Tag: doj

Trump DOJ Files Amicus Brief Supporting Challenge to Illinois ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban

On June 13, 2025, the Civil Rights Division of President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice announced the filing of an amicus brief supporting an NRA lawsuit against Illinois’ “assault weapons” ban.

The brief was announced by Assistant Attorney General for DOJ’s Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon. In a post to X, Dhillon noted, “The Second Amendment is not a second-class right. See you in court, Illinois.”

The amicus brief’s introduction points to Bruen (2022) and says in part:

Three years ago, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision meant to break a habit developed by some States of treating the Second Amendment as “a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other” constitutional rights. …[Bruen] (2022).

Regrettably, not every State got the message. Just a few months after Bruen, Illinois outlawed some of the most commonly used rifles and magazines in America via a so-called “assault weapons” ban. In doing so,  Illinois violated the Supreme Court’s clear directive that States cannot prohibit arms that are “in common use” by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes. …[Heller] (2008).

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Federal Prosecutors Are Starting To Sound Like Campus Activists About Sex and Consent

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is now embracing ideas about coercion and consent that rose to prominence on college campuses during the Barack Obama administration.

That’s the implication of the OneTaste case, in which a jury has returned a guilty verdict against Rachel Cherwitz and Nicole Daedone, who stood accused of a conspiracy to commit forced labor during their time with the sexual and spiritual self-help organization.

I have written many words about this case already, and I’m going to try to refrain from rehashing all of the details in today’s newsletter. (If you’re new to the case and want to dive deep, here you go. If you want a couple of overviews of how the trial played out, see here and here.)

What I want to focus on right now is the larger implications of this case. They’re not pretty.

From College Campuses to #MeToo to the DOJ

If these ideas about coercion and consent didn’t start on the college campuses of the 2010s, that’s at least when they became fully institutionalized —adopted as not just the framework favored by activist students and women’s studies professors but by college administrators and the Title IX offices they were beholden to. There was affirmative consent, sure, but also a broader suspicion of consent as a worthwhile standard, or at least a willingness to dismiss it for more arcane ideas about sexual permissibility.

Suddenly it wasn’t enough to say no and it wasn’t even enough to say yes—one had to consider a complex set of power dynamics, alcohol consumption levels, subtle nonverbal cues, and so on, to determine if consent counted. It stopped just short of taking astrological signs into account.

We went from a reasonable corrective (acknowledging that sexual assault needn’t necessarily involve force or violence) to women getting support for claims of sexual coercion and violation even when they seemed to willingly go along with sexual activity at the time but later said that they weren’t enthusiastic enough about it and a partner should have known that and stopped. Basically, it was only consensual if a woman felt deep down in her heart, during and after, that everything had been OK.

We saw this idea migrate from campus newspapers and Title IX offices to the broader world during the #MeToo movement. It’s perhaps best exemplified by a story about the actor Aziz Ansari. A young woman went to dinner with him, then back to his house, and later excoriated him in Babe magazine for not reading her cues about not wanting to fool around and allegedly pressuring her to do so. The piece called it sexual misconduct and a violation. But when the woman explicitly told Ansari no, he stopped, per her account of things. And when she wanted to go, she left.

The Babe article provoked a huge debate about whether this sort of thing—which in another era we might have just called a bad date or caddish behavior—was a form of sexual assault and where responsibility lies here. Are sexual partners supposed to be mind readers? Do women have any responsibility for explicitly making their wishes known?

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Danish Scientist Bribed by Dr. Fauci to Say COVID Did NOT Come From a Wuhan Lab May Flee the Country Before He Is Called to Testify in DOJ Investigation

Attorneys inside the Bondi Justice Department have launched inquiries into one of the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases or “CREID grants awarded to Scripps Research Institute scientist Kristian Andersen, by Tony Fauci in 2020.

Anderson is now in the process of fleeing the United States for a position being created for him at the University of Oslo before too many eyes are pointing in his direction.

Dr. Kristian Anderson should be worried.

