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Posted on 06/11/2026 9:47:53 PM PDT by Red Badger
The Supreme Court just issued a unanimous ruling, and the case behind it has everything: Twitter, Saudi dissidents, federal prosecutors, and a fake invoice.
The decision came down June 11, 2026, in Abouammo v. United States, No. 25-5146. Justice Elena Kagan wrote for a 9-0 Court, reversing the Ninth Circuit and sending the case back.
Legal reporter Katie Buehler summed up the ruling this way:
The defendant is Ahmad Abouammo, a former Twitter employee accused of giving confidential information about Saudi dissidents to a high-level Saudi official.
According to the Court, the Saudi official wired Abouammo $300,000. Later, after Abouammo had left Twitter and moved to Seattle, FBI agents interviewed him at his home.
The case was ugly. The legal question was narrower: where was the government allowed to try the false-record charge?
The Supreme Court laid out the case this way:
This case presents the question whether a defendant charged with violating 18 U.S.C. §1519—which makes it a crime to knowingly falsify a document with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation—must be tried in the district where the falsification occurred, or whether he may alternatively be tried in the district where the federal investigation was located.
While employed by Twitter at its San Francisco office, petitioner Ahmad Abouammo provided confidential information to a high-level Saudi official about Saudi dissidents posting on the company’s platform. In exchange, the official wired Abouammo $300,000.
Around the same time, Abouammo left Twitter and relocated to Seattle, where he started a social-media consulting business. Two San Francisco-based FBI agents, who were investigating unauthorized disclosures of Twitter account information, later flew to Seattle to interview Abouammo at his home.
During the interview, Abouammo denied giving the Saudi official confidential information, claiming that the payments were for consulting work. When the agents asked for supporting documentation, Abouammo went upstairs, created a fake invoice, and emailed it to one of the agents.
Back in San Francisco, the agents discovered from the emailed document’s date-and-time metadata what Abouammo had just done.
Held: A defendant charged with violating §1519 must be tried in the district where the falsification occurred; he cannot be tried in a different district where the investigation was located because no “conduct constituting the offense” happened there.
That is the heart of the ruling.
The government charged the false-record count in the Northern District of California. Abouammo argued it belonged in the Western District of Washington because the alleged falsification happened in Seattle.
The Supreme Court agreed with him on that venue question.
For readers who do not live inside legal filings, venue is not a technicality when the Constitution says it twice.
Article III says criminal trials are to be held in the state where the crimes were committed. The Sixth Amendment protects the right to a jury from the state and district where the crime was committed.
In plain English, prosecutors do not get to pick a preferred courtroom just because the case is politically sensitive, embarrassing, or tied to foreign influence.
That is the part that makes the unanimous ruling land.
The Court did not bless what Abouammo allegedly did. It did not declare him innocent.
It did something more basic: it reminded the government that even an unsympathetic defendant gets the protections the Constitution actually gives him.
And when all nine justices agree on that, federal prosecutors across the country have to pay attention.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
https://wltreport.com/2026/06/11/breaking-supreme-court-issues-unanimous-ruling/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=breaking-supreme-court-issues-unanimous-ruling
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The Constitution actually says people must be tried where the crime occurred?
The government lawyer who filed the charge in CA sure bungled that. You'd think that they would understand something as simple as venue.
Article III, Section 2, Clause 3:
The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.
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So all crimes committed in Washington DC must be decided by a DC jury. hmmmm
Yes, but in Civil matters if Mark Steyn publishes an article that Michael Mann finds defamatory, Mann can pick any venue where National Review might be read, so he went with Washington D.C., where the jury found $1 in actual damage, but found Steyn liable for $1 Million dollars punitive damages.
"The Sixth Amendment protects the right to a jury from the state and district where the crime was committed.
In plain English, prosecutors do not get to pick a preferred courtroom just because the case is politically sensitive"
This involves the attempt to assassinate a Saudi diplomat, and the disappearance of Washington Post op ed writer Jamal Kashoggi , former friend of OBL and MBro, last seen alive at the Saudi Enbassy in Istanbul Turkey back in 2018.
*****
Found on another thread:
“
spooky British journo who knows Khashoggi well:
11 Oct: US Spectator: What the media aren’t telling you about Jamal Khashoggi
The dissident’s fate says a lot about Saudi Arabia and the rise of the mobster state
by John R. Bradley
As someone who spent three decades working closely with intelligence services in the Arab world and the West, the Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi knew he was taking a huge risk in entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week to try to obtain a document certifying he had divorced his ex-wife...
He had become the darling of western commentators on the Middle East. With almost two million Twitter followers, he was the most famous political pundit in the Arab world and a regular guest on the major TV news networks in Britain and the United States...
In the 1970s he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, which exists to rid the Islamic world of western influence. He was a political Islamist until the end, recently praising the Muslim Brotherhood in the Washington Post. He championed the ‘moderate’ Islamist opposition in Syria, whose crimes against humanity are a matter of record. Khashoggi frequently sugarcoated his Islamist beliefs with constant references to freedom and democracy. But he never hid that he was in favour of a Muslim Brotherhood arc throughout the Middle East. His recurring plea to bin Salman in his columns was to embrace not western-style democracy, but the rise of political Islam which the Arab Spring had inadvertently given rise to. For Khashoggi, secularism was the enemy.
He had been a journalist in the 1980s and 1990s, but then became more of a player than a spectator...
The Saudis, too, may have worried that Khashoggi had become a US asset...
...Khashoggi had earlier this year established a new political party in the US called Democracy for the Arab World Now, which would support Islamist gains in democratic elections throughout the region. Bin Salman’s nightmare of a Khashoggi-led Islamist political opposition was about to become a reality...
https://spectator.us/2018/10/jamal-khashoggi/
15 posted on 10/14/2018, 2:00:21 AM by MAGAthon (O)
… and Iran, of course…
📌
The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.”
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So all crimes committed in Washington DC must be decided by a DC jury. hmmmm
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Since the DC is not a state, Congess can, and should, change this venue.
5 posted on 6/12/2026, 1:24:56 AM by Neanderthal (The steal was real!)
Since the DC is not a state, Congess can, and should, change this venue."
******************************************************************
That is a very good point and if it stands up to hard legal scrutiny it should move to the top of Congress' to-do list.
Smith tried to drag Trump to court in the rigged DC circuit but since the "crimes" allegedly took place in FL, the case stayed there.
No mention of limitations............
So yesterday...Why post this??
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