CREATORS: The U.S. Senate's Great Money Grab

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
December 2, 2025

In early October, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) revealed that the FBI obtained personal cell phone data from eight Republican senators as part of an investigation into the conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential Election so that outgoing President Donald Trump could remain in office.

In 2023, the FBI sought and obtained data about the senators' phone use from Jan. 4 through Jan. 7, 2021. The data showed when and to whom calls were made, as well as the duration and general location of the call. The data did not include the content of the call.

Some members of the Senate were outraged by the revelation. The U.S. Senate was so incensed at the perceived invasion of privacy that it decided that American taxpayers should pay the "aggrieved" senators millions of dollars to prevent the FBI from ever investigating senators without letting them know in advance.

While literally millions of federal workers were not being paid during the 43-day government shutdown, lawmakers were scheming about how to cash in on the government impasse.

As Americans were standing in line at food pantries, Senators were sitting in the proverbial "smoke-filled room" drawing up a real money grab — even by the lowly standards of the U.S. Congress.

Senate Republicans secured a provision in the bipartisan, shutdown-ending government funding package that could award senators millions of dollars for having their phone records collected without their knowledge as part of the election investigation.

A person with direct knowledge of the legislative negotiations confirmed to Politico that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) oversaw the inclusion of the money grab provision. It was tucked into the legislative branch spending measure for fiscal year 2026, part of a three-bill appropriations package approved by the Senate.

According to the blog Lawfare, the law created a civil cause of action — "that is, the ability to sue in court — if a senator is not notified when providers (cell phone companies) receive a subpoena for his or her data, or that of his or her staff."

The law makes it possible for eight sitting senators to cash in. The legislation conveniently provides that this new cause of action is retroactive to January 2022 — the data was obtained in 2023.

This means that those eight senators will recover a minimum of $500,000. Eight senators voted to create a retroactive cause of action so they could recover at least half a million dollars.

Lawfare suggests, the $500,000 remedy is available for each "instance," which means that a typical subpoena seeking data from a senator's cell phone and email account could cost $1 million. Collecting the same data from a Senator's staff — say, five individuals plus the senator — could cost taxpayers $6 million in damages. Lawfare further points out that the common practice of "refreshing the collected data by issuing new subpoenas as the investigation progresses could double or triple the amount of damages."

The controversy got more interesting when members of the House of Representatives finally read the legislation they passed to end the government shutdown. It was unclear if the House was outraged more by what the Senate did or by finding out the payoff did not include members of the House.

The House recently voted 427-0 to repeal the self-serving part of the new law. According to PBS, a senior White House official, who was granted anonymity to describe President Trump's thinking, said that the president had no objections to the language added by the senators and indicated privately that he does not think it was a bad provision. The source said, "The White House had been fully looped in as senators drafted the bill."

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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DOJ considers new indictments against Comey and James

The U.S. Justice Department is weighing seeking new indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, after a federal judge dismissed both cases last week, according to two people familiar with the matter, reported Reuters. 

The department could seek new charges against Comey and James as soon as this week, though the timing was not yet clear, the people added, speaking anonymously in order to discuss non-public department deliberations.

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Representatives for James could not be immediately reached for comment. An attorney for Comey declined to comment.

A federal judge last week dismissed the criminal cases against both Comey and James - two of President Donald Trump's perceived political enemies - after she determined that both indictments were secured by an unlawfully appointed U.S. Attorney in Virginia's Eastern District.

In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie found that the Trump Justice Department violated the U.S. Constitution's Appointments Clause and federal law by appointing Lindsey Halligan in September as Interim U.S. Attorney.

Halligan's predecessor was forced out of his job after expressing concerns about the evidence in both cases. Halligan presented evidence alone to the grand juries in both criminal cases. Career prosecutors in her office refused to participate.

Currie's ruling left the door open for the Justice Department to try to seek fresh indictments.

Both Comey and James have been longtime targets of Trump's ire. Comey as FBI director oversaw an investigation into alleged ties between Trump's 2016 election campaign and the Russian government, and was fired by Trump in 2017.

James, an elected Democrat, successfully sued Trump and his family real estate company for fraud.

Comey pleaded not guilty to charges of making false statements and obstructing Congress after he was accused of lying and authorizing leaks to the news media.

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James pleaded not guilty to charges of bank fraud and lying to a financial institution. Halligan alleged that she filed misleading mortgage documents to secure more favorable loan terms.

Both Comey and James have alleged the prosecutions against them were vindictive, driven by Trump's animus towards them.

It was unclear whether prosecutors could seek to bring a new case against Comey over the same conduct. The five-year statute of limitations on the charges expired on September 30, and Comey's lawyers have already indicated in court filings that they do not believe prosecutors have more time to refile the charges.

