that claim. But Sullivan did, dinging DOJ for trying to misstate Phang’s concern (in part by quoting her out of context), but mostly arguing that Phang is being harmed because DOJ is withholding material to which she and the public are entitled under ETA.

Finally, the Attorney General argues that Ms. Phang’s argument regarding public interest fading after the upcoming mid-term elections is speculative. Id. However, “the nondisclosure of information to which a plaintiff is entitled, under certain circumstances itself constitutes an irreparable harm; specifically, where the information is highly relevant to an ongoing and highly public matter.”

[snip]

Here, the current high level of interest in the Epstein Files combined with the upcoming mid-term elections amounts to a circumstance that itself constitutes irreparable harm, especially where the Attorney General has not disputed that he is in violation of the Epstein Act.

Sullivan returned to Blanche’s failure to address his noncompliance with the law in refusing a stay.

The Attorney General requests a stay of seven days to determine whether to seek emergency appellate review. Opp’n, ECF No. 12 at 30. The Attorney General also requests a stay of sixty days to determine whether further appellate review is warranted. Id. The Court will not issue a stay for the reasons stated in this Memorandum Opinion. The Attorney General has conceded that he is in violation of the Act. Ms. Phang is not requesting the immediate production of documents, but rather that the Attorney General show cause if he declines to do so.

Stan Woodward, who has never shied away from doing outrageous things to protect his bosses, filed a notice of appearance; DOJ told Politico they will appeal. In an apparently anonymous statement to Politico, a spox misstated the clear posture of the case, denying that Blanche had conceded (or more accurately, forfeited) any claim to have complied with the statute and falsely claiming that the injunction would require revealing victims names; it would require only that DOJ identify redacted names as redactions of victims.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department said Blanche “has not conceded anything.”

“Judge Sullivan’s perverse interpretation appears to be focused on driving misleading headlines. This judge is suggesting DOJ violate the law by un-redacting victim names, who as the Department has always explained, sadly became co-conspirators. DOJ has produced all responsive documents and will appeal this decision with confidence,” the spokesperson said.

An attorney for Phang, Brendan Ballou, said the ruling Thursday was the logical result of DOJ’s cavalier response to the suit.

“The government ignored its own law and blew off a judge’s order, all for the sake of protecting the very powerful and the very rich,” Ballou said. “Doing so had consequences, and now the public will finally get transparency around Jeffrey Epstein and his network.”

In truth, depending on the panel at the DC Circuit — and certainly at SCOTUS — DOJ might be right about Phang’s APA argument.

But in the short term this arrogance has fucked Todd Blanche, who is due for a confirmation hearing in mid-July.

In DOJ’s filing balancing interests relevant to an injunction, DOJ argued there’s not much public interest in setting aside DOJ’s other priorities to actually comply with the law.

True, there is public interest in transparency and the disclosure of the information concerning Epstein. Those interests, however, are not served by compelling the Department to redirect personnel and resources away from competing public interest and safety priorities to address Plaintiff’s preference for expedited treatment. The public equally has an interest in the orderly administration of government. Those interests would be undermined—not advanced—by the extraordinary relief Plaintiff seeks.

Effectively, DOJ said that Blanche couldn’t be bothered to step away from his day job prosecuting Trump’s adversaries to comply with a law passed via unanimous consent in the Senate. And now, Blanche is preparing to argue that he can’t even identify which redactions in the twenty-or-so documents Blanche must now release are redacted as victims, and to do so in an attempt to stall the further release of documents that definitely pertain to allegations against Trump.

I have no doubt Phang filed this to force DOJ to comply with the law. This process did not start as an attempt to embarrass Blanche for his sex trafficking cover-up as he bids for the full-time job. She didn’t force DOJ to respond in such arrogant fashion, thereby making Blanche’s continued cover-up a key news issue in the lead up to his confirmation hearing.

It just worked out that way.

The post Katie Phang Just Made Jeffrey Epstein Central to Todd Blanche’s Bid for Confirmation appeared first on emptywheel.

Listen on Spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

The post Fridays with Nicole Sandler appeared first on emptywheel.

I summarized what happened in that case this way:

Douglas Micko ruled there was no probable cause to arrest Georgia Fort. And then DOJ started making a series of what she claims are false claims about her, and on that basis obtained an indictment.

Since then, the government has been serially releasing new details about grand jury testimony. The timeline looks like this:

June 1: Georgia Fort files a second request for grand jury transcripts based off false claims that HSI Agent Timothy Gerber said about her in sworn affidavits. The request included a letter her attorney sent on May 26, detailing a bunch of problems with their claims against Fort.

June 1: DOJ asks for permission to share the grand jury testimony of a grand jury witness-victim.

June 2: DOJ says it will respond to Fort’s motion, but asks for additional time, until June 8.

June 3: Micko gives the government an extra day, until June 9.

June 4; Micko grants permission to share the witness transcript, and some other affidavits.

June 9: AUSA Robert Keenan responds to Fort’s motion (he fucks up which co-defendant has joined in the motion), pretending she has raised only one issue. But he says he would like to provide two additional lines of testimony.

