What happens when the watchdogs aren't watching?
Bad things happen when no one is there to police the people in power.
NOTE: Miles is out of pocket this week for much-needed rest with family. This week, we’re sending our Members-only daily news update (THE DEFIANCE WATCHLIST) to all subscribers. If you want to continue to get all-access, please consider becoming a DEFIANCE.org Member today at DEFIANCE.org/join
THE COPS-WATCHING-THE-COPS ARE DISAPPEARING. As federal judges keep hammering Donald Trump’s Justice Department for all types of misconduct, the two internal offices meant to police the DOJ seem to be fading away. Nearly half of the Office of Professional Responsibility’s (OPR) staff has left since Trump’s second term began, shrinking from 29 employees to 16. To be clear, OPR is the top DOJ office responsible for monitoring prosecutors’ conduct. Trump isn’t too concerned; he fired the OPR’s director outright and never named a replacement. As a result, the office opened just seven new investigations last fiscal year, which is a 20-year low, even though misconduct complaints hit 1,666, the highest total since 2005. The Inspector General’s office is suffering too, having lost 99 employees over the past year. One former IG official said the office has started avoiding “the high-profile stuff.”
REWRITING JANUARY 6. The last chapter of January 6 accountability just closed for good, as U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta reluctantly dismissed the seditious conspiracy case against Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and others. Trump’s pardons and commutations had already gutted the case, and Judge Mehta didn’t hide his disgust. He wrote that the dismissal “diminishes the gravity of that day, denigrates the work of the prosecutors and law enforcement officers who secured these convictions, and excuses criminal acts that caused a centuries-long pillar of our democracy…to buckle.” While that chapter may be closed, a dozen former federal prosecutors are seeking another kind of accountability. They sent senators a letter this week urging them to stop confirming judicial nominees who can’t bring themselves to call January 6 an attack on democracy or acknowledge that Joe Biden won in 2020.
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SUE FOR. Remember Trump’s $10 billion defamation suit against the BBC over its January 6 documentary? It just got a lot more interesting. A federal magistrate judge ruled this week that because Trump’s suit claims both financial and reputational harm, his business records are fair game. That opens the door for the BBC to dig through the finances of more than 400 companies held under the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust. Trump’s lawyers are now scrambling to amend the complaint to claim only reputational harm, hoping that gets them out of turning anything over. The trust also asked the judge to pause her order, arguing that once records are disclosed, they can’t be “un-disclosed.” The BBC isn’t buying it, calling the move a transparent effort to dodge discovery. The judge is also letting the BBC subpoena dozens of people in Trump’s inner circle to probe his actual thoughts and intentions on January 6. Stay tuned.
FOLLOW THE MONEY. The Todd Blanche attorney general confirmation process has proven yet again that Republican “resistance” is a paper tiger. Blanche’s assurances to Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis to earn their votes kept fully intact the audit immunity shielding Trump, sons Eric and Don Jr., and the Trump Organization from any IRS review of tax returns filed before May 19, 2026. Tax experts say that shield could save the Trumps hundreds of millions, possibly billions, of dollars. In other words, it was all a rhetorical fiction to get Blanche confirmed, and Trump becomes the only person on EARTH with a sweetheart deal with the IRS to avoid getting audited. Meanwhile, Trump’s 250th-anniversary celebration group, Freedom 250, which he personally chairs, raised an estimated $50 million from corporate giants, but only three companies (Chevron, United Airlines, and RTX) actually disclosed their contributions as federal lobbying law requires. Lockheed Martin, ExxonMobil, GE Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, and more than a dozen others simply didn’t respond when asked. You may think they’re all getting away with it. But our friends in the real political resistance on Capitol Hill would call these “investigative targets.”
WHO GETS THE REFUND? The Supreme Court struck down Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs back in February, but his illegal tariffs are still costing Americans. So who’s pocketing the $100 billion in refunds that have flowed out of government coffers since the SCOTUS ruling? Corporations, of course. And consumers, who footed most of the tariff bill through higher prices, are still waiting for their cut. Some defiant shoppers are suing to get it. Five Below, Sony, and Nintendo have all faced class action suits filed by consumers who say retailers have kept price hikes in place while receiving refunds.
SERVE THE COUNTRY, LOSE YOUR FAMILY. An AP investigation has found that more than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty U.S. troops have been detained by ICE since Trump took office, with at least six already deported. Marine Cpl. Jose Manuel Vilchis-Valle’s mother was detained at what she thought was a routine immigration appointment and deported to Mexico within a week, despite living in the U.S. since the 1990s with no criminal record. A new administration policy states plainly that military service “does not exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws.” And it’s not cheap: a new Economic Policy Institute calculator finds Trump’s mass deportation campaign will cost the average taxpayer $2,358—a combined $268.9 billion that could otherwise fund Medicaid for nearly 12 million more people or public housing for 9.7 million more households. Unfortunately for Trump, the cruelty will keep backfiring; his numbers are already in the sewer over the economy. Now he’s getting rid of a swath of America’s working class by deporting them. Prices will go up, and eventually, MAGA will go down.
BANKS SAW IT COMING...BUT LOOKED AWAY. A new Senate Finance Committee report released by Senator Ron Wyden found that more than a dozen bankers at JPMorganChase, Bank of America, and Deutsche Bank flagged suspicious transactions from Jeffrey Epstein as far back as 2002, and mostly sat on that information until after his 2019 arrest. The report covers thousands of transactions totaling more than $1 billion over nearly two decades. JPMorgan dropped Epstein as a client in 2013 over trafficking concerns but didn’t report the suspicious activity to the government for another six years. Committee Democrats want the Justice Department to investigate why suspicious activity reports were not filed about Epstein in a more timely manner—the same DOJ, of course, that foot-dragged the congressionally ordered release of the Epstein files and “over-redacted” them so heavily, a judge is now reviewing them. In other words, it won’t happen without a mighty push from the defiant.
BONUS ACT OF DEFIANCE: NEW MEXICO WON’T LOOK AWAY. Some of that push is coming from New Mexico, where Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Todd Blanche and the DOJ this week, demanding the unredacted Epstein files tied to the state’s criminal investigation into Epstein’s Zorro Ranch. Torrez says the DOJ has stonewalled New Mexico’s probe, after asking the state to pause its investigation back in 2019 and promising to share information once theirs wrapped up. That never happened, and Torrez wants to know why. Trump’s DOJ has decided Epstein’s associates and enablers have had enough scrutiny, but New Mexico has different plans.
THE ANT HILL IS OUR MEMBERS-ONLY CORNER OF THE COLONY, WHERE “DEFY ANTS” GET MORE THAN JUST THE NEWSLETTER.
TODAY’S FEATURES: READER POLL AND SHOW US YOUR ANT-ITUDE!
IF YOU’RE ALREADY A DEFIANCE MEMBER, THEN STEP RIGHT IN. IF NOT, SIGN UP HERE, SO YOU DON’T MISS A THING.
