Donald Trump Is a Disgusting Fat Pig — and Yes, We Let Him Get Away With Everything

I know exactly what I just called the President of the United States.

I know the headline is crude. I know it is insulting. I know somebody’s weight tells us nothing about whether they are honest, decent, competent, compassionate, intelligent or worthy of dignity. So let me get that out of the way before anybody mistakes the insult for the argument.

Donald Trump’s body is not my case against Donald Trump.

The headline is an expression of disgust. Mine. And unlike the man I am writing about, I am going to spend the rest of this article showing you the receipts for how I got there.

This did not begin with Cornell University. It did not begin with January 6. It did not begin with E. Jean Carroll, 34 felony convictions, Jeffrey Epstein, two impeachments or Donald Trump’s second presidency. For me, this argument goes back to 2015.

Anyone who has followed my social accounts long enough can find the record. I did not wake up last week and suddenly decide that Donald Trump bothered me. I have wrestled publicly with this man for more than a decade.

But disliking somebody politically is one thing. Reaching an overwhelming moral judgment about another human being is something else. That distinction matters to me because I am Canadian, I do not know Donald Trump personally, I do not move in his circles, and I do not know every private conversation he has when the cameras are gone.

And I am a Christian.

That last part has made this considerably harder. Christianity keeps forcing me to ask questions anger would rather skip. What if I am wrong? What if I am seeing only what confirms what I already believe? What if there is something his supporters understand that I do not? What if I am mistaking hatred for discernment? What if grace requires me to keep looking for something redeemable?

So I have tried. I have prayed about Donald Trump. I have written about Donald Trump. I have made music trying to process Donald Trump. I have deliberately gone looking for arguments I dislike because I do not want to build a worldview in which everybody who reaches a different conclusion from mine becomes automatically stupid or evil.

This is not a conclusion I reached flippantly. It has taken me more than a decade to write it.

Cornell changed the temperature

Seven former Cornell University students are now at the centre of a renewed investigation arising from allegations that a woman was drugged and sexually assaulted at the Chi Phi fraternity house in October 2024. The woman, identified publicly as Jane Doe, says she was intoxicated, given ketamine and sexually assaulted by multiple men.

There is a legal sentence that belongs here because it matters: the accused are entitled to due process, and no criminal court has convicted them of the alleged assault.

But there is another sentence that matters just as much: “not yet convicted” does not mean “there is no evidence.”

Those ideas get collapsed far too easily. They are not the same. A criminal court asks whether the state has proven a particular offence against a particular defendant beyond a reasonable doubt. The public can still look at evidence already in view and decide that some of it is deeply incriminating, disturbing or damning without pretending to be the jury.

Cornell’s own internal process was extensive. Reporting on the university investigation described roughly 50 interviews and 12 days of hearings, with different disciplinary outcomes for different students. That difference matters because individual conduct matters. The investigation now has to answer specific questions about who did what, what can be authenticated, what each person knew, what each person participated in, and what can actually be proved under New York criminal law.

But we are not standing at zero.

Among the material reported from the case are Snapchat communications allegedly exchanged among fraternity members while Jane Doe was present. Those messages have been described as crude, sexual and degrading, including language apparently encouraging others to come upstairs. That is not a conviction. It is also not nothing.

By the time Donald Trump was asked about the case on October 2, 2026, the public discussion already included far more than a bare allegation.

His response was not to say that the allegations were horrifying and should be investigated carefully. It was not to say that the alleged victim deserved justice while the accused deserved due process. It was not to say that he needed to understand the record before commenting.

He called New York Attorney General Letitia James corrupt and said:

“I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at because they won’t get a fair shake.”

That was the instinct.

I cannot prove Donald Trump personally sat down and read the Snapchat material. I cannot tell you what was in a presidential briefing. But that creates a very simple question: then why are you commenting?

You are President of the United States. You have just been asked about an active investigation involving allegations of an extraordinarily serious sexual assault. There is documentary material in the public discussion. Cornell has already conducted an internal investigation. The local criminal matter was reopened. The governor assigned a special prosecutor.

If you do not know what the evidence says, learn what the evidence says before telling America you “feel badly” for the people being investigated. If you do know what is already in the record, then the answer becomes even harder for me to understand.

