Tag Archives: Donald Trump

How a “Fantastical” Claim from a “Presidential Candidate” Was Stuck in Pre-Trial for 7 Years Before Dismissal

26 Oct

The common problem in American courts is for cases to be instantly dismissed for a lack of merit due to slight errors made by lawyers, despite their central claims being of significance to the public. The Raysor v. Safi civil lawsuit displays a less common problem: how cases truly without merit clutter the courts’ dockets and thus force judges to reject potentially more weighty disputes.

Events began in November 2017, when officer Troy Ann Safi responded to a domestic dispute in Brooklyn, New York. Ftema Raysor was beating her boyfriend with a hairbrush and biting his ear. Kings County District Attorney dropped criminal charges against Raysor during the initial arraignment process.

Two years later, in November 2019, Raysor filed a federal civil rights complaint pro se in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. A year still later, in December 2020, she amended her case by asking for $100 million in damages, and narrowing her claims from many more to two: false arrest and excessive force by Officer Safi. These initial complaints were a standard civil rights complaint hat accused NYPD of false arrest, racial bias and physical assault. Across the following years, Raysor failed to provide discovery on the federal case, while also pursuing a state case.

Finally, on November 12, 2025, the parties submitted a draft joint pretrial order. Then, at the Pretrial on December 29, 2025, U.S. District Judge Diane Gujarati warned Raysor that the witness list she had submitted for this meeting was deficient because she had subpoenaed irrelevant high-profile figures: Donald Trump, a former First Lady, Barack Obama, NYC Mayor Eric Adams, Reverend Al Sharpton and U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin. At the January 20, 2026 meeting, Raysor’s filing remained noncompliant. So, on February 18, the judge refused to schedule a trial date until Raysor amended her witness list, and the case was referred to court mediation. On June 11, the parties held a video mediation settlement conference before a federal magistrate judge, but failed to reach an agreement. The judge issued another pretrial order on June 18 for Raysor to fix her filing, which she again refused at a July 8 hearing. Finally, on July 21, the city filed a motion to dismiss.

But the case was not immediately dismissed, and instead escalated on August 12-14 when Raysor submitted what the court termed “fantastical” filings that claimed her life was in danger.  In this submission, Raysor explained why she was still insisting on subpoenaing high-profile individuals by stating: “I am running for President of United States of America and was when this event took place my witness are relevant.” She insisted she was refusing “to sit back and let the Law Department kill me.” She refused to cite “cases” because “this is a matter of life or death.” In parallel with these increasingly alarming to the defendants claims, she also set up a protest tent and began living outside the federal courthouse, and began posting photographs and alleged threats against the defense lawyers on YouTube and Instagram. She apparently did indeed register to run as an independent for president in the 2028 election: and this was partly what she was documenting on her social media.

Only after this breakdown—and not immediately afterwards but two weeks later—did Judge Gujarati finally dismiss this lawsuit with prejudice (i.e., without a right to appeal). Did the slowness of the American judicial system drive this filer mad, or did it drive her to the rational solution that instead of subpoenaing presidents she had to run for president to finally obtain some justice? Was she delusional at any point, or is this a woman who succeeded in manipulating judges to keep her case on their docket for a decade? Why was she given such extraordinary number of chances to amend her complaint? Plenty of pro se and public-defender litigants have rational claims rejected on technicalities. This case many lessons to teach us all. But these lessons are too mysterious for a law class.

Suggested Citation:
Faktorovich, Anna. “How a ‘Fantastical’ Claim from a ‘Presidential Candidate’ Was Stuck in Pre-Trial for 7 Years Before Dismissal.” Anaphora’s Law Review (October 26, 2026).

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Federal RICO Oversight of Teamsters Set to End

26 Oct

The latest decision in U.S.A. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, et al., U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska formally transitions the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) away from the preceding independent, court-ordered oversight and with a plan to return disciplinary control back to the union. Federal oversight commenced with a RICO lawsuit against IBT that established a consent decree in 1989. These restrictions began to be loosened in 2015 when the government seized direct involvement and put in place an outside oversight system. This 2026 order designs a plan to end oversight, claiming IBT is now free of mob corruption by having built a lasting democratically voting organization.

IBT has around 1.3 million active members across US and Canada, mostly in the delivery (UPS), transport (school buses), warehousing (Costco), civil service, airlines, railroads and food processing (Sysco) sectors.

