Besides Bludgeoning The Constitution, The Judges Stopping DOGE Are Boosting Inflation

President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency is doing the inflation reduction Congress has refused to tackle for decades.

Timeline: Federal Judge Didn’t Even Read Final Complaint Before Enjoining Trump

At the very least, Judge Paul Engelmayer’s decision should bring on a congressional impeachment inquiry.

How The Media Learned To Start Worrying And Fear The ‘Constitutional Crisis’

Democrat-appointed and activist judges are doing what they were always going to do if Donald Trump won the election, which is tie up and stall as much of his agenda as possible by court order. That’s all fine and good by the news media because they also hate Trump. But what they didn’t anticipate was […]

Trump, Vance challenge limits of judicial authority, sparking separation-of-powers debate



President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance seem to be gearing up for a battle about the separation of powers after weighing in on whether the federal judiciary should be able to curtail executive authority.

Early Saturday morning, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer issued a ruling that temporarily blocks Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency from gaining access to the payment system of the Treasury Department, which is under the purview of the executive branch. The judge also ordered anyone outside the Treasury Department who has already gained access to the system to destroy all downloaded information.

Musk and DOGE have attempted to audit the agency to uncover possible fraud, waste, and other inefficiencies.

Engelmayer's ruling is set to expire on Friday, when a hearing will be held before a federal judge in New York, who will consider the issue on a more permanent basis. The case was brought by 19 state attorneys general — all Democrats — who argued that Musk and DOGE should not have access to sensitive data within the payment system.

Engelmayer agreed. "The Court’s firm assessment is that, for the reasons stated by the States, they will face irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief," he wrote.

"That is both because of the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking."

'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'

Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller countered on Fox News that hindering executive control over executive agencies has allowed the deep state to flourish with no accountability:

What we continue to see here is the idea that rogue bureaucrats who are elected by no one, who answer to no one, who have lifetime tenure jobs, who we would be told can never be fired, which, of course, is not true, that the power has been cemented and accumulated for years, whether it be with the Treasury bureaucrats or the FBI bureaucrats or the CIA bureaucrats or the USAID bureaucrats, with this unelected shadow force that is running our government and running our country.

Federal judges routinely blocked elements of Trump's agenda during his first term. From the travel ban to pushing back against sanctuary cities to border wall funding, federal judges, often at the district level, stymied the efforts of the president of the United States to fulfill his campaign promises.

On his way to the Super Bowl on Sunday, Trump suggested federal judges should not have the authority to block a democratically elected POTUS. "No judge should frankly be allowed to make that kind of a decision," he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

"We’re very disappointed with the judges that would make such a ruling, but we have a long way to go."

Vance also weighed in on the limits of judicial oversight on Sunday, likely in response to Engelmayer's ruling. Vance claimed that federal judges should not have the ability to prevent the president from exercising "legitimate" control over executive agencies.

"If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power," he wrote.

— (@)

Vance also retweeted Harvard Law Professor Adrian Vermeule, who likewise argued that such judicial blocks ran afoul of the established separation of powers: "Judicial interference with legitimate acts of state, especially the internal functioning of a co-equal branch, is a violation of the separation of powers."

Republicans in Congress have also stood behind President Trump, defending executive authority in the face of apparent judicial overreach. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) called Engelmayer's decision "outrageous," claiming it was not based on legal precedent and yet would still have the effect of impeding the work of the secretary of the treasury.

Though the Constitution empowers a president to nominate members of his Cabinet, those nominees must first be approved by the Senate before they can take office. So judicial interference in the actions of a president's Cabinet has separation-of-powers implications regarding the legislative branch as well.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) indicated that a showdown about the reach of judicial authority was imminent. "I assume we will argue this out in court, like the other 17 or 18 decisions we have seen in the last several days. That all is going to get argued out in court. And, frankly, we knew the left, we knew the Democrats were going to do this," he said Sunday on CNN.

X has also been flooded with recollections of President Andrew Jackson, a proto Democrat who famously engaged in a standoff with the federal judiciary. After the Supreme Court ruled on a case related to Native American sovereignty rights in 1832, Jackson allegedly quipped, "The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it."

With Jackson's quote as a backdrop, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) seemingly warned Vance not to ignore the courts, even as he stopped short of claiming that doing so would be illegal.

