Trump’s Supreme Court Immunity Ruling Just Came Back to Bite Him

The Supreme Court’s decision to expand the definition of presidential immunity may have just caused a hiccup for Donald Trump’s administration.

A federal judge ruled Monday that Trump’s FBI must disclose records from its Mar-a-Lago case file, complying with a FOIA request by Bloomberg’s Jason Leopold. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell decided that the Supreme Court’s decision—combined with his return to the White House and its executive privileges—has insulated Trump enough from further criminal prosecution to allow the release of documents.

“With the far dampened possibility of any criminal investigation to gather evidence about a president’s conduct and of any public enforcement proceeding against a president, the [Supreme Court’s] decision … has left a FOIA request as a critical tool for the American public to keep apprised of a president’s conduct,” Howell ruled.

Howell also ordered the FBI to provide a timetable of release for files pertaining to Leopold’s request, with a mandatory update required by February 20.

The FBI had used Glomar arguments to retain the privacy of the Mar-a-Lago case files, falling back on its typical refusal to “confirm or deny” a criminal investigation in order to safeguard ongoing investigations. But the decimation of any future case against Trump on the details of the case has completely undermined that argument, according to the judge.

“In these circumstances, defendants’ Glomar arguments crumble with no more weight than dust and just as little persuasiveness,” Howell wrote. “As plaintiff pointedly highlights, as to President Trump, ‘there is a reasonable argument that [he] is immune from prosecution for flushing his own records down the toilet while in office.’”

In a footnote, Howell torched the high court’s decision to grant Trump such sweeping protections, likening their actions to enablers of the fascist regime of Nazi Germany.

“Of course, while the Supreme Court has provided a protective and presumptive immunity cloak for a president’s conduct, that cloak is not so large to extend to those who aid, abet and execute criminal acts on behalf of a criminally immune president,” Howell wrote. “The excuse offered after World War II by enablers of the fascist Nazi regime of ‘just following orders’ has long been rejected in this country’s jurisprudence.”

Donald Trump is planning to pardon yet another convicted felon with a history of corruption, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, a source told The Associated Press.

In 2011, Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison on 18 felony counts, over charges that included attempts to sell former President Barack Obama’s Senate seat in 2008 and to shake down the CEO of a children’s hospital.

The Democrat turned MAGA politician served eight years before Trump commuted his sentence during his first term in 2020.

The two men’s history together runs deeper than politics: Blajogevich, commonly known as “Blago,” appeared on Trump’s reality TV show, Celebrity Apprentice, in 2010, two years after he was first arrested on corruption charges.

When Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts in the New York hush-money case, “Blago” defended his fellow convict. “I love Trump more today than ever! When you’ve lived through it yourself you recognize when they do it to someone else,” he wrote on social media in May.

If pardoned, Blagojevich will join some 1,500 insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and were pardoned by Trump in one of his first executive orders as president, the more notorious of whom include former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right militia group Oath Keepers.

Politico reported Friday that Trump is considering nominating Blajogevich to be the U.S. ambassador to Serbia, a pick that would add to his already fraudulent Cabinet.

Donald Trump plans to make it legal for businesses to bribe foreign officials.

Bloomberg reports that the president will soon sign an executive order to pause the enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, claiming that it hurts American businesses. The order will instruct Attorney General Pam Bondi to pause criminal prosecutions under the law until she issues new enforcement guidelines, according to a fact sheet on the order obtained by the news outlet. She will also be ordered to review current and past Justice Department actions under the law.

“U.S. companies are harmed by FCPA overenforcement because they are prohibited from engaging in practices common among international competitors, creating an uneven playing field,” the fact sheet states. A White House official confirmed the fact sheet’s veracity to CNBC, telling the network the move is “a pause in enforcement to better understand how to streamline the FCPA to make sure it’s in line with economic interests and national security.”

The FCPA, passed in 1977, specifically prohibits any person or company tied to the United States from paying money or offering gifts to foreign officials to help their business. In 1998, the law was amended to include foreign businesses, as well as people who facilitated such bribes in the U.S. The DOJ said there were 24 cases related to alleged violations of the law in 2024, and 17 in 2023.

This new order is a continuation from Trump’s first term, when he considered getting rid of the FCPA and called it a “horrible law.” It’s quite clear why Trump would seek to get rid of or soften the law. During his first term, he often looked the other way on possible illegal bribes and let American oil and gas companies keep their under-the-table payments to dictators of countries like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan secret, a practice that even Russian oil companies don’t engage in.

