#43AMERICANS
No lobbyists.
No connections.
Just the record.
Nurses, doctors, veterans, engineers, software developers, small business owners, public servants, parents. One of us was never charged with anything and lost nearly $900,000 to forfeiture. One was acquitted before the jury finished deliberating, having already spent everything he owned on his defense. Twelve are in prison tonight. The verdicts differ. The cost did not.
Some of us you will have heard of, and some of those stories you will not like. That is the point. The Justice Department did not check whether we were sympathetic before it started. Neither should anyone reviewing it now.
Why this site exists
They have the press release, the podium and the paperwork. Every one of us has the same thing instead: a record nobody read.
So this is where the records go. Some of us are still in court — appealing, awaiting retrial, waiting on a date. That work happens inside a courthouse, where a handful of people read the filings and nobody else ever does.
This is the other half. The same documents, in public, under our own names, where anyone can check them line by line against the government’s version.
One person saying this happened is dismissible. That is not an accident, it is the design. Forty-three is harder to wave off. Four hundred is a finding.
Every case documented and open for anyone to review.
Dates that have not happened yet.
Everything else on this site already happened. These have not.
Michael Castillero and Brian Martinsen were due to report on September 10. Both dates were moved to October 20.
Read their casesPart one
The Justice Department can be wrong about you, and nothing happens to it.
This is not a claim about motive. It is a claim about consequence — and the government keeps the records itself.
In fiscal year 2022 the Department’s own Office of Professional Responsibility processed 397 matters and found professional misconduct in fourteen of them.1 Fourteen findings against Department attorneys, in writing, by the Department.
Here is what happened next.
- Nobody checked that the punishment happened The Government Accountability Office found the Department could not confirm that attorneys found to have committed misconduct actually served the discipline imposed on them.2 Not that the discipline was light. That there is no record it occurred.
- A federal judge asked the question out loud On 18 November 2025 a federal district judge asked the government why one case had sat for six years while comparable cases were charged and tried. Was this one weaker than those? Counsel said yes, and that it went without saying — it would have been charged otherwise. The judge cut in: “No, I think it has to be said. That’s the whole point.” The government had separately argued in writing that it may pick a defendant based partly on the deterrent effect on other people. That argument is lawful. No court ever reached it.3
- Their errors are harmless. Ours are not. A federal jury was told that a defendant has to prove she acted in good faith. That is backwards — the government has to prove she did not. On 31 July 2026 the appeals court agreed the instruction was wrong, called the error harmless, and left the conviction standing. She is serving twenty years. The same court noted the trial judge gave the government forty minutes to close and gave her thirty. Also harmless.4
- When a defendant is the one who misleads a court That is an obstruction enhancement, and it adds years to the sentence. There is no equivalent running the other way.
- Eleven weeks On 18 May 2026 the Attorney General established a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people harmed by prosecutorial overreach. On 2 August 2026 the order was rescinded; the rescission states that there is no fund. What is left is gated at thresholds almost nobody clears. The Hyde Amendment requires proving the prosecution was vexatious or brought in bad faith. Compensation for unjust conviction requires a court-issued certificate of innocence.5
Every review available to us happens inside the institution being reviewed, by people who report to it, under standards the Department itself cannot confirm were enforced.
We know what that is like from the other end. Every one of us has been told to trust a process that answers to nobody, and has watched it answer to nobody.
A system cannot be the judge of its own conduct. That is why we are asking someone outside it to look.
Part two
The government has already said some of these went wrong. The record still says otherwise.
Not us. It.
- 7 April 2025 The Deputy Attorney General issued a memorandum titled “Ending Regulation by Prosecution,” directing federal prosecutors not to charge unlicensed money transmitting in digital-asset cases. Four months later Roman Storm was convicted of exactly that. He faces retrial.6
- Charges dismissed mid-trial The Attorney General ordered every charge against Dr. Kirk Moore dismissed while his trial was already under way.
- Dismissed with prejudice Armed U.S. Marshals were sent to Dr. Eithan Haim’s home. The Justice Department later dropped every charge, permanently.
- Two full pardons Jeremy Hutchinson, May 2025. Mike McMahon — a retired NYPD sergeant who was at the towers on 11 September — November 2025. The Second Circuit vacated McMahon’s conviction the following year.7
Four of the forty-three. Each one an official act, on the record. And not one of them got their years back, their savings back, or their name back.
