Category: reason

Brian Doherty, a longtime Reason senior editor and the leading historian of the libertarian movement, was found dead Friday morning after a fall the night before in Battery Yates park along the San Francisco Bay. He was 57.

Doherty, who began working at Reason in 1994, was the author of six books, most notably the definitive 2007 study, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. Conservative writer Jonah Goldberg called Radicals an “extraordinary accomplishment“; libertarian economist Bryan Caplan dubbed it a “remarkable labor of love.”

Doherty’s other book-length treatments of libertarian phenomena included Gun Control on Trial: Inside the Supreme Court Battle Over the Second Amendment (2008), Ron Paul’s rEVOLution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired (2012), and Modern Libertarianism: A Brief History of Classical Liberalism in the United States (2025).

“Brian was the historian of the libertarian movement,” says Reason Foundation President David Nott. “He lovingly and comprehensively portrayed the colorful characters in the libertarian world.”

Born in Brooklyn and raised mostly in Florida, Doherty first caught the libertarian bug at age 12 by gobbling up the Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

“One of the specific purposes of that work, according to Wilson, was to do to the state what Voltaire did to the church—that is, reduce it to an object of contempt for all thoughtful people,” he recalled in 2018. “I wound up mail ordering a copy of the Principia Discordia, the founding religious document of the Discordian Church discussed in Illuminatus! I tracked down this volume in the rich, fascinating, and frightening catalog of the bookseller Loompanics. Afterward I delved deeper into its offerings of forbidden or hated ideas, eventually ordering a copy of Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. That book’s version of economics matched the ethical conclusion that felt undeniable to me after reading Illuminatus!: that shaping the human social order primarily by granting one set of people working under an institutional cover the poorly restricted right to rob, assault, and kill others at their will seemed like a bad idea.”

Hazlitt led to Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and above all Murray Rothbard, the latter of whom, fittingly, was the subject of Doherty’s last piece published before his death, “100 Years of Murray Rothbard.”

While majoring in journalism at the University of Florida, Doherty “met some congenial and hilarious people manning a booth for the…College Libertarians in the autumn of 1987,” and was off to the races, mixing intense philosophical curiosity with an equally deep interest and participation in the more animal spirits of DIY music and expressive freedom.

Relocating to Los Angeles in the mid-’90s, he fell in with “a gang of arty pranksters you’ve likely never heard of” called the Cacophony Society, who “inspired or created phenomenon ranging from the novel/movie Fight Club to urban exploration, billboard alteration, the Yes Men, flash mobs, and ‘Santa Rampages.'”

Cacophony’s most lasting stunt was the one that evolved into the annual temporary art festival in Nevada called Burning Man. “I thought my deskbound, magazine-reporter, bedroom record label–running self would be destroyed by the pitiless desert,” Doherty would later recall. “So I didn’t go in ’94. By 1995, I had heard so much about Black Rock City’s functional anarchy that I had to go—anarchy being one of my primary intellectual interests.”

Those words can be found in the prologue of Doherty’s first book, 2004’s This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground, which grew out of a 2000 Reason cover story. He never stopped going to Burning Man, nor participating wholeheartedly in obscure art/music happenings that some of his bemused work colleagues would find almost as inscrutable as some of his counterculture pals viewed libertarianism.

“Brian’s contributions to the art scenes in L.A. and San Francisco were monumental,” says his best friend, the showman/experience designer Chicken John Renaldi. “His passing leaves so many people and so many systems impoverished.”

Doherty’s knowledge of pop culture, rock music, and comic books was encyclopedic, as evidenced not just by his heroically cluttered workspaces but by his 2022 book, Dirty Pictures: How an Underground Network of Nerds, Feminists, Misfits, Geniuses, Bikers, Potheads, Printers, Intellectuals, and Art School Rebels Revolutionized Art and Invented Comix.