June 10: Micko issues an order denying all the other requests for grand jury transcripts, without prejudice, but says he’ll get around to Fort’s.

June 11: Fort replies to her second request for grand jury transcripts. In addition to pointing out that Keenan has not responded to all the problems raised in her letter, she reveals DOJ has not yet turned over that grand jury transcript.

June 15: DOJ files notice that it has provided the two additional lines of testimony it wants to share. (It has not, as far as I can tell, provided notice of sharing the grand jury transcript.)

June 15: Fort files a supplement to her request for grand jury transcripts, describing she only finally received the witness transcript on June 12 (she files it under seal), after she filed her reply. She reveals that the witness disproves all the claims against her.

June 26: DOJ files notice of additional filings on Micko’s order.

PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that, pursuant to the Court’s direction, the Government is today filing in camera additional materials relating to defendant Fort’s Motion for Disclosure of Grand Jury Materials and Status Conference.

Maybe they didn’t file the entire grand jury transcript — but given the 11-day delay after Fort’s supplement — it seems likely they did.

If Fort’s claims are even remotely true, then in response to being refused an arrest affidavit targeting Fort (and Don Lemon), DOJ’s summary witness proceeded to make claims about Fort’s conduct that directly and repeatedly conflicted with what the most relevant witness testified, as well as the available camera footage.

A witness (possibly even the Pastor himself) testified that Fort conducted herself like a journalist, and didn’t make that witness feel threatened at all. Nevertheless, DOJ told the jury that Fort had chanted with protestors, intimidated the Pastor, and prevented a van from leaving the church. And based on those claims, they indicted a journalist.

Update: One more detail of note. Fort and Don Lemon, together, appealed Micko’s dismissal of their request for grand jury transcripts based on the legal presentation. To rebut his argument that they had no proof the presenting attorneys repeated the same errors that Pam Bondi and Harmeet made in their public statements about the law and Robert Keenan’s assertion that “that tired canard” of exceptional involvement from the Civil Rights Division (where he himself works) “is nonsense,” Fort and Lemon said this.

As detailed in the Motions, not only did then-Attorney General Bondi and Assistant Attorney General Dhillon comment extensively to the press, but they were themselves both directly involved in this case. AG Bondi bragged on social media that Lemon and Fort were arrested “[a]t my direction.”3 After career prosecutors from the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office refused to prosecute this case, AAG Dhillon’s Civil Rights Division took it over. AG Bondi and AAG Dhillon personally flew to Minnesota for the grand-jury presentation. ECF 125 at 5-9. Their names are the first ones listed on both indictments. ECF 39 at 14; ECF 144 at 19. Further, although the government suggests otherwise, ECF 479 at 14, the grand-jury testimony disclosed so far reflects only Civil Rights Division attorneys involved in the presentation. ECF 545-1. [Links added]

Civil Rights Counsel Orlando Sonza signed both of those indictments, though Keenan’s name also appeared on both of them.

That is, any errors made were made by people who report directly to Harmeet, who was platforming bets on the indictment before the first one.

I guess I should have put a bet on my prediction that Harmeet’s own misconduct would become an issue in this case.

The post More Evidence that Harmeet Dhillon’s Team Fabricated Their Entire Case against Georgia Fort appeared first on emptywheel.

Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law. It uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals. This campaign involves coordinated efforts to obstruct enforcement of Federal laws through armed standoffs with law enforcement, organized riots, violent assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement officers, and routine doxing of and other threats against political figures and activists.

DOJ, in turn, responded to that Executive Order by taking the existing Prairieland case charging a conspiracy based on anarchist and Black Bloc propaganda …

And rebranded it, in the 13th word of the long-delayed indictment, as Antifa.

Late at night on the Fourth of July, 20205, a North Texas Antifa Cell (Antifa Cell) of at least eleven operatives, clad in black and donning masks, some of whom were wearing body armor and carrying firearms, attacked the Prairieland Detention Center (Prairieland) in Alvarado, Texas.

The evidence presented at trial did not support that this was an Antifa action.

But while the jury in Fort Worth clearly believed the prosecution’s theory that most of the defendants had supported an act of terrorism when they joined the attack on the immigration facility, shooting a police officer in the neck, the evidence that emerged from the trial offered a more complicated view of the Trump administration’s repeated claims that antifa presents a serious threat to national security.

Five of the government’s own cooperating witnesses — people who were part of the supposed antifa cell — denied under oath that they or their compatriots thought of themselves as belonging to antifa, a contraction of the word “antifascist.” Lawyers for the nine defendants sought to portray them as something much less sinister: a group of left-leaning activists who became involved in “tragic” violence and then fell prey to a political prosecution by the Trump administration.

Yet a jury convicted on terrorism charges and Tuesday, Chief Judge Reed O’Connor sentenced the defendants to truly ridiculous sentences, 100 years for the one person who actually did shoot an ICE goon. DOJ crowed about its fight against dangerous Antifa terrorists.

