Federal Judge Sanctions Alabama Lawyers for Submitting Fake AI‑Generated Case Citations, Highlighting Systemic, Ongoing AI Problems Making up Facts

OpenAI founder Sam Altman says that soon, everything everywhere will start using Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models for entire professions, causing them to “disappear.”

Meanwhile, people actually using these services, including attorneys in Alabama, are being sanctioned for the pervasive AI/LLM flaw of ‘hallucinating’ fake citations and fake references.

A federal judge in Birmingham, Alabama, Judge Anna Manasco, issued formal sanctions this week against three attorneys from the law firm Butler Snow after they submitted legal filings containing fabricated case citations generated by ChatGPT.

Manasco, appointed to the court by President Trump, described the citations as “completely made up” and removed the attorneys from the case.

The filings were part of a lawsuit brought by an inmate who alleged repeated stabbings at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility. Manasco referred the case to the Alabama State Bar and ordered the attorneys to share the sanctions order with all current and future clients, as well as all opposing counsel and courts where they are actively involved.

Even the attorneys overseeing the ones who made the mistake of using ChatGPT were also sanctioned. The supervisors claimed they ‘skimmed’ the filings and did not notice the fabricated legal authorities used to support their written arguments.

The lawsuit centers on claims by inmate Frankie Johnson, who alleges that prison officials failed to prevent multiple assaults despite prior warnings. Johnson is housed at Donaldson Correctional Facility, one of the state’s most overcrowded and violent prisons. The firm representing the Alabama Department of Corrections, Butler Snow, filed motions in the case that included five legal citations meant to support its arguments on scheduling and discovery disputes. Upon review, none of the referenced decisions existed.

News in the past month also suggests that, when measured, heavy AI/LLM reliance stunts the cognitive growth in its users, effectively making them dumber.

The judge investigated the filings further in this case and determined that the cases cited had never been published, logged, or recorded in any known legal database. They were simply made up out of thin air.

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The Intelligence Community Needs To Be Dismantled

At the direction of President Barack Obama in late 2016, our intelligence agencies pulled off what can only be described as a coup and a treasonous conspiracy against President-elect Donald Trump — a conspiracy that continued throughout his entire first term in office, hobbling his presidency and thwarting the will of the American electorate.

That’s what the bombshell documents released this week by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reveal: a criminal scheme, at the highest levels of the federal government, to deprive Trump the fruits of his electoral victory and, by extension, the American people of meaningful self-government.

At the center of this scheme was President Obama and his intelligence chiefs, who in December 2016 launched a conspiracy to prevent Trump from taking office or, failing that, to hamstring his presidency. “The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment. There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact,” Gabbard said Wednesday, adding that her office has forwarded all documents to the Justice Department and FBI “to investigate the criminal implications of this.”

It’s possible that those responsible for this long-running coup will face some kind of criminal prosecution and possibly conviction, but it’s highly unlikely. No one should hold their breath waiting for an Obama mugshot, as well-deserved as that might be given what he and his top officials did.

However, that doesn’t mean that nothing at all can be done. The conspiracy that these documents reveal should lead to a thorough reform of our intelligence agencies — not for the sake of political retribution, but for the survival of our republic. Simply put, our intelligence agencies as currently constituted are incompatible with republican self-government and the rule of law. They now function here in America much as they have functioned abroad for decades: as coup machines, undermining national sovereignty and imposing their will over and against the will of the electorate.

If nothing else comes of this scandal, it should be this: the complete dismantling of the intelligence community and its total reconstitution into agencies that can be held accountable to democratically-elected leaders. Right now, it’s accountable to no one, as the recent revelations demonstrate.

What makes such reform difficult isn’t just the power and insularity of these agencies, but that in this particular case they were weaponized by an outgoing president, Obama, who gave his intel chiefs a directive to push out a narrative, backed by official intelligence assessments, that Moscow stole the election for Trump. If a corrupt president is able to use the intel agencies like this, then reform of the agencies is necessary to prevent it from ever happening again.