And the Cornell story is not standing still. On October 4, Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff publicly called the allegations “deeply disturbing,” backed an independent outside review of the university’s handling of the case, supported the renewed criminal investigation, and said the administration and community “must do better.” Cornell is also taking a fresh look at the role of fraternities and sororities on campus. This is exactly why Cornell has to remain the spine of this article: the facts are still developing in public, and every new fact creates another opportunity to see whether Donald Trump adjusts to evidence or simply adjusts the story around himself.

And that is where Cornell collides with a much older Donald Trump story.

Five boys who never got Donald Trump’s “fair shake”

In 1989, New York City was consumed by the brutal attack on a woman jogging in Central Park. Five Black and Latino teenagers were accused. Donald Trump inserted himself directly into the public fury by purchasing full-page newspaper advertisements calling for New York to bring back the death penalty.

The boys were convicted. They spent years living with the consequences. And they were innocent of that attack.

Their convictions were vacated in 2002 after another man confessed and DNA evidence corroborated that confession. Today we know them as the Exonerated Five: Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise and Antron Brown.

So when I hear Donald Trump in 2026 express concern that accused men at Cornell are not going to get a “fair shake,” I cannot erase 1989 from my memory.

Where was the caution then? Where was the concern about rushing to judgment? Where was the warning that public fury could destroy young lives before the truth was known?

And perhaps somebody wants to say: that was 1989. Fine. People change. People learn. People admit when they were terribly wrong.

Except Donald Trump kept talking.

During the September 2024 presidential debate, he falsely said the Exonerated Five had pleaded guilty. They had not. He also spoke as though someone had died in the Central Park attack. The victim survived. The five men later sued Trump for defamation over those comments.

Who gets Donald Trump’s presumption of fairness?

That question sits at the centre of this article for me.

Five Black and Latino boys wrongly convicted in a notorious sexual-assault case did not receive public caution from Donald Trump. Exoneration itself did not stop him from repeating falsehoods about them decades later. Yet in Cornell, with a renewed investigation and disturbing evidence already part of the public record, his immediate public sympathy goes toward the people being investigated.

Then there is Letitia James.

Trump has an obvious personal reason to despise her. Her office brought the New York civil-fraud case against him and his businesses. A New York appeals court later threw out the huge monetary penalty imposed in that case as excessive, an important legal victory for Trump. That history is real.

Letitia James is also a Black woman.

Can I prove Trump attacks her because she is Black? No. I am not going to turn my interpretation into a fact I cannot establish.

But after the Exonerated Five, after decades of watching Trump’s public conduct, I also refuse to pretend race is some absurd thing for me to notice. I do not believe race is incidental to the larger pattern I see.

You do not have to agree with my conclusion. But you should understand what produced it.

Show the receipts

I recently published a Jack Righteous article and song built around three words: Show The Receipts.

Trump Calls It “Super Intelligence.” I Want to See the Receipts.

That piece was about artificial intelligence. This one is about something much bigger: what happens when a man asks an entire country to trust him after decades of giving the country reasons to check everything he says.

You tell me somebody is corrupt? Show me. You tell me an election was stolen? Show me. You tell me seven men being investigated in a sexual-assault case will not get a fair shake? Show me why. You tell me the system is always lying and you are the only one telling the truth?

Show me the receipts.

And the standard applies to me too.

So here they are.

Receipt No. 1: the sexual-misconduct record is not one allegation

Long before Cornell, Donald Trump had accumulated a public record of sexual-misconduct allegations stretching across decades. At least 17 women have publicly accused him of unwanted sexual touching or other sexual misconduct. Trump has denied the allegations.

Those accusations are not all legally equivalent. They should not be lazily bundled together as though every allegation has been adjudicated. But they also should not be erased from the context in which Trump now chooses to publicly sympathize with men under investigation in the Cornell case.

Then there is the Access Hollywood tape. Recorded in 2005 and made public in October 2016, it captured Trump talking about making sexual advances toward women and grabbing them without waiting for consent. His campaign was thrown into panic. He eventually said, “I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.”

Then came E. Jean Carroll.

