Tag: lawsuits

Another Act of Betrayal, Another Act of Air Force Inspector General Complicity

A federal court has ruled that the Air Force inappropriately diverted thousands of service members from the Integrated Disability Evaluation System (IDES), which is a congressionally mandated process for evaluating disabilities.

The court determined that an unauthorized prescreening process, known as Initial Review-in-Lieu-of (IRILO), violated the Administrative Procedure Act. IRILO effectively prevented wounded, injured, or sick service members from receiving the medical evaluations and protections they are entitled to.

The decision, made by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, highlighted that the Air Force lacked the authority to create such a process.

The lawsuit, filed in July 2025 by former Air Force personnel, including Kathleen L. Watts and Robert Newman, argued that this prescreening mechanism denied them consideration for medical retirement benefits due to their medical conditions incurred in the line of duty.

Although the case illustrates a significant issue where service members were stripped of their rights and protections under federal law, the prescreening process remains in place for now, as the court has yet to finalize a remedy for the matter. Meanwhile, as this could potentially impact tens of thousands of service members, the possibility of a larger class action hangs in the balance.

The Gateway Pundit interviewed retired Air Force pilot and advocate for injured service members, Jeremy Sorenson, who stated, “The US Air Force has long known that the IRILO is a completely illegal process. But, because it ‘saves’ the Air Force money, senior leaders have refused to correct it.” In August 2023, Sorenson informed Lt. Gen. Stephen Davis (SAF/IG) that the Air Force was using the IRILO to improperly deny Airmen entrance into the congressionally-mandated Disability Evaluation System processing (IDES).

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Grandmother jailed for six months after facial recognition mistake launches $10 million lawsuit against Fargo and detective

A Tennessee grandmother who spent six months in jail after facial recognition tech falsely linked her to a North Dakota bank fraud investigation now wants compensation for what happened. Angela Lipps is suing the City of Fargo and a Fargo Police Department detective for $10 million over the incident, which led to the loss of her home, car, and dog.

In July 2025, a team of US Marshals arrested 50-year-old Lipps in Tennessee at gunpoint while she was babysitting four young children. She was booked into the county jail in Tennessee as a fugitive from justice wanted in North Dakota.

The arrest stemmed from an investigation into bank fraud cases in April and May 2025. Detectives reportedly reviewed video of a woman using a fake US army ID to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars.

By using facial recognition software, the investigators identified Lipps as a possible match. She was charged with eight felonies, the most serious of which carried a 10-year prison sentence.

But Lipps had never been to North Dakota in her life, and bank records later confirmed she was more than 1,200 miles away at the time of the alleged crime.

She was held in a Tennessee county jail for 108 days before being transported to North Dakota. Jail staff allegedly denied her access to her dentures and medication for extended periods.

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DOJ Sues San Jose, Alleging $1,600 Firearm Fee Is Unconstitutional

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the City of San Jose, California, alleging that its nearly $1,600 firearm licensing fee infringes the Second Amendment right to carry firearms for self-defense. The fee has risen by about $300 over three fiscal years to $1,591.

“San Jose is a national outlier when it comes to burdening the exercise of fundamental rights. Its fees are abusive and violate the Second Amendment,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in the Sept. 16 lawsuit.

The DOJ asked the court to issue permanent injunctive relief that would prevent defendants from imposing any “abusive licensing fees.” The San Jose Police Department is also a defendant in the case.

“The City’s law enforcement officers are charged with enforcing its abusive licensing scheme and are doing so. Such law enforcement misconduct is unlawful,” the DOJ added.

In Washington, the nation’s capital, a concealed carry license costs $75, while in New York, a handgun license costs $340. In Boston, the nonrenewable processing fee for a license to carry is $100. And in Philadelphia, a new license to carry firearms costs only $20.

Compared with other California locations, such as San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Clara, and Alameda County, San Jose’s fees are still high, the DOJ said in the complaint.

