https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-lines-up-next-target-as-bolton-could-face-life-in-prison
Attorney General Pam [Bimbo #3] Bondi and other senior leadership of the Justice Department were caught off guard Thursday by news that the Trump-installed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia had presented to a grand jury seeking an indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James, multiple sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
While [Bimbo #3] Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and other DOJ officials had expected Lindsey Halligan would move forward in seeking to indict James, against the recommendation of prosecutors in the office who had investigated for months the claims she committed mortgage fraud, they were not informed until after Halligan had already presented the case, sources said.
“The Justice Department is united as one team in our mission to make America safe again and as stated previously Lindsey Halligan is fully supported by the AG, DAG, and the entire team at Main Justice,” a Justice Department spokesperson told ABC News in a statement.
The news that Halligan was making her presentment was not news, however, to Ed Martin — who was appointed to several senior leadership positions at DOJ by President Trump after his nomination to be the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. failed to earn support from Republican senators earlier this year.
Martin, who goes by his self-described nickname “Eagle Ed” posted on his ‘X’ account Thursday morning an image of an eagle flying over the Brooklyn Bridge – and reposted the image Thursday evening following news of James’ indictment.
As ABC News previously reported, Martin and Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who initially made the criminal referral to DOJ over James’ mortgage applications, have in recent weeks clashed with senior leadership of the department as they’ve demanded more aggressive actions to prosecute President Trump’s political enemies.
In a Truth Social post last month, President Trump publicly urged [Bimbo #3] Bondi to move “now” to prosecute his enemies and said he was appointing Halligan to lead the office and “get things moving.”
One former senior DOJ official said it would be extraordinary for leadership at the department to not be informed of a pending indictment of a major political figure like James, which would more typically be led by the department’s Public Integrity Section. Staff in that office has been eliminated to just two officials down from roughly 30 since Trump’s inauguration, according to sources.
Despite her being initially caught off guard by Halligan’s presentment, [Bimbo #3] Bondi posted on ‘X’ following James’ indictment, “One tier of justice for all Americans.”
https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=126401855
So many people to abuse, so much revenge to be exacted, so many lives to turn upside down & inside out, that poor bimbo bitch Bondi just can’t keep up with it all!
A man arrested by US Customs and Immigration Enforcement (Ice) died in a Long Island, New York, jail on Thursday, according to a report.
Officials in Nassau county confirmed the death of a 42-year-old man to Newsday but declined to share details, saying that an investigation was under way.
“There is an ongoing investigation, which will be thorough and transparent to determine the cause of death,” the Nassau county sheriff, Anthony LaRocco, told the outlet. “Nassau county takes seriously its obligation to treat every prisoner humanely.”
The outlet reported that this is the first death of an Ice detainee in custody in Nassau county, where more than 1,400 people detained by the federal agency have been held between February and June this year.
A spokesperson for the office of the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, confirmed that it is conducting a preliminary assessment of the death.
Police arrived at the Nassau county correctional center in East Meadow on Thursday morning at around 6.30am to find the man “not breathing” after he was “observed in his cell unresponsive”.
At least 14 people have died in Ice custody in fiscal year 2025, which began in October 2024, according Ice figures. About 58,766 people have been detained this year, as of 7 September, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Nassau county, home to a large Salvadorian and Guatemalan population, entered into a partnership with Ice in February, allocating 50 local jail cells for Ice detainees. The man who died was being held as part of that partnership.
The Nassau county executive, Bruce Blakeman, said in July that “there is no evidence” to suggest anyone was being held longer than 72 hours, per the agreement with Ice. The official said the federal government was reimbursing the county $195 per Ice detainee, per night.
The publication New York Focus calculates that New York state’s county jails have held six times more people for immigration authorities than they did in 2024.
The state’s jail system booked a total of nearly 2,800 people arrested for immigration reasons in the first seven months of 2025, up from only 500 last year, according to Ice data.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/19/ice-death-long-island-ny
Tulsi Gabbard may have broken the law by publicly identifying dozens of current and former officials while revoking their security clearances, according to a national security lawyer.
Gabbard revealed that 37 people have been targeted in the clearance purge ordered by President Trump, accusing them without evidence of “politicizing and manipulating intelligence, leaking classified intelligence without authorization, and/or committing intentional egregious violations of tradecraft standards.”
Gabbard made the announcement—which comes after Trump stripped the security clearance of his political opponents—by posting a memo from her office on X. The list of 37 individuals targeted includes intelligence officials who concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, as well as those accused by far-right activist Laura Loomer of lacking loyalty to Trump, according to Axios.
Mark Zaid, an attorney who represents intelligence officers and who is suing the Trump administration to have his own stripped security clearance restored, suggested Gabbard may have landed herself in legal trouble by making the memo public.
“Can you say ‘Privacy Act violation’? I certainly can,” Zaid wrote in a post on X. “Further proof of weaponization and politicization. The vast majority of these individuals are not household names & are dedicated public servants who have worked across multiple presidential administrations.”
