The Paper Trail: January 3, 2025

Hackers Breach Treasury Sanctions Office; Congress’s Top Defense Stock Traders; The Rise of Big Potato; and More.

Jan 03, 2025

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The Paper Trail

Announcements

The Confirmation Process: POGO’s virtual training on how to vet presidential nominees effectively will be Tuesday, January 7 at 12 noon. This event is only open to staff in Congress, GAO, and CRS. Register HERE.

Classified Documents

Jack Smith hands over Trump Mar-a-Lago case: Special Counsel Jack Smith this week formally withdrew from the classified documents case, handing it over to other prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. The office hasn’t said what it plans to do with the case, which may continue for Trump’s co-defendants, Mar-a-Lago employees Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira. (Andrew Stanton, Newsweek)

Supreme Court Ethics

Senate Democrats find many ethical lapses by Supreme Court justices: Supreme Court justices have regularly failed to identify conflicts of interest that require their recusal and have accepted lavish gifts without reporting them, including previously undisclosed jet and yacht travel by Justice Clarence Thomas, according to a Senate Judiciary Committee report. (Justin Jouvenal, Washington Post)

Judicial body won’t refer Clarence Thomas to Justice Department over ethics lapses: The Judicial Conference, an organization that sets national policy for federal courts, rejected a request from two Democratic lawmakers to refer Justice Thomas to the DOJ over free travel and gifts from wealthy benefactors that he omitted from his financial disclosures. Judicial Conference Secretary Robert Conrad Jr. argued there is uncertainty over whether he has the authority to refer complaints about Supreme Court justices. (Zoë Richards, NBC News)

Police Misconduct

Beyond excessive force: How police abuse women, the poor, the homeless: Justice Department reports detail how police officers sexually assault women, mistreat the homeless and people suffering from mental health episodes, exploit poor people, threaten and abuse minors, and punish protesters exercising their constitutional rights. “Police killings, as terrible as they are, are relatively infrequent. But these other types of abuses are happening every single day to hundreds, if not thousands, of people,” said a former DOJ official. (David Nakamura, Washington Post)

Defense and Veterans Affairs

New Year’s attacks fuel fears of extremism in military: The primary suspects in two deadly New Year’s Day attacks shared a history of service in the U.S. military, amplifying questions about the extent of radical and unstable veterans and active-duty troops and whether the Pentagon’s efforts to root out extremism in the ranks are working. (Ellen Mitchell, The Hill)

Trump has promised to build more ships. He may deport the workers who help make them: President-elect Trump has promised to increase the pace of U.S. military shipbuilding. But his pledge to also clamp down on immigration could make it hard for shipyards already facing workforce shortages. (Nicole Foy, ProPublica)

Top defense stock traders in Congress in 2024: At least 37 members of Congress and their families traded between $24 million and $113 million worth of defense contractor stocks in 2024. Eight of these members simultaneously held positions on committees overseeing defense policy and foreign relations. (Nick Cleveland-Stout, Responsible Statecraft)

Business and Finance

The American oil industry’s playbook, illustrated: How drillers offload costly cleanup onto the public: More than 2 million oil and gas wells sit unplugged across the U.S. Many leak contaminants into waterways, farmland, and neighborhoods. The industry has already left hundreds of thousands of wells as orphans, leaving taxpayers on the hook for cleanup. (Mark Olalde, ProPublica)

Death on the night shift at frozen pizza factories in Chicago: Companies turn to staffing agencies to find workers for factories, warehouses, and distribution centers. The workers, often people who are in the country illegally, are vulnerable to exploitation. Staffing agencies allow the companies to sidestep responsibility for the treatment of these workers. (Marcela Valdes et al., New York Times)

Three big banks sued by CFPB over Zelle scams: The CFPB alleges JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo allowed fraud to run rampant on the payment app Zelle and failed to put safeguards in place to protect users, whom the agency claims have lost $870 million since Zelle was launched in 2017. (Dylan Tokar, Wall Street Journal)

The rise of Big Potato: Allegations of price collusion among the four major suppliers of frozen potato products reveal the new, sophisticated methods food corporations are using to keep prices high. (Katya Schwenk, The Lever)

Tech

In the shadows of Arizona’s data center boom, thousands live without power: As data centers drain America’s power grids, a fierce battle is being waged for electricity. On Navajo Nation land, many are on the losing end. (Pranshu Verma, Washington Post)

The men who use Instagram to groom child influencers: Photographers and other men offer to build online followings for young girls, but some are pedophiles who work with parents to sexualize them. (Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Michael H. Keller, New York Times)

Health Care

“Would he have lived?” When insurance companies deny cancer care to patients: Cancer diagnoses are often compounded by insurance company denials of treatments and screenings and a peer review process that cancer patients and their families describe as “harrowing.” (Gretchen Morgenson, NBC News)

🔎 See Also: How taxpayers are helping health insurers make even bigger profits (Chris Hamby, New York Times)

🔎 See Also: Insurers continue to rely on doctors whose judgments have been criticized by courts (Duaa Eldeib and Maya Miller, ProPublica)

The EPA promotes toxic fertilizer. 3M told it of risks years ago: The EPA continues to promote sewage sludge as fertilizer and doesn’t require testing for toxic “forever chemicals,” even though whistleblowers, academics, state officials, and the agency’s internal studies have long raised contamination concerns. (Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times)