Drama at the Russian Embassy

Plus EJ Wittes Defends Himself in L'Affaire Drosophila

Benjamin Wittes

and

EJ Wittes

May 28, 2025

∙ Paid

Good Morning:

There was drama across the street from the Russian embassy yesterday. The sunflowers are all fine, but I suspect this may have been a dry run for an attack on them. I’m honestly not sure. Here is everything I know.

At 2:04 pm, a gentleman who has not yet been identified came sauntering down Wisconsin Avenue, carrying a “Stop the War” sign that had previously stood on private property in front of a house across the street from the embassy. He lay it down on the private property of the estimable Connor O’Brien, keeper of the Polonne Sunflower Garden, and then proceeded to uproot Connor’s own sign and place it on Connor’s porch. My north camera filmed the scene:

Then things get a little weirder. Our perpetrator then takes the sign he has moved from up the street and erects it on Connor’s front lawn. Then he continues his walk down Wisconsin Avenue. Again, here is the footage from the north camera:

And here is one of my other cameras confirming his journey past the next house.

He did not, let me repeat, bother any of the sunflowers. Connor and I both checked on them and they are thriving. And I have no idea why he moved a sign from one neighbor’s yard to Connor’s yard and moved Connor’s own sign from his lawn to his porch. The gentleman did not do any damage to any signs.

But here is a question for general contemplation. If you were a Karla—my arch-nemesis in the Russian embassy who plots the deaths of sunflowers—and you were contemplating an attack on the sunflowers, and you were concerned that the sunflowers were this year on private property and your agents thus could not kill them without trespassing and committing theft and destruction of property crimes, and you were aware that I had cameras in the area, might you try a little non-destructive sign-moving trespassing just to see what you could and couldn’t get away with? Might you see if anyone noticed if you or one of your agents moved a few signs? Might you see whether cameras captured the action? Might you check whether that crazy guy who shines lights on the embassy and plants sunflowers and has a newsletter actually cares enough to out a random stranger for uprooting a “Stop the War” sign and placing it neatly on Connor’s porch?

Well, guess what, Karla?

Connor did notice.

The cameras did capture the action.

And yes, I care enough to go through hours of footage to find out exactly what happened and publish it on #DogShirtDaily—even though nobody destroyed anything.

So just a polite message to Karla: If that was your guy, keep him away from the sunflowers.

And a message to the rest of you: Cameras are expensive. Spotlights and lasers are even more expensive. And you can support #SpecialSunflowerAndSignProtectionOperations at the Russian embassy by becoming a paid subscriber of #DogShirtTV:

Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable

Holly Berkley Fletcher

and I continued yesterday’s discussion of parenting by swapping stories about children (not) cleaning things. I told the story of how one of my children loosed a swarm of fruit flies on the entire house. I would like to emphasize that I did not identify the child in question. I would also like to emphasize that to understand fully the defense of himself preferred by

EJ Wittes

below, you will need to watch or listen to the story has told here. The broader philosophy of cleanliness and the difference between being a slob and being a hoarder was also discussed:

Today On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Caroline Cornett

Judge Dugan, Charlie Chaplin, and the Claim of Judicial Immunity From Criminal Prosecution

James Pearce explains why Judge Hannah Dugan’s claim of judicial immunity is unlikely to succeed given that courts have consistently ruled judges are not immune from criminal prosecution. Pearce highlights that in the sole federal case recognizing judicial immunity, the prosecution ultimately failed due to a rushed investigation and a hasty decision to prosecute.

A similarly long line of judicial prosecutions confirms that the judicial immunity from criminal prosecution that Dugan posits doesn’t exist. In the 1930s, federal prosecutors secured a conviction of Martin Manton, then a federal judge in New York who accepted “sums of money in return for corrupt judicial action ... favorable to the interests of those who paid.” In the 1980s, Alcee Hastings, at the time a district court judge in Florida, accepted a bribe to reduce a defendant’s sentence and to revoke an order forfeiting some of the defendant’s property. Around the same time, Harry Claiborne, then a district court judge in Nevada, accepted a bribe from a Las Vegas brothel owner in exchange for a favorable ruling. Later in the same decade, Robert Collins, while a district court judge in Louisiana, accepted a bribe to impose a more lenient sentence. Other examples exist. And every time a prosecuted judge raised an immunity claim, the courts rejected it. (Dugan’s motion doesn’t cite any of these cases.)

Luigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’

Jacob Ware and Ania Zolyniak argue that bringing terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione is an overzealous application of New York’s Anti-Terrorism Act, enacted in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Ware and Zolyniak emphasize the importance of prosecutorial discretion to preserving the integrity of anti-terrorism efforts and warn that the charges against Mangione could diminish public confidence in the justice system.

After Morales, although courts have upheld § 490.25 against claims of unconstitutional vagueness, they have also been much more discerning in scrutinizing the conduct charged to ensure it falls within the contemplated parameters of the law. Pressing terrorism charges against Mangione on the theory his conduct was meant to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population,” that is, the health insurance industry, appears to fly in the face of Morales’s dictate that the relevant “statutory language cannot be interpreted so broadly so as to cover individuals or groups who are not normally viewed as ‘terrorists’”—not because they aren’t capable of committing an act of terrorism, but because the specific violence they are said to have committed in a particular case does not “qualif[y] for this nefarious designation.”

What Has Congress Been Doing on Section 230?

Anna Vinals Musquera and J. Scott Babwah Brennen share updates to the Section 230 tracker, which identifies and categorizes proposals to reform Section 230. Musquera and Brennen highlight three trends in the ten proposals lawmakers have introduced since a new Congress began in January.

But after several years of legislators turning their attention elsewhere, interest in revising Section 230 appears to be rebounding. There have already been ten proposals to amend or repeal Section 230 in the first few months of the 119th Congress. The arrival of a new administration critical of the law’s broad immunity, along with recent court decisions carving back that immunity have combined to put Section 230 back on the legislative agenda.

Podcasts

On Lawfare Daily, Pearce sits down with John Keller to discuss proposed changes to the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice, criminal and civil contempt, and whether there is a viable prosecution theory for former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey.

A Beastly Update

Yesterday’s #BeastOfTheDay, the vampire bat running on a treadmill, has been identified! Thanks to the estimable

Mary Ann

for pointing us to the ultimate source of this bat exercise routine. Apparently, the bats were running on the treadmill in order to assist scientists in learning about how bats store and process energy.

You can learn more about the experiment here, but I wanted to highlight one particular quote:

According to Dr. Welch, the dexterous bats initially used their thumbs to hook into crevices to avoid the moving belt. “They’re like you or me,” he said, “if they don’t want to run on the treadmill, they’ll cheat and stand on the side.”

Yesterday, I told you to get some exercise, in honor of the vampire bat. Today, I remind you to avoid exercise at all costs, in honor of the vampire bat.

Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the elephant trunk snake, which earns its title for having an extremely accurate name. Seriously. It’s an elephant trunk pretending to be a snake:

In honor of today’s Beast, be proud of your excess floppy skin. You too look like an elephant trunk.

In My Defense (In Re: Fruit Flies)

A listicle by
EJ Wittes

This happened over a decade ago. Why are we still talking about it?
I had no knowledge that there was an orange behind my dresser. It fell out of a bag of oranges on top of my dresser. I disposed of that bag of oranges appropriately and in good time. It was not reasonably foreseeable that one orange would have rolled out of the bag and fallen behind the dresser, and failing to anticipate that eventuality cannot be construed as negligence.