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Did Secretary of War order 'no quarter will be given'?

There can be no conceivable legal justification for what the Washington Post reported:  The U.S. Special Operations Forces killed the survivors of a first strike on a drug boat off the coast of Trinidad who, in the Post’s words, “were clinging to the smoldering wreck.”

According to the blog Executive Function, Section 5.4.7 of the DOD Law of War Manual says:

Prohibition Against Declaring That No Quarter Be Given. It is forbidden to declare that no quarter will be given. This means that it is prohibited to order that legitimate offers of surrender will be refused or that detainees, such as unprivileged belligerents, will be summarily executed. Moreover, it is also prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, or to threaten the adversary with the denial of quarter. This rule is based on both humanitarian and military considerations. This rule also applies during non-international armed conflict.

This is an old principle of the laws of war. The Hague Regulations of 1907 state that “it is especially forbidden . . . [t]o declare that no quarter will be given.” The 1863 Lieber Code—the famous U.S. government rules governing military conduct during the Civil War—provides: “Whoever intentionally inflicts additional wounds on an enemy already wholly disabled, or kills such an enemy, or who orders or encourages soldiers to do so, shall suffer death, if duly convicted, whether he belongs to the Army of the United States, or is an enemy captured after having committed his misdeed.” And the currently governing DOD Manual in Section 5.9 states clearly that persons “placed hors de combat may not be made the object of attack.” The Manual defines “hors de combat” to include “persons . . . otherwise incapacitated by . . . shipwreck.”

In short, if the Post’s facts are correct, it appears that Special Operations Forces committed murder when the “two men were blown apart in the water,” as the Post put it.

It is unclear from the Post’s reporting precisely what role Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth played in the decision to kill the survivors of the first strike. The story opens:

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

The Post then reports that after then-Joint Special Operations Command chief U.S. Navy Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley became aware of the survivors, he “ordered the second strike to fulfill Hegseth’s directive that everyone must be killed.” This makes it seem like Hegseth—even if his initial “order” was (as it appears) a command to take no quarter—might not have been in the loop between the first and second strikes.

I do not believe, based on the facts in the Post story, that Bradley could have relied on Hegseth’s order—even if Hegseth formally ordered the second strike. The prohibition on targeting a disabled combatant is so clear that Bradley had a duty, in the words of 18.22.4 of the Manual, “to refuse to comply with clearly illegal orders to commit violations of the law of war.”

According to the Post, Bradley at some point argued that “the survivors were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo.” That is wrong. The theoretical possibility of calling other traffickers for help is not the test. The incapacitated survivors simply may not be targeted unless, as Section 5.9 of the Manual says, they affirmatively committed a “hostile act” or “attempt[ed] to escape.” If the Post’s facts are in the vicinity of the truth, that could not have happened. (The Intercept, which reported the kernel of this event in September, said that the survivors were “killed shortly after in a follow-up attack.”)

I wrote a few weeks ago about the possibility of an OLC golden shield as a defense to illegal conduct in connection with the boat strikes. OLC is forbidden to “advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law” and is exercising power delegated from an Attorney General unflinchingly beholden to the President. But I do not believe that even the Bondi OLC could legally justify the events the Post reported. In an opinion last summer upholding the general legality of the drug boat campaign, OLC apparently stated (or at least assumed) that the law of armed conflict governed the strikes. In this light, it is hard to see how OLC could bless these strikes, much less do so ex post. Which leaves the pardon power as the option that can, and no doubt will, eventually immunize what happened.

Hegseth has emphasized that he wants to restore the “warrior ethos” in the U.S. military. In the hours after the story, he signaled generic support for the boat strike campaign and chest-thumped that “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”

Yet the warrior ethos has always demanded honorable conduct in warfare. The Navy Seals, for example, describe themselves as “a special breed of warrior” but the Seal Ethos thrice emphasizes the importance of honor, including “on . . . the battlefield.” And surely the warrior ethos, whatever else it means, doesn’t require killing helpless men clinging to the burning wreckage of a blown-up boat. The DOD Manual is clear because the law here is clear: “Persons who have been incapacitated by . . . shipwreck are in a helpless state, and it would be dishonorable and inhumane to make them the object of attack.”

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Mangino discusses murder of missing teen on Law & Crime

Watch my interview with Chris Stewart of the Law & Crime Network discussing the missing teen strangled with jumper cables.

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Veterans in Congress targeted after video about ignoring 'illegal orders'

Democratic lawmakers who appeared in a social media video urging U.S. troops to defy “illegal orders” say the FBI has contacted them to begin scheduling interviews, signaling a possible inquiry into the matter, reported The Associated Press.