“Libertarians talk a lot about freedom and responsibility. Brian embodied both,” Reason Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward recalls. “His weird, colorful life—filled with comics and festivals and music and books—was a model of life lived freely and openly. And in his thinking, reporting, and editing, he was one of the most conscientious and responsible people I have ever met. A libertarian hero in every sense.”

Spelunking in subcultures both libertarian and whimsical led to a lot of early discoveries that the normies only sussed out later. Doherty profiled New Hampshire’s Free State Project way back in 2004, caught Seasteaders on their then-rise in 2009, and started covering Bitcoin in 2013. Though, as he ruefully admitted later, he knew about the groundbreaking crypto currency as early as July 2010 yet somehow neglected to cash in.

“Had I shelled out, say, $2,000 on this innovative, anti-inflationary currency even a lazy six weeks after I was introduced to it,” he wrote, “today I would be sitting on 28,571 bitcoins, the equivalent at press time of over $212 million in cash.” More like $2 billion now, but who’s counting?

After news of his death broke, Doherty’s work colleagues filled up a long Slack thread with fond memories of his deep-seated sense of tolerance, his garrulous laugh, his fury at personal technology, his sometimes elliptical prose style. A staffer once made a T-shirt from a typically verbose Dohertian Slack message: “I try not to assume that because crazy people with crazy beliefs believe or used to believe the things I believe for what I think are right and sane reasons, that that is a sign that I am crazy. But it’s getting harder and harder I confess.”

Doherty in recent years had suffered from a series of physical ailments and setbacks that left him walking with a cane. It is likely that condition contributed to his deadly tumble Thursday, as he took a stroll away from—of course!—an art gathering atop an abandoned World War 2 gun battery. More details are expected to emerge next week, though the (terrible) news remains the same.

What we’re left with is a sui generis body of work. Explorations of “the hippie capitalism of the Grateful Dead.” Massive oral histories of the Libertarian Party and Reason. A full-throated libertarian critique/condemnation of a man many of his fellow Rothbardians took a flier on, Donald Trump.

“He and his work will be missed,” former Reason Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie tweeted Saturday. “And more important, remembered.”

The post Brian Doherty, Historian of the Libertarian Movement, Dead at 57 appeared first on Reason.com.

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For more on the opinion, see this post.

The post From Chief Judge Boasberg's Opinion Quashing Grand Jury Subpoena Related to Fed Chair Jerome Powell appeared first on Reason.com.

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From Chief Judge James Boasberg’s opinion Friday in In re Grand Jury Subpoenas, Bd. of Governors of the Federal Reserve System v. U.S.:

“Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell has done it again!!! He is TOO LATE, and actually, TOO ANGRY, TOO STUPID, & TOO POLITICAL, to have the job of Fed Chair. He is costing our Country TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS …. Put another way, ‘Too Late’ is a TOTAL LOSER, and our Country is paying the price!” That [Truth Social post] is one of at least 100 statements that the President or his deputies have made attacking the Chair of the Federal Reserve and pressuring him to lower interest rates. So is this: “‘Too Late’ Jerome Powell is costing our Country Hundreds of Billions of Dollars. He is truly one of the dumbest, and most destructive, people in Government …. TOO LATE’s an American Disgrace!”

Yet the President has been unable to push rates lower through social-media posts. He has thus hinted at other options: “I want to get him out ….” Several months ago, he mused that if the Fed does not cut rates, “I may have to force something.” Appointed officials and the White House Press Secretary have taken up the call. See … Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte calling on Congress to investigate Powell …; … White House Press Secretary announcing that “the administration, led by the president, is looking into” Fed’s renovations ….

Perhaps it comes as no surprise, then, that the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office has recently opened a criminal investigation into Powell. It has served two subpoenas on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, seeking records about recent renovations of the Board’s buildings and testimony that Powell delivered to Congress that briefly discussed those renovations. The Board has now responded with a Motion to Quash, contending that the subpoenas are merely part of the gameplan to pressure Powell to bend to the President’s wishes or to get rid of him.

The case thus asks: Did prosecutors issue those subpoenas for a proper purpose? The Court finds that they did not. There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will.

