Mike Benz On US Institute Of Peace: "They Create A Network Of Assets For The CIA To Play With Abroad"DOS reviewing 55 million visas to the U.S.
18:50
https://rumble.com/embed/v6vpooe/?pub=4
EMERGENCY DOCKET
Supreme Court allows Trump administration to terminate $783 million in NIH grants linked to DEI initiatives
By Amy Howe on Aug 21, 2025
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By a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to allow the National Institutes of Health, the largest public funding source for biomedical research in the world,to terminate $783 million in grants linked to DEI initiatives. In a brief unsigned order, the court granted a request from the Trump administration to pause a ruling by a federal judge in Massachusetts that required the federal government to continue making the payments. Also by a vote of 5-4, the court left in place a different portion of the judge’s ruling, which had thrown out internal NIH guidance documents describing the agency’s policy priorities.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett provided the key vote on each issue. She joined Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh in voting to allow NIH to terminate the grants, but she joined Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in voting to leave the lower court’s ruling on the guidance documents in place.
Jackson had sharp words for her colleagues, describing the ruling as “Calvinball jurisprudence” – a reference to the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon – “with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.”
NIH ended hundreds of grants it linked to DEI-related studies in response to a series of executive orders issued by President Donald Trump after his inauguration in January. The first order, titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” instructed the director of the Office of Management and Budget, assisted by the attorney general and the director of the Office of Personnel Management, to work to end “discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI” programs in the federal government. It was followed by two other executive orders, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” and “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.”
Two separate groups of plaintiffs went to federal court in Massachusetts to challenge the termination of the grants. One group is made up of 16 states whose public universities receive funding from NIH, while the other consists of the American Public Health Association, individual researchers, a union, and a reproductive health advocacy group. They contended that the termination of the grants violated both the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act, the federal law governing administrative agencies.
U.S. District Judge William Young agreed that the grant terminations violated the APA. He explained that although “a new administration certainly is entitled to make changes — even unpopular or unwise changes” – it cannot “undertake actions that are not reasonable and not reasonably explained.” And NIH cannot meet this bar, he said, because “there is no reasoned decision-making at all with respect to the NIH’s ‘abruptness’ in the ‘robotic rollout’ of this grant-termination action.”
After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit declined to temporarily put Young’s order on hold,U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to intervene. Sauer suggested that the case was governed by an earlier order inDepartment of Education v. California granting the Department of Education’s request to pause the payment of millions of dollars in teacher-training grants that included funding for DEI initiatives. In that case, the justices concluded that the government is likely to show that a different federal judge did not have the power to direct the government to make the payments. Instead, the majority said, lawsuits arising from contracts with the United States should be brought in a different court, the Court of Federal Claims, located in Washington, D.C.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/08/supreme-court-allows-trump-administration-to-terminate-783-million-in-nih-grants-linked-to-dei-initiatives/
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The challengers urged the justices to leave Young’s order in place.The states contended that the termination of the grants “caused unrecoverable loss of scientific knowledge,” and the private plaintiffs wrote that putting Young’s order on hold even for a short time would “inflict[] incalculable losses in public healthand human life because of delays in bringing the fruits of” their research “to Americans who desperately await clinical advancements.” And they distinguished their case from the Department of Education case in which the justices allowed the government to stop payments for teacher-training grants, noting that, unlike the challengers in that case, they do not have the money to make up for the lost NIH funding.
In a four-paragraph order issued on Thursday afternoon, the court indicatedthat it was granting the government’s request to block the part of Young’s ruling that required NIH to continue to fund the terminated grants. Citingits decision in the Department of Education case, the court stated that the district court did not have the power to rule on claims “‘based on’ the research-related grants or to order relief designed to enforce any ‘obligation to pay money’ pursuant to those grants.” And, according to the court, the federal government would face “irreparable harm” if it paid the money for the grants and then was not able to recover that money.
In a concurring opinion, Barrett indicated that she agreed that “the District Court likely lacked jurisdiction to hear challenges to the grant terminations.” But the district court likely does have the power to review a challenge to the guidance documents, she continued, even if those documents describe “internal policies related to grants.” Moreover, she observed, “vacating the guidance does not necessarily void decisions made under it.”