It would mark the second investigation tied to the video, coming a day after the Pentagon said it was reviewing Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona over potential violations of military law. The FBI and Pentagon actions come after President Donald Trump accused the lawmakers of sedition and said it is “punishable by DEATH” in a social media post.

Together, the inquiries mark an extraordinary escalation for federal law enforcement and military institutions that traditionally steer clear of partisan clashes. They also underscore the administration’s willingness to push legal limits against its critics, even when they are sitting members of Congress. Lawmakers in the video urge troops to reject any illegal orders from their superiors, something they are already duty-bound to do.

“President Trump is using the FBI as a tool to intimidate and harass Members of Congress,” a group of four Democratic House members said in a statement Tuesday. “Yesterday, the FBI contacted the House and Senate Sergeants at Arms requesting interviews.”

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/John McDonnell, File)

Democrats call inquiry a ‘scare tactic’

Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, one of the six Democratic lawmakers in the video, told reporters Tuesday that “last night the counterterrorism division at the FBI sent a note to the members of Congress, saying they are opening what appears to be an inquiry against the six of us.” Slotkin called it a “scare tactic by” Trump.

“Whether you agree with the video or don’t agree with the video, the question to me is: is this the appropriate response for a president of the United States to go after and seek to weaponize the federal government against those he disagrees with?” said Slotkin.

The group of four Democratic House members said in their statement that “no amount of intimidation or harassment will ever stop us from doing our jobs and honoring our Constitution.”

All six of the Democratic lawmakers in the video have served in the military or intelligence community.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska criticized both inquiries on social media, saying that accusing the lawmakers “of treason and sedition for rightfully pointing out that servicemembers can refuse illegal orders is reckless and flat-out wrong.”

“The Department of Defense and FBI surely have more important priorities than this frivolous investigation,” wrote Murkowski.

FBI Director Kash Patel speaks with reporters during a news conference at the Department of Justice, Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

FBI provides no insight into interview requests

The FBI went through the top security officials for the House and Senate to request interviews with each of the six lawmakers. The lawmakers said they had no further information and the FBI has not made clear on what basis they were seeking the interviews.

The FBI declined to comment Tuesday, but Director Kash Patel, in an interview with journalist Catherine Herridge, described it as an “ongoing matter” in explaining why he could not discuss details.

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Arrests for drugs and guns plummet as focus remains immigration

Amid President Trump’s immigration crackdown, special agents at the Homeland Security Department have made fewer arrests for drug crimes and seized fewer weapons than they did the previous fiscal year, according to internal government documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The numbers reflect a shift in priorities as top officials at the department pulled special agents off drug, gun and other complex criminal investigations under pressure from the White House to deport more undocumented immigrants, current and former federal officials told The Times.

The impact was clear, with immigration arrests soaring. The number of people arrested by homeland security special agents for civil immigration offenses went from roughly 5,000 to a record of more than 94,500, the data shows.

Among the key figures in the documents:

Narcotics arrests fell by roughly 11 percent.

Agents opened 15 percent fewer new investigations into narcotics crimes.

The number of weapons seized fell dramatically, declining from nearly 41,400 to fewer than 11,200 — a 73 percent drop.

The data comes from an internal report by Homeland Security Investigations, the agency’s crime-fighting arm. The report offers a comparison of enforcement statistics between Oct. 1, 2024, and Sept. 30, 2025, and the same period during the previous year. That time frame includes roughly four months of the Biden administration and eight months of the Trump administration.

Overall, the report shows that criminal arrests went up to more than 46,000, a 41 percent rise. The increase was driven in part by several types of investigations often related to immigration, such as human smuggling and trafficking. But roughly 12,000 of the arrests were not categorized by crime type, making it difficult to assess the kinds of cases that accounted for the reported rise.

The Times reported last week that H.S.I.’s investigations into major crimes, including child exploitation and terrorism financing, had faltered after special agents were ordered to assist with the immigration crackdown. Dozens of officials who have worked under the current Trump administration said the shifts had hindered their case work.

The newly disclosed data reveals the extent of the change under H.S.I., which is part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement but generally focuses on criminal investigations involving threats like financial fraud, drug smuggling and sex trafficking, not civil immigration violations. Another component of ICE, called Enforcement and Removal Operations, has typically handled immigration enforcement.

The numbers were circulated in recent days within H.S.I. but have not been released publicly. No data is included for the fiscal years before 2024, which is also not publicly available in similar detail.

In a message to H.S.I. employees that accompanied the report, the agency’s acting leader, John A. Condon, highlighted the civil immigration arrests, calling them a “monumental achievement that underscores your operational impact and commitment to mission.” Those arrests are counted separately from criminal ones.

