A Project Battery Update

The first two batteries have been delivered. Eight more are in process.

Good Evening:

First off, a Project Battery update. It’s been a busy few days in the battery-buying department.

A little bit of data:

• Total contributions so far: $39,772.81

• Number of individual contributions so far: 263

• Median contribution: $75

• Largest individual contribution: $3,000

• Total funds wired to the estimable Anastasiia Lapatina: $25,000 (I will send more as soon as additional funds clear into my bank account; Venmo limits weekly cash transfers out of the system, so some of the funds are stuck in my Venmo account.)

• Total funds received by Nastya: $5,000 (Wiring money to Kyiv takes anywhere from a few seconds to a few days. We are expecting another $10,000 to arrive on Jan. 22, $5,000 more to arrive on Jan. 23, and $5,000 more to arrive on Jan. 26.)

• Batteries purchased and delivered: 2

Here is a note I received from one of the recipients. “Huge thanks,” to you all,

for fundraising and purchasing EcoFlow units, which are so desperately needed right now for Ukrainians!!!!

At the moment, the situation in Ukraine with heat and energy supply is very difficult, as the enemy is striking the country’s critical infrastructure to leave people without electricity and heating.

But EcoFlow makes it possible to work, study, heat our homes, stay connected, and have food!

This is what makes us unbreakable and resilient and leads us toward Ukraine’s victory!

So once again, a huge thank you for your contribution for the sake of our Victory!!! 🙂

The batteries cost about $3,500 per unit. They are particularly expensive because lower-cost ones tend to be sold out these days, and because Nastya and I decided that given the extent to which people are relying on these for heat, not merely back-up electrical power, it makes sense to get higher-end units.

Nastya and I will continue to update you all.

I am genuinely overwhelmed by the response to this. Thank you to all who have contributed. If you haven’t contributed yet and you want to, Nastya and I will keep this up as long as people keep sending me money.

Here’s my original post:

And for those who still want to contribute, here are my PayPal and Venmo QR codes:

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Because of Project Battery, I got a little behind in posting. Apologies for that.

Wednesday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Anastasiia Lapatina reported on her battery buying activities and the drones strafing overhead while she shopped. The estimable Holly Berkley Fletcher and I discussed the situation in Iran:

Thursday on #DogShirtTV, in response to the demands of the Greek Chorus for more in depth discussion of the protests in Iran, I brought on the estimable Ari Tabatabai for a really excellent discussion:

Friday on #DogShirtTV, Nastya gave us an update on the batteries, Holly gave us an update on her latest parody song, and I delivered an impromptu lecture on the history of Crimean Tatars in the Stalin era:

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The Situation: A Temper Tantrum in a Legal Brief

The Situation on Tuesday contemplated monetary policy by abuse of the criminal investigative apparatus.

Today, let’s take a look at a government brief in a case in Richmond, Virginia in which the Justice Department is actually in the right and yet manages to behave with almost mind-boggling impropriety anyway.

The case is not a high-stakes, politically-freighted matter. It is not one that begs issues of national policy. It is not one in which some left-wing advocacy group has sued the government challenging a Trump administration initiative.

Indeed, it is precisely the fact that the government is actually right—or right-ish—on the law and the case is so marginal that makes the Justice Department’s brief so remarkable.

I don’t know how to say it more politely, so I’ll be blunt: The brief is really assholeish.

It comes in the criminal case of a man named Davante Aandrell Jefferson, who was indicted back in December for carjacking, use of a firearm in a crime of violence, and attempted bank robbery.

A little more than a month after Jefferson’s indictment, the judge in the case—U.S. District Judge David J. Novak—entered an ill-advised and inappropriate, if amusingly cheeky, order directing the government to brief the question of why the name Lindsey Halligan keeps appearing on government briefs in the case with the title “United States Attorney.”

Judge Novak is not a liberal activist. He was appointed to the bench by President Trump during his first term. But the order is certainly aggressive. It opens by declaring that, “This matter comes before the Court on its own initiative”—which is almost never a good sign. And Judge Novak declares that in the indictment, “Ms. Halligan identified herself . . . as the United States Attorney for this District . . . despite a binding Court Order entered by Senior United States District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie on November 24, 2025, in which Judge Currie found that the ‘appointment of Ms. Halligan as Interim U.S. Attorney violated 28 U.S.C. § 546 and the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.’” While the matter is under appeal, “no stay has been issued in conjunction with that appeal [so the order] remains the binding precedent in this district and is not subject to being ignored.”

