Fox’s News Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin made an ominous observation Friday about the deployment of several fighter jets and U.S. Navy vessels to Puerto Rico and the Caribbean Sea.
Griffin posted the news on Friday midday, writing, “The Pentagon is deploying 10 F-35 stealth fighter jets to Puerto Rico for counter-narcotics tasking in the Caribbean, a source familiar confirms to Fox News per Lucas Tomlinson.”
Griffin, one of the most respected national security reporters in the country, then added, “Why would you need F35 stealth fighter jets for a counternarcotics mission?”
“The F35s being sent to Puerto Rico are usually used for large bombing missions like the targeting of Iran’s nuclear facilities- a 5th generation supersonic fighter jet known for its lethality. It looks to me like the US military is going to war. 8 US Navy destroyers in the Caribbean near Venezuela is a first,” Griffin warned, suggesting the U.S. may be on a war footing.
Earlier in the week, President Donald Trump announced they bombed a vessel in the Caribbean that was allegedly carrying drugs and operated by the Tren de Aragua gang.
“The strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States. No U.S. Forces were harmed in this strike. Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America,” Trump announced on Truth Social.
The announcement raised questions surrounding the scope of the U.S. military’s mission in the Caribbean and under what legal authority the Trump administration is operating. Vice President JD Vance was asked on Wednesday, “On the Venezuela vessel strike, what legal authority were you guys working under? And will there be an after-action report on the strike?”
“Well, I’m sure there’s going to be an after-action report. I mean, the legal authority, and I want to talk about these kids, is that there are people who are bringing literal terrorists, who are bringing deadly drugs into our country, and the President of the United States ran on a promise of stopping this poison from coming into our country,” Vance replied, dodging the question. “Another question?”
The leaders of Russia, China, and North Korea are not good men. They preside over brutal autocracies replete with secret police and prison camps. But they are, nevertheless, serious men, and they know an unserious man when they see one. For nearly a decade, they have taken Donald Trump’s measure, and they have clearly reached a conclusion: The president of the United States is not worthy of their respect.
Wednesday’s military parade in Beijing is the most recent evidence that the world’s authoritarians consider Trump a lightweight. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and North Korea’s maximum nepo baby, Kim Jong Un, gathered to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. (Putin’s Belarusian satrap, Alexander Lukashenko, was also on hand.) The American president was not invited: After all, what role did the United States play in defeating Japan and liberating Eurasia? Instead, Trump, much like America itself, was left to watch from the sidelines.
But the parade was worse than a mere snub. Putin, Xi, and Kim stood in solidarity while reviewing China’s military might only weeks after Putin came to Alaska and showed no interest in moving to end Russia’s war against Ukraine. The White House tried to spin that ill-advised summit into at least a draw between Putin and Trump, but when the Kremlin’s dictator shows up with no interest in negotiation, speaks first at a press conference, and then caps the day by declining a carefully planned lunch and flying home, that’s a humiliation, not an exchange of views.
Nor has Trump fared very well with the other two members of this cheery 21st-century incarnation of SPECTRE. In the midst of Trumpian chaos, Xi is adroitly positioning China as the new face of international stability and responsibility. He has even made a show of offering partnership to China’s rival and former enemy India: Chinese diplomats last month said that China stands with India against the American “bully” when Trump was, for some reason, trying to impose 50 percent tariffs on India.
Likewise, the North Koreans, after playing to Trump’s ego and his ignorance of international affairs during meetings in the president’s first term, have continued their march to a nuclear arsenal that within years could grow to be larger than the United Kingdom’s. Trump was certain that he could negotiate with Kim, but the perfumed days of “love letters” between Trump and Kim are long over. Pyongyang’s leadership seems to know that it costs them little to humor Trump politely, but that they should reserve serious discussion for the leaders of serious countries.
Trump responded to his exclusion from the gala in Beijing by acting exactly like the third-tier leader that Xi, Putin, and Kim seem to think he is. As the event was taking place, Trump took to his social-media site—of course—to express his hurt feelings with a cringe-inducing attempt at a zinger. “May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration. Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.”
Now, the reality is that Russia, China, and North Korea are conspiring against America, but it is beneath both the dignity and the power of an American president to whine about it. Trump continued his unseemly carping with a demand that China recognize the valor of the Americans who died in the Pacific:
The big question to be answered is whether or not President Xi of China will mention the massive amount of support and ‘blood’ that The United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader. Many Americans died in China’s quest for Victory and Glory. I hope that they are rightfully Honored and Remembered for their Bravery and Sacrifice!