This is the first sentencing of defendants affiliated with Antifa following President Donald J. Trump’s executive order designating the group as a Domestic Terrorist Organization in September 2025.

Benjamin Hanil Song, who was convicted of the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, was sentenced to 100 years in prison. Together, the Prairieland terrorists received a combined sentence of 450 years in prison:

• Maricela Rueda was sentenced to 70 years in prison;
• Cameron Arnold was sentenced to 50 years in prison;
• Savanna Batten was sentenced to 50 years in prison;
• Zachary Evetts was sentenced to 50 years in prison;
• Bradford Morris was sentenced to 50 years in prison;
• Elizabeth Soto was sentenced to 50 years in prison; and
• Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

“The sentences handed down today make clear that Antifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities will face swift and uncompromising justice,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Their violent extremism has no place in our country, and the Department of Justice will continue to aggressively investigate, disrupt, and prosecute those who threaten law enforcement officers or undermine the rule of law.”

Those verdicts matter because they’re draconian, because of claimed irregularities with discovery and both the selection and the deliberations of the jury and because of far right judge Reed O’Connor’s overt viewpoint bias in imposing them — they matter for a bunch of legal reasons. But they also matter because legal cases are about storytelling, and with the case, Trump’s DOJ chose to tell a fiction about something called Antifa.

What DOJ is attempting with the anti-ICE indictment in Minnesota is the mirror image of the Prairieland myth-making, an attempt to use one avowed Antifa figure to turn a network of anti-ICE protestors into something they are not and in the process, I fear, an attempt to criminalize opposition more generally.

DOJ turns anarchists into Antifa, again

As I noted in this post, I think this indictment was inevitable once DOJ arrested Kyle Wagner — for the claimed stalking of right winger , Jayden Scott, in February. Wagner flamboyantly brands himself as Antifa and even explained — in one of the last passages of the indictment that addresses Wagner — that his role in activism was to,

give them a face to hate so they aren’t focused on the real movement behind the scenes. I’m a spectacle — a punch able face and loud mouth — and everything they hate…”

The fourth paragraph of the indictment — after one introducing the 15 defendants, one claiming the indictment focuses on Twin Cities Direct Action (TCDA) and Direct Action Minnesota (DAMN), and a single sentence describing, “DAMN is comprised of members from several sub-groups, such as the Black Cat Worker’s Collective (“BCWC™), Ray Rainbolt Memorial Shooting Club, and other organizations,” — claims those two groups (but not the “other organizations” referenced) are Antifa:

Many self-proclaimed [1] “antifascist” or [2] “Antifa” groups in the United States exist at the local level. in small units called affinity groups. [3] Antifa groups frequently blend [1] anarchist and communist views. BCWC is a Minneapolis-based [4] Antifa affinity group committed to militant class struggle, community self-defense, and revolution. Militant class struggle includes disrupting rallies. digital campaigning, community organizing, and physical confrontation, often justified as collective self-defense. BCWC members advocate, promote, and utilize militant tactics and violence. BCWC members are intricately involved in the planning and execution of direct actions. The Ray Rainbolt Memorial Shooting Club is another Minneapolis-based [5] Antifa affinity group dedicated to “community self-defense.” [bracketed numbers added]

The term Antifa appears around 19 times in the indictment, 5 of which are in this paragraph and 10 more of which are associated with Wagner. By contrast, the term “anarchist” appears 25 times, including most if not all of the descriptions of national networking, which the indictment nevertheless describes as training Antifa groups as the last of the means of the conspiracy:

Training other direct action and [7] Antifa affinity groups throughout the country about how to forcibly obstruct, prevent. delay. hinder, and impede federal immigration enforcement operations:

In other words, the indictment itself purports to be about TCDA/DAMN, but uses a claim of Antifa affiliation by subgroups BCWC and Ray Rainbolt (not substantiated elsewhere, as far as I can tell, and in fact contradicted in places that treat them as entirely separate groups and defendants specifically identifying as anarchists) and the role of Wagner to make this about Antifa, explicitly claiming that national networking with anarchists equates to networking with Antifa.

As I’ve suggested here and here, this indictment reads like DOJ was alerted to Wagner by the far right extremists who wailed about him to their buddies with ties to DOJ, somewhere between mid-January (the confrontation with Jake Lang) and February 5 (his arrest for stalking, but not the threats that were the primary focus of his stalking charge complaint but are charged here), they started hoovering up all Wagner’s communications, just certain they were going to find a grand Antifa conspiracy they could use to retroactively excuse the Renee Good and Alex Pretti murders.

And then they found very little.

So after waiting and watching for all of February and all of March and all of April, they got two flimsy assault charges in May — some dents in a car — and then packaged it all into a conspiracy in June. This is speculation, but this hypothesis would explain several things about this indictment.