The ins and outs of how all this happened, and what exactly Obama and his intelligence chiefs did in November and December of 2016, is admittedly a bit confusing, especially for those who never followed or perhaps have forgotten what happened back then and why we should care now, more than eight years later.

My colleagues here at The Federalist have in recent days done the heavy lifting of laying it all out in clear and unmistakable terms: Mollie Hemingway explained how top intelligence officials were overruled by Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, who insisted on the “key judgment” in a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that Russia had interfered in the election because Moscow “aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.” The intelligence officials knew there was no evidence to substantiate that claim, which became a cornerstone of the Russia collusion narrative that Trump conspired with Russia to “steal” the 2016 election.

Shawn Fleetwood wrote about newly declassified records showing that “the phony dossier intel agencies used to spy on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was included in a critical Obama-era report on Russia’s activities in the 2016 election — despite claims from top Obama officials that it wasn’t.” That report, the above-mentioned ICA, relied on the infamous Steele dossier as evidence that Trump colluded with Moscow. Why? Because that was the only evidence they had to substantiate the explosive claim. The Steele dossier was of course an outlandish piece of opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign, and everything in it was fabricated.

Keep in mind the key part of all this is that after Trump won the 2016 election, but before he took office, Obama, Brennan, DNI James Clapper, and FBI Director James Comey, along with other top intel officials, deliberately manipulated the ICA so they could claim that Moscow had helped Trump steal the election. Russia has for a long time meddled in our elections, seeking to sow chaos and undermine the democratic process. But in 2016, Obama and his intel chiefs decided to manufacture a narrative that this time Russia didn’t just want to sow chaos, it wanted to help Trump win and then intervened to make that happen. That’s the central claim of the Russia collusion hoax, and what we learned this week is that it was all based on totally bogus evidence — evidence that was cobbled together at the behest of Obama himself.

But the Obama team didn’t stop there. As my colleague Sean Davis has explained, “Obama intel officials then prepared separate versions of the ICA — one for Congress, which did not include references to Steele dossier in the main body, a declassified version for public release which also excluded the dossier even though it was unclassified, and one for Obama and other executive branch officials, which included the Steele dossier references in the main body. The newly declassified review of the ICA concluded that this sleight of hand was done to allow top intel officials to avoid any public scrutiny or accountability for their inclusion of false, Clinton-funded opposition research in an ICA.”

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New Docs Contradict Top Obama Officials’ Claims Steele Dossier Wasn’t Included In Critical Russiagate Report

Newly declassified records show the phony dossier intel agencies used to spy on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was included in a critical Obama-era report on Russia’s activities in the 2016 election — despite claims from top Obama officials that it wasn’t.

The information was disclosed Wednesday in a declassified 2020 report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Approved for release by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the unsealed records paint a damning picture of how high-ranking Obama administration officials included unsubstantiated dirt about Trump in its 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Moscow’s shenanigans in the 2016 contest.

That ICA, as The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway noted, included a “‘key judgment’ … that Russia had interfered in the election specifically because Putin and the Russian government ‘aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.’”

The declassified report released Wednesday not only significantly undermines the ICA’s “key judgement,” but it also contradicts claims made by top Obama officials that salacious information from the infamous Steele dossier were not incorporated into the main body of the 2017 ICA.

As a quick refresher, the allegations that ultimately became the dossier were compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which in turn had been hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign’s law firm (Perkins Coie) to dig up dirt on Trump ahead of the 2016 election. The dossier was ultimately shopped by Steele to the FBI in early July 2016 and later used by the agency to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump campaign official Carter Page.

The report unsealed by Gabbard reveals that the dossier’s “most significant claims — that Russia launched cyber activities to leak political emails — were little more than a regurgitation of stories previously published by multiple media outlets prior to the creation of the dossier.” It further disclosed that dossier reports containing salacious allegations about Trump’s character and alleged collusion with Moscow “were either proven false or unsubstantiated.”

