Bipartisan lawmakers are seeking to secure a 35% federal pay raise for correctional officers at the Bureau of Prisons, in an effort to address longstanding staffing shortages across the agency.
The Federal Correctional Officer Paycheck Protection Act, which both House and Senate lawmakers introduced this week, would implement a 35% increase to the base pay rates for BOP correctional officers in the 0007 job series, as well as certain correctional officers on various other government pay scales.
“Persistent and often dangerous staffing shortages at federal prisons nationwide cause safety concerns for BOP personnel and incarcerated individuals alike,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), one of the bill’s original cosponsors, said in a statement. “Our bill will help to ensure that staff within our federal prisons are paid adequately for the critical work they do across this country.”
A bipartisan companion bill in the House comes from Reps. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who said that pay rates for correctional officers fall short of other similar federal law enforcement personnel. In turn, that leads to low staffing levels, coupled with excessive use of overtime to try to compensate for the vacancies.
“This strains workforce morale, disrupts inmate programming and creates unsafe conditions inside Bureau of Prisons facilities,” Bresnahan said in a statement.
The new bill comes shortly after BOP correctional officers received a 3.8% federal pay raise, as part of President Donald Trump’s orders for a larger 2026 pay increase for certain law enforcement personnel.
The American Federation of Government Employees said it “appreciates” the 3.8% raise for law enforcement, including BOP correctional officers. But AFGE added that for the BOP, “the one-time pay bump simply isn’t enough to make up for decades of pay disparity.”
Brandy Moore White, national president of the AFGE Council of Prison Locals, expressed support for the new legislation.
“This reform is critical. It will align BOP compensation with federal law enforcement standards, stem the loss of experienced officers and attract qualified applicants in an increasingly competitive hiring market,” Moore White said in a statement. “Most importantly, it will help restore safe staffing levels across federal institutions, reduce violence, protect staff and ensure mission readiness.”
The introduction of the bill also comes shortly after BOP Director William K. Marshall III announced upcoming retention-based pay incentives for certain correctional officers and other BOP positions seeing consistent staffing shortages. The new pay incentives, which are expected to take effect in February, will give some agency employees a temporary pay boost between 5% and 25%, depending on their job position and geographic location.
For years, BOP has attempted to stave off poor recruitment and retention levels by using pay-based recruitment and retention incentives as a way to try to keep federal correctional officers in their jobs. But because the pay incentives are a temporary fix, many have advocated for a larger and permanent federal pay raise for the BOP workforce.
A Justice Department Office of Inspector General report from February 2024 said the BOP workforce uses excessive overtime hours and staff “augmentation” to try to compensate for persistent understaffing. But the OIG wrote that those factors “overburdened existing staff and potentially contributed to staff fatigue, sleep deprivation, decreased vigilance and inattentiveness to duty.”
Recent federal workforce data also shows that BOP correctional officers’ attrition levels over the last year have resulted in 1,700 officers leaving their jobs, including more than 1,100 correctional officers who have either quit or retired since January 2025. Over the same time period, the agency had about 1,200 new officers join the ranks, resulting in a net loss of nearly 500 correctional officers over the last year.
Under the new legislation, the 35% pay increase would initially last for five years. Within the last six months of that timeframe, the bill would require the Justice Department OIG to assess the progress BOP has made toward improving recruitment and retention levels, as well as reducing overtime hours and staff augmentation. If that OIG assessment shows BOP has made progress as a result of the federal pay raise, the 35% salary boost would remain in place.
The post Bipartisan lawmakers propose 35% federal pay raise for Bureau of Prisons officers first appeared on Federal News Network.
© The Associated Press
The recent Bitcoin rally may be driven by real spot demand on Coinbase. Data indicating elevated spot activity on Coinbase suggests that this move higher is bolstered by direct purchases rather than leveraged positioning in derivatives markets. This distinction matters because Spot buying reflects a real capital commitment, not a temporary bet.