This message does not exactly project confidence and leadership; instead, it sounds like the grousing of a man beset by insecurities. A more self-assured commander in chief would have ignored the parade and, if asked about it, would have said something to the effect that the United States has always respected the sacrifices of our allies in World War II. But not Trump: He petulantly declared that he would not have attended even if the cool kids had invited him.
Authoritarians are unfortunately in good company in treating Trump as an incompetent leader. Even America’s allies have recognized that Trump may be their formal partner, but that they mostly get things done with the American president by soothing his ego and working around him. After Trump emerged from the summit in Anchorage essentially parroting Putin’s talking points, seven top European leaders rushed to Washington to tell Trump that he had done well and that they truly, really respected him, but that perhaps he should hold off on being a co-signer of Kremlin policy.
Trump’s damage to American power and prestige would be less severe if the president had a foreign policy and a team to execute it. He has neither: Trump ran for president mostly for personal reasons, including to stay out of prison, and his foreign policy, such as it is, is merely an extension of his personal interests. He holds summits, issues social-media pronouncements, and engages in photo ops mostly, it seems, either to burnish his claim to a Nobel Prize or to change the news cycle when issues such as the economy (or the Jeffrey Epstein files) get too much traction.
Worse, Trump is no longer surrounded by people who care about foreign affairs or can competently step in and create consistent policy. In his first term, Trump had a secretary of defense, James Mattis, who helped to create a national-defense strategy, a document that Trump might have ignored but was at least promulgated to a national-security establishment that needed direction from someone, somewhere. Now, at the Pentagon, Trump has Pete Hegseth, who shows little apparent inclination or ability to think about complexities.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was supposed to be one of the new “adults in the room,” but he has instead become a man in a Velcro suit, with the president sticking jobs and responsibilities onto him without any further guidance. He has been reduced to sitting glumly in White House press sprays with foreign leaders while Trump embarrasses himself and his guests. Meanwhile, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is spending her time trying to root out the spies she thinks hate the president. Unfortunately, the agents she’s hunting are Americans, which must bring a smile to Xi’s face and perhaps even produce a belly laugh from former KGB officer Putin.
America is adrift. It has no coherent foreign policy, no team of senior professionals managing its national defense and diplomacy, and a president who has little interest in the world beyond what it can offer him. Little wonder that the men who gathered in Beijing—three autocrats whose nations are collectively pointing many hundreds of nuclear weapons at the United States—feel free to act as if they don’t even think twice about Trump or the country he leads.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/09/trump-parade-china-putin-xi-kim/684113
In an article for Democracy Docket published Thursday, journalist Jim Saksa argued that President Donald Trump is systematically expanding his authority to deploy military force within U.S. cities, and that the lack of sufficient legal or legislative pushback risks making such aggressive domestic deployments routine.
Saksa noted that over the past two weeks Trump has repeatedly threatened to send the National Guard not only to Chicago, but also to New York, Baltimore, Seattle, New Orleans and other major American cities. These threats follow earlier deployments of thousands of troops to Los Angeles in June and Washington D.C. in August.
Most recently, Trump signed an executive order establishing a National Guard “quick reaction force” prepared for rapid nationwide mobilization.
While these troop deployments are of questionable legality, Saksa pointed out that previous actions, particularly the deployments to LA and D.C., have largely gone unchecked by either the courts or Congress.
This, he warned, could embolden the president to continue deploying military force in Democratic-led cities
Trump’s rhetoric has reinforced this trajectory. He described Chicago as “a killing field right now,” despite evidence of its safest summer in decades.
He further asserted, “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the President of the United States of America,” and added, “If I think our country is in danger, and it is in danger in these cities, I can do it.”
Saksa examined the legal response: a district court in California ruled that Trump’s administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which broadly prohibits the use of the military for domestic law enforcement, but the court did not deem the deployment itself illegal.
The Ninth Circuit, moreover, upheld the administration’s actions, concluding the deployment to LA was lawful. As a result, around 300 National Guard personnel remain on federal active duty in Southern California nearly three months later.
The article noted the slow governmental response: nearly a month passed before Washington filed a legal challenge, a delay compounded by the District’s unique legal status.
