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Tag: department of justice

  • U.S. Accuses Apple of Running a Monopoly

    U.S. Accuses Apple of Running a Monopoly

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    Apple is in major legal trouble as the Department of Justice (DOJ) and 16 state and district attorneys filed a lawsuit against the iPhone maker, as reported by the Washington Post Thursday. They accuse Apple of building a monopoly with the iPhone.

    Apple Unveils Its iPhone 15 and Apple Watch Series 9

    The suit alleges Apple’s changes to its rules and high fees created a “degraded user experience.” Some of the practices cited included the iMessage green bubbles for non-iPhone users, the 30% App Store fee, and privacy issues with the Apple Wallet.

    “We alleged that Apple has consolidated its monopoly power, not by making its own products better, but by making other products worse,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press conference Thursday. “If left unchallenged, Apple will only continue to strengthen its smartphone monopoly.”

    Apple says the suit is wrong on the facts and the law.

    “This lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets,” the company said in an emailed statement to Gizmodo Thursday. “If successful, it would hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple—where hardware, software, and services intersect. It would also set a dangerous precedent, empowering government to take a heavy hand in designing people’s technology.”

    Apple routinely finds itself in legal trouble over its business practices, but the company finds ways to keep winning. Last year, the legal battle between Epic and Apple over the App Store payment options went all the way to the Supreme Court, but Apple prevailed in the end.

    On the hardware side, Apple has been fighting right-to-repair laws so that it can keep repairs for its products in-house. However, the company does seem like it’s changing its mind on some recent right-to-repair legislation in certain states.

    But that’s in the U.S. Over in the European Union (EU), Apple has been getting spanked by regulations. Not only did regulators make Apple go all-in with USB-C cables for the iPhone 15 last year, but the EU also made Apple open up its software to allow third-party app stores onto its devices.

    The Biden administration has picked multiple fights with some big companies over antitrust violations. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon for operating an illegal monopoly while the DOJ filed a suit against Google for the same reason. Microsoft was also the focus of antitrust legal action when it acquired video game publisher Activision. That deal was completed in October, but the FTC appealed that merger in December seeking to reverse it.

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    Oscar Gonzalez

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  • Apple to be hit with Justice Department antitrust lawsuit over allegations it unfairly blocked rivals

    Apple to be hit with Justice Department antitrust lawsuit over allegations it unfairly blocked rivals

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    The Justice Department is poised to sue Apple Inc. as soon as Thursday, accusing the world’s second most valuable tech company of violating antitrust laws by blocking rivals from accessing hardware and software features of its iPhone.

    The suit, which is expected to be filed in federal court, according to people familiar with the matter, escalates the Biden administration’s antitrust fights against most of the biggest US technology giants. The Justice Department is already suing Alphabet Inc.’s Google for monopolization, while the Federal Trade Commission is pursuing antitrust cases against Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

    Apple and the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The people familiar asked not to be named discussing a confidential matter.

    Apple shares fell as much as 1.4% to $176.10 in late trading on the news. They had been down 7.2% this year through Wednesday’s close.

    The coming case will mark the third time that the Justice Department has sued Apple for antitrust violations in the past 14 years, but it is the first case accusing the iPhone maker of illegally maintaining its dominant position. 

    The lawsuit comes as Apple also is coming under increasing scrutiny in Europe over alleged anticompetitive behavior. The company was hit with a €1.8 billion fine this month for shutting out music streaming rivals from offering cheaper deals. Apple’s appealing the penalty and has said that regulators failed to uncover any “credible evidence of consumer harm.”

    Meanwhile, the company may face a full-blown investigation under the EU’s new rules for Big Tech — the Digital Markets Act — which went into force earlier this month. Rivals have dinged new App Store rules that came into force in Europe, complaining that changes are likely to result in higher prices for developers. Penalties for failing to comply with the EU’s new rules can be severe – as much as 10% of a company’s annual worldwide revenue or up to 20% for repeat offenders.

    The Justice Department opened the latest case in 2019 under former President Donald Trump. The antitrust division, though, chose to prioritize twin cases against Google, taking a back seat as Fortnite maker Epic Games Inc. sued Apple for monopolization in 2020 and that case worked its way through the federal courts.

    Subscribe to Data Sheet, our daily newsletter about the business of tech. Sign up for free.

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    Anna Edgerton, Kartikay Mehrotra, Leah Nylen, Bloomberg

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  • SoCal man one of four sentenced in Sacramento area ‘bust-out’ scam

    SoCal man one of four sentenced in Sacramento area ‘bust-out’ scam

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    (FOX40.COM) — A Southern California man has been sentenced to nearly two years in prison after an FBI investigation found he and three other Korean nationals were responsible for a “check-kiting bust out” scam that led to a loss of over $200,000 to various banks throughout the Sacramento area.

    According to the Department of Justice, the schemers would get real Korean passports with new photos and fake names and use them to open bank accounts with a small amount of cash. Those accounts would stay dormant until the schemers believed the bank would allow them to deposit a check and withdraw a portion of the money before it cleared.
    •Video Above: Card skimming scams: What you need to know

    This would be done by writing checks from various accounts with insufficient funds, depositing checks into the accounts initially created with the Korean passports, and then withdrawing the money before the checks cleared.