Zaid—who previously represented a whistleblower who accused Trump of attempting to extort Ukraine for dirt on former President Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election—told Axios that a person’s security clearance “is maintained in a protected Privacy Act System of records.”
He added the government “cannot simply release that information without written consent from the individual or the existence of a Routine Use, which I do not believe exists for this purpose.”
Those who lost clearances reportedly include officials who signed a letter supporting Trump’s first impeachment trial, when he was accused of threatening to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings ahead of the 2020 election.
Others were targeted online by Loomer, an extremist and conspiracy theorist who has taken credit for multiple people being removed from the Trump administration, citing reasons such as their prior service in the Obama or Biden administrations.
“Thank you, Tulsi! MORE SCALPS,” Loomer posted while sharing Gabbard’s memo.
In response to Zaid’s remarks, White House Spokesman Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast: “President Trump promised to end the weaponization of government against American citizens which is why Director Gabbard rightfully directed the revocation of 37 security clearances from current and former intelligence officials who abused their positions of public trust.”
The Trump administration has stripped numerous national security officials and political opponents of their clearances as part of the president’s campaign of retribution.
Those affected include Trump’s 2024 election rival, former Vice President Kamala Harris. New York Attorney General Letitia James—who prosecuted Trump for filing fraudulent financial filings for years—was also targeted, as was former president Joe Biden and his entire family.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/tulsi-gabbards-revenge-purge-immediately-runs-into-a-major-problem
The New York court weighing President Trump’s appeal of a roughly $500 million civil-fraud judgment typically acts swiftly and unanimously, with many of its decisions coming within weeks after hearing arguments.
Trump’s experience stands out as an unusual exception.
A five-justice panel has yet to render a decision nearly a year after taking up the case, leaving him and his business in limbo. Behind the scenes, members of the panel have been divided, and three of them have been writing opinions, according to people familiar with the matter. It couldn’t be determined how they are split. Justices do occasionally shift their positions, and the number of opinions could change, the people said.
A spokesman for the New York state court system said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation. A spokesman for Trump’s legal team said, “It is time for the New York Courts to step in and end this witch hunt once and for all.”
For the New York Appellate Division’s First Department, the Trump matter is among the most high-profile cases in its history, and the outcome could influence future business regulation in the state. For Trump, whose legal entanglements largely faded after his return to the White House, the fraud case is his main private legal headache. At stake isn’t only the half-billion dollar penalty, growing by the day with interest, but the possibility that his sons could be barred from running his family company in the near term. The president asks regularly why the court hasn’t ruled, said people who speak to him.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, sued Trump in 2022, alleging he fraudulently inflated the value of parts of his real-estate empire for financial benefit, primarily lower-interest loans. Justice Arthur Engoron presided over a monthslong civil trial and ruled James proved her case, which relied upon a state statute that grants the attorney general broad authority to investigate “persistent fraud or illegality” in business.
The judge in February 2024 ordered Trump to pay more than $350 million plus interest and imposed an array of other sanctions that restricted the Trump Organization from borrowing money and effectively prohibited Trump’s two eldest sons from running the business for two years. Trump quickly appealed, and the First Department put those restrictions on hold while it considered the case.
The appeals court heard arguments this past September, and some of the judges’ questions appeared favorable to Trump. One wondered whether there should be some “guardrails” on the attorney general’s power. Another questioned the size of the judgment. “The immense penalty in this case is troubling,” said Justice Peter Moulton. A lawyer for James defended it: “There was a lot of fraud.”
Other justices appeared to see James’s lawsuit as within the bounds of the law, despite the Trump lawyers’ arguments that banks didn’t lose money and no victims were harmed. Presiding Justice Dianne Renwick noted the statute refers to “persistent fraud or illegality,” but not harm.
Lengthy waits and disagreeing judges are a common occurrence on some appeals courts. But recent leadership of the First Judicial Department, which reviews thousands of lower-court decisions and motions annually, has emphasized speed.
The First Department typically issues decisions within 30 days, according to a 2024 court report. For each of the past five years, that report said, the court began its new annual session each September with zero pending and undecided appeals.
“Is this normal? No,” said Bill White, a lawyer at appellate consulting firm Counsel Press. “This is something I imagine they are anxious to have on their docket for so long, with everyone’s expectation and the pressure building.”
Alongside that promptness has come unanimity. From 2024 through this July, the court decided roughly 2,900 appeals, according to an analysis of public court data. Only about two dozen of those rulings—or less than .01%—came with a recorded dissent.
If the court upholds the trial judge’s decision, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. would be barred from holding a position as an officer of a New York company for two years. Trump and his company for three years couldn’t apply for loans from financial institutions registered in New York. The losing side can appeal to the state’s highest court.
