James Comey is not exactly someone we’ve ever been a fan of on Techdirt. He was a terrible FBI director in so many ways. We’ve spent years criticizing the man — for his crusade against encryption, his supporting the FBI’s ridiculously aggressive impersonation of reporters, his embrace of the FBI’s program to coerce and entrap people down on their luck into fake terrorist plots, and much more. And, while the impact has been exaggerated, it is true that he took multiple actions violating DOJ procedures that likely helped get Donald Trump elected in 2016. So it’s not like I’m rushing to support the guy. He’s a bad cop and has been for some time.
But the indictment the Department of Justice handed down against James Comey on Tuesday is a truly embarrassing legal document, and everyone involved in producing it should be professionally radioactive for the rest of their careers. I would have said it’s one of the most embarrassing legal documents that this DOJ has produced, but remember, just a day earlier they filed a legal brief that was indistinguishable from a Truth Social post.
The charge, in its entirety, concerns this Instagram post from May 2025:
If you can’t see that, it’s an Instagram post from Comey showing some shells on some sand with the shells spelling out 8647 and the caption on the post saying:
Cool shell formation on my beach walk
For this — for posting a photo of arranged seashells in a slightly sassy pattern and posting it to Instagram — Comey has been charged with two federal felonies: threatening the President under 18 U.S.C. § 871, and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c). (For what it’s worth Comey has claimed he didn’t arrange the sea shells, but just found them. It’s unclear if that makes much of a difference, it’s protected speech either way).
Ken “Popehat” White, who has perhaps done more than any other lawyer in America to explain First Amendment doctrine to laypeople, didn’t mince words about what this is:
The charge is preposterous and no competent or honest prosecutor would bring it. It represents a betrayal of the professional and ethical obligations of every U.S. Department of Justice attorney involved, and reflects the complete collapse of the Department’s credibility and independence in favor of a cultish and cretinous devotion to Donald Trump.
He’s right, and the way to understand just how right he is requires understanding the path that brought us here.
Because this is the second time the Trump DOJ has tried to indict Comey. The first attempt collapsed in spectacular fashion last year, after Trump — in what was apparently supposed to be a private direct message but accidentally went out as a public Truth Social post — demanded that Pam Bondi install Lindsey Halligan, a former insurance lawyer with no relevant experience, as a U.S. Attorney specifically because she had promised to indict Comey. The problem: Halligan wasn’t legally appointed. The entire indictment got tossed before the court could dismiss it for being ridiculous (which would have happened) because the person who filed it wasn’t allowed to file it.
As we noted at the time, this pattern of procedural self-sabotage is a recurring feature of an administration that treats legal procedure as an inconvenience rather than the actual point of having a justice system.
So how did the DOJ respond to that humiliation? By coming back with something substantively even worse. In theory, they tried fixing the “wrong person filed it” problem by having an actually legally appointed person file something… even if that something has no legal basis whatsoever. Progress! Sort of?
The seashell indictment was filed by W. Ellis Boyle, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew R. Petracca listed as the prosecuting attorney. Remember those names. They put their signatures on this. Boyle is listed as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, but he’s serving in an acting capacity — Trump has nominated him multiple times, yet the Senate has still refused to confirm him.
The legal problem with the indictment is pretty easy to spot: to convict someone under either of the threat statutes the DOJ is invoking, the government has to prove the communication constituted a “true threat.” Under controlling Fourth Circuit precedent (this case is in North Carolina), a true threat is something “an ordinary, reasonable recipient who is familiar with the context in which the statement is made would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm.”
As Ken White noted, the Supreme Court established this framework in Watts v. United States, a 1969 case involving an 18-year-old draft protester who said:
They always holler at us to get an education. And now I have already received my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this Monday coming. I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L. B. J.
The Court found this was protected political hyperbole, not a true threat. An explicit statement about wanting a President in your rifle sights — protected.
If Watts isn’t damning enough, there’s United States v. Bagdasarian, a much more recent Ninth Circuit case where a man posted online statements about wanting to shoot then-candidate Barack Obama, including some genuinely vile racially explicit language about hoping Obama would be killed. The court held that even that did not constitute a true threat under the relevant statutes.
I’d be curious to hear from anyone defending this indictment whether they think Bagdasarian was wrongly decided. Or do we change the “true threat” standard when the target is Trump?
So the descending ladder of seriousness looks like this:
Explicit racial language about wanting a President shot: protected
Telling a crowd you want LBJ in your rifle sights: protected
Posting a photo of seashells arranged on a beach to spell “86 47”: two federal felonies
Any first-year law student who’s taken a basic First Amendment course could tell you the seashell post is constitutionally protected. Any prosecutor with five minutes of research time would know that Bagdasarian and Watts exist. But, of course, as we’ve seen over and over and over again in the Trump era, the point is not to bring a good case or a winnable case. The point is just to punish Trump’s enemies with vexatious, vindictive prosecutions in hopes of creating a chilling effect among the populace and stopping them from criticizing the President with the thinnest skin possible.
Now, “86” has had various meanings over the years — to “86” something in restaurant slang means to remove it from the menu or get rid of it. The DOJ’s theory is apparently that when used about a person, it means to kill them. No one else believes that. This is the kind of motivated reading that requires ignoring both the dictionary and how actual humans use language.
But fine, let’s grant the absolute most uncharitable reading and say “86 47” means “get rid of the 47th President through killing.” Even granting that — even doing all the work for the prosecution — it’s still obviously protected political expression, and still obviously not a true threat under the controlling case law.
Which brings us to the part that genuinely cannot be explained by anything other than pure vindictiveness. Here is a tweet from Jack Posobiec, a prominent Trump loyalist/conspiracy theorist, posted in January 2022:
That tweet is still up. I just made that screenshot minutes ago. As of this writing, it has been online for nearly four years. No FBI investigation. No federal indictment. No felony counts. Literally no one thought that was an actual threat. Because it’s not. Apparently the DOJ’s theory of criminal threats has a loyalty-based expiration date — the same numerical expression is a felony when arranged in shells by a Trump critic and a perfectly fine tweet when posted by a Trump supporter about a different President.
Indeed, the fact that Posobiec seems to have no issue keeping this tweet up is itself a sign that the MAGA world knows it’s engaged in purely theatrical vindictive prosecution — and wants you to know they know. To them, once again, nothing here is about justice or the rule of law. It’s just “will this make the people I dislike upset.” That is their only motivating factor.
The DOJ has baked the selective prosecution argument directly into its own theory of the case. Comey’s lawyers will surely refresh the selective prosecution motion they filed in the first, dismissed indictment, and the facial absurdity of this one — combined with the existence of identical, ignored expression by Trump allies — makes that motion approximately as easy to support as such motions ever get.
There’s a specific kind of institutional rot in play here, driven entirely by Donald Trump and his minions. Competent authoritarianism is dangerous in obvious ways. Incompetent authoritarianism that keeps trying anyway is dangerous in different ways: it normalizes the use of state power for personal vengeance while demonstrating that the people wielding it will stop at nothing — even on the most facially ridiculous grounds. That’s a chilling effect doubled: a politicized DOJ, staffed by people who can’t pass a First Amendment quiz.
White is right that the indictment is unlikely to survive. Comey’s attorneys can challenge it on its face, arguing that even taking every allegation as true, seashells spelling “86 47” are protected by the First Amendment as a matter of law. The assigned judge was appointed by a Republican but is reportedly not a partisan hack, and the case law here is so clear that it would take extreme judicial bad faith to let this proceed. The selective prosecution motion is also stronger now than it was the first time, with Posobiec’s untouched tweet sitting there as Exhibit A.
