Weekend Series on Crime History: Chuckie O’Brien and the Hoffa Investigation 2 May 5:44 PM (21 hours ago)
Fired DOJ Official Claims Trump Pardons Cost Victims $1 Billion 2 May 3:09 AM (yesterday, 3:09 am)
By Steve Neavling
Liz Oyer, the Justice Department’s former pardon attorney, claims President Donald Trump’s recent wave of pardons has cost Americans $1 billion in unpaid restitution.
Oyer, who was fired in March, said many of those pardoned were convicted of fraud and had not yet paid back victims, The Washington Post reports.
Oyer’s estimate is based on how much money recipients of Trump’s pardons were accused or convicted of stealing, even if a judge had not formally ordered restitution. In some cases, those pardoned had not yet been sentenced.
The largest amount came from Trevor Milton, the electric-truck company founder convicted of defrauding investors. Prosecutors said he owed more than $680 million. Trump also wiped out a $100 million fine against BitMEX, a cryptocurrency exchange, and pardoned four of its executives.
Oyer also pointed to Michele Fiore, a Nevada politician convicted of stealing $70,000 meant for families of slain police officers. Trump pardoned her before sentencing. The White House defended her pardon, claiming — without evidence — that she was politically targeted.
Oyer told The Washington Post that Trump’s pardons reflect a break from traditional DOJ standards, which typically require that recipients finish their sentences before being considered for clemency. She said many of Trump’s choices were political allies or donors.
“It’s unprecedented for a president to grant pardons that wipe out so much debt owed by people who have committed frauds,” Oyer said.
She believes her refusal to support restoring gun rights to actor Mel Gibson, a Trump supporter, contributed to her firing. The DOJ denies that claim.
FBI Whistleblower Facing Charges Registers to Run for Congress in Arizona 2 May 3:05 AM (yesterday, 3:05 am)
By Steve Neavling
A former FBI counterintelligence agent facing federal charges for leaking classified information is now running for Congress in Arizona.
Johnathan Buma, who accused the FBI of suppressing his investigations into Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, filed paperwork April 28 to run as a Democrat in Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, the Arizona Republic reports. The seat is currently held by Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani.
Buma was arrested March 17 at JFK Airport in New York as he prepared to board an international flight. Federal prosecutors allege he printed more than 100 sensitive FBI files in October 2023 and began writing a book shortly after, sending drafts with confidential material to associates. He was released the next day on a $100,000 bond and ordered to undergo a substance abuse evaluation.
In a 2023 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Buma claimed the FBI blocked him from investigating Giuliani’s alleged ties to Russian-Ukrainian oligarch Pavlo Fuks and pressured him to focus instead on Hunter Biden’s ties to Burisma. He said the bureau retaliated against him after he filed internal complaints.
Buma has called himself “the most significant whistleblower in FBI history,” and his campaign filings describe him as an “Arizona native,” though they list an address in Prescott, outside the district.
He has declined to comment publicly on his candidacy.
ProPublica: How Interim D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin Is Weaponizing the DOJ for Trump 1 May 5:00 AM (2 days ago)
This story was first published by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. To donate to ProPublica, click here.
By Andy Kroll and Jeremy Kohler
When President Donald Trump chose Ed Martin, the Missouri lawyer and political operative, to be the top U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., the decision came as a shock to current and former federal prosecutors as well as outside legal experts. Martin had no prosecutorial experience. He was best known as a conservative activist, the former right-hand man to influential anti-feminist icon Phyllis Schlafly and a loyal Trump surrogate.
Since taking charge of the office in January, Martin has launched controversial investigations, rushed to defend Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and vowed to change how his office prosecutes crime in the District of Columbia.
His actions have been met with fierce pushback from Democratic lawmakers, watchdog groups and legal experts. There have been at least four disciplinary complaints filed against him with the D.C. and Missouri bars. One of the D.C. complaints has been dismissed; the other three appear to be pending. If Martin has responded to the complaints, his statements have not been made public.
Martin did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Here are some of Martin’s most contentious moves so far.
Jan. 6 Retribution
At Trump’s direction, Martin has presided over the dismissal of outstanding cases that were part of the Justice Department’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol.
But Martin got tripped up by what should have been a legal formality: In one of the cases he dismissed, he was still listed as counsel of record for the defendant, a possible conflict of interest. The incident prompted bar complaints against Martin in D.C. and Missouri. (The D.C. bar’s disciplinary panel dismissed the complaint, saying Martin had been acting at the behest of the president. The Missouri complaint appears to be pending.)