Meanwhile, the White House continues to rely on obscure statutes and novel legal theories, while avoiding reliance on the Insurrection Act of 1807, a more traditional yet controversial legal pathway to deploy troops domestically.
David Janovsky, acting director of the Project on Government Oversight’s Constitution Project, told the outlet that courts and Congress have been “mostly feeble” in response to what he termed a “power grab.”
He voiced concern that there may be no clear limits left on such presidential authority: “I don’t know what the next meaningful limit is,” he said.
The article also included comments from William Banks, professor emeritus at Syracuse University College of Law, who said: “The insurrection act is the big heavy gun.”
He added: “It was intended to be utilized, if at all, when all hell is broken loose. It’s for extreme circumstances.”
Donald Trump has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling that the basis for his “reciprocal tariffs” policy was not legal, having warned the country would be “destroyed” without it.
The Court of Appeals ruled on Friday in agreement with a May finding by the Court of International Trade that the president had overstepped his authority by invoking a law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act 1977 to place hefty levies on goods imported from America’s trading partners.
Trump was incensed by the decision, insisting it was “highly partisan” and “would literally destroy the United States of America.”
Now, the administration has asked the conservative-majority Supreme Court to decide whether to take up the case by September 10, despite its new term not beginning until October 6, with a view to hearing arguments in November.
“The stakes in this case could not be higher,” Solicitor General D John Sauer wrote in his filing. “The president and his cabinet officials have determined that the tariffs are promoting peace and unprecedented economic prosperity, and that the denial of tariff authority would expose our nation to trade retaliation without effective defenses and thrust America back to the brink of economic catastrophe.”
Attorneys representing small businesses challenging the tariff program said they were not opposed to the Supreme Court hearing the matter and said, on the contrary, they were confident their arguments would prevail.
“These unlawful tariffs are inflicting serious harm on small businesses and jeopardizing their survival,” said Jeffrey Schwab of Liberty Justice Center. “We hope for a prompt resolution of this case for our clients.”
Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs in the White House Rose Garden on April 2, invoking the IEEPA to set a 10 percent baseline tax on all imports and even higher taxes on goods being shipped from nearly every one of America’s trading partners, with China, Canada and Mexico among those hardest hit.
However, his announcement sent shockwaves through the world’s stock markets as investors panicked over their likely economic consequences, eventually forcing Trump into a rethink. He duly announced a week later that the implementation of the tariffs would be suspended for 90 days, a deadline that was eventually extended until August.
Administration officials led by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick used the intervening summer months to attempt to broker custom deals with other countries but only succeeded in securing a handful of agreements, notably with the U.K. and Vietnam.
A revised list of tariffs that came into effect on August 7 saw India (51 percent), Syria (41 percent), Laos (40 percent), Myanmar (4o percent) and Switzerland (39 percent) particularly hard done by.
Then, last week, the Court of Appeals agreed with two challenges, one brought by the small businesses and another by 12 states, to rule in a seven-four majority decision that the president’s power to regulate imports under the law does not include the power to impose tariffs.
“It seems unlikely that Congress intended, in enacting IEEPA, to depart from its past practice and grant the president unlimited authority to impose tariffs,” the justices wrote in their decision.
They added that U.S. law “bestows significant authority on the president to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency, but none of these actions explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties, or the like, or the power to tax.”
The Independent is the world’s most free-thinking news brand, providing global news, commentary and analysis for the independently-minded. We have grown a huge, global readership of independently minded individuals, who value our trusted voice and commitment to positive change. Our mission, making change happen, has never been as important as it is today.
The Department of Defense (DoD) is reportedly encouraging civilian employees to volunteer with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Advocacy groups have voiced concerns regarding the program’s potential effects on immigrant communities. Under the plan, volunteers may serve for up to 180 days, mainly supporting data entry and logistical operations.
A DoD email reads, “Selected Department employees will have a chance to offer critical support to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as they fulfill the President’s intent to ensure a safe and orderly immigration system.”
The USA Jobs listing requires commitment to efficiency and rule of law. Some travel costs may be reimbursed, but no relocation aid is offered, and volunteers must be ready to deploy within 96 hours.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized DoD civilians to aid DHS for up to 120 days. The volunteer roles offer no promotions, may require heavy overtime, and do not need clearances or drug tests.
Hegseth stated, “In support of the President’s priority of securing our borders, I am authorizing the detail of DoD civilian employees to the DHS to support its operations at the United States southern border and with internal immigration enforcement.”