In 2020, Dr. Tony Fauci bribed Anderson to change his position on the COVID lab leak as the origin of the pandemic. After his call with Dr. Fauci on February 1, 2020, Dr. Anderson was given a $1.88 million grant and $16.5 million in funding from NIAID, Dr. Fauci’s personal piggy bank.

As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier in 2023 and 2024…

On January 31, 2020, Danish-born and British-educated scientist Kristian Andersen emailed Dr. Tony Fauci, saying the virus looked lab-made.

According to the email (emphasis added):

“[O]ne has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered . . . . Eddie [Holmes], Bob [Garry], Mike [Ferguson] and myself all find the genome inconsistent with evolutionary theory.”

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Conservative watchdog Judicial Watch sours on Patel, Bongino: ‘Hostages of the Deep State’

Formerly conservative heavyweights FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino are rapidly losing the confidence of at least one member of the MAGA movement, with watchdog group Judicial Watch alleging this week they have failed to deliver enough transparency on prior scandals.

In an investigative bulletin from the organization, Judicial Watch reporters highlighted their prior support for the pair, but lamented that the pair appeared to have been swept up by bureau norms.

“These days, as well, conservative insiders are alarmed by mounting signs that Patel and Bongino have been taken hostage by the Deep State consensus and are failing to bring meaningful change to the FBI,” they wrote.

FBI and DOJ officials dispute the portrayal, telling Just the News the FBI has produced tens of thousands of pages to DOJ and Congress since Patel and Bongino started on scandals ranging from Russia collusion to the JFK assassination. The officials said the documents get a secondary review at DOJ to determine which are supposed to be sent to Congress because of prior unanswered document requests and subpoenas and then are released to the public.

Officials said major public releases from DOJ from the files FBI scoured in recent weeks are due this summer, including some still this month.

Judicial Watch also took issue with Patel’s appointment of Steven Jensen, a leader of the Jan. 6 investigations, to lead the Washington Field Office.

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House Oversight to Issue Formal Document Request to Neville Singham Over Alleged Funding of CCP-Tied Communist Group Behind LA Riots — Subpoena and DOJ Referral Incoming if He Refuses to Cooperate

The House Oversight Committee is turning up the heat on Neville Roy Singham, the shadowy billionaire and alleged Chinese Communist Party asset accused of bankrolling the radical left’s most disruptive street agitators.

In a bombshell move announced on Tuesday, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) confirmed that the Committee will issue a formal document request to Singham over his alleged financial support of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) — the extremist Marxist group believed to be behind the violent anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles.

“Thanks to the investigative work of Data Republican, House Oversight will issue a formal document request to Neville Singham regarding his funding of a communist group linked to the LA riots and the CCP,” Luna wrote on X.

She continued, “IF HE REFUSES TO APPEAR, HE WILL BE SUBPOENAED, AND IF HE IGNORES THAT HE WILL BE REFERRED TO THE DOJ FOR PROSECUTION.”

According to a bombshell report by @DataRepublican, Neville Singham—a tech multimillionaire who resides in Shanghai, China—has funneled over $20 million into U.S.-based far-left organizations via dark money channels like The People’s Forum and No Cold War, both of which are openly pro-Beijing.

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Justice Department Backs Judicial Watch in Oregon Elections Case Over Alleged Violations of National Voter Registration Act — Files Statement of Interest

In a major win for election integrity advocates, the Department of Justice has sided with Judicial Watch in a lawsuit against the Oregon Secretary of State over the state’s failure to follow federal law requiring transparency in how it maintains its voter rolls.

The DOJ filed a Statement of Interest on Friday, in the case Judicial Watch v. Read, confirming that Oregon cannot hide behind its counties or bureaucratic red tape to avoid its clear legal responsibilities under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

The case centers on Oregon’s refusal to hand over public records detailing efforts to clean up its voter rolls — including lists of people sent confirmation notices and whether they responded — as mandated by Section 8 of the NVRA.

Judicial Watch and other plaintiffs allege that Oregon’s Secretary of State, Tobias Read, failed to make a reasonable effort to remove ineligible voters from the rolls and unlawfully withheld critical records from public inspection — a violation that could conceal voter fraud and election mismanagement.