As I laid out in this post, the indictment hides — literally redacts — the way DOJ’s focus on Wagner arose from far right extremists, especially Jake Lang, who were and remain engaged in precisely the same kind of agitation for which this indictment charge the leftists who actually live in Minnesota. There are several other ways the indictment hides this, beyond redacting Wagner’s reference to Lang when discussing fundraising. In the complaint against Wagner, DOJ quotes him complaining on January 26, on a new Instagram account, that “they” had “pulled everything I’ve ever f—— put on the Internet off the Internet today like I never f—– existed…” The indictment excludes mention of “them … pull[ing] everything” when it quotes this same post: “I’m back… The fight is well and alive.”

There are just a few more mentions of Wagner after that in the MN indictment, and just to his incendiary IG account and not any communications with any of the Minnesota defendants. After a gap of over a week, DOJ presents as an overt act of the conspiracy what they found when they came to arrest Wagner (though they don’t say that’s what happened): Antifa patches!

On or about February 5, 2026, WAGNER wore a sweatshirt that had “I’m [16] Antifa!” on the front. WAGNER possessed multiple [17] Antifa patches at his residence.

That’s, of course, not an act at all besides Wagner getting dressed that morning (and two of the last mentions of Antifa in the indictment).

It’s an arrest, but (contrary to the claim made in the DHS tweet posting Wagner’s trophy photo) not for the threats — “get your fucking guns and stop these fucking people” — Wagner posted on January 24 in response to the Pretti murder, which are charged (but not quoted in the actual charges, which is always a tell about the weakness of a threats case) here, but instead for doing to outside agitator Jayden Scott what Scott had done to a Minnesota journalist first, doxing. DHS appears to have lied in this post, then, about the charges against Wagner, which will be the first of many reasons to wonder what happened with the grand jury.

DOJ’s hot and cold running conspiracy

The reason I’m focused on Wagner’s role in the indictment (and DOJ’s unsubstantiated claims that people who repeatedly identify as anarchists are Antifa) is because of the way DOJ strings together a series of events to substantiate a conspiracy.

If we can believe the claims in the indictment — which with this DOJ, we no longer can — Wagner is involved in one of the most obstructive actions described in the indictment: crashing one or two trailers to block the road during a far broader January 23 protest.

At or around 11:58 am. WAGNER sent a video to an unindicted coconspirator. which showed him driving the trailer that was tipped over at Minnchaha Avenue North and Bloomington Road. WAGNER texted, “We sh*t down both the back entrances and have them trapped one way in and one way out from that north entrance.” The unindicted coconspirator texted, “I wasn’t even scared. 1 was ready to tell them to f**k off… And I did.”

But he was not part of the larger group before that nor was he integrated during it. His involvement in that event involves his introduction via defendant Brian Apland to other defendants, first lead defendant Isaac Sant:

On or about January 18. 2026. at approximately 12:23 p.m.. APLAND introduced WAGNER to SANT in the “January DIY” Signal group message. APLAND messaged. “Kyle (WAGNER), Isaac (SANT).

Then a guy named Sam from Chicago.

On or about January 18,2026, at approximately 5:39 p.m… APLAND created a new Signal chat group called “New Friends” and added WAGNER and “Sam.” APLAND messaged in the group. “Kyle. meet Sam. Sam is coming up from Chicago tonight to support us, also has some friend here who want to help with shield building. I learned this morning that Kyle was planning a shield build as well. Learned about Sam from my longtime California comrade, Forrest, who also happens to be on this chat.”

And then Cam Kennedy.

On or about January 22. 2026. at approximately 11:05 a.m.. APLAND sent message in the “Construction Invoice #7” Signal chat group. stating, “Cam (KENNEDY) meet Kyle (WAGNER). Kyle is very generously offering a truck.

Besides that, Wagner drives around offering people gas masks, something DOJ has tried to criminalize elsewhere, and in one instance describes picking up fireworks, a central part of the Prairieland conspiracy.

While Apland, Sant, and Kennedy remain involved in organizing throughout the indictment, nothing described says Wagner was ever included in the more public Signal chats that are central to this indictment (remember that Douglass Mackey’s conspiracy charges were thrown out because he was not in the key chat rooms where the plan to trick Hillary voters into texting their vote rather than casting it legally).

Something similar is true of two of the individually charged defendants. The first mention of William Morgan (the guy accused of denting an ICE vehicle) — for participating in one of the anarchist events the indictment mislabels as Antifa — occurs on April 8, and the first mention of him doing anything in Minnesota was on May 9. The first mention of Natasha Rakotz (the woman accused of sideswiping an ICE vehicle) is March 11, and every overt act of hers save one in advance of the alleged side-swiping involves tracking the comings and goings of ICE vehicles.

Moreover, most of the 15 charged defendants are not described to be involved in either of the blockades — the one on January 23 and another on March 1, the only thing that might constitute obstruction as opposed to protest — nor the specifically charged crimes against Wagner, Sant, Morgan, and Rakotz.

Networked conspiracies

Unfortunately, given the way conspiracy law works, it may not matter that the vast majority of defendants did not choose to join or stay in a Signal group with Wagner and from what I’ve heard, some people from Minnesota always thought he was a bloward.

Here’s a description of how conspiracy law works at the Federal level, laid out by Elizabeth de la Vega years ago.