The Bitcoin rally since Sunday’s Powell subpoena news has been largely linked to Coinbase spot buyers. Crypto trader Alex Krüger has highlighted on X that both the Adjusted Coinbase Premium and Cumulative Volume Delta (CVD) show steady spot accumulation, which is exactly why this has been a true hated rally even among bitcoiners. For over a month, the dominant narrative in every crypto chat room has been that BTC is lagging while equities and commodities are moving upward.
However, the fun fact is that equities are not accurate, but 40% of the S&P 500 (Standard & Poor’s 500) stocks have actually closed red in 2025, (39.2% to be precise). Perception is doing a lot of work here, and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) move on Powell represented a major macro litmus test for BTC. Kruger claims that the BTC long-term value proposition is about protecting against the tail risk of central bank profligacy.
On Monday, BTC surged upward, although the move was just a little surge. According to Krüger, the BTC key battlefield remains the 50-week moving average (WMA), which is currently around $101,420. Meanwhile, the trader is looking to take some profits into short liquidations right above the $100,000 mark.
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is set for markup today, January 15th, 2026, in the Senate Banking Committee. According to the update by BTC_road_to200k on X (Formally Twitter), this is where the lawmakers will debate and shape the final version of the bill before it moves forward.
This matters because the art aims to clear up the ongoing regulatory uncertainty between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which has been a major source of hesitation for large institutional players looking to move into Bitcoin and other digital assets.
Furthermore, the Clarity Act will be a turning point as it aims to clear rules that will bring more confidence to banks, pension funds, and large investors, which often translates into higher demand and stronger price momentum for BTC. As the regulatory clouds lift, the market might start experiencing a renewed wave of institutional money flowing in, and that’s obviously bullish for BTC.
Interview transcript:
Terry Gerton I want to talk about a letter that was released on December 9. Over 100 former DOJ civil rights attorneys and staff really released an extraordinary warning about the destruction of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. What prompted that letter, and why now?
Paul Kiesel What prompted the letter was that there have been, over the last now 11 months, close to 5,000 career Department of Justice attorneys who have either resigned or been removed. And it’s a reflection that these are individuals that are non-political, they’re non-partisan, they’re there to serve justice for our American system, and they have been under assault. And so this is just consistent with that same approach of taking down members of the justice system that don’t seem to agree with the administration’s policies.
Terry Gerton The letter walks through a number of very specific constraints. What does this tell you about the state of the organization right now?
Paul Kiesel They’re expressing their frustration that in trying to do the job that they were hired to do and many of them — like Liz Oyer, who was the pardon lawyer — left Big Law and became a federal public defender. Then ultimately, when she resisted providing a gun permit to someone who’d been convicted of domestic violence, was fired for doing her job. And that’s really what it’s all about.
Terry Gerton Is this something new, or is this an escalation of a trend that we’ve been seeing over time?
Paul Kiesel I really think it’s something new. This really is an unprecedented experience where you have members of the Department of Justice who are either being fired or resigning over simple policy rules that are within what they’re supposed to be doing. They’re not outside the box. They’re working within the box that’s been created for them by the Department of Justice, and yet they’re being told to do something else. And their only option is to resign, if not be fired.
Terry Gerton With the loss of 5,000 people, what does that mean for the organizations, for the Department of Justice’s ability to actually carry out its mission?
Paul Kiesel I think probably Todd Blanche’s fireside chat he did some months ago, where he acknowledged that they were losing lots of career Department of Justice attorneys and saying that, quote, we are at war — his words, “we’re at war” — and we need young lawyers who are prepared to lose a lot, but fight. And I think the problem is we’re losing institutional history. We’re losing career prosecutors who were there for the right reasons. And so this is going to take years, if not well over a decade, to ultimately hopefully rebuild what was there in the first place.
Terry Gerton The letter focuses on the Civil Rights Division, but it also talks about a broader pattern of politicizing the Department of Justice. What does that really look like in practice? How do you see that playing out?