Equally significant, however, are the report’s following paragraphs, which detail how the dossier was “referenced in the ICA main body text and further detailed in a two-page ICA annex” — “[c]ontradicting public claims by [then-CIA Director John Brennan] that the dossier ‘was not in any way‘ incorporated into the ICA.”

“By devoting nearly two pages of ICA text to summarizing the dossier in a high-profile assessment intended for the President and President-elect, the ICA misrepresented both the significance and credibility of the dossier reports,” the 2020 HPSCI analysis reads. “The ICA referred to the dossier as ‘Russian plans and intentions,’ falsely implying to high-level US policymakers that the dossier had intelligence value for understanding Moscow’s influence operations.”

As summarized by Federalist CEO Sean Davis, “Obama intel officials then prepared separate versions of the ICA — one for Congress, which did not include references to Steele dossier in the main body, a declassified version for public release which also excluded the dossier even though it was unclassified, and one for Obama and other executive branch officials, which included the Steele dossier references in the main body.”

“The newly declassified review of the ICA concluded that this sleight of hand was done to allow top intel officials to avoid any public scrutiny or accountability for their inclusion of false, Clinton-funded opposition research in an ICA,” Davis added.

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Tulsi Gabbard Suggests Obama May be Guilty of Treason – “The Expressed Intent and What Followed Afterward Can Only be Described as a Years-Long Coup and Treasonous Conspiracy”

Tulsi Gabbard on Wednesday told reporters at the White House that she believes Obama and members of his administration are guilty of a “treasonous conspiracy” to overthrow then-President-elect Donald Trump in 2016.

Gabbard made a surprise appearance during yesterday’s White House press briefing after releasing the second batch of previously undisclosed documents that include more proof that Barack Obama directly gave the order to push the falsified Russia Collusion hoax.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, Gabbard told reporters that the DOJ is investigating all of the documents, including criminal acts by Barack Obama.

“I’m leaving the criminal charges to the Department of Justice,” Gabbard said when asked if Obama was guilty of treason.

“I am not an attorney, but as I’ve said previously, when you look at the intent behind creating a fake, manufactured intelligence document that directly contradicts multiple assesments that were created by the intelligence community, the expressed intent and what followed afterward can only be described as a years-long coup and treasonous conspiracy against the American people, our Republic, in an attempt to undermine President Trump’s administration.”

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Obama’s Disgraced CIA Director John Brennan Lashes Out — Accuses Tulsi Gabbard of “Intentionally Lying” After She Exposes His Fraudulent Intel Reports

Obama’s scandal-plagued CIA Director John Brennan has lashed out at Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, accusing her of “intentionally lying” after she publicly exposed him for publishing fraudulent intelligence reports.

The report—declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard—alleges that Brennan, together with Obama-era officials like James Clapper and James Comey, directed the creation of a misleading Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) claiming “Putin aspired to help President‑elect Trump’s election chances”

In October 2020, then-DNI John Ratcliffe declassified Brennan’s handwritten notes from a July 2016 briefing he gave to President Obama and other senior officials, along with a related CIA memo sent to the FBI.

These documents originated from U.S. intelligence monitoring Russian activities and were declassified amid congressional oversight into the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Recent declassifications in July 2025, under DNI Tulsi Gabbard, include a HPSCI oversight report and DNI press releases (e.g., PR-15-25 and PR-18-25) on Obama-era actions. These build on prior materials, focusing on the ICA’s creation.