In an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, Roberts argued that this case was different from the Department of Education case precisely because Young had thrown out the guidance documents – relief, Roberts wrote, that “has prospective and generally applicable implications beyond the reinstatement of specific grants” and that “falls well within the scope of the District Court’s jurisdiction.” “And if the District Court had jurisdiction to vacate the directives,” Roberts continued, “it also had jurisdiction to vacate the ‘Resulting Grant Terminations.’”
Gorsuch, joined by Kavanaugh, wrote his own opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. He emphasized that “[l]ower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them.” He acknowledged that “decisions regarding interim relief are not necessarily ‘conclusive as to the merits,’” but he stressed that a decision’s reasoning does carry weight going forward. “And California’s reasoning,” he wrote, “was clear” and “binds lower courts.”
In her own separate opinion, Jackson contended that the court’s decision in the Department of Education v. California case “was an even bigger mistake than” she had realized at the time because it “now apparently governs all” challenges under the federal law governing administrative agencies concerning “grant-funding determinations that the Governmentasks us to address in the context of an emergency stay application.” “With potentially life-saving scientific advancements on the line,” she concluded, “the Court turns a nearly century-old statute aimed at remedying unreasoned agency decisionmaking into a gauntlet rather than a refuge.”
In another separate opinion,Kavanaugh pushed back against Jackson’s suggestion that the court could avoid the dilemmaof deciding what forum the claims will proceed in “by simply denying the application.That is wrong,” Kavanaugh wrote. “We have to decide the application” and make “that interim forum-channeling decision.”
https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/08/supreme-court-allows-trump-administration-to-terminate-783-million-in-nih-grants-linked-to-dei-initiatives/
‘MOST REVEALING’ interview with ex-Biden spokesman
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., discusses former Biden spokesman Ian Sams' testimony before the House Oversight Committee on 'Hannity.
4:49
https://youtu.be/7y03_9VQh-E
Habba speaks out after Obama-appointed judge strips her of authority in stunning legal rebuke
Alina Habba discusses a judge's ruling that she has been unlawfully serving as a U.S. attorney for New Jersey, despite being appointed by President Donald Trump, on 'Hannity.'
NJ doesn’t want their mafia ties and corruption to come to light.
4:36
https://youtu.be/57UQHVyohbg
BREAKING: John Bolton's home raided by federal agents
Fox News' David Spunt provides details on the FBI raid at former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton's home in Maryland as FBI Director Kash Patel tweets, 'NO ONE is above the law.'
8:01
Mike Pompeo should be next
https://youtu.be/c-CpbMi8DwY
‘South Park’ voice actor gets candid about Trump support
Actress and stuntwoman Janeshia Adams-Ginyard discusses ‘South Park’ taking political jabs at the Trump administration and Hollywood ‘pandering’
4:39
https://youtu.be/67THAKFR5PE
‘Gutfeld!’: This is so bad, they should be deported
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld and the panel discuss the mariachi band performance at Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s news conference on ‘Gutfeld!'
17:38
https://youtu.be/CM22fh7KAeE
The Great Leak Hunt of Term #1 – FBI Director Kash Patel Gives Another Mostly Declassified Release to John Solomon
August 22, 2025 | Sundance1/2
You may remember the year 2017, the first year of President Trump’s first term in office when theentire Main Justice, FBI and Intelligence Community apparatus was leaking manufactured, sometimes classified information, to the media.
Against President Trump’s furious demands, the Dept of Justice, Jeff Sessions, Rod Rosenstein and Dana Boente announced a widespread ‘whole of govt; effort to find the leakers in an effort to stop the outflow.
The leakers were later identified, albeit never prosecuted, as top DOJ, FBI and Intelligence Community (DNI, CIA) officials. However, the insufferable hunt for them was also shown to be mostly nonsense because the apparatus of DC just didn’t care.
With orange Hitler in the White House, the Washington DC Uniparty didn’t care how he was taken out – they just wanted him gone. We all remember it well.
In the latest release of information from FBI Director Kash Patel to John Solomon, part of the leak hunting files has been made public. [SEE HERE]I would note the FBI file constructs are intentionally obtuse, because: (a) they come from multiple silos by design; and (b) they don’t outline a useful timeline to tell the story. This is done on purpose.