Paul Kiesel In practice, I think what’s happening is that people are being told that what they need to do in order to follow the dictates of the Trump administration is X, Y and Z. And in order to be loyal to the president of the United States, they need to engage in certain acts that are politicizing by suggesting that they are Trump’s attorney. There’ve been a number of federal judges who’ve not ruled favorably to the administration, and the president has not been shy about blaming someone that he quote-unquote appointed and is no longer being loyal to the president. And look, when you take the oath to be a Department of Justice attorney or a judge, you take an oath to the Constitution, not to the President of the United States.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Paul Kiesel. He’s the founder of Kiesel Law and of Speak Up for Justice. Speaking of becoming political, we’ve also seen the resignation of acting U.S. Attorney Alina Haba after the court ruled her appointment unconstitutional. So how does that play out into the bigger picture of the pressure on the Department of Justice and the judiciary that you just mentioned?
Paul Kiesel Alina Haba is a perfect example of where they attempted to bypass congressional approval. So the president can appoint a temporary U.S. attorney in a particular jurisdiction. In this case, it was New Jersey. So Alina Haba was appointed the acting U. S. attorney in New Jersey. Well, the Senate never acted to confirm her appointment; in other words, her appointment no longer becomes valid “unless”. And the “unless” is there’s an escape valve: If the judges of the district in which the U.S. attorney overseeing vote to approve and maintain that U.S. attorney, then in fact, the U.S. attorney remains in place. Well, the judges, the federal district judges in New Jersey, I believe it’s in Essex County in Newark, New Jersey, voted not to maintain Alina Haba as their U.S. attorney, which would essentially mean she’s out. She’s no longer acting. She has got to be removed from that position. Rather than accept the decision of the fact that the Senate didn’t approve and that the judges did not vote for, they challenged the non-appointment of Alina Haba as the U.S. attorney to the Third Circuit. And ultimately the Third Circuit said, no, no good, you cannot be the U.S. attorney. And ultimately she packed up her bags and left. But that is just symptomatic of not following the rules that have been laid out constitutionally for the appointment and the confirmation of the U.S. attorney. That’s happened in a number of different jurisdictions around the country, in fact even California, Los Angeles, has the same problem with its U.S. attorney as happened with Alina Haba. So it’s an ongoing story.
Terry Gerton So when the concerns raised by this letter about the Civil Rights Division specifically and about the Department of Justice more broadly actually come into play, how does it affect everyday Americans? Where do they see it? Where do they feel it?
Paul Kiesel They feel it where you’ve got indictment of James Comey and the indictment Letitia James, where the U.S. attorney wouldn’t act to indict, but ultimately a non-criminal lawyer was appointed by the president to assume the role of the U.S. attorney, Lindsey Halligan. And ultimately bypassing the rules, she got an indictment. A grand jury arguably indicted the two of them. And that’s what plays out. All of us, as Americans, are at risk. If we’re not following the rules that are in place, every American’s safety, every American’s security is at risk. When you begin to politicize the judiciary, you lose the guardrails that the framers of the Constitution put in place in the first instance. And those guardrails are not just being removed with a crowbar, they’re being run over by a tank.
Terry Gerton The Speak Up for Justice Forum that you head had a bipartisan panel last month of former U.S. attorneys that tackled some of these issues. What did you hear in that panel?
Paul Kiesel I heard concern, a broad concern of very respected, very well-regarded lawyers, expressing the concerns they have about where our country is going. When you’re politicizing the Department of Justice, when you’re removing the guardrails of our democracy, there’s real fear. Now, having said that, I’ll say that Gov. Christie, when I said, are you worried about American democracy when these things are happening? And he pushed back, and he said, no, I’m not worried. This obviously is not a good situation, but our democracy is flexible. Our democracy has survived other challenges in the past, whether it was Leo McCarthy or the Civil Rights Movement of the ’60s. We’ve survived those times. And he was optimistic, which makes me more comfortable knowing that optimism exists. Because I don’t want to be fear-mongering, but I want the country to realize the risks we have as a nation when we begin to engage in these sorts of activities.
Terry Gerton In that spirit of optimism then, what do you think needs to happen inside the Department of Justice and perhaps beyond to restore trust and protect civil rights enforcement?