There are now anti-mob injunctions, wherein IBT members must agree to avoid associating with a long list of barred individuals, such as La Cosa Nostra. The plan specifies that the role of the external Independent Investigations Officer (IIO) will be terminated on December 31, 2026, when their functions will transfer to IBT’s internal Office of Compliance Standards and Investigations (OCSI). Though federal judge Barbara S. Jones has been appointed to one more final three-year term as the Independent Review Officer (IRO) to oversee if the union is continuing to obey by anti-corruption mandates. And even after this three-year transition, IBT will continue to be overseen by an outside attorney with the title Independent Compliance Professional (ICP), who will sit on IBT’s Audit Committee.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has had an interventionalist strategy against unions since the 80s. Aside for IBT, four other unions have been the subjects of federal lawsuits that have led to consent decreases for monitoring or government takeovers: International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA), United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and United Slate, Tile and Composition Roofers. Most of these oversight programs are coming to an end. In related litigation over IBT, there has been recent dissolution in Chicago, after 40 years of oversight, of Teamsters Central States Pension Fund. These attacks on the unions contributed to lowering the overall union membership rates in the US from around 18% in 1985 to 10% in 2025 (CEPR). Though a similar trend is seen internationally, as OECD reports developed nations’ union rates have dropped from 30% in 1985 to 15% in 2023. America is more sharply falling behind on collective bargaining coverage, as workers covered by collective agreements have fallen from 47% (1985) to 33.6% (2024), but in the US this number is down to 11.3%. There have been some similar to the US anti-corruption lawsuits elsewhere that have also installed government-overseers in unions, as with Australia’s compulsory state administration over its construction union CFMEU, and Canada’s trusteeship over its construction unions.

Union membership fees have increased in part to support the millions the federal government has been charging unions for their oversight. Though beyond these RICO litigations that have framed unions as corrupt, there have also been decisions such as Janus v. AFSCME at the Supreme Court that struck down mandatory agency fees for public employees that instantly halved memberships in public-sector unions.

There have been a few other non-governmental entities that have faced similar RICO scrutiny. In 2015, the football FIFA association was indicted by DOJ over accepting over $150 million in bribes to decide who would host its future championship. DOJ then placed its own monitor to oversee its operations to avoid similar corruption in the future. And DOJ filed RICO charges against SAC Capital Advisors ($14 billion in assets), thus forcing it to restructure and pay for a court-appointed compliance monitor in addition to paying $1.8 billion settlement. Back during Trump’s one failed presidential run, IBT’s General President Sean M. O’Brien made the then strange step of being the first Teamsters president ever to address the Republican National Convention (RNC). While O’Brien did not endorse Trump and focused his speech on corporate greed, by breaking the union’s prior exclusive relationship with the Democratic party (as by hosting events with Trump at Mar-a-Lago) O’Brien ingratiated himself to Trump’s administration sufficiently for the current continuation of the shift to liberate IBT from oversight.

Suggested Citation:
Faktorovich, Anna. “Federal RICO Oversight of Teamsters Set to End.” Anaphora’s Law Review (October 26, 2026).

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Conviction of Podcaster for Threatening Officials’ Demise Overturned

26 Oct

In a September 15, 2026 decision in State v. Ford, the Court of Appeals of Ohio, Sixth Appellate District reversed a previous conviction of a podcaster, Ashli Ford, over her hyperbolic anti-officials statements.

Three years earlier, in 2023, Ford was arraigned on falsification charges for publishing a Facebook post aimed at four Norwalk city officials—the Mayor, Law Director, Police Chief and Safety Service Director. She claimed she had these officials “on” their “knees”, adding: “I will escort you to your demise in a manner more akin to Malcolm X than Martin Luther King Jr.” Though the rest of the post stated she hoped to “crumble the reputation” of justice-blockers by pursuing them in the “court of public opinion”. She accused them of being guilty of municipal corruption, sex scandals and fiscal mismanagement. Initially, the court agreed with the officials that the reference to the “manner” of “demise” of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King suggested a threat of an assassination, finding her guilty of four felony counts of intimidation, punished with a probation sentence.