Martin fired more than a dozen federal prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases. He demoted seven senior lawyers in his office, including the two prosecutors who led the Jan. 6 team, to low-level roles in D.C. Superior Court, which handles local prosecutions. (Most of the affected attorneys have not commented publicly, but those who have are critical of Martin’s tenure.)
Martin has opened an investigation into supposed leaks related to Jan. 6 cases, saying the information was used “by the media and partisans as misinformation.” He also ordered an investigation into past charging decisions made as part of the Jan. 6 cases. In 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the DOJ’s use of an obstruction statute in those prosecutions. In an office-wide email obtained by ProPublica, Martin quoted an unnamed contact who compared the DOJ’s use of the obstruction statute to President Franklin Roosevelt’s decision to imprison more than 100,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II.
DOGE Enforcer
Martin has published several open letters to Musk on the Musk-owned social media platform X.
In the first letter, dated Feb. 3, Martin asked Musk to “utilize me and my staff” to protect the people and the work of DOGE. He vowed to take “any and all legal action against anyone” who impeded DOGE’s work.
“We will not act like the previous administration,” Martin added, “who looked the other way as the Antifa and BLM rioters as well as thugs with guns trashed our capital city.”
In his second letter, dated Feb. 7, Martin expanded on his pledge to his office’s legal powers in support of Musk and DOGE’s work. “Please let me reiterate again: If people are discovered to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically, we will investigate them and we will chase them to the end of the Earth to hold them accountable,” Martin wrote.
He urged his employees to respond to Musk’s demand that all federal employees list five things they accomplished that week, adding: “DOGE and Elon are doing great work! Historic.”
And when DOGE employees attempted to seize control of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a private nonprofit that receives government funding, Martin and his office assisted so that DOGE could take over and wind down the nonprofit.
“We Will Defend You”
The U.S. attorney’s office for D.C. is unique in that it prosecutes both federal and local crimes. In his tweets and public statements, Martin has vowed to “Make D.C. Safe Again,” even though violent crime has broadly declined in the District in recent years.
While his public safety agenda is light on details so far, he has pledged to be a stalwart defender of the D.C. police. In yet another open letter posted on X, Martin wrote that the “radical ‘Defund the Police’ movement by Black Lives Matter is over” and that it was “time to get back to protecting and supporting our law enforcement officers.”
“At every turn, we will defend you,” he said.
Yet current and former federal prosecutors in D.C. say Martin’s actions so far have undercut morale in the office while his proposed reforms could make it harder, not easier, for prosecutors to do their jobs.
In February, Martin removed the chief and deputy chief of the Federal Major Crimes section, which oversees cases involving drugs, firearms possession, child exploitation, human trafficking and immigration violations. The two lawyers, who had decades of experience between them and were widely respected, were demoted to low-level roles; the more senior of the two, Melissa Jackson, resigned soon afterward. (Jackson declined to comment; her deputy did not respond to requests for comment.)
Martin also said he was “rewriting” the office’s policy for the so-called Lewis list, a repository of police officer disciplinary records. Prosecutors consult the Lewis database when they decide whether to put a police officer on the witness stand. They also use the Lewis list to identify officers about whom they need to disclose information to defense attorneys that bears on a witness’s credibility or potential bias to fulfill their constitutional obligations.
Martin framed his decision to reform the Lewis list as part of a broader shift to be more pro-police. “USAO will no longer allow judges or others to gratuitously damage your careers because of the outsized impact of inexact characterizations,” he wrote.
Michael Romano, a former federal prosecutor in the D.C. office, said that any effort to weaken or eliminate the Lewis list will only make it harder for prosecutors to argue and win cases because it would deprive them of information that they must disclose in court. “Gutting the Lewis list,” Romano told ProPublica, “makes it less likely that prosecutors will obtain convictions at trial, makes it more likely that convictions will be reversed on appeal and puts prosecutors’ licenses to practice law at risk.”
Investigating Democrats
Martin has initiated multiple inquiries into critics and opponents of Trump.
Martin asked Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., for information about a business that Vindman and his brother, Alexander, started to support Ukraine in its war against Russia, The Washington Post reported. Vindman and his twin brother, Alex, both blew the whistle on Trump’s attempt to withhold military aid to Ukraine while pressuring the country’s leader to investigate the family of President Joe Biden. Eugene Vindman said that Martin’s letter was part of Trump’s “retribution campaign” and that those who wrote the letter and “encouraged this weird attempt at intimidation are lying.”
Biden’s family members and former officials from his administration received letters from Martin’s office related to the ex-president’s decision to grant pardons to people close to him, The New York Times reported. Trump has pushed an unproven theory that Biden’s actions weren’t valid because he wasn’t mentally competent.