In 2023, a federal civil jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll and awarded her $5 million. At that trial, the judge allowed jurors to hear the Access Hollywood tape and testimony from two other women, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, who described alleged nonconsensual encounters with Trump. Trump denied their allegations as well.

The Carroll judgment did not disappear into legal theory. After Trump exhausted the appeal route on that first case, Carroll received approximately $5.63 million in July 2026, representing the verdict plus interest. A separate jury awarded her $83.3 million in 2024 for additional defamation; Trump is still seeking Supreme Court review of that award.

That is the sexual-conduct context in which the President now tells the public he feels badly for whoever Letitia James investigates at Cornell.

Again, that does not prove the Cornell defendants guilty. It does make Trump’s instinct worth examining much more closely.

Receipt No. 2: the hush-money case was also about controlling damaging sexual stories

The 34 felony convictions in New York did not arise in some completely separate universe. The case grew out of efforts to suppress damaging stories ahead of the 2016 election, including Stormy Daniels’ allegation of a sexual encounter with Trump, which he denies.

Testimony at trial described the political panic after the Access Hollywood tape and the effort to keep another potentially damaging story from voters before Election Day. A New York jury ultimately found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He received an unconditional discharge in January 2025—no jail, no probation, no fine—but the judgment of guilt remained, and his subsequent efforts to erase or relocate the conviction have continued.

This distinction matters: the sexual encounter Daniels alleged was not what Trump was convicted for. The convictions concerned the falsification of business records surrounding the payment and reimbursement scheme. But the sexual-political context of the scheme is part of the factual history.

Receipt No. 3: Epstein was not introduced to Donald Trump by Democrats in 2025

Trump and Jeffrey Epstein had a documented social relationship decades before Trump returned to the White House and began fighting with his own supporters over Epstein disclosures.

There is video of Trump and Epstein together at Mar-a-Lago in 1992. In 2002, Trump told New York magazine that he had known Epstein for 15 years, called him a “terrific guy,” and remarked that Epstein liked beautiful women and that many were “on the younger side.” Years later, after Epstein’s crimes became notorious, Trump said they had fallen out and that he had not been a fan of Epstein.

Records released in December 2025 also showed Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet at least eight times in the 1990s. The records did not show Trump traveling to Epstein’s island, and their existence is not evidence that Trump participated in Epstein’s crimes.

But the relationship is real. It is documented. It belongs in the receipts.

Receipt No. 4: the Epstein transparency promise had a very specific rise and collapse

During the 2024 campaign, Trump was repeatedly asked whether he would release Epstein-related records. In June, when asked whether he would declassify the Epstein files, he initially said yes, then qualified the answer by worrying that “phony stuff” in the files could damage people. In September, on Lex Fridman’s podcast, he sounded much more definitive, saying he would do it and would do it “very early on.”

Then he won.

On February 21, 2025, newly confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi was asked on Fox News about an Epstein “client list.” Her answer became famous:

“It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”

Six days later, the White House staged what looked like the beginning of the big reveal. More than a dozen conservative influencers walked out of the West Wing carrying white binders stamped with the Justice Department seal and titled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1.” The administration called it the first phase of declassified Epstein material and said it was fulfilling Trump’s commitment to transparency.

Then people opened the binders.

Much of the material had already been public. Even some of the influencers who received the folders acknowledged there was little new inside them. Bondi then said she had learned that thousands of additional pages had been withheld from her and promised that the public would eventually get the full files.

Then came July 2025.

The Justice Department and FBI issued a memo saying their systematic review found no incriminating “client list,” no credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent people, and no evidence that would justify investigating uncharged third parties. The memo concluded that “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”

That is an extraordinary sequence:

The backlash came from inside Trump’s own movement because his administration had spent months creating the expectation that something enormous was coming.

Eventually Trump changed course again. He backed legislation requiring disclosure and signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November 2025. By January 2026, DOJ said it had published about 3.5 million responsive pages, despite identifying roughly 6 million potentially responsive pages. Litigation over additional withheld material continued into 2026.

That does not prove Trump personally ordered material hidden. I do not have evidence to say that. It does show a promise, a highly choreographed rollout, a retreat, an internal political explosion, another reversal and an unfinished transparency fight—all around a case involving a man Trump had known socially for years.