Now, before the Q-adherents and alt-media clickbait crowd start to generate false-hope soundbites and column inches from the data, let me be crystal clear:
Absolutely nothing will come of this release, AND that cannot be emphasized enough; because in the final analysis, evidence released to John Solomon – is, by its nature – never going to be used in court proceedings.
If the DOJ and FBI planned to use the evidence in court, they would not be giving it to their clickbait friends in media.
That said, here’s some first review perspectives on the release anyway.
The file release surrounds the investigationknown as “Tropic Vortex,” another stupid name given by the stupid FBI to one of their information control operations, under the auspices of an “investigation.”
Tropic Vortex was triggered in January 2019, made official in February 2019.It was the outcome of the U.S Attorney in Washington DC, Jessie Liu, sending an investigative leak file to the FBI for review and action.
Within the release we find that Connecticut Attorney John Durham was used in March 2017. That’s new.
That’s a full two years before his name surfaced publicly via Bill Barr. Thus, the origin of theDurham spray paint operation surfaces sooner than previously understood. Interesting.
Durham was assigned by Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente on 3/22/17 based on a criminal referral from [XXXXX] redacted? [That redaction is likely 28/29 characters] “House Intelligence Committee”? Possible fit.
Clip 1
[SOURCE]
March 22, 2017, was two days after James Comey’s first testimony to the HPSCI on March 20, where he admitted publicly for the first time President Donald Trump was the target of an FBI counterintelligence investigation.
[Comey’s 3/20/17 testimony was three days after SSCI Vice-Chair Mark Warner and SSCI Security Director James Wolfe leaked the FISA to media.The intent was momentum for a special counsel. After the 3/17/17 FISA leak it made no sense for Comey to keep denying Trump was a target. Hence the admission on 3/20/17.]
• Sessions recused March 2nd
• Nunes Presser March 16th
• Wolfe/Warner leak March 17th
• Comey Testimony March 20th
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2025/08/22/the-great-leak-hunt-of-term-1-fbi-director-kash-patel-gives-another-mostly-declassified-release-to-john-solomon/
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Nine months later USAO JohnDurhamcompletes his investigation, December 2017, anddetermines no criminal charge into the leaks is warranted.
Clip 2
However, things get interesting. We know from the Wolfe indictment, at almost the exact same time as Durham says there’s no ‘there’ there – move along, move along, theFBI is getting a December 2017 admission from SSCI Security Director James Wolfe that he leaked classified information to the media.
Following the December admission, the Mark Warner/James Wolfe leaking issues (evidence),indictment and plea deal take place throughout 2018. U.S. Attorney for DC Jessie Liu is in chargeof the prosecution and plea agreement.
Then suddenly in January 2019 [check the second paragraph above], Liu sends memo highlighting what appears to be the Wolfe investigative file that “may contain information relevant to other FBI investigations of public disclosures.”
FBI Investigation “Tropic Vortex” is an outcome. The “unauthorized public disclosures of U.S. govt classified information.”
Jan/Feb 2019 “Tropic Vortex” is now a combination of several prior leak and classified document releases. Official notification of full investigation 02/04/2019.
Clip 3
Clip 4
As you can see,the CURRENT DOJ/FBI doesn’t want us to know the details of why USAO Jessie Liu was sending information to the FBI following the sentencing of James Wolfe. My message to the current AG/FBI Director is above.
[In the background, Jeff Sessions was fired November 2018. President Trump nominated Bill Barr December 07, 2018. Bill Barr confirmed Feb 14, 2019. The Mueller probe is winding down.]
Tropic Vortex starts shortly before Bill Barr is confirmed as Attorney General, and originates as an outcome of USAO Jessie Liu sending something to the FBI which caused them to re-open the 2017 Durham investigation and generate an overlapping larger investigation with a new name.
The information from Liu, almost certainly about leaks to media, “may contain information relevant to other FBI investigations of public disclosures.”So, the FBI triggers a larger investigation to throw a bigger bag over all of it.
So, what was “Tropic Vortex” about?
Well, it’s a combination of several leak investigations, and would have been what was ultimately briefed to incoming AG Bill Barr and helped formulate his initial perspectives.
