The questions presented are:

1. Whether, when proceeding under § 1132(a)(8), a beneficiary may seek surcharge, a remedy that this Court has described as being “exclusively equitable.” CIGNA Corp. v. Amara, 563 U.S. 421, 442 (2011).

2. Whether, if surcharge is unavailable under § 1132(a)(3), a beneficiary may pursue state-law claims arising out of a contract that is separate and apart from an ERISA plan and that is not required by the plan, or whether these state-law claims are preempted, thereby leaving the beneficiary without a remedy under either federal or state law.

28 U.S.C. § 2253(e)(1) and this Court’s precedents establish that certificates of appealability (“COA”) may be issued to habeas petitioners seeking appellate review of their constitutional claims if “a circuit justice or judge” determines that “jurists of reason could disagree with the district court’s resolution of his constitutional claims or that jurists could conclude the issues presented are adequate to deserve encouragement to proceed further.” Buck v. Davis, 580 U.S. 100, 115 (2017) (quoting Miller- El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 327 (2008)). This Court has made clear that an appellate court’s evaluation of whether a COA should issue is a threshold inquiry, it is not a merits determination, and an appellate court improperly sidesteps the COA process when it prematurely denies a COA based on an adjudication of the merits. Buck, 580 U.S. at 115-16. This case presents two questions relating to the COA inquiry, which have sharply divided the circuits:

1. In Buck, 580 U.S. at 117, this Court established that “whatever procedures are employed at the COA stage” by an appellate court “should be consonant with the limited nature of the [COA] inquiry.” Are the practices adopted by the Second, Fourth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits of issuing summary denials citing to applicable standards without further analysis “consonant with the limited nature of the [COA] inquiry” and sufficient to allow meaningful review by this Court, or are reasoned explanations for denials, such as those provided by the Sixth and Tenth Circuits, necessary to demonstrate compliance with Buck and to allow meaningful review by

this Court?

1. Should the unsettled issue in Heck v. Humphrey and Spencer v. Kenma;’where this court has not definitively ruled that criminal defendants may use a §1983 lawsuit for evidence suppression when the accused has exhausted all state remedies, a habeas petition is not an adequate remedy, and the accused has been irreparably injured by bad faith concealment of evidence needed to show fraud and unlawful arbitrary detention?

| 2. Do established laws protect and prevent the indefinite suppression of public records that show fraudulent prosecutions of non-existent crimes, impeachability of all prosecution witnesses, an insufficiency of evidence to sustain any conviction and the lack of any lawful authority by non-elected, appointed judges and prosecutors to perpetrate and conceal unconstitutional processes facilitating extrinsic fraud and false imprisonment?

| 3. Do established Federal and International laws enforce the right to a fair, speedy trial and correct the deprivation of that right, perpetrated through trickery, deceit, extrinsic fraud, depriving face to face confrontation, material evidence of impeachability and actual innocence? : 4. Does the deprivation of self-representation/access to courts, with the purpose of preventing challenges to rights violations, entitle the victim, through established law, to review of the disqualified challenges and or dismissal of criminal charges and release from custody? 5. Does established law protect an enforce rights violated through vague, ambiguous, conflicting state legislation, non—elected appointed officials and prolonged ex—parte influence/inadmissible evidentiary support and arguments? 6. Is this court obligated to revisit, under stare decisis, impact of actuality, highest level of controversy, the internal constitutional conflict between the 9° and 14th Amendments for vague and ambiguous wording in the 9 Amendment, violating International law, when the application results in arbitrary detention perpetrated by non-elected, appointed judges and assistant prosecutors falsely claiming a lawful authority? 7. Does the manifest disregard of established laws and rights, through intentional plain errors and the abuses of discretion, by federal appellate and district judges, require the

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A. In contradiction of Supreme Court Rule 10, was the appellate court’s avoidance of, through modifications to appellant’s facts and arguments, so extreme that it “so far departed from the accepted and usual course of judicial proceedings, or sanctioned such a departure by a lower court, as to call for an exercise of this Court’s supervisory powers”?

