It has been a pitiful few weeks for the United States Senate, which means senators are now pretending they saved Immigration and Customs Enforcement, fought for the SAVE Act, and still care about victims of government weaponization.

None of that is true.

Do not buy the celebratory social media posts from Senate Republicans. Get to work electing new ones instead.

This is a geriatric form of professional wrestling kayfabe. But instead of heroic wrestlers in tights, the actors are young communications staffers tweeting victory on behalf of their bosses while those bosses fly home.

Before we unpack what happened, we should understand how we got here. To his credit, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) recently summarized the problem well: “We made a huge mistake by not funding ICE and CBP in January. We NEVER should have funded the Democrats’ thousands of earmarks without funding ALL of homeland security. It is time to fund ICE and CBP NOW!”

It was a mistake, except that it was intentional. Still, Scott acknowledged the major point his colleagues would rather hide. Forthrightness in the Senate is rare, so we should welcome it when it appears.

The story begins in January, after two protesters were killed obstructing ICE. In the media-driven hysteria that followed, Congress did something unusual: It split off the Department of Homeland Security from the funding package that covered other agencies.

At the urging of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and top Democrat appropriator Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), Republicans caved and agreed to put DHS in a stand-alone funding posture. In congressional funding terms, that means danger.

For decades, government funding has largely moved through omnibus and minibus bills that force lawmakers into take-it-or-leave-it votes. Members may dislike parts of the package, but they swallow the whole thing to avoid shutting down large portions of the government. When DHS stands alone, Democrats have a much easier time voting no.

In February, DHS funding shut down. Airport lines grew. Employees went without pay. DHS changed secretaries. Democrats continued blasting ICE, deportations remained low, and the Trump administration retreated on parts of the deportation agenda.

In other words, Democrats gained concessions while holding DHS funding hostage.

Then, in April, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) began negotiating with the hostage-takers in earnest. They offered another major concession: separate ICE and Customs and Border Protection from DHS, making ICE and CBP a stand-alone within a stand-alone. For funding purposes, it is hard to imagine a worse fate.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images

Congress funded the rest of DHS, ending a roughly 76-day shutdown. Politicians breathed a sigh of relief because airline lobbyists would stop pestering them about long lines at airports. ICE and CBP, meanwhile, would have to be funded through another mechanism: reconciliation.

Reconciliation funding creates operational problems that normal appropriations do not. That deserves more attention, though it falls deep into the procedural weeds. The key point is that ICE and CBP were isolated, weakened, and pushed onto a more perilous path.

As part of ending the shutdown for every part of DHS except ICE and CBP, President Trump demanded a reconciliation bill funding those agencies by June 1.

Negotiations began, then quickly collapsed after the May announcement of an Anti-Weaponization Fund that would compensate victims of government persecution. Republican senators revolted and learned the lesson Democrats had just taught them: ICE and CBP could be used as hostages.

They threatened to withhold ICE and CBP funding unless Trump agreed to kill the fund. Ultimately, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche did just that.

Despite acting as hostage-takers, Republican senators also used the reconciliation process to posture on the SAVE Act, which had no chance of passing through that mechanism. The SAVE Act, which is popular across party lines, includes voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a leading opponent of the Anti-Weaponization Fund but a proponent of his own right to recover damages for weaponization against himself, introduced a meaningless amendment on the SAVE Act. Knowing most voters do not understand Senate procedure, he styled the move as a valiant attempt to pass election integrity legislation.

“Mr. President,” Graham posted, “I was honored to lead the charge to pass the SAVE America Act, one of the most consequential pieces of legislation you and your team have created.”

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

This was insincere and unserious. The SAVE Act has no chance unless the talking filibuster is enforced. Everyone on the Senate floor knew that. But Graham maintains Trump’s endorsement in his upcoming primary, so perhaps it will not matter. We may be stuck with him even after Trump leaves the stage.

Much of the swamp remains undrained.