CONSPIRACY LAW – EIGHT THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW.
One: Co-conspirators don’t have to explicitly agree to conspire & there doesn’t need to be a written agreement; in fact, they almost never explicitly agree to conspire & it would be nuts to have a written agreement!

Two: Conspiracies can have more than one object- i.e. conspiracy to defraud U.S. and to obstruct justice. The object is the goal. Members could have completely different reasons (motives) for wanting to achieve that goal.

Three: All co-conspirators have to agree on at least one object of the conspiracy.

Four: Co-conspirators can use multiple means to carry out the conspiracy, i.e., releasing stolen emails, collaborating on fraudulent social media ops, laundering campaign contributions.

Five: Co-conspirators don’t have to know precisely what the others are doing, and, in large conspiracies, they rarely do.

Six: Once someone is found to have knowingly joined a conspiracy, he/she is responsible for all acts of other co-conspirators.

Seven: Statements of any co-conspirator made to further the conspiracy may be introduced into evidence against any other co-conspirator.

Eight: Overt Acts taken in furtherance of a conspiracy need not be illegal. A POTUS’ public statement that “Russia is a hoax,” e.g., might not be illegal (or even make any sense), but it could be an overt act in furtherance of a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Items One, Five, and Eight are the things I’m worried about: DOJ will argue that it doesn’t matter than most of the defendants never chose to have anything to do with Wagner, most never participated in the hard blockades, but instead did legally protected things like tracking ICE vehicles. Because defendants entered into an agreement with Sant, Apland, and Kennedy, I imagine prosecutors will argue, they’re on the hook for Wagner and/or events that happened months later or months earlier.

Compared to both the Spokane 3 and Prairieland cases, each of which focused on a single event, this is an attempt to criminalize months of organization by strapping Twin Cities’ activism onto the face of Wagner.

And it’s not just those already charged this attempts to criminalize. There are — as mentioned — multiple references to other anarchist groups, people like Sam the shield-builder in Chicago along with long-time comrade Forrest in California, the anarchist speaking circuit in Ann Arbor and Seattle, as well as the zine, Crimethinc, which played a role in the Praireiland case. Partly in an attempt to test the indictment’s reliance on informants (there may be two or three), I laid out the references to unindicted co-conspirators in the indictment, below; the way the last reference to an unindicted co-conspirator focusing on Delaney Hall (plus DOJ’s treatment of the arrest of a Cities Church defendant there) makes me believe they’ll soon seek a similar indictment there.

But the indictment also lays out coordination with the AFL-CIO, 50501, and DSA, hypothetically putting some of the most important normie left organizations in a conspiracy with Kyle Wagner too.

Harassment for harassment’s sake

The only guard against such an expansive effort to criminalize lefty dissent lies in the description of the goal of the conspiracy — that single object of the conspiracy that all members agreed on.

Paragraph five of the indictment — the one after it claims this is an indictment targeting Antifa Antifa Antifa Antifa Antifa — claims that defendants wanted to ID and harass ICE goons in order to harass ICE goons and prevent them from performing their official duties.

5. DAMN members worked closely with rapid response networks (“RRNS”) to identify and harass federal immigration and law enforcement officers in order to harass and prevent officers from performing their official duties.

That’s not just a hilarious tautology. It parrots 18 USC 2261A, stalking, which was ultimately charged against Morgan and Sant: harassing is the only thing they remotely could be claimed to do by following an ICE goon across a state line.

Whoever—

(1) travels in interstate or foreign commerce or within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or enters or leaves Indian country, with the intent to kill, injure, harass, or place under surveillance with intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate another person, and in the course of, or as a result of, such travel places that person in reasonable fear of the death of, or serious bodily injury to, or causes substantial emotional distress to that person, a member of the immediate family (as defined in section 115) of that person, or the spouse or intimate partner of that person; [my emphasis]

Given the way both stalking incidents appear to be an attempt to lure the commuters across state line, I look forward to the claimed “emotional distress” requisite to this charge. The Raygoza case in SoCal will be appealed on the definition of emotional distress successfully used to prosecute a single instance of following an ICE goon, as well as on First Amendment grounds.

Still, absent the conditions laid out in the stalking statute harassing ICE goons for harassment’s sake is not illegal.

But the operative part of the conspiracy is paragraph seven, which lays out four claimed objects of the conspiracy, basically three different statements of preventing goons from doing their job by force, intimidation, and threats, as well as one instance of opposing the authority of the US government (which may be an ambitious attempt to chase a sedition conspiracy).

The purposes of the conspiracy include the following:

a. Preventing the enforcement of federal immigration law by force, intimidation, and threats;

b. Opposing the authority of the United States government;

c. Preventing, hindering, or delaying by force the execution of the laws ‘governing the identification, detention, and removal of non-citizens, to include the Immigration and Nationality Act; and

d. Preventing, impeding. and interfering federal law enforcement from discharging their duties, including enforcement of federal immigration law by force, intimidation. and threats.

The Broadview 6 case began to fall apart when they forced DOJ to commit to which of those three means of obstructing cops — force, intimidation, or threats — the defendants had used, and that could happen here.