Judge Novak’s sua sponte order goes on to direct Halligan, within seven days, to file a brief explaining the “identification of herself as the United States Attorney, notwithstanding Judge Currie’s contrary ruling.” The order directs her to “set forth the reasons why this Court should not strike Ms. Halligan’s identification of herself as United States Attorney from the indictment in this matter.” And it orders that she “shall further explain why her identification does not constitute a false or misleading statement.” As to this latter point, Judge Novak pointedly cites a number of ethical rules that prohibit lawyers from making false statements to courts.

The message is clear: Judge Novak demands that Halligan explain what her name is doing on the indictment, and he makes clear that he’s contemplating professional action against her.

Now before looking at the government’s brief, let’s consider the matter for a moment in the abstract. It is exceedingly unwise for the government to keep appointing unqualified, inappropriate U.S. attorneys in a fashion whose legality is reasonably subject to judicial question and then leave them in place after courts do so. If I were advising the attorney general, I would warn her in no uncertain terms that she is buying herself a world of hurt by letting Halligan continue to represent herself as the U.S. attorney even after Judge Currie McGowan’s rulings in the James Comey and Letitia James cases.

That said, as I mentioned on Lawfare Live the other day in dialogue with Roger Parloff, it’s not at all clear to me that the government isn’t within its rights to keep letting Halligan pretend to be U.S. attorney—at least until the Fourth Circuit upholds Judge Currie McGowan’s ruling on the lawfulness of her appointment:

After all, the opinions do not order that Halligan be fired—nor could they. They merely dismiss the specific criminal cases before the specific judge in question. Moreover, a ruling by a district judge is not binding precedent on any other district court. It merely binds the two parties to the specific case in that specific case. This case is a little bit complicated in that regard because the court routed all of the challenges to Halligan’s appointment to Judge Currie McGowan, so she effectively ruled on this for all the judges in the EDVA. But still, one district judge does not rule over others.

That’s why, when Judge Aileen Cannon absurdly ruled that Special Counsel Jack Smith had been unlawfully appointed, it did not remove Smith from office or prevent him from proceeding with other cases. It merely provoked the dismissal of the classified documents case against Trump in her court.

In other words, there are reasonable answers to Judge Novak’s question, and there are reasonable ways for the government to point out to the judge that his order is inappropriate.

One of which is not a temper tantrum.

I’m honestly not sure how else to describe the brief filed in response to Judge Novak’s order, submitted not just by Halligan and two of her assistant United States attorneys but also by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The brief opens as follows:

In violation of the Rules of Criminal Procedure and the principle of party presentation, the Court has initiated a sua sponte inquisition into whether it should strike Ms. Halligan’s title from the Government’s signature block. The order launching this quest reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of Judge Currie’s orders dismissing the indictments in United States v. Comey, No. 1:25-cr-272 and United States v. James, 2:25-cr-122 and flouts no fewer than three separate lines of Supreme Court precedent on elementary principles like the role of federal courts, the effect of district court rulings, and the nature of our adversarial system.

Adding insult to error, the order posits that the United States’ continued assertion of its legal position that Ms. Halligan properly serves as the United States Attorney amounts to a factual misrepresentation that could trigger attorney discipline. The Court’s thinly veiled threat to use attorney discipline to cudgel the Executive Branch into conforming its legal position in all criminal prosecutions to the views of a single district judge is a gross abuse of power and an affront to the separation of powers.

The bottom line is that Ms. Halligan has not “misrepresented” anything and the Court is flat wrong to suggest that any change to the Government’s signature block is warranted in this or any other case.

What follows is eight additional pages making substantially the same—and quite valid—legal arguments I sketched out above, all laced with this sort of vituperative, condescending, and self-righteous rhetoric of precisely the sort with which it is never, ever appropriate to address a federal judge.

This is not the way the Biden administration talked to the conservative judges who were the thorns in its side. It is not the way conservative administrations have spoken to liberal activist judges they loathed. It is not the way Jack Smith’s prosecutors talked to Judge Cannon, though I have no doubt they believed her to be a corrupt actor.

It simply is not the way advocates speak to courts.

Ever.

The fact that the government here is right on the law actually makes the behavior worse, not better.