The appellate court overruled this previous decision by finding that the broader context threatened reputational versus physical harm, and thus could not be interpreted as a harm-threatening intimidation. One element of this context was that she had threatened to run for mayor herself, which contradicted any plans to assassinate her opponents. The court decided that under the First Amendment, a listener’s subjective fear alone is legally insufficient to transform political speech into a “true threat”. Ford had no history of physical violence, and previously merely threatened to sue these officials into bankruptcy: these were examples of mere political hyperbole protected by the law.

There have been many similar cases that have similarly been decided in favor of the speaker, unless the language used includes explicit, unconditional promise of physical violence. The precent for this direction in decisions has been Watts v. United States (1969), when during an anti-war rally, an 18-year-old stated: “If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sight is L.B.J.” He was initially convicted before the Supreme Court reversed it, establishing the right to “crude, offensive political opposition” as a protected hyperbole, and not a “true threat”. Though an Alabama woman was federally indicted for posting on Facebook a direct threat of violence against Trump: “i’ll put a bullet through him if he dares” visit their local football stadium. While there have been a few exceptions, the scales have shifted further in the direction of free-speech-guarantee in Counterman v. Colorado (2023) that decided the prosecutors not only needed to prove a “reasonable listener’s” feeling threatened, but also the speaker’s subjective mindset, or that they acted recklessly while consciously intending to express physical violence. The reason for this shift towards free-speech must be the widespread use of semi-threats, or hyperbolic aggressive language across social media. If each threatening message was prosecutable, the courts would have a lot of added cases on their dockets. It is easy to sympathize with both sides of many borderline cases. When modern politicians assassinate fishermen by blowing up their boats without due process, it is very easy for emotions to flare and for a speaker to respond with equally violent rhetoric without intending to cause any harm. On the other hand, a politician or a reporter who faces veiled threats of violence is likely tempted to turn these over to the police to protect themselves in case the speaker is issuing a warning of planning to do them physical harm.

Suggested Citation:
Faktorovich, Anna. “Conviction of Podcaster for Threatening Officials’ Demise Overturned.” Anaphora’s Law Review (October 26, 2026).

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Attempt to “Solve” LA Homelessness by Blocking Federal Funding

25 Oct

In LAHSA v. Donald Trump, et al, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) and the Los Angeles Continuum of Care (LA CoC) filed a lawsuit against the federal government, naming President Donald J. Trump and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as defendants. This suit is in response to the June 11, 2026 abrupt order from HUD that had suspended LAHSA’s mandated role as the collaborative applicant that had been managing the region’s federal homelessness grant applications. HUD explained this defunding by pointing to a two-decade history of “obvious fraud”, gross financial mismanagement, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and a severe failure to pay local shelter providers $69 million (according to the overdue balance specified in LA County Auditor-Controller’s review in 2026). The latter has meant that many shelters were already on the brink of bankruptcy before HUD blocked LAHSA’s funds.

The recent appeal is primarily objecting that the defunding occurred after LAHSA had already been funded by HUD for the 2024-6 period. The sudden withdrawal means the Los Angeles region anticipated receiving $239 million federal funding that will no longer be accessible, leading to a looming crisis among LA shelters. The first filing was successful in convincing the California U.S. District Court to issue a preliminary injunction o force HUD to reinstate LAHSA’s role and to disburse the promised $239 million. However, the latest September 2026 ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied the motion to remove LAHSA (because it was too abrupt, given that HUD knew about corruption in LAHSA across the past decades), but upheld HUD’s right to block paying the $239 million (because HUD had invited shelters to apply directly with them, instead of using LAHSA as a corrupted gatekeeper). Though the latter excuse is problematic because HUD has admitted it had not received any successful direct applications through its special portal from shelters that now cannot apply through LAHSA: these small entities have not hired any grant writers after decades of allowing LAHSA to handle this work for them.

Back in the 2007 HUD audit, regulators found that LAHSA failed to conduct onsite fiscal monitoring of project sponsors, lacked required documentation, paid for ineligible expenses, and had poor cash management controls. Then in the 2022 HUD audit, it found that LAHSA had allowed $3.5 million in Continuum of Care (CoC) grant awards expire unused, missed performance deadlines, and lacked documentation for over $870,000 in internal payroll and rent costs. Fraud allegations against LAHSA accuse it of over-requesting funding from HUD and inappropriately shifting cash balances between different grants to mask deficits. And a 2026 review found that LAHSA had undisclosed conflicts of interest in direct personal ties between LAHSA’s CEO and awardees.