When the president is personally part of the history surrounding the files, transparency should become cleaner—not more confusing.

Receipt No. 5: the legal record is bigger than one verdict

Trump’s personal criminal record is precise: a New York jury convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. That is his criminal conviction; it should not be padded with convictions belonging to other people or corporate entities.

His civil record is separate. A New York court found Trump liable for fraud for years of asset-value misstatements. In 2025, an appeals court threw out the enormous monetary penalty as excessive, a major victory for Trump, while preserving the fraud case and some restrictions. That distinction belongs in any honest accounting.

His businesses have their own record. Two Trump Organization corporate entities were convicted in 2022 on 17 criminal counts arising from a tax-fraud scheme; Trump himself was not on trial in that case. Trump University separately resolved fraud lawsuits through a $25 million settlement without Trump admitting wrongdoing.

Then there are the two impeachments, the election-subversion prosecution that was dismissed after his return to office because of Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president, the classified-documents case that was dismissed and not revived against him after his election, and the civil judgments discussed above.

The point is not to throw every lawsuit into one pile and shout “guilty.” The point is almost the opposite. The receipts are strong enough that they do not need inflation.

And then, after looking at all of that, come back to Cornell.

That is the point.

The President telling America he feels badly for men being investigated in an alleged sexual assault is not some isolated sentence spoken by a random politician with an otherwise spotless record. It lands on top of the tape, the allegations, the Carroll verdict, the hush-money concealment case, the Epstein relationship, the Epstein disclosure reversals, the felony conviction, the fraud finding, and decades of public behavior.

You do not have to accept my conclusion about Donald Trump.

But you cannot fairly tell me I arrived without receipts.

And the receipts are why Cornell matters so much now: it is where this entire record meets a live case, in real time, and gives Donald Trump another chance to show us what he does when evidence gets harder rather than easier.

The doubling down is the point

There is a reason January 6 belongs here even after the receipts section has already established Trump’s legal and credibility record. January 6 is not just another item in the pile. It is the clearest example of what happens when Donald Trump is confronted with an outcome he refuses to accept.

He did not simply challenge the 2020 election, lose those challenges and move on. He continued insisting the election was stolen. He was impeached after the attack on the Capitol and acquitted by the Senate. Federal prosecutors later charged him over efforts to overturn the election, but that prosecution was dismissed after his return to office because Justice Department policy bars prosecution of a sitting president.

Then Trump returned to power and did something more consequential than continuing to complain about January 6.

He used presidential power to grant sweeping clemency covering roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants. His Justice Department later removed hundreds of public news releases documenting January 6 prosecutions from its website, describing them as “partisan propaganda.” On the fifth anniversary of the attack, the White House published its own January 6 website repeating the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen and asserting that Mike Pence had authority to return electoral votes to the states—an authority Pence himself has repeatedly said he did not possess.

That is not merely refusing to admit you were wrong. It is using power to preserve the story in which you were never wrong.

And the pattern is still moving. Reuters reported on October 2, 2026 that Trump’s continuing fixation on supposedly “rigged” voting machines has spread into the federal government. Officials and allies pushed investigations involving the Justice Department, FBI, Homeland Security and intelligence agencies. Yet the investigations Reuters reviewed had still produced no evidence that foreign actors manipulated voting machines to change the 2020 result.

That is what I mean by doubling down.

The adverse evidence does not necessarily end the claim. The failed court challenge does not necessarily end the claim. The election certification does not end the claim. The passage of years does not end the claim. The presidency itself can become another instrument for keeping the claim alive.

And that brings me back to Cornell.

Cornell gives us a live version of the same test. Trump has already publicly positioned Letitia James as corrupt and the people she is investigating as unlikely to get a fair shake. Now the evidence continues to develop. Cornell itself is reviewing its failures. The criminal investigation is active. More facts will come.

What happens if those facts make Trump’s original posture harder to defend?

Does the position change?

Or does the story change so the position never has to?

That connection is already part of the foundation of the project. In The First Fall, I describe the story’s purpose with a line that fits this article almost perfectly: less about what happened; more about why it keeps happening.