Clip 5
This part of the case AG Bill Barr eventually handed back to John Durham for review in 2019. A considerable irony given that we now know Durham already looked into these matters beginning in March 2017 and stopped in December 2017.
Tropic Vortex existed as an FBI investigation from February 2019, until January 30, 2020.That’s when USAO Jessie Liu ended the investigation by deciding she was not going to prosecute any of the leakers
Clip 6
USAO Jessie Liu resigned the following day, January 31, 2020.
Think about it against the fulsome context of what we know.
♦ James Comey leaked to media, admitted it and was not prosecuted (Durham ’17). ♦ Andrew McCabe leaked to media, lied about it three times, and yet he too was not prosecuted (Durham ’17). ♦ James Wolfe leaked to media, lied about it, then admitted he lied, and was given a plea deal that didn’t involve any prosecution for leaking.
How could USAO-DC Jessie Liu prosecute anyone for leaking anything given the context of these examples?
Hey, at least Kash is giving Solomon stuff to show how corrupt it is.
Just like John Durham, Kash Patel and Pam Bondi are not going to do anything about it; but hey, we know the details now – so there’s that!
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2025/08/22/the-great-leak-hunt-of-term-1-fbi-director-kash-patel-gives-another-mostly-declassified-release-to-john-solomon/
So basically no one is going to be prosecuted, great job KashSundance has been saying this from the beginning.
Wondering why Bolton’s house was just raided? We’ve got the scoop and a spicy twist…
August 22, 2025 (an hour ago)
If you’re just waking up, wipe the sleep from your eyes and pour yourself a strong cup of coffee, because we’ve got a big one for you.
The Deep State’s biggest warmonger and most famous mustache, John Bolton, just had his home raided at 7:00 a.m.
The New York Post:
FBI agents raided the DC-area home of President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton on Friday morning in a high-profile national security probe, The Post can exclusively reveal.
Federal agents went to Bolton’s house in Bethesda, Md., from 7 a.m. in an investigation ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, a Trump administration official told The Post.
“NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission,” he said in a cryptic post to X shortly after the raid began.
As videos and tweets flood social media, everyone’s asking the same thing: what’s really going on?
Thanks to Catherine Herridge, we’ve got the inside scoop.
Developing:
I understand that @FBIDirectorKash has reopened a high profile National Security case involving former national security adviser John Bolton that was shut down by the Biden administration.
I’m told @fbi raids are being conducted and it involves government records.
FBI declined to comment.
A source familiar with the matter said it is a national security investigation involving classified documents and potential leaks.
Earlier on @X Patel posted “NO ONE is above the law…FBI agents on mission.”
Patel has made a public commitment to destroy “weaponized government.”
Reaching out to Bolton and team for comment.
The twist here is that word “raids” in Catherine’s post. It makes you wonder if there are more to come. Let’s hope so. In the meantime, here’s the most recent video of feds at John Bolton’s primary DC residence.
Eric Daugherty:
🚨 BREAKING: Federal agents are RIGHT NOW in John Bolton’s home “going through things” following an early morning FBI RAID in the DC area over national security concerns.
Yes. We did, indeed, vote for this.
This is Bolton’s primary residence.
“This deals with classified records.”
https://revolver.news/2025/08/wondering-why-boltons-house-was-just-raided-weve-got-the-scoop-and-a-spicy-twist/
NEWS
Texas is finally firing her — but there’s one catch…
August 21, 2025 (a day ago)
It’s finally happening, folks…Texas is about to give the boot to wannabe “ghetto queen” Jasmine Crockett. Was it thanks to some emergency election? Nope. It was even more poetic than that. Republicans turned the tables on Dems and used their favorite trick against them: redistricting.
The new map is set to hand Republicans five additional seats in the House.
And it completely wiped Jasmine’s seat right off the map.
The vote now goes to the Republican-controlled Texas Senate, which is expected to pass the map.
Right-wingers probably aren’t the only ones celebrating today. After all, Crockett’s own staff hated working for her.
Here’s a closeup of the image:
Ironically, Ms. Crockett is the same rep who once suggested white people should leave Texas and move to Arkansas. Now, she’s the one who’s about to officially get her walking papers.