This whole drawn-out charade should be remembered for two reasons.

First, Senate Republicans crossed the Rubicon and went where Democrats had already gone: They held ICE hostage. Worse, they held ICE hostage to force the Trump administration to scuttle the Anti-Weaponization Fund. That is a double betrayal of the base: threaten immigration enforcement to hurt victims of government persecution.

Second, Senate Republicans helped create the most perilous funding path for ICE and CBP moving forward: complete isolation. With ICE and CBP now handled outside the normal appropriations process, they will face another shutdown unless this strategy is reversed. As soon as Democrats have enough votes, they will try to defund both agencies.

Do not buy the celebratory social media posts from Senate Republicans. Get to work electing new ones instead.

Trump’s anti-weaponization fund puts GOP cowards on trial

Eleven months ago in these pages, I argued that task forces would not cut it. President Trump needed a truth and reconciliation commission.

I noted at the time that the Biden administration oversaw one of the most sweeping campaigns of federal abuse in modern American history. Nearly every major department played a role. A truth and reconciliation commission on political persecution would give Americans what they had long been denied: justice, reconciliation, and a full accounting of the truth.

Trump has created an opportunity to help real victims in a real way. Republicans should not kill it. They should make it work.

In November, Senate Republicans tried the opposite. Rather than compensate everyday victims of federal weaponization, they tried to pay themselves.

The scheme emerged from the Arctic Frost scandal. Senators quietly inserted legislative text into a funding bill to end the government shutdown. The provision would have created a $500,000 cause of action for individual senators for each instance in which investigators seized their data. Some senators could have become millionaires many times over.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) drove the effort and repeatedly went on television to defend it.

I argued then that the surveillance of senators was wrong. It should never have happened. But senators did not face what ordinary Americans endured.

Senators have large campaign accounts to hire top lawyers. They operate from official offices, protected by constitutional safeguards such as the Speech and Debate Clause. They did not lose their homes, jobs, savings, or businesses. But thousands of Americans did. Many still face legal bills, ruined livelihoods, and ongoing cases. They deserve restitution — not the politicians who failed them.

The Oversight Project, my organization, joined the fight. We called out Graham and made the legal, prudential, and political case for compensating the real victims of weaponization. The Senate’s self-dealing provision was eventually pulled, much to Graham’s chagrin.

But the victims remained ignored.

Trump created a better path

That began to change last week. President Trump stepped up in his own unique and unmistakable way.

In January, Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service over a political leak of his tax returns. Those returns, after years of left-wing fixation, revealed nothing especially interesting. Trump sought $10 billion in damages. He recently settled for a far lower amount: $1.776 billion.

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But rather than pocket the money himself, Trump directed it toward the creation of an Anti-Weaponization Fund. The fund would be governed by five members empowered to issue monetary settlements to victims of government weaponization.

That act deserves applause. It also deserves protection.

Trump is redirecting money that could have gone to him toward Americans harmed by the government. Conservatives should encourage that kind of selflessness, especially from a president who suffered more than anyone from the weaponization he now seeks to address.

The fund must work

I instantly recognized the historic opportunity the fund presents. I have spent years defending victims of weaponization, investigating government abuse, and advocating restitution. The fund needs to work, and it needs to work well.

For that reason, I threw my hat in the ring to serve as one of its five members. But this column is not about my campaign for that position. It is about the Anti-Weaponization Fund and the bad-faith attacks now aimed at destroying it.

January 6, 2021, became the fulcrum for the left’s assault on civil rights, legal norms, and basic rule-of-law principles. Prosecutors, courts, media outlets, members of Congress, and left-wing activists turned their power against ideological, political, and religious enemies.

In their minds, January 6 gave them moral and political permission to go all the way. They used it to hurt thousands of Americans, including people who had nothing to do with the Capitol riot. Once they saw what their unleashed machinery could do, they lost all shame and restraint.

