A Kansas federal judge recently imposed penalties that included fines ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 upon attorneys responsible for mistakenly submitting a brief containing falsehoods created by artificial intelligence. Senior U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson in a Feb. 2 ruling spelled out penalties assessed to Texas-based attorneys Sandeep Seth, Kenneth Kula, Christopher Joe and Michael Doell and Kansas-based attorney David Cooper. The five, as attorneys of record for Lexos Media IP LLC, signed a defective brief submitted in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kansas, as part of a patent infringement case against Overstock.com Inc. The brief contained numerous falsehoods blamed on AI, including citing a nonexistent lawsuit against Topeka's city government, sharing made-up quotes attributed to judges' decisions and sharing citations to cases that are real but held the opposite of what the brief claimed they did. Robinson assessed the following penalties: · A $5,000 fine upon Seth, of Houston-based SethLaw PLLC, who admitted he added the AI-generated citations to the brief and should have checked their accuracy. Robinson also revoked Seth's admission as an attorney in the case, ordered him to self-report to legal disciplinary authorities in the state where he is licensed and ordered him to submit to the court clerk a certificate outlining internal procedures his firm is undertaking to ensure future court filings are accurate. · A $3,000 fine and public admonishment upon Kula, of Dallas-based Buether Joe & Counselors LLC., whom Robinson said violated his duty by signing documents he had failed to review and also failed to acknowledge his breach of legal rules. · A $3,000 fine and public admonishment upon Joe, the case's lead attorney, whom Robinson said violated his duty by signing documents he'd failed to review and failed to acknowledge his breach of legal rules. Because Joe is the managing member of Buether Joe & Counselors LLC, Robinson also ordered him to implement procedures there to ensure future court filings are accurate; strongly consider verification and training requirements for all members; and file a certificate outlining those procedures by Feb. 28. · A $1,000 fine upon Cooper, the local counsel for the case, whom Robinson said signed documents for which he didn't check citations. Robinson stressed that Cooper acknowledged he had a responsibility to fact-check those documents, expressed remorse for not doing so and shared detailed information about steps being taken to avoid future infractions of the same type by the Topeka firm for which he is employed, Fisher Patterson Sayler & Smith LLP. · Admonishment upon Doell, of Buether Joe & Counselors LLC, where he is the most junior attorney in the case. Doell wasn't fined. Robinson said Doell was placed in a difficult position by his supervising attorneys, who neither expected nor instructed him to substantively check Seth's work. Here's how the mistake was made Seth said that after writing an initial draft brief in the case, he used ChatGPT as a shortcut to find 10th Circuit and Federal Circuit case law consistent with the facts of the case. Seth said he incorporated some of the citations and quotes ChatGPT provided into his brief but didn't check them. "I should not have incorporated these without checking them first," he said. All five attorneys on Lexos Media's legal team who signed the brief shared the blame for the AI-hallucinated material, Robinson said last month. She ordered the five to show cause in writing as to why they shouldn't be penalized. The attorneys responded by each filing declarations Jan. 5.

The U.S. Justice Department has removed a government lawyer from an assignment in Minnesota after she told a federal judge, "This job sucks" and said immigration authorities had failed to comply with court orders, according to a source familiar with the move. Julie Le, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, had been detailed to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota as hundreds of lawsuits flooded the court there from people challenging their detention during the Trump administration's immigration enforcement surge. U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell had ordered her and another government lawyer to appear before him in a St. Paul courtroom on Feb. 3 to explain why the administration had repeatedly not complied with court orders in several cases including ones directing the release of detainees. According to a court transcript, Le told the judge she had "stupidly" volunteered to work at the U.S. Attorney's Office starting January 5 to help it address hundreds of lawsuits that had arrived challenging the detention of people swept up in "Operation Metro Surge" in Minnesota. "What do you want me to do?" she said, the transcript showed. "The system sucks. This job sucks." A Justice Department spokesperson said the Trump administration was complying with court orders "and fully enforcing federal immigration law", blaming high caseloads on "rogue judges." The source said the Justice Department had cut short Le's assignment. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson called Le's remarks "unprofessional and unbecoming" but did not say whether she had returned to her previous job. Le did not respond to requests for comment. During the Feb. 3 hearing, Le said she had worked days and nights on the cases and tried to ensure court orders were complied with. But she said she had not received proper training from the Justice Department and had struggled to ensure U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement complied with all court orders, "which they have not done in the past or currently". "Sometime I wish you would just hold me in contempt, Your Honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep," Le told Blackwell, according to the transcript. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota has come under strain as it faces a flood of immigration petitions and cases accusing demonstrators of assaulting federal agents. Six prosecutors, including some senior officials, resigned earlier this month in protest against how President Donald Trump's administration handled the investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an immigration agent. Blackwell, who was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, said he understood "the concerns about all the energy that this is causing the DOJ to expend, but, with respect, some of it is of your own making by not complying with orders." Le said she shared his concerns about how the immigration cases were being handled. "I am not white, as you can see," she said. "And my family's at risk as any other people that might get picked up too, so I share the same concern, and I took that concern to heart."

Georgia's Fulton County filed a challenge on Feb. 4 to the legality of a warrant and seizure of election records in an FBI search of an election facility last week, seeking the return of all confiscated files and the unsealing of a related affidavit. The FBI searched the election office outside Atlanta as it pursues U.S. President Donald Trump's false claims that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voting fraud. The raid was the latest in a string of actions by Trump's administration to use the Justice Department against his perceived enemies or to intervene in cases in which he believes he was treated unfairly. The county asked a federal court to limit the warrant to provide an opportunity for a forensic accounting of all the documents and to request they stay in Georgia, Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. told Reuters in an interview, adding that ideally he would like all records returned. "Frankly, though, it's really too late," Arrington said. "Even if they give us the records back, we still don't know if they lost records or deleted records because there was no inventory, there was no orderly transition of these files." FBI agents searched the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center in Union City, a large, warehouse-like facility opened in 2023. "This morning, February 4, 2026, Fulton County has filed a motion in federal court, in the Northern District of Georgia, seeking the return of all files from the 2020 Election that were confiscated by the FBI on Wednesday, January 28," a county spokesperson said in a statement. "The motion also seeks the unsealing of the affidavit filed in support of the search warrant," the spokesperson added. According to a copy of the search warrant seen by Reuters, the FBI was directed to seize all physical ballots from the 2020 general election in Fulton County as well as tabulator tapes for every voting machine used and voter rolls from absentee, early voting, in-person and other voters. Joe Biden, a Democrat, won Georgia and defeated Trump, a Republican who was seeking reelection in 2020. Trump returned to the presidency for a second term last year after winning the 2024 election. The seizure of the records comes ahead of November's midterm elections, with Republicans seeking to retain their control of both chambers of Congress.