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Twin Brothers Acquitted in FBI’s Whitmer “Kidnap Plot” Sue Dana Nessel, FBI Agents, and Michigan State Police — Allege They Were Framed in a Manufactured Fednapping Hoax

Twin brothers Michael John Null and William “Bill” Null, two of the Michigan men a jury cleared in 2023 after the FBI and Democrat Attorney General Dana Nessel spent years painting them as terrorists, have now taken the fight to federal court.

They filed a civil complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan on September 15, 2026, Null v. Nessel, naming leftist Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, disgrace-ridden former FBI Special Agent Richard Trask II (who was fired after domestic assault charges), agent Henrik Impola, former Detroit FBI chief Steven D’Antuono, along with the Michigan State Police and a parade of Deep State actors.

In October 2020, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged the Null brothers (along with Eric Molitor and several others) in state court with:

  • Providing material support for terrorist acts (related to an alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and attack the state Capitol).
  • Possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

Prosecutors alleged they acted as lookouts during nighttime surveillance of Whitmer’s vacation home in Elk Rapids and participated in militia training and planning meetings tied to the Wolverine Watchmen and other groups. The kidnapping plot was manufactured by the FBI.

The case against the Michigan militia members plotting to ‘kidnap’ Governer Whitmer fell apart when it was revealed that Chris Wray’s FBI was behind the scheme, the FBI paid for training, Governor Whitmer was in on the planning, and the FBI even had an agent sleeping with the militia leader during the planning and training.

Did you catch that… Governor Whitmer was also involved in planning the plot to kidnap herself!

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Democrat Roy Cooper Was Sued for Defamation and Forced to Apologize in First Statewide Campaign

North Carolina Democrat U.S. Senate candidate and former Gov. Roy Cooper was forced to pay $75,000 and issue a formal apology to a Republican opponent in his first statewide campaign to settle a defamation lawsuit.

After serving 14 years in the North Carolina General Assembly, Cooper set his sights on becoming the state’s Attorney General in 2000. With the race considered to be close, Cooper’s campaign — led by the same consultant in this year’s race, Morgan Jackson — decided it needed to “hit Boyce and hit him soon.”

Not only that, Cooper personally made the false claims in the attack worse and said so himself in a deposition. From a Charlotte Observer report:

Cooper said in the deposition that he scratched out “demanding $1,200 an hour” and wrote in “charged $28,000 per hour.” The ad told voters that a judge said the fee “shocked the conscience.” The hourly fee, the ad went on to explain, was more than a police officer earned in a year. The commercial was broadcast across the state in the days leading up to the election. Boyce’s campaign urged Cooper to stop running the ad; it didn’t. Boyce lost the race, winning 46 percent of the votes to Cooper’s 51 percent.

According to Cooper’s deposition, it was he who took a draft campaign ad accusing Republican opponent Dan Boyce of “demanding $1,200 an hour,” scratched it out, and replaced it with the explosive claim that Boyce had “charged $28,000 per hour.”

The ad wasn’t true, and Cooper knew it.

The case referenced in the defamatory ad had been handled by Boyce’s father, Gene Boyce. The elder Boyce was never paid $28,000 an hour. The figure came from a judge’s calculation and he had been awarded a fraction of it. The underlying lawsuit had actually resulted in more than $1 billion being returned to North Carolina taxpayers.

Cooper fought the lawsuit against him and the case spent more than a decade in both state and federal courts. Not wanting to take accountability for his own actions, Cooper unsuccessfully asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf. But as the case finally approached a public trial in 2014, Cooper caved.

In the settlement, Cooper paid $75,000, mediator fees, and delivered a written apology to the Boyces.


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The Trump Administration Shut Down a Police Misconduct Database. Now It’s Facing a FOIA Lawsuit

Last year the Trump administration shut down a national database of misconduct by federal law enforcement officers. Now it’s facing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for refusing to release records about that decision.

A coalition of civil rights and police accountability groups filed a FOIA lawsuit on September 4 after waiting 10 months for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release records about why it pulled the plug on the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD), a nonpublic database tracking misconduct by federal law enforcement officers.