Applications are reportedly open with no set deadline, allowing extensions if needed. A DoD spokesperson stated, “ICE, CBP, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense are embracing President Trump’s whole-of-government approach to protecting the American people.”
The DoD spokesperson added, “DOD civilians — who have already undergone rigorous vetting and demonstrated their commitment to serving this nation — are invited to volunteer for temporary ICE assignments to help make America safe again and remove national security threats—including gang members and terrorists from our country.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/defense-dept-authorizes-temporary-ice-assignments/ss-AA1Ly8hj
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that most of President Donald Trump‘s global tariffs are illegal, striking a massive blow to the core of his aggressive trade policy.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a 7-4 ruling held that the law Trump invoked when he granted his most expansive tariffs does not actually grant him the power to impose those levies.
Trump is all but certain to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. The appellate court paused its ruling from taking effect until Oct. 14, in order to give the Trump administration time to ask the Supreme Court to take up the case.
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Friday’s ruling, which is the second straight loss for Trump in the make-or-break case.
The Trump administration has argued that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, empowers the president to effectively impose country-specific tariffs at any level if he deems them necessary to address a national emergency.
The U.S. Court of International Trade in late May rejected that stance and struck down Trump’s IEEPA-based tariffs, including his worldwide “reciprocal” tariffs unveiled in early April. But the Federal Circuit quickly paused that ruling while Trump’s appeal played out.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/29/trump-trade-tariffs-appeals-court-ieepa.html
President Donald Trump is continuing to transform the Justice Department into a tool for vengeance against his political enemies, including billionaire philanthropist and Democratic donor George Soros.
“George Soros, and his wonderful Radical Left son, should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America,” Trump wrote Wednesday on Truth Social, referencing conspiracy theories claiming that Soros and his philanthropic group, the Open Society Foundation, pay money to and supply violent protesters.
“We’re not going to allow these lunatics to rip apart America any more, never giving it so much as a chance to ‘BREATHE,’ and be FREE. Soros, and his group of psychopaths, have caused great damage to our Country! That includes his Crazy, West Coast friends. Be careful, we’re watching you!” Trump added.
Soros has long been a boogeyman for right wingers, who have — for decades at this point — made the Jewish investor the centerpiece of antisemitic conspiracy theories, as well as other conspiracies claiming his financial support of pro-Democracy organizations is actually part of an effort to destroy “western civilization.”
In a statement to Rolling Stone, The Open Society Foundation wrote that “these accusations are outrageous and false. The Open Society Foundations do not support or fund violent protests. Our mission is to advance human rights, justice, and democratic principles at home and around the world.”
“We stand for fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, including the rights to free speech and peaceful protest that are hallmarks of any vibrant democracy,” the organization added.
In the early months of Trump’s second administration, and especially in recent weeks, the Justice Department and other federal agencies have been weaponized to go after people Trump perceives as enemies, and critics of his political project.
Last week, the FBI raided the home of former national security adviser John Bolton, who has been a public critic of the president since his departure from Trump’s first administration. Last month, the Department of Justice announced that it would launch a “strike force” to investigate former President Barack Obama, and placed New York Attorney General Letitia James — who successfully prosecuted Trump and his company — under investigation. The Justice Department is also probing Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) who led the first impeachment of Trump during his first term. The investigations into both James and Schiff center around potential mortgage fraud.
During a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Trump denied he is weaponizing the government by, as a reporter put it to him, “digging into the mortgage records of officials you don’t like.” Trump responded by saying that the reporter should be the one doing the digging before quickly moving onto a different question.
During the same Cabinet meeting, Trump for the second straight day mused to reporters about the American people wanting a dictator. “I’m not a dictator, I just know how to stop crime,” Trump claimed.
But while Trump may claim he’s not an authoritarian, the way he’s transformed agencies intended to serve the public into his personal attack dogs has all the hallmarks of fascism.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-threatens-charges-george-soros-1235416539
President Donald Trump’s surge of federal law enforcement on the streets of D.C. is meeting resistance in the city’s federal courthouse, where magistrate judges have admonished prosecutors for violating defendants’ rights and court rules, and grand jurors have repeatedly refused to issue indictments.