But as White notes, surviving the motion to dismiss isn’t actually the point:
The point of the indictment is to demonstrate that the United States Department of Justice is wholly an instrument of Donald Trump’s senescent pique, no more independent of him than a boil on his ass. The point is to show that the administration can, and will, use the Department’s mechanisms to punish enemies. The point is to show that the Department can, and will, punish protected speech. The point is to show that the Department is staffed by committed fanatics willing to do anything, however unethical and unconstitutional, to promote Trump.
The point is to show that in the war between Donald Trump and the U.S. Department of Justice, Trump has won. Now they’re on the field slitting the throats of the wounded and looting bodies.
W. Ellis Boyle and Matthew R. Petracca put their names on this indictment. They will, presumably, lose this case the way the previous Comey case was lost — embarrassingly, on grounds that any competent attorney not engaged in cult-like performative fealty to a wannabe authoritarian could have anticipated. And when this is all over, when there is some accounting for what was done to the Department of Justice in these years, the people who signed the seashell indictment should never be trusted with prosecutorial power, a bar membership, or any position requiring professional judgment ever again.
The shells, for what it’s worth, were on a beach. The tide has presumably long since rearranged them. The Instagram post was taken down fairly quickly when the MAGA world lost their minds over it. The federal felony charges, somehow, remain.
The FCC clearly leaked word of the inquiry to Semafor in the hopes that Semafor would present it as a serious, big boy sort of inquiry. And Semafor was happy to oblige, with a six paragraph story that can’t bother to mention that the Trump administration has serious credibility issues, ABC doesn’t really have many broadcast licenses, and that none of this is legally supportable:
“The Federal Communications Commission is moving toward a review of Disney’s broadcast licenses, according to people familiar with the matter, a maneuver that would up the pressure on the ABC owner as it faces fierce scrutiny from the administration — again — over a late night monologue.”
We’ve mentioned time and time again that most of these national media giants don’t personally own all that many broadcast licenses to review. Those are generally under the domain of local broadcast affiliates, most of which are increasingly being consolidated in the hands of right wing rich men who already gushingly support the administration (see: NexStar, Tegna, Sinclair).
The licenses ABC does have are limited and not up for renewal anytime soon. There’s eight in total, and while the FCC claims they can just accelerate renewal review, that’s not how any of this works. Stripping them away isn’t quick, or easy. It never really happens. Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone commissioner (because Republicans refuse to seat any more), made it very clear the purported reviews are illegal:
“This is unprecedented, unlawful, and going nowhere. This political stunt won’t stick,” Gomez said. “Companies should challenge it head-on. The First Amendment is on their side.”
If you recall, when one activist media reform group suggested pulling a single Philly Fox News affiliate license for lying repeatedly about election conspiracy theories back in 2023, Carr (and the GOP generally) responded with pure revulsion. These folks are not… ideologically consistent. They’re not even logical.
The threat against “ABC’s broadcast licenses” (because a comedian told a joke) is obvious an illegal assault on the First Amendment (something Semafor can’t bother to make clear). But more generally, it’s designed as an ambiguous threat of costly legal headaches and annoyance if ABC executives don’t help the administration silence voices (journalists or comedians) critical of our unpopular president.
Obviously the last time Brendan Carr illegally abused FCC authority to try and censor Kimmel, it didn’t go well for Brendan Carr (something else Semafor doesn’t mention). Given the mass cancellations to their streaming services, Disney’s decision to temporarily suspend Kimmel didn’t go well for them either (something else Semafor doesn’t think is worth mentioning).
Fighting the deep-pocketed Disney corporation on obvious shaky First Amendment grounds is not something Brendan Carr actually wants. What he wants is for pathetic, feckless executives to pre-emptively bend and quiver at his very serious threats as a very serious big man. But as Trump’s power and health wanes, that’s going to happen less and less, putting Brendan Carr in a sad little box.
Carr’s options as a dutiful little authoritarian lapdog are limited, so he’s increasingly trying to pretend he’s got more leverage and legal authority than he actually does. In addition to vague anonymous threats of broadcast license “inquiries,” he’s also recently leaked word he’s “investigating” Kimmel for his political donations, another hollow effort that’s destined to go nowhere.
Ironically Semafor’s toothless coverage of this is precisely the sort of lazy, pseudo-journalistic cack the administration likes. Fluff that normalizes, elevates, and validates the empty rants and illegal, incoherent acts of unpopular and lame autocrats, but can’t be bothered to mention to readers that the king is not wearing any pants.
Apparently we’ve reached the stage of the second Trump presidency when we’re doing reruns of the old hits. As you’ll recall, Donald Trump has been desperate to get late-night TV host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel fired for quite some time. While Trump has long complained about any late night comedian making fun of him, he really has gone after Kimmel in particular. Things went into overdrive last fall when America’s top censor, FCC chair Brendan Carr, threatened an investigation if Disney didn’t punish Kimmel for a joke. Disney initially caved, before millions started canceling their subscriptions, leading to a backtracking.
But, since then, both Trump and Carr have continued to look for opportunities to get Kimmel fired for his speech.
In any normal world this would be a huge five alarm fire as an attack on the First Amendment. The president and his minions keep trying to get a comedian fired for his jokes because they are critical of the president. That’s not how any of this is supposed to work. But because Trump does it so often, almost everyone seems to just shrug and move on.
And now Trump is at it again. Both Donald and Melania went on social media to whine about Kimmel mocking Trump again — and to demand he be fired again. Because he told a pretty standard joke about Donald Trump being old.
While the White House Correspondents Dinner this past weekend was shut down after someone tried (and failed) to rush past security with a couple of guns (you know, the kind that Trump and the Republicans have made sure it’s easy for anyone to purchase), even before that the Correspondents Association knew better than to hire the usual comedian to entertain the journalistic elite in the room, preferring instead to hire a magician/mentalist.
Kimmel decided last week, on his show, to present an alternative — effectively what his own White House Correspondents Dinner roast would have been. It’s a pretty typical WHCD comic routine, interspersed with “audience reaction” shots spliced in from other events. You can watch it here:
One joke in it referred to Melania Trump, pretending that she was present (like she would be at the actual dinner) and saying: “Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”
Anyone not desperate to exploit a situation for political gain would hear that joke and recognize immediately that it’s about the fact that the president is decades older than his third wife, and that his health does not appear to be that great (in multiple ways).
But, because no big news story can go unexploited by the Trumps for personal and political gain, they’re pretending that this mid-level joke, combined with the failed security breach by a lone nut, somehow… demands the firing of Jimmy Kimmel all over again..
In his social media post Monday afternoon, Mr. Trump described the comedian’s joke as “really shocking” and “something far beyond the pale.” He ended his post: “Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”
The first lady had posted about Mr. Kimmel a few hours earlier.
“His monologue about my family isn’t comedy,” she wrote. “His words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.” She called Mr. Kimmel “a coward” who “shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.” She said he “hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him.”
“Enough is enough,” she wrote. “It is time for ABC to take a stand.”
Oh come on.
This theatrical pearl-clutching over a joke is pathetic and ridiculous on almost every level. First, Kimmel was making an obvious joke about the age difference and the obvious decline in health of the president. It had nothing to do with political violence. Second, claiming that this joke has anything to do with the attempt at violence makes no sense. Kimmel’s joke about the age difference between the Trumps was made two days prior to the scheduled WHCD. The comments above act as though they’re somehow associated with the lone nut’s failed assassination attempt, but unless time works backwards that makes no sense.