Righteous Man Cometh begins opening that world publicly, introducing Jack Righteous, Lion and the 2030 Biblical sci-fi setting. And the developing WAR COMES material carries Jack into Empire City as a peace-first freedom fighter confronting power, conflict and the Four Horsemen.

I am not writing Donald Trump into the musical by changing his name.

I am watching what power does to people, what people do for power, how truth becomes negotiable, how grievance can become permanent, and how faith is supposed to function when the crowd is demanding allegiance.

That is bigger than Trump.

Trump is simply providing a remarkable amount of real-world material with which to think about it.

The Christian problem I cannot escape

While talking through this article, I said something ugly: Donald Trump is a man that only Jesus and racists can love.

I want to leave that sentence in because pretending I never said it would be dishonest.

There is a conviction underneath it that I am not abandoning: race matters to how I understand Donald Trump’s public history. The Exonerated Five are part of why.

But the sentence itself goes further than I can prove. I cannot establish that every person who loves Donald Trump is racist.

And Christianity presents an even bigger problem for my anger.

Jesus loves Donald Trump.

That is what I believe. Not because Trump won an election. Not because political power demonstrates God’s approval. Not because he deserves some special dispensation. Jesus loves Donald Trump for the same uncomfortable reason Christians believe he loves the rest of us.

Grace.

Grace is irritating when you are furious because grace does not allow me to decide who has become permanently unworthy of redemption.

But Christians need to stop confusing love with endorsement.

I can pray for Donald Trump without supporting Donald Trump. I can believe he is capable of repentance without pretending he has repented for things he refuses to acknowledge. I can forgive somebody and refuse to give him the keys. I can love somebody and remove him from management.

Christianity does not command us to abandon discernment. It does not call dishonesty truth because the liar advances policies we prefer. It does not call cruelty strength. It does not turn accountability into persecution simply because accountability reaches our political side.

And grace does not erase consequences.

There is another uncomfortable Christian truth I have to confront. Maybe Jesus has something to say to me about this headline too.

Calling another human being a “disgusting fat pig” is cruel language. It attacks his body. I know that. Righteous anger and self-righteous anger live dangerously close together. I do not get to declare every word that comes out of my anger holy simply because some of the things I am angry about are serious.

So I will own the contradiction.

Perhaps I have something to answer for too.

But Christianity cannot become an instruction to speak so politely about wrongdoing that eventually nobody can tell you are describing something wrong.

Grace does not require silence.

And it certainly does not require stupidity.

The test happening right now

There is one more thing I want to watch carefully because it gets to the heart of the man I am describing.

Has Donald Trump ever admitted he was wrong? Yes. Rarely, but yes. After the Access Hollywood tape in 2016, he said, “I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.” Just days ago, he also admitted he had done a “very bad job” explaining his economic record. So I am not going to write the false sentence that Donald Trump has literally never admitted error.

But substantive reversals in which he accepts that his underlying judgment was wrong are unusual enough that they stand out when they happen. Much more familiar is the pattern we have seen around the 2020 election, the Exonerated Five, E. Jean Carroll, his New York conviction and his attacks on prosecutors: the adverse fact arrives, and the argument becomes that the process, the person, the court, the prosecutor, the media or the institution is corrupt.

That is why Cornell has become a live test for this entire article.

If new evidence further substantiates what has already emerged, what will Donald Trump do?

Will he say he spoke too soon? Will he acknowledge that the Snapchat evidence changed the picture? Will he separate his hatred of Letitia James from the underlying case? Will he express concern for Jane Doe? Will he say that the men involved should be investigated fully and held accountable according to their individual conduct?

Or will he double down?

Cornell is no longer just evidence in this article. It is a prediction test.

I do not need to pretend I already know the answer. We are going to get one in public.

Is he worth the trouble?

After eleven years of arguing about Donald Trump, this is the question I keep coming back to because it is simpler than politics.

At some point in almost everybody’s life, you have to decide whether something is worth the trouble.

Managers understand this. Sometimes you have an employee who produces. Maybe they are brilliant. Maybe they possess skills nobody else on the team has. Maybe replacing them would be extremely difficult. Maybe you genuinely need what they provide.