In a stunning rebuke of Oregon’s handling, the DOJ’s legal filing emphasized that states, not counties, are directly responsible for maintaining and disclosing these records.

Oregon’s own response to Judicial Watch’s 2023 records request admitted that fulfilling it would take 5,000 hours due to lack of central coordination.

The DOJ made clear: this is no excuse.

“To the extent that the state does not have in place and must fashion ad hoc methods to access and retrieve the records from the counties and ensure the records are preserved for at least two years, the state’s laws and practices would not be consistent with the state’s obligations under the NVRA,” the DOJ wrote.

The DOJ warned that any state law attempting to delegate those responsibilities to local officials must yield to federal law under the Constitution’s Elections Clause.

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Troublesome School District Once Again in DOJ’s Sights After Locker Room Disaster

Four years after Loudoun County Public Schools became the national poster child for cover-ups in the name of advancing the transgender agenda, the schools are again in the news over a gender-based complaint.

In 2021, the school and its leaders were pilloried after it was revealed that school officials knew about a sexual assault in a high school girl’s bathroom by a boy wearing a skirt but didn’t disclose it for weeks.

Now, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is calling for the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education to investigate the district over “significant concerns regarding potential violations of Title IX, unlawful retaliation, and viewpoint discrimination,” according to a news release.

“The investigation reveals a disturbing misuse of authority by Loudoun County Public Schools, where students appear to have been targeted not for misconduct, but for expressing their discomfort for being forced to share a locker room with a member of the opposite sex,” Miyares said.

“Title IX was never meant to be used as a weapon against free speech or religious convictions. Every student in Virginia deserves the right to speak openly, think freely, and live according to their conscience without fear of retaliation. Protecting those rights is not political — it’s foundational to who we are as Americans.”

The release said the school retaliated against three male students at Stone Bridge High School after they objected to the school’s policy of letting gender identity determine access to bathrooms and locker rooms.

“Rather than safeguarding the constitutional rights of all students, LCPS appears to be punishing those who hold and express faith-based views,” the release said.

“Furthermore, there are persistent reports that LCPS and the School Board take adverse and potentially unlawful action against parents, teachers, and public speakers,” the release added.

WJLA-TV reported that the root cause of the issue was that a female student used a boys’ locker room and recorded the boys, prompting them to object.

“The boys indeed are the victims in this situation,” Miyares said. “There is no evidence, no corroborating evidence that we have found that they had sexually harassed anyone, that they had done anything even approaching what would be considered sex discrimination. The reality is, is that Loudoun County Schools, what we have found, have bad policy and bad judgment.”

“We’ve also seen, in our opinion, that the three students sincerely held religious beliefs, some of these students in question are Christian, some were Muslim, but they basically were told to be silent, to be quiet and not to express their sincerely held religious beliefs,” he said.

Miyares said the district is “weaponizing” Title IX.

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Here We Go: Trump Administration Launches Investigation into Biden Autopen Scandal – Here Are the Details

The long-awaited investigation into Joe Biden’s autopen scandal has begun and several members of his family should start sweating.

Reuters obtained an email from Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, Ed Martin, telling staff that he has been ordered to investigate clemency allegedly granted by Biden in the final his time in office to his family members and death row inmates.

Martin wrote in the email that he will investigate whether Biden “was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through use of AutoPen or other means.”

The email states that Martin will specifically focus on the preemptive pardons Biden issued to six members of his crooked family and the clemency he granted to 37 child r*pists, murderers, and other violent thugs on death row.

Biden’s executive orders apparently will not be covered in the investigation.

As TGP readers know, Biden pardoned five members of his family hours before Trump took the oath of office back in January.

Biden issued preemptive pardons to James B. Biden, Sara Jones Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John T. Owens, and Francis W. Biden for any nonviolent offenses they may have committed from January 1, 2014, through the date of the pardon.

On December 1, Biden pardoned his ne’er do well son Hunter. The pardon, which covered any federal crimes by Hunter from 2014 to 2024, ended a case that was blown open by IRS whistleblowers who spoke out after the Biden Justice Department slow-walked an investigation into Hunter, allowing the statute of limitations to pass on some charges and offering Hunter a sweetheart plea deal that was ultimately rejected by an incredulous federal judge in Delaware resulting in the appointment of a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland in the case.