Still online
The Justice Manual instructs that a press release issued before a finding of guilt should say the charge is only an accusation and that the defendant is presumed innocent.8 It says nothing about what happens afterward. There is no correction policy. There is nobody to ask.
So the announcement outlives the case. The Department’s page for Angelica Pacheco still lists charges that were dismissed before trial, still offers the thrown-out indictment for download, and still asks for victim impact statements. It was last updated two and a half months after the case ended.9
Dr. Kirk Moore’s charges were dismissed by order of the Attorney General, mid-trial. Search his name.
Part three
People with money started putting a price on clemency.
Thirty million dollars for one, reportedly. We filed ours the ordinary way, for free — and it was not the White House selling.
Over the past year a market grew up around presidential clemency. Bloomberg reported an offer to arrange a pardon for $30 million, which the White House said it knew nothing about. NBC News reported lobbyists fielding proposals as high as $5 million to press a single case. Reporting describes the White House Chief of Staff and the White House Counsel restructuring the process to shut that traffic out.10
A White House official told reporters nobody should be profiting off pardons, and that anyone spending money to lobby for one is wasting it.10
We agree, and we have never paid anyone a dollar for access.
What is on this site instead is the record. Every case documented from indictments, plea agreements, sentencing transcripts, appellate opinions, and the Justice Department’s own press releases. Anyone can check every line of it.
What gets written about
- Who received a pardon
- Who they know
- Whether the grant looks improper
What does not
- A jury told that a defendant must prove her own good faith, and an appeals court calling that harmless.
- Nearly $900,000 taken from a family through civil forfeiture with no criminal charge ever filed.
- A man acquitted before the jury finished deliberating, in a state he had never set foot in, who had already spent everything he owned.
Clemency was ordinary for most of the last century and then it closed — from better than a fifth of requests granted to two percent, under presidents of both parties.11 It has never been a finding of innocence. It is the constitutional power to fix a sentence that does not match what a person did, or a process that went wrong in a way the courts will not correct.
The framework
Seven forms of weaponization. Only one is political.
Weaponized justice is the machinery of criminal law driven by a purpose other than justice. That is not our standard — the Supreme Court set it in 1935, holding that the government’s interest in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.12 Politics is one purpose that can replace it. There are six others, and none of them requires a political motive at all.
- Political — charged for who you are aligned with
- Career — the conviction is worth something to someone
- Cognitive — the theory forms first, the evidence is sorted after
- Leverage — charges as bargaining instruments, not descriptions
- Regulatory — conduct a licensing board used to handle, charged as fraud
- Attritional — the process costs more than the sentence
- Proxy — a private party aims the state at a rival
- U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Professional Responsibility, Annual Report, fiscal year 2022. justice.gov/opr
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-15-156, Professional Misconduct: DOJ Could Strengthen Procedures for Disciplining Its Attorneys. Report (PDF)
- Transcript of hearing, 18 November 2025, United States v. Angelica Pacheco, S.D. Fla. Documents and full context at Case 43.
- United States v. Elizabeth Hernandez, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, 31 July 2026. Full opinion (PDF)
- U.S. Department of Justice, “Justice Department Announces Anti-Weaponization Fund,” 18 May 2026. justice.gov/opa · NBC News, “Acting AG Todd Blanche reaches deal with holdout senators to end $1.8B anti-weaponization fund,” 2 August 2026. nbcnews.com
- U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Deputy Attorney General, “Ending Regulation by Prosecution,” 7 April 2025.
- U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Pardon Attorney, Clemency Grants by President Donald J. Trump (2025–Present). justice.gov/pardon
- U.S. Department of Justice, Justice Manual 1-7.000, Confidentiality and Media Contacts Policy. justice.gov/jm
- U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division case page, United States v. Angelica Pacheco. Captured 8 August 2026. See Case 43.
- NBC News, “White House tightens Trump pardon process amid concerns about outsiders trying to profit.” nbcnews.com · NOTUS, “It’s Chaos: How Trump’s Pardoning Process Keeps Changing.” notus.org
- Office of the Pardon Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, clemency statistics compiled by Pew Research Center, 7 February 2025. Pew Research Center analysis · Full chart at Clemency by the numbers.
- Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935).
