President Donald Trump‘s top prosecutor in Washington, D.C., has sent a letter to the nonprofit behind Wikipedia — the free online encyclopedia “anyone can edit,” according to the website — accusing it of “masking propaganda that influences public opinion” and “permitting information manipulation” in benefit of “foreign powers,” the letter says.

Ed Martin, who is the president’s nominee to oversee the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, wrote that the Justice Department would be probing the “content manipulation” to see if Wikimedia Foundation was “engaging in a series of activities” that could violate its “obligations under Section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code,” which is what ultimately gives the organization its ability to operate as a nonprofit exempt from paying taxes.

“Wikipedia is permitting information manipulation on its platform, including the rewriting of key, historical events and biographical information of current and previous American leaders, as well as other matters implicating the national security and the interests of the United States,” Martin alleged.

“Masking propaganda that influences public opinion under the guise of providing informational material is antithetical to Wikimedia’s ‘educational’ mission,” the interim U.S. attorney said. “In addition, Wikipedia’s operations are directed by its board that is composed primarily of foreign nationals, subverting the interests of American taxpayers. Again, educational content is directionally neutral; but information received by my Office demonstrates that Wikipedia’s informational management policies benefit foreign powers.”

A Jan. 6 defendant from Texas who ran for Congress last year and is reportedly attempting another political run has been granted permission to “examine and publish” footage, evidence and discovery from his criminal case surrounding the events of the 2021 Capitol attack — but the Justice Department says not so fast.

Ryan Zink, 35, of Lubbock, was granted access last week by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on account of the DOJ not filing a memorandum in opposition to Zink’s March 22 motion to lift a protective order keeping his case material sealed. Boasberg issued a minute order on April 9 announcing his decision, which the DOJ apparently saw and responded to Wednesday with the document in question.

“As the Government has not opposed Defendant’s Motion to Lift Protective Order, the Court orders that the Motion is granted, and the Protective Order is lifted,” a docket entry from Boasberg said last week.

In response, the DOJ’s top prosecutor in Washington, D.C., Ed Martin, signed off on a memorandum in opposition Wednesday that said granting such a request to Zink would put people at risk and pose a threat to national security.

“Lifting a protective order in this case creates a dangerous opportunity and could potentially place sensitive information in the possession of those who would use it to harm the national security, in addition to allowing terabytes of information including individual defendants’, witnesses’, and victims’ personal identifying information to be released to the public,” Martin said. “The government has thus demonstrated that release of these materials could cause a significant hazard to others, and there is no prejudice to the defendant from continuing the protective order here.”

President Donald Trump handed down orders to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday directing federal law enforcement to go after lawyers and law firms that challenge his administration with “frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation.”

The White House issued a memo late Friday announcing Trump’s memorandum, which was titled, “Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court.” In it, the Trump administration warns that lawyers and firms engaging in actions that violate the laws of the United States or rules governing attorney conduct “must be efficiently and effectively held accountable.”

“Accountability is especially important when misconduct by lawyers and law firms threatens our national security, homeland security, public safety, or election integrity,” the memo states. An example of “grossly unethical misconduct” is included in the memorandum, with Trump administration officials claiming it’s “far too common.”

“For instance, in 2016, Marc Elias, founder and chair of Elias Law Group LLP, was deeply involved in the creation of a false ‘dossier’ by a foreign national designed to provide a fraudulent basis for Federal law enforcement to investigate a Presidential candidate in order to alter the outcome of the Presidential election,” the memo alleges. “Elias also intentionally sought to conceal the role of his client — failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton — in the dossier.”

A Democratic member of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, an independent administrative agency tasked with administering “labor-management relations” for over 2 million government workers, was “unlawfully removed” by President Donald Trump last month, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Susan Tsui Grundmann, who was axed on Feb. 11, has been suing the Trump administration for what she claims was an “unconstitutional” removal from the FLRA, which is a three-member agency charged by Congress with “managing federal labor relations” in an “unbiased” and “fair” way that she says is not supposed to “shift with political whims.” With Grundmann in, the FLRA would have a 2-1 Democratic majority until her term expires in July.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan handed down her ruling in the case — siding with Grundmann and her argument that Trump’s firing of her was “unlawful” — after the Justice Department argued Article II of the Constitution gave Trump the power to remove executive branch officials without cause, including members of the FLRA.