When one is confident in the merits of one’s legal argument, after all, one should be able to present that argument with minimal resort to rhetoric, let alone this sort of personal rhetoric.

Bondi, Blanche and Halligan might respond that their rhetoric here merely responds to impropriety on the part of Judge Novak, who really did start the whole thing with a needless provocation.

But judges err in their management of cases all the time, and arrogance and imperiousness is part of the persona—as this song memorably parodies:

The remedy on the part of the advocate for the arrogant district judge who knows not the limit of his or her role is patient advocacy, answering questions, and when those strategies fail, resort to the appellate process. The Justice Department, in particular, has no business dressing down a federal district judge as though he were some mere employee who had gotten out of line.

For one thing, it is an immensely counter-productive behavior. Unlike other advocates, the Justice Department is a repeat player in every single federal court in the country. When it behaves this way, it poisons the relationship between the department and the courts in which its attorneys practice.

But more fundamentally, Judge Novak’s order, even if legally mistaken on important points, was an entirely predictable response to the ongoing provocation that Halligan’s presence in office has represented from the beginning. We have discussed the mounting irritation among the judges of the Eastern District of Virginia with Halligan’s continued service several times on Lawfare Live’s weekly roundup. And that irritation is by no means limited to Judge Novak.

Put simply, if you are going, as the executive branch, to install a wildly unqualified officer in a sensitive position with the express intent that she will engage in wildly unethical activity in office and you do so this in arguable violation of the law, and she proceeds to engage in activity far more wildly unethical than anyone could have imagined, and then you leave her in office after a court declares her service unlawful, you can’t wax too indignant when a federal judge gets annoyed and behaves imperiously in asking for an explanation.

Except that apparently you can.

At least in Pam Bondi’s Justice Department in the second Trump administration.

So here’s my amicus brief to Judge Novak—a friendly piece of advice as to how to handle this matter from someone who is wholly sympathetic to the judge’s anger at the department’s behavior: Leave this one to the Fourth Circuit. Judge Currie McGowan’s ruling is going up on appeal. It will be affirmed, whereupon Halligan’s presence in office will become untenable, as Alina Habba’s did in New Jersey after the Third Circuit’s ruling on her appointment. In the meantime, unfortunately, she gets to dress herself in borrowed robes and cosplay as U.S. attorney. Save the rage for a case in which it matters—and in which the law is on your side.

Because The Situation continues tomorrow.

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Recently On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Marissa Wang

American Power, Half-Built

Afreen Akhter assesses Congress’s reauthorization of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), arguing that while lawmakers expanded the agency’s ability to compete with China, they also constrained its capacity with guardrails driven by short-term political concerns.

Strategic competition today is increasingly waged through finance—decisions about which infrastructure gets built, which technologies scale, and which firms and standards shape global markets. In that contest, speed, scale, and institutional confidence matter as much as formal authority. The DFC was created to compete in precisely this space. Whether its reauthorization equips it to do this—or entrenches a model that favors caution over action—is less clear.

Before and After the Trigger Press that Killed Renee Good

Michael Feinberg examines the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis and the policy failures before and after Good’s death. Focusing on ICE’s shaky legal authority, failures to de-escalate, and the withholding of medical aid, Feinberg analyzes how the agency repeatedly departed from its internal policies and its role as federal law enforcement.

Whether Ross violated Homeland Security’s deadly force policies—and thus also potentially Good’s Fourth Amendment rights—is certainly one of the most important questions to arise out of her death. But amid the high passion and tumult of the debate, other, equally pressing issues remain largely unaddressed: Namely, what do the events which occurred immediately before Ross took the slack out of his trigger, and the response of him and his colleagues right after the final press, tell us about how ICE is conducting itself as it executes the largest apprehension and deportation operation in the history of the United States?

Minnesota Can Prosecute Jonathan Ross—But It May Not Be Easy

Carolyn Shapiro analyzes Minnesota’s options for prosecuting Immigration Customs Enforcement Agent Jonathan Ross for the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. While precedent makes clear that states can prosecute federal officials for violating state law, Shapiro explains that Minnesota’s path forward will hinge on complex factual questions, evidentiary access, and whether Ross has Supremacy Clause immunity.