B. Given that the three members of the appellate judiciary contributed to denying the appeal, does their order content signal a break in our system of justice?

C. Did the appellate court’s ORDER provide the false detail to the trial court’s arguments, so to put that court in a favorable light, while omitting actual arguments by the appellant on those same arguments?

D. Did the district and appellate courts knowingly side-step detail on the trial court’s § 3161(h)(7)(C) default, so to protect against a default due to its “congested calendar” error?

E. Once the appellate court recognized, or should have recognized, that the trial court did in fact set the new trial date based upon its congested calendar, did the court err by not dismissing the indictment?

F. Did the appellate court knowingly side-step the trial court’s loss of authority to grant a continuance under § 3161(h)(7)(C) and ends-of-justice errors, so to artificially preserve the court’s speedy trial clock?

G. Did the appellate court knowingly misinform when it stated that, even without a valid continuance, the “70-day speedy trial clock would not have expired”: then, in violation of § 3161(e) and § 3162(a)(2) proceeded to observe the trial date set out hundreds of unexcused days beyond the 70-day clock?

H. Did the appellate court’s order intentionally omit appellant’s argument that the trial court improperly included its ends-of-justice arguments within its order to dismiss the § 3161 speedy trial petition, so to dismiss the appellant’s appeal?

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| I. DUBIN MISAPPLICATION Whether Petitioner’s conviction for aggravated identity theft under 18 U.S.C. § 1028A can : stand where, contrary to Dubin v. United States, 599 U.S. 110 (2023), the alleged use of identity was merely incidental in progress notes by a non-credentialed employee without billing authority, rather than the means of executing fraud. I. INDICTMENT DEFECTS | Whether the Fifth Amendment is violated when a defendant is prosecuted on an indictment that omitted essential elements, mischaracterized Petitioner’s role by alleging he “provided counseling services” and falsely attributing licensure and billing authority, and then proceeded to trial on an “Amended Indictment” never returned by a grand jury, never signed by a foreperson, and never subject to arraignment. | Il. CONSTRUCTIVE DENIAL OF COUNSEL Whether structural error requiring automatic reversal occurs where (1) trial counsel deprived Petitioner of core protections by executing waivers without consent, permitting conviction on an unreturned and unarraigned indictment, and failing to present exculpatory audit-trail evidence; and (2) the appellate process compounded those errors when first appellate counsel omitted constitutional claims, successor counsel mischaracterized Petitioner’s pro se submissions as “non-meritorious,” refused to file a merits or Anders brief, and the Court of Appeals excluded Petitioner’s filings, leaving the appeal without adversarial testing in violation of the Sixth Amendment. |

Are the Courts (state and otherwise) required to uphold Laws that are in violation of State and Federal Constitutions?

Is an individual, incarcerated or otherwise, citizens? Are not both Protected by the same Controlling Constitiutions?

Can a sentence and/or conviction within the State Court where constitutional violations exist? Should lowa Code Section 701.9 be upheld and used in the underlying case? Was Trial Counsel ineffective for failing to impeach a critical state witness? Was Trial Counsel ineffective for failing to investigate other potentially beneficial witnesses? Was Trail Counsel ineffective for failing to file post-trial motions to set aside verdicts as inconsistent and irreconcilable?

QUESTION No. 1: Is a criminal defendant deprived of his rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Coustitution to tile a pro se brief after appointed counsel has tiled a no-merit brief pursuant to Anders v. California, 87 S.Ct. 1390 (1967) when | the record before the appellate court contains no evidence that appointed counsel provided the defendant with a copy of the Anders brief and informed the defendant of the right to access tne appellate record and file a pro se brief? | QUESTION No. 2: Is a criminal defendant deprived of his rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution when the State appellate process contains no adequate safeguards and protection that ensures that upon the filing of a no-merit brief by appointea counsel pursuant to Anders v. California, 8/ S.Ct. 1396 (1967) the defendant was provided with a copy of the brief and was informed of the right to access the appellate record and file a pro se brief?