So you tolerate some weaknesses. You coach. You accommodate. You explain. You give another opportunity. Then another. You spend time repairing relationships. You double-check work. You manage the attitude. You deal with complaints. You tell everyone else, yes, I know, but look at what this person produces.

Sometimes that is the correct decision. Great performers are not always easy people.

But every competent manager eventually reaches the same calculation.

Is the value this person provides worth everything it costs us to keep them in the role?

That is return on investment.

So strip away the cult of personality for a moment. Strip away MAGA. Strip away Democrats. Strip away cable news. Put Donald Trump into the longest performance review in American history.

Start by giving him every benefit his supporters believe he delivers. Immigration. Judges. Taxes. Regulation. Trade. Energy. Foreign policy. AI. Abortion. Government disruption. Whatever you believe Donald Trump delivers, put it on the table.

I am serious.

Give him the credit you believe he deserves.

Then do something Donald Trump himself so rarely seems interested in doing:

Show the receipts.

Now put the cost on the other side.

The endless disputes over basic facts. The false election claims repeated again and again years after the election ended. January 6. Two impeachments. Sweeping clemency for January 6 defendants. A civil jury finding of sexual abuse. Thirty-four felony convictions. Years of litigation. Attacks on prosecutors. Constant arguments over whether today’s outrageous statement really means what the words appear to mean. The explanations. The corrections. The reinterpretations. The exceptions. The demand that an entire country absorb one more thing.

And now a question about an alleged sexual assault involving young people at Cornell becomes another opportunity for the President to centre one of his own grievances.

At some point, the calculation has to happen.

Not whether Donald Trump is a human being worthy of dignity. He is.

Not whether Jesus can love Donald Trump. He can.

Not whether Donald Trump has ever done anything useful as president. Of course a president can do useful things.

The question is about responsibility.

What does Donald Trump have to deliver to make all of this worth it?

Because the trouble is not free.

Institutions pay for it. Families pay for it. Public trust pays for it. Political discourse pays for it. Truth pays for it when every factual disagreement becomes another loyalty test.

And eventually an entire society pays for it when people become so exhausted by the extraordinary that nothing feels extraordinary anymore.

That may be Donald Trump’s most consequential political achievement: not convincing everybody that he is always right, but convincing enough people that nothing matters enough to disqualify him.

I have spent eleven years trying to understand that.

I have prayed. I have questioned my own anger. I have gone looking for arguments on the other side. I have written. I have made music. I have tried to distinguish what I can prove from what I merely believe. I have tried to leave room for grace.

I still do.

But grace does not require gullibility. Forgiveness does not require amnesia. Christian love does not require political endorsement. The presumption of innocence does not require pretending evidence does not exist. And giving one man the benefit of the doubt cannot mean giving him the benefit of every doubt forever.

So yes, the headline is ugly.

Maybe it is too ugly.

Maybe Jesus and I are going to have to talk about that.

But after the Exonerated Five, after January 6, after Carroll, after 34 felony convictions, after another cycle of Epstein promises and reversals, after more than a decade of watching Donald Trump demand that every institution and every person around him accommodate one more controversy, one more contradiction and one more grievance, I have reached a much simpler place.

If you believe Donald Trump is worth all of this, I will listen. And now Cornell gives us something even more valuable than another retrospective argument: it gives us a live demonstration. Watch what happens as the evidence develops. Watch whether the President makes room for facts that complicate his original posture, or whether every new fact is bent around the same grievance.

But do not bring me another slogan. Do not tell me every court that rules against him is corrupt while every court that rules for him suddenly proves the justice system works. Do not tell me every prosecutor is political. Do not tell me every negative report is fake. Do not tell me every election he loses is rigged and every election he wins is sacred. Do not tell me that the endless chaos around one human being is somehow always somebody else’s fault.

I have spent eleven years listening.

Now bring the evidence.

Show the receipts.

---

Sources and context: This essay draws on public reporting and records concerning the Cornell investigation and Letitia James’s appointment as special prosecutor, Trump’s October 2, 2026 remarks, the Exonerated Five, the January 6 investigations and clemency actions, E. Jean Carroll litigation, Trump’s New York criminal conviction, and the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Key reporting referenced includes Associated Press, Reuters, congressional records, court records and Department of Justice releases.