Will the Senate vote finally be the end of Crockett’s embarrassing political career? We sure hope so, because she’s definitely not the “best and brightest” America has to offer. But here’s the one catch… Crockett is already eyeing another district to run in, so don’t fully celebrate just yet.
CBS News:
The newly drawn and hotly contested congressional maps in Texas may prompt Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, to run in a neighboring district, instead of the one she currently represents.
This comes as Texas House Democrats have made national news by breaking quorum for a second week to prevent the chamber from passing the new maps that are designed to give the GOP five new majority seats.
In an interview for Eye On Politics on Wednesday, Crockett accused Republicans of intentionally drawing her home out of her district, District 30, under the newly proposed maps. Due to that, she said she is considering running in the newly drawn 33rd Congressional District, where her home will be if the new maps are approved by Texas Republicans.
“I’m debating about where I will run where they put me, which is where I live, in 33,” said Crockett.
Texas beat Dems at their own little game. Democrats loved redistricting when it worked in their favor; now they’re choking on their own medicine. Just wait until President Trump runs this new census. Dems won’t know what hit them.
Revolver:
When you think about how important illegal aliens are to the very survival of the Dem Party, everything that’s been happening at our border suddenly makes a lot more twisted sense. Under Biden’s wide-open border disaster, an estimated 10 million illegals have poured into the US, and the left isn’t just content with letting them stay; they’re counting them in the census.
That single move skews population numbers, hands Dems more House seats, and tilts the Electoral College in their favor. It’s one of the biggest and most dangerous tactics in their power-grab arsenal, right up there with mass asylum fraud and birthright citizenship. This is why the border invasion was never just “chaos”; it was calculated. When you really dig into this, you quickly see that this is one of the left’s most shameless scams of all, and President Trump is putting an end to it.
That census will be a game-changer. And speaking of that, buckle up, because the maps and the games have changed.
(https://revolver.news/2025/08/texas-is-finally-firing-her-but-theres-one-catch/
DR. PETER NAVARRO: This Deal Ends Decades Of One-Sided Trade With Europe. American Autos, Farmers, And Energy Producers All Win, And The Global Playing Field Is Finally Level
21:56
https://rumble.com/embed/v6vp3hq/?pub=4
SEN. ERIC SCHMITT: In 2021 They Mocked Conservatives For Saying Big Tech Was Colluding With Government. In 2022 We Filed Suit, Got Discovery, And Proved it. The FBI, DHS, CISA, Fauci—They Were All In On It
14:20
https://rumble.com/embed/v6vp0tq/?pub=4
Exclusive: Trump Initiates Deportations for 86,000 Illegal Aliens Left in Limbo by Biden Administration
John Binder21 Aug 2025
President Donald Trump’s United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has initiated deportation proceedings of tens of thousands of illegal aliens who had been left in legal limbo by former President Joe Biden’s administration, Breitbart News has exclusively learned.
Notices to Appear (NTAs) are charging documents that instruct an illegal alien to appear before a federal immigration judge in deportation proceedings.
USCIS Director Joseph Edlow, in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, said that under the Biden administration, the agency “had no policy” on NTAs and thus “when a case was denied and the person was just in limbo and had no other legal pathway here, nothing was happening.”
Under Trump, Edlow said, that has all changed.
“Now, those people … when they are denied [benefits], they are given a Notice to Appear and sent to immigration court,” Edlow said.
According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), immigration benefits include “granting of U.S. citizenship to those who are eligible to naturalize, authorizing individuals to reside in the U.S. on a permanent basis, and providing noncitizens with the eligibility to work in the United States.”
Since Trump took office, about 86,500 NTAs have been issued to illegal aliens who failed to secure immigration benefits and were thus placed in deportation proceedings.
One USCIS official told Breitbart News that the administration has been ramping up the issuance of NTAs in recent months. Indeed, figures published in June showed that at the time, about 26,700 NTAs had been issued since Trump took office.
Those figures indicate that nearly 60,000 of the 86,500 NTAs issued under Trump’s USCIS have been issued in the last few months.
Edlow told Breitbart News that USCIS must have a rigorous NTA policy so that hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are not living in the U.S. in some sort of legal limbo, but rather have their cases closed before an immigration judge.