"JD, we both went to law school. But we don’t have to be lawyers to know that ignoring court decisions we don’t like puts us on a dangerous path to lawlessness. We just have to swear an oath [to] the constitution. And mean it," he said.

The Democratic Biden-Harris administration infamously ignored SCOTUS' rulings regarding student loan forgiveness.

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Judiciary nicely tells Democrats to pound sand — Justice Thomas will not be referred to DOJ



Democrats and their allies in the press have worked feverishly in recent years to neutralize conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito on the U.S. Supreme Court. Owing to the justices' resilience and the toothless nature of Democrats' attacks, these efforts have all been in vain — including the attempt by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) to have Thomas referred to the Department of Justice for imagined violations of the Ethics in Government Act 1978, which was thwarted Thursday by the Judicial Conference of the United States.

Thomas and his relatives reportedly sold an old single-story home and two vacant lots in Savannah, Georgia, at market rate to one of Texas billionaire Harlan Crow's companies in 2014. Crow, who has been Thomas' family friend for over two decades, said in a statement that his intention was to "one day create a public museum at the Thomas home dedicated to telling the story of our nation's second black Supreme Court Justice, who was born in Pin Point, Georgia and later raised in Savannah."

ProPublica — an investigative journalist outfit that has received donations from Laurene Powell Jobs and her leftist Emerson Collective, from George Soros' Foundation to Promote Open Society, and from Crankstart Foundation, Lincoln Project donor Michael Moritz's family foundation — published a report on April 13, 2023, suggesting that Thomas failed to disclose his family's sale of the property and may have violated a federal disclosure law in the process.

'Potential violations of disclosure laws by officers of the highest court merit serious investigation.'

ProPublica also made a fuss about the justice's inadvertent failure to note in financial filings that Crow provided him with food and lodging in 2019 at both an Indonesian hotel and at a private club that year in California. Thomas later noted these in his financial disclosure report for 2023.

Just as Democratic lawmakers would later use the New York Times strategic reports about flags to attack Justice Alito, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Hank Johnson were quick to weaponize the ProPublica report, penning a letter to the Judicial Conference on April 14, 2023, requesting that it refer Thomas to Attorney General Merrick Garland for investigation.

The Democrats suggested that there was "reasonable cause to believe that Justice Thomas willfully failed to file information required to be reported under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978."

"Justice Thomas's failure to report this transaction is part of an apparent pattern of noncompliance with disclosure requirements," said the letter. "Potential violations of disclosure laws by officers of the highest court merit serious investigation, and it is well past time for the Supreme Court to align with the rest of the government on ethics requirements."

Coinciding with Whitehouse and Johnson's publication of their letter, the New York Times editorial board ran a condemnatory piece echoing both the scandal-plagued leftist group Fix the Court in calling the Supreme Court "the least accountable part of our government" and Democratic lawmakers in calling for the establishment of an ethics office at the high court.

The Democratic lawmakers received a reply this week after 20 months of waiting. Apparently unmoved by the the letter and the editorial in the Times, Judicial Conference secretary Robert Conrad Jr., an Article III federal judge with senior status on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, effectively told Whitehouse and Johnson that theirs is a nonissue and to pound sand.

Conrad noted in his Thursday letter that the judiciary's financial disclosure requirements have been in flux over the past few years.

For instance, in early 2023, the Financial Disclosure Committee issued guidance that the personal hospitality gift reporting exemption applies only to food, lodging, or entertainment — such as what was received by Thomas from Crow in 2019. As for disclosures regarding gifts of transportation, Conrad noted that the committee issued guidance in March 2023 precluding the need for retroactive application past 2022.

'The provision in fact contains a suggestion to the contrary.'

Conrad pointed out that Thomas "has filed amended financial disclosure statements that address several issues identified in your letter. In addition, he has agreed to follow the relevant guidance issued to other federal judges, which would include the guidance mentioned above. We have no reason to believe he has done anything less."

The secretary also indicated that it was not altogether clear whether the Judicial Conference's referral authority applies to justices of the Supreme Court, stating that "there is reason to doubt that the Conference has any such authority."

"Because the Judicial Conference does not superintend the Supreme Court and because any effort to grant the Conference such authority would raise serious constitutional questions, one would expect Congress at a minimum to state any such directive clearly," wrote Conrad. "But no such express directive appears in this provision. The provision in fact contains a suggestion to the contrary."

