This week’s Serious Trouble comes to you live from a perch overlooking the soon-to-be-built Trump National Championship Golf Links at East Potomac Park by Donald J. Trump. Or, maybe — as I looked over the federally administered national parkland along the Potomac River, I was looking at a suite of projects where the president’s “just do things” approach has faced intermittent trouble in court. For example: Trump’s name has been ordered down off the Kennedy Center, which is once again just the Kennedy Center. We discuss challenges to his “anti-weaponization fund," and the status of various lawsuits aimed at stopping the fund and the ripeness and standing challenges they face. And we look at the “you fucking dingus” doctrine — the extent to which Trump’s most cartoonish actions cause judges to hunt for ways to respond to them.

That’s for free subscribers. Paying subscribers also get:

* Alexis Wilkins vs. MS NOW, and the George Costanza theory of actual malice.

* The junior lawyer leading the James Comey seashell prosecution steps down (as lawyers flee the government more broadly) while a judge in another case rules that “8647” is not a true threat.

* Trump really doesn’t want to pay tariff refunds, and Ilya Somin argues the tariff cases show how CASA has created a mess.

* A CIA official gets indicted for lying on his resume, but really for stealing tens of millions of dollars worth of gold that he was somehow able to order to his office.

* George Santos appears to be under investigation for insider trading in a prediction market about George Santos.

* A gadfly blogger in Ohio is arrested for texting an image to a state senator that apparently depicts Shrek masturbating. Is that a crime?

The ‘Broadview Six’ case was one of the Trump administration’s prominent prosecutions of anti-ICE protesters. Federal prosecutors in Chicago brought felony charges to fanfare, then curiously dropped them, keeping only misdemeanor counts. Now we know why: they engaged in egregious misconduct to obtain the felony indictments, which they then sought to conceal from the judge, who is not amused.

For all subscribers, we discuss that and US Attorney Andrew Boutros, who issued a weird memo promising reform, and the news that his office is apparently running a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, examining whether she lied in a deposition hundreds of miles from Chicago.

For paying subscribers (upgrade your subscription now at serioustrouble.show) this week, there’s also:

* Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s big and unusual win on vindictive prosecution, which is already inspiring the Southern Poverty Law Center.

* A sordid case involving an Eleventh Circuit judge whose sofa cushion required forensic testing after clerks asserted she was noisily carrying on an affair in chambers.

* A free speech win for West Point faculty.

* An interesting new insider trading case involving Polymarket.

* A probably-too-clever motion attacking the “anti-weaponization fund,” and

* More bad news for ex-JP Morgan banker Chirayu Rana.

Donald Trump has announced a new $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund” to be doled out as he sees fit to “victims” of the “weaponization” of the Justice Department. It's financed from the Judgment Fund, a strange legal creature — it’s a permanent, unlimited appropriation the federal government can use to pay judgments and settlements. But like… doesn’t that have to be for real lawsuits with plausible claims that could win in court? Also: an ex-AUSA has been criminally charged for sending herself electronic copies of confidential reports about the findings from Jack Smith’s documents investigation into the president. She gave the files names like “bundt cake recipe."

That’s for free subscribers. Paying subscribers get our discussions about:

* An ICE agent facing state criminal charges in Minnesota.

* Elon Musk losing in his civil trial against Sam Altman, and the complex set of circumstances that led the presiding judge to seek an advisory verdict from the jury before disposing of the case herself.

* A counterclaim from Lorna Hajdini in the JP Morgan saga.

* Chud the Builder, unfortunately (in part because of his whiny lawyer).

* Trouble for timeshare billionaire Stephen Cloobeck — Eric Swalwell’s onetime benefactor — and Cloobeck’s ex-Penthouse Pet fiancée, Adva Lavie, a.k.a. “Mia Ventura.”

* Rep. Max Miller, who apparently has the worst luck with women, is suing his ex-wife for defamation, saying she’s making up lies about him being abusive, just like his ex-girlfriend before her, whom he also sued for defamation when she called him abusive.

* And Clavicular pleads no-contest to shooting a dead alligator, is sentenced to non-livestreamed community service — and gets brutally mogged by Judge Marcus Bach-Armas, a total chad who used to be in-house counsel for the Miami Dolphins.