    The DOJ added that the scammers would access the funds by purchasing a money order and depositing it into another bank account associated with the scheme.

    According to the Department of Justice, the “bust-out” scam resulted in a loss of $273,800 to the banks. Based on additional, unsuccessful attempts to conduct the scheme, the total intended loss was $466,318.

    Three other Korean nationals between the ages of 47 and 55 were previously sentenced for their connection to this scheme. Their sentences ranged from two years to seven years.

    The Los Angeles man, 60, who was sentenced on Thursday received a sentence of 21 months in prison.

    The Department of Justice did not specify the banks affected by the scheme, but they said that the scam was done in “the Sacramento area and elsewhere.”

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    Aydian Ahmad

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  • 4 reasons Trump says a judge should dismiss charges in the classified documents case

    4 reasons Trump says a judge should dismiss charges in the classified documents case

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    In four motions filed late last week in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Florida, Donald Trump’s lawyers seek dismissal of 40 felony charges based on his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House in January 2021. They argue that his decision to keep the documents is shielded by “absolute” presidential immunity for “official acts,” that he had complete discretion to designate records as personal rather than presidential, and that the charges related to mishandling “national defense information” are based on an “unconstitutionally vague” statute. They also argue that Special Counsel Jack Smith, who obtained the indictment, was improperly appointed, making all of the charges invalid.

    The motion based on presidential immunity, which seeks dismissal of the 32 counts alleging unlawful retention of specific classified documents, rehashes the argument that a D.C. Circuit panel unanimously rejected this month in the federal case based on Trump’s attempts to remain in office after he lost the 2020 presidential election. “The D.C. Circuit’s analysis is not persuasive,” Trump’s lawyers write, “and President Trump is pursuing further review of that erroneous decision, including en banc review if allowed, and review in the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.” They say U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the documents case in Florida, “should not follow the D.C. Circuit’s non-binding, poorly reasoned decision.”

    As Trump sees it, the separation of powers bars federal courts from sitting in judgment of a former president’s “official acts,” whether in the context of a civil case or in the context of a criminal prosecution. The D.C. Circuit, including Republican appointee Karen L. Henderson, was troubled by the implications of that position, which would allow presidents to commit grave crimes, including assassination of political opponents, without being held accountable unless they were impeached and removed from office based on the same conduct.

    Trump’s lawyers read the Supreme Court’s 1803 decision in Marbury v. Madison as prohibiting judicial review of any presidential act. But as the D.C. Circuit emphasized, federal courts historically have passed judgment on the legality of presidential decisions, most famously in the 1952 case Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. In that case, the appeals court noted, the Supreme Court “exercised its cognizance over Presidential action to dramatic effect” by holding that “President Harry Truman’s executive order seizing control of most of the country’s steel mills exceeded his constitutional and statutory authority and was therefore invalid.”

    Strictly speaking, however, Youngstown dealt with an order issued by the secretary of commerce rather than the president himself. “To be sure,” Trump’s lawyers say,  federal courts “sometimes review the validity of the official acts of subordinate executive officials below the president, and such review may reflect indirectly on the lawfulness of the president’s own acts or directives. But the authority of judicial review of the official acts of subordinate officers has never been held to extend to the official acts of the president himself.”

    Marbury drew a distinction between “discretionary” and “ministerial” acts. Regarding the first category, Chief Justice John Marshall said in the majority opinion, “the President is invested with certain important political powers, in the exercise of which he is to use his own discretion, and is accountable only to his country in his political character, and to his own conscience.” In that situation, he said, “the subjects are political and the decision of the executive is conclusive,” meaning it “can never be examinable by the courts.”

    But that is not true, Marshall added, “when the legislature proceeds to impose on [an executive official] other duties; when he is directed peremptorily to perform certain acts; when the rights of individuals are dependent on the performance of those acts.” Then “he is so far the officer of the law, is amenable to the laws for his conduct, and cannot at his discretion, sport away the vested rights of others.” In those circumstances, he is acting as a “ministerial officer compellable to do his duty, and if he refuses, is liable to indictment.”

    Although Trump’s lawyers do not explicitly address that distinction, they argue that the counts charging him with illegally retaining 32 listed classified documents are based on 1) presidential decisions that 2) fell within the “discretionary” category. Both of those conclusions seem dubious.

    The indictment says Trump “caused scores of boxes, many of which contained classified documents, to be transported” from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s lawyers say the indictment “makes clear that this decision and the related transportation of records occurred while President Trump was still in office.”

    As Trump’s lawyers see it, in other words, the first 32 counts are all based on actions that he took as president. That interpretation seems problematic based on the text of the statute and the wording of the indictment.

    Trump is charged with violating 18 USC 793(e), which applies to someone who has “unauthorized possession” of “information relating to the national defense” and  “willfully retains” it when he “has reason to believe” it “could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” The indictment says Trump “did willfully retain the documents and fail to deliver them to the officer and employee of the United States entitled to receive them.”