Third, if we’re going to talk about “corrosive” dialogue that “deepens the political sickness within America,” the only one to talk about is President Trump, who can barely go a day without issuing corrosive attacks on anyone who criticizes him… or just anyone who is a non-white, non-male who doesn’t praise him.
Fourth, Trump has had it in for Kimmel for years, so of course he’d jump on this excuse to attack him again and demand he be fired — even though the last attempt not only failed badly, but made millions more people aware of Trump’s insecure lashing out at comedians.
Finally, Trump and his MAGA cultists keep pretending that they’re all about free speech, when he is actually (by far) the most censorial president of our lifetime. And here he is demanding someone be fired (not for the first time) over a simple joke. That is authoritarian, censorial bullshit.
Yet, we hear nothing from the folks who spent years insisting that when the Biden admin sent emails to Facebook asking them how they were going to handle health misinformation, that was the greatest attack on free speech in history. Those same people are still making things up about the Biden administration… and have nothing to say about yet another actual attack on free speech. We don’t need to review this all over again, but some Biden officials sent weak emails asking Facebook and Twitter to improve their policies on disinformation, which were mostly ignored. As the Supreme Court said clearly in the Murthy ruling, there was no evidence presented of any actual coercion by the government, which meant the plaintiffs had no standing to bring the case (there needs to be an actual case or controversy, and they could present none).
Meanwhile, between Trump and Carr, we see clear, detailed attempts by the administration to punish a comedian and the company he works for speech that is critical of the president. It’s about as big an attack on the First Amendment as we’ve seen from a President in decades.
Kimmel, for his part, mentioned the latest verbal attacks and attempt to get himself fired on his monologue Monday night, seemingly taking it in stride, but having the President of the United States repeatedly target a comedian for making jokes about him is about as far from a free speech presidency as you can get.
There have been plenty of absolutely batshit crazy legal filings from Trump and his crew over the last few years, but a filing last night takes the crazy to new levels. This is in the case filed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation against the National Park Service over the ballroom Donald Trump is trying to build (and for which he already tore down the East Wing of the White House despite earlier promises that it wouldn’t even touch the existing building). It absolutely reads like a typical Donald Trump Truth Social post more than any legal filing you’ll ever see:
“The National Trust for Historic Preservation” is a beautiful name, but even their name is FAKE because when they add the words “in the United States” to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, it makes it sound like a Governmental Agency, which it is not. In fact, the United States refused to continue funding it in 2005 because they strongly disagreed with their mission and objectives. They are very bad for our Country. They stop many projects that are worthy, and hurt many others. In this case, they are trying to stop one that is vital to our National Security, and the Safety of all Presidents of the United States, both current and future, their families, staff, and Cabinet members. They were asked by the United States Military not to bring this suit because of the Top Secret nature of the important facility being built. They were shown detailed plans and specifications of this knitted, unified, and cohesive structure by Top Officers and Leaders in both the Military and Secret Service. But this did not deter them because they suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, commonly referred to as TDS, as noted by Democrat Senator John Fetterman, of Pennsylvania, and are represented by the lawyer for Barack Hussein Obama, Gregory Craig. The lower section of the building does not work without the upper section and, likewise, the upper section of the building does not work without the lower. It is all one highly integrated unit! As an example, one venting system, one electrical system, one plumbing system, one security system, one air conditioning and heating system, one elevator connector and, very importantly, one structural steel and enforced concrete system — and more. Even the bullet proof windows and glass, and the heavy steel, drone proof roof, protect what is below. With such a facility, it would have been impossible for an attack like that which took place last Saturday evening in D.C. when an attempted assassin, armed with a shotgun, pistol, and knives, charged through a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton in an attempt to assassinate President Donald J. Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and members of the President’s Cabinet and senior staff, during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The Secret Service fortunately neutralized the assassin before he could reach the ballroom. However, Saturday’s narrow miss—which marks the third assassination attempt on President Trump since 2024—confirms what should have already been obvious: Presidents need a secure space for large events, that currently does not exist in Washington, D.C., and this Court’s injunction stalling this Project cannot defensibly continue, for the sake of the safety of President Trump, future Presidents, and their families, Cabinets, and staff. Defendants thus request that this Court issue an indicative ruling under Rule 62.1 that it will dissolve its injunction. Three assassination attempts—including the attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, where an assassin’s bullet hit the President’s ear—is enough. There is absolutely no argument that a woman walking her dog in the vicinity of the White House has STANDING to stop such a desperately needed structure for the people of the United States of America, as it will provide Presidents, current and future, a secure space to do their jobs.
I kid you not: that is the entire first paragraph of the legal filing. At the very least it raises the question of who actually wrote this. In tone and style, it reads as identical to a typical Donald Trump social media post.
And also, as explained below, it seems to admit to a potential sharing of a top secret military plans with an organization that (in the same paragraph!) the DOJ claims is “fake.”
Beyond the craziness of the filing, there are so many other problems with this. First off, the case is already on appeal at the DC Circuit, meaning that filing this in the District Court is meaningless, given that it’s out of that court’s hands for now. The judge in the lower court, Judge Richard Leon (who is not known for suffering fools gladly), literally has no ability to step in and take back control over the case and change his earlier ruling. That’s not how any of this works.
You would hope the DOJ understands such basic concepts regarding civil procedure. But apparently not!
Separately, as Law Dork’s Chris Geidner points out, the lawyers who filed this (including Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche) aren’t even the lawyers who are on the caption on the appeal:
The Monday night filing was not submitted by any of the 11 lawyers who filed the notice of appeal in the case on April 16. Instead, shortly before the filing, Woodward entered an appearance in the case.
It is very rare for the associate attorney general — No. 3 at DOJ — to enter an appearance in a case, let alone personally file a brief.
Also, if you actually read the filing, the DOJ bizarrely admits that it shared the supposed details of an apparently top secret military structure with an organization it simultaneously deems “fake.” It’s worth breaking down, because it demonstrates, yet again, the hallucinating ChatGPT nature of this President — just keep generating plausible-sounding answers, consequences be damned.
The piece starts out by (falsely) saying that the plaintiffs in the suit, The National Trust for Historic Preservation, is a “fake” organization:
“The National Trust for Historic Preservation” is a beautiful name, but even their name is FAKE because when they add the words “in the United States” to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, it makes it sound like a Governmental Agency, which it is not.
I mean, no, it doesn’t make it sound like a Government Agency. It makes it sound like a non-profit. And there are many non-governmental organizations that one could argue sound like a government agency: the US Chamber of Commerce, for example. But most people can deal with that.
Next, the filing admits that the details of the ballroom are “top secret” and a national security issue:
In this case, they are trying to stop one that is vital to our National Security, and the Safety of all Presidents of the United States, both current and future, their families, staff, and Cabinet members. They were asked by the United States Military not to bring this suit because of the Top Secret nature of the important facility being built
And then immediately admits that the US government supposedly showed the plans of this top secret military installation of great national security importance to an organization they themselves are claiming is fake:
They were shown detailed plans and specifications of this knitted, unified, and cohesive structure by Top Officers and Leaders in both the Military and Secret Service.
So even taking the filing at its word, the DOJ is admitting to what might very well be an Espionage Act violation — revealing the “detailed plans and specifications” of a “top secret” military facility to a “fake” group.
And that’s their opening argument here!
