Tunnel of Bove
By 
Above: when you take the command to find “the next Roy Cohn” really seriously
This is what happens when Wilhoit’s law becomes an administration’s entire theory of law enforcement:
A top Trump appointee in the Justice Department ordered an aggressive investigation in the last several months of student protesters at Columbia University, raising anger and alarm among career prosecutors and investigators who saw the demand as politically motivated and lacking legal merit, people familiar with the episode said.
The demand for the inquiry into students who protested Israel’s conduct of the conflict in Gaza also prompted pushback from a federal magistrate judge, who believed some of the steps being sought by the official, Emil Bove III, were unjustified and might violate the First Amendment, the people said.
[…]
The prosecutors were told by superiors that Mr. Bove was seeking a list so the information could be shared with immigration agents, these people said. Inside the civil rights division, prosecutors came to fear that their criminal investigation was a pretext to facilitate an intimidation and deportation campaign by the Trump administration against student protesters, these people said. Prosecutors refused to compile such a list that could be given to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, these people said.
Mr. Bove then shifted his focus to obtaining a search warrant for the group’s Instagram account, these people said. He ordered prosecutors to apply for a search warrant for the nonpublic data associated with the account, these people said.
[…]
When the federal prosecutors involved in the investigation of student protesters applied for a search warrant, a magistrate judge in New York rejected the request, finding that the government did not have sufficient probable cause, these people said.
In an unusual move, Mr. Bove insisted that the prosecutors appeal the ruling to a district court judge, these people said. After weighing the request, Judge John G. Koeltl of Federal District Court of the Southern District of New York instructed the chief magistrate judge, Sarah Netburn, to reconsider the application, the people said.
But the second time, the government lawyers fared even worse. Judge Netburn not only rejected the request for a search warrant, but she also ordered the government to abide by a special condition: Should prosecutors ever try to refile such an application before another federal judge, they had to include a transcript of the sealed discussions in her court, these people said.
Part of the judge’s skepticism, these people said, stemmed from the absence from the case of lawyers with the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office. But prosecutors in the Southern District of New York were wary of signing onto the effort and had minimal involvement with it, these people said. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment.
It’s worth emphasizing here that as a practical matter getting a warrant does not require “probable cause” in anything like a literal sense. To not only be denied a warrant but to have a judge put conditions even on future applications for a warrant the government must have nothing. Which is also pretty apparent from the surrounding context.