Conrad indicated not only that the Democrats' request might be legally unworkable but that it was moot on account of the lawmakers' direct appeal to Garland on July 3 to have a special counsel investigate these matters.

In a separate letter, the Judicial Conference shut down a similar request from the Center for Renewing America to refer Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the DOJ for failing to "disclose required information regarding her husband's medical malpractice consulting income for over a decade." Conrad noted that Jackson has amended her disclosure to include the previously omitted income from her husband.

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Chief Justice Roberts highlights worsening attacks on judicial independence



Chief Justice John Roberts highlighted the efforts of certain elected officials and other ne'er-do-wells to undermine the independence and legitimacy of federal courts in his annual year-end report.

Echoing former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Roberts noted that the independent federal judiciary established in Article III and preserved for the past 235 years remains "one of the 'crown jewels of our system of government.’" The trouble, according to Roberts, is that independence is under attack.

While figuring passionate reactions to judicial rulings as inevitable and strong criticism as occasionally warranted, Roberts stressed that "not all actors engage in 'informed criticism' or anything remotely resembling it."

The chief justice noted that there exists types of "illegitimate activity" which "threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends: (1) violence, (2) intimidation, (3) disinformation, and (4) threats to defy lawfully entered judgments."

"There is of course no place for violence directed at judges for doing their job," wrote Roberts. "Yet, in recent years, there has been a significant uptick in identified threats at all levels of the judiciary."

Last year, the U.S. Marshals Service revealed that serious threats to federal judges had more than doubled since 2021, driven largely by political hostilities. Roberts indicated that the data shows the "volume of hostile threats and communications directed at judges has more than tripled over the past decade."

For instance, after a draft of the Dobbs opinion was leaked, Nicholas John Roske of California — headed for trial in June — was apparently caught near Justice Brett Kavanaugh's house with a gun and a knife and charged with attempted murder. Roske allegedly claimed he was going to give his life a purpose by killing the justice, reported the Washington Post.

In another instance, an Alaska man with over 80 contributions to the Democratic fundraising outfit ActBlue was charged in September with nine counts of making threats against a federal judge and 13 counts of making threats in interstate commerce. Blaze News previously reported that Panos Anastasiou allegedly threatened to hang a specific justice from an oak tree, to lynch another, and to kill a third by "putting a bullet in his ... head." He is also accused of threatening to behead, strangle, and/or drown all six as well as gun down their family members.

After noting that judges "cannot hide, nor should they," Roberts thanked the Marshals who protect judicial officers as well as the federal and state lawmakers who have advanced legislation protecting judges from doxxing, which the chief justice noted has been used by activist groups to intimidate judges in recent years.

On account of doxxing efforts, Marshals had to be extremely vigilant when extreme pro-abortion groups, including Ruth Sent Us and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, mobbed the homes of Justices Roberts, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch in 2022.

Title 18, Section 1507, of the U.S. Code states that it is illegal to picket or parade in or near a building housing a U.S. court or occupied by a judge, juror, witness, or court officer "with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty."

Nevertheless, President Joe Biden and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) joined other Democrats in downplaying the intimidating post-Dobbs protests outside of Supreme Court justices' homes, saying they were acceptable if peaceful.

Although Roberts did not mention any particular Democratic lawmaker by name, he noted that "public officials, too, regrettably have engaged in recent attempts to intimidate judges — for example, suggesting political bias in the judge's adverse rulings without a credible basis for such allegations."

Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the Democrat who discussed the possibility last year of Democrats in Congress nullifying the 2024 election in the event of a Trump win, is among the radical lawmakers who have tried repeatedly to pressure and neutralize conservatives on the Supreme Court.

'These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.'

In a May op-ed in the New York Times titled "How to Force Justices Alito and Thomas to Recuse Themselves in the Jan. 6 Cases," Raskin suggested that the Biden Department of Justice could lean on the court to help Democrats get their way.

When that didn't work and Democrats failed to get the result they wanted from the Supreme Court in Trump v. United States last year, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) filed articles of impeachment against Justices Alito and Thomas with the backing of Reps. Barbara Lee, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Jamaal Bowman, and other radical Democrats.

"Disinformation, even if disconnected from any direct attempt to intimidate, also threatens judicial independence," Roberts said in his report. "The modern disinformation problem is magnified by social media, which provides a ready channel to 'instantly spread rumor and false information.'"