On Tuesday, a federal grand jury refused to indict a former Justice Department employee who threw a sandwich at a federal law enforcement agent in an incident this month that went viral on social media, according to two people with knowledge of the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly. Prosecutors had sought to charge Sean Charles Dunn with a felony count of assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer.
Trump declared a crime emergency this month, giving federal law enforcement agencies and National Guard members unprecedented authority to patrol the nation’s capital, while also enlisting the District’s 3,100-member police force to assist with immigration enforcement. More than 1,000 arrests have followed, according to the White House. Meanwhile, D.C.’s top prosecutor, Jeanine Pirro, ordered her staff to file the stiffest possible charges in every case.
But there are emerging signs that not all of the arrests will stand up to scrutiny in court.
Before prosecutors failed to indict Dunn, a grand jury on three separate occasions this month refused to indict a D.C. woman who was accused of assaulting an FBI agent, another extraordinary rejection of the prosecution’s case. Days later, a federal magistrate judge said an arrest in Northeast Washington was preceded by the “most illegal search I’ve seen in my life” and described another arrest as lacking “basic human dignity.”
While judges are known to criticize prosecutors from time to time, grand jurors only in rare cases refuse to issue an indictment, which requires them to find only probable cause that a crime was committed, the lowest evidentiary bar in criminal cases. Instances of failed indictments have begun to crop up more since Trump took office this year. Grand jurors in Los Angeles have rejected indictments of people who were arrested for protesting the administration’s immigration enforcement actions, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The July 22 scuffle at issue in D.C. federal court occurred weeks before Trump’s law enforcement order, but the grand jurors were presented with the case this month just as federal agents were descending on Washington.
Prosecutors alleged that Sydney Reid was obstructing and recording agents from the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as they attempted to arrest a gang member being released from the D.C. jail who was slated for deportation. An FBI agent scraped her hand against a wall amid the fracas, and prosecutors planned to charge Reid with assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer, a felony offense punishable by up to eight years in prison.
Under the Fifth Amendment, however, charges that carry potential penalties of more than a year in prison must be approved by a grand jury. At least 12 members must vote to authorize an indictment. After striking out with the D.C. grand jury, prosecutors dropped the effort to charge Reid with a felony and instead filed a misdemeanor charge that does not require grand jury approval. The maximum penalty for the misdemeanor is one year in jail.
“After Ms. Reid was wrongfully arrested, the ICE agent told her, ‘You should have just stayed home and minded your business,’” Reid’s public defenders, Tezira Abe and Eugene Ohm, said in a statement. “As a United States citizen and a compassionate person, caring about fellow D.C. residents getting snatched off the streets by ICE agents is her business and should be of concern to all human beings.”
They added: “The U.S. attorney can try to concoct crimes to quiet the people but in our criminal justice system, the citizens have the last word. We are anxious to present the misdemeanor case to a jury and to quickly clear Ms. Reid’s name.”
Several recent cases, including Dunn’s, have involved the same felony statute that prosecutors tried to apply to Reid’s case.
Pirro declined to speculate about how juries in D.C., where 90 percent of voters cast ballots for Trump’s opponent in the 2024 presidential race, might respond to criminal cases as the federal crackdown continues.
“The only thing that I can say is we are prosecutors. We are the tip of the spear. We are the ones who take these cases into court, and the burden is on us to prove these cases, and we welcome that burden — beyond a reasonable doubt,” Pirro said at a news conference Tuesday. “Sometimes a jury will buy it and sometimes they won’t. So be it. That’s the way the process works.”
A spokesman for Pirro did not say whether federal prosecutors would try to present the Dunn case to a grand jury a second time. The spokesman, Timothy Lauer, alleged that a government lawyer had violated a court rule requiring confidentiality in grand jury proceedings by disclosing the decision not to indict Dunn. The grand jury’s move in that case was first reported by the New York Times. Dunn’s attorney, Sabrina Shroff, declined to comment.
U.S. Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey said at a hearing this month that prosecutors should have promptly notified the court about the grand jury’s decision not to indict Reid but that they held off for days, violating a court rule. “I’ve taken up that issue with the U.S. attorney’s office,” Harvey said last week.
But the most pointed criticisms of Trump’s law enforcement surge have come from Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui, who has castigated law enforcement officials for wearing masks while tackling and arresting a Venezuelan national who worked as a food-delivery driver, for disobeying an order the judge issued this week to release a woman from the D.C. jail, and for arresting and jailing a 37-year-old because “he was a Black man going into Trader Joe’s.”