One can reasonably call into question the underlying lawsuit, or even Judge Leon’s earlier ruling. But this filing is beyond crazy not just in what it says, but how it’s written. In normal times, this filing would be cause for a court to order sanctions against the lawyers filing it. That it’s filed by the Acting Attorney General of the United States should be cause for serious concern. Instead, it’s just another Tuesday.
One of the more frustrating things about the case in which Donald Trump sued the IRS that he runs, demanding $10 billion over nothing, was that it seemed like it might just work, and there might be nothing that could be done to stop it. But at least one federal judge (luckily the one overseeing this “case”) is at least somewhat concerned about all this.
First, a quick recap, in part just to remind ourselves just how absolutely batshit crazy this situation is. Every major candidate for US President since Richard Nixon has voluntarily released his or her tax returns as a reasonable act of transparency to the public. Trump refused claiming (nonsensically) that he could not do so because he was being audited. He also promised to release them once the audit was complete. All of this was bullshit. Richard Nixon (who started this practice) was dealing with audit when he released his tax returns. Also, Trump refused to release returns from earlier that were outside of the returns supposedly being audited. Also, it’s been ten freaking years since he made that promise — and no tax returns have been released. Not willingly, anyway.
In 2019 and 2020 an IRS contractor, named Charles Littlejohn, leaked Trump’s tax returns (along with some other wealthy people) to the NY Times and Propublica, both of whom wrote stories about Trump’s ability to dodge paying taxes and to represent very different profit numbers to the IRS as compared to lenders. Littlejohn was arrested and is currently in prison, serving a five-year sentence for the leak.
Trump received effectively zero consequences for his sketchy tax return practices, or his false claims about being willing to release the returns to the public.
Instead, after he returned to the White House he decided to sue the IRS, which he runs, for an insane $10 billion. And when asked about it, he admitted that he was basically negotiating with himself over how much taxpayer money would be put into his own bank account. Earlier this month we noted a filing in the case about how Trump’s lawyers were asking for more time because they were trying to negotiate a “settlement” — with themselves. Can you just imagine how those meetings were going?
However, on Friday, the judge overseeing the case, Kathleen Williams, finally called out the emperor’s lack of clothes, noting that the core of the American judicial system was that you needed two adversarial parties with an actual controversy between them, and that didn’t appear to be the case here:
A key characteristic of the case or controversy requirement is the existence of adverseness, or “a dispute between parties who face each other in an adversary proceeding.” Aetna Life Ins. Co. of Hartford, Conn. v. Haworth, 300 U.S. 227, 242 (1937). “There must be an honest and actual antagonistic assertion of rights by one individual against another, which is neither feigned nor collusive.” Muransky, 979 F.3d at 981 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Typically, adverseness is found in a situation where one party is asserting its right and the other party is resisting. Nat’l Lab. Rels. Bd. v. Constellium Rolled Prods. Ravenswood, LLC, 43 F.4th 395, 400 (4th Cir. 2022) (internal quotations and citations omitted). Consequently, if there is no adverseness, there is no case or controversy.
In the instant case, Defendants have not yet filed any notices of appearance. Nonetheless, the Parties have advised the Court that they are engaging in discussions to resolve this matter. Moreover, although President Trump avers that he is bringing this lawsuit in his personal capacity, he is the sitting president and his named adversaries are entities whose decisions are subject to his direction.2 Indeed, President Trump’s own remarks about this matter acknowledge the unique dynamic of this litigation.3 Accordingly, it is unclear to this Court whether the Parties are sufficiently adverse to each other so as to satisfy Article III’s case or controversy requirement.
In other words, at least this judge is willing to say out loud what a total sham this whole setup is.
To deal with this, the judge has asked both “parties” to file briefs over this particular issue and set a hearing for the end of May to see what to do about all this. To call this a unique situation would be the understatement of the decade. One hopes that the courts recognize how blatantly corrupt this is, but we have to remember that if this actually continues, it would end up in front of the same court that decided when Donald Trump is president he’s effectively a king and can do whatever he wants (though, when a Democrat is president, they should have zero powers at all).
So while anyone with half a brain can recognize the absolute cynical corruption baked into this case, I have zero faith that this Supreme Court wouldn’t bless it — should the question of whether a Republican president can simply sue his own government and agree with himself to take money from the treasury ever actually reach the high court.
Amidst all the other chaos and damage RFK Jr. is doing in his current role as Secretary of Health and Human Services, we noted a few weeks back that he was also seemingly having a hard time finding someone to fill the opening for CDC Director. That opening, created when Kennedy fired Susan Monarez after only a few weeks on the job back in August of last year (!!!), has been vacant this entire time, with only temporary stand-ins filling the gap.
And then something truly remarkable happened. The Trump administration announced it was nominating Dr. Erica Schwartz for the position. And the notable thing about Schwartz is that… she’s a perfectly qualified, reasonable pick for the role. Many took this as yet another sign that the White House had begun attempting to rein in Kennedy so that his particular brand of nonsense didn’t get the GOP killed in the midterms. The nomination was so bizarrely reasonable that public health policy wonks immediately worried aloud that this couldn’t possibly work under Kennedy.
Outside public health experts have praised her nomination, highlighting her qualifications. But, they’re also wary of how an evidence-based health official will be able to function amid Kennedy’s anti-vaccine efforts and interference from the many like-minded allies he has installed at the CDC.
“As a well-trained and credentialed physician and former Deputy Surgeon General, Erica Schwartz possesses the medical background and public health knowledge to understand that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must be guided by evidence-based science,” Georges Benjamin, CEO of the American Public Health Association, said in a statement. “She will need to use sound managerial and negotiation skills to navigate the rebuilding of our nation’s public health system.”
Jerome Adams, who served as Trump’s surgeon general in his first administration, posted on social media that Schwartz is a “battle-tested leader with decades of distinguished public service,” and that he was “cautiously optimistic” of her selection. As the leader of the CDC, “she’ll excel,” he said, with the caveat, “if [she’s] allowed to follow the science without political interference.”
Unfortunately for anyone optimistic that this would force Kennedy to return to sanity in public health policy, his recent appearance before Congress indicates that he’s not interested in complying. In those hearings, Kennedy was asked several questions about whether he would stop screwing with vaccine policy to bend it to his personal whims, and whether he would support the work of and listen to Schwartz if confirmed as CDC Director.
In a Congressional hearing Tuesday, Kennedy refused to commit to supporting evidence-based vaccine policy from the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the same time, he refused to say that he wouldn’t interfere with the agency’s recommendations.
Kennedy’s response Tuesday suggested Schwartz could face an equally short tenure. His answer came amid an exchange with Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) in a hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Ruiz asked Kennedy: “If Dr. Schwartz is confirmed, will you commit on the record today to implement whatever vaccine guidance she issues without interference?”
Kennedy replied without hesitation: “I’m not going to make that kind of commitment.”
There is danger in this for Kennedy. This administration, and particularly its mad king leader, do not like having their power challenged. There is a reason that Schwartz was tapped for this role and sure as hell isn’t because the Trump team thinks all is well at HHS. Or, at least, it knows they have a problem with public perception of the work that Kennedy is doing there. To have the administration offer up the rare sane nomination, only to have Kennedy state before Congress that he’s not committed to taking her seriously, is a public slap in the face to Trump. And one that will be memorialized in congressional hearing notes.
In other words, this nomination of Schwartz is a no-lose situation for the American public, in my view. Either she’ll be allowed to do her work in a competent way, which is great for a country suffering through a measles outbreak, or she won’t and the Trump administration will have to do something about it. Firing her would, I would guess, amount to Kennedy firing himself.