These victims were my friends, colleagues, and fellow patriots. Some had to sell their homes. Some lost jobs. Some saw their reputations destroyed. Many incurred crushing legal bills.

The so-called conservative legal movement and legacy conservative institutions were largely absent. Too many viewed the targets as a lower-class problem — or worse, as an opportunity to purge the Republican Party of the deplorable MAGA voters they detested.

Republicans funded the machine

The FBI sent agents to question parents at school board meetings. The government pressured social media companies to censor lawful speech on a massive scale. Senators had their phone records secretly subpoenaed. Churchgoers were surveilled. Americans who did nothing more than hold the wrong political opinion found themselves under the microscope of a weaponized federal government.

Republicans in power did worse than nothing. They confirmed Merrick Garland, an obvious case of a scorned partisan with revenge on his mind, as attorney general. As weaponization accelerated, Republicans funded it without restraint.

They also poured billions into the Department of Homeland Security, helping finance a vast network of left-wing nonprofits that moved illegal immigrants into and around the country while providing them with every service imaginable. USAID and other federal agencies served as Democratic patronage networks, funneling money to left-wing projects and make-work jobs.

House Republicans even launched a so-called Weaponization Committee. It barely scratched the surface of its $20 million budget and achieved little.

What did Republican leaders do well? Fundraise and appear on cable television to denounce the very abuses they kept funding.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Now they want to kill restitution

Then, despite the private and public misgivings of much of the establishment, Trump won the presidency again. Much of his campaign rested on addressing the harms inflicted not only on him but on all the Americans targeted by the same regime. On his Agenda 47 promise list, he vowed to “end the weaponization of government against the American people.”

The politicians fell in line. They did not contest the promise then.

Now some Republicans have joined Democrats in threatening to destroy the Anti-Weaponization Fund. Some have even floated refusing to fund central elements of Trump’s presidency, including Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, if that is what it takes to stop the fund.

They are willing to reopen the border rather than let Trump compensate victims of federal abuse. That crosses a line no Republican should approach.

When the government harms people, the government should do what it can to make them whole. Critics may object to the form of the fund. I object to four years of destruction visited upon my friends and allies.

Trump has created an opportunity to help real victims in a real way.

Republicans should not kill it. They should make it work.

The anti-weaponization fund is not just for J6. It is for the rest of us too.

If you think the new $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund is merely a slush fund for January 6 defendants, you are missing the bigger story. And if you are tempted to roll your eyes because of your politics, let me introduce you to my family — and to many other American families whose names you have never heard.

The truth is this: Department of Justice weaponization is rarely about politics. It is almost never about a president. It is about power — who has it, who lacks it, and which private citizens have built warm enough relationships with federal prosecutors to pick up the phone and ask for a favor.

The very existence of a publicly funded process that acknowledges the government can ruin innocent Americans marks a step the country has needed for a very long time.

I learned that the hard way.

In 2020, a former federal prosecutor then working for Amazon Web Services called his old colleagues at the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia and asked them to criminally investigate my husband, a former Amazon employee. He did not pitch a murder case. He did not allege a Ponzi scheme. He claimed my husband had violated the terms of his Amazon employment agreement.

Read that again. A private company hired a lawyer to ask the federal government to put my husband in prison over an alleged breach of a corporate HR document.

And it worked.

The Eastern District of Virginia opened an investigation. FBI agents pounded on my door one pandemic morning while my baby sat on my hip in a diaper. Federal prosecutors used civil forfeiture to seize every dollar in our bank accounts. We sold our house, sold our car, and emptied my husband’s retirement account to pay lawyers.

My husband was never charged with a crime. A federal judge later ruled that he had complied with the “explicit terms” of his Amazon contract. The government eventually returned 85% of what it had taken, with no apology and no explanation.

Why did this happen?

The answer has nothing to do with Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Federal prosecutors almost all leave the Justice Department for private practice. The value they bring to big firms lies in their relationships and their institutional know-how. To make partner, you need a book of business. To build that book, you cultivate corporate relationships before you leave government service. Future clients need to know you can call your old colleagues and get movement. That is the currency. That is the game.