    Retaining the documents and failing to deliver them are distinct from the initial act of transportation. While the latter may have happened while Trump was still in office, the former included his conduct during the year and a half that elapsed from the end of his term until an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago discovered the 32 documents, along with 70 or so others marked as classified, on August 8, 2022. During that time, Trump delivered some classified documents but retained others, even after he claimed to comply with a federal subpoena demanding their return. But for that continuing resistance, the FBI would not have obtained a search warrant and Trump would not be facing these charges.

    Why does Trump think the initial act of bringing the documents to Mar-a-Lago was within his discretion as president? Under the Presidential Records Act, he argues in another motion, he had complete authority to classify documents as personal, meaning he could keep them rather than turn them over to the National Archives. His possession of those documents therefore was not “unauthorized,” as required for a conviction under Section 793(e). And since the FBI’s investigation was not legally justified, Trump’s lawyers say, the other eight counts, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, concealing records, and lying to federal investigators, also should be dismissed.

    That reading of the Presidential Records Act is counterintuitive given its motivation and text. The impetus for the law was President Richard Nixon’s assertion of the very authority that Trump is now claiming. Rather than allow a president to destroy or retain official documents at will, Congress declared that “the United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records.”

    The law defines presidential records as “documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion thereof, created or received by the President, the President’s immediate staff, or a unit or individual of the Executive Office of the President whose function is to advise or assist the President, in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.” That term excludes “personal records,” defined as “all documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion thereof, of a purely private or nonpublic character which do not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.”

    As Trump reads the Presidential Records Act, however, it “conferred unreviewable discretion on President Trump to designate the records at issue as personal.” That interpretation would, on its face, render the statute a nullity. If a president has total discretion to decide that a document is “of a purely private or nonpublic character,” regardless of its content, the situation that Congress sought to rectify would be unchanged in practice.

    Trump also argues that Section 793(e), as applied to him, violates his Fifth Amendment right to due process because it is so vague that it does not “give people of common intelligence fair notice of what the law demands of them.” In particular, his lawyers say, the phrases “unauthorized possession,” “relating to the national defense,” and “entitled to receive” have no clear meaning.

    Finally, Trump says the indictment is invalid because “the Appointments Clause does not permit the Attorney General to appoint, without Senate confirmation, a private citizen and like-minded political ally to wield the prosecutorial power of the United States.” Smith therefore “lacks the authority to prosecute this action.”

    The Appointments Clause empowers the president to “appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law.” Because there is “no statute establishing the Office of Special Counsel,” Trump’s motion says, “Smith’s appointment is invalid and any prosecutorial power he seeks to wield is ultra vires”—i.e., without legal authority.

    This question, the motion says, is “an issue of first impression in the Eleventh Circuit,” which includes Florida. But in 2019, the D.C. Circuit rejected the argument that Trump is deploying here, holding that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was an “inferior” rather than “principal” officer, meaning that Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had the authority to appoint him.

    Trump is asking Cannon to approve “discovery and pretrial hearings on factual disputes” relevant to his motions. That is apt to delay the trial in this case, which had been scheduled to begin on May 20.

    The Section 793(e) charges require the government to show that the 32 documents listed in the indictment contained information that could compromise national security, a task complicated by their classified status. But the obstruction-related counts, which include allegations that Trump defied the federal subpoena, deliberately concealed classified records, and tried to cover up his cover-up by instructing his underlings to delete incriminating surveillance camera footage, may be the strongest charges that he faces across four criminal cases. Assuming the government can prove the facts it alleges in the indictment, it seems pretty clear that Trump is guilty of multiple felonies, including half a dozen that are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

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    Jacob Sullum

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  • How Donald Trump Became Unbeatable

    How Donald Trump Became Unbeatable

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    Not too long ago, Donald Trump looked finished. After the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the repeal of Roe v. Wade, and a poor Republican showing in the 2022 midterms, the GOP seemed eager to move on from the former president. The post–Trump era had supposedly begun.

    Just one week after the midterms, he entered the 2024 race, announcing his candidacy to a room of bored-looking hangers-on. Even his children weren’t there. Security had to pen people in to keep them from leaving during his meandering speech.

    Today, thanks to Trump’s dominant performance in South Carolina, the Republican primary is all but over. Trump’s margin was so comfortable that the Associated Press called the race as soon as polls closed. How did we get here? How did Trump go from historically weak to unassailable?

    I talk with Republican-primary voters in focus groups every week, and through these conversations, I’ve learned that the answer has as much to do with Trump’s party and his would-be competitors as it does with Trump himself. Most Republican leaders have profoundly misread their base in this moment.

    The other candidates hoped to be able to defeat Trump even as they accommodated his behavior and made excuses for his criminality. They even said they would support his reelection. By doing so, they established a permission structure for Republican voters to return to Trump, all but ensuring his rise.

    My focus groups over the past few years can be seen as a travelogue through the GOP’s journey back to Trump. Three key themes emerged that help explain why Trump’s opponents failed to gain traction.

    First, you can’t beat something with nothing. The Republican field didn’t offer voters anything new.

    Nikki Haley and Mike Pence cast themselves as avatars of the pre-Trump GOP. Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy did their best to imitate Trump, presenting themselves as younger and more competent stewards of the same MAGA agenda. None of them offered a viable alternative to Trump; instead, they spent their resources trying not to anger his supporters.