The wait has cost the company. It is paying a court-appointed monitor, the former federal judge Barbara Jones, whom Trump lawyers previously accused of charging “exorbitant fees” amounting to more than $2.6 million over 14 months. On top of that, Trump has paid more than $2 million in fees on the bond he secured to guarantee the judgment while he appeals, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The panel hearing the Trump appeal includes four judges appointed by Democratic governors and one Republican appointee, David Friedman, who is regarded as among the most conservative of the court’s 21 members. The court’s presiding justice, Renwick, also on the panel, is viewed as a stalwart liberal who has an institutional interest in seeking consensus and guarding the court’s reputation.
ICE is detaining a 7-year-old girl and her immediate family, sources confirmed to Nexstar’s WPIX Saturday morning.
The 7-year-old, a student at a New York City Public School, and her mother were sent to an ICE detention center in Texas. Her 19-year-old brother remains in ICE custody in New Jersey, officials said.
“It is disgusting that a child would be taken into ICE detention this way,” Queens City Councilman Shekat Krishanan said in an interview with WPIX. “She should be with her mom, getting ready for school in a couple of weeks. She should be buying school supplies.”
This is the first known ICE arrest of a New York City child under 18, Krishnan said in a social media post.
The student’s name, which is not being released due to her age, was a student at Public School 89 in Queens.
The detention, first reported by the nonprofit news outlet The City, isn’t the first time ICE has detained a New York City public school student after they had been in the vicinity of the federal building.
WPIX did not immediately receive a response from federal authorities regarding the detainments but, according to a Department of Homeland Security statement shared with The City, the girl’s mother illegally entered the U.S. from Ecuador in 2022.
Mamadou Diallo, another New York City student, was detained by ICE during a routine hearing, City Council Member Lincoln Restler said.‘
Other cases of New York City students being detained have also been reported, prompting New York City Public Schools to issue the following statement:
“New York City Public Schools stands with all of our students, and we are committed to supporting every child and family in our system. When we hear about a family that is being detained, we have – with their permission – connected them with community and agency partners who can offer legal support and other resources. We want to reassure all families: our schools are safe, welcoming places, and we encourage you to continue sending your children to school, where they are cared for and valued.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James also took to social media, saying, “This administration is ripping families apart. It’s cruel, inhumane, and wrong.”
New York City Comptroller and Democratic mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested Tuesday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents while he was escorting a defendant out of immigration court.
“While escorting a defendant out of immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza, Brad was taken by masked agents and detained by ICE,” Lander’s wife, Meg Barnette, wrote on X.
…
Lander repeatedly asked the officers to show him a judicial warrant before he is handcuffed, per the video posted by Barnette.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/17/brad-lander-ice-mayoral-comptroller.html
The New York attorney general was an hour into a Westchester County town hall, expounding on her view of her mission during President Trump’s second term — on democracy and the need to defend it, on courage and the need to display it — when a middle-age man stood up and told her she was going to prison for mortgage fraud.
The attorney general, Letitia James, did not visibly react. As members of her staff escorted the man from the room, she thanked him with a small smile, said the allegations were baseless and turned her attention to a less fired-up attendee who was taking the microphone.
The episode in Westchester last month neatly encapsulated the role Ms. James has staked out in recent years as one of Mr. Trump’s chief antagonists, and the risks of having done so. The audience member was referring to allegations that have become the subject of a criminal investigation by Mr. Trump’s Justice Department, whose leaders have rewarded the president’s allies and targeted his foes.
But it’s important to remember that many of the White House’s political antagonists are, in fact, facing the kind of investigations that Trump has in mind. The New York Times reported:
The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday opened an investigation into Media Matters, a liberal advocacy organization that has published research on hateful and antisemitic content on X, according to two people familiar with the inquiry. The regulator said in a letter sent to the organization that it was investigating the group, which is aligned with Democrats, over whether it illegally colluded with advertisers, according to the people.
…
The public has learned in recent weeks that the administration — led by a president whose second-term “revenge tour” has been unsubtle — is also investigating and/or prosecuting a variety of Democratic officials and candidates, including Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York Attorney General Letitia James and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.
This dovetails with the president directing the Justice Department to go after Christopher Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; which came on the heels of Trump pressing the Department of Homeland Security to investigate Miles Taylor, a former high-ranking DHS official. The president did this not because there’s evidence of Krebs or Taylor having done anything wrong, but because they defied him several years ago. They went on his enemies list, and now he’s exacting revenge.
Around the same time, Trump also directed the Justice Department to investigate ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s most important fundraising platform.
And did I mention the investigation into former FBI director James Comey? Because that’s underway, too.
Trump and his team are also going after law firms, universities and news organizations they consider political foes of the White House.
What’s more, given Ed Martin’s new responsibilities at the Justice Department, this overtly and abusive partisan pattern is likely to intensify.
Axios recently noted, “In the final days of the 2024 campaign, Axios identified a list of perceived adversaries who fit what Trump ominously described as ‘the enemies from within.’ As president, he has taken steps to retaliate against virtually all of them.” That was two months ago. The problem is vastly worse now, and there’s no reason to believe conditions will improve anytime soon.