ALEX WROBLEWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

The lawyer who pushed for the investigation of my husband had spent years as a line prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia. He called the sitting U.S. attorney, his former colleague. The U.S. attorney looped in the criminal chief, who had also worked with Amazon’s lawyer in that same office. In later civil discovery, we obtained an email in which the criminal chief reassured Amazon’s lawyer that she had “specifically selected” her “two best prosecutors” for his client’s “important matter.”

The important matter was a private employment dispute.

Two of the best prosecutors in a major federal district were assigned by name to a corporate HR grievance because the corporation’s lawyer used to work down the hall. Bill Barr once warned that the investigation itself is the punishment: “People facing federal investigations incur ruinous legal costs and often see their lives reduced to rubble before a charge is even filed.” He was right.

And this does not happen once in a blue moon. It happens every day in the 93 U.S. attorney’s offices across the country. It has almost nothing to do with who occupies the White House.

We are not the only ones.

If prosecutors now face some real consequence for promising their ‘best’ people as a favor to old work friends ... maybe a few of them will pause before making the call.

Ask Nevin Shetty, the former chief financial officer of a Seattle start-up. His company hired a former federal prosecutor to bring a criminal case over an investment that lost money. Shetty had moved corporate cash into a stablecoin platform he believed was safe enough to entrust with his own life savings. Then the stablecoin collapsed, erasing $60 billion in four days, and the platform’s founder later pleaded guilty to fraud.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers called Shetty’s prosecution an “improper attempt ... to stretch the wire-fraud statute beyond its breaking point.” Shetty was convicted anyway and sentenced to two years in federal prison. At bottom, his “crime” was violating company investment policy. The start-up, by the way, had billionaire investors on its board.

Ask Michael Kail, the former Netflix executive. Netflix hired another firm thick with former federal prosecutors to pursue criminal charges over a violation of its “culture deck,” which barred outside advisory work for vendors. He is in federal prison today, separated from his wife and two teenage sons. The start-up founders who supposedly paid him were never prosecuted. Netflix, of course, was founded and run by a billionaire.

Ask Ryan Bloom, the former construction company CEO charged with bank fraud over allegedly false bank invoices. Agents arrested Bloom in front of his young child, who was left alone when they hauled his father away in handcuffs. Later, the judge learned that the prosecutor’s wife worked for the University of Oklahoma, whose president founded and sat on the board of the alleged victim bank. Under that president, her salary had doubled to $310,000, with a $100,000 raise arriving two months before the superseding indictment, even as the university cut costs elsewhere. The court disqualified the prosecutor.

After 18 months of hell, the charges were dismissed. No billionaire required. Just a prosecutor with a personal stake and enough power to wreck a family before anyone checked his work.

Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Now flip it.

Take billionaire Robert Smith. After a four-year investigation, the government’s top tax prosecutor was prepared to indict him in one of the largest individual tax-fraud cases in American history. Smith had allegedly hidden more than $200 million in income through offshore structures. Instead, he got a non-prosecution agreement. He paid $139 million, admitted to “an illegal scheme,” and walked away a free man, still running his firm, still worth billions.

Compare those ledgers and tell me what you see.

I see a justice system weaponized not mainly by presidents, but by access — by titans of business, by corporations rich enough to hire the right former prosecutors, and sometimes by prosecutors themselves. It is a quiet, daily message to the rest of us: Get in line, or we can ruin you.

And while we are being honest, ask yourself why federal prosecutors did not exactly race to take down Larry Nassar before Olympic gymnasts forced the issue. Or why Jeffrey Epstein secured a sweetheart non-prosecution deal in 2008, even as dozens of women came forward. My theory is simple. No future law firm partnership is built on prosecuting a gymnastics doctor or a sex trafficker. No lucrative book of business waits on the other side. Prosecutors are human. They respond to incentives. Regular American families pay the price.

