Fraudster Francesca’s Fake Federal Bill Blows Up in D.C.
By Richard Luthmann and Frankie Pressman with Michael Volpe
Congressional Illusion: A Bill with No Backers
Francesca Banfield Amato promised desperate parents a historic breakthrough – a federal Family Justice & Accountability Act (FJAA) she claimed was backed by powerful politicians. She hyped a “congressional hearing” for her 94-page proposal, boasting that Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) were sponsoring her act, with 25 lawmakers supposedly lined up to attend.
It was all smoke.
In reality, not one legislator showed up. Not one.
The much-touted “hearing” wasn’t even on Capitol Hill – it was a rented public library room, scheduled after her original Capitol venue fell through during the government shutdown.
According to Representative Moore’s staff, Amato finagled a room reservation as a courtesy, dropping a contact’s name to get her foot in the door. But no one in Congress agreed to host or endorse her event. Senator Grassley’s office was blunt: they never heard of the FJAA, and a search of Congress’s records turned up nothing.
In short, Amato’s “federal bill” doesn’t exist in any congressional docket – no sponsors, no hearing, no bill number, nothing. She sold families an illusion. Attendees traveled across the country, believing they’d testify before Congress. Instead, they got a glorified meet-up with zero officials present.
One heartbroken parent called it “a painful disappointment,” saying Amato gave traumatized families false hope: “To mislead them like that… It’s beyond cruel.”
The Family Justice & Accountability Act was a congressional mirage – and Amato knew it.
FJAA Legal Lunacy: The Advocate Exposed – Fraud and Falsehoods
Francesca Amato-Banfield presents herself as an “award-winning legal advocate.” In truth, she’s a fraud. Public records and financial disclosures expose a trail of deceit and self-enrichment behind her activist persona. Her nonprofit, Punished 4 Protecting, Inc., was stripped of its tax-exempt status in 2024 after she failed to file required IRS forms and paid herself roughly 80% of all donations.
Wall Street fiduciary David Weigel didn’t mince words: “You absolutely cannot take in $25,000 a year in donations and pay yourself $20,000 of that. That is called financial fraud.”
Amato lied about it, claiming the loss of nonprofit status was voluntary – a false cover story debunked by IRS records showing the revocation was for violations.
Her pattern is clear: false claims, intimidation, and financial impropriety.
Amato has repeatedly misrepresented her clout. She touted “multiple Congress members” supporting her and a “fast track” to pass the FJAA – all lies.
When investigative journalist Michael Volpe dared to fact-check her, Amato lashed out with baseless legal threats. She fired off a cease-and-desist letter accusing Volpe of “defamation per se” and even “tortious interference,” but couldn’t cite a single false statement he made. Instead of backing up her claims with evidence, she resorted to playground insults and bombast – calling Volpe “a little dense” who “probably doesn’t know how to read,” then crying “harassment” when he pushed back.
When this reporter publicly challenged her to put up or shut up: name any factual error in Volpe’s reporting, or drop the act. She couldn’t. So far, Amato has failed to cite a single factual error, nor does she have any right to muzzle critical journalism.
Instead of proof, Amato delivered profanity-laced screeds and threats to “sue you… you will go down with it” – an empty intimidation ploy that legal experts recognize as a SLAPP-style tantrum.
The upshot: Francesca Banfield Amato’s credibility is shot. Her advocacy empire is built on boasts and bluster, and it’s crumbling under the weight of her own lies.
FJAA Legal Lunacy: A Train Wreck of Fatal Flaws
If Amato’s behavior is shameless, her bill’s content is downright lawless. The so-called Family Justice & Accountability Act isn’t just a paper tiger – it’s a constitutional train wreck. The 94-page draft reads more like a rambling manifesto than a serious piece of legislation. It mashes together criminal codes, child welfare policy, disability rights, and even wild-eyed conspiracies into one overstuffed package, with no regard for the boundaries between federal and state authority.
Federal Preemption and Copyright Law
Family law has always been primarily a state arena. See Ankenbrandt v. Richards, 504 U.S. 689 (1992) (“the whole subject of domestic relations of husband and wife, parent and child, belongs to the laws of the States and not to the laws of the United States”). Yet the FJAA tries to bulldoze that division of power – it would strip states of their judicial independence, dictate how state family courts operate, and even call for the repeal of long-standing federal laws at whim.
For example, one section seeks to repeal outright the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) – a cornerstone of federal child-welfare policy since 1997 – and replace it with an untested “family preservation” framework. Such extreme overreach would be laughed out of Congress if it ever got there; its intent may be to reform, but its method is to nuke the legal landscape from orbit. Indeed, the FJAA’s sweeping, jurisdiction-blurring approach is immediately disqualifying as serious legislation.