On the other side of the scale, the Government has offered no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the President. The Court must thus conclude that the asserted justifications for these subpoenas are mere pretexts. It will therefore grant the Board’s Motion to Quash. It will also grant the Board’s Motion to Partially Unseal the Motion to Quash, related briefing, and this Opinion….

Surveying precedents, the Court distills four lessons. First, courts have recognized two improper purposes that seem especially relevant here. For one, prosecutors may not use the grand jury “to engage in arbitrary fishing expeditions” or to “select targets of investigation out of malice or an intent to harass.” So if they singled out an opponent of the President “out of malice” or “to harass” him, including by fishing around for some crime to pin on him, that would not be kosher.

Separately, Trump v. Vance suggests that if prosecutors are forbidden from meddling with an official’s duties, then they cannot use criminal investigations to pressure him into enacting their preferred policies. In Vance, state prosecutors had issued grand-jury subpoenas seeking financial records concerning President Trump and his businesses. The Court did not decide whether those subpoenas were proper, but it warned that state DAs cannot use grand-jury subpoenas to “interfer[e] with a President’s official duties.” It reasoned that because the Supremacy Clause bars state prosecutors from interfering in the President’s policy decisions, they cannot turn to subpoenas to try to “manipulate a President’s policy decisions” or to “retaliate against a President for official acts.” That warning extended a well-established principle: “[A] government official cannot do indirectly what she is barred from doing directly ….”

As noted above, the President and his appointees may not interfere with the Fed Chair’s choices about monetary policy. Vance thus suggests that, in addition, the President’s appointees may not use grand-jury subpoenas to pressure the Chair to take certain official actions or to retaliate against him for policies that they dislike.

While those two improper purposes seem especially relevant here, the caselaw’s second teaching is that an abusive purpose need not be clearly identified in precedents for a court to deem it improper. Instead, improper purposes are as numerous and protean as are the opportunities for prosecutors to misuse their power. Consider the expansive (and expanding) list that courts have identified, often for the first time in the case then at bar. For example, prosecutors cannot harass a target with subpoenas “with no expectation that any testimony concerning the commission of a crime would be forthcoming.” They may not use grand-jury subpoenas to get evidence for a separate civil case, thereby evading the rules of civil discovery. Or to get evidence for an already-indicted criminal case, thus skirting criminal discovery. Or to demand details that are irrelevant to the crime under investigation but that would chill a target’s First Amendment rights. Or to subpoena journalists in bad faith, solely to expose confidential sources. Or to drag a witness before the grand jury over and over in the hopes that he might contradict himself and so expose himself to a perjury prosecution.

With varied improper purposes popping up on different occasions, it is clear that such purposes cannot be reduced to a fixed and exhaustive list. In none of the cases above did the court take a subpoena’s purportedly improper purpose, hold it up to the list of improper purposes that other courts had already recognized, and say that a match was required. Instead, when new facts present new ways that prosecutors might be abusing their subpoena power, courts do not hesitate to declare those purposes improper.

Returning to the case at hand, while these subpoenas’ purpose would be improper if it resembled the forbidden purposes identified in R. Enterprises and Vance, that is not necessary. The Court would still quash them if they were issued for an improper purpose that prior cases had no occasion to identify.

Third, the Government is not necessarily acting for a proper purpose just because it seeks information relevant to a criminal investigation. Someone can move to quash a subpoena because it is irrelevant or because it serves an improper purpose. A subpoena thus might be quashed because it is irrelevant, regardless of its purpose. Or it could be quashed for having an improper purpose, even though it asked for information relevant to a criminal investigation. Consider a subpoena hunting for evidence in an already-indicted case: it is plainly seeking relevant evidence, yet it is an improper purpose to use the grand jury to bolster trial testimony. Applying that principle here, the subpoenas are certainly relevant to a criminal investigation. Yet if they constitute an improper use of the grand jury, then they have an improper purpose.