So no, the anti-weaponization fund is not just for railroaded January 6 defendants. Read the government’s announcement. It contains no partisan requirement for filing a claim. The fund exists, in Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s words, to redress “victims of lawfare and weaponization.” That category includes far more Americans than cable news will admit.

It includes the family that lost their home to civil forfeiture even though no charges were ever filed. It includes the CEO arrested in front of his child over a case later dismissed. It includes all of us who do not have a billionaire’s lawyer on speed dial.

I do not know yet whether this fund will be administered fairly. But the very existence of a publicly funded process that acknowledges the government can ruin innocent Americans marks a step the country has needed for a very long time.

And here is the part that gives me hope. If prosecutors now face some real consequence for promising their “best” people as a favor to old work friends, or for running a case while their own families cash in, maybe a few of them will pause before making the call. Maybe the next family will get to keep their house.

That is worth $1.776 billion of the federal budget. It is worth much more than that.

Ask anyone who has lived it.

Former Capitol Police Officer Shauni Kerkhoff files lawsuit against Blaze Media

Former Capitol Police Officer Shauni Kerkhoff filed a defamation lawsuit on Tuesday against Blaze Media, former employees Steve Baker and Joseph Hanneman, and Baker and Hanneman's new online publication, Veritas Regnat, for their reporting on the Jan. 5 to Jan. 6, 2021, pipe-bomb incident in Washington, D.C.

For nearly five years, federal authorities had been unable to identify the masked individual who placed one pipe bomb outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters and another outside the Republican National Committee headquarters the evening before the Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the U.S. Capitol. The devices did not detonate, and there were no injuries reported.

The lawsuit cites a November 8, 2025, Blaze News article that named Kerkhoff as a "forensic match," based on gait analysis, to the bombing suspect. In December, the Department of Justice announced that the suspect had been identified as another person, Brian Cole Jr., from Woodbridge, Virginia. Blaze News retracted the article shortly after Cole's arrest.

The complaint alleges that Kerkhoff, represented by the Alexandria-based defamation law firm Clare Locke, was "ultimately exonerated" and that the defendants' "false and defamatory accusations have irreparably changed her life." It further alleges that Blaze News' investigation "induced the FBI to open an investigation of Ms. Kerkhoff."

"They then cited that investigation — which their own actions had caused — as independent corroboration of their accusation," according to the complaint.

An April 1 motion filed by Cole's attorneys claimed that Kerkhoff was "interviewed by the FBI and took a polygraph examination" on Nov. 6, 2025, two days before Blaze News published the article naming Kerkhoff in connection to the pipe-bomb incident.

In her lawsuit, Kerkhoff confirmed that two FBI agents confronted her on Nov. 6, claiming they were "investigating 'online chatter' that she was the pipe bomber." Kerkhoff’s complaint also alleges that her home was subjected to a search, and she participated in a polygraph interview that evening.

While Kerkhoff's complaint does not mention the results of her polygraph, Cole's motion — which stated that she was asked two relevant questions, "Did you place those pipe bombs?" and "Did you place those pipe bombs that evening?" — asserted that she failed the examination. It also claimed that the polygraph examiner “noted” that Kerkhoff's answers seemed "rehearsed." Cole's attorneys stated that the FBI named Kerkhoff "as a person of interest" on Nov. 7, a day before Blaze News' article was released.

“Blaze News initially reported, as confirmed by official intelligence sources, that based on a forensic gait analysis, Ms. Kerkhoff was a 94% match to the suspected pipe bomber. That report was retracted when the FBI arrested and DOJ charged another individual, who had reportedly confessed to the crime. According to recent court filings by that individual's legal counsel, Ms. Kerkhoff was a person of interest under surveillance by the FBI and failed a polygraph test administered two days before Blaze Media's article was published,” Michael Grygiel, attorney for Blaze Media, told Blaze News in a statement.

