DOJ Defies a Federal Judge, Trump’s Iran “Surrender,” and the Plot to Brand Protesters Terrorists
Notes from this week’s Frank Figliuzzi Show
Frank opened Friday’s show the way he opens most of them lately: with breaking news that arrived in the last hour. A federal judge, Brinkema, had ordered the Trump Justice Department to put in writing that it would not revive what Frank calls “the slush fund for felons” — the proposed payout tied to the January 6 IRS lawsuit that Trump has repeatedly tried to recast as a “settlement.” DOJ’s answer to the court came back essentially as a refusal, with the administration arguing the judiciary has no business telling the executive branch what to do. For anyone who suspected Trump was never going to let go of that fund, this was the confirmation.
I moderated and fielded questions from the more than 200 people who joined live, while Frank worked through his list of the week’s most consequential stories — and the threads connecting them.
The Iran “Deal” That Isn’t One
Frank didn’t soften this one: the so-called Iran deal is, in his words, a cocktail napkin with an MOU attached, not an agreement. The United States is poised to hand back billions in frozen assets to the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, while the regime it was supposed to weaken remains intact, the Strait of Hormuz is no more secure than before the war, and American service members have already paid the price in strikes on regional bases. Frank’s read is blunt: Trump started a war, lost it, and is now buying his way out of the embarrassment. The one bright spot he flagged is that cracks are forming inside MAGA itself, with far-right lawmakers beginning to say openly that this is a mistake.
The DNI Shakeup Nobody’s Talking About Correctly
Trump pulled his own DNI nominee, Jay Clayton, days before a scheduled confirmation hearing — and Frank thinks the why matters more than the headline. His theory: installing mortgage executive Bill Pulte as acting DNI isn’t about competence, it’s about control. Pulte has already shown, in Frank’s assessment, a willingness to use his current government position to dig up information on the president’s political enemies. Frank’s concern is that an acting DNI with no Senate confirmation hearing could sit in that seat well into the midterms, potentially surfacing a “classified” pretext for intervening in how the election itself is run.
That theory ties directly into two other threads Frank laid out: the lapse of FISA Section 702 — which he stressed has not created an immediate security gap, since the FISA court’s certification holds through March — and the so-called Save America Act, which Frank calls the Unsave America Act, tying national ID requirements to election administration that the Constitution leaves to the states. Senate Majority Leader John Thune is reportedly pushing back, which Frank counts as one more crack in the armor.
Antifa, RICO, and the Statute That Doesn’t Exist
The story Frank wanted front and center this week: fifteen people charged this week, labeled “Antifa,” for tracking ICE agent locations — facing federal charges including conspiracy carrying up to six years. Frank’s point isn’t that the underlying conduct should go unexamined; it’s that the label is doing work the law doesn’t actually support. The U.S. still has no domestic terrorism statute on the books. What it has is a patchwork of underlying charges — conspiracy, interstate threats, in the most extreme cases RICO — that get stacked once a group is informally designated. Frank walked through why that distinction matters: international terror designations come with a documented, public evidentiary trail. Domestic ones, as currently used, do not.
He connected this to a broader pattern: the State Department reportedly pushing allies to prioritize left-wing terrorism, law enforcement guidance shifting in the same direction, and the Justice Department going after groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center on theories Frank calls, charitably, thin. He also flagged DHS and ICE attempts to compel carriers like Instagram to identify anonymous accounts criticizing or tracking ICE — without warrants, and now via grand jury subpoenas after carriers initially refused.
A related audience question pulled in the detention infrastructure being built out by DHS — large-capacity facilities purchased under DHS rather than processing agencies. Frank didn’t hedge on the historical parallel he sees forming, invoking Korematsu v. United States and the internment of Japanese American citizens during World War II.
The Kratom Story You Haven’t Heard Enough About
Frank’s “corruption continues” segment this week centered on Kratom — a plant-derived stimulant sold openly in gas stations and convenience stores that hits the same brain receptors as opioids and has been linked to thousands of overdose deaths. DHS Secretary Mark Wayne Mullin reportedly holds up to a million dollars in a Kratom company, never divested after taking office, and has used his position to push rules that benefit that company over competitors. Per Frank’s reporting, the same company paid a Trump-connected lobbyist $600,000, after which DOJ dropped a pending lawsuit against it, the FDA scrubbed warning language from its site, and RFK Jr. — who also received PAC money tied to the company — intervened to stop a state-level ban in Ohio.
A Few More Threads
Frank also touched on Trump’s stock purchase in TKO, the parent company of UFC, ahead of announcing a White House cage fight — a sequence he likened to a pump-and-dump. On World Refugee Day, he noted the contrast between more than 120,000 already-approved refugees currently blocked from entry and the administration’s expanded admissions cap for Afrikaner refugees from South Africa. And on the broader theme of institutional decay, Frank connected dots between science denial — from the reflecting pool repainting controversy to ignored warnings ahead of the Iran strikes — and the concept of “state capture,” a term he encountered covering Russian resource extraction in Africa and Ukraine, where corruption itself becomes the operating system.
We closed on Christian nationalism, Opus Dei, and the kind of Georgetown “salon” gatherings now drawing scrutiny after the Peter Thiel dialogue reporting — Frank’s view is that proximity isn’t the story; documented membership and advocacy is.
This Week’s Good News
Frank always ends with something hopeful, and this week it was the Senate moving — with bipartisan support — to block the dismantling of a $368 million ocean-monitoring system critical to climate and national security tracking, after the administration had moved to rip it out entirely.