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Did the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals err in denying a Certificate of Appealability (“COA”) consistent with the standards set by 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2) and by this Court in Mi/ler-E/ v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 327 (2003) and Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473 (2000), to review the holdings of the district court that Mr. Burleson was not deprived of due process of law and a fair trial by ineffective assistance of trial counsel because he failed to have Mr. Burleson thoroughly examined for psychiatric, medical, social and personal information to obtain facts and arguments for suppression of evidence, plea bargaining, determination of guilt, and mitigation at sentencing?

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In Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 856 (2010), this Cout held defense counsel must advise a defendant of adverse immigration consequences prior to the defendant’s entry of a guilty plea. Following Padilla, Fed. R. Crim. P. 11 was amended to require district courts advise defendants that “if convicted, a defendant who is not a United States citizen may be removed from the United States, denied citizenship, and denied admission to the United States in the future. Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(b)(1)(O).

The Petitioner, Amir Golestan, is an Iranian national and a naturalized citizen of the United States of America. As a result of his wire fraud convictions, he is subject to denaturalization and eventual removal from the United States. The district court did not advise Mr. Golestan there could be adverse immigration consequences as a result of his guilty plea in violation of Rule 11(b)(1)(O).

The Fourth Circuit concluded the district court’s error was harmless because “a warning meant for those who are not United States citizens would not have put Golestan on notice of the potential immigration consequences.” App. 138A. That conclusion was wrong and conflicts with the Sixth Circuit’s conclusion that the Rule 11(b)(1)(O) instruction places a defendant “on notice that he might face adverse immigration consequences as a naturalized United States citizen.” United States v. Ataya, 884 F.3d 318, 325 (6th Cir. 2018). The question presented is:

Whether the failure to give the Rule 11(b)(1)(O) warning affects the substantial rights of a naturalized United States citizen who could be denaturalized as a result of the guilty plea?

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Whether the Due Process Clause and Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.1(b)(2)(C) require a district court, before admitting hearsay at a supervised-release revocation hearing, to conduct an on-the-record balancing of the releasee’s confrontation interest against the gvovernment’s good cause for denying confrontation, with the reliability of the proffered hearsay as a principal factor but not the only factor.

Whether a district court may admit uncorroborated hearsay from an absent complainant at a revocation hearing based solely on a finding of government good faith or witness unavailability, without specific good cause and without articulating why the releasee’s confrontation interest yields under Rule 32.1(b)(2)(C).

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A person who is convicted under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) of possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence or drug trafficking crime, but whose firearm qualifies under federal law as a machinegun, faces a mandatory 30-year consecutive sentence, rather than the statute’s otherwise applicable 5-year, 7-year, and 10-year consecutive penalties. Compare 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(B)(@i), with id. § 924(c)(1)(A)G@)-(@). In the D.C. and Eleventh Circuits, the automatic nature of the weapon 1s a strict hability element, while in the First Circuit, the government must prove the defendant knew it was a machinegun.

The question presented is whether the presumption of mens rea applies to 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(B)(@i) requiring the government to prove that a defendant knew of the automatic capability of a firearm before subjecting the defendant to a consecutive, decades-long mandatory minimum sentence.

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1. Whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause is violated when a state court enforces a settlement entered over a litigant’s explicit objection while under psychiatric duress.

2. Whether the Fourteenth Amendment protects against government-compelled disclosure of medical records obtained through secret subpoenas without notice, contrary to Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589 (1977).

3. Whether a state appellate court may permanently bar a litigant from all pro se filings without individualized,

narrowly tailored findings, consistent with State v. Spencer, 751 So. 2d 47 (Fla. 1999), and the First and | Fourteenth Amendments. | : 4, Whether, after a federal remand, state courts may refuse to adjudicate remaining issues, contrary to Quackenbush v. Allstate Ins. Co., 517 U.S. 706 (1996). 5 |