John Konrad, a shipping analyst with a hundred fifty five thousand X followers, says he got far enough along toward becoming a Pentagon special government employee that he sold his stock portfolio to satisfy ethics requirements, then says he was ghosted by the administration before it went through. He was in the room for the first briefing of Hegseth's overhauled press corps. When Pounds's Pentagon job surfaced, Konrad wrote that if she is getting paid, good for her. The relationships differ, but the ecosystem is real. Thomas Anderson, the retired colonel known as Cynical Publius with three hundred twenty-three thousand followers, declined to answer when a Washington Post reporter asked directly whether he holds SGE status like Pounds did. Adam D'Ortona is a different case entirely: an active-duty lieutenant colonel already known to work in Hegseth's orbit, running a partisan account with over a hundred thousand followers, and the Pentagon will not say what his role is or how it relates to DoD rules against partisan political activity by active-duty officers.

The voluntary dismissal filed this morning is three pages long. No detail about the reported $1.776 billion settlement with Jan 6 rioters and convicted fraudsters. The filing does contain this sentence: "Upon the filing of this Notice, no judicial analysis is appropriate." That sentence is the entire operation. Judge Williams had set a May 20 deadline to examine whether the parties were genuinely adversarial in a lawsuit where the plaintiff controls the defendant's boss. Trump's team filed a self-executing dismissal 48 hours before that examination and argued the filing itself strips the court of jurisdiction to conduct it. The 93 members of Congress filing to oppose this argue the maneuver is constitutionally impermissible: a settlement "intended to avoid the Court's scrutiny" would contravene DOJ's settlement authority and the Constitution. The race to May 20 was won. The constitutional question was not dismissed with it.