    But Republican voters don’t want Reagan Republicanism. Old-school conservatives may pine for a return to balanced budgets, personal responsibility, and American leadership in the world (guilty). But a greater share of Republican voters prefer an isolationist foreign policy and candidates who promise to punish their domestic enemies.

    Read: Nikki Haley’s endgame

    “The feds, both parties, the elites … want everything to go back to the way it was before Trump got elected,” said Bret, a two-time Trump voter from Georgia. “And that would be the wrong direction, in my opinion.”

    And voters aren’t interested in Trump-lite when they can have the real thing. Trump’s supporters see in him a leader who’s willing to fight for them. No other candidate proved they could do that better than Trump.

    “We need a man that is strong as hell, a brick house,” said Fred, a two-time Trump voter from South Carolina, in May 2023. “He is that man.”

    Larry, an Iowa Republican, called Trump “a disruptor. In the business world, you bring in a disruptor when everybody’s stuck in groupthink. That’s what I hired him to do: blow stuff up.”

    Contrast that with how Republican voters saw his opponents. “If you want to be president, you’ve got to be hated by half the country,” said Dakota, a two-time Trump voter from Iowa, adding, about Nikki Haley: “I don’t think she can do it.”

    “Does it kind of feel in a sense that he just kind of gave up?” Ashley, another Iowa Republican, asked about DeSantis before he dropped out of the race.

    Pence, Chris Christie, and the other also-rans came in for much worse criticism. “I don’t know if anyone would vote for him, just his family at this point,” Justin, a two-time Trump voter from Texas, said of Pence. “I think he’s alienated everyone.”

    The second theme: Trump’s competitors declined to hit him on his 91 felony counts, despite the fact that voters say they have serious concerns about them. Instead, most of them (with the honorable exception of Christie and Asa Hutchinson) actively defended Trump.

    DeSantis called the charges the “criminalization of politics.” Haley said the charges were “more about revenge than … about justice.” And Ramaswamy promised to pardon Trump “on day one.”

    By the time Haley started attacking Trump in recent weeks, it was already too late. She can call him “diminished,” “unhinged,” “weak in the knees,” and “incredibly reckless,” but voters saw her raise her hand six months ago when asked whether she would support him if he became the nominee.

    If Trump’s primary opponents weren’t going to hold his indictments against him, why should GOP voters? “It’s all a witch hunt,” Dennis, a two-time Trump voter from Michigan, said of the charges. The Department of Justice and state prosecutors bringing the cases “are terrified of Trump for whatever reason … because they’re afraid he will run and they’re afraid he will win.”

    Read: Republicans are no longer a political party

    Lastly, Trump started to be seen as electable. This represented a big shift from a year ago, when voters had concerns about Trump’s ability to beat President Joe Biden in a rematch.

    In February 2023, Isaac, a Pennsylvania Republican, said of Trump: “I just feel he is unelectable. I think you could put him up there against fricking Donald Duck and Donald Duck will end up coming out ahead. He just ticks too many people off.”

    But as they got a better look at the alternatives—and as they came to believe that Biden was too frail, weak, and senile to be competitive in the general election—GOP voters came around.

    “I’m convinced that he is in the final stages of dementia,” Clifton, an Iowa Republican, said of Biden. “I mean, yeah, Trump’s an asshole and he doesn’t have a filter and he says stupid things, but it doesn’t matter.”

    These voters have come to believe that the election is a choice between senility and recklessness. And they’ve decided they prefer the latter.

    DeSantis’s rise and fall is the clearest demonstration of how we got here. For a time, he looked like the greatest threat to Trump, leveraging culture-war issues to gin up the base while projecting an image of being, as one voter put it to me, “Trump not on steroids.”

    He sent refugees to Martha’s Vineyard, went after Disney, banned books—and the base loved him for it. “For the most part, from what I hear, he’s doing a good job in Florida,” said Chris, a Republican voter from Illinois, in March 2023. “He stands for a lot of the same values that I think I do.”

    But over time, DeSantis’s star began to fade. The more retail campaigning he did, and the more voters were exposed to him, the less they liked what they saw.

    “I think he was a strong candidate before he was actually a candidate,” said Fred, a two-time Trump voter from New Hampshire in December 2023. He cited “things he’s done in Florida and how big he won his last governor’s election.” But now, he said, “I think he got a little too into the social issues.”

    By the time DeSantis dropped out, skepticism had turned to contempt among the Republican voters I spoke with. Sean, a two-time Trump voter from New Hampshire, put it succinctly last month: “He has a punchable face, and I just don’t like him.”

    This time last year, DeSantis had a real shot at consolidating the move-on-from-Trump faction of the GOP while making inroads with the maybe-Trumpers—each of which constitutes about a third of the party. Instead, he tried to wrestle the former president for his always-Trump base, a doomed effort. He couldn’t get traction with the always-Trumpers and he alienated the move-on-from-Trumpers. It was a hopeless strategy for a flawed candidate.