But there’s something else about this list.

If you asked the vast majority of activists from the Twin Cities why they stood up against ICE goons, they like would say a number of other things, starting with they wanted the ICE goons to leave, which is consistent even with what Wagner and others were saying at the time. Given that all this alleged conspiracy happened in the wake of Renee Good’s shooting, they also wanted to stop the murders of innocent Minnesotans. They wanted ICE to stop kidnapping US citizens, as they did to ChongLy Scott Thao along with many others.

This case will be about competing storylines about what ICE did in Minnesota in January, whether they were there executing the law, or whether they were invading a blue city for spite.

Legal cases are about story-telling. And five months after losing a battle of story-telling after the Good and Pretti murders, DOJ appears to be attempting to start criminalizing everything that happened as a result.

Activities attributed to Unindicted Co-Conspirators

• Created TCDA Signal chat to plan for January 23 direct action at Whipple
• Asked Wagner “where you at” in advance of trailer operation (2 mentions)
• Told Wagner they were worried about being in a million pictures (2 mentions)
• Received a video from Wagner
• Attended a February 12 meeting where Robinet bragged about having sharpshooters
• Were considered for addition to TCDA chat
• Sent a link about a MeltTheIce event
• Sent a message about raising $10K for an action
• Sent an article about decreased us of Whipple
• Sent a message about fundraising
• Asked about vetting for inclusion in chat groups
• Referred a volunteer for a scouting position
• Asked about how arrestable an exfil role was (2 mentions)
• Sent a “thumbs up” emoji
• Appeared at Fort Snelling Rail Station with Thoreson
• Appeared with Thoreson at North Park and Ride
• Helped remove Czech hedgehogs from a blue truck*
• Participated in blockade of Whipple on March 1*
• Agreed to be an evac driver with their white Toyota Corolla (4 references)
• Parked a Honda Fit
• Sent a message about missing radios
• Commented about MN law on trade contractor vehicles
• Sent a message about heavy duty cutters
• Asked if they could share notes
• Co-piloted with Sant
• Reported that Doob was arrested, but Tony S was not
• Responded to Sant’s request for commuters (two separate people)
• Participated in an anarchist speaking tour
• Asked for someone to vouch for Robinet
• Drove with Robinet
• Discussed commuting at the ICE goons hotel (two separate people and references)
• Mused about a job fair for activist organizations
• Shared a link to the White House Counterterrorism Strategy and stated, “The White House just declared us terrorists” (2 references)
• Co-piloted with Morgan and added to Signal thread
• Rode in car that Morgan drove into Wisconsin (charged as stalking)
• Described an HSI investigation and described an HSI vehicle
• Described a different HSI vehicle
• Joked about an ICE vehicle getting a flat
• Discussed removing Rakotz after her arrest (4 references)
• Restored Rakotz to Signal group
• Asked when ICE was most active at Whipple
• Discussed coordinating with Delaney Hall protestors (2 references)

The post The Stories Todd Blanche Fabricates about Antifa appeared first on emptywheel.

Yet has not been fired.

The causes of America’s defeat in Iran are well-known:

• The idiots running the war simply assumed they would win so quickly that Iran wouldn’t succeed in doing what every war-gaming scenario said they would, close the Strait of Hormuz.
• In part because Whiskey Pete Hegseth had literally shot America’s wad last year in an attempt to subdue the Houthis, and in part because he knows little other approach than shooting his wad, the US faces an acute shortage of munitions (a widely-known fact that Whiskey Pete aggressively and corruptly attempts to suppress); that shortage limited US ability to sustain the war.
• DOD mounted ineffective defense of its bases, and as a result, American bases around the Middle East were badly damaged.

WSJ has an updated report on the latter issue, focused on the damage to the US Navy base in Bahrain.

The U.S. Navy base in Bahrain was repeatedly targeted between late February and June. Strikes that got through caused extensive damage, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of satellite imagery, social-media footage and interviews with current and former servicemembers—damage that the Pentagon hasn’t publicly acknowledged. Hit hard were the command headquarters and at least a dozen other buildings, along with two satellite communications terminals.

The military said no one was killed at the base, known as Naval Support Activity Bahrain, and that the strikes didn’t significantly impact operations. The U.S. evacuated most personnel but has kept a small staff on the ground.

Over the course of the war, “Centcom rightfully prioritized the protection of people over buildings, and our strategy of protecting people worked. Iran shot more than 8,000 missiles and drones and only two hits resulted in U.S. fatalities,” said Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East. Hawkins also said the U.S. military inflicted far more damage to Iran than it received, with the U.S. striking more than 13,500 targets.

The extensive damage done to America’s sole naval base in the Middle East—along with hits to at least 20 U.S. sites across the region, including military installations and diplomatic facilities—has the U.S. re-evaluating its entire footprint in the region, according to U.S. officials familiar with the deliberations.

[snip]

The military is now considering revamping the base in Bahrain, reducing the U.S. presence in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and moving some bases or base functions west, farther from the reach of Iranian missiles and drones, according to the officials familiar with the deliberations.

