The Retribution: Mar-a-Lago Edition?

This gets a little convoluted, but it’s potentially quite important so stick with me for a moment here.

Bloomberg News has sleuthed out a federal grand jury in Florida that could be another thread of President Trump’s wide-ranging investigate the investigators retribution scheme.

The news that a grand jury is set to probe a bogus Democratic-led “grand conspiracy” against Trump was divulged by Trump ally Mike Davis — the rabble-rousing conservative legal activist who briefly clerked for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch — during an appearance last week on the Charlie Kirk Show:

Asked by the host about next steps for an investigation into a “grand conspiracy” against Trump, Davis replied that US Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones — whom he described as “my buddy” — had received court approval for a grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida, that “should be fully up and running by January.”

Davis said that the court order he was referring to was a “public document.”

Those comments didn’t get much attention until Davis posted them on X yesterday. That appears to have prompted Bloomberg to go search for the public document Davis referenced.

Bloomberg hit pay dirt with a court order by U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga, the chief judge of Southern District of Florida, that was filed on Sept. 26. On a motion from the Justice Department, she ordered that two grand juries be empaneled beginning on Jan. 12, 2026, one in Ft. Lauderdale and the other in Ft. Pierce. As Davis put it in his X post: “We need a special grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida. That’s ground zero for the Mar-a-Lago raid.”

Davis declined to comment to Bloomberg, but in his Oct. 17 appearance on the Charlie Kirk Show, Davis warned “lawfare Democrats” that it was time to “lawyer up”:

After discussing the grand jury order, Davis spoke about the need for an investigation into whether a range of former public officials from the Biden and Obama administrations had conspired to violate Trump’s rights.

“I would say to these lawfare Democrats who waged this unprecedented, Republic-ending Russian collusion hoax conspiracy against President Trump, his top aides and his supporters over the last eight years, I would say to those lawfare Democrats to lawyer up,” Davis said.

While the court order Bloomberg found syncs up with what Davis claimed publicly, a lot remains murky and … odd, to say the least.

It’s not clear from the court order or any other publicly available information what the Ft. Pierce grand jury will be investigating. If it is slated to investigate some MAGA fever dream of a “grand conspiracy” against President Trump, it’s not evident what the precise flavor of this particular conspiracizing is, although the fact that it’s in the same division as the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case might provide a clue. It’s also not immediately apparent why the Justice Department would need such a long lead time before the grand jury begins its work in January.

But most of all, it’s highly unusual for someone like Mike Davis to have information about what a yet-to-be empaneled federal grand jury is up to, including who it will target, even if he is good buddies with the U.S. attorney. Or at least it would have been extraordinarily unusual before the Justice Department began being run out of the Trump II White House.

Bloomberg puts the nascent Florida grand jury in the broader context of its own prior reporting on another federal grand jury investigation of the investigators that Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly ordered over the summer after getting a criminal referral from DNI Tulsi Gabbard with claims of “a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government” against Trump.

“President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump,” DNI said in a July press release. That prompted a rare public rebuke at the time from an Obama spokesperson.

Davis’ use of “lawfare” might be telling. If the earlier grand jury was being used to target the intel side of the purported Deep State conspiracy against Trump, it’s plausible that the Ft. Pierce grand jury could be the companion vehicle for retribution against prosecutors and investigators. But we – or at least those of us not named Mike Davis – don’t really know.

Last week, the day before Davis’ remarks, Trump himself stood in the Oval Office next to Bondi, deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel and called for them to investigate former Special Counsel Jack Smith, former deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.

“It’s time to drag every name into the light. Every last one will face justice,” Davis said on X.

The Retribution: IWWG Edition

A group of former intelligence, law enforcement and State Department officials warned that the Trump administration’s newly revealed Interagency Weaponization Working Group threatens to become “an American KGB,” Jeff Stein reports.

The Corruption: $230M Edition

President Trump has been pressing claims against the U.S. government since before he was re-elected, seeking compensation for the investigations and prosecutions he faced from the Justice Department. Now those claims — totaling some $230 million — could be paid to him by his own Justice Department, where he installed his personal lawyers as top officials.

Even Trump — not known to be sensitive to appearances — recognized the conflict of interest: “I’m the one that makes the decision and that decision would have to go across my desk and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.”

The Destruction: Literally

With new photographs emerging, it became abundantly clear yesterday that President Trump has ordered the demolition of the entire East Wing of the White House to make room for construction of his ill-fitting, gaudy ballroom.

“They’re wrecking it,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist and professor emeritus at Towson University told the WaPo. “And these are changes that can’t be undone. They’re destroying that history forever.”

The Latest on Venezuela

• New Yorker: The Real Target of Trump’s War on Drug Boats
• WaPo: Trump beats the drums of war for direct action in Venezuela
• NYT: Prosecutors in Ecuador decided not to charge a man who survived a U.S. strike in the Caribbean and have already released him.

