Tag: judges

Biden-Appointed Activist Judge Sparkle Sooknanan Blocks Trump DOJ’s Nationwide Voter Roll Cleanup Effort — Even in States That Voluntarily Cooperated

A Biden-appointed federal judge has once again stepped in to shield dirty voter rolls from federal scrutiny, striking down the Justice Department’s nationwide effort to collect registration records and identify suspected non-U.S. citizens on the rolls.

U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago, ruled that the Department of Justice overstepped its bounds by demanding unredacted voter registration lists and cross-referencing them using federal databases.

According to the 78-page ruling, the DOJ began requesting complete, unredacted statewide voter registration lists (including names, dates of birth, addresses, and driver’s license or partial Social Security numbers) from 49 states and the District of Columbia starting in May 2025. At least 18 states fully cooperated.

The department then shared the data with DHS for runs through the expanded Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system and urged states to remove voters flagged as potentially ineligible.

The Justice Department maintained that its actions were authorized by federal laws governing voter registration and election administration.

Sooknanan rejected that argument.

Sooknanan concluded that the Justice Department’s policy violated the Privacy Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act, exceeded the agency’s statutory authority, and was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.

Keep reading

Feral Youth Leaves Man’s INTESTINES Hanging Out; Judge Lets Him Walk The SAME DAY

A 19-year-old charged with stabbing a man in Pittsburgh’s Garfield neighborhood, so badly that officers found the victim’s intestines protruding, was released the same day on a promise to come back to court. 

He did not have to post a dime. Eight days later he was the prime suspect in yet another stabbing, this one at an East Liberty bus station, and he is now charged with attempted homicide.

District Judge Dan Butler signed the non-monetary bond. Pittsburgh Police Chief Jason Lando, expressed disbelief that the suspect was walking free. This all occurred in Democrat-run Allegheny County.

On September 23, police were called to the 5000 block of Penn Avenue after a fight that began on a bus. WPXI reported that officers arrived to a man whose intestines were hanging out of his body. Delvin Dobbins, 19, was chased a short distance, tased, and found with a bloodied knife. He was charged with aggravated assault. The victim was hospitalized in serious condition and survived.

Chief Lando addressed the case the next morning on local radio.

“I remember in the police report it said when the officers arrived on scene the man’s intestines were protruding,” Lando said. “The officers immediately began rendering aid to prevent him from bleeding out.”

Incredibly, Butler released Dobbins on a non-monetary bond that same day. No cash. A signature and a date. Sources told WPXI’s 11 Investigates that Butler should not have done it. The Fifth Judicial District, which oversees Allegheny County magistrates, declined to comment.

Lando said he assumed the suspect was still locked up.

Keep reading

Clinton-Appointed Judge Sides with Illegal Aliens Against Trump’s Civil Immigration Fines

A federal judge appointed by former President Bill Clinton sided with illegal aliens who were fined by President Donald Trump’s administration for civil immigration violations.

For more than a year, the Trump administration has used civil immigration fines to incentivize illegal aliens to self-deport from the United States. As of July of this year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has levied more than $84 billion in fines against about 103,000 illegal aliens in the United States.

This week, Judge George A. O’Toole, appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts by Clinton, sided with a pair of illegal aliens the Trump administration fined, claiming that DHS violated federal law when issuing its final rule that permitted the use of the fines.

“The plaintiffs here face assessment and possible collection of enormous fines well beyond their capacity to pay,” O’Toole wrote of the two plaintiffs:

Maria L., a nail technician on a variable salary, was issued a significant fine in the hundreds of thousands. A victim of political violence in her home country, she reports that the fine has affected her health, increased her anxiety, caused depression, and led to her missing work for a month. [Emphasis added]

Nancy M. was fined over 1.8 million dollars. She is a laborer working over sixty hours a week with two jobs, and she reports feeling serious anxiety affecting her ability to sleep, eat, and live a normal life. Given the amount of the fines, the plaintiffs face the possibility of garnishment of wages and bank accounts, seized assets such as vehicles and homes, IRS reports, federal collections suits, and adverse future admissibility determinations. [Emphasis added]

O’Toole granted the motion to stay that was sought by the plaintiffs in the case, preventing the Trump administration from collecting such fines on illegal aliens.

Trump administration officials previously told Breitbart News that the fines are critical to getting illegal aliens to self-deport from the United States.

The case is Maria L. v. Noem, No. 1:25-cv-13471 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Keep reading

Military Judge Throws Out Confessions of Fourth Defendant in 9/11 Case

A military judge on Wednesday tossed out the confessions of a fourth defendant in the government’s 9/11 case.

3,000 Americans were killed in the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon, and a downed plane in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Walid bin Attash is accused of helping train two of the hijackers.