[snip]

“We defended our installations admirably, but the munitions that got through hit infrastructure required for us to conduct operations,” said Dr. Ravi Chaudhary, a former assistant secretary of the Air Force. “This is the byproduct of 10 years of Iran adapting its strike technologies for greater range and accuracy.”

The decisions the U.S. makes now—what to reconstruct, what to abandon, how far to pull back—will define its presence in the Middle East for a generation.

Donald Trump’s invasion of Iran, led by Crusader Pete Hegseth, may force the US to withdraw from the Middle East or perhaps just retreat to Israel, with all the symbolism that would entail.

And we’re not talking about how the Crusader dude, who defines his fragile identity via a construction of superiority not just to Muslims, but to brown and female Americans of Christian faith, got his ass handed to him by a country led by Shia clerics. We’re not even talking about what a catastrophic leader he has been, and instead leave him in place chipping away at the actually competent people.

The reasons why Whiskey Pete has not been held accountable for his disastrous failure are the same reasons Trump is failing more generally. Whiskey Pete is, by profession, a propagandist with a history of suspect management behavior. And so, faced with the reality that his own decisions have led to serious problems, Hegseth has ratcheted up an increasingly authoritarian propaganda machine that, while it has delayed some of the reporting on his failures (the WSJ reminds how Hegseth demanded private satellite companies suppress evidence of his failures for months), it has not fully prevented that reporting — in part, as Mark Kelly pointed out when Whiskey Pete tried to criminalize him for telling the truth — thanks to Hegseth’s own big mouth.

More importantly, Hegseth’s fondness for lies perfectly suits Trump’s pathological need to be lied to. The old Fox propagandist will keep doing as he was trained, repeating that he won, repeating that he won thanks to Donald Trump’s brilliant leadership (the same leadership that didn’t take foundational warnings about the Strait of Hormuz seriously).

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

The two men are locked in a tight homosocial embrace of mutually assured deception about their own superiority.

Such relationships are the only thing that sustain Trump as he experiences a series of Narcissistic injuries.

So Trump won’t replace Whiskey Pete.

He will, instead, double down on the propaganda. Trump will try to reprogram his cult to believe that the people who, just two years ago, attempted to solicit contract killers to assassinate him…

Pamela Bondi, United States Attorney General; Joseph Nocella, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; and James C. Barnacle, Jr., Assistant Director in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), announced the verdict.

“This man landed on American soil hoping to kill President Trump — instead, he was met with the might of American law enforcement,” said Attorney General Bondi. “The Department of Justice will remain ever-vigilant to protect Americans, prosecute terrorists, and halt acts of terrorism before they happen.”

“Iran’s terrorist regime sent Asif Merchant here to sow mayhem and murder,” stated United States Attorney Nocella. “Thanks to the vigilance of our law enforcement partners, his scheme ended in failure. Today, with Merchant’s conviction, that failure is complete. Our Office will always remain vigilant in our mission to protect the United States from foreign terrorist adversaries.”

Mr. Nocella expressed his appreciation to the FBI’s Field Offices in Dallas, Houston, Tampa, Boston, Washington D.C., Chicago and Albany for their partnership on this case. Mr. Nocella also expressed his appreciation to the FBI New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, the New York City Police Department, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas and U.S. Customs and Border Protection for their assistance.

“At the direction of the Iranian regime, Asif Merchant plotted to assassinate a United States politician or government official on American soil,” stated FBI Assistant Director in Charge Barnacle. “This foiled scheme motivated by vengeance for U.S. actions against the Iranian regime sought to strike at the heart of our democracy. May today’s conviction illustrate the FBI’s resolute commitment to protect the homeland from the Iranian regime’s craven efforts to wage terror on the American people.”

Are really just super smart.

[A]s the Trump administration has defended its preliminary peace deal, a different perspective has been taking hold in parts of the American right: Iran as a pragmatic country that the United States can, and must, learn to live with.

The stark shift has been led by President Trump, who called Iran’s leaders “strong people, smart people” last week, but it goes well beyond him.

It helps, I suppose, that journalists can spend 1,300 words writing about that attempt to reprogram the cult without mentioning the assassination plot.

Anyway, things may about to get interesting.

The other day, DOD submitted its supplemental request for the illegal war they refused to brief Congress on.

Per Jake Sherman, the ask includes almost three times what DOD said the war cost, just for DOD, more bribes for the farmers Trump has destroyed, payments to State for diplomacy even though Trump’s developer buddies are doing the so-called diplomacy here, money to fund Ebola response to replace the Ebola prevention Elon Musk cut last year, and an attempt to bigfoot Trump’s name onto Penn Station.

THE SUPPLEMENTAL IS OUT highlights:

$67B for DOD

$11B for farmers

$40M for FBI for “Operation Epic Fury” and other classified programs.

