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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • It’s usually the case that federal judges did not fall off the turnip truck yesterday.

    In this case the actual order says to turn over all copies. It also says to deposit one copy at the federal court, which the feds can access if they apply for and obtain a lawful search warrant.

    If the feds are found to be holding onto copies later, they can get in a bunch of trouble. More importantly, they can no longer publish these emails as exhibits in a hypothetical future prosecution, like they did with Comey. Because as soon as they do, it’s all “hey where did you get those from?”






    1. The court found that there is no lawful basis to deport Abrego in the first place, because the government was unable to produce a copy of the 2019 deportation order in court.

    2. The court found that government lawyers deliberately “misled the tribunal” regarding their efforts to deport Abrego to Africa. The court “will take this into account” while considering pending motions for sanctions.

    3. In alternative to #1, the court found that the government was not really detaining Abrego to deport him, because they could have sent him to Costa Rica at any time in the past few months. But they did not.

    4. Therefore, there is no lawful reason to subject Abrego to immigration detention, and the writ of habeas corpus is granted.

    5. Abrego is still on bail in the TN criminal case.






  • In many jurisdictions, deer season is like 1 or 2 weekends per year, and the limit is 1. It’s not a lot of time to actually find and shoot a deer. So this guy is probably setting this up several weeks in advance to get some level of assurance that some deer will show up to his spot at the appointed time.




  • This is a different judge in a different district than the one who handled the Comey indictment.

    The lawsuit was filed by Dan Richman, who wants his personal data returned to him. The data was seized in 2019-2020 under search warrants, but the public learned in Comey case filings that the FBI failed to exclude non pertinent data, violating the terms of the original warrants. Among other problems.

    In the previous Comey case, nearly all of the evidence that the government presented against Comey came out of these warrants. And it’s not clear if they have any other sources of evidence.



  • and why would he have given ID to the pigs?

    I don’t know what the law is in Pennsylvania, but some states have a law that you must present ID on request if you have it. Nearly all jurisdictions require you to correctly state your name and address to police on request.

    And the police here used a ruse that this was all just a McDonald’s loitering complaint. The cop admitted on the stand that the loitering thing was a lie. But that’s okay. Remember: the cops are allowed to lie to you, but you are not allowed to lie to the cops.

    Remember also: stating the false name orally is a separate crime from the forged instrument.

    So bottom line, the failure to Mirandize could suppress the statements where he confessed to the fake ID and to the fake name. But it’s not going to toss those charges. And it doesn’t suppress the action of handing over the ID, because that’s not a statement.

    So there’s a pretty strong case for the ID charge even without the statements.


  • That’s actually a much bigger deal for Mangione at this hearing than the Miranda warning issue.

    That seems like more of an uphill battle. Even if the search incident to arrest is illegal, the defense also has to prove that the feds would not have inevitably gotten the search warrant for the backpack anyway.

    The sequence of events with the backpack was:

    1. 12 minutes into the McDonald’s interaction, the cops moved the backpack some distance away from him, and put themselves between Mangione and the backpack.

    2. While still in the McDonald’s a local cop opened the backpack, searched all the inside compartments, and found the key items, including the gun. The cops say this was an inventory search incident to arrest.

    3. She then put the gun back in the backpack and zipped it back up. This is a clue that the cops were actually worried about the legality of the search.

    4. They took the whole backpack back to the police station.

    5. The same cop then searched the backpack again at the police station, and magically found the same gun that she had put back into the backpack. Still no warrant.

    6. 7 hours later, Altoona PD applied for and received a warrant to search the backpack.

    Despite the preposterousness of this sequence, if the prosecution can show that the team that applied for the warrant was not excessively tainted by prior knowledge of the gun or notebook, they can probably still use the evidence.


  • The key dispute is that the State thinks that Mangione wasn’t “detained” until after the ID check came back as fake. Mr. Mangione argues that he was “detained” from the very start of the interaction because the police positioned themselves to block his only route of exit.

    In between those two times, Mangione made some statements that the defense would like to suppress, but nothing like a full confession or anything.

    There may also be an issue that the first Miranda warning that the cop gave in the McDonald’s was only the first half of the warning. The right to remain silent part, but not the attorney part. I haven’t followed closely enough to know if the defense is arguing that or not.