There’s some endless, curious tensions within the corrupt Trump administration when it comes to their effort to completely destroy the government’s ability to hold corporations accountable for dodgy, nefarious, or even illegal behavior. Their own, lazy, circular logic and bad faith legal interpretations are creating vast new legal minefields we’ll be untangling for decades.
The wireless industry is a prime example.
For decades, major wireless carriers AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile collected vast troves of sensitive user location and movement data, then sold access to any random nitwit with two nickels to rub together. The result was a parade of scandals wherein everybody from stalkers, law enforcement (or people pretending to be law enforcement), car companies, governments (foreign and domestic), and right wing extremists all happily abused the data in myriad, dangerous ways never made clear to the end user.
Though this behavior had been going on for years generating untold millions, it only gained mainstream attention thanks to a 2018 New York Times story showcasing how police and the prison system routinely bought access to this data and then failed completely to secure it. In 2024 the Biden FCC finally proposed fining wireless carriers $196 million ($91 million for T-Mobile, $57 million for AT&T, $48 million for Verizon).
Those fines have been winding through the courts ever since, with wireless carriers (with varying degrees of success) insisting that the FCC lacks the authority to do, well, anything they don’t like. Like most corporations, wireless giants have been broadly helped in that endeavor by Supreme Court rulings dismantling regulatory authority across several different pillars of consumer protection law.
AT&T was also helped dramatically by a 5th Circuit ruling last year declaring that the FCC fines somehow violated wireless carriers’ Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. This was one of several specious arguments telecom lawyers threw at a wall to see which one would satisfy the Trump-addled court system. The 5th Circuit was happy to oblige, vacating the FCC’s long-percolating fines of AT&T.
You were to ignore that AT&T has been at the vanguard of making jury trials impossible for customers through its use of fine print forcing users to pursue binding arbitration, a lopsided system that finds in favor of corporations a vast majority of the time. Or that AT&T spends millions of dollars annually successfully lobotomizing the entirely of telecom oversight, be it congressional, legal or regulatory.
The FCC is kind of defending the Biden era fines (Brendan Carr wants to retain some FCC authority to force corporations to bend the knee to authoritarianism). But here’s the fun thing; even if the justices disagree with the wireless carriers (which can certainly change after a few late night chats with telecom lobbyists), the FCC’s inclined to change the language of their forfeiture orders anyway:
“But even if AT&T and Verizon lose this case, they could get a victory of sorts because the FCC and justices seem to agree that FCC fine decisions are nonbinding and require a court decision to enforce them. A government lawyer told justices that the FCC may change the language of its forfeiture orders to make it clearer that fines don’t have to be paid until after a jury trial.
“It seems like you’ve won on the law going forward, one way or the other,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh told attorney Jeffrey Wall, who represents AT&T and Verizon. “Your reply brief begins, ‘the government’s in retreat.’ That’s absolutely correct.”
With the Supreme Court poking holes in regulatory autonomy across countless fronts (SEC v. Jarkesy, Loper Bright), there’s no limit of options for corporate lawyers looking to avoid regulatory accountability. Nearly any serious attempt by a regulator to hold corporations accountable for pretty much anything can now pretty easily be bogged down in years of litigation, quite by design.
You’d think the broad, dire impact of that would be of more interest to journalists and policy folk.
This whole Ars Technica article by Jon Brodkin is worth a read, and is a good demonstration of (1) how the Trump administration’s legal lackeys have to trip over themselves to pretend they’re engaged in good faith, non-corporatist, non-corrupt interpretation of consumer protection law, (2) how all the weird holes created by Supreme Court rulings aimed at demolishing even basic corporate oversight have created a vast minefield it’s a nightmare for everyone to navigate, and (3) how the press likes to pretend this is somehow normal behavior by a serious country and not a byproduct of abject corruption.
But in short it’s likely that AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile will never have to actually pay any fines related to their decade+ decision to spy on users and monetize their sensitive movement data. That’s not only an act of overt corruption (dressed up as serious, furrowed-brow legalese), but also the failure to hold wireless carriers accountable for privacy and security issues will pose a lasting cybersecurity threat.
It genuinely doesn’t get enough attention that the Trump administration (specifically the Trump-friendly Supreme and circuit courts) have delivered a killing blow to the federal government’s already shaky ability to hold corporations accountable for anything. People and the press deny, ignore, downplay, or normalize it, but these choices will range from massively problematic to fatal, and will reverberate for a generation.
This Saturday is the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner (WHCA). And there’s been ample criticism of journalists that plan to have giggles and cocktails with overt fascists, given this helps normalize of one of the most racist, censorial, and corrupt administrations in U.S. history.
This year, because an actual comedian might get somewhere close to the truth about the country’s collapse, the whole thing is being hosted by a “mentalist.”
A coalition of more than 250 journalists wrote a letter to the WHCA and attendees, begging them to demonstrate something resembling a backbone. But even these calls for action from other journalists feel pathetic:
“We understand that some journalists plan to wear pocket handkerchiefs or lapel pins with the words of the First Amendment. And continuing in that spirit, we believe the White House Correspondents Association should take stronger action by issuing — from the podium — a forceful defense of freedom of the press and condemnation of those who threaten that freedom, followed by a standing toast to the First Amendment and a pledge to continue upholding such a critical cornerstone of our democracy.”
This would all be slightly more palatable if U.S. journalism hadn’t so catastrophically failed to meet the moment during our authoritarian era. As far as the eye can see, corporate journalism (with occasional and welcome exception) has been a pathetic mess; normalizing, validating, and often even encouraging our bumbling, violent, and extremely racist kakistocracy.
It’s a little late for jokes. And a toast to the First Amendment over smoked salmon-potato chip canapés doesn’t mean much at this point, if it ever did.
The coverage of the event has been almost as pathetic as the journalists planning to attend. New York Times columnist Michael Grynbaum, for example, actually put these words down in print:
“Mr. Trump, whose instinct for crowd work and note-perfect timing have drawn comparisons to the insult comic Don Rickles, will almost certainly take a few potshots. His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on social media that the evening “will be fun!”
Good times.
Brendan Carr will be in attendance. I’m sure there will be some good natured ribbing about his efforts to illegally censor critics of the administration, destroy legitimate journalism, and dismantle the First Amendment. Some real zingers about his total destruction of consumer protection and corporate oversight (just kidding, nobody in the U.S. media cares about any of that). Maybe some light guffaws at his most recent efforts to harass comedians for telling jokes.
After that, maybe some light quips about the fact this administration used a masked gestapo to murder American civilians in the street. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
Granted there are some that correctly argue that schmoozing with the wealthy and powerful you cover was never a good idea in the first place. Especially in a country where the press is so increasingly and clearly captured by the extraction class and corporate power:
“As elite journalists wring their hands over whether it is hypocritical to attend this year’s dinner or mount a quiet protest by wearing First Amendment lapel pins and pocket squares, I would rather they acknowledge that a red-carpet schmoozefest with the powerful sources they cover was never a good idea. The annual rationalizing that it’s just a show of civility to party with the people one covers doesn’t overcome the public’s skepticism about our independence. What was once (a fairly long time ago) a well-intended night of fundraising and camaraderie among professional adversaries is now simply a bad look.”
There will certainly be some spotty (and maybe even genuinely funny) useful criticism of Trump on Saturday. He’ll probably mostly love it, because it normalizes his vile corruption and makes for good television. But there’s very little attendees could do or say at this point that can make up for the broader industry’s abject failure to meet the moment. The cost has simply been too high and the failure too great.