  • HPSCI Report Findings on Brennan:
    • Brennan ordered the ICA’s publication despite veteran CIA officers’ warnings it was “substandard” and relied on dubious sources, including the Steele dossier. He overruled objections, reportedly saying of the dossier, “Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?”
    • The ICA claimed Putin “aspired to help” Trump’s election by discrediting Clinton, but excluded intelligence contradicting this (e.g., reports Putin was neutral or prepared for a Clinton win). Only a “scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment” supported the claim.
    • Brennan directed inclusion of “substandard reporting” on December 9, 2016, after an Obama Oval Office meeting, ignoring standards because it was a presidential directive.
    • The report accuses Brennan of misleading lawmakers by denying dossier use in the ICA, though it was referenced in the text and annex.
  • DNI PR-18-25 Revelations:
    • Brennan and IC leaders “mischaracterized intelligence” to create a “contrived false narrative” of Putin’s Trump preference, suppressing contradictory info that made the claim “implausible—if not ridiculous.”
    • Brennan overruled officers who noted “we don’t have direct information that Putin wanted to get Trump elected.”
    • In a December 2016 memo, Brennan stated: “There is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election.”
    • The ICA was unusually directed by senior officials like Brennan, using just five analysts and one principal drafter.
  • DNI PR-15-25 Revelations:
    • Brennan attended a December 9, 2016, White House meeting where Obama directed creation of the ICA to detail Russian “tools” influencing the election. No direct quotes from Brennan, but it implies his involvement in what the release calls a “treasonous conspiracy” to undermine Trump.

The irony is rich. Here is John Brennan—architect of the Russia Collusion Hoax, signer of the infamous Hunter Biden laptop disinformation letter, and key player in weaponizing U.S. intelligence against political opponents—lecturing anyone about ethics and honesty.

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Second Court Ignores Landmark SCOTUS Ruling, Issues Nationwide Injunction

In a 6-3 ruling late last month, Justice Amy Coney Barrett minced no words when it came to so-called “universal injunctions,” lower-court rulings that extended far beyond that court’s jurisdiction.

“It is unnecessary to consider whether Congress has constrained the Judiciary; what matters is how the Judiciary may constrain the Executive,” Barrett wrote in the decision.

“That goes for judges, too,” Barrett added. “When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”

That decision, by the way, did not decide the merits of the case in which the universal injunction was issued: President Donald Trump’s administration has argued that the 14th Amendment does not grant birthright citizenship because those born to citizens of other countries within U.S. borders are not among “persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

The meaning of this language, and whether children of foreign nationals are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States will eventually be decided one way or another before the high court. But the ruling itself was clear: Before that, nationwide universal injunctions were the judiciary acting in a way that exceeded its power.

So, for the second time since the decision, the judiciary has exceeded its power, because what the heck?

In a 2-1 decision handed down late Wednesday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, judges ruled that the plaintiffs — attorneys general from four Democratic-led states, Arizona, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington — could receive a nationwide injunction because that was the only way to obtain requisite relief, according to The Hill.

“States’ residents may give birth in a non-party state, and individuals subject to the Executive Order from non-party states will inevitably move to the States,” U.S. Circuit Judge Ronald Gould wrote in the opinion of the court.

Both Gould and Judge Michael Hawkins, who voted to issue the universal injunctions, were Bill Clinton appointees.

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MSM Flips on Zelensky, Starts Reporting on Ukraine Corruption – Kiev Regime Leader Backtracks and Files New Bill Restoring Independence to Anti-graft Agencies

The war made Zelensky famous – and the corruption of the Kiev regime made him infamous.

The mainstream media – and people who give credence to their reporting – live in an upside-down world.

Take Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky, for example: described as a ‘new Winston Churchill’, a heroic figure of nearly mythological standing.

In real life, Zelensky is a ‘president’ whose mandate ended more than a year ago, who leads a via martial law a regime packed with real-life Nazis, rampant corruption, censure of the press, outlawing of opposition parties, arresting or exiling popular opponents… the list goes on – and don’t even get us started with his widely rumored substance abuse.

Now, all of a sudden, the world’s MSM is slowly but surely turning a cold shoulder to the ‘moderately successful comedian’.

The reason is simple: the Kiev regime was reportedly on the verge of being struck by corruption investigations targeting the close circle around Zelensky.

So, they fast-tracked a bill defanging the anti-corruption agencies NABU and SAPO, subjecting them to the control of the Presidency via the prosecutor general.

Everyone and their uncle came public to protest, including the European Union and the US.