The bill’s text is also laced with unorthodox, self-aggrandizing touches – including a bold © 2025 copyright stamp and the author’s name on the cover, as if Francesca Amato can trademark federal law. Newsflash: she can’t. By law, any bill or act of Congress is in the public domain – 17 U.S.C. § 105 bars copyright on U.S. government works.
This kind of personal authorship credit and advocacy-slogan language is unheard of in real legislation. It gives the “bill” the feel of a vanity project rather than a bona fide act drafted for Congress. No actual member of Congress would introduce a bill emblazoned with a private activist’s logo or a legal “©” claim; Congress does not, and cannot, codify self-promotional or proprietary material into U.S. law.
This alone signals that the FJAA is not a serious or professionally crafted proposal. Unsurprisingly, no senators or representatives have sponsored the FJAA, and it has no bill number or official entry in any congressional docket. Its bizarre presentation and content would ensure it never gets a first hearing in committee, let alone a floor vote.
Judicial Immunity
Substantively, the draft brazenly proposes measures that collide head-on with the U.S. Constitution. For one, it seeks to eliminate judicial immunity and even criminalize judges’ courtroom decisions. In Amato’s crusade, a judge who issues an order she dislikes could be prosecuted and sent to prison. These fantasies run smack into Article III and centuries of jurisprudence protecting judicial independence.
Article III of the Constitution guarantees that federal judges hold office during good behavior (effectively for life, unless impeached) and can’t have their salaries diminished – a design meant to insulate judges from political retaliation. Congress cannot pass a law punishing judges for their rulings without violating the separation of powers inherent in Article III.
The doctrine of absolute judicial immunity (for civil liability) is likewise deeply entrenched in American law. The U.S. Supreme Court has reaffirmed, time and again, that judges are immune from lawsuits for acts taken in their judicial capacity – even if those acts are erroneous or malicious – as a necessary corollary of an independent judiciary. Landmark cases like Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. 335 (1872), and Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349 (1978), established that judges cannot be sued in civil court for their decisions. Congress cannot simply abolish that immunity by statute; doing so would undermine the constitutional structure.
Even state judges (whom FJAA also targets) traditionally enjoy immunity for judicial acts, and while Congress can create federal causes of action for civil rights violations (42 U.S.C. §1983, for instance), it cannot impose personal criminal liability on state judges for ordinary judicial rulings. The only lawful ways to hold judges accountable for misconduct are through appellate review, state disciplinary commissions, or impeachment in extreme cases – not by throwing judges in jail for decisions made on the bench.
In fact, in 1996 Congress went the opposite direction of FJAA’s vision: it amended 42 U.S.C. §1983 to reinforce judicial immunity by preventing most injunctions against judges’ judicial acts, absent extraordinary circumstances (a direct response to Pulliam v. Allen, 466 U.S. 522 (1984), which had allowed such injunctions). The FJAA’s attempt to criminalize or civilly punish judges for “unjust” orders defies this long-standing principle. Such provisions would not survive a day in court – they’d be struck down for violating Article III’s guarantee of judicial independence and the separation of powers doctrine.
Moreover, threatening judges with criminal penalties for exercising their legal discretion could be seen as an unconstitutional bill of attainder or at least a gross due process violation. And as an absurd extreme, the FJAA even flirts with draconian punishments – one section would allow “life imprisonment or death” for officials whose actions supposedly harm a child. Imposing the death penalty or life in prison on a judge or caseworker for “professional misconduct” is so wildly disproportionate that it would violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments.
Federalism and the Tenth Amendment
The FJAA also tries to place state courts under newfangled “independent” oversight bodies dominated by activist appointees. For instance, it proposes creating citizen-led Family Justice Oversight Committees with power over family courts – boards of laypeople and advocates who would monitor or even overrule judges.
This raises its own host of constitutional red flags. State court systems are established by state constitutions and supervised by state governments or judiciary commissions, not by Congress or self-appointed watchdog groups. By attempting to federalize control of state judicial proceedings and install external oversight, the bill tramples on basic federalism principles.
The Tenth Amendment reserves to the states powers not delegated to the federal government, and domestic relations (family law) is the classic example of a field left to state governance. As the Supreme Court reiterated in Ankenbrandt v. Richards, In re Burrus, and other cases, domestic relations and family court matters belong to state law and local courts, not to federal law.
Washington cannot dissolve or directly commandeer state family courts by fiat; Congress has no enumerated power to run divorce, custody, or child welfare proceedings. When Congress does act in family law, it’s only in narrowly tailored ways tied to clear federal interests (for example, the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act, ensuring interstate recognition of custody orders, or funding statutes like ASFA that encourage certain child protection practices).