    Haley may hold out for a few more weeks, even though she has virtually no chance of beating Trump outright. Her only real incentive for remaining in the race is to be the last person standing in the event that he is imprisoned or suffers a major health event. Barring either of these scenarios, Trump’s path to the nomination is clear.

    This outcome wasn’t inevitable; Trump was beatable. His opponents had real opportunities to cleave off his support, but they squandered them.

    The reason is simple: Republican elites don’t understand their voters. They spent eight years making excuses for Trump and supporting him at every turn, sending the clear signal that this is his party. They spent nearly a decade saying that he was a persecuted martyr—and the greatest president in history. It’s frightening, but not surprising, that their voters think he’s the only man for the job.

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    Sarah Longwell

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  • DOJ: 5 arrested after meth found in plates, books and dolls

    DOJ: 5 arrested after meth found in plates, books and dolls

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    The Department of Justice announced a major drug bust after narcotics were discovered in ceramic plates, hollowed-out books and dolls. 

    Law enforcement seized 91 packages of meth, carrying nearly 200 kilos of the drugs. 

    “The defendants are engaged in the mailing and shipping of methamphetamine from Los Angeles County to New Zealand and Australia,” the DOJ said. 

    If the drugs were sold in New Zealand or Australia, they were valued at more than $20 million, according to law enforcement. Search warrants were served in three locations in the San Gabriel Valley where five people were arrested. 

    The five arrested were “alleged members of an international drug trafficking ring based in the San Gabriel Valley,” the DOJ said in a statement. 

    The suspects were identified as:

    • Yangqiang Chen, 45, of Monterey Park; 
    • Jie Chen, 40, of Rosemead; 
    • MeiMei Chen, 41, of Rosemead; 
    • Guorong He, 50 of Rosemead; and
    • Yien He, 32, of Rosemead.

    While conducting the search warrants, law enforcement said they also seized about 40 pounds of methamphetamine, more than $100,000 in cash, and more than 1,000 gift cards from various retailers.

    According to the DOJ, the FBI; the Drug Enforcement Administration; Homeland Security Investigations; IRS Criminal Investigation; the Los Angeles Police Department; the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department; and the United States Postal Inspection Service are investigating this matter.

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    Staff Reports

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  • UPDATE: Every Texan Charged for Crimes During the Jan. 6 Capitol Breach

    UPDATE: Every Texan Charged for Crimes During the Jan. 6 Capitol Breach

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    UPDATE Feb. 6, 2023: On Friday, Feb. 2, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia announced that a Fort Worth man had been found guilty for his role in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach, and a Houston-area woman had been arrested for her role in the events that attempted to delay the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

    Jason Benjamin Blythe, 24, was found guilty of assaulting an officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon, a metal crowd control barrier, in this instance, and on a misdemeanor charge for committing an act of physical violence on the Capitol grounds. According to a press release, Blythe stayed on the Capitol grounds “for hours,” while he resisted officers and climbed the media tower near the Capitol steps. A sentencing hearing for Blythe is scheduled for June 13.

    Judy Fraize, 70, of Highlands, was arrested on Monday and charged with four crimes, including disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building. Federal court records identify Fraize in more than a dozen images taken from the Capitol’s closed circuit security video. At one point during her time inside the building, Fraize, sporting a red Make America Great Again cap, can be heard yelling at an officer “we gotta take our country back!” Investigators zeroed in on Fraize by connecting her to a mobile device registered under her name and linked to her Gmail account that was used at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

    These are the latest developments related to Texans arrested in connection to the Jan. 6 insurrection to add to the total since the Observer originally published this article on Nov. 8, 2023. The article and list below is updated to reflect the latest information as of Feb. 6, 2024.

    Just over three years ago, thousands of pro-Donald Trump protesters stormed into the building in an attempt to prevent Congressional certification of the election of President-elect Joe Biden. The chaos quickly became deadly when Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter who illegally attempted to climb through a shattered Capitol window while at the front of a violent mob, was shot and killed by police.

    The third anniversary of the insurrectionist attacks on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is just over two weeks away. Nearly three years ago, thousands of pro-Donald Trump protesters stormed into the building in an attempt to prevent Congressional certification of the election of President-elect Joe Biden. The chaos quickly became deadly when Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter who illegally attempted to climb through a shattered Capitol window while at the front of a violent mob, was shot and killed by police.

    Since then, law enforcement agencies have continued to announce the arrests of many of those who participated, no doubt aided by a host of videos and photos posted to social media by the eventual defendants of their Jan. 6 rampage exploits. The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia released a report detailing the arrests, charges, pleas and other action that have followed in the wake of the attack.

    “The government continues to investigate losses that resulted from the breach of the Capitol, including damage to the Capitol building and grounds, both inside and outside the building,” the report reads. “As of October 14, 2022, the approximate losses suffered as a result of the siege at the Capitol totaled $2,881,360.20. That amount reflects, among other things, damage to the Capitol building and grounds and certain costs borne by the U.S. Capitol Police.”

    So far, more than 1,200 arrests have been made in connection with the Jan. 6 case, and more than half of them have already resulted in guilty pleas.

    Filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of former U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, recently released her latest documentary, The Insurrectionist Next Door, a harrowing look at several of the people who were arrested for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack.