“I’d say we live in a surreal world right now,” Faruqui said at a court hearing for Christian Enrique Carías Torres, who was taken down by masked federal agents as he exited a Bluestone Lane coffee shop with a delivery order, an arrest that was captured on video by a Washington Post reporter.
“This is not consistent with what I understand the United States of America to be,” the judge told Carías Torres. “You should be treated with basic human dignity. We don’t have a secret police.”
Pirro’s office said in a court filing that Carías Torres ran after officers approached him, struggled as he was being taken down and tried to flee from a police vehicle after being handcuffed, adding that he had missed his immigration court hearings since entering the country in 2023.
Violent crime is down 27 percent so far this year compared with the same period in 2024, according to D.C. police data, and has declined 51 percent when measuring the year-over-year period since Trump issued his order Aug. 11.
The president has painted a portrait of “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor” in the District, blaming years of passive policing by local authorities and lenient criminal justice policies from Democratic officials.
“But now they are allowed to do whatever the hell they want,” Trump said of D.C. police as he announced his moves. He said criminals in the city are rough and tough, “but we’re rougher and tougher.”
Carías Torres was charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers, just as Dunn and Reid had been, after an officer injured his head while helping take him to the ground. Faruqui ordered that Carías Torres be released pending trial, acknowledging that ICE would have an opportunity to take him into custody to enforce a removal order issued by an immigration court last year.
In another case, federal prosecutors charged Kristal Rios Esquivel with a felony violation of the same statute, which makes it illegal to assault federal officers. Her alleged offense started when she walked through a door that was marked “staff only” at the National Zoo’s bird house, tripping an alarm. As National Zoo Park Police officers arrested her for unlawful entry, Rios Esquivel spat on two of them and kicked one, prosecutors alleged. Her attorney has criticized the arrest as an instance of overpolicing.
Rios Esquivel was held for five days in the D.C. jail before making her initial appearance Monday in Faruqui’s courtroom, which Faruqui said was bad enough. The judge ordered Rios Esquivel released pending trial, but the D.C. Department of Corrections did not free her the same day. Faruqui threatened to impose sanctions in a scathing order issued Tuesday that said officials had subjected Rios Esquivel to illegal detention, and she was released.
“What is especially troubling is that this is not even the first time in the past four months that the Court has encountered this same problem of false imprisonment,” Faruqui wrote, citing another case from April.
At yet another court hearing scrutinizing police tactics in D.C., Faruqui reprimanded federal prosecutors this week for charging Torez Riley with illegally possessing firearms. The judge found that D.C. police officers, who were on patrol with federal agents, violated Riley’s privacy rights by searching his bag, where they found two guns. Riley had previously been convicted of weapons offenses, prosecutors said.
Police said in court documents that Riley’s bag had been searched in part because it appeared to contain something heavy. But that observation was not enough to show probable cause that Riley had committed a crime, the court found.
It was “without a doubt, the most illegal search I’ve seen in my life,” said Faruqui, a former D.C. federal prosecutor, adding that Riley had been jailed and kept away from his three children and pregnant wife for a week because “he was a Black man going into Trader Joe’s.”
Pirro’s office then filed court papers to dismiss the case, and the judge ordered Riley released from a D.C. jail facility.
A spokesman for Pirro said that as soon as she “was shown the body-worn camera footage on Friday, she ordered the dismissal of the charges.” The motion to dismiss was filed Monday.
In response to Faruqui’s criticisms, Pirro said in a statement: “This judge has a long history of bending over backwards to release dangerous felons in possession of firearms and on frequent occasions he has downplayed the seriousness of felons who possess illegal firearms and the danger they pose to our community.”
But Faruqui also admonished Riley over his firearm possession. “You will die, you will kill somebody, or you will end up in jail,” the judge said.
Riley is set to face consequences in Maryland, where Faruqui said authorities would use what they learned in the “blatantly illegal” D.C. search to show he violated his probation in an earlier gun possession case. A bench warrant was issued Monday over the probation violation, according to records from Prince George’s County Circuit Court.
Riley’s wife, Crashawna Williams, said she took a week off from the beauty classes she’s enrolled in to deal with her husband’s case while taking care of their boys, ages 3, 8 and 12.
“I feel like he shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place,” Williams said. But, she added, what could they do?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/08/27/trump-crime-surge-court-cases