Give your money to worker-owned and independent media organizations (like Techdirt!) with a backbone.
CBS has announced that the now-Larry Ellison owned network will be hosting a lavish dinner this week praising Donald Trump and his (nonexistent) dedication to the First Amendment. The dinner will be hosted at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, which the State Department claimed in December 2025 was being renamed “The Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace.”
CBS management doesn’t care about any of that, of course, because it’s owned by billionaire right wing Trump ally, Larry Ellison. And Larry and David Ellison are desperate to have the government sign off on their job-destroying merger between Paramount and Warner Brothers. The Warner Brothers board is voting to approve the deal on the same day as the dinner.
Despite some pretense that the Trump DOJ is doing its due diligence to review the deal, there’s little real doubt that the feds will rubber stamp the transaction. The real question mark rests with a likely antitrust lawsuit from a coalition of state attorneys general to block the transaction.
“David Ellison…made a unexpected appearance at CinemaCon, the annual gathering of theater owners. He took the stage to reassure exhibitors they have nothing to fear, whether it be the new regime at Paramount, or his pending acquisition of Warner Bros.”
They of course have everything to fear. The massive $108 billion in debt from the Warner Brothers deal will inevitably result in mass layoffs, price hikes, and sagging product quality due to the need to cut corners to service the debt. This is before we even talk about the layoffs already happening at CBS.
It’s simply not up for debate: this happens absolutely every single time folks like the Ellisons delude themselves into thinking mass consolidation does anything useful outside of generate tax breaks, drive short-lived stock boosts, and let guys like David Ellison pretend they’re “savvy dealmakers.”
Pre-merger promises about release windows (or anything else) are absolutely meaningless. But with just a handful of people at the top financially disincentivized from learning anything from history (including the three previous disastrous Warner Brothers mergers), the dysfunction just repeats itself indefinitely. We’ve seen merger dysfunction and chaos before, but this one has the potential to outdo them all.
The National Guard soldiers in desert camo piled out of unmarked vans in East Los Angeles last June, cordoning off East Sixth Street, a residential street lined with single family houses, and blocking a nearby road leading to an elementary school.
A squad of federal agents moved in flinging flash-bang grenades — explosives designed to disorient — into a small home before storming inside. They’d come for Alejandro Orellana, a Marine Corps veteran and UPS employee accused of being a central figure in a secret confederacy of insurrectionists. A news video had shown the 30-year-old distributing water, food and face shields to people protesting the Trump administration’s immigration roundups in Los Angeles.
Bill Essayli, a former state legislator who leads the federal prosecutor’s office in Los Angeles, joined the raid along with a Fox News crew.
With cameras rolling, Orellana, his parents and brothers were led out in handcuffs as agents searched their home.
On Fox News, Essayli, sporting a blue FBI windbreaker, hyped the arrest of Orellana, a quiet, wiry man with a long mane of coal-black hair. “It appears they’re well-orchestrated and coordinated, and well-funded,” he said. “And today was one of the first arrests — first key arrests — that we did.”
Essayli would charge Orellana with conspiracy — under a federal statute typically used to build cases against drug traffickers and organized crime — and with aiding and abetting civil disorder.
Within weeks, the prosecutor’s marquee case would quietly fall apart. Agents who searched Orellana’s house found little that could be considered incriminating, and prosecutors never charged anyone else as part of the supposed conspiracy. By late July, they moved to have the charges dismissed.
It wouldn’t be the only such case.
Over the past 10 months, President Donald Trump’s administration has made much of its success in sweeping through U.S. cities, capturing unauthorized immigrants and arresting people who publicly oppose the operations, routinely accusing dissenters of being domestic terrorists or extremists. Federal agents have arrested hundreds of U.S. citizens like Orellana — including protesters, activists observing the immigration enforcement operations, bystanders and, in some cases, the family members of people targeted for deportation.
Less clear to the public is what has happened to those charged.
To find out, ProPublica and FRONTLINE combed through social media, court records and news stories. Reporters identified more than 300 protesters and bystanders who were arrested by federal agents during immigration sweeps and were accused of crimes such as assaulting or interfering with law enforcement.
But over and over those accusations fell apart under scrutiny. Our reviews of court files found that statements made by the arresting officers were repeatedly debunked by video footage. In more than a third of the cases, prosecutors quickly dismissed charges that couldn’t be substantiated, refused to file charges at all, or lost at trial. The tally of cases that end this way will likely climb as many of the arrests remain unresolved.
“What’s happening now is not comparable to anything that’s happened in the past,” said
Cuauhtémoc Ortega, the chief federal defender for the Central District of California, who personally represented Orellana and other protesters. “We’ve never had a situation where it seems like you arrest first and then try to justify the reasons for the arrests later.”
The Department of Homeland Security, which includes Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the arrests and declined to answer detailed questions from ProPublica and FRONTLINE.
But in a statement in response to an earlier story, DHS said, “The First Amendment protects speech and peaceful assembly — not rioting. DHS is taking reasonable and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law and protect our officers.”
Watch FRONTLINE and ProPublica’s Documentary: “Caught in the Crackdown”
Given the unprecedented nature of the urban sweeps, it is difficult to compare the rate of failed cases to another time period or context. But current and former federal prosecutors and other legal experts said having that number of arrests come to nothing is particularly striking in the federal system, where U.S. attorneys usually secure convictions or guilty pleas in more than 90% of the cases they bring; only 8.2% of federal criminal cases were dismissed in 2022, according to data compiled by that court system.
The failures highlight the challenges of sending large numbers of federal agents into major cities to conduct roving immigration sweeps: They aren’t accustomed to dealing with crowds of angry protesters
Border Patrol agents are typically stationed at the border where their day-to-day work entails scooping up people who have crossed illegally. ICE agents, who often work in urban settings, had little prior experience handling hostile crowds. And FBI agents, who have aided in the immigration sweeps, would normally spend months or years painstakingly amassing evidence before making arrests.
That lack of experience in street policing and crowd control, coupled with the Trump administration’s demand for huge numbers of deportations, led agents to make a wave of unjustified arrests, legal experts say.
To be sure, protesters have often engaged in hostile behavior, hurling expletives, getting in agents’ faces and occasionally becoming violent. A woman in Minnesota is accused of biting off part of an agent’s finger during a scuffle after the killing of Alex Pretti in late January; in Los Angeles, an officer outside an immigration detention facility suffered a dislocated finger after a protester allegedly grabbed his bulletproof vest and shook him.
“The agents, they don’t know how to operate in these situations,” said Christy Lopez, a former Justice Department attorney who spent years investigating misconduct by law enforcement. Their behavior, she said, “is on par with the worst protest policing and just law enforcement that I’ve seen from any department, even in their worst days.
In its earlier statement, DHS said that “rioters and terrorists” have repeatedly attacked immigration agents, but ICE and Customs and Border Protection personnel “are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and themselves.”
The arrests are not without consequence. Even unsuccessful prosecutions can be costly and emotionally taxing for defendants, said Jared Fishman, a former career prosecutor in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. The aggressive tactics of the agents and the gleeful social media posts by DHS accusing protesters of serious crimes, Fishman said, affect people’s willingness to publicly challenge the mass deportation policies.
“If the goal of the Trump administration is to keep people out of the streets, then it doesn’t matter if the people are getting convicted,” said Fishman, now the executive director of the Justice Innovation Lab, a nonprofit focused on creating a more equitable and effective justice system. “I’m sure it’s having a chilling effect.”
