Accountability Blitz

Friday was a blitz of important news on the accountability front — an ICE agent arrested on state charges, a federal judge demanding reasons from the Trump DOJ for dismissing the Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy indictments, another federal judge ordering Trump’s name removed from the Kennedy Center — but the biggest development came in the previously closed case of Trump v. Internal Revenue Service.

In a strikingly worded order, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams of Miami demanded that Trump and the other Trump-related plaintiffs in the case respond to the allegations of collusion raised by 35 former federal judges about the settlement of the case, which purported to create the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund and to grant Trump et al. a sweeping release from as much as $100 million in back-tax liabilities.

Judge Williams’ decision to entertain whether she and her court were used to, among other things, launder public funds for use by Trump to award his allies sets up a categorically different kind of clash between the federal judiciary and rogue executive than we’ve seen thus far in Trump II.

This is largely uncharted territory. We have not encountered before a president audacious enough to sue his own government and corrupt enough to have his thumb on every lever of government such that he is essentially settling with himself. It is the lack of an adverse party in the case that caught Judge Williams’ attention in the first place, but the administration raced to settle the case before she could weigh in.

Now she’s taking another stab at it, giving Trump et al. until June 12 to respond to these three allegations:

(1) the charges of collusion and whether the Parties are truly adverse;

(2) the assertion that the dismissal in this case was premised on deception by the Parties; and

(3) the question of whether the case should be reopened because the Court was the “victim of a fraud.”

Williams seemed none too happy when she dismissed the case last month and even less pleased with what she has since learned. In three bristling footnotes to Friday’s order, she called out DOJ for not having ever formally entered an appearance in the case, for the strange settlement “addendum” signed only by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that potentially violates department policy on settlements, and for not defending the IRS against Trump’s claims with the vigor it has in other similar litigation.

But at least for now, it’s not the Justice Department that will get to respond to Williams because it never entered an appearance in the case. It will fall to Trump to respond.

Among the things to watch for: Trump immediately appealing to the 11th Circuit to avoid responding to Williams; the DOJ seeking to intervene so that it may respond (a tricky strategic decision for it to make at this stage); and the political pressure building from Senate Republicans opposed to the slush fund to drop it so that even more immigration enforcement funding can pass.

New Details on the Slush Fund Scheme

• Trump personal lawyer Boris Epshteyn has emerged as a key figure in the scheme to settle Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS and establish the “anti-weaponization” slush fund, the NYT reports: “Mr. Epshteyn played a significant role in moving forward the deal to end the suit, coordinating and holding discussions with all of the sides involved: Mr. Trump, the president’s personal lawyers and Justice Department officials, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.”
• On the DOJ side, very few lawyers were reportedly involved, but among them was acting Blanche’s top aide, Trent McCotter, and the Office of Legal Counsel led by T. Elliot Gaiser, which blessed the scheme, according to multiple reports.
• As many as 12 Senate Republicans have balked at the scheme, and Trump’s top aides have “discussed whether he should kill” the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” in order to get the reconciliation bill on immigration enforcement passed, the WSJ reported.

Quote of the Day

“I mean, it’s deeply offensive to me that you could have a fund that could even possibly compensate people who assaulted police officers or vandalized the Capitol on January 6th.”—former Vice President Mike Pence, who made a harrowing escape from the mob at the Capitol

Jan. 6 Never Ends

• U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta of D.C. ordered the Trump DOJ on Friday to provide a fuller justification for seeking to dismiss the indictments of Oath Keepers convicted of seditious conspiracy, including founder Stewart Rhodes. In additions to commutations and pardons of Jan. 6 defendants by the president, the Trump DOJ has moved to wipe the historical record clean of the indictments and convictions arising from the attack on the Capitol.
• Tina Peters is scheduled to be released from state custody in Colorado today following the commutation of her sentence by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis.

The Retribution: Vindictive Prosecutions

• James Comey: Matthew Petracca, the rookie federal prosecutor who brought the “86” case against former FBI Director James Comey, has dropped off the prosecution team and withdrawn from other criminal cases he was handling in the Eastern District of North Carolina. “Petracca had contemplated leaving the Justice Department altogether, according to two people familiar with the matter, but instead remained a Justice Department employee after taking a week off,” NBC News reported.
• SPLC: The Trump DOJ’s retributive prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center came after an earlier IRS review of the civil rights organization’s paid informant program in 2019-20 concluded that it was legal, CBS News reports: “The tax portion of the investigation, which has not been previously reported, was initiated during President Trump’s first term as an expansion of an FBI probe into whether that same former chief financial officer may have embezzled money from the SPLC, the sources said.”