While LAHSA is a notoriously corrupt example, HUD has filed similar funding blocks against many other agencies and states that have no such records of corruption. In response, the attorneys general of states including Washington, New York California and Rhode Island have successfully sued HUD to block their attempts to rapidly change funding rules. These successful lawsuits have explained that HUD has attempted to decrease funding by 90% while implementing pre-conditions on homelessness aid (i.e., mandatory job training or drug treatments). Federal judges have blocked these rule-changes nationwide.

There have been a few failed attempts to stop corruption at LAHSA, such as the LA City Council’s 2023 issue of restrictions when it learned LAHSA was not tracking when homeless people left hotel housing, and thus was receiving public funds for empty hotel rooms. And in 2025, the LA County Board of Supervisors voted to defund LAHSA starting on July 1, 2026 because it was routinely late in paying shelters (the source of the $69 million figure), which had caused 284 layoffs. HUD’s attempts to suddenly withdraw funding has been met with expected blocks by courts because they threaten to leave thousands of homeless people stranded. It seems as if HUD’s organizers are deliberately attempting to prove corruption investigations or funding withdrawals from mismanaging entities is impossible by applying a maximally irrational approach in their ironic attempt. The LA homelessness funding system is indeed in need of an overhaul as the homeless are being blocked access to resources that are being eaten up by corrupt middlemen. But switching middlemen by instead forcing the homeless or the minor homelessness agencies to apply directly through a far more inefficient and likely more corrupt federal portal is obviously the wrong approach. There must be some way to disburse assistance systematically. There should be buildings that just provide housing to those who can meet minimum requirements to prove they need it. Homelessness is solved by providing homes, not by wasting most of the funding for this problem on self-dealing administrators.

Suggested Citation:
Faktorovich, Anna. “Attempt to ‘Solve’ LA Homelessness by Blocking Federal Funding.” Anaphora’s Law Review (October 25, 2026).

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Another Crypto Founder Charged with Fraud, While the Giants Remain Unscathed

25 Oct

Back in 2022, Arshad Assofi et al v. Donald Basile e al was filed in the U.S. District Court in California. After an arbitrator issued a $42.5 million damages award in 2025, GIBF filed a new appealing lawsuit in Delaware: GIBF GP, Inc. v. Arshad Assofi, where Judge Maryellen Noreika has just confirmed the California decision to issue the award.

The lawsuit was first filed by investor Arshad Assofi against the founder of Bitcoin Latinum token (LTNM) Donald Basile and GIBF GP, Inc., alleging this operation was a worthless scam. Assofi argued that Basile convinced him to invest based on false information about the other backers, such as receiving $20 million from the producers of Star Trek (denied by Paramount). Basile had suggested this association by naming this currency after “latinum”, a fictional currency employed by the Ferengi in Star Trek. Basile had also falsely claimed that the coin was backed by an asset trust and insured for up to $1 billion.

Assofi had invested $15 million by purchasing simple agreements for future tokens (SAFTs). But Basile had misappropriated these funds on personal real estate and luxury items such as a $160,000 horse. When he realized Basile was not building this coin and that it would remain worthless, he asked for a refund that Basile refused, leading to this battle.

SEC also filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Basile, GIBF GP, Inc. and Monsoon Blockchain Corporation on April 17, 2026 in New York. SEC’s case mirrors Assofi’s filings, while aiming to apply new penalties, including banning Basile from serving as an officer of a public company.

Bitcoin Latinum saw a peak token price of around $190 during the 2021 crypto boom, but has dropped to around $.41. KuCoin shows an all-time high as $9,322, but this was a brief glitch at which the public would not have been able to trade this coin. The coin’s website is defunct, but the business has not yet officially filed for bankruptcy protection.

While the case names hundreds of defrauded investors, it seems there was only $16 million invested, with most being from Assofi. Other investors have filed in Michigan against a promoter who had convinced them to purchase Latinum.

The most recent appeal filing claimed the arbitration award was manipulated “by corruption, fraud, or undue means” with “evident partiality or corruption in the arbitrators”, specifically Daniel B. Garrie, Esq., who were “guilty of misconduct in refusing to postpone the hearing” and by “refusing to hear evidence pertinent… to the controversy”.