“Blaze Media will vigorously defend this meritless lawsuit challenging its valid news reporting on a matter of legitimate public concern, which is protected under the First Amendment and Virginia’s anti-SLAPP law.”

Kerkhoff's complaint alleges six counts of defamation against the defendants, including four against Blaze Media. She is seeking an unspecified amount in damages to be determined at trial.

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Oath Keepers, Proud Boys feel hopeful and skeptical after Trump DOJ’s moves to end Biden-era witch hunt

The Trump administration's Department of Justice is moving to vacate the seditious conspiracy convictions against several Proud Boys and Oath Keepers members who were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the U.S. Capitol.

On Tuesday, the DOJ filed unopposed motions to throw out convictions and dismiss the indictments with prejudice for Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and members Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, and Jessica Watkins, as well as Proud Boys members Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola.

'I'm excited to finally move on from January 6.'

The DOJ claimed that dismissal of the criminal cases would be "in the interests of justice."

"The government's motion to vacate in this case is consistent with its practice of moving the Supreme Court to vacate convictions in cases where the government has decided in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of a criminal case is in the interests of justice — motions that the Supreme Court routinely grants," the motions read.

Under the Biden DOJ, Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison, Meggs to 12 years, Harrelson to four years, Watkins to 8.5 years, Nordean to 18 years, Biggs to 17 years, Rehl to 15 years, and Pezzola to 10 years.

In January 2025, Trump commuted the sentences of each of the defendants. However, the president stopped short of granting a pardon, leaving the convictions on their records. Among the defendants, six are military veterans, and the continued presence of those felony convictions carries significant consequences for any VA benefits or military retirement pay for which they may previously have been eligible.

Jon Cherry/Getty Images

"I couldn't be happier," Rehl told Blaze News. "I'm excited to finally move on from January 6, and my family and I are looking forward to rebuilding our lives again."

Rehl thanked Trump, acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, and U.S. pardon attorney Edward Martin for "making this possible!"

Carolyn Stewart, an attorney representing Meggs, stated that she is "pleased that the DOJ finally admitted there should be no further prosecution of my innocent client, Mr. Meggs — where he can go forward with his life without this shadow."

Norm Pattis, an attorney representing Biggs, expressed skepticism that the court would grant the DOJ's request but told Blaze News that he is "delighted to see the Justice Department throw in the towel," noting that it "should have done that years ago."

"I hope the courts do it, but I do think it's a head-scratching request," Pattis said, explaining that the DOJ previously poured thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of dollars into its prosecution and therefore "clearly thought that the interests of justice required that prosecution then."

"The separation of powers doctrine leaves to the executive branch decisions about whether to prosecute. Once the case is gone to judgment in the judicial branch, that branch has spoken. Suggesting that, 'Well, we've changed our mind, millions of dollars, years later, in the interest of justice,' it doesn't really promote respect for the law. It makes it look like a funhouse over there and makes you wonder who's running the shop," Pattis stated.

He noted that despite Trump's decision to commute Biggs' sentence, the military veteran lost the pension that he "earned by virtue of his Purple Heart and combat injuries that he suffered."

"We want that pension back," Pattis said. "I'm not at all counting on relief. I still think this ends up back on the president's desk for a full pardon."

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Rhodes, who also spoke with Blaze News, expressed hopefulness about the DOJ's motion to vacate, calling it "very good news," adding that it would "be a blessing to have not just our convictions overturned, but the underlying charges dismissed with prejudice."

"It would wipe our records clean," Rhodes told Blaze News. "I'm a disabled veteran. … I'm service-connected disabled from a parachuting accident when I was serving as a paratrooper in the Army, and I lost all my VA benefits, along with being a felon and losing my rights to bear arms."

Rhodes speculated that the DOJ may have requested to vacate to "avoid a potentially negative outcome on appeal that could affect their ability to use a statute in the future." He noted that seditious conspiracy is "a very legally vulnerable statute" from the Civil War era that is "overbroad and vague" and "does not provide any shelter for free speech."