ICE Agent Arrested on State Charges

Christian Castro, the ICE agent rung up on state charges of shooting an undocumented immigrant through the closed door of their residence during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis and then lying about it, was arrested in South Texas by Texas Rangers on a nationwide warrant. The arrest was made in the presence of Minnesota law enforcement officers and agents from the DHS Inspector General’s Office.

In announcing the arrest, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said her office has more than 30 other open investigations of federal immigration agents who took part in Operation Metro Surge, including the fatal shootings of American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the NYT reported.

Judge Orders ‘Trump’ Off Kennedy Center

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper of D.C. ruled Friday that tacking Donald Trump’s name on to the Kennedy Center, the official memorial for President John F. Kennedy, violated federal law.

“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” Cooper wrote in giving the administration two weeks to remove Trump’s name.

The adverse ruling sent Trump on long meandering weekend tirades against the judge and the judge’s wife.

2026 Midterms Watch: Maine Senate

The wife of Graham Platner, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination to challenge Sen. Susan Collins (R), disclosed to his campaign last August that she had discovered on his phone in the spring of 2025 sexually explicit texts with other women, the WSJ reported.

The campaign confirmed that Platner had engaged in the sexting with other women and posted a video of his wife, Amy Gertner, responding to the news reports.

Genevieve McDonald, the Platner campaign’s political director until she resigned in October, was apparently the staffer in whom Gertner had confided. McDonald shared with the NYT a screenshot of a text message exchange she had with Gertner at the time.

A current Platner campaign official said that Platner had been communicating with up to six women but that the conduct had stopped before his Senate campaign launch, according to the NYT.

Two More Lawless Boat Strikes

A total of four U.S. strikes last week against alleged drug-smuggling boats brought the death toll in the lawless high seas campaign to more than 200:

• Friday: Three men were killed in a strike in the eastern Pacific.
• Saturday: Three more men were killed in a strike in the eastern Pacific

Ebola Watch

Jonathan Cohn in the Bulwark: Ebola Veterans Are Aghast at Trump’s Plan for the Outbreak

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Fund Halted Until at Least June 12

In a ruling just out this morning, a federal judge has temporarily blocked the creation of the $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that emerged as part of the purported settlement of President Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia paused any action on the fund while the case proceeds on an expedited briefing schedule that she issued simultaneously. She set a June 12 hearing for arguments on issuing an injunction in the case brought by a group that includes a former Jan. 6 prosecutor, Common Cause, and the National Abortion Federation.

In pressing pause, Brinkema delineated in her order exactly what she doesn’t want happening between now and next month’s hearing. She barred the administration “from taking any further action pursuant to the creation or operation of the Anti Weaponization Fund, which includes the transferring of money to the Fund; the consideration of any claims submitted to the Fund; and the disbursing of any funds from the Fund.”

In a footnote to her order, the judge said that it’s “important that the status quo be maintained” and cited previous claims by the plaintiffs that the Trump DOJ refused to commit to not rushing ahead with the fund:

… especially as plaintiffs allege in their Expedited Motion that defense counsel “was unable … to provide assurances of how long [the] status quo would last” and declined plaintiffs’ “request that the government commit to not transferring money to the Fund or processing or paying claims until at least June 19 to allow for less compressed briefing in this case.”

The case before Brinkema is one of a handful of early legal challenges to the corruptly conceived “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” A separate line of attack on the underlying IRS settlement with Trump emerged this week when a group of former federal judges asked the trial judge to reopen the case she had already dismissed.

Trump DOJ: We’re Targeting ANOTHER Trump Foe, Not E. Jean Carroll!

Quite of bit of conflicting reporting since CNN first scooped Wednesday that the Trump DOJ is investigating Trump sexual abuse victim E. Jean Carroll over bogus allegations of perjury in her successful civil lawsuit against him.

In an unusual move, Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros issued an outright denial that his office has opened an investigation into Carroll: “In light of wide-spread reporting and intense media and public interest into the E. Jean Carroll matter in New York, the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office can confirm that it has not opened — and has never opened — a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll. Any claim to the contrary is categorically false.”

That lines up with other reporting Thursday that the investigation in question is looking into Reid Hoffman and his nonprofit American Future Republic, which helped to fund some of Carroll’s legal costs in pursuing Trump. Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, has been a major donor to Democrats and progressive causes.

The probe is reportedly looking at alleged money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction at American Future Republic over its payments for Carroll, CBS News and Reuters reported.

It doesn’t appear this is a case of CNN getting it wrong. Some of the conflicting reporting come from sources whose accounts have changes, as in the case of Reuters: “The source had told Reuters on Wednesday that the investigation was examining ​whether Carroll had committed perjury regarding the funding of her suit in a 2022 deposition. But the person said on Thursday that ​while the probe is examining that funding, Carroll is not a focus of the investigation.”

