Featured

Texas megachurch pastor Robert Morris is free after 6 months in an Oklahoma jail for child sex abuse | CNN

Robert Morris’ release after just six months in jail highlights how plea deals and old-case legal limits can produce punishments that feel wildly out of proportion to the underlying abuse.

Mar 31, 2026

Featured

Democrats Say FEMA Official Who Has Claimed to Be Teleported Is ‘Unfit’ for Role

A FEMA disaster-response leader skipped a key shutdown hearing as Democrats highlighted his conspiracy talk and violent rhetoric—raising basic questions about competence and accountability during a strained disaster season.

Mar 25, 2026

Buried.News

The stories buried under the noise

Primary focus

Trump fires Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary

A Cabinet secretary was forced out amid contracting and oversight scrutiny, signaling that executive control—not transparent accountability—can dictate leadership of the agency driving mass detention and deportation.

Mar 5, 2026

Featured

Trump Throws Stephen Miller Under the Bus in Surprise Show of Panic

A report suggests Trump wants to hide the optics of “mass deportations,” but the policy machinery and legal end-runs Stephen Miller champions appear to be moving ahead anyway.

Mar 24, 2026

Featured

Supermicro’s co-founder was just accused of smuggling $2.5 billion in GPUs to China | Fortune

Federal prosecutors say a Supermicro co-founder helped run an elaborate transshipment-and-fake-document scheme to divert U.S.-assembled AI servers into China, highlighting how export controls can fail inside complex supply chains.

Mar 24, 2026

Trump voters who believed conspiracy theories were the most likely to justify the Jan. 6 riots

When election-fraud conspiracies are fed to politically mobilized groups, they can harden into moral permission slips for attacks meant to stop lawful democratic outcomes.

Media & Narrative

Mar 5, 2026

Sources

https://www.psypost.org/trump-voters-who-believed-conspiracy-theories-were-the-most-likely-to-justify-the-jan-6-riots

Summary

A peer-reviewed study found that Trump voters who combined high political activity with strong conspiracy beliefs were most likely to justify violence connected to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The evidence maps how unverified election-fraud narratives can become a mobilizing force inside already engaged political constituencies. The practical consequence is a measurable pathway by which conspiracy messaging can normalize acceptance of anti-democratic violence among politically active citizens.

Reality Check

A democracy cannot function when citizens are primed to treat violent obstruction of lawful electoral certification as acceptable political participation. Normalizing conspiracy narratives inside mobilized factions weakens the shared factual baseline that elections and peaceful transfers of power require. Over time, that erosion turns routine civic engagement into a channel for justifying coercion against institutions that count votes, certify results, and enforce the law.

Detail

Researchers published findings in Social Psychological and Personality Science examining when conspiracy beliefs predict support for political violence, using January 6, 2021 as the focal case. Study 1 surveyed 372 U.S. citizens who voted for Donald Trump in 2020, measuring general conspiracy mentality, belief that the 2020 election was rigged to favor Democrats, past-year political participation (e.g., rally attendance, contacting politicians), and justification of Capitol-attack violence (including whether it was acceptable for rioters to arm themselves). Analyses controlled for age, gender, education, and political orientation; both political participation and conspiracy beliefs predicted justification, with the highest justification among those high on both.

Study 2 recruited 751 additional Trump 2020 voters. Participants reported baseline participation, then were randomly assigned to read a fabricated blog post either supporting or denying widespread election fraud, completed a comprehension check, and then reported current fraud beliefs and views on the Capitol attack. Exposure slightly shifted fraud beliefs, and an interaction showed the participation–violence-justification link was stronger among those exposed to the pro-fraud text.

Norms Impact

Trump Says It’s His Right to Weaponize the Department of Justice

Trump publicly claims a “right” to turn DOJ power into personal retaliation, shredding the post-Watergate norm that federal prosecution must be insulated from presidential vendettas.

Executive

Feb 5, 2026

⚖ Legal Exposure

Ethics Violation

Likely Unlawful

Potentially Criminal

Likely Criminal

The article describes an asserted presidential “right” to use DOJ to “get even,” coupled with DOJ-organized efforts to investigate and punish specific officials involved in prior Trump-related investigations. That is a serious investigative red flag for retaliatory abuse of law-enforcement power and institutional politicization, but the context provided does not specify executed coercive acts (e.g., prosecutions/arrests/searches) or a transactional quid pro quo pattern. Exposure is therefore best assessed as likely unlawful/potentially criminal in direction, requiring further factual development.