He also sent letters to Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and Rep. Robert Garcia of California, both Democrats, asking them to answer questions about incendiary public comments they had made. The inquiries appeared to have fizzled out and did not result in any charges.
Targeting Medical Journals
On Apr. 14, Martin sent a list of questions to the editor of Chest magazine, a medical journal published by the American College of Chest Physicians. The letter accused the journal and others like it of “being partisans in various scientific debates” and asked a series of contentious questions, such as “How do you clearly articulate when you have certain viewpoints that are influenced by your ongoing relations with supporters, funders, advertisers, and others?” and “How do you handle allegations that authors of works in your journals may have misled readers?”
Two other medical journal publishers received similar letters, The New York Times reported. The letters have raised grave concerns about curbing free speech and government intimidation of scientific publications.
FBI Reassigns Agents Who Kneeled During 2020 Racial Justice Protest 1 May 2:46 AM (2 days ago)
By Steve Neavling
The FBI has reassigned several agents who were photographed kneeling during a 2020 racial justice protest in Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter, the Associated Press reports.
The reasons for the transfers are unclear, but they come amid widespread personnel changes under FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, both of whom have sought to assure Trump supporters that internal reforms are underway.
“The Director and I are working on a number of significant initiatives to ensure that the mistakes of the past are never repeated,” Bongino wrote recently on X, formerly known as Twitter.
He did not elaborate on which mistakes he was referring to.
Photos from the May 2020 protest showed a group of FBI agents kneeling amid nationwide demonstrations following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. While some within the bureau viewed the gesture as inappropriate, others described it at the time as a de-escalation tactic. The agents were not disciplined.
The reassignments were first reported by CNN and later confirmed to the Associated Press by two people who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss personnel matters. The FBI declined to comment.
Patel, who was confirmed as director in January, pledged during his confirmation hearing not to “go backwards” or retaliate against perceived political adversaries. But concerns about politicized purges have persisted, especially after reports surfaced that Justice Department officials requested lists of agents involved in investigations tied to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Judge Denies Release of Informant Who Lied About Biden Bribery Scheme 1 May 2:34 AM (2 days ago)
By Steve Neavling
A federal judge in Los Angeles has denied a request to release a former FBI informant who fabricated a bribery story involving President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, an allegation that later fueled Republican efforts to impeach the president.
U.S. District Judge Otis Wright rejected the joint request from prosecutors and defense attorneys to release Alexander Smirnov while he appeals his conviction, saying he still poses a flight risk, the Associated Press reports.
“The fact remains that Smirnov has been convicted and sentenced to seventy-two months in prison, providing ample incentive to flee,” Wright wrote in his decision Wednesday.
Smirnov, 44, pleaded guilty in January to tax evasion and lying to the FBI. Prosecutors said he falsely claimed that Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, paid $5 million each to Joe and Hunter Biden around 2015. Investigators later determined Smirnov’s only interactions with Burisma were routine and began after Biden’s vice presidency.
The claim, which Smirnov made in 2020 after expressing bias against Biden, was cited by House Republicans during their failed attempt to impeach the president. The White House dismissed the probe as a political stunt.
Smirnov has been in custody since February 2024, when he was arrested at the Las Vegas airport after returning from overseas. He holds both U.S. and Israeli citizenship.
His attorneys, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, said they plan to appeal the ruling and “continue to advocate for Mr. Smirnov’s release.”
Smirnov was initially charged by former special counsel David Weiss, who resigned in January shortly before Donald Trump returned to office. Weiss also prosecuted Hunter Biden, who was convicted on federal gun charges and pleaded guilty to tax violations. President Biden later pardoned his son, calling the case politically motivated.
Judge Blocks Border Patrol From Warrantless Sweeps in California 30 Apr 2:52 AM (3 days ago)
By Steve Neavling
A federal judge has barred Border Patrol agents from stopping or arresting individuals in California’s Central Valley without reasonable suspicion or probable cause, following controversial immigration sweeps in January that led to nearly 80 arrests, The New York Times reports.
The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and United Farm Workers, who allege agents targeted farmworkers and day laborers in Kern County without legal justification, often based on appearance alone. Public records show that 77 of the 78 people arrested had no known criminal or immigration history before their detention.
Judge Jennifer L. Thurston issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday, finding the government failed to rebut claims that agents violated constitutional protections during the operation, which included monitoring gas stations and home improvement stores.
“This ruling upholds the basic standards of law in the country,” said Elizabeth Strater of United Farm Workers.