The Justice Department launched NLEAD in 2023 to assist federal agencies with hiring and oversight. However, in one of his first acts after returning to the White House in 2025, President Donald Trump ordered the department to delete it. In a written statement to The Washington Post, the White House said former President Joe Biden’s executive order creating the database “was full of woke, anti-police concepts.”

Before the DOJ scrapped NLEAD, it had logged more than 5,200 incidents of misconduct by federal officers—more than 70 percent of them Bureau of Prisons (BOP) or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employees.

Anthony Enriquez, vice president of U.S. advocacy and litigation at the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center, says the lawsuit is not seeking the misconduct data itself, but rather records “about how and why the government dismantled its own accountability tool.”

“You can’t build a national misconduct database, watch federal agencies run 10,000 searches against it in eight months, shut it down, and then tell the public that there’s nothing urgent about explaining why,” Enriquez says.

The Kennedy Human Rights Center, along with the National Police Accountability Project, Black Lives Matter D.C., and National Immigration Project, filed a FOIA request last October seeking records concerning the creation, operation, and decommissioning of NLEAD, as well as whether the data was preserved or destroyed.

The Justice Department first agreed to fast-track the FOIA request based on the heightened public interest in the records, but then reversed its decision. The coalition’s FOIA lawsuit says the department has been sitting on their request for 10 months now.

Civil liberties groups have called for the creation of centralized databases of police misconduct because, traditionally, poor information sharing between departments and lax background checks have allowed problem officers to hop from one department to another, leaving a string of misconduct, rights violations, and expensive lawsuits.

“This was about giving people more information to make smart hiring decisions,” Enriquez says. “Just as you always check someone’s recommendations whenever you’re hiring for your department, we want to do that with people who are entrusted with public safety before we put a weapon in the hands of someone and give them the authority to arrest or even use deadly force. We want to make sure that they don’t have a record of abusing that authority.”

Federal law enforcement unions opposed NLEAD, arguing that it included minor administrative infractions and didn’t give officers due process channels to dispute their inclusion.

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NYC and 21 states file federal suit over proposed changes to green card eligibility

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a pair of federal lawsuits attempting to block the Trump administration’s efforts to enforce self-sufficiency requirements for immigrants seeking permanent residency.

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Those applying for a Green Card or Visa – Primary Target

The public charge rule directly affects non-citizens who are currently in the U.S. legally on temporary visas (work visas, student visas, temporary statuses) or applying for green cards/visa adjustments from abroad.

If federal officers determine they are likely to rely on government benefits, their green card or visa application can be denied.

Current Green Card Holders – Secondary Target

Once a person already has a green card, utilizing public benefits generally does not jeopardize their status or lead to deportation. However, the rule can impact them if they leave the U.S. for more than 180 consecutive days and try to re-enter, as they are treated like new applicants subject to admissibility checks upon return.

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The legal challenges target the GOP administration’s updated “public charge” rule — a policy taking effect September 18th that directs immigration officials to evaluate whether non-citizen visa and green card applicants are likely to become dependent on taxpayer-funded government aid, including Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance.

Joined by local officials from liberal jurisdictions including Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle, alongside a coalition of 21 Democrat state attorneys general (AGs), the lawsuits argue that the administration “exceeded its authority” by broadening the criteria used to evaluate financial independence.

The left-wing plaintiffs allege that assessing non-cash benefit usage creates unnecessary confusion. During a press conference, Mayor Mamdani criticized the Trump administration’s policy, arguing it would deter immigrant families from utilizing city-provided services and lead to higher long-term healthcare costs for municipal governments.

However, the Trump administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) firmly defended the measure as a lawful, common-sense enforcement of longstanding immigration principles designed to safeguard federal resources.

Federal officials dismissed the local and state lawsuits as politically motivated attempts by sanctuary city leaders to preserve non-citizen access to costly public entitlement programs.

Defending the policy, a DHS spokesperson stressed that the GOP administration is committed to safeguarding taxpayer dollars, asserting that U.S. immigration laws must prioritize self-reliant applicants rather than foreign nationals seeking to live off government assistance.

Ensuring that immigrants remain self-reliant has been a fundamental tenet of U.S. immigration law for generations, they added, expressing confidence that federal courts will uphold the rule against the state and municipal challenges.