    “The government continues to investigate losses that resulted from the breach of the Capitol, including damage to the Capitol building and grounds, both inside and outside the building.” – U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia

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    Some of the subjects featured in the film displayed no remorse for their actions, while others had undergone a change of heart since early 2021. One man admitted he didn’t really know what he was even doing that day since he had never been a Trump supporter. Perhaps as much as any other point, the film hammers home the fact that the hordes of rioters involved on Jan. 6 represent an unexpectedly wide cross-section of the American population, and that it’s not a stretch to think one of them might be living near you.

    That’s especially true if you live in Texas. The Lone Star state is home to the second most people charged with a role in the Capitol breach, behind only Florida. An X account that tracks arrests related to the Jan. breach, @Jan6thData, reports that Texas is now home to more than 100 Jan. 6 arrests with North Texas being home to more than a third of that total.

    People from nearly all 50 states have been arrested for their Jan. 6 misdeeds, but Texas sits near the top of the list. According to a July report from the Center for Policy and Research at Seton Hall University, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, New York and California account for just over 43% of those charged with Capitol breach crimes.

    Texans played pivotal roles in the violent attack on the peaceful transfer of power above and beyond the basic number of participants. On the second anniversary of the attack and following the release of a 2022 Congressional report on Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, the Texas Tribune wrote “[t]he Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection would not have been possible without the help of a number of key Texans.” Later in the piece, Tribune reporter Robert Downen noted the massive report read “like a who’s who of Texas conspiracy theorists, conservative activists and extremists.”

    The charges that the dozens of arrested Texans face include, but are not limited to, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly or disruptive conduct in the Capitol grounds or buildings; acts of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings; parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building; obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder; assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers; and seditious conspiracy.

    There will likely be more added to the list of people charged. The U.S. Attorney’s 34-month report noted that “the FBI currently has 13 videos of suspects wanted for violent assaults on federal officers and (ONE) video of (TWO) suspects wanted for assaults on members of the media on January 6th and is seeking the public’s help to identify them.”

    But before those suspects are arrested, let’s take a look at all of the Texans who have been charged by the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia for their role in the attack (in alphabetical order, with location of arrest).

