Trump DOJ Appears Ready to Drop Case Against GOP Rep

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Sword for Foes and Shield for Friends

It appears the Trump DOJ is 86-ing the campaign finance investigation into Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), Phil Williams of Newschannel 5 in Nashville reports.

There were already signs that the investigation, which began before Trump was re-elected, had stalled out since his second inauguration.

Then yesterday, Ogles notified the court that he was withdrawing his long-standing motions for the return of his phone and emails seized by the FBI because the Justice Department had agreed to give it back to him voluntarily without even examining it.

“In discussions with the Office of the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice, the Government has advised defense counsel that it will promptly return or destroy the property and information obtained pursuant to the respective search warrants at issue,” Ogles’ attorneys said in the filing.

Ogles hailed the apparent end of the criminal probe.

“From the day the FBI showed up, I said this investigation should never have happened and that the Biden DOJ had no right to rummage through a sitting congressman’s legislative communications. Today, the Justice Department has effectively acknowledged I was right.”

Career prosecutors in Nashville withdrew from the case shortly after Trump re-took office, and the case was transferred to the Main Justice’s Public Integrity Section, which has since been decimated by the Trump II purges.

Ogles originally claimed that he’d personally loaned his 2022 congressional campaign $320,000. But in the wake of the fabulism and campaign finance fiasco surrounding the eventually expelled Rep. George Santos (R-NY), savvy investigative reporting from Newschannel 5’s Williams exposed a number of fabrications and exaggerations by Ogles and questioned whether Ogles had the financial resources to make such a loan, since his financial disclosure form didn’t even list a savings account.

Ogles later admitted the filing was in error and made an amended filing that reduced the personal loan amount to $20,000. The FBI executed a search warrant in the case in August 2024, seizing, among other things, Ogles’ cell phone. It also obtained a warrant to seize his personal email records from Google.

As is not uncommon in criminal investigations of sitting members of Congress, Ogles objected on constitutional grounds to the seizure of his phone and emails. The Justice Department agreed not to examine the seized material until a court ruling on the matter. The case has since languished, without a ruling from the court. The new agreement between Ogles and the Trump DOJ means the FBI will never review the materials, a sign the criminal case has or is about to be abandoned.

“This is a complete win for the responsible exercise of prosecutorial discretion and respect for the Constitution’s Separation of Powers,” Ogles said in his statement.

A separate but related House Ethics Committee investigation has also languished since January 2025.

Quote of the Day

“We can survive a lot: bad policies, funky elections. There’s a bunch of stuff we can overcome. We can’t overcome the politicization of the criminal justice system — the awesome power of the state. You can’t have a situation in which whoever is in charge of the government starts using that to go after their political enemies or reward their friends.”—former President Barack Obama, in an interview with Stephen Colbert at the soon-to-open Obama Presidential Center in Chicago

Judge Refers DOJ Attorney for Possible Discipline

U.S. District Judge Melissa R. DuBose of Rhode Island said Tuesday she is referring a Trump DOJ attorney for possible discipline after he withheld from her the existence of an overseas arrest warrant for murder charges against a ICE detainee whom she ordered released.

Kevin M. Bolan, the head of the civil division of the Rhode Island U.S. Attorney’s Office, apologized to DuBose in court on Monday for failing to divulge the information to the court, saying ICE instructed him not to reveal it.

“It’s the candor and the lack of candor to this court that has to be addressed,” DuBose said Tuesday in making the referral of Bolan. “And it has to be fully investigated, so we don’t have anything like this happen again.”

DuBose was especially incensed because the Trump DHS issued a press release (the link is still live) titled “Activist Biden Judge Releases Violent Criminal Illegal Alien Wanted for Murder” even though the administration failed to inform her of the outstanding warrant.

Mass Deportation Watch

• Illinois: State police said Tuesday that they’re investigating the fatal ICE shooting of Mexican national Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez last summer in suburban Chicago.
• Minnesota: The Department of Veterans Affairs conducted internal investigations into employees who attended the vigil for VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by federal immigration officers.
• Nationwide: The Trump administration is abandoning the accelerated training program it used to quickly deploy the thousands of recently hired ICE agents and will instead provide them with additional instruction in the field, Politico reports.

2026 Ephemera

• OH-09: Former ICE official Madison Sheahan lost the GOP primary to challenge Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D).
• OH-Guv: Vivek Ramaswamy won the GOP nomination for governor.
• MI: Democrats held onto a narrow majority in the state Senate on Tuesday by winning a special election in a closely divided district.
• IN: In the Republican primary, President Trump succeeded in ousting five incumbent GOP state senators who voted against his mid-decade redistricting proposal.

Lawless Boat Strike Campaign: 190 Deaths

Three people were killed Tuesday in a U.S. strike against an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific, bringing the death toll to at least 190 in the lawless high-seas campaign.

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