The Michael Fanone Show

California voters already have their ballots. Now Trump’s Justice Department wants thousands of them set aside, and Trump is threatening election officials with prison.

According to DOJ’s October 15 filing, federal agencies identified roughly 20,000 “likely” noncitizens who were sent mail ballots. Likely is doing a lot of work. California’s Secretary of State Shirley Weber says the government hasn’t given the underlying data or methodology. She says the state will look at real evidence of ineligibility. That’s the whole fight.

Nobody gets to vote illegally. But a filing is an argument, not proof. And a threat from the president can do damage long before a judge decides anything. You don’t have to arrest every official for it to work. You just make them wonder what defying you will cost.

If the list is wrong, the official making the accusation doesn’t lose a vote. An eligible voter does.

Standing behind the people who run our elections means standing next to them in public, and it doesn’t stop when the headline changes.

French high schoolers walked out because they didn’t have enough teachers. Then workers, parents, and even a mayor who put himself between cops and kids showed up. Nobody told those kids to wait their turn.

So what the fuck, America?

We’ve got citizens shot dead by federal immigration agents and masked men hauling people off our streets. And by tonight we’re figuring out dinner and getting the kids to bed. I get it. But the people doing this are counting on that.

Being angry isn’t pressure. If an official can watch the crowd go home, put out a statement, and get right back to it, we haven’t changed shit. They’ve learned they can survive our anger without answering our demands.

I’m not telling anyone to risk their job or their health insurance alone. I worry about those bills too. Real solidarity is child care, a ride, and covering the lost shift so people can keep coming back after the march is over.

And Democrats, you don’t get a pass. We don’t need another speech about how dangerous Trump is. Tell us what you’re willing to do with power, even when it costs you.

Share this with somebody you want standing next to you.

Saturday on the National Mall. Turnstile playing a free show to about 60,000 people, raising money for humanitarian relief. I was there with my daughter Piper.

Then Park Police moved horses into the crowd. I heard officers say they were responding to moshing and crowd-surfing. I saw no fight where we were. What I saw was a horse backing into people, a father with his little girl on his shoulders, and a crowd scrambling toward the fences.

That’s my account, and in my view it looked like a deliberate crowd-dispersal tactic. A riot-control response to a concert audience. People could have been killed.

Yes, some people threw water bottles. That happened after the horses moved in, and the order of events matters.

If they say there was a fight, show me the fight. Preserve the footage, radio traffic, and supervisor instructions, and keep the sequence intact.

The job was to get those families home safely. Judge every decision against that.

Charlotte cops allegedly had a competition to see who could pull over the most Black drivers, according to WBTV’s sources. What the fuck are you doing wearing a badge if that’s how you see the people you swore to protect?

I did this job for twenty years. Treating a stop like a game makes me sick.

The chief confirmed the messages showed racial, sexual and religious bias going back years. Four officers have resigned and two are suspended. The competition is an allegation, and audits haven’t found targeting so far. But the DA is reviewing cases, and a cop nobody can trust can wreck cases victims were counting on.

Resigning doesn’t end this. The people they stopped deserve answers.

You’re an American citizen. You tell the agents you’re American. You ask them to check. And somehow you’re the one who has to prove this shouldn’t be happening.

DHS has issued flat denials about mistakenly arresting citizens and racial profiling. Then ProPublica compiled more than 500 citizens detained during this administration’s enforcement operations, including at least 63 who were recording. And here’s the kicker: the government doesn’t even track this. An outside newsroom had to.

I carried a badge. If somebody handed me this much documented conduct, “we already denied it” wouldn’t be an answer. I’d want to know who reviews these encounters, what triggers a correction, and what supervisors knew.

I’m not saying every officer broke the law because of a video. I’m also not saying everybody deserved it because of a press statement. A badge gives you authority. It doesn’t prove you used it properly. That takes evidence.

Honest officers should want that process. Otherwise the bad ones hide behind everybody else’s reputation.

ICE’s own death reviews found care outside practice limits in 27 cases, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Then the reports vanished from its website.

I’ve taken people into custody. You don’t get to lock somebody up, control whether they can get help, and shrug when they don’t make it. Custody isn’t a fucking waiver of responsibility.

Who pulled the reports? What changed after? We need outside oversight with real access to the records, and ICE abolished and rebuilt.

The people who died deserve more than a broken link.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin went on a friendly podcast and said “something’s going to happen” in the Omar investigation. Then agents showed up at her door.

I worked investigations for years. You build the case first. You don’t tease the target in public. And I’d want to see that affidavit. A judge signed off on the warrant, and that belongs in this story. She hasn’t been charged, and her office denies wrongdoing. But a warrant authorizes a search. It doesn’t establish guilt.

So what made this urgent now? Reuters, citing Fox News’s sources, reports the probe concerns paperwork her father completed when she was a child. And the Justice Department’s own manual says investigative steps shouldn’t be timed to affect an election.

Say what you want about Omar. Disagree with her, vote against her. That’s not the point. A search alone can upend somebody’s life before a prosecutor files anything, and the message reaches way beyond one congresswoman.

The raid gets the headline. Election Day doesn’t wait for the evidence.

I’ve spent a lot of time on ICE. The shootings. The bodycam footage that’s conveniently missing. The official stories that fall apart the second somebody checks them.

Every time, I ask the same question: how does this keep happening without anyone being held to account?

New reporting gives us the answer, and it’s bigger than any single incident. It’s a system built to protect the agency. Aggressive prosecutions against people who get in the way. Political interference. And retaliation against officials who dare to challenge the government’s version of events.

That’s not a few bad moments. That’s a machine.

I’ve worked in law enforcement. I know policing is hard. But when the response to every mistake is to cover it up and punish whoever questions it, you’re not protecting the mission. You’re protecting yourselves from the truth.

I break it all down.

I’m not interested in speeches about “restoring norms.” Here’s what I want to see from Democrats.

Investigate this administration’s unlawful conduct. All of it. Prosecute the crimes you can actually prove, across the board, no exceptions and no favorites. Remove corrupt officials through lawful processes, not stunts. And then rebuild the system that let all of this happen in the first place.

Because it didn’t happen by accident. The guardrails failed, and somebody has to fix them.

Some people will tell you corruption is an abstract Washington issue. It’s not. It’s a kitchen-table issue. It’s who gets a fair shake, who gets protected, and who pays the price when people in power think the rules are for everyone else.

And restoration without consequences? That’s not accountability. That’s an invitation to do it again.

Don’t tell me you’re going to turn the page. Show me you’re willing to do the work.

The Associated Press looked at 102 felony-assault cases the Trump DOJ brought against protesters in LA, Chicago, Portland, and DC. Twelve had reached trial when AP published. None ended in a felony-assault conviction. Acquittals, mistrials, dismissals. Across the group, 41 percent were dismissed and 34 percent ended in misdemeanor pleas.

I need to be careful here. A mistrial isn’t an acquittal. A misdemeanor plea isn’t an exoneration. This doesn’t prove every arrest was wrong. But when that many serious charges collapse or shrink, you have to ask whether prosecutors were building cases or building a narrative.

I investigated crimes, worked with federal agents, and testified in court. An arrest is one piece of the job. You prove the charge. You don’t announce a crackdown and shrug when the evidence doesn’t hold up.

And I want people who assault officers held accountable. I was dragged into a crowd on January 6, beaten, and shocked with a stun gun. That’s exactly why exaggerated charges piss me off. They make it harder for the next legitimate case to stand up in front of a jury.

Trump doesn’t get to pardon people who attacked cops and then lecture me about protecting them.