After reviewing data and some court records for ProPublica and FRONTLINE, Fishman said, “The numbers seem to indicate a pattern and practice of illegal arrests.”
“We Must Identify Him”
The crackdown on protesters began in June of 2025, when the Department of Homeland Security launched its wave of major immigration sweeps in Southern California. The campaign was led by Gregory Bovino, a veteran Border Patrol chief who normally presided over a remote stretch of sand and scrub deep in the state’s Imperial Valley.
Bovino from the start encouraged his agents to shut down or arrest protesters.
“Arrest as many people that touch you as you want to. Those are the general orders, all the way to the top,” Bovino told his officers, footage from an agent’s body-worn camera shows. “Everybody fucking gets it if they touch you.”
He went on to remind them that their actions should be “legal, ethical, moral” while encouraging them to use so-called less lethal weapons on protesters.
“We’re gonna look at shipping tractor trailers full of that shit in here,” he said.
Bovino’s aggressive tactics sparked intense opposition from Angelenos, including those gathered in the streets in front of the sprawling federal office complex in downtown Los Angeles on June 9.
That day Orellana drove his Ford F-150 pickup truck loaded with bottled water, snacks and cardboard boxes containing Uvex brand face shields — clear plastic masks designed to protect industrial workers from flying debris and chemical splashes — to the protest.
When he arrived in front of the federal building, another person hopped into the bed and began handing out the supplies to protesters gathered outside the entrance.
Orellana told FRONTLINE and ProPublica that he decided to help distribute the supplies after watching federal agents fire tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds at an earlier demonstration.
“A bunch of us took it upon ourselves to, you know, go downtown and give out these resources — the food, water and of course the PPE,” he said, referring to personal protective equipment.
Video and photos quickly made their way onto social media. An X user with more than 30,000 followers posted a photo of Orellana. “A photograph of the man delivering boxes of gas masks to the rioters has emerged,” wrote the poster. “We must identify him, so we can track down who is funding this coordinated attack.”
From there the thread was picked up by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has a vast audience on the platform. Jones, who repeatedly claimed that financier and philanthropist George Soros was funding the protests, eventually named Orellana as the driver of the pickup. More than two million people saw the post.
Within 48 hours, the soldiers and federal agents arrived to arrest Orellana.
Over the next five months, they arrested more than one hundred U.S. citizens in Los Angeles and other cities in Southern California — most of them demonstrators — charging them with assaulting federal law enforcement personnel or interfering with agents’ activities. Others were accused of damaging government property. At least 16, like Orellana, were charged with conspiracy, which can carry a sentence of up to six years in prison.
ProPublica and FRONTLINE found that more than a third of those cases crumbled. In eight instances, juries acquitted defendants at trial. But more frequently, prosecutors dropped charges when the claims made by immigration officers and agents didn’t match video evidence or other inconsistencies emerged. In several cases, prosecutors declined to file charges at all.
There have been some successful prosecutions: 32 of the 116 people whose arrests in California we reviewed have been convicted, many pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges. And in late February, jurors convicted two activists on stalking charges after they livestreamed themselves following an immigration agent to his home; the pair were acquitted of conspiracy.
Today 38 cases are still pending.
Essayli has stated on social media that his office brought more than 100 cases and secured convictions in more than half of them. When asked about the discrepancy between his claims and the data compiled by ProPublica and FRONTLINE, he declined to comment.
“The U.S. attorney’s office does not lose cases because they’re bad lawyers,” said Carley Palmer, who spent eight years as a federal prosecutor in the office Essayli now runs. “They are excellent trial attorneys. So if they’re losing a case, it may mean that the evidence isn’t there, or it may mean that the community doesn’t believe it should be a federal crime.”
Palmer, who is now in private practice, said the glut of protest and low-level criminal immigration cases have shifted resources away from the complex prosecutions the DOJ is uniquely equipped to handle: environmental crimes, public corruption, financial fraud, cyberscams, civil rights violations.
Essayli declined to be interviewed for this story or an accompanying FRONTLINE documentary set to air Tuesday. He was appointed by the Trump administration in early 2025, but he has never been confirmed by the Senate, raising ongoing questions about the legality of his role as top prosecutor for the region. His office did not respond to detailed questions sent by email.
Like Orellana, Julian Pecora Cardenas, 31, was charged with conspiracy last summer after following a convoy of federal agents in his car.
On the morning of July 5, Pecora Cardenas followed vans full of Border Patrol agents after they left a Coast Guard station in San Pedro, south of Los Angeles, livestreaming their movements on Instagram. “It’s every citizen’s duty to conduct oversight of their government,” he said. “I was within my First Amendment rights.”
After roughly 30 minutes, the agents stopped, pulled Pecora Cardenas from his Hyundai and slammed him to the pavement. “I honestly thought it was going to be like a George Floyd moment,” Pecora Cardenas recalled in an interview, alleging that multiple agents pinned him to the asphalt with their knees. He suffered a concussion, needed stitches over his left eye and wore an orthopedic collar to stabilize his injured neck.
Federal prosecutors charged Pecora Cardenas and another activist with conspiracy to impede the federal agents, saying that they “were illegally maneuvering their vehicles through traffic, stop lights, and stop signs to stay behind the agent’s vehicles,” that they tried to block the Border Patrol vehicles, and that they created “hazardous conditions on the road.”
Pecora Cardenas’ own video of the day’s events told a different story. The footage, which ProPublica and FRONTLINE have reviewed, contradicts the claims that the men had interfered with the agents. Within days of seeing the images, Essayli’s office jettisoned the charges “in the interest of justice.”
Pecora Cardenas hasn’t tried to observe federal agents or participate in a protest since his arrest. “I don’t want to be assaulted again. I don’t want to wind up back in federal prison for something that I didn’t do.”
“They Were Just Randomly Grabbing People”
When Bovino, the Border Patrol chief, left California and took his forces to Illinois last fall, their focus on protesters intensified.
In roughly one month, federal agents arrested more than a hundred American citizens, many of them activists participating in demonstrations or documenting the movements of immigration agents as their convoys of rented SUVs rolled through the streets of Chicago and surrounding communities.
On the morning of Oct. 3, 2025, about two hundred demonstrators gathered near the ICE facility in Broadview, a small town in the western suburbs of Chicago. Tucked away in a quiet industrial park, the nondescript building had become the locus of ongoing protests since Bovino and his forces had arrived in Illinois.
Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, accompanied by a DHS video team, was on site that day wearing a baseball cap and a black ballistic vest.
Also present was Benny Johnson, a prominent podcaster and online influencer who is close to the Trump administration. Johnson, who had brought his own camera crew to shoot video for his YouTube channel and other social media accounts, was effectively embedded with Noem, Bovino and the immigration agents.
At about 9 a.m., Bovino and a phalanx of heavily armed agents in combat gear began striding down Harvard Street toward the protesters. “Walk slowly,” Bovino told his men.
Without a bullhorn or any sort of amplification, Bovino informed the crowd that they were being dispersed. Then he and his colleagues began shoving people to the ground and arresting them.
In a matter of minutes, a dozen protesters had been handcuffed. Three arrestees interviewed by ProPublica and FRONTLINE told us they were confused because they’d been standing in a “free speech zone” set up by state officials.
“I felt somebody grab my shoulder and pull me to the ground,” said Juan Muñoz, a business owner and elected leader in nearby Oak Park Township. “And once I fell onto my back, that’s when I saw it was Greg Bovino.”