Sources

https://newrepublic.com/post/206192/donald-trump-his-right-weaponize-department-justice

Summary

Donald Trump publicly suggested he would have a “right” to use the Department of Justice to “get even” with perceived opponents. The Justice Department, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, has moved away from post-Watergate guardrails intended to preserve prosecutorial independence from White House partisan control. The practical consequence is a federal law-enforcement apparatus being organized to revisit and punish officials connected to prior investigations of Trump and January 6 accountability efforts.

Reality Check

This conduct threatens to convert federal law enforcement into an instrument of personal revenge, a precedent that erodes due process and leaves every citizen’s rights contingent on presidential favor. The facts presented point less to an isolated outburst and more to an operational posture—daily DOJ meetings aimed at “punishing” officials tied to prior investigations—an archetype of abuse-of-power governance even where criminal proof is hard to establish from public statements alone. If action crosses into corruptly using official power to target individuals for personal benefit, core federal guardrails implicated include 18 U.S.C. § 242 (deprivation of rights under color of law), 18 U.S.C. § 241 (conspiracy against rights), and 18 U.S.C. § 1503 and related obstruction provisions, but the immediate damage is the deliberate collapse of the DOJ’s independence as a democratic restraint.

Legal Summary

Legal Analysis

18 U.S.C. § 242 — Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law

Alleged intent to use DOJ as a personal instrument to "get even" and to "investigate and punish" specific government officials raises risk of initiating law-enforcement action for retaliatory/personal purposes rather than legitimate governmental ends.
Targeting individuals who attempted to hold the president accountable (including in connection with January 6) suggests a potentially retaliatory use of federal power; however, the article does not specify particular coercive acts (arrest, search, prosecution) actually carried out against any person.

18 U.S.C. § 1505 — Obstruction of Proceedings Before Departments, Agencies, and Committees

Using DOJ processes to “challenge” prior investigations and to pursue “punish[ment]” of officials involved in investigating the president could function as corrupt interference with governmental processes if aimed at intimidating or deterring lawful investigative activity.
Key gap: the article describes meetings and a working group initiative, but does not allege specific obstructive steps taken in an identifiable pending proceeding.

18 U.S.C. § 371 — Conspiracy to Defraud the United States (impairing lawful government functions)

Creation and operation of a “Weaponization Working Group” to pursue retribution against named prosecutors/investigators supports an inference of coordinated action to impair DOJ’s lawful function as a neutral enforcer.
Key gap: no concrete allegations of deceptive means, specific unlawful acts, or executed misuse of process beyond stated intent and organizational activity.

5 C.F.R. § 2635 (Standards of Ethical Conduct) / DOJ independence norms (non-criminal)

Stated belief that DOJ can be used as a president’s “personal law firm,” and allegations that the Attorney General “bent and capitulated” to personal “whims,” describe politicization and misuse-of-office concerns.
These facts most strongly support ethics/neutrality violations and investigative red flags absent a described transactional quid pro quo or specific unlawful action.

Conclusion: The described conduct reflects a serious politicization/retaliation risk and potential abuse-of-power posture warranting investigation, but the article does not allege concrete completed acts or an explicit money-access-official-action exchange sufficient to treat it as prosecutable structural corruption on these facts alone.

Media

View media post

Detail

At the 74th National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning, President Donald Trump mocked criticism that he intends to use the Justice Department for retaliation, repeating the charge that he is “using the Justice Department to get even,” and then asking, “But wouldn’t I have a right to?” He added that no president had been treated the way he was treated.

Post-Watergate principles associated with Attorney General Griffin Bell emphasized procedures to keep partisan interests from influencing legal judgments and to protect a DOJ “neutral zone.”

Since Trump returned to office last year, the department under Attorney General Pam Bondi has moved away from those precedents. Earlier in the week, Justice Department officials began daily meetings to restart efforts to investigate and punish government officials involved in investigating Trump before his return to the White House. The meetings are organized under Bondi’s “Weaponization Working Group,” which is described as challenging former special counsel Jack Smith and his staff, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, and targeting officials who sought accountability after the January 6 attack.