Here's what DOJ's internal case management records show about Rep. Ratcliffe's time as a federal prosecutor:
He worked on 43 cases that DOJ designated as having something to do with terrorism. Two of those cases led to criminal charges.
The only "terrorism" case to which Ratcliffe was assigned that resulted in a conviction was the prosecution of Kenneth Kanyayi, who was accused of using someone else's Social Security number to gain employment.
Kanyayi pleaded guilty to one count of Social Security fraud and was sentenced to six months, which was basically time-served, followed by two years of supervision.
(These were the heady days when federal prosecutors were counting anything and everything as terrorism. Around this time, I interviewed a truck driver whose harassing phone calls to his former landlord were classified as domestic terrorism. Old school DOJ stats-juking.)
The other case that resulted in a prosecution was marked as "terror financing," but the actual charge was tax fraud. It was filed in 2003, before Ratcliffe joined DOJ. Records show it was dismissed at the government's request in 2011.
Of the rest, DOJ declined to prosecute 27 defendants because of weak or insufficient evidence. It dropped 10 at the request of an agency. (These are the internal codes the U.S. Attorneys' offices use; they're not super-specific.)
A few others were marked as having been opened in error. Basically, somebody created a record in the case-management system when they shouldn't have, and the system doesn't allow you to delete cases.
(The records don't look like they capture whatever work he did on the Holy Land case, because DOJ's case management system is a clunky rust-bucket that is not designed to capture weird situations where somebody works outside of his normal district and whatnot.)
This is all from the Justice Department's case management system. The department releases a huge trove of records - about 50gb - every month: justice.gov/usao/resources…
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Twitter's lawyers told a federal court yesterday that nothing in the "Twitter Files" cited by Donald Trump actually show that the social media platform was a tool of government censorship.
Twitter also says the appointment of a new CEO won't result in any changes to its content moderation strategy.
Twitter's lawyers also point out the problem with claims -- echoed by the company's CEO -- that the government was paying it to censor people. (The gov't was paying it to comply with search orders, which it is required to do by law.)
The Mar-a-Lago special master is telling Trump's lawyers to say once and for all whether they really think the FBI planted evidence during its search, as the former president has publicly alleged.
This isn't the first time Judge Dearie has told Trump's lawyers to essentially put up or shut up about the things they've been saying in TV but not in court.
A lawyer from the Texas Attorney General's office just entered an appearance in the 11th Cir. case over classified records at Mar-a-Lago. He claims to represent Texas, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Louisiana, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia.
Texas' brief is quite a document. It's basically a litany of why-Biden-is-bad-and-shouldn't-be-trusted, going through everything from immigration litigation to theories about COVID's origin to the Vice President's assertion that the border is secure.
Texas - with support from 10 other states - says courts should mistrust this administration. It argues Judge Cannon was right to set aside the "presumption of regularity," though she didn't actually do that.
A federal court in Florida has dismissed - for many different reasons - former President Trump's lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, various government officials and various others over "Russiagate." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
Judge: Trump's 193-page conspiracy allegation "is neither short nor plain, and it certainly does not establish that Plaintiff is entitled to any relief."
The judge said Trump's lawsuit that he was the victim of a plot by Hillary Clinton and others relied on misrepresented evidence, legal theories rejected by the Supreme Court and hyperbole to settle political scores. And that's just what you see before page 5.
One of the lawyers who asked a federal court to invalidate two of the three branches of government, @kellyesorelle, says she's filed another case in the Supreme Court to invalidate the 2020 election.
I checked with the clerk today. There is no such case.
This is not surprising. You can't just file a lawsuit in the Supreme Court (unless you happen to be a state and are suing another state or similar things). And even then you can't just file a lawsuit; you have to file a motion for leave to file. None of that has happened.
(Many thanks to the person who took the time to call me to ask about this.)
A large part of the totally-unsubstantiated theory that the FBI actually incited the Jan. 6 riot started with people not understanding how to read charging documents and making assumptions about their misunderstanding. And it's gone downhill from there.
Guys, there were federal agents in the crowd on Jan. 6. We know because one of them, a DEA agent, was prosecuted.
Here he is showing his creds.
He was with his brother, an FBI agent, who was investigated but not charged. He even went on Tucker Carlson's show to talk about it.
Here's the story. The DEA learned one of its agents was at the Capitol (with his weapon) because he was group-texting pics to a bunch of other agents. reuters.com/article/us-usa…