The injunction will remain in effect as the case moves forward. Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection declined to comment.
Former DEA Officials Raise Concerns About Trump’s Pick to Lead Agency 30 Apr 2:45 AM (3 days ago)
By Steve Neavling
A group of former DEA agents is urging senators to scrutinize President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the agency, Terrance Cole, over his connection to two deadly operations abroad that left dozens dead in Colombia and Mexico, CNN reports.
The former agents, some of whom worked directly with Cole, sent an anonymous letter to Congress alleging operational failures under his watch and questioning whether he has the leadership to run the DEA. Cole, now Virginia’s secretary of public safety, spent 22 years at the agency before leaving in 2019.
One incident involved a 2006 Colombian drug raid that ended with 10 police officers killed by corrupt soldiers. Cole worked closely with the unit but was not present at the time. A second case tied to a 2011 massacre in Allende, Mexico, stemmed from DEA intelligence about cartel leaders that was leaked to Mexican authorities. Cole supervised the agent who passed along the tip.
Supporters say Cole followed protocol and had no direct role in the violence.
“Terry did not act unilaterally,” said Dan Salter, Cole’s former supervisor. “He coordinated with superiors before anything was shared.”
The DEA has declined to release internal reports on the incidents, and Cole has not commented publicly.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Dick Durbin, is expected to examine Cole’s record during his confirmation hearing.
FBI Using Polygraphs to Find Source of Internal Leaks 29 Apr 2:16 AM (4 days ago)
By Steve Neavling
The FBI has begun administering polygraph tests in an effort to identify the source of leaks from within the bureau, the agency said Monday.
“We can confirm the FBI has begun administering polygraph tests to identify the source of information leaks within the bureau,” the FBI’s public affairs office said in a statement to Reuters.
The Washington Post first reported the move, noting that polygraphs, often called “lie detector” tests, are being used as part of the broader leak investigations.
Since returning to office in January, President Donald Trump’s administration has ramped up efforts to crack down on leaks to the media. Last week, the Justice Department made it easier for prosecutors investigating leaks to subpoena journalists’ records and testimony.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also warned of potential prosecutions tied to leaks of Pentagon information, saying that evidence would be handed over to the Justice Department once an internal investigation concludes. Hegseth’s memo left open the possibility of using polygraphs during the inquiry.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard pledged in March to “aggressively pursue recent leakers” and said she had referred two intelligence community leaks to the Justice Department, with a third referral underway.
Gabbard also said she was willing to work with the Justice Department and the FBI “to investigate, terminate and prosecute” those responsible, calling the leakers “criminals.”
Mass Exodus at Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division Amid Trump-Era Overhaul 29 Apr 2:10 AM (4 days ago)
By Steve Neavling
The Justice Department’s civil rights division is facing an exodus of attorneys and staff as Trump administration officials shift its focus away from traditional civil rights enforcement toward more aggressive actions against liberal cities, Ivy League schools, and student protesters.
More than 100 lawyers are expected to leave under a “deferred resignation program” that allows them to resign while continuing to be paid for a limited time, The New York Times reports. Combined with earlier departures, the mass resignations would cut the division’s staff by more than half, according to current and former officials.
“Now, over 100 attorneys decided that they’d rather not do what their job requires them to do, and I think that’s fine,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, the new head of the division, said in an interview with conservative commentator Glenn Beck. “We don’t want people in the federal government who feel like it’s their pet project to go persecute police departments. The job here is to enforce the federal civil rights laws, not woke ideology.”
Traditionally, the division has protected the constitutional rights of marginalized communities, including investigating police misconduct, enforcing voting rights, and fighting housing discrimination. But current and former lawyers say the administration’s actions go beyond a routine shift in priorities, fundamentally changing the division’s mission.
“This is not simply a change in enforcement priorities — the division has been turned on its head and is now being used as a weapon against the very communities it was established to protect,” said Vanita Gupta, who led the division during the Obama administration.
When Trump took office, the division had about 380 lawyers. With the latest resignations, officials estimate the number could fall to around 140. The support staff has also been sharply reduced.
Adding to the turmoil, political appointees have reassigned many of the remaining career managers, creating what staff describe as daily chaos over supervision and responsibilities.
The administration introduced new mission statements this month that many longtime lawyers say have stripped away key civil rights protections the division once championed.
“With the reckless dismantling of the division, we’ll see unchecked discrimination and constitutional violations in schools, housing, employment, voting, prisons, by police departments and in many other realms of our daily lives,” said Stacey Young, a former division lawyer and now executive director of Justice Connection.