“The Government vigorously defends Ms. Grundmann’s hasty termination on the basis that the Constitution vests the entirety of the ‘executive Power’ in the President,” Sooknanan said. “The government’s arguments paint with a broad brush and threaten to upend fundamental protections in our Constitution. But ours is not an autocracy; it is a system of checks and balances. Our Founders recognized that the concentration of power in one branch of government would spell disaster.”

State attorneys general in 20 states suing the Trump administration over its mass firings of federal workers have “no hope of success” against the president and his Justice Department lawyers, the DOJ says — arguing in a new filing on Monday that “third parties cannot interject themselves” into government-employee affairs.

“The States cannot circumvent that channeling scheme by asserting downstream harm from those employment actions,” the DOJ said in an opposition filing on behalf of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Education and other federal agencies being sued by unions in Washington, D.C., Maryland and 18 other states across the country where government workers live. “Nor do the States have any legitimate claims of their own,” the filing said.

DOJ lawyers are asking U.S. District Judge James Bredar to deny a motion filed by the states on Friday for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to “restrain and enjoin” the USDA from terminating federal probationary employees without making “specific, individualized determinations regarding the inadequacy of the employee’s conduct or performance” and without complying with requirements applicable to “Reductions in Force” procedures. The states are also seeking an order that would reinstate probationary employees who have been “unlawfully fired” by USDA officials and an order compelling the agency to file a status report with the court within 48 hours — and at “regular intervals thereafter” — identifying terminated probationary employees and describing the steps the government will take to comply with the order.

“Notably, this is not the first lawsuit to seek this relief,” the DOJ pointed out Monday in its opposition filing. “A set of unions sued in federal court in the District of Columbia a few weeks ago to rescind the termination of the probationary workers.”

The U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump‘s firings of approximately 5,900 probationary employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture who have been booted since he took office in January.

In a stay issued on Wednesday by embattled MSPB member Cathy Harris, who has been fighting for her job herself, the board condemned the terminations as “planned eliminations” and violations of “personnel practice.”

“I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the agency engaged in a prohibited personnel practice,” Harris wrote in the MSPB order, noting how Biden ethics enforcer Hampton Dellinger — who is battling Trump’s Justice Department in federal court over his firing at the Office of Special Counsel — provided findings from an OSC investigation on the USDA removals this week that “reasonably” alleges and outlines personnel violations by the Trump administration.

Harris said the board believed there were “reasonable grounds” to stay the firings for 45 days while MSPB members continue to investigate, on account of there being so many people involved.

“Because there is a possibility that additional individuals, not specifically named in the agency’s response, may be affected by these probationary terminations, and given the assertions made in OSC’s initial stay request and the deference to which we afford OSC in the context of an initial stay request, I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the agency terminated the aforementioned probationary employees in violation of (civil service laws),” Harris explained.

Massive firings by Donald Trump’s administration have purged several federal agencies of thousands of career civil servants, but none more dramatically than in the U.S. Department of Justice.

At least a dozen United States Attorneys have been removed, and hundreds of lawyers and investigators who worked on the Jan. 6 and the Trump indictments face potential firing as well. And there is then the resignation of seven prosecutors who refused the Justice Department order to dismiss criminal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams — leading, now, to a temporary delay in a case that is ultimately likely to result in a dismissal given the Justice Department’s unwillingness to prosecute it.

But apart from the removal of experienced and professional attorneys is what appears to be a radical transformation of the Department’s longtime guiding ethos. To many observers, the Justice Department has become under Trump’s regime a terrifying weapon to accuse and prosecute Trump’s enemies and protect his friends. To these observers, “Justice” now means “Trump justice,” not the way justice is defined in the Justice Department’s manual as dependent on the rule of law, an evenhanded approach to the administration of justice, and the requirement that legal judgments be made impartially and insulated from political influence.

So, the big question for defense lawyers is whether — and to what extent — prosecuting federal criminal cases may be different.

For as long as we can remember, most criminal defense lawyers believed they were dealing with fair-minded and nonpolitical federal prosecutors. Lawyers strategized to try to persuade prosecutors that the potential charges were weak on the merits; that the government could not sustain its burden of proof; that a key witness wouldn’t hold up; that the trial jury would be unimpressed with the evidence; that the jury wouldn’t be “outraged” by what would be presented to it; that there was some sympathetic fact about the defendant that might encourage the jury to acquit; or that there was some “nullifying” fact about the case or the victim’s motivations that would undermine the prosecution’s theory.