Paul Kiesel I’m going to say in some ways it’s up to Congress and up to the courts. We need to push back on the administration’s consistent attempts to broaden the margins of what the president of the United States is actually permitted to do. Whether it is going into a sovereign nation — none of us who are aware what’s going on in Venezuela were comfortable with President Maduro. Hugo Chavez took down the justice system. A program we did several months ago had federal judge Javi Saldivia, who fled Venezuela under fear of imprisonment or assassination because of what was happening to the judicial system in Venezuela. So when you have our president bypassing Congress and simply going down to a sovereign nation and kidnapping or doing a rendition of a leader of another country, those are the kinds of guardrails that are built in that should not be happening in this country today. And we as a people need to react to it quickly, because the consequences can be dire and they can happen very fast.
Terry Gerton Does your spirit of optimism extend to congressional action on this matter then?
Paul Kiesel Well, it does. I mean, look, when you have Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had been a staunch ally of President Trump, who was kind of vicious in the way she approached members of Congress and members of the judiciary, when she’s called Marjorie Traitor Greene and she decides not to run again, her whole attitude has shifted. And so I’m hoping that other members, elected members who remain in Congress realize that we’re at risk, nationally and internationally and losing our democracy, they’ll push back. And maybe what’s just happened to Maduro will be that process because he bypasses Congress. And the Senate, I don’t know where that trigger, where that circuit breaker gets tripped, but I’m hopeful. If there’s members of Congress listening to this conversation, now is the time. We don’t have any more time to waste to demonstrate the three-tripartite measures of government that we have in this country. The legislative branch, the executive branch and the judicial branch need to act to protect our country.
The post More than 100 former DOJ attorneys: Civil rights, vulnerable communities under new threats first appeared on Federal News Network.
© Getty Images/iStockphoto/BrianAJackson
Bitcoin Magazine
Did DOJ Prosecutors Violate Trump’s Executive Order by Selling the Forfeited Samourai Wallet Bitcoin?
It seems that the U.S. Marshall Service (USMS) has sold the $6.3 million worth of bitcoin that Samourai Wallet developers Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill paid the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) as a fee that was part of their guilty plea.
In doing so, it has potentially violated Executive Order (EO) 14233, which mandates that bitcoin acquired via criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings should be held as part of the United States’ Strategy Bitcoin Reserve (SBR).
If the Southern District of New York (SDNY), the federal judicial district in which the Samourai case was to be tried, did, in fact, violate EO 14233, it would not be the first time employees of the SDNY have acted in defiance of direction from the federal government.
According to a document titled “Asset Liquidation Agreement”, which has been obtained exclusively by Bitcoin Magazine and has not until now been made public, the bitcoin that Rodriguez and Hill forfeited is to be sold — or already has been.
As per the document, the defendants agreed to transfer $6,367,139.69 worth of bitcoin — 57.55353033 bitcoin at the time the final party signed the agreement, which was Assistant United States Attorney Cecilia Vogelon November 3, 2025 — to the USMS.
The bitcoin, which was sent from address bc1q4pntkz06z7xxvdcers09cyjqz5gf8ut4pua22r on November 3, 2025, seems to have bypassed any direct custody by the USMS. Instead, it seems to have been sent directly to Coinbase Prime address 3Lz5ULL7nG7vv6nwc8kNnbjDmSnawKS3n8 (Arkham Intel attributes this address to the brokerage), presumably to be sold.
This Coinbase Prime address currently has a zero balance, indicating that the bitcoin may have already been sold.
If the USMS has sold the forfeited bitcoin, it likely contravened EO 14233, which orders that bitcoin acquired by the U.S. government via criminal forfeiture, termed “Government BTC” in the EO, “shall not be sold” and should be contributed into the U.S. SBR.
If the USMS sold the bitcoin, they did so at their own discretion and not as a legal mandate, which indicates that certain members of the DOJ may still view bitcoin as a taboo asset to be offloaded as opposed to a strategic asset that President Trump has directed government agencies to retain.