Trump may benefit personally from weakening or discarding the FCPA. The Trump Organization announced last month that it will no longer prohibit deals with foreign companies while he is president, and he might seek to “grease the wheels” on overseas deals without any restrictions.

The president’s family is also trying to reclaim the lease on their former hotel in Washington, D.C.—a hotbed of corruption, where foreign governments spent more than $750,000 during his first term. It looks like Trump is opening the doors for American companies and individuals, including himself, to pay off foreign officials to better line their pockets.

Elon Musk’s cringey tweet was cited in a federal court Monday, during a case trying to curb the Department of Government Efficiency’s access to American citizens’ private information.

Politico’s Kyle Cheney reported that litigants had cited an exchange Musk had on X with right-wing shill Ashley St. Clair earlier that very day.

“What the fuck do you think Elon Musk is going to do with your social security number???” St. Clair wrote in a post on X. “Tweet it???? Open a line of credit you don’t have??????”

Musk, who posts an unhealthy amount on the social media site he’s running into the ground, reposted St. Clair, acting as if suggestions of overreach were hysterical.

“Seriously 🤣🤣,” Musk wrote, demonstrating just how seriously he handles sensitive information. “And for damn sure, I’m 1000% more trustworthy than untold numbers of deep state bureaucrats and fraudsters who may be misusing your SSN right now.”

Musk, the unelected billionaire bureaucrat, has transformed himself into the deep state he pretended to rail against, and has gained sweeping access to sensitive information across a slate of federal agencies.

Over the weekend, a federal judge made a temporary ruling for 19 democratic state attorneys general preventing non–civil servants from accessing the Treasury Department’s payment systems, which distribute trillions of dollars annually. Trump’s Justice Department has already moved to lift the sweeping order.

Donald Trump is still stripping the security clearances of his political enemies, and this time, he’s doing it to people who still work for the government!

New York Attorney General Letitia James and District Attorney Alvin Bragg were the most recent targets of the president’s petty political games, and both saw their security clearances stripped over the weekend, according to an exclusive report from The New York Post, the president’s favorite tabloid. Trump also said last week that he would revoke President Joe Biden’s security clearance.

In addition to revoking their access to classified information, it theoretically bars them from entering federal buildings such as courthouses, prisons, the U.S. attorneys offices, or the FBI’s field office in New York. If enforced, it would be problematic, but in true Trump fashion, it seems like it’s more symbolic than consequential.

“It’s more an insult and a slap in the face than a real deterrent,” former Manhattan federal prosecutor Bob Costello told the Post. Costello testified as a witness for the defense in Trump’s hush-money trial.

Trump has targeted both James and Bragg for their roles in convicting him of, respectively, bank fraud and 34 counts for falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments made to keep an adult film actress quiet about his extramarital affair.

Since Trump entered office, James has continued to be a thorn in the president’s side. On Monday, she joined a coalition of 21 other attorneys general suing the Trump administration over its efforts to strip funding from the National Institutes of Health. A new NIH policy announced last week would cap “indirect cost” reimbursements, which cover all research expenses, at 15 percent for research institutions. The policy went into effect Monday.

“The administration’s decision to cap NIH reimbursement rates could force scientists to shutter their lifesaving research on cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, addiction, infectious diseases, and more,” James said in a statement. “My office will not stand idly by as this administration once again puts politics over science and endangers public health. We are suing to prevent this harmful policy from taking effect.”

Last week, James led a coalition of 22 states to file for a restraining order against Trump’s freeze on federal funding, and a coalition of 18 states seeking a restraining order against Elon Musk’s unfettered access to the private information of American citizens, which was then granted.

Former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, the warmonger who co-signed the U.S. support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, also had his security clearance revoked. While the principle behind it is still disturbing, that one seems more like a don’t-cry-over-spilled-milk situation.

But it doesn’t seem as if the president is done with his wrathful revocations that don’t mean anything! The New York Post also reported that up next on the president’s list for petty revenge is attorney Andrew Weissman, special counsel Robert Mueller’s deputy in the Russiagate probe; Mark Zaid, the attorney representing a whistleblower in the first Trump impeachment; and Norm Eisen, who served as special counsel to the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee during that impeachment.