“… [T]here should be an end to those cases. That end is either them getting relief before an immigration judge or their ultimate removal from this country,” Edlow said.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/08/21/exclusive-trump-initiates-deportations-for-86000-illegal-aliens-left-in-limbo-by-biden-administration/
Pew Research: Biden Administration Packed Swing States with Over 1 Million Illegal Aliens
Aug. 21, 2025
In just two years of his one-term presidency, President Joe Biden’s border policies helpedwelcome more than a million illegal aliens to the nation’s electoral swing states and, additionally, some 450,000 illegal aliens to Texas.
The latest Pew Research Center estimates specifically look at the rate at which Biden increased the illegal alien population in a two-year window — from 2021 to 2023.
Notably, the Biden administration packed swing states with more than a million illegal aliens during those two years, with likely many more resettling in such states from 2023 through 2024.
In particular, the swing state of Florida saw its illegal alien population grow by 700,000 in just two years under Biden, while Georgia’s illegal alien population grew by 100,000.
Pennsylvania and Michigan each added 80,000 illegal aliens to their resident populations in 2021 and 2022, as North Carolina added 100,000 illegal aliens and Ohio added 70,000.
Arizona, likewise, added 50,000 illegal aliens in two years under Biden, while Nevada and Wisconsin each absorbed 30,000 illegal aliens. Colorado, which has rapidly turned blue in the last decade, saw 40,000 illegal aliens added to its population in 2021 and 2022.
New Hampshire, which has a population of 1.4 million, added 5,000 illegal aliens in two years under Biden.
Significantly, the Biden administration oversaw a surge of illegal aliens to New Jersey, which election predictors say could become a swing state over the next 10 years, and Texas — a GOP stronghold that Democrats have long sought to flip to their side.
Texas alone was forced to absorb 450,000 illegal aliens in two years under Biden, while New Jersey saw an influx of 150,000 illegal aliens in the same period.
While the Pew Research Center estimates that the illegal alien population hit a record in 2023 under Biden, at more than 14 million, scholarly estimates from years priorsuggest that the illegal alien population today is well above 22 million.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/08/21/pew-research-biden-administration-packed-swing-states-over-1-million-illegal-aliens/
This Is Exactly Why Libs Are LosingScott Jennings
9:39
Republican strategist Scott Jennings argued Wednesday on CNN that Democrats are "hemorrhaging voters because they've chosen all the wrong constituencies," claiming they care more about illegal aliens than U.S. citizens as one example. Left-wing panelists promptly melted down, with Democratic strategist Alencia Johnson claiming his examples were false and Meidas Touch content creator Adam Mockler pressing him to name a Democratic politician fitting the description.
https://youtu.be/s-_2OLYfL_U
CS August 22, 2025
Engoron’s Half-Billion-Dollar Miscalculation: Court Tosses Trump Fine
Below is my column in Fox.com on the New York opinion tossing out the grotesque half-billion-dollar fine imposed by Judge Arthur Engoron.Despite the support of many lawyers and pundits, Engoron could not get a single judge to agree with him on the fine.
Here is the column:
In New York, a court revealed that a leading citizen had cooked the books by inflating questionable figures without any support in reality. Moreover, his wild overvaluation was widely viewed as motivated by his self-aggrandizement. The final reported figures are so absurdly inflated that they were rejected in their entirety. In the end, he was off by over half a billion dollars.
That man is Judge Arthur Engoron.
After a New York appellate court unanimously threw out Engoron’s absurd half-a-billion-dollar judgment and interest against President Donald Trump, the irony was crushing. It was Engoron who seemed, as he characterized Trump witnesses, as having “simply denied reality.” It made his notorious reliance on an assessment of Mar-a-Lago as worth between $18 million and $27.6 million seem like good accounting.
In the end, he could not get a single judge to preserve a single dollar of that fine.
For some of us who covered that trial, the most vivid image of Engoron came at the start. He indicated that he did not want cameras in the courtroom, but when the networks showed up, Engoron took off his glasses and seemed to pose for the cameras.