Ingrassia Is Out

After some initial confusion over whether U.S. Special Counsel-nominee Paul Ingrassia was cancelling his appearance at his confirmation hearing tomorrow or outright withdrawing his nomination, the White House confirmed it was yanking him entirely in the wake of his I-have-a-bit-of-a-Nazi-streak text.

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Unbelievable

Acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan initiated a Signal chat two weekends ago with Lawfare reporter Anna Bower in which the newly-appointed federal prosecutor tiptoed to the verge of revealing grand jury information in the Letitia James case.

After Bower started reporting out the Signal exchange, including by calling Main Justice, Halligan sent Bower a final message late yesterday, more than a week after starting the chat: “By the way – everything I ever sent you is off record. You’re not a journalist so it’s weird saying that but just letting you know.”

The entire episode is madness. Halligan — who has no prior experience as a prosecutor — comes off as even less sophisticated than expected. She also seems peevish, self-consciousness, and in utterly over her head, in every possible way. You can read the entire exchange here.

Ironically, Halligan’s prosecution of former FBI Director Jim Comey is, in part, about Comey’s alleged contacts with the media, in his case through intermediaries. No intermediary here! Just Halligan herself recklessly bumping up against criminal case particulars with a reporter.

Bower recounted the whole crazy episode last evening:

The Retribution: Jim Comey Edition

Comey has filed the first two major challenges to his politicized indictment. The former FBI director is trying to get the indictment dismissed with prejudice (meaning it cannot be refiled by the government) on two primary grounds:

• that Halligan wasn’t properly appointed as U.S. attorney. The filing happened to come the same day that the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals seemed quite skeptical of the appointment of Alina Habba as U.S. attorney for New Jersey after similarly questionable machinations designed to bypass Senate confirmation and local federal judges.
• that the prosecution is vindictive and selective. Comey filed a 60-page exhibit containing an exhaustive list of Trump’s rhetorical attacks on him

Both of Comey’s motions were well-written, tightly structured, and compelling. But more importantly, taken together they mount the first wholesale challenge to President Trump’s use of the Justice Department to conduct reprisals by prosecution. Some of the arguments are designed to appeal to conservative justices on the Supreme Court, and others are designed to appeal to the rule of law and long-standing DOJ traditions and norms. The effect, undoubtedly intended, is to make a Comey victory here have implications beyond this particular political prosecution.

Meanwhile, in a bit of gamesmanship, prosecutors fired a shot across the bow of Comey lead attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, suggesting he might need to be disqualified from the case because Comey allegedly used him “to improperly disclose classified information.” Comey fired right back against what it called the government’s effort to “defame” Fitzgerald, calling the allegation “provably false.” The judge in the case quickly denied prosecutors’ effort to expedite the briefing on this sideshow.

The Retribution: Fani Willis Edition

The Trump DOJ is scrutinizing a trip that Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis, the disqualified Trump prosecutor, made to the Bahamas in November, according to a subpoena obtained by the NYT.

It’s not clear if the trip is a focus of the investigation or if Willis herself is a target. The investigation is being led by Atlanta U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg.

The Retribution: IWWG Edition

Officials from across the Trump administration have been meeting since May under the auspices of what is called the Interagency Weaponization Working Group to coordinate the president’s retribution against perceived political foes, Reuters reports. The group draws from the White House, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Department of Homeland Security, Internal Revenue Service, Federal Communications Commission, Department of Defense, CIA, DOJ, and FBI, according to the report:

The existence of the interagency group indicates the administration’s push to deploy government power against Trump’s perceived foes is broader and more systematic than previously reported. Interagency working groups in government typically forge administration policies, share information and agree on joint actions.

Trump DOJ official Ed Martin, who is the U.S. pardon attorney and leads the Justice Department’s own weaponization working group, is “an important player in the interagency group,” a source told Reuters.

Only the Best People

A Trump-pardoned Jan. 6 rioter has been charged with threatening to kill House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) ahead of his a Monday speech to the Economic Club of New York.

GOP Senators Abandon Ingrassia Nom

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) sounded the death knell for the nomination of Paul Ingrassia as U.S. special counsel after Politico published texts in which Ingrassia admitted he had “a Nazi streak,” said the MLK holiday should be ““tossed into the seventh circle of hell,” and used an Italian slur for Black people. “He’s not gonna pass,” said Thune, who was one of at least four GOP senators to come out against the nomination.

National Guard Cases Moving Swiftly

A judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has already moved to hear the Oregon National Guard case en banc after a three-judge panel of the court ruled in favor of the Trump administration on Monday

In a powerful dissent, Judge Susan Graber essentially begged for patience from the public as she implored the full appeals court to act: “I urge my colleagues on this court to act swiftly to vacate the majority’s order before the illegal deployment of troops under false pretenses can occur. Above all, I ask those who are watching this case unfold to retain faith in our judicial system for just a little longer.”

A Symbol of Lawlessness

Despite assurances that construction of President Trump’s unauthorized ballroom would not touch the White House, work crews began demolishing portions of the East Wing Monday. The ballroom is being constructed between the White House and Treasury building, where employees with a bird’s-eye view were told not to take or share photos of the project.

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