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George Washington's first Thanksgiving 'a civic celebration in which “we may then all unite"'

 Maurizio Valsania writing for The Conversation:

On Thursday, Nov. 26, 1789, George Washington woke early. Assisted by his enslaved valets – William “Billy” Lee and the young Christopher Sheels – he powdered his hair, put on his favorite black velvet suit, tied his white neckwear and donned his yellow gloves.

Finally ready, he set out to travel the short distance from the President’s House, at what used to be 3 Cherry St., New York, and St. Paul’s Chapel, which still stands at 209 Broadway.

He had an important aim that day: to celebrate Thanksgiving. Washington had thought carefully about this Thanksgiving, the first of his presidency. On Oct. 3, 1789, following the recommendation of a joint committee of the Senate and House of Representatives, Washington had issued a proclamation. He urged the people of the United States to celebrate “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.”

But Washington believed that particular Thanksgiving in 1789 was a crucial occasion. He would use it to call on the people he now led to hold their new country together in the face of forces that he knew could pull it apart.

Devotion in the service of unity

It was not the first Thanksgiving Americans celebrated. The first took place at Plymouth colony in the autumn of 1621 – Pilgrims held a feast to thank God for their first harvest and invited members of the neighboring Wampanoag tribe.

It was not even the first national Thanksgiving – which was held on Dec. 18, 1777, at then-General Washington’s behest. Nor was Thanksgiving yet a federal holiday to be observed every last Thursday of November – it became so with the 1863 proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln.

Nov. 26, 1789, was a Thursday, and the weather was miserable. Few New Yorkers showed up at St. Paul’s Chapel to see the president: “I went to St. Pauls Chapel,” Washington wrote in his diary, “though it was most inclement and stormy.” There were “but few people at Church.”

The president had prepared for the occasion. He also contributed a sizable sum of his own money to buy beer and food for prisoners confined for debt in the New York City jail. The donation was deemed to be a magnanimous and moving gesture, suitable to the spirit of the holiday. A week later, in an advertisement in the Dec. 3 issue of the New York Journal, those very prisoners returned their “grateful thanks” to their president “for his very acceptable donation on Thursday last.”

Washington’s first Thanksgiving as a president may have not been tremendously successful, given the scarce attendance at the church service.

Yet, as a scholar writing a biography about Washington, I believe it was an important step in his much larger political plan to bring the executive branch to the people’s doorstep.

What Washington wanted was a virtuous kind of populism in the new country he led. Washington’s populism wasn’t about inciting an angry mob; it was about sharing in their rituals, worshiping their God, speaking their own language. And he did so in the sole interest of the American people.

Thanksgiving 1789, for Washington, was at once religious and more than religious. Washington’s proclamation invoked devotional language, literally. The upcoming festivity, in his words, could “be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”

But Washington’s main concern was political. The nation was recently formed, and he feared that it could easily collapse. Its many internal divisions and separate interests could be lethal. Consequently, the president wanted this holiday to be a civic celebration in which “we may then all unite.”

‘Pardon our national…transgressions’

As its first president, Washington recognized that the United States was born out of slavery, conquest and violence as much as of sacred principle. Civic unification required acknowledgment of these flaws. Thus, in the proclamation, Washington asked God “to pardon our national and other transgressions.”

A tremendously self-aware man, Washington knew that he was a deeply flawed person himself.

He was a slave owner, a relentless pursuer of African American fugitives and a destroyer of Native American villages. He was also a warrior who deployed brutality against enemies. He was a commander who resorted to corporal punishment with his own soldiers. Washington believed that he was not a saint to be mindlessly imitated. This made him humble in his duties.

More importantly, Washington also grasped the power of his symbolic position as president. He sought to leverage that for the good of the nation.

As president, Washington could not advertise his actions effectively via Twitter and social media. He had to show himself around constantly, no matter the weather. He had to painstakingly attend balls, plays, dinners, public receptions and of course the church. Every occasion, every Thanksgiving counted.

Through his outings, Washington met with a diversity of people, including those who were second-class citizens or were not citizens at all. Women, for example, greeted Washington at nearly every stop of the extended presidential trips he took between 1789 and 1791. Textile workers in New England, Jewish leaders in Newport, many enslaved persons in the South and churchgoers everywhere did the same.

These women and men, in bondage or free, believers or skeptics, played a part in the invention of a new political theater. Maybe, it was just a theatrical illusion. But these individuals – just like the prisoners in the New York City jail – thanked President Washington because they felt they were voices in a larger political culture.

Washington made sure his Thanksgiving message – not simply a message, but a “proclamation” – sounded clear and strong: May God “render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed.”

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