Given that the Samourai prosecution originated under the previous administration, which was notoriously hostile toward noncustodial crypto tools and their developers, the decision to ignore EO 14233 and sell the bitcoin despite a mandate from the executive branch fits a pattern of treating bitcoin as something that should be removed from government balance sheets as soon as possible.
According to a legal source close to this matter, the Samourai developers’ forfeited their bitcoin under 18 U.S. Code § 982(a)(1), which stipulates that any offense that violates 18 U.S. Code § 1960, the statute that prohibits the operation of unlicensed money transmitting businesses, orders that person to forfeit to the United States any property involved in the offense.
Judging by § 982 and its incorporation of 21 U.S.C. § 853(c), a criminal forfeiture statute that stipulates that “property that is subsequently transferred to a person other than the defendant may be the subject of a special verdict of forfeiture and thereafter shall be ordered forfeited to the United States,” the bitcoin that Rodriguez and Hill forfeited fits the EO’s definition of “Government BTC”.
Neither § 982 nor the incorporated § 853 requires that property that is forfeited as part of a criminal offense be liquidated. Furthermore, the fund forfeiture statutes cited in section three of the EO — 31 U.S.C. § 9705 and 28 U.S.C. § 524(c) — regulate where forfeiture proceeds are deposited and how they may be used; they do not require that forfeited bitcoin be converted to cash rather than held in kind.
The EO also stipulates that “Government BTC” falls under the umbrella of “Government Digital Assets” and states that “the head of each agency shall not sell or otherwise dispose of any Government Digital Assets” except in certain scenarios, none of which apply in the Rodriguez or Hill cases and, in all of which, the U.S. attorney general would play a role in determining what should be done with the forfeited digital assets.
When taking EO 14233 and the statutes cited in this article into account, the SDNY seems to have acted in a manner that defies the EO 14233’s mandate to transfer bitcoin obtained via criminal forfeiture to the U.S. SBR.
This would not mark the first time that the SDNY has acted in such a manner.
The judicial jurisdiction, sometimes colloquially referred to as “Sovereign District of New York,” has earned a reputation for operating independently and unilaterally, despite being part of a federal system.
The fact that the SDNY proceeded with the cases against Rodriguez and Hill as well as the case against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm, is further evidence of this.
On April 7, 2025, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a memo entitled “Ending Regulation By Prosecution” in which he stated “the Department [of Justice] will no longer target virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, and offline wallets for the acts of their end users…”
The SDNY seemed to disregard the language in this memo, though, as it proceeded with the Samourai Wallet or Tornado Cash cases.
And when the defense team for Hill and Rodrguez learned as per a Brady request that two high-ranking members of the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) “strongly suggested” that Samourai Wallet wasn’t serving as a money transmitter due to the noncustodial nature of the service, the prosecution proceeded anyway.
When it comes to criminal cases tried within the federal court system, over 90% of defendants are convicted and sentenced, with as little as 0.4% being acquitted some years. And the prosecution for SDNY cases has a reputation for having an even higher win rate.
Rodriguez was aware of these statistics, as well as the fact that Judge Denise Cote, the judge who presided over his and Hill’s cases, has a reputation for harsh sentencing.
He told me as much the morning before he pleaded guilty to the conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter business charge.
Many Bitcoin and crypto proponents who voted for President Trump in 2024 as well as the crypto industry, which supported the president in his reelection, are now beginning to question whether or not President Trump really does want to see an end to the war on crypto.
For this to happen, the DOJ under President Trump must honor what is mandated in EO 14233 and follow Deputy Attorney General Blanche’s guidance to stop prosecuting developers of noncustodial crypto technology.
To the latter point, President Trump recently stated that he is considering a pardon for Rodriguez.
His pardoning Rodriguez as well having the DOJ look into why it sold the bitcoin that the Samourai developers forfeited would send a signal that the president is quite serious about his pro-Bitcoin and pro-crypto stance.
This post Did DOJ Prosecutors Violate Trump’s Executive Order by Selling the Forfeited Samourai Wallet Bitcoin? first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Frank Corva.
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