Don't look now but there's a real dispute emerging among judges in DC about one of the staple charges against nearly every Jan. 6 defendant: Entering and remaining in a restricted building.
Tonight, Judge Cooper acquitted a Jan. 6 defendant of two counts, saying DOJ fell short.
The heart of the dispute: Does DOJ need to show that rioters *knew* Mike Pence (or another USSS protectee) was/would be present to prove someone violated he law. Until recently, judges had all agreed that wasn't necessary.
Cooper (Obama) joins Judges Nichols (Trump) and Lamberth (Reagan) in taking this narrower view of the 18 USC 1752 charges, a misdemeanor that has been leveled against 1,186 of the 1,260-ish Jan. 6 defendants.
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HAPPENING NOW; Judge Young is picking up where he left off in his remarkable opinion describing an unconstitutional scheme to arrest/deport pro-Palestinian activists in violation of their constitutional rights:
"There was no policy here. What happened here is an unconstitutional conspiracy to pick off certain people, to twist the laws."
"Two cabinet secretaries conspired ... they intentionally, knowing what they were doing, counseled by professionals who cautioned them, nevertheless went ahead to pick off these people with the intention that your clients would be chilled. And did so rather effectively, by the way."
YOUNG: "The big problem in this case is that the cabinet secretaries and ostensibly the president of the United States are not honoring the First Amendment."
YOUNG, speaking of Secretary Rubio and Secretary Noem: "These cabinet secretaries have failed in their duty to uphold the constitution."
HAPPENING NOW: In federal court in MN, DOJ is struggling to articulate why a person following an ICE vehicle — so long as they are obeying traffic laws — can be stopped for "reasonable suspicion" of a crime.
Judge Menendez sharply questioning that contention.
Judge Menendez has not tipped her hand entirely yet but she seems concerned that DOJ provided no firsthand evidence to counter the specific, evidence-backed claims by protesters that they were arrested / seized in retaliation for First Amendment speech.
Under questioning from Menendez, DOJ struggling again to articulate why ICE officers can draw guns on drivers who are following them, so long as those drivers are not breaking traffic laws or posing any other articulable threat.
BREAKING: A day after the Minneapolis shooting, Secretary Noem quietly signed a new policy barring congressional visits to ICE facilities without a week's advance notice.
MORE: DOJ says the batch of 1 million documents it recently unearthed appear to be largely duplicative "but nonetheless still need to undergo a process of processing and deduplication." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
NEW: DOJ says it's barely scratched the surface of the massive trove of Epstein Files, with millions of documents still being reviewed for release even with hundreds of lawyers working on it full-time.
Smith was barred from discussing any nonpublic parts of his classified documents probe by Judge Cannon's order prohibiting DOJ from divulging any nonpublic info about it.
DOJ opted against having a lawyer present for Smith's deposition.
In a late night filing, DOJ says Kilmar Abrego Garcia should be returned to detention because he is subject to laws governing detention during deportation proceedings — and “may seek a bond hearing” before an immigration judge. However … storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
The administration has been arguing in thousands of cases that people in Abrego’s position are not entitled to bond hearings at all — and rather are subject to mandatory detention. Hundreds of judges across the country have ruled that position illegal politico.com/news/2025/11/2…
And DOJ knows, but doesn’t mention here, that the immigration courts are all bound by a recent Board of Immigration Appeals ruling — breaking with decades of precedent — finding that bond hearings are not available to virtually anyone facing deportation proceedings. politico.com/news/2025/09/0…