News of this investigation comes after Martin identified the gatekeepers involved in the autopen scandal late last month.

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DOJ Opens Investigation into Chuck Schumer For Threatening Supreme Court Justices

The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into Chuck Schumer for threatening Supreme Court justices.

According to The Washington Post, interim D.C. U.S. attorney Edward R. Martin, Jr. is looking to scrutinize Democratic leaders and former Justice Department officials.

Among them is the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in connection with comments regarding Trump’s Supreme Court justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

During a pro-abortion rally back in 2020, Schumer said that the two justices would “pay the price” for overturning Roe vs Wade, a decision that they eventually handed down two years later.

“I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price,” Schumer said at the time.

”You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

“We take threats against public officials very seriously,” Martin wrote Schumer in a letter on January 21st. “I look forward to your cooperation.”

Schumer never apologized for these remarks, despite a very public rebuke by Chief Justice John Roberts.

“Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous,” Roberts said in a rare public statement.

“I should not have used the words I used yesterday,” Schumer said at the time. They didn’t come out the way I intended to.”

“I’m from Brooklyn. We speak in strong language. I shouldn’t have used the words I did, but in no way was I making a threat.”

Last month, Schumer complained that Kamala Harris lost the presidential election because Americans did not understand all the wonderful things Democrats and the Biden administration had done for them.

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Anti-Trump Defense IT Specialist Arrested For Attempting to Provide Classified Information to Foreign Government Because He Did Not “Agree or Align with the Values of This Administration”

An anti-Trump IT specialist the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was arrested on Thursday for attempting to provide classified national defense information to a foreign government.

According to the DOJ, Nathan Vilas Laatsch, 28, of Alexandria, Virginia, was arrested on Thursday in northern Virginia, and will make his initial court appearance in the Eastern District of Virginia on Friday.

The Justice Department said Laatsch offered to transmit classified information to the foreign government because he did not “agree or align with the values of this administration” and was therefore “willing to share classified information” that he had access to, including “completed intelligence products, some unprocessed intelligence, and other assorted classified documentation.”

Per the Justice Department:

According to court documents, Laatsch became a civilian employee of the DIA in 2019, where he works with the Insider Threat Division and holds a Top Secret security clearance. In March 2025, the FBI commenced an operation after receiving a tip that an individual — now known to be Laatsch — offered to provide classified information to a friendly foreign government. In that email, the sender wrote that he did not “agree or align with the values of this administration” and was therefore “willing to share classified information” that he had access to, including “completed intelligence products, some unprocessed intelligence, and other assorted classified documentation.”

After multiple communications with an FBI agent — who Laatsch allegedly believed to be an official of the foreign government — Laatsch began transcribing classified information to a notepad at his desk and, over the course of approximately three days, repeatedly exfiltrated the information from his workspace. Laatsch subsequently confirmed to the FBI agent that he was prepared to transmit the information.

Thereafter, the FBI implemented an operation at a public park in northern Virginia, where Laatsch believed he would deposit the classified information for the foreign government to retrieve. On or about May 1, 2025, FBI surveillance observed Laatsch proceed to the specified location and deposit an item. Following Laatsch’s departure, the FBI retrieved the item, which was a thumb drive later found to contain a message from Laatsch and multiple typed documents, each containing information that was portion-marked up to the Secret or Top Secret levels. The message from Laatsch indicated that he had chosen to include “a decent sample size” of classified information to “decently demonstrate the range of types of products” to which he had access.

After receiving confirmation that the thumb drive had been received, on May 7, Laatsch allegedly sent a message to the FBI agent, which indicated Laatsch was seeking something from the foreign government in return for continuing to provide classified information. The next day, Laatsch specified that he was interested in “citizenship for your country” because he did not “expect[] things here to improve in the long term.” Although he said he was “not opposed to other compensation,” he was not in a position where he needed to seek “material compensation.”

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