It was a “Sunset Boulevard” moment. We only need Gloria Swanson looking into the camera to speak to “those wonderful people out there in the dark!” and announcing “all right, [Ms. James], I’m ready for my close-up.”
The close-up was not a good idea, and, on appeal, it was perfectly disastrous. The court found little legal or factual basis for his fine. The purported witnesses not only did not lose a dime, but they testified that they made money on the loans and wanted new loans with the Trump administration. That did not move Engoron. From the start, he was speaking to those “wonderful people out there.”
You did not have to go far. In both the civil and criminal trials of Trump in New York, there was a carnival atmosphere in the street outside the courthouse.It was really not derangement as much as delirium. Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James had injected lawfare directly into the veins of New Yorkers. Pledging in her campaign to bag Trump (without bothering to name any crime or violation), James was elected based on her recreational rather than legal appeal.
Yet, James could not have succeeded if she had not had a judge willing to ignore reality and cook the books on the fines. She needed a partner in lawfare. She needed Engoron.
Even for some anti-Trump commentators, the judgment was impossible to defend and some acknowledged that they had never seen any case like this one brought in New York.
Judge David Friedman gave Engoron a close-up that would have made Swanson wince. He detailed how the underlying law “has never been used in the way it is being used in this case – namely, to attack successful, private, commercial transactions, negotiated at arm’s length between highly sophisticated parties fully capable of monitoring and defending their own interests.”
He accused Engoron of participating in an effort clearly directed by James as “ending with the derailment of President Trump’s political career and the destruction of his real estate business.”
Other judges said that Engoron’s fine was so off base and engorged that it was an unconstitutional order under the Eighth Amendment, protecting citizens from “cruel and unusual” punishments. So, Engoron not only inflated the figures but shredded the Constitution in his effort to deliver a blow against Trump.
Trump can now appeal the residual parts of the Engoron decision imposing limits on the Trump family doing business in New York. Some of those limits could be moot by the time of any final judgment. Ironically, if Engoron had shown a modicum of restraint, he might have secured a victory. During the trial in New York, I said that he would have been smart to impose a dollar fine and limited injunctive relief. That, however, required a modicum of judicial restraint and judgment.
Instead, Engoron chose to walk down the stairway into infamy. He was off by half a billion dollars, which could put him in the Bernie Madoff class of judges.
In other words, if he wanted to be remembered on that first day, Arthur Engoron succeeded.
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/08/22/engorons-half-billion-dollar-error-court-tosses-trump-fine-as-unfounded/
August 21, 2025
“I Have No Idea”: Justice Department Official Raised Objections to Ill-Defined Biden Pardons
The House Oversight Committee is investigating the use of the autopen by Biden officials as allegations grow that President Joe Biden had little idea of some of the actions taken under his name, from executive orders to pardons. Now, the Committee has disclosed that at least one senior official warned that he had “no idea” what the parameters were for Biden’s blanket pardons and that the public was being misled about the pardons only applying to non-violent individuals.
Associate Deputy Attorney General Brad Weinsheimer told the Office of White House Counsel they needed an additional statement from the President as to his intent and the scope of the pardon:
“I think the language ‘offenses described to the Department of Justice’ in the warrant is highly problematic and in order to resolve its meaning appropriately, and consistent with the President’s intent, we will need a statement or direction from the President as to how to interpret the language…I have no idea what interpretation the incoming Administration will give to the warrant, but they may find this interpretation attractive, as it gives effect to the language but does not go beyond the four corners of the warrant.”
So, at least for this senior Justice Department official, it was not just Biden who may have had little idea of what pardons were being issued under his name. The confusion was shared by implementing attorneys. That is a serious problem in the use of this presidential power by unseen, unnamed staff members.
Weinsheimer also flagged how even the stated intent of Biden in barring violent individuals was being disregarded due to the ill-defined criteria:
“One other important note – in communication about the commutations, the White House has described those who received commutations as people convicted of non-violent drug offenses. I think you should stop saying that because it is untrue or at least misleading… As you know, even with the exceedingly limited review we were permitted to do of the individuals we believed you might be considering for commutation action, we initially identified 19 that were highly problematic.”