Obama hagiographer Jodi Kantor's attempted character assassination of Justice Alito in the New York Times would likely fall into Roberts' "disinformation" category.

Kantor's May 16 story concerned allegations about the Jan. 17, 2021, flying of an inverted American flag at the Alito residence — a story Robert Barnes of the Washington Post reportedly did not bother with at the time because it was clear that Justice Alito was not involved.

Blaze News previously noted that Kantor did her best to pass off the American flag as a "Stop the Steal" symbol, to link Alito to the Jan. 6 protests, and to set the stage for arguments by critics that the Supreme Court justice should recuse himself from important Trump-related cases — arguments that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), and other Democrats were more than happy to make.

While violence, intimidation, and falsehoods are a problem, Roberts suggested that defiance of lawful judicial decisions is another major threat to the independence of the federal judiciary.

"Within the past few years, ... elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings," said Roberts. "These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected."

The chief justice concluded, "Violence, intimidation, and defiance directed at judges because of their work undermine our Republic, and are wholly unacceptable."

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'Pardons for me, no justice for thee': Biden vetoes bill that would have let Trump nominate much-needed judges



President Joe Biden appears keen to maximize consequential, controversial, and costly decisions in his final days as president.

Following President-elect Donald Trump's landslide victory last month, Biden and his administration undermined the Republican's goal of peace in Ukraine and risked turning America's proxy war with Russia into a direct nuclear conflict with the authorization of use of long-range American missiles; took steps to "Trump-proof" the federal bureaucracy; gave his felonious son Hunter Biden an "unconditional" blanket pardon and commuted the sentences of child-killers, grifters, and other loathsome convicts; rushed through DEI-satisfying judges; and set high-reaching greenhouse gas emission targets.

Par for the course, Biden — set to end his presidency with a record-low approval rating — vetoed a bipartisan bill on Monday that would have created 66 new judicial seats in the coming years in understaffed federal courts across the country.

While the 82-year-old Democrat suggested that there remained unanswered questions about the potential allocation of judges, legal experts and lawmakers who championed the Judicial Understaffing Delays Getting Emergencies Solved Act of 2024 indicated Biden's concerns were unfounded. Critics suggested Biden simply wanted to preclude his popular Republican successor from nominating dozens of new judges over the course of his second term.

'The President is more enthusiastic about using his office to provide relief to his family members who received due process.'

Reuters noted that had the bill been enacted, Trump would have been able to fill 22 permanent and three temporary federal judgeships in his second term in addition to the over 100 judicial appointments he is already expected to make.

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), who co-sponsored the initial Senate bill with Democratic Sen. Chris Coons (Del.), noted on X, "Issuing this veto is partisan politics at its worst. The JUDGES Act is a fair bill with strong bipartisan support that would have created 66 judgeships over three presidential terms to address our judicial backlog."

"The President is more enthusiastic about using his office to provide relief to his family members who received due process than he is about giving relief to the millions of regular Americans who are waiting years for their due process," continued Young. "Biden's legacy will be 'pardons for me, no justice for thee.'"

The authors of the legislation noted that by the end of fiscal year 2022, district courts were overwhelmed and in many cases understaffed: "As of March 31, 2023, there were 686,797 pending cases in the district courts of the United States, with an average of 491 weighted case filings per judgeship over a 12-month period."

Although authorized by Article III of the U.S. Constitution to establish judgeships in district courts, Congress has not done so since 2003. The Judicial Conference of the United States recommended to Congress in March 2023 the creation of new district and court of appeals judgeships to address the workload demands facing certain courts.

The JUDGES Act of 2024, which embraced the conference's recommendations, passed the Senate in October with an amendment by unanimous consent — back when Democrats figured they would have fellow traveler Kamala Harris making the judicial nominations.

'This veto is about power, not justice.'

Weeks after Trump won the election, Biden threatened to veto the bill.

The Federal Judges Association and Federal Bar Association implored the geriatric Democrat and members of the House to get over their doubts and similarly pass the bill, stressing in a Dec. 11 statement that it would add judges "in a non-partisan manner and through its creative staggered approach to creating these new judgeships, offers the best chance in three decades for addressing the increasing judicial caseload crisis."