$672M for NNSA $95.5M for DOE for Epic Fury

$36M for Treasury

$600M for GSA

$2B for Coast Guard re Epic Fury

$13M for DHS classified request

$500M for Park Service

$1B for DOL for pensions

$1.5B for State for diplomatic programs

$300M for embassy security and construction for restoring facilities in Bahrain, Dubai, Karachi, Lahore, Riyadh etc

$1.4B for Ebola

$1B for “modernized Penn Station”

In short, self-imagined supremacist Pete Hegseth loaded up this request with a bunch of shit, and that’s before a bunch of classified programs that likely involve domestic repression and international war crimes.

And it can only pass Congress with the help of Democrats in the Senate, as well as people, like Thom Tillis, who stupidly made a last ditch attempt to win Trump’s support by confirming the Fox News host, as well as Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, who both opposed his confirmation and the latter of whom, especially, Hegseth has disdained.

Whiskey Pete Hegseth is about to go to Capitol Hill with hat in hand, asking Congress to reward him for getting his ass handed to him by Iran.

Which makes it an exceptionally good time to point out that the guy with the Crusader tattoos invaded an Islamic state and lost. Badly. In significant part because of those Crusader tattoos.

The post Guy with Crusader Tats Suffers Humiliating Defeat at Hands of Islamic Republic appeared first on emptywheel.

As I described here, the indictment was likely inevitable from the time DOJ arrested Kyle Wagner, a flamboyantly Antifa activist, for allegedly stalking far right extremist Jayden Scott, who had come to Minnesota to rile things up. What appears to have happened is that Scott whined to DOJ (or to people with a lot of sway at DOJ), which led them to focus on Wagner, which led to Wagner’s arrest on dodgy charges while deferring charging on statements that more closely meet true threat standards targeting ICE until this indictment.

As I’ll show, virtually all of the focus on Antifa in the MN indictment (as opposed to anarchists or garden variety activists) is tied to Wagner, and much of that comes from his social media posts.

But in introducing Wagner, the indictment hides how DOJ was alerted to Wagner: By far right extremists who have friends at DOJ. Indeed, they literally edit out the import of Jake Lang, who is the quintessential extremist outside agitator.

The first social media post in the MI complaint against Wagner is dated January 8, in the immediate aftermath of the Renee Good murder. By contrast, the first post cited in the MN indictment is one that appears in both charging documents, dated January 17 or 18.

On or about January 18, 2026, WAGNER posted a video on his Instagram account “kaos. follows,” which was captioned, “I’m fundraising for other mutual aid networks and spending my resources fighting back and organizing the direct action that’s getting us results…If you can’t be here and want to see us take the fight to them – give me your support and help us Stop ICE now. My link is in my bio – fund community protection and anti-ICE: direct action. #vivalaresistance.”

But the citation of the post in the MN indictment edits out something included in the screen cap from the MI one: A reference to the fundraising Jake Lang did before coming to Minnesota “bring[ing] hate to our streets.”

The complaint also describes an earlier post, which describes a street conflict at which Wagner let Jake Lang go,

I want to make one thing very clear and this is going to be directly to all of the rest of the Nazis that were around for this, okay? You’ll see in this video I was right there, and I let Jake Lang go.

Lang was among the earliest people arrested for January 6, charged with rioting and multiple counts of assaulting cops.

Lang managed to stall his trial for years, largely by constant juggling of legal representation, but ultimately by invoking his expected clemency by Trump. Along the way, Lang tried over and over to get Carl Nichols to release him, but each time DOJ successfully argued he was too dangerous to release.

Since these conflicts in MN, Lang has been arrested multiple times — for threatening a cop in DC, threatening another cop in Texas, drunk driving in PA, driving-related crimes in MI. He’s an attention-seeker that even right wingers hate. Yet he is also someone who, by dint of his violent extremism in the service of Donald Trump on January 6, has had impunity from DOJ, even though he does precisely the kinds of things alleged here, only to serve the far right.

The video makes it clear Wagner connected his own fundraising, which DOJ relies on to establish a conspiracy in the MN indictment, to the invasion of MN by outside agitators.

Yet DOJ omits the reference to Lang, where Wagner said, “They raised $1m for lang to come,” the first Wagner social media post in the indictment.

The result creates the appearance that Wagner was raising money for a January 23 operation Wagner was invited to join just a day or so earlier, rather than as a response to the invasion of MN not just by ICE, but also by outside agitators with a direct line to DOJ.

DOJ already has a selective prosecution problem with this indictment. On January 15 — likely one of the conflicts Wagner was referencing — Scott was cited for obstruction after ignoring orders and “incit[ing] other demonstrators to follow,” similar conduct for which Wagner was charged with a felony. But instead, DOJ dismissed the citation against Scott in May.

US Attorney Daniel Rosen is literally editing out the role that outside agitators played in his own state, in an attempt to paint broad swaths of activism on the part of Minnesotans with an Antifa brand.

He’s covering up an invasion of his state by extremist agitators, including one whose alleged assault of cops Trump has rewarded, to selectively criminalize the left.

The post Daniel Rosen Hid the Far-Right Agitators at the Core of His Anti-ICE Indictment appeared first on emptywheel.