House Oversight Chairman James Comer is pursuing this investigation despite opposition from Democratic members and, of course, many in the media. Yet, there is mounting evidence that Biden was clueless on major decisions made in his Administration, including signing a major executive order on natural gas exports. In this latest controversy, a veteran Justice official did not have a clue about the scope of the pardons as staff members just compiled lists of people whom they wanted to include in the presidential order.
What is particularly disconcerting is how accountability for any abuse is made more difficult by the large number of staff contributing to these lists and lack of clearly defined decision makers. With Biden abdicating his own responsibility, staffers were allowed to effectively add names to a signed blank page, exercising a presidential power with the level of circumspection of an inter-office memo.
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/08/21/i-have-no-idea-justice-department-official-raised-objections-to-ill-defined-biden-pardons/#more-234976
Based on these admissions can’t all of pardons and commutations be negated and are null and void?
CRIMINAL LAW, POLITICSAugust 15, 2025
The Usual Suspects: Disclosure on the Scuttled Clinton Foundation Investigation Reveals Familiar Names
As the Trump Administration finally releases the underlying documents related to prior scandals and investigations, the public has learned a great deal about the origins of the Russian collusion investigation and other subjects.This week, another document was released explaining why the investigation into the Clinton Foundation seemed to go nowhere. What is less surprising are the characters involved in shutting down the investigation. It is, as Claude Rains would say, “the usual suspects” from former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates to former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
Many of us had written about the allegations of influence peddling by the Clintons. While Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, the Clintons raked in hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign sources. Clinton Foundation officials were shown to have intervened for donors at the State Department. Those funds were used not only for the Clinton Foundation programs but also for travel and support for the Clinton family members. (Tellingly, donations reportedly plummeted after Clinton left office).
What is striking is that officials who relentlessly pursued Trump and his associates on little evidence were reportedly opposed to aggressive efforts involving the Clintons.I was one of the loudest critics of Sally Yates, who ordered the entire Justice Department not to assist Trump on immigration efforts after his inauguration.In my view, Yates’s conduct (just days before she was scheduled to leave the department) was a raw political move that shattered standards of professional conduct. It would also make her a heroine on the left and in the media.
Ultimately, Trump prevailed on the underlying claims of authority raised in the immigration orders before the Supreme Court.In these documents, Yates is shown in an email shutting down the investigation into the Clintons.Despite findings of good cause for further investigation into these allegations of pay-to-play corruption, Yates (then-Deputy Attorney General) is quoted as saying, “Shut it down!”
FBI Director Kash Patel released a memo showing a timeline of the interference, including the message from Sally Yates, whom Trump fired as acting attorney general. McCabe, who is now a CNN contributor, is again shownintervening in a crushingly predictable way.
The declassified timeline revealed that as early as February 2016, the Justice Department “indicated they would not be supportive of an FBI investigation.” The timeline also shows that, in mid-February 2016, McCabe ordered that “no overt investigative steps” were allowed to be taken in the Clinton Foundation investigation “without his approval” — a command he allegedly repeated numerous times over the coming months.
[…]
The timeline detailed how Yates ordered one of the federal prosecutors to “shut it down,” likely in the March 2016 timeframe. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and Eastern District of New York (EDNY) purportedly said in August 2016 that they “would not support the investigation” into the Clinton Foundation, according to the timeline, and that “no explanation was given.”
Special Counsel John Durham found that the FBI’s Little Rock and New York investigations “included predication based on source reporting that identified foreign governments that had made, or offered to make, contributions to the Foundation in exchange for favorable or preferential treatment from Clinton.”Nevertheless, the FBI timeline stated that DOJ “indicated they would not be supportive of an FBI investigation” on February 1, 2016.
For those of us who closely followed these investigations and wrote about them, this is hardly surprising but still very valuable for historical purposes. The consistent efforts of figures like McCabe only magnify concerns over the role of key figures in pushing investigations of Trump while discouraging investigations of top Democrats.
Once again, the media is largely ignoring the disclosures. The same reporters who exhaustively pushed the false Russian collusion claims have little interest in these countervailing disclosures. As with the conduct of Yates and McCabe, that is also an all-too-familiar pattern.
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/08/15/the-usual-suspects-disclosure-on-the-scuttled-clinton-foundation-investigation-reveals-familiar-names/#more-234811