Judge J. Michelle Childs of the FJA and Glen McMurry, president of the FBA, noted further in their joint statement, "Failure to enact the JUDGES Act will condemn our judicial system to more years of unnecessary delays and will deprive parties in the most impacted districts from obtaining appropriate justice and timely relief under the rule of law."

The House of Representatives passed the bill on Dec. 12 in a 236-173 vote.

Following the bipartisan embrace of the JUDGES Act in Congress, Democratic Rep. Lou Correa (Calif.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) penned a letter to Biden urging him to reconsider his veto threat, noting that "addressing the needs of our judiciary is not a partisan issue but a national imperative."

The requests by judges and lawmakers of various stripes evidently fell on deaf ears.

In his veto announcement Monday, Biden stated, "The House of Representative's [sic] hurried action fails to resolve key questions in the legislation, especially regarding how the new judgeships are allocated, and neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate explored fully how the work of senior status judges and magistrate judges affects the need for new judgeships," according to a White House transcript.

Biden suggested further that the "efficient and effective administration of justice" requires that these questions undergo further study and insinuated that helping courts meet workload demands — a problem recognized by members of both major parties — was not the "true motivating force behind the passage of this bill."

Judge Robert Conrad Jr., the director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, said in response, "The president’s veto of the JUDGES Act is extremely disappointing. Providing additional judgeships is essential to improving access to the courts and necessary for the efficient and effective administration of justice."

Conrad noted that Biden wasn't just spiking a carefully considered bill that was based on thorough analysis but breaking from a custom he appeared previously happy to uphold.

"This veto is a deviation from the long historical pattern of approving judgeship bills that awarded new judgeships to sitting presidents. The president's veto is contrary to the actions of Senator Biden who helped pass many of those bills," wrote Conrad. "It is regrettable that the administration failed to support the federal judiciary and rejected this bipartisan, bicameral, and interbranch agreement. The president’s veto will contribute to the pattern of growing caseloads and increasing backlogs that hurt litigants and weaken public confidence in our courts."

Rep. Issa called the veto "a petty, partisan, and pointless act by a presidency that can't end soon enough."

"Very disappointed President Biden has vetoed the JUDGES Act, despite strong bipartisan support in Congress," tweeted Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.). "This decision leaves countless individuals struck in a backlogged legal system without the judges needed to address delays."

Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman of Wyoming emphasized that Biden's veto was purely a partisan maneuver, noting, "The JUDGES Act of 2024 was 'necessary' until the point Republicans would hold a trifecta. This veto is about power, not justice."

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Exclusive: Jim Jordan, Chip Roy slam DOJ prosecution of whistleblower who exposed trans surgeries on minors



Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Chip Roy of Texas co-authored a letter exclusively obtained by Blaze News slamming the Biden Department of Justice for prosecuting a medical whistleblower who shed light on transgender medical interventions used on children.

The DOJ is prosecuting Dr. Eithan Haim, a whistleblower who exposed the Texas Children's Hospital for performing transgender surgeries and treatments on minors, for allegedly committing HIPAA violations despite withholding sensitive medical or personal information about the patients. Haim's advocacy alerted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, prompting him to issue a formal opinion in 2022, categorizing the procedures as child abuse.

'The DOJ's prosecution of Dr. Haim for blowing the whistle on criminal child abuse is wrong.'

"The hospital's actions raise concerns that this is continuing to intentionally harm young children for the purpose of a left-wing policy agenda," the letter reads.

Although Texas Children's Hospital announced that it would cease the transgender medical interventions on minors just a month after Paxton's statement, Haim revealed the hospital had continued the surgeries. As a result, the DOJ decided to prosecute Haim.

"The DOJ's prosecution of Dr. Haim for blowing the whistle on criminal child abuse is wrong," the letter reads. "As the Subcommittee examines this matter to inform potential legislative reforms that would enhance civil liberties and protect minors, we believe that the Texas Children's Hospital possesses relevant documents and information."

Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, and Roy, who chairs the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, called on Texas Children's Hospital to turn over all relevant communications and documents surrounding Haim and the transgender treatments on minors.

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Biden admin has been using banking institutions to spy on Americans without warrants: House report



Congressional investigators released an interim report Friday detailing some of the creative ways that the Biden administration has apparently sidestepped the legal process in order to spy on and track American citizens, particularly those who have expressed opinions and political views unfavorable to the powers that be.