From Basile’s perspective, he claimed Assofi’s purchase of the tokens was made with no binding investment relationship. Basile argued that the sudden 95% drop in the token’s price coincided by the crypto market’s crash, as opposed to any deception on his part. Basile initially attempted to threaten a $1 billion countersuit that accused Assofi of filing fabricated fraud charges in an extortion scheme. Basile has not yet surrendered any money or assets in response to the arbitration decision. And if SEC wins their case before Basile pays Assofi, SEC might empty Basile’s coffers before Assofi digs in.

There have been several similar lawsuits over crypto currency owners defrauding investors: the crypto owners have lost most of these. FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried diverted $8 billion in customer deposits and is now serving a 25-year federal prison sentence with a looming $11 billion forfeiture order. Terraform Labs’ Do Kwon was found guilty of operating a $40 billion fraud, now serving a 15-year prison sentence, and owns $19 million in forfeiture. The one escape-hatch has been Changpeng Zhao securing a pardon from Trump and negotiating a settlement with the Department of Justice by paying a $4.3 billion penalty for Binance.

Is the difference then between crypto fraud and legality in if it is operated or protected by the president? If not being too cynical, there are provable frauds in these convicted crypto entities, as in the Latinum case: false claims of insurance protection and backers, and a lack of a finance platform on a recognized public blockchain. As long as World Liberty Financial (WLF) is disclosing that it is paying out millions in tokens to the Trump family, it is not defrauding other buyers. Though WLF has recently been civilly sued over constitutional and corporate violations, such as corruptly accepting billions from foreign governments (especially UAE).

All but the top major multi-billion crypto businesses have been sued by U.S. regulators (SEC, CFTC, DOJ) over fraud or unregistered security offerings. Largely because of Trump’s personal profiteering from crypto, he has put leadership in place at SEC that has lowered its crypto laws by 60%. The biggest still operating crypto companies, such as Binance and Crypto.com have only been hit with regulatory lawsuits, as opposed to criminal fraud charges. The reason the top crypto company in the world, Bitcoin ($1.62 trillion), has not been sued by a U.S. regulator is because it is a decentralized, open-source software protocol without any corporate founder who might have been accused of fraud. Though it is very suspicious that the second largest business, Ethereum ($286 billion), has never been sued despite it having a founder, Vitalik Buterin. It is logical to assume that the companies at the top have been knocking out their competition by encouraging federal prosecutions against their competitors over fraud charges. Otherwise, there would not be exceptions of top companies that are committing the same securities violations, but are skipped over. For example, the third largest company, Tether ($182 billion), has faced multiple lawsuits, such as about its corporate statements that each 1 USDT token was backed 1:1 with cash, when it was merely backed by unsecured commercial debt and commingled corporate funds. It is improbable that Ethereum or Bitcoin have billions or trillions in cash in their vaults, and yet they have not faced the same scrutiny.

The winners in the crypto game seem to be hackers who can create the illusion of their non-involvement and thus prevent being vulnerable to personal fraud charges. The biggest fraudsters are those who can escape liability even beyond the protections offered to corporations.

And why are coin founders being accused of pocketing millions from investors for “personal gain” when all American corporate CEOs are pocketing millions in salaries and bonuses? Is the distinction that the crypto businesses are collapsing too soon after this pocketing? The lack of profitability is normal, as around 13% of biotech and AI startup companies in the Nasdaq have no revenue, and half are unprofitable. Investors who bet on unprofitable ventures are being defrauded through false advertising that promises they are going to become ultra-profitable in the future. There must be many exaggerations in unprofitable companies’ marketing that have cast this false confidence over the public. The point of fraud cases against crypto founders seems to have been to discourage small startups in this sphere for the giants to monopolize it. Crypto as a concept is a fraud: it is a fictional currency that can be manipulated by hackers who pretend a system is functioning because it is being fairly “mined”. Then again, state-issued currencies that are not backed by gold are also frauds: because there is no 1:1 backing for trillions in fictional bucks being printed. In an ideal world, nobody could speculate on currency, as there would be some international monetary unit that does not change in value and has no “creator”. People would just trade goods and services at standard exchange rates, without needing to worry about their local currency being devalued. But with trillions to be made on intervening in this utopia as middleman pocketing a share of all transactions, we are going to continue to see litigation until this sector is a monopoly.

Suggested Citation:
Faktorovich, Anna. “Another Crypto Founder Charged with Fraud, While the Giants Remain Unscathed.” Anaphora’s Law Review (October 25, 2026).

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