Fourth, the strength of a movant’s evidence of an improper purpose determines how much the Government must show to substantiate its asserted proper purpose. To be clear, the movant bears the burden of showing an improper purpose. That burden is heavy, since it requires “rebutting the presumption of regularity attached to a grand jury’s proceeding.” And that presumption cannot be rebutted by mere speculation or conjecture.

That said, if the movant overcomes the presumption, then the Government’s burden to justify a subpoena will depend on how much evidence of an improper purpose the movant puts forth. That follows naturally from seeking a subpoena’s dominant purpose: the more evidence there is that the purpose is improper, the more is needed to show that a proper purpose nonetheless dominated. Since a grand-jury subpoena’s proper purpose is investigating suspicious facts that might suggest a crime, that means showing a stronger basis for such investigation….

With those lessons in hand, the Court applies them to the facts….

The Board contends that the Government issued these subpoenas for the improper purpose of harassing and pressuring Powell to push the Fed to lower interest rates or to resign and make way for a more pliant Chair. There can be little debate that such purpose would be improper. As just discussed, existing caselaw warns that prosecutors may not “select [a] target[ ] of investigation out of malice or an intent to harass.” And it implies that if prosecutors—or the President who appointed and can fire them—are legally barred from interfering in an official’s policy choices, they may not use grand-jury subpoenas in an “attempt to influence” him or to “retaliate against [him] for official acts.” True, no case says that federal prosecutors cannot target the head of an independent agency to pressure him to knuckle under or step aside. That purpose would still be improper, though: it would sic prosecutions on people because the President dislikes them, use criminal subpoenas as a form of official coercion, and thwart statutes protecting the agency’s independence. Even if nobody has tried that before, a novel improper purpose is improper all the same.

What the Court must determine is whether the Board is correct in its inference. In other words, what is these subpoenas’ dominant purpose? A mountain of evidence suggests that the dominant purpose is to harass Powell to pressure him to lower rates. [For more details, see the opinion. -EV] …

True, most of the evidence above speaks to the motives of the President, not the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Yet judges “are not required to exhibit a naiveté from which ordinary citizens are free.” The U.S. Attorney was appointed by the President and can be fired by him. Her peer one district over was recently pushed out for refusing to prosecute the President’s opponents. The signal to other U.S. Attorneys was hard to miss. Indeed, this U.S. Attorney’s Office has targeted the President’s opponents before. Compare, e.g., Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Truth Soc. (Nov. 20, 2025, at 9:17 AM), https://perma.cc/6CKS-7LPA (reposting article about Democratic members of Congress who posted video telling service members to refuse illegal orders and commenting, “This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???”), with Alan Feuer, Glenn Thrush & Michael S. Schmidt, Grand Jury Rebuffs Justice Dept. Attempt to Indict 6 Democrats in Congress, N.Y. Times (Feb. 10, 2026), https://perma.cc/TY69-XV55 (D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office then tried to indict all six of those congresspeople). It is a natural inference that the President’s appointee was responding to his desires (whether real or perceived) here.

Against such extensive and persuasive evidence of improper motive, the Government counters with only a tenuous assertion of a legitimate purpose. In its briefing, the Government’s sole justification for investigating the renovation is that it went “far over budget, raising the specter of fraud.” But buildings often go over budget. That fact, standing alone, hardly suggests that a crime occurred. Nor is there any reason to think that this project was especially prone to fraud. On the contrary, the Board’s “independent Inspector General … has had full access to project information on costs, contracts, schedules, and expenditures and receives monthly reports on the construction program.” He audited the renovation several years ago and raised no concerns about fraud.

As for Powell’s testimony, the Government vaguely intimates that it “contained possible discrepancies” and was “possibly problematic.” What those discrepancies or problems might be, it does not (or cannot) say. Indeed, most members of the Committee that Powell testified before—including a majority of each party’s members, as well as the Committee’s Chair—have said that they do not think he committed any crime. Searching for any reason to suspect that Powell might have lied to Congress, the only one the Court can descry is that he testified at a hearing. The Government might as well investigate him for mail fraud because someone once saw him send a letter….