Kyle Frankovich, a Harvard data scientist and Chicago resident, was also arrested. “They were just randomly grabbing people,” he recalled. “There was nowhere to go, people were falling all over the place, and several of the people they arrested simply had the misfortune of tripping over all of the other protesters” as federal agents surged into the crowd.
Frankovich said FBI agents who questioned him asked who had paid for him to participate in the demonstration and who “covered the transportation cost for you to be here today.”
Johnson’s video team and a DHS camera crew filmed the arrested protesters as they were lined up outside the ICE building, while Noem looked on. DHS posted photos of Frankovich in handcuffs on X and Facebook with the message, “We will NOT allow violent activist to lay hands on our law enforcement.”
Johnson, who has more than more than 4 million followers on X and more than 6 million subscribers on YouTube, posted a video on X panning across the arrested protesters and wrote: “I saw dozens of Democrat domestic terrorists arrested today for VIOLENT ASSAULT on federal law enforcement. Every activist here attacked ICE agents in broad daylight just for enforcing American law.” He made the same claim in a nearly 13-minute-long YouTube video.
Such social media content had become a central feature of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign. DHS, Border Patrol and a raft of allied social media influencers regularly produced slick videos showing agents in action: riding in helicopters, striding through city streets clutching rifles, breaking down doors, and apprehending immigrants and activists.
But on that day in Chicago, DHS had strayed far from the facts. And so had Johnson, a 38-year-old former journalist who turned to social media after being embroiled in plagiarism scandals at BuzzFeed and the Independent Journal Review.
After about eight hours in custody, Frankovich, Muñoz and nearly all the others were released without charges. In the end, only one person would be prosecuted.
Neither DHS nor Johnson have taken the posts down. Johnson did not respond to emailed requests for comment.
The lone person charged with a crime that day was Cole Sheridan, who was accused of attacking Bovino and sending him to the hospital with an injured groin muscle.
Sheridan spent three and a half days in jail — “probably the most unpleasant thing I’ve ever had to experience,” he said in an interview with FRONTLINE and ProPublica — before being released.
In court, a prosecutor said that Sheridan had thrown a punch at Bovino and pushed him, transcripts show.
The evidence presented by the Justice Department, though, was slim. Bovino didn’t wear a body camera, so prosecutors relied on video from the body camera of Border Patrol agent Jason Epperson. But it didn’t show Sheridan assaulting anyone — though he did call Bovino “a fucking idiot.” In statements to investigators, Bovino and Epperson had offered conflicting accounts of the encounter.
About a month after Sheridan was arrested, prosecutors moved to dismiss the case after a bystander video surfaced showing clearly that Sheridan hadn’t assaulted Bovino.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced something truly that bizarre and absurd as, like, seeing a law enforcement agent concoct a narrative to arrest me, to press charges against me,” said Sheridan, who describes himself as intensely private and was initially reluctant to talk publicly about his arrest. “That was extremely unnerving.”
He remains worried that he’ll be harassed or even physically attacked because of the inflammatory social media posts about him. “What a farce. Every element of it felt staged,” he said.
In a statement to ProPublica and FRONTLINE, Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros said, “Our willingness to be open-minded and dismiss cases — or not file charges in the first place — reflects our commitment to do the right thing even in those cases where a crime was committed and the conduct in question clearly falls outside any protected First Amendment activity.” He declined to comment directly on Sheridan’s case.
FRONTLINE and ProPublica showed video of Sheridan’s arrest to Lopez, the former Justice Department attorney. “It’s just a gross abuse of power,” she said. “And we’ve almost normalized that this is how federal law enforcement behaves now. They just arrest people.”
Of the 109 arrests that ProPublica and FRONTLINE documented in the Chicago area, federal prosecutors dropped charges in at least 75 cases.
Felony Charges Downgraded
When Bovino and his forces arrived in North Carolina last November, they were greeted by protesters opposed to the deportation sweeps, as they had been in previous cities.
Heather Morrow was one of them. She had joined a small group of demonstrators, chanting and banging on metal dishes outside an immigration facility in Charlotte when ICE officers confronted the group.
They handcuffed Morrow, 45, and another activist, stuffed them in the back of a federal vehicle and, according to Morrow, kept them there for hours before finally taking her to jail.
“I was so traumatized,” Morrow, a school bus driver and dog boarder, said in an interview. “I didn’t expect them to be so overly aggressive. I really showed up there expecting conversation, making them come to their senses.”
After a full day and night in custody, she was released to face federal felony assault charges. A Department of Justice press release accused her of attacking an ICE officer just as he showed up for his work shift, grabbing his shoulders and trying to jump on his back.
But a shaky phone video circulating on social media showed what appeared to be a very different scene. In it, an officer comes from behind and abruptly tackles Morrow to the pavement. The video doesn’t show her assaulting anyone.
When prosecutors saw the video, they dumped the felony charges. But they promptly filed a new misdemeanor case against Morrow and the other activist, alleging the pair impeded ICE officers and failed to follow their orders. It took a month for Morrow to get her phone back from federal custody, while her other confiscated possessions, including her keys, have been lost, Morrow’s attorney said. Because she’s on pretrial probation, the federal government has seized her passport. Morrow has pleaded not guilty, and her case is ongoing.
In Handcuffs and Intimidated
In early January, Bovino arrived in Minneapolis with his social media team. Within weeks, two activists — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — were shot and killed by immigration agents. The Trump administration immediately portrayed Good as an extremist; Bovino claimed that Pretti was planning to kill federal personnel when he was shot to death.
The killings, which sparked national outcry, would prompt the administration to recalibrate. By Jan. 26, Bovino had been demoted and sent back to his home station in the California desert.
But immigration agents continued to roam the Twin Cities, and activists continued to get arrested.
Civil rights attorneys from around the country gathered in a Minneapolis conference room on Jan. 30 to discuss those arrests.
During a break for lunch, Jon Feinberg, president of the National Police Accountability Project, stepped out of the room and spoke to reporters. “To be charged with a federal crime is something that is life-altering,” said Feinberg, who is based in Philadelphia. “The consequences of being accused and possibly convicted of a federal offense are devastating, especially when people have not engaged in criminal conduct from any reasonable person’s perspective.”
ProPublica and FRONTLINE have identified nearly 80 arrests stemming from the Minnesota immigration sweeps. Most of the cases are still ongoing, though a handful have been dismissed.
Daniel Rosen, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, did not respond to requests for comment.
One of those arrested was Rebecca Ringstrom, who lives in Blaine, a quiet suburb north of Minneapolis.
Ringstrom, 42, is a member of an activist group that tracks immigration agents as they move around Blaine. “There was a vehicle with four agents inside that I could see. All four were in tactical gear,” she said in an interview with ProPublica and FRONTLINE. “I was able to look at the plate and see that it was a confirmed ICE vehicle.”
Behind the wheel of her Kia, she began following them; Ringstrom insists her driving was safe and lawful. But in a matter of minutes, she’d been arrested and accused of interfering with federal law enforcement.
Ringstrom said an agent at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, where she was briefly held after her arrest, said he wished he’d arrested her — because he would’ve made the experience more unpleasant and violent. “There was no reason to say that. I’m already here. I’m in handcuffs. It’s just a way to intimidate,” she recalled.
She was charged with interfering with a federal agent and issued a notice of violation — essentially a ticket — for the misdemeanor offense. Since then, Ringstrom has lined up a pro bono lawyer, but she has also lost her job, “likely due to the ongoing coverage” of her arrest.
She is scheduled to make her first court appearance later this month.