The report was released just days after Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, told Joe Rogan that scores of tech founders were de-banked under the Biden administration through a politically motivated effort he referred to as "Operation Choke Point 2.0," an apparent update on a scandalous Obama Department of Justice initiative.

Americans' financial data reveals a great deal about their political viewpoints, interests, vulnerabilities, and locations. The new report from the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, titled "Financial Surveillance in the United States: How the Federal Government Weaponized the Bank Secrecy Act to Spy on Americans" noted that "because of this data's usefulness, federal law enforcement agencies increasingly coordinate with financial institutions to secure even greater access to Americans' private financial information, often without legal process."

Congressional investigators began looking into the process after a whistleblower alleged that Bank of America voluntarily and without legal process provided the FBI with a list of names of Americans who used a BoA credit or debit card in Washington, D.C., around the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, protests. A former senior FBI official, Joseph Bonavolonta, later confirmed the testimony of the whistleblower, retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst George Hill.

While law enforcement is normally barred from inquiring into financial institutions' customer information, at least without going through proper legal processes, federal agents apparently found a workaround: Highlight as "suspicious" client characteristics common to intended targets — such as criticism of gun-grab policies, vaccine mandates, COVID-19 lockdowns, and the Deep State — and encourage financial institutions to file Suspicious Activity Reports. The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network compiles these reports into a searchable database.

'This could lead to widespread abuse of power and debanking.'

The Weaponization Committee indicated Friday that last year, the FinCEN database was accessed by over 14,000 government employees for more than 3 million warrantless searches.

According to FinCEN's latest annual report, nearly 15.42% of active FBI investigations in fiscal year 2023 were directly linked to SARs and Currency Transaction Reports. At least 4.6 million SARs and 20.8 million CTRs were filed last year.

The new report from the House Judiciary Committee, which relies on over 48,000 pages of newly reviewed documents and three new transcribed interviews, underscored that federal agencies have increasingly worked "hand-in-glove with financial institutions, obtaining virtually unchecked access to private financial data and testing out new methods and new technology to continue the financial surveillance of American citizens."

The report claims that:

  • the FBI manipulated the Suspicious Activity Report filing process "to treat financial institutions as de facto arms of law enforcement, issuing 'requests,' without legal process, that amount to demands for information related to certain persons or activities it considers 'suspicious'";
  • FinCEN coordinated with the FBI to lean on financial institutions to comb through their data and file SARs on hundreds of Americans "without any clear criminal nexus"; and
  • while on paper an advisory body to the Treasury Department on matters pertaining to the Bank Secrecy Act, the BSA Advisory Group has become "a tool for federal law enforcement and financial institutions to monitor the private, financial data of American citizens" — a tool set to become more invasive and more powerful in the hands of federal law enforcement operatives.

The report concludes, "All Americans should be disturbed by how their financial data is collected, made accessible to, and searched by federal and state officials, including law enforcement and regulatory agencies."

Congressional investigators emphasized that with e-commerce ascendant and the use of cash growing increasingly less common, "the future leaves very little financial activity beyond the purview of modern financial institutions or the government's prying eyes."

The Weaponization Committee added on X that "without safeguards, this could lead to widespread abuse of power and debanking."

The report was not, however, all doom and gloom. Lawmakers highlighted potential legislative reforms that could be undertaken to curb the potential for continued and worse abuse, including

  • raising the threshold for currency transaction reports from the $10,000 mark to $60,000, as a means to reverse the CTR's transformation from a program about criminal activity into a government surveillance program;
  • amending the BSA to require that banks notify a customer that an SAR was filed, provide a justification, and offer the flagged client the opportunity to respond to the corresponding allegations;
  • restore Fourth Amendment protections to American's financial records, requiring law enforcement obtain a warrant to gain access to Americans' private financial information;

"Federal law enforcement has shown that it will leverage any opportunity to operate outside the bounds of the statutes that govern access to Americans’ financial data," said the report. "Absent adequate congressional oversight and legislative reforms, it is likely that countless more Americans will be subject to financial surveillance and potentially federal investigation, all without ever knowing about it."

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Now Is Not The Time For Senate Republicans To Play Nice On Biden’s Judicial Nominees

In the months before Trump assumes office, Democrats control the Senate, and President Biden has sent up a slew of hardcore leftist nominees.