When the evidence of improper motive is so strong and the justifications for these subpoenas are so tenuous, it is hard to see the renovations and testimony as anything other than a convenient pretext for launching a criminal investigation that the Government launched for another, unstated purpose: pressuring Powell to knuckle under. In light of all the evidence, the only reasonable inference is that the Government targeted Powell “out of malice or an intent to harass” and has launched a “fishing expedition[ ]” to either find something to pin on him or to pressure him to fold. That harassment seems aimed at bulldozing the Fed’s statutory independence….

Andrew Z. Michaelson, Jeffrey S. Bucholtz, Leah B. Grossi, Nicholas A. Mecsas-Faxon, and Robert K. Hur (King & Spalding) represent the Board.

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From Whiting v. City of Athens, decided yesterday by Sixth Circuit Judge John Bush, joined by Judges Jane Stranch and Eric Murphy:

These consolidated appeals concern several lawsuits filed over an incident at the annual fireworks show hosted by the City of Athens, Tennessee, in 2022, and the subsequent fallout. By separate opinion issued this date, we affirm the district court in all respects.

This opinion addresses the misconduct of Glenn Whiting’s lawyers, Van Irion and Russ Egli, in their briefing before this court and the sanctions we impose for it. That briefing repeatedly misrepresented the record, cited non-existent cases, and cited cases for propositions of law that they did not even discuss, much less support….

[W]e found over two dozen fake citations and misrepresentations of fact in Whiting’s briefs, which we list in an appendix to this opinion. {This is a conservative estimate. We call something a “fake citation” or “misrepresentation of fact” only when it is clearly so. We do not include typos or sloppy citations. “As those mistakes could be attributed to simple sloppiness in drafting, as opposed to a failure to comply with the basic obligations of legal counsel, they are not the subject of this” opinion. If we included typos and other errors that are arguably, but not clearly, a misrepresentation or fake citation, we would be looking at far more misstatements of fact and law.}

Upon discovering these problems, we ordered Irion and Egli to show cause why they should not be sanctioned. The order instructed them to (1) explain why they should not be sanctioned for citing fake cases, (2) provide a copy from Westlaw or LexisNexis of all the cases and authorities cited in all of the briefs filed across the three appeals, (3) highlight any material that they quoted from those cases, (4) tell us who wrote the briefs in each case, (5) tell us whether the briefs were ghostwritten in whole or in part, (6) tell us whether they used generative AI to write the briefs, and (7) explain how they cite-checked the briefs.

Irion and Egli did not respond to these directives. Instead, they said the show cause order was “void on its face for failing to include a signature of an Article III judge,” was “motivated by harassment of the Respondent attorneys,” and “reflect[ed] illegal ex-parte [sic] communications within this Court.” …

[W]e “reject[ ] any … notion that because some authority exists to support a legal proposition it should negate the harm caused by false and hallucinated cases. Put bluntly—absolutely not; period; end of story; all stop.” Citing even a single fake case can be sanctionable because “no brief, pleading, motion, or any other paper filed in any court should contain any citations—whether provided by generative AI or any other source—that” a lawyer has not personally “read and verified.” …

Although citing fake cases violates Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 38, Rule 38 alone is not “up to the task” of sanctioning this conduct, because Rule 38 allows only for the imposition of costs and attorneys’ fees. But we think other sanctions are also appropriate, so we employ our inherent authority….

Although Irion and Egli did not seriously respond to our show cause order, we construe their responses as making four objections: (1) the show cause order violated Sixth Circuit Local Rule 46, (2) attorney-client and work-product privilege excused compliance with the show cause order, (3) the order was invalid because it allegedly came from several ex parte communications, and (4) the order is void because the clerk signed it.

