Federal Prosecutor Used Fabricated Quotes in Court Filing (2)

Source: Bloomberg Law

Federal Prosecutor Used Fabricated Quotes in Court Filing (2)

March 6, 2026, 4:55 PM EST; Updated: March 6, 2026, 9:08 PM EST

Ben Penn
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Justice Department lawyers in North Carolina are facing possible sanctions for what a magistrate judge called "fabricated quotations and misstatements of case holdings."
Photographer: MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

An assistant US attorney in North Carolina filed a response with the court that included "fabricated quotations and misstatements of case holdings" and then made "false or misleading statements" of how they got included, a magistrate judge said.

"Because of the seriousness of these issues," senior leaders from the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina must appear at a show cause hearing next week for why the federal prosecutor responsible shouldn't be sanctioned and why the entire office shouldn't be held jointly responsible, US Magistrate Judge Robert Numbers said in a March 2 order. ... The US attorney's office is representing the Defense Department in a lawsuit by a North Carolina pro se litigant challenging a policy limiting availability of GLP-1 weight loss medications for TRICARE for Life participants.

The plaintiff asserted that a response brief signed by assistant US attorney Rudy Renfer included fabricated quotes and misstated the holdings of several cases. In a reply, Renfer said he "inadvertently included incorrect citations to case law from this circuit" and attributed the errors to the "inadvertent filing of an unfinalized draft document," Numbers said in his order.

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The pro se plaintiff who caught the errors, Derence Fivehouse, is a retired Air Force colonel and an attorney himself. He's a former staff judge advocate (1) who also served as chief of the legal counsel division (2) at the Air Force Base Conversion Agency in the George W. Bush administration ... In an email to Bloomberg Law Friday night, Fivehouse credited the court for identifying "the most significant issues" after he flagged "a few case misrepresentations."

{snip}

The case is Fivehouse v. Defense Dept., E.D.N.C., No. 2:25-cv-00041. (3)

(Updated with comment from plaintiff.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Penn in Washington at bpenn@bloomberglaw.com

To contact the editors: Seth Stern in Washington at sstern@bloomberglaw.com

(1) https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA281364.pdf
(2) https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDIR-2002-10-01/pdf/CDIR-2002-10-01-DEPARTMENTS-3.pdf
(3) https://www.bloomberglaw.com/product/blaw/document/X1Q6OSEMSL82?criteria_id=b64c7b3d6a191c07d4e465a2d29c366e&searchGuid=30d7d168-a18d-472b-9323-9326354ec987

Read more: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/federal-prosecutor-used-fabricated-quotes-false-cites-in-filing

NEWS: A Justice Dept. line attorney in North Carolina fabricated quotes in court filing, causing judge to order hearing to consider sanctions and holding entire US attorney’s office jointly responsible.
Pro se defendant flagged the errors.
news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/...

— Ben Penn (@benjaminpenn.bsky.social) 2026-03-06T22:50:39.106Z