“Tell the judge that I am very proud for my part in the Planes Operation,” Walid bin Attash said to federal agents on January 24, 2007 — the first day of the interrogations, according to The New York Times.

The judge, Lt. Col Michael Schrama, ruled that bin Attash’s previous confessions to the CIA were coerced and therefore not admissible.

This is the latest blow to the federal government.

The New York Times reported:

The judge in the Sept. 11 case on Wednesday excluded the last disputed confessions of a prisoner accused of conspiring in the attacks, once again denying prosecutors evidence they had defended for years as crucial to the case.

The statements were obtained through a program designed by Bush administration lawyers in 2007 because the defendants’ previous statements to the C.I.A. were considered coerced and could not be used against them.

But for the fifth time, a military judge found that confessions obtained by federal agents on so-called clean teams were not admissible.

Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, the judge, ruled that the agents failed to notify Walid bin Attash that what the C.I.A. extracted from him from 2003 to 2006 in forced interrogations could not be used against him. The judge also found that when F.B.I. agents brought treats to their interrogation room to gain Mr. bin Attash’s cooperation they were copying a technique sometimes used by the C.I.A. to keep a prisoner confessing.

Keep reading

Federal Judge Calls License Plate Readers a Form of Mass Surveillance

The lower instance federal courts are making their rulings regarding license plate readers (LPRs) – and they are so far coming in contradictory.

The latest is from a federal judge in Oklahoma who has no doubt that the technology is “a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance” that is approaching a “dragnet type law enforcement practice” – and that the system is “constitutionally problematic” because it lets the police “indiscriminately and passively catalog your whereabouts over an extended period of time.”

US District Judge Sara E. Hill of the Northern District of Oklahoma made this and other points in her ruling in United States v. Kyle, where she said that a Tulsa County sheriff’s deputy violated the Fourth Amendment when he searched LPR systems without a warrant.

The case started with the traffic stop of a Mazda SUV with a California license plate that passed the deputy’s camera as he was parked by the highway. The judge said the deputy followed the car “for no apparent reason other than the fact that it had a California license plate.”

The vehicle was driven by Melisa Kyle, and the stop was justified as the deputy said she had changed lanes without signaling and was following another car too closely. But before he pulled her over, the deputy ran the plate through two LPR databases, Flock and VehicleManager.

The judge said this gave him access to “more than 50 individual records of Kyle’s whereabouts across the country for an entire month,” and that he had access to at least 30 days of the vehicle’s location information in many states.

The deputy used this information to help justify searching her car.

That search produced about 91 pounds of methamphetamine, and Kyle, 46, of Crane, Missouri, is now charged with possessing methamphetamine with intent to distribute. But the judge has ruled that the evidence was obtained illegally and suppressed it.

The ruling said the search “was not supported by probable cause, and it was done without a warrant in violation of Kyle’s Fourth Amendment rights.” The judge also suppressed “all evidence obtained after Alaniz initiated the ALPR search.”

The judge accepted that the technology has “remarkable benefits” but also asked, “why is it the government’s business where everyone goes all the time? The government cannot go snooping through our personal lives and business without an adequate basis to do so.”

In her ruling, Judge Hill also said that people “do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their movements on a public roadway” – but that the LPR technology “becomes constitutionally problematic when law enforcement can indiscriminately and passively catalog your whereabouts over an extended period of time.”

Keep reading

Supreme Court Rejects Radical Far-Left PA Judge’s Appeal After He Was Suspended For Hyper-Partisan Pro-Biden Facebook Posts

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear former Philadelphia Judge Mark B. Cohen’s last-ditch bid to undo his suspension for turning a public Facebook page, one that identified him as a sitting judge and showed him in his robes, into a Democrat cheering section for Joe Biden, Josh Shapiro, and the party line.

The justices denied certiorari without comment. Cohen, a Democrat who spent more than four decades in the Pennsylvania House before winning a Court of Common Pleas seat in 2018, had asked the high court to rule that the First Amendment shielded dozens of partisan posts he made while on the bench. It did not.

As The Hill reported, Pennsylvania’s judicial discipline system suspended him in 2024 over posts praising Democrats, including Biden and Gov. Josh Shapiro, and pushing policies such as raising the minimum wage.

That suspension was not a close call, and it was not a surprise.

The Judicial Conduct Board charged Cohen over scores of posts on a page that advertised his status as a Family Division judge.

The record, laid out in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s January 21, 2026, opinion and in the board’s filings, shows a longtime Democratic operative who never really left the campaign.

He called Biden an excellent president. He boosted Shapiro. He backed Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner.

Keep reading

Judge Tosses Road Rage Killer’s Sentence over AI-Generated Video of Victim Played in Court

An Arizona appeals court has overturned the prison sentence of a man convicted of manslaughter after a road rage incident, determining that an AI-generated video of his deceased victim used during sentencing was unreliable and created fundamental unfairness in the proceedings.