The show cause order did not violate Local Rule 46. Local Rule 46 governs suspension, disbarment, and other forms of attorney discipline. But the rule expressly contemplates that this court could impose litigation sanctions and “does not limit the court’s” power to do so. Id. The show cause order cited Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 38 and Chambers v. NASCO, Inc. (1991), which govern sanctions for a frivolous appeal and inherent authority sanctions, respectively. Put simply, the show cause order did not initiate disciplinary proceedings under Local Rule 46, nor do we impose discipline under that rule. Instead, we exercise our inherent authority and our powers under Rule 38 to sanction Irion and Egli for bad-faith litigation conduct….

Our order does not violate the work-product or attorney-client-privilege doctrines, either. Under those doctrines, we may not compel the disclosure of a lawyer’s notes, prior drafts of briefs, or legal advice absent waiver. But the order to show cause sought no such thing. Whether and how the briefs were cite-checked does not implicate conversations regarding legal advice, nor do they ask for any work product of any kind.

Finally, our orders are not invalid simply because the clerk signed them. We have already told Irion and Egli that our orders are not void when the clerk signs them in this very case. Whiting v. City of Athens (6th Cir. June 2, 2025). And the Supreme Court has twice denied petitions for mandamus from Irion and Egli demanding that the clerk stop signing our orders. See In re Murphy (2025); In re Irion (2026). Neither Irion nor Egli points us to any authority saying that the clerk may not sign our orders….

Irion and Egli breached the trust that we must have in the lawyers appearing before us. They have brought the profession into disrepute. Irion’s and Egli’s failure to comply with the basic rules of our profession has forced us and the City to unnecessarily expend time and resources on a case that should have been litigated and resolved straightforwardly but was not.

More importantly, by breaching our trust, we can no longer rely on the representations in Irion’s and Egli’s briefs, harming both their clients (whose cases are now viewed with skepticism) and this court (who must now independently verify everything Irion and Egli write). Finally, Irion and Egli have sullied the reputation of our bar, which now must litigate under the cloud of their conduct. We therefore issue these sanctions to Irion and Egli, the rationales for which we will explain below:

1. Irion and Egli must jointly and severally reimburse appellees in full for their reasonable attorneys’ fees on appeal in all three appeals.
2. Irion and Egli must jointly and severally pay double costs to appellees for costs incurred under 28 U.S.C. § 1920 on appeal in all three appeals.
3. Appellees must file an accounting of their costs and attorneys’ fees on appeal, with supporting documentation, no later than seven days from the date of this order. Irion and Egli shall file any responses or objections to appellees’ requests for costs and attorneys’ fees on appeal no later than seven days thereafter. There will be no replies.
4. Irion and Egli must each separately and individually pay $15,000 to the registry of this court as punitive sanctions for the proceedings in this court in all three appeals.
5. The clerk will forward a copy of this order to the chief judge to consider disciplinary proceedings under Sixth Circuit Local Rule 46.
6. If Irion and Egli are financially unable to comply with some or all of the requirements of this order, they must file an affidavit under seal describing their financial situation along with their objections to appellees’ fee requests.

{We could have gone much further. Other courts have dismissed cases, disqualified lawyers, or revoked their pro hac vice status for similar conduct. But only the chief judge can suspend or disbar a lawyer from practice before this court, see 6th Cir. Local Rule 46(c)(4)(C), so those sanctions are not available to us, and we choose not to sanction Whiting himself because we have no evidence that Whiting participated in the misconduct.

Finally, we could have held Irion and Egli in contempt because they flagrantly ignored our order to show cause. But we do not think additional sanctions are necessary to send the message we send here.}

A substantial penalty is necessary to compensate the City for the time spent dealing with Whiting’s litigation and for having to deal with the rampant misconduct Irion and Egli committed on appeal. Although courts often limit the amount of fees to “those the losing party foisted on the winner,” the pervasive misconduct makes these appeals almost entirely frivolous. We found systemic problems with Whiting’s briefing, including misrepresentations of fact and law, improper citation formatting, an inadequate record, and copious drafting errors. Even if there might have been a grain of merit in these appeals, we can disregard the non-frivolous aspects and treat the entire appeal as frivolous. Given how many problems there were in this case, we conclude that appellees should be fully compensated for being forced to litigate this appeal.

