In a summer marked by legal drama, political clashes, and the ever-present battle for public trust, two of America’s most prominent institutions—its justice system and its media—have found themselves under intense scrutiny. On one front, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. has accused top Justice Department prosecutors of trampling civil rights during President Donald Trump’s latest law-enforcement surge. On another, Fox News and its conservative rival Newsmax continue to weather the fallout from massive defamation lawsuits, even as their audiences grow and their influence deepens in the Trump era.
Thursday’s courtroom scene in Washington was anything but routine. Federal magistrate judge Zia Faruqui, himself a former prosecutor, openly rebuked the leadership of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office. According to the Associated Press, Faruqui charged that Pirro’s team had “tarnished its reputation” by needlessly detaining suspects and bringing cases that, in his words, “don’t belong in federal court.” The judge’s frustration reached a boiling point as he declared, “It’s not fair to say they’re losing credibility. We’re past that now. There’s no credibility left.”
The spark for this unusually public confrontation was the case of Edward Alexander Dana, who spent over a week behind bars after being accused of threatening to kill President Trump while in police custody. Dana’s ordeal began on August 17, 2025, when he was arrested for allegedly damaging a light fixture at a restaurant and, while intoxicated, made a threat against the president. Yet, as the AP reports, a federal grand jury refused to indict him—a rare outcome that has happened at least seven times in five cases since Trump’s law enforcement surge began on August 7.
Faruqui’s criticism extended beyond Pirro’s handling of Dana’s case. He questioned why senior prosecutors would not appear in court to defend their decisions, stating, “That’s what leaders do.” The judge also took aim at the broader Trump administration, which he said was “touting the arrest figures on social media with seemingly no regard for how the arrests are affecting people’s lives.” Faruqui did not mince words: “Where are the stats on the people illegally detained?”
Pirro, for her part, was quick to fire back. In a statement posted to social media, she accused Faruqui of letting his politics cloud his judgment and claimed he had “repeatedly indicated his allegiance to those who violate the law and carry illegal guns.” She added, “America voted for safe communities, law and order, and this judge is the antithesis of that.” Pirro’s office later dropped the federal charges against Dana, opting instead to pursue misdemeanors in D.C. Superior Court, including destruction of property and attempted threats.
This clash between prosecutor and judge is just the latest skirmish in what has become a broader showdown between the Trump administration and the federal judiciary. Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has repeatedly challenged the courts’ authority, but it remains rare for a prosecutor to publicly criticize a judge by name. The stakes are high: the White House says more than 1,800 people have been arrested since the law enforcement operation began, with over 40 cases filed in district court—many involving serious federal charges like assault, gun, and drug offenses.
The controversy over prosecutorial overreach and civil rights is mirrored, in a different arena, by the ongoing reckoning within America’s conservative media. Fox News, the nation’s dominant cable news network, continues to face the aftershocks of a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over false claims made after the 2020 presidential election. Newsmax, a rising conservative rival, recently settled a similar lawsuit with Dominion for $67 million, as reported by the Associated Press.
Yet, if anyone expected these legal setbacks to dent Fox’s popularity, they were mistaken. According to Nielsen data cited by the AP, Fox News averaged 2.63 million viewers in weekday prime-time for the second quarter of 2025—a staggering 56% increase from the same period in 2023. The network’s share of the cable news audience has soared from 45% to 62% in just two years, outpacing competitors ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN.
Fox’s unwavering support for Trump is unmistakable. The former president has filled his second administration with Fox alumni, including Pete Hegseth and Jeanine Pirro herself. Trump often turns to Fox to make news, and his loyalists dominate the network’s programming. Even after the departure of major personalities—Tucker Carlson was fired after the Dominion settlement, and longtime anchor Neil Cavuto left in December 2024—Fox has demonstrated a knack for generating new stars and keeping its audience engaged. Jesse Watters now occupies the coveted prime-time slot once held by Carlson and Bill O’Reilly.
Behind the scenes, however, the legal and ethical challenges have been significant. Internal documents and deposition interviews tied to Smartmatic’s ongoing lawsuit against Fox reveal management’s efforts to control the narrative during the 2020 election. Reporters were disciplined for fact-checking Trump’s claims, and anchor Neil Cavuto was criticized for cutting away from then-press secretary Kayleigh McEnany when she began discussing alleged election fraud. Despite these revelations, Fox has refused to retract or apologize for programs that falsely implicated Smartmatic in vote manipulation, maintaining that such coverage was newsworthy and defending itself on free speech grounds.
Newsmax, meanwhile, has taken a different tack—at least in public. After settling with Smartmatic in 2024, the network aired a statement in December 2020 acknowledging that “no evidence has been offered that Dominion or Smartmatic used software or reprogrammed software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election.” In April the following year, Newsmax apologized for airing false allegations against a Dominion employee, leading to the employee dropping Newsmax from a defamation lawsuit. However, when it came to the August 2025 settlement with Dominion, Newsmax offered no apology. Instead, CEO Chris Ruddy attacked the judge, claiming a “confiscation of our property because our reporting was not always sympathetic to Joe Biden.” Newsmax insisted on air that its coverage was “fair, balanced and conducted within professional standards of journalism.”
The financial impact of these settlements has been substantial. Newsmax is spreading its $67 million payment over three years. Fox, with deeper pockets, has absorbed its much larger hit—helped by insurance and tax deductions—and remains a profit engine, with Axios reporting the company expects to make half a billion dollars from non-TV products like books, podcasts, and streaming in 2025.
As the dust settles, both the justice system and the media find themselves at a crossroads. Judge Faruqui, in a rare move, apologized to Dana “on behalf of the court” for the ordeal he endured, and suggested that Pirro’s office owed him an apology as well. Meanwhile, the nation’s top conservative news outlets continue to thrive, seemingly impervious to scandal and litigation, their audiences undeterred and, in many cases, more loyal than ever.
In a climate of deepening division, the battles over justice and truth are far from over. But for now, the institutions at the heart of these controversies show little sign of changing course—no matter how heated the public debate becomes.
