by Taya Graham | Nov 13, 2026 | police accountability, Police Accountability Report, Prisons and Policing, video
When Ismail Khan stepped outside his Conroe, Texas, home to film police arresting his sister, he never imagined he would end up in handcuffs himself. But after questioning a Montgomery County sheriff’s deputy, requesting his badge number, and recording the encounter, Khan was taken to the ground and arrested for interfering with public duties and resisting arrest.In a very revealing exchange captured on body cam, Khan asks an officer if he was arrested for taking a video. The deputy’s answer? Simply, “Yes.”Khan says he suffered injuries during the encounter and spent approximately eight months fighting criminal charges.But his story raises a much bigger question: Why are people being arrested for interfering with police when they attempt to document law enforcement activity?According to an investigation by Houston’s KPRC 2, interference-with-public-duties charges in Montgomery County increased by nearly 700% between 2017 and 2025, with the majority of resolved cases resulting in dismissal- so why the large uptick in these charges?!In this episode of the Police Accountability Report, Taya Graham interviews Ismail Khan about his experience, examines the body-camera footage, and joins investigative reporter Stephen Janis to investigate how interference charges can affect the public’s ability to hold law enforcement accountable.We also examine the broader implications of expanding police power, surveillance technology, and the constitutional right to document government officials in the course of their duties.
Credits:
Production/Post-production: Taya Graham, Stephen Janis
Written by: Stephen Janis
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Taya Graham:
Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I always make clear, this show has a single purpose, holding the politically
by Doug Bock Clark | Nov 13, 2026 | 2026 election, 2026 Elections, 2026 midterms, Cleta Mitchell, elections, Georgia, midterms, News, Voter Suppression
In the run-up to the midterms, members of Georgia’s State Election Board and much of its professional staff were coordinating with an activist group led by Cleta Mitchell, the conservative attorney who worked with President Donald Trump to try to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election. The board sets the swing state’s election rules, oversees the conduct of its election officials and…
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by Steve Benen | Nov 13, 2026 | Congress, Justice Department, Maddowblog, White House
If the Justice Department had hoped to bully Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut into abandoning his interest in the White House ballroom project, it doesn’t appear to be working. The Washington Sun reported:
Blumenthal is defending his plans to pursue oversight investigations into the Trump administration after he got a threatening letter from a U.S. attorney with what he called “baseless” threats.
“The public deserves to know the terms under which dozens of American companies were persuaded to donate millions of dollars to the president’s vanity projects,” Blumenthal wrote in a letter Thursday to Aaron Reitz, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas.
One of the odd things about this brouhaha is how seemingly unnecessary it is. Blumenthal is the top Democrat on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations — a panel the Connecticut Democrat will likely soon lead — and as an NBC News report noted, this panel “is tasked with studying the economics and efficiency of government operations.”
So it’s not surprising that Blumenthal has taken an interest in the president’s controversial vanity project. It would have been far more surprising if he hadn’t.
Nevertheless, Aaron Reitz, the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Texas — a Republican lawyer with a colorful professional background — demanded this week that Blumenthal preserve all documents related to his efforts, suggesting the prosecutor was prepared to investigate the investigation.
Reitz went on to warn of “significant legal consequences” if the senator didn’t comply.
Blumenthal, unmoved, made it clear that his investigation would proceed apace, but just as notably, the Democratic senator wrote back to the Texas prosecutor, characterized his intimidation
by Sharon Zhang | Nov 13, 2026 | Article, Democrats, Israel, midterms, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
by Steve Benen | Nov 13, 2026 | Iran, Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, White House, World, World News
The day after the Republican Party suffered a historic smackdown in the midterm elections, JD Vance took a provocative step that raised plenty of eyebrows: The vice president blamed the GOP’s devastating losses on the ongoing war with Iran that Donald Trump launched eight months earlier.
“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote online, concluding in his missive that “any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”
The analysis suffered from a variety of flaws, though the Ohio Republican was apparently doing more than just playing the role of pundit: Axios reported a few days after Election Day that Vance had become “personally involved in indirect talks with Iran aimed at reaching a new ceasefire and resuming nuclear negotiations.” The Wall Street Journal added earlier this week that the vice president was also eyeing “face-to-face talks with a top Iranian security official as he emerges as the lead negotiator with Iran.”
It was against this backdrop that Trump published a statement to his social media platform, which effectively told his vice president, “Stop.”
The president’s post read in part:
I have asked Vice President Vance to focus his complete and total attention on the Massive Corruption and Crime taking place in Democrat run Cities and States throughout the U.S. […]
We don’t need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait! Thank you for your attention to this matter.
It’s worth emphasizing that Trump’s statements often bear resemblance to reality, so there’s no reason to assume that his post reflects the current (or future) White