The New York Post reports that Gabriel Horcasitas will face resentencing after the Arizona Court of Appeals vacated his 10.5-year prison sentence on Wednesday. Horcasitas was convicted of manslaughter and endangerment in the 2021 shooting death of Christopher Pelkey during a road rage incident in Chandler, Arizona, approximately 25 miles outside Phoenix.

The appellate court took issue with an AI-generated video of Pelkey that was presented during the original sentencing hearing. Breitbart News reported on the controversial AI video last year:

The AI-generated video, believed to be the first of its kind used nationwide, recreated Pelkey’s image and voice, allowing him to “speak” about his life and the fateful day he encountered Horcasitas. The video included real footage from Pelkey’s life, showcasing his personality and sense of humor, while also addressing his killer directly.

“In another life, we probably could have been friends,” the AI version of Pelkey said to Horcasitas. “I believe in forgiveness…” The video also featured a photo of Pelkey with an “old age” filter, as he remarked, “This is the best I can ever give you of what I would have looked like if I got the chance to grow old. Remember, getting old is a gift that not everybody has, so embrace it and stop worrying about those wrinkles.”

Keep reading

Federal Judge Rules Warrantless Flock Search Unconstitutional After Deputy Pulls Month of Driver’s Travel History — Calls System ‘Indiscriminate Mass Surveillance’

A federal judge in Oklahoma just threw out a drug case after ruling that police violated the Fourth Amendment when they used Flock Safety’s automated license-plate cameras to pull a driver’s travel history for roughly a month, without a warrant, and without probable cause.

U.S. District Judge Sara E. Hill of the Northern District of Oklahoma ruled that Tulsa County sheriff’s deputy Freddie Alaniz conducted an “Unconstitutional Warrantless Search” when he queried Flock and other automated license plate reader systems on a Mazda SUV simply because it had a California plate.

According to 404 Media, the search returned more than 50 records of the driver’s whereabouts across the country. Hill suppressed the Flock records and everything that came out of the later search of the vehicle.

The defendant is Melisa Kyle, 46, of Crane, Missouri, charged with possessing methamphetamine with intent to distribute.

According to Law Commentary, the case began in May when Alaniz, who also served as a DEA task force officer, was parked along Interstate 44, saw the California plate, pulled onto the highway, and started following the SUV.

He later stopped Kyle for changing lanes without a signal, then used the Flock history to question her about her travel and to justify searching the car.

Authorities said they found about 91 pounds of methamphetamine packed in luggage, marijuana, and roughly $7,000 in cash. Hill ruled the constitutional violation happened earlier, when the deputy reached into the historical location database.

Keep reading

Obama Judge Tanya Chutkan Blocks Trump Education Department From Naming Foreign Donors Who Dumped Billions Into Harvard, Columbia, and Other Elite Campuses

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from publicly releasing the names of foreign donors and contract counterparties tied to some of America’s most prominent universities.

DC US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, the Obama appointee who presided over the federal election case against President Trump, issued a temporary restraining order barring the Department of Education from releasing a list of foreign donors tied to as much as $5.2 billion in gifts and contracts reported by the schools since 2020.

The Department of Education announced in February that universities disclosed more than $5.2 billion in reportable foreign gifts and contracts during 2025 alone, involving more than 8,300 transactions. The agency said universities have reported a cumulative $67.6 billion in foreign funding since Section 117 was added to federal law in 1986.

Section 117 of the Higher Education Act already requires schools that take federal money to report foreign gifts and contracts of $250,000 or more.

The department began collecting individual donor names in 2020, during President Trump’s first term, while telling the schools the names would stay confidential.

In June 2026, the department reversed course. It has already published 92 “counterparties of concern.” Friday was supposed to be the day the rest of the list went public.

According to the New York Post, Chutkan ruled that disclosure of the information could “constitute irreparable harm.”

Keep reading

Florida Judge Denies Rapper Rick Ross Special Treatment After Attorney Plays the Fame Card: “I Have No Idea Who You Are”

If you attempt to play the “fame card” in Judge Mindy Glazer’s courtroom, you will not have any luck.

Rapper Rick Ross found out the hard way.

William Roberts II, whose stage name is Rick Ross, turned himself in to Florida authorities on Thursday morning and was charged with two counts of battery.

Later on Thursday, the rapper appeared in the Miami-Dade Bond Court before Judge Mindy Glazer, where his attorney requested that his client be expedited from Miami-Dade County Jail because he’s a celebrity.

Judge Glazer, without missing a breath, quickly responded, “Hi, Mr. Roberts. I have no idea who you are, except as somebody here in the court who’s going to be treated fairly just like everybody else here,”

Keep reading