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California Democrat Ex-Mayor Found Liable for Sexually Assaulting Seven Women — Jury Hits Him With $13 Million Bill After State AG Rob Bonta Refused to Charge Him

A Sonoma County jury on Friday delivered a unanimous civil verdict against former Windsor, California, Mayor Dominic Foppoli, finding him liable for sexually assaulting seven women and ordering him to pay more than $13 million in compensatory damages.

According to Fox News, the awards ranged from roughly $6,000 to $4.65 million per plaintiff. Jane Doe 7 received about $4.65 million. Jane Doe 1 received about $3.8 million.

The jury also found the Santa Rosa chapter of the all-male Active 20-30 Club liable in one of the cases and ordered an additional $2 million.

Punitive damages have not been decided. That phase was set to begin this week after jurors found clear and convincing evidence that Foppoli acted with oppression, fraud, or malice.

Foppoli, 44, has never been criminally charged. That is the part California’s political class would prefer you not dwell on.

The allegations first exploded in April 2021, when the San Francisco Chronicle published accounts from four women. By the end of that spring, 13 women had accused the Wine Country politician of sexual assault or misconduct spanning nearly two decades. Foppoli resigned as mayor in May 2021.

Seven of those women filed a joint civil lawsuit in 2022. The trial that just ended ran about eight weeks.

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Trump-Appointed D.C. Judge Blocks President Trump’s USPS Mail-In Ballot Safeguards After Democrat Lawsuit — Claims Postal Service “Lacked Authority”

A Trump-appointed federal judge in Washington, D.C. on Sunday blocked the U.S. Postal Service’s new mail-in ballot rule, the one designed to stop untracked, unverified absentee ballots from flooding the midterms, after Democrat committees, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, LULAC, and the NAACP sued to kill it.

As reported right here on The Gateway Pundit back in May, Judge Nichols originally smashed the Democrats’ desperate, multi-headed lawsuits, brought by Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and left-wing activist groups, ruling they had absolutely zero standing to challenge President Trump’s March 31 Executive Order.

We celebrated this as a massive win for basic ballot security. Now, with the election breathing down our necks, Nichols has completely reversed course and sided with the very same activists he previously dismissed.

U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols granted preliminary injunctions against the Postal Service’s Final Rule on “Ballot Mail for Federal Elections.”

He ruled that key parts of the rule were ultra vires: Congress never gave USPS the power to force states to enroll mail voters in a federal portal, build state-specific absentee lists, and refuse outbound ballots that don’t match the list.

According to the court’s memorandum opinion, the rule created a Federal Ballot Mail Portal, required state and local election officials to submit voter and ballot information to USPS, established state-specific participation lists, and allowed the Postal Service to reject outbound federal ballot mail that failed to meet the new requirements.

Judge Nichols wrote that the Postal Reorganization Act authorizes USPS to collect, handle, transport, and deliver mail.

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Several People Who Were Fired Over Charlie Kirk Comments Got Big Payouts or Were Given Their Jobs Back

Following Charlie Kirk’s death last year, various individuals were either fired, suspended, or disciplined for celebrating his assassination, but since then, several have been reinstated, and some have been paid huge sums of money.

A Reuters report from November revealed that over 600 people were fired or punished for posting about Kirk’s assassination, which occurred Sept. 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University during a TPUSA event.

They included members of law enforcement agencies, nurses, teachers, professors, journalists, entertainers, military members, and more.

The social media account “Libs of TikTok” led the charge, sharing screenshots of posts that either mocked or disparaged Kirk after he was violently shot in the neck.

The most recognizable person to face any consequences was ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. He was initially taken off the air after falsely telling his audience that Kirk’s assassin was a MAGA conservative. However, he was only hit with a brief suspension and soon returned to action.

Some of the individuals who were punished have pushed back and were granted huge paydays because of it.

In June, National Public Radio reported on Maria Ruhtenberg, who had been fired from her job last September, after one of Ruhtenberg’s friends saw one of her Facebook posts about Kirk’s death and complained to her employer.

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