Nonetheless, in deciding whether and how to proceed, Minnesota officials will face some challenges, from the factual investigation; to determining what, if any, charges to bring; to evaluating the defenses that Ross, as a law enforcement officer, may have—and the related likelihood that he could successfully claim what is known as “Supremacy Clause immunity,” which (contra Vance) is not absolute, but which Ross would almost certainly attempt to invoke.

Zelensky Announces Government Overhaul

Anastasiia Lapatina examines Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s sweeping government restructuring, which includes the appointment of a new chief of staff, new defense and energy ministers, and reforms of the law enforcement system. Lapatina argues that the reset could be a major turning point for Ukraine’s defense during wartime.

In picking Fedorov for defense minister now, Zelensky is banking on defense innovation and drone warfare to ensure a sustainable Ukrainian defense in the future.

“Ukraine is fully committed to diplomacy and seeks to end this war as soon as possible. However, Russia is not demonstrating a similar approach and is prolonging its aggression. We will counter this through greater technological advancement and transformation of the defense sector,” Zelensky said on Jan. 5 after a meeting with Fedorov.

China Fights Scam Compounds … For China

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business Cybersecurity Newsletter, Tom Uren discusses China’s crackdown on scam compounds in Southeast Asia, the critical role of disruptive cyber operations in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and more.

The real significance here is political. The Trump administration has signaled it wants an increased role for offensive cyber operations. Cyber agencies were involved in a stunning U.S. military operation and were not found wanting: The president was pleased. It marks the arrival of disruptive cyber operations as a regular part of future military planning.

The U.S. Heel Turn on International Cooperation

Isabel Linzer and Aliya Bhatia examine the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from 66 multilateral institutions, arguing that the move undercut global human rights protections and weakened U.S. strategic influence. Linzer and Bhatia explain how abandoning these fora jeopardizes everything from digital rights and internet governance to U.S. economic and political leverage on the global stage.

The Trump administration’s choice to announce U.S. withdrawal from these international governance spaces might simply be symbolic, pending the government taking the procedural steps to officially leave each body. But as the U.S. acutely ramps up unilateral foreign engagement in Venezuela and threatens to do so elsewhere, even rhetorical retrenchment sends a clear message about the U.S. rejecting human rights and international, multistakeholder cooperation: Democracy and rule of law are not priorities for this administration.

The Trump Administration’s Fear-Based Governance

Heidi Kitrosser reviews Patrick G. Eddington’s new novel on the use of fear tactics in the history of U.S. governance, titled “The Triumph of Fear: Domestic Surveillance and Political Repression from McKinley to Eisenhower.” Kitrosser highlights how Eddington’s analysis of past abuses of the national security state give insight into the Trump administration’s actions in today’s political climate.

Eddington’s book is a rich, important contribution to our understanding of a pivotal time in American history, and of the growth of America’s national security state in particular. Of course, there are other significant works on the national security state and its abuses, and Eddington draws on many of them. As he notes in his introduction, however, “The Triumph of Fear” is extraordinary in its scale and in its use of primary as well as secondary literature to illuminate its subject. And Eddington is particularly effective in his choice of stories to highlight and to connect to the book’s larger theme of fear-based governing and politics.

Documents

Katherine Pompilio shares the Office of Legal Counsel’s memorandum on purported legal justifications for the U.S.’s military operation in Venezuela and President Nicolás Maduro’s forceful removal.

Podcasts

On Wednesday’s Lawfare Daily, Tyler McBrien sits down with John Dinkelman to discuss the role of foreign service in U.S. national security and major findings from the American Foreign Service Association’s latest report, “At the Breaking Point: The State of the U.S. Foreign Service in 2025.”

On Thursday’s Lawfare Daily, Scott R. Anderson joins Ashley Deeks and Kristen Eichensehr to discuss their recent law review article, “Federalism and the New National Security.” They unpack the new ways states are engaging national security policy and the costs and benefits of such practices.

On Rational Security, Anderson sits down with Tyler McBrien, Michael Feinberg, and Ariane Tabatabai to talk through the week’s news in national security, including the protests in Iran that have resulted in 2,000 to 12,000 fatalities, developments in the Good case, Trump’s talks with diplomatic representatives from Denmark and Greenland, and more.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the Valais Blacknose sheep, which earns the title for looking so much like toy sheep that I had to check that they weren’t AI generated:

@showingyoustuff

Stuff | Interesting Facts & Videos on Instagram: "The Valais Bl…

In honor of today’s Beast, don’t be afraid to be a cliche.