"It's an ancient statute that I don't believe passes muster constitutionally, but it hasn't been directly challenged on those grounds," Rhodes said.

Rhodes stated that the DOJ may realize that the statute is "vulnerable [to] being struck down" or that it may result in the "narrowing of the scope of … conspiracy charges in general."

He also pointed to the active civil claims that Jan. 6 defendants lodged against the U.S. as a possible reason the DOJ requested that the convictions be thrown out.

"If they wind up with a bad outcome in the appellate case, with the court finding that there was prosecutorial misconduct, that there was constitutional violations, that could affect them when it comes to the civil claims too. And we can point to those findings," he said.

"There was perjury in all of our cases. We caught two cops lying red-handed in our case," Rhodes said, referring to a Blaze News investigation that revealed then-U.S. Capitol Police Officers Harry Dunn and David Lazarus had testified that they were together on Jan. 6, despite video footage showing otherwise. "That's the kind of crap that would come out in the appeal."

"I don't believe this is the DOJ being nice to us," he continued. "I'm willing to give props to the DOJ for doing the right thing, even if it's not for the right reasons."

If the court accepts the DOJ's requests, Rhodes noted that it will "definitely be fantastic for the restoration of our lives."

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ROOKE: The Dem Revenge Machine Is Already Built As GOP Walks Sleepily Into Its Crosshairs

Supporters would face renewed attacks, repeating the cycle.

Pelosi stabs old ally Steny Hoyer in the back to endorse J6 ex-cop accused of lying under oath

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) broke ranks with her longtime colleague, retiring Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), by endorsing a rival candidate over Hoyer's handpicked successor, marking a potential final clash in their complex alliance.

Pelosi and Hoyer first crossed paths as Capitol Hill interns in the 1960s. Hoyer was elected to Congress in 1981 and Pelosi in 1987. By the late 1990s, the two began vying for leadership roles, with Pelosi defeating Hoyer in 2001 to become the House minority whip.

'I’m beyond honored to have her support in this campaign.'

Despite previously heaping praise on Pelosi, Hoyer suggested that he would have won if Pelosi "hadn't been a woman or from California."

"Gender and geography in this case were overwhelming. C'est la guerre,” he said.

In 2006, Pelosi snubbed Hoyer by backing his opponent for majority leader, but Hoyer won despite her lack of support.

Hoyer then spent two decades as one of the highest-ranking House Democrats, second only to Pelosi.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Hoyer, 86, announced his retirement in January as a representative for Maryland's 5th Congressional District after serving 23 terms. He endorsed his former campaign manager Adrian Boafo as his successor.

Instead of announcing her support for Boafo in the packed congressional race, Pelosi seized the opportunity to use her endorsement to seemingly pay back former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who was credited with protecting her on Jan. 6, 2021.

Pelosi announced her endorsement of Dunn on Wednesday, stating, "My friend Harry Dunn is a true American hero and exactly the right person to represent Maryland in Congress."

She claimed that he "bravely defended our democracy from Donald Trump's violent MAGA mob. Since then, Harry's been called to do everything he can to protect Marylanders and all Americans from extremists like Donald Trump."

“Few leaders have done more to defend our democracy and stand up to Donald Trump than Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi,” Dunn stated in reaction to Pelosi’s endorsement. “Her leadership helped deliver historic progress for the American people. I’m beyond honored to have her support in this campaign.”

Pelosi, who has also announced her retirement, will end her term in January 2027. She previously backed Dunn in his failed 2024 congressional run for Maryland's 3rd District.

Harry Dunn, Nancy Pelosi. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Dunn gained prominence for his testimony about defending the Capitol on Jan. 6. However, a Blaze News investigation found that Dunn gave false and conflicting statements on the witness stand concerning his interaction with a group of Oath Keepers. His testimony ultimately led to their imprisonment.