    Daniel Page Adams, Goodrich

    Wilmar Jeovanny Montano Alvarado, Houston

    Philip Anderson, Mesquite

    David Arredondo, El Paso*

    Thomas John Ballard, Fort Worth*

    Richard Franklin Barnard, Liberty*

    Dana Jean Bell, Princeton

    Kevin Sam Blakely, McKinney*

    Jason Blythe, Fort Worth

    Brandon Bradshaw, San Antonio

    Cory Ray Branan, Midland*

    Paul Thomas Brinson, Flower Mound

    Larry Rendell Brock, Fort Worth*

    Daniel Ray Caldwell, The Colony*

    Steven Cappuccio, Universal City*

    Luke Russell Coffee, Dallas

    Thomas Paul Conover, Keller*

    Nolan B. Cooke, Sherman*

    Christian Cortez, Seabrook*

    Jenny Louise Cudd, Midland*

    Matthew Dasilva, Lavon

    Nicholas Decarlo, Fort Worth*

    Lucas Denney, Kinney County*

    Robert Wayne Dennis, Garland*

    Alexander Fan, Houston

    Jason Farris, Arlington

    Frederic Fiol, San Antonio

    Judy Fraize, Highlands

    Jacob Garcia, Fort Worth*

    Anthime Joseph Gionet, Houston*

    Billy Joe Gober, Smithville

    Daniel Goodwyn, Corinth*

    Christopher Ray Grider, Austin*

    Leonard Gruppo, Lubbock*

    Stacy Wade Hagar, Waco

    Alex Kirk Harkrider, Carthage*

    Donald Hazard, Hurst

    Alan Hostetter, Parker County*

    David Howard, Frisco

    Jason Lee Hyland, Plano*

    Adam Jackson, Katy

    Brian Jackson, Katy

    Sergio Jaramillo, Dallas

    Raul Jarrin, Houston

    Shane Jenkins, Houston

    Joshua Johnson, Plano

    David Lee Judd, Carrollton

    Joseph Zvonimir Jurlina, Austin

    John Lammons, Galveston

    Benjamin Larocca, Seabrook*

    Joshua R. Lollar, Spring

    Duong Dai Luu, Katy

    Mario Mares, Ballinger

    Michael Marroquin, Nederland

    Felipe Antonio Martinez, Austin

    Victor Martinez, San Antonio

    Matthew Carl Mazzacco, San Antonio*

    Kyle McMahaon, Watauga

    William Hendry Mellors, Houston

    Jalise Middleton, Forestburg

    Mark Middleton, Forestburg

    Garrett Miller, Richardson

    Samuel Christopher Montoya, Austin*

    Andrew Jackson Morgan Jr., Maxwell

    Dawn Munn, Borger*

    Kayli Munn, Borger*

    Kristi Marie Munn, Borger*

    Thomas Munn, Borger*

    Ryan Taylor Nichols, Tyler*

    Jason Douglas Owens, Blanco*

    Paul Orta, Rio Hondo

    Nathan Donald Pelham, Frisco

    Tam Dinh Pham, Houston*

    Daniel Dink Phipps, Corpus Christi

    Jeffrey Reed, Rosanky

    Guy Wesley Reffitt, Bonham*

    Sebastian Reveles, Dallas

    Stewart Elmer Rhodes III, Little Elm*

    Eliel Rosa, Midland*

    Jennifer Leigh Ryan, Plano*

    Aron Sanchez, Dallas

    Katherine Staveley Schwab, Fort Worth*

    Geoffrey Samuel Shough, Austin*

    Jonathan Owen Shroyer, San Antonio

    Troy Anthony Smocks, Dallas*

    Kellye Sorelle, Junction

    Edward Spain Jr. (city not provided)*

    Andrew Taake, Houston*

    Timothy Tedesco, Corpus Christi

    Chance Anthony Uptmore, San Antonio*

    James Herman Uptmore, San Antonio*

    Sean David Watson, Alpine*

    Adam Mark Weibling, Katy*

    Dustin Ray Williams, Brady

    Elizabeth Rose Williams, Kerrville*

    Vic Williams, Odessa*

    Jeffrey Shane Witcher, Bastrop*

    Darrell Alan Youngers, Houston*

    Ryan Scott Zink, Lubbock
    *Defendant has either pleaded guilty to or has been found guilty of at least one count against them as of Feb. 6, 2024.



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    Kelly Dearmore

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  • Trump’s Claims of Political Bias Shot Down by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Office

    Trump’s Claims of Political Bias Shot Down by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Office

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    Special Counsel Jack Smith pushed back on Friday against former President Donald Trump’s persistent claims that his federal prosecution over alleged mishandling of classified documents is politically motivated. 

    Smith’s latest 67-page filing comes in response to a request Trump’s lawyers filed in mid-January, seeking to have lawyers in Smith’s office turn over additional evidence—including documents from intelligence agencies, the National Archives, and the Biden White House—that could be used by the former president’s legal team. In that filing, Trump’s lawyers indicated that they planned to use the evidence to argue that the investigation that led to his indictment was “politically motivated and biased.”

    In their argument to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon overseeing the documents case, Smith’s lawyers accused Trump of attempting to “cast a cloud of suspicion over responsible actions by government officials diligently doing their jobs” by “putting a nefarious gloss on innocuous events.”

    Prosecutors in Smith’s office, seeking to “set the record straight,” claimed that Trump and his lawyers are painting an “inaccurate and distorted picture” of the case, based on “speculative, unsupported, and false theories of political bias and animus.” Trump and his co-defendants’ legal problems, they concluded, “are solely of their own making.”

    Looking to “clear the air” on the issue, the prosecutors offered a fine-grained account of the series of events leading to Trump’s indictment, arguing that the investigation into Trump’s holding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence was an appropriate response to an unprecedented situation. 

    When the National Archives and Records Administration asked the Justice Department in February 2022 to investigate Trump’s possession of classified records, it came after “months of efforts” to retrieve the documents, according to the Special Counsel’s Office.  The former president’s lawyers have previously called the DOJ referral a “sham.”

    “Put simply,” the prosecutors concluded, “the Government here confronted an extraordinary situation: a former President engaging in calculated and persistent obstruction of the collection of Presidential records, which, as a matter of law, belong to the United States for the benefit of history and posterity, and, as a matter of fact, here included a trove of highly classified documents containing some of the nation’s most sensitive information. The law required that those documents be collected.”

    In addition to rebutting claims from Trump’s lawyers, Smith’s filing also contains some new information about the case that prosecutors have uncovered in the course of their investigation. Of the approximately 48,000 guests who visited Mar-a-Lago when classified documents were being held at the compound, only 2,200 had their names checked, while just 2,900 passed through magnetometers.

    The response also excoriated the specifics of Trump’s lawyers’ request for documents, which Smith argued should be wholly rejected. Some of the demands, prosecutors wrote, were so unclear “that it is difficult to decipher what they seek,” while others “reflect pure conjecture detached from the facts surrounding this prosecution.” Still, more of the requests, they argued, were for documents that had already been turned over to the defense.

    DOJ reported that the government has already handed over 1.28 million pages of unclassified discovery documents to Trump’s lawyers, exceeding “in both scope and timing that to which the defendants are entitled under law.”

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    Jack McCordick

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  • DEA Re-Hires Agent Who Was Fired for Taking CBD | High Times

    DEA Re-Hires Agent Who Was Fired for Taking CBD | High Times

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    The Department of Justice has rescinded a DEA decision to fire a special agent who was let go due to a positive reading for CBD on a drug test.

    DEA special agent Anthony L. Armour will be re-hired as a special agent and be reimbursed for back pay and legal expenses after a years-long court battle that stretches back to 2019 when a routine drug test showed he had been using CBD, which Armour maintained in court was for the purpose of treating chronic pain in lieu of highly-addictive opioid based painkillers.

    “I’m excited to be getting back to work at DEA,” Armour said to The New York Times. “I hope to finish my career at DEA by helping its mission in taking dangerous drugs like fentanyl off the streets.”