We award double costs to appellees because that is the stiffest penalty available under Rule 38. Rule 38 is supposed “to deter frivolous appeals and thus preserve the appellate calendar for cases worthy of consideration.” Double costs will send the loudest message that this type of conduct is not allowed in our court or any other.

We can issue fines when issuing inherent authority sanctions, Shepherd, 62 F.3d at 1475, and courts have generally issued fines for similar misconduct. We agree that this is appropriate. Citing fake cases “unnecessarily burdens the court and the taxpayers,” so courts can and should fine the offending lawyers to reimburse the court for its time. A lawyer’s misrepresentation of the law and facts heavily burdens the courts and their staffs.

We rely on good briefing to narrow and clarify the issues for our review while helping us locate the facts and the law that will govern the case. But we did not have that assistance from Whiting’s counsel because we could not rely on any of their briefing to truthfully explain the facts and governing law. Their submission of fake cases and factual misrepresentations forced the court to individually verify every single citation to determine the appropriate sanction.

To call these consolidated appeals a burden would be an understatement. We choose $15,000 each because (1) the misconduct was spread across three cases instead of just one and (2) smaller fines have plainly been inadequate—as is evidenced by the continuous stream of cases raising the same problems.

Four additional aggravating factors in this case warrant particularly harsh sanctions

First, Irion and Egli are appealing sanctions orders, and they have engaged in further misconduct….

Second, Irion and Egli have been disciplined for lack of candor to the tribunal before. In 2017, the Supreme Court of Tennessee publicly censured Egli for lack of candor to the tribunal. See In re Egli, No. M2017-00608-SC-BAR-BP (Tenn. Mar. 30, 2017) (per curiam). And in August 2025 (while Irion and Egli were briefing these appeals), Irion was suspended from the Eastern District of Tennessee for five years because he lied to the district court in No. 25-5424. In re Irion, 2025 WL 2319537, at *13, *37. Despite this, both Irion and Egli submitted several briefs to this court with fake citations and misrepresentations of the record.

Third, Irion and Egli defied this court’s order to show cause and refused to provide the information we requested. For over 150 years, the Supreme Court has said that litigants must comply with court orders, whether they are erroneous or not….

Fourth, the responses to the show cause order that Irion and Egli did file show a stunning lack of respect for this court, the members of the panel and their staffs, and the rule of law. Most litigants caught submitting fake cases have apologized and sought forgiveness, rightly recognizing the seriousness of their misconduct. By contrast, Irion and Egli scolded this court and accused it of engaging in a vast conspiracy to harass them. More severe sanctions are clearly warranted to deter misconduct like this….

The courts are, should be, and must be, open to all litigants who have suffered harms at the hands of the government. And nothing in this opinion should be construed as a holding that Irion and Egli were appropriately sanctioned simply because they lost. That is far from the truth.

Irion and Egli have engaged in a coordinated effort to harass the City of Athens, Tennessee, and its employees through non-stop litigation over the past five years. They asserted claims that they knew were meritless to drain the resources of the City. They then compounded the problems by submitting briefs to this court with fake citations and factual misrepresentations and defying the order to show cause why they should not be sanctioned. To protect the integrity of our proceedings, we take the measures outlined [above]….

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From Judge Robert Hinkle’s Injunction Not to File Emails yesterday in Elephant Shoe, LLC v. Cook (N.D. Fla.):

Some of the defendants have made a practice of copying me and the magistrate judge on emails addressed to others. Local Rule 7.1(M) prohibits the practice. I have read none of the emails; they have been intercepted by my staff and deleted. I am told that their tone is completely inappropriate, but the practice would be totally unacceptable, even if the tone was professional. This order constitutes an injunction requiring the defendants to stop. A violation of this order may be punished as contempt of court with sanctions including fines or imprisonment. If the defendants continue the practice, it will not end well for them. They should govern themselves accordingly.

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