Dunn, who has since retired from the U.S. Capitol Police, has used his platform since Jan. 6 to publish a memoir, run for political office, and establish a political action committee named Dunn's Democracy Defenders, which aims to fund Democrat candidates to defeat President Donald Trump, who Dunn has claimed is a threat to democracy.

"The outrageous truth is that Dunn’s lies are easily disprovable by anyone who examines the evidence. Far from the hero he portrays himself to be, when he was not hiding on January 6, 2021, Dunn was needlessly and recklessly screaming at and otherwise confronting protesters who posed no threat to him, violating official protocols and procedures. Other officers repeatedly had to intervene to calm him down," Blaze News investigative reporter Steve Baker wrote in a 2023 analysis of Dunn's account of Jan. 6.

"It is unfortunate that the media is celebrating the many lies in Dunn’s book, but the real tragedy is that this unstable man’s testimony in a federal trial was instrumental in the conviction and sentencing of several Americans to years in federal prison," Baker added.

Maryland's congressional primary race is scheduled for June 23, and the general election is November 3.

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J6 committee's anti-Trump storyteller referred to DOJ for criminal charges: Report

The Jan. 6 Select Committee's various improprieties and its prioritization of narrative over facts have been exposed. Nevertheless, key participants in the Democrat-led lawfare campaign have so far managed to evade consequence. That might soon change.

House Republicans have reportedly referred Jan. 6 committee star witness Cassidy Hutchinson to the Department of Justice for criminal charges.

The USSS agents ... directly refuted the fundamentals of her story.

A pair of sources reportedly familiar with recent developments told CNN that Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk (Ga.), the chairman of the Select Subcommittee to Investigate the Remaining Questions Surrounding Jan. 6, 2021, recently made the referral, which was co-signed by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

The referral reportedly accuses Hutchinson — who milked her time in the limelight for a book deal — of lying to Congress in her public testimony in June 2022.

This is undoubtedly good news for President Donald Trump, who claimed Hutchinson "made up" stories about him during her testimony.

"Our great Secret Service has totally CRUSHED Cassidy Hutchinson’s (who I barely knew) made up (FAKE!) stories about me roughing up Secret Service Agents from the back seat of the Beast (Limo)," Trump noted in March 2024. "Has she now changed her testimony? Will she be prosecuted for what she did and said?"

Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Blaze News has reached out to the Department of Justice and Loudermilk's office for comment. CNN indicated that Hutchinson's current and former lawyers did not respond to multiple inquiries.

Loudermilk released a congressional report in March 2024 alleging that the Jan. 6 Select Committee — manned by outspoken critics of President Donald Trump — erased records; hid numerous transcribed interviews; failed to turn recordings over to GOP lawmakers; and suppressed evidence that failed to conform to Democrats' preferred narrative.

The report, penned by the House Administration Committee's oversight subpanel, also impeached Hutchinson's character and testimony.

Hutchinson, who served as assistant to Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows, sat for six transcribed interviews and one publicized hearing with the committee.

The report noted that on June 20, 2022, in her fourth transcribed interview with the Jan. 6 committee, Hutchinson told a previously unheard tale about how on January 6, 2021, Trump allegedly got into a scuffle with a Secret Service agent and attempted to wrest control of the presidential limousine after his speech at the Ellipse.

Hutchinson's allegations pertained to supposed incidents to which she was not an eyewitness.

The Jan. 6 committee didn't bother interviewing either of the two Secret Service agents referenced in Hutchinson's testimony who were actually present at the time of the alleged events or anyone else implicated prior to her testimony.

When the committee put questions to the USSS agents some four months after Hutchinson's testimony, they directly refuted the fundamentals of her story.

In December 2024, Loudermilk released another damning congressional report, this time alleging that:

former White House employee Alyssa Farah Griffin back-channeled with former Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), the vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, to help Hutchinson change her story;
Hutchinson had secret conversations with Cheney without her attorney's knowledge; and
"Hutchinson committed perjury when she lied under oath to the Select Committee."

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