    Armour’s battle with chronic pain goes back to an injury he sustained during his college football career. He was also injured on the job as a DEA agent in a car crash during a surveillance operation, after which he suffered from back pain and a sprained neck. He ordered CBD products and a vaporizer from the internet, under the impression that he was not taking any illegal risks as the 2018 Farm Bill federally legalized hemp products. 

    “For Armour and many others in this country, this change meant new opportunities—particularly as to CBD, a non-THC cannabinoid in the cannabis plant,” a portion of the lawsuit said. “Armour hoped CBD oils could play a role in his pain management. That he did is unsurprising. From Martha Stewart to Wrigley Field, CBD has become embedded in American culture.”

    After he failed the drug test, Agent Armour turned the CBD products he had ordered into his superiors. Under federal law, hemp-derived products are defined as such if they contain less than 0.3% THC (please follow these handy-dandy little hyperlinks if you want more information on the clusterfuck of loopholes the Farm Bill created with regard to hemp-derived cannabis products). Of the three different hemp-based products Agent Armour turned in, court documents showed that two of them tested within the 0.3% THC range but one of them tested above the allowed threshold at 0.35%, which could be due to the notoriously unreliable potencies of hemp products and the methods by which they are tested.

    The DEA even went so far as to double down on their decision years into the lawsuit in late August of 2023. They filed a court brief defending Agent Armour’s termination just days before the Department of Health and Human Services officially recommended the federal rescheduling of cannabis from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3. The DEA also issued an official notice to all DEA employees after Armour’s termination to avoid all CBD products despite their federally legal status.

    “Mr. Armour was an outstanding DEA agent when he took a chance in 2019. He believed it was unlikely that CBD products would cause him to test positive for marijuana, but he knew it was possible, and he bought those unregulated products on the internet and consumed them anyway,” the DEA brief said. “Mr. Armour argues that he ‘displayed negligence or poor decision-making,’ and DEA properly held him accountable for his poor decisions when they resulted in a verified positive drug test. DEA lost trust in Mr. Armour and properly removed him.”

    Despite a years-long fight to keep Agent Armour off the payroll the DEA has agreed to reinstate him and pay him $470,000 in back pay and legal fees, according to the New York Times who obtained a copy of the court filings from earlier this month. Agent Armour told the New York Times he still sees value in using CBD for pain management but that he will consult a medical professional for viable alternatives upon his return to work. 

    “Federal drug testing policies—and importantly, attitudes about drug testing—have not caught up with the times. I’m not the only career law enforcement officer in this country with chronic pain, nor am I the only law enforcement officer that has turned to legal cannabis products to address pain,” Agent Armour said in court testimony in September. “Nobody should have to choose between suffering pain and serving our country.”

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    Patrick Maravelias

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  • Jack Smith will “absolutely” indict six more Trump allies: Ex-prosecutor

    Jack Smith will “absolutely” indict six more Trump allies: Ex-prosecutor

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    Six unnamed co-conspirators of Donald Trump are likely to be indicted by Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith, according to former federal prosecutor and legal analyst Glenn Kirschner on Saturday.

    Trump is currently contending with four criminal indictments at the state and federal levels, totaling 91 criminal charges in all. Among these cases is the federal one brought by the DOJ and Smith pertaining to Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which ultimately led to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Trump, the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, has maintained his innocence in the case and accused all of the cases against him of being attempts to undermine his political prospects.

    The federal indictment for election interference also notably mentions six other alleged co-conspirators in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. In a video posted to YouTube on Saturday, Kirschner, a former assistant U.S. attorney turned outspoken critic of the former president, told MSNBC contributor Brian Tyler Cohen on The Legal Breakdown that further indictments will “absolutely” be passed down onto these unnamed co-conspirators.

    “We know that in the Trump indictment…there are six unindicted co-conspirators,” Kirschner said. “Now, they are listed, they are described, but they’re not named, but we basically know who they are…They do include people like Mark Meadows, and Rudy Giuliani, and Sidney Powell, and John Eastman, and Kenneth Chesebro.”

    Former President Donald Trump is seen in a courthouse. Six unnamed co-conspirators of Trump are likely to be indicted by Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith, according to former prosecutor and legal analyst Glenn Kirschner on Saturday.
    Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

    He continued: “You have heard me say before, I am not a betting man, I am not a high roller, one dollar is my betting limit. I would bet the full buck on those six unindicted co-conspirators being indicted…[Smith] will absolutely, in my opinion, indict those six, though perhaps waiting for Donald Trump’s trial to run its course first.”

    Newsweek reached out to other legal experts via email for comment.

    The several Trump allies listed by Kirschner as the likely unindicted co-conspirators were all notably among the 18 co-defendants charged in the former president’s election interference indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, which similarly stems from his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Among those names, Powell and Chesebro have already accepted plea deals in exchange for future testimony, and might be liable to do the same in the federal case.

    Elsewhere in his Saturday appearance on Cohen’s YouTube channel, Kirschner addressed the possibility of Trump continuing to campaign for president even if he is convicted of criminal charges, which the former president has pledged to do and which the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit in most cases. Kirschner referred to this as a “weak spot” in the founding document.