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GOP senator demands National Archives turn over all documents on Biden’s health

Senator Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is demanding the National Archives turn over all records related to former President Joe Biden’s health and cognitive decline. Johnson sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week, who is serving as the acting U.S. archivist. In the letter, Johnson said he is conducting an investigation into “the cover-up of Biden’s health.”

My office has been reviewing the allegations that former President Biden, cabinet members, and his staff covered up his declining mental and physical health over the course of his presidency,” Johnson wrote in the letter, first obtained by Fox News Digital.

The investigation comes just days after Biden’s son, Hunter, said on a podcast that his father was taking Ambien before his first presidential debate last year. But Biden’s publicly available medical records do not list Ambien as a medication he was prescribed.

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After Spreading Russia Hoax Lies, Media Lie Again To Bury Evidence They Lied

Newly declassified documents confirm that Obama-era intelligence officials pushed the discredited Steele dossier that served as the nexus of the Russia collusion hoax in a bid to kneecap Donald Trump before he could set foot in the White House. But instead of reckoning with the truth, the propaganda press is scrambling to discredit the revelations — not because the evidence is lacking, but because it’s a damning indictment of the media’s complicity.

Nine years ago, the media breathlessly peddled the now discredited claim that then-candidate Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. At the heart of the hoax was the Steele dossier — opposition research created by a former British spy, paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and laundered into the intelligence community.

On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified a 2020 report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence showing — among other things — that members of the intelligence community were concerned with several aspects of the dossier, such as credibility. In fact, according to the report, two senior CIA officers contended that the dossier should have been omitted from the ICA “because it failed to meet basic tradecraft standards.” In fact, the information in the dossier was so flawed that “every CIA analyst and operations officer” asked about the dossier made sure to “emphasize that they had nothing to do with the decision to include Annex A” and could not “vouch” for it.

Pretty damming, right? And that’ not even half of it. Additional coverage of the findings can be found here, here, and here.

One would think the media would be all over a story this explosive — historic levels of government corruption and a weaponized intel apparatus. While a functioning press would be digging into this (like us here at The Federalist!), the propaganda press is actually doing the opposite, trying to discredit the news.

“Trump’s intel chief Tulsi Gabbard reignites political battles with 2016 election documents on Russia,” CBS News’ Olivia Victoria Gazis wrote.

“‘It’s just wildly misleading’: Why the administration’s latest allegations about the Russia investigation don’t add up,” read a headline from CNN’s Jeremy Herb and Katie Bo Lillis.

Ironically, Herb and Lillis (the latter of which was involved in a massive defamation case this year that ended with a jury finding CNN is literally fake news) claim the declassified document “conflate[s] and misrepresent[s]” the findings of the intelligence community. But according to the declassified report, the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) “misrepresented both the significance and credibility of the dossier reports.”

“Trump rehashes years-old grievances on Russia investigation after new intelligence report,” The Associated Press’ Erick Tucker and Chris Megerian wrote. According to the Bobbsey twins, decisions to review the corrupt intelligence apparatus and their involvement in the 2016 Russia collusion hoax is “backward-looking.”

“Gabbard Releases New Documents Targeting Obama Administration,” The New York Times’ Julian E. Barnes wrote.

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House speaker says there will be no votes on releasing Epstein files before August recess

The House of Representatives will not move forward with any legislative efforts aimed at releasing files related to notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein before its monthlong August recess, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Monday. 

“No,” Johnson responded when asked by CNN reporter Manu Raju if lawmakers would vote on a resolution calling for the public disclosure of documents related to Epstein’s case before the lower chamber takes its annual summer break. 

The House speaker argued that Congress needs to give the Trump administration “space” to handle the hot-button issue on its own for the time being. 

“There is no daylight between the House Republicans, the House and the president on maximum transparency,” Johnson said. “[President Trump] has said that he wants all the credible files relating to Epstein to be released. He’s asked the attorney general to request the grand jury files of the court. All of that is in process right now.”  

“My belief is we need the administration to have the space to do what it is doing.” 

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