Still, most of the reporting suggests it’s not an either/or situation but rather the Hoffman probe seems by design likely to sweep in the bogus perjury allegations against Carroll. As the WaPo put it: “The investigation, which is expected to look at statements Carroll made during a deposition, could also morph into a criminal perjury probe against the 82-year-old columnist.”

A lot of dancing on the heads of pins going on here.

Jan. 6 Never Ends: Wisconsin Edition

A revisionist Trump DOJ “investigation” of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin has been percolating in the background for a few weeks now. Like similar investigations in Georgia and Arizona, the focus is not statewide but on Democratic big cities, in this case Milwaukee.

The timing of the investigations and the focus on minority-heavy urban areas suggest a dual purpose of advancing President Trump’s Big Lie and muddying the waters ahead of the 2026 midterms.

The WaPo rounds up some of the recent reporting on FBI interviews in the state:

FBI agents recently showed up at the homes of former election officials in Milwaukee, according to two people familiar with their activities who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. The visits came after agents spoke to the state’s deputy elections director, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This week, agents were planning to interview police officers who escorted the election official responsible for delivering the city’s 2020 results to a Milwaukee County election office, according to WISN-TV.

What is particularly concerning in Milwaukee is the prospect of the FBI seizing ballots like it did in Atlanta, especially absentee ballots (emphasis mine): “The confiscation of tens of thousands of absentee ballots from Wisconsin’s largest city would set off alarms because Milwaukee maintains its absentee ballots in a way that could allow agents to determine who voters selected — undermining the secrecy of their ballots.”

One irony of of this is that typically Milwaukee County would have destroyed its 2020 ballots long ago but has refrained from doing so due to litigation over the results.

Unitary Executive Extremism

In former federal prosecutor Maurene Comey’s wrongful termination lawsuit against the Trump DOJ, the administration argued in court yesterday that the president has sweeping powers to remove career civil service employees “even if there were political motivations.”

It led to this exchange, reported by Politico:

U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman pressed [DOJ lawyer] Lesperance on whether there are any limits to the president’s Article II powers. Could the president, for example, decide to fire people in order to achieve an “all-white executive branch? Or all-black?” he asked.

Lesperance stammered in response, finally saying, “I can’t answer on behalf of the government.”

Furman replied: “You’re here representing the government.”

Comey’s lawsuit is an important test case of whether wrongfully purged federal civil service employees can challenge their terminations in federal court or must go through the old civil service appeal process that has since been rigged by the Trump administration.

ICE v. Its Opponents

• The Spokane Three: A federal jury convicted three ICE protesters of conspiracy after an eight-day trial in a case that prompted the resignation of the acting U.S. attorney.
• Online commenters: D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has sent grand jury subpoenas to Reddit and X seeking the names, addresses, and banking information of commenters critical of the administration’s mass deportation policy, Bloomberg reports.

Boat Strike Death Toll Climbs to 199

The death toll in the Trump administration’s lawless high-seas campaign against alleged drug-smuggling boats has now reached 199, after factoring at least 22 people who survived an initial strike only to be hit again or left to die at sea, the AP reports.

Quote of the Day

“West Point cadets are already, by definition, smart, tough and patriotic. They are not snowflakes who will somehow be harmed by learning about controversial issues or competing viewpoints. They will not somehow be weakened in their future defense of our country if their classroom discussions are robust and open.”—U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel, blocking one of the Trump administration’s most heavy-handed assaults on academic freedom

Preach, Brother

G. Elliott Morris, on why so much of the analysis of close elections is basically useless: “Close elections are what social scientists call overdetermined — that is, the product of too many factors to decipher what dominated. This means they are also underpowered as causal evidence; when everything was enough to cause the loss, nothing is uniquely to blame for it. The election just doesn’t carry enough information to tell you which factor was the factor.”

As If On Cue

After my extended item yesterday about the rising threat of Russia attacking NATO territory, a Russian drone crashed into an apartment building in NATO-member Romania. Two people were wounded in the incident after Romania jet fighters attempted to intercept the drone.

“It was the first known time that a Russian drone had caused damage and injuries in a major urban area on the territory of the Western military alliance,” the New York Times reports.

The drone does not appear from early reports to have fired munitions at the building in the city of Galati but instead literally crashed into the roof of the building. It’s not clear yet whether the incident was a deliberate provocation or an inadvertent spillover of the war from across the nearby Ukrainian border.

A senior Western military official told the NYT the cause of incident was “probably some combination of careless behavior by the Russian military and that the drone may have been jammed off course.”

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