The FJAA’s broad attempt to dictate state court procedures and oversight violates the anti-commandeering doctrine, which forbids the federal government from conscripting state officials to implement federal policy. In Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997), the Supreme Court struck down a law that required local law enforcement to carry out federal gun background checks, affirming that Congress cannot direct state authorities in that manner.
Here, FJAA would effectively conscript state judges, court staff, and even state legislatures (by mandating how courts must operate and how state bar associations must be run) – a command well outside Congress’s authority.
Similarly, New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992), held that Congress cannot simply force states to enact or abide by federal regulatory programs; it cannot “commandeer” the legislative or executive processes of the states. FJAA thumbs its nose at that principle. Provisions that attempt to federally control state bar licensing and discipline, or to suspend federal funding unless states kowtow to Amato’s edicts, would be dead on arrival in court.
Not only does Congress lack power to regulate state bar associations (which are arms of state courts or state legislatures), but using federal funds as a cudgel has limits: the Supreme Court has warned that financial inducements to states cannot be unconstitutionally coercive. For example, in NFIB v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (2012), the Court said Congress crossing from pressure to “gun to the head” coercion (as it did by threatening to cut all Medicaid funds if states refused expansion) violates the Spending Clause. The FJAA’s threat to yank child-welfare or court funding from noncompliant states would likely be viewed as the same kind of unconstitutional compulsion.
In short, virtually every major element of this bill flouts foundational constitutional rules – it is unconstitutional to its core, a Frankenstein’s monster of legal misfires stitched together.
Legislative Impracticability
Even on the political front, the FJAA is toxic and doomed. No member of Congress from either party will touch a bill that tries to jail judges for doing their jobs, federalize all family custody disputes, or nullify state laws wholesale. Indeed, congressional staff who have glimpsed bits of Amato’s draft have reacted with confusion or derision.
Tellingly, one Senate staffer, when asked about the “Family Justice & Accountability Act,” mistook it for an entirely different, legitimate family-law reform proposal – Senator Tim Scott’s Families’ Rights and Responsibilities Act (a real bill, S.204, introduced in early 2025) – because Amato’s “FJAA” had no official presence anywhere in Congress.
Once they realized FJAA doesn’t actually exist on Capitol Hill (no sponsor, no bill number, nothing), any initial interest evaporated. That anecdote underscores how unserious this effort is in the eyes of policymakers. A draft that isn’t even formally introduced – and, in its current form, never could be – is essentially dead on arrival.
Amato herself seems dimly aware that her draft verges on the absurd, because she has gone to unusual lengths to hide it from scrutiny. Rather than proudly publish the text for public input, she kept the full text secret, forcing even her own volunteers to sign nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) just to read it. [You can read the full text of the FJAA HERE. We’re not worried about a SLAPP suit, even though our sources tell us that Amato would not have the means to pay].
Transparency and accountability for a “Family Justice” reform bill? Not here.
Gagging discussion of a proposal that purports to promote justice is deeply ironic – and it suggests that even Amato suspects her plan can’t withstand informed scrutiny. This lack of openness has rightly drawn criticism: real legislative reformers seek out expert feedback and public debate, whereas FJAA’s author chose secrecy and cult-like control of information. It’s the opposite of how credible laws are built in a democracy.
In the end, a sober assessment shows the FJAA has zero chance of ever becoming law in its current form. It wouldn’t survive even a first hearing in the House Judiciary Committee – staff attorneys would spot its constitutional defects within minutes and reject it outright. It’s too sweeping, too flawed, and frankly too bizarre to earn any serious consideration.
At best, a few sane ideas buried in the rubble – for instance, calls for more family court transparency, better data collection on case outcomes, or improved disability accommodations – could be salvaged someday and incorporated into a different, narrowly tailored bill. Those fragments, stripped of FJAA’s unconstitutional baggage, might contribute to legitimate reforms in the future.
But as it stands now, Amato’s grand “Family Justice & Accountability Act” is legally D.O.A. – a fever dream of reform with no footing in reality. Its fatal flaws aren’t just theoretical: they are glaring, insurmountable contradictions of our Constitution and legal system. No amount of passion or rhetoric can paper over that fact.
FJAA Legal Lunacy: False Hope, Backlash, and a Dead End
In the end, Francesca Amato’s fraudulent crusade has done more harm than good. She rallied hundreds of victimized parents by dangling a magic solution – then delivered nothing but theatrics and trauma. Families that believed her lies are rightly furious. They spent time, money, and emotional capital to join a supposed “historic” event that turned out to be a farce.
“No legislators were there… You could see people were desperate and traumatized… It’s beyond cruel,” one attendee lamented after the D.C. debacle.
Amato betrayed the trust of the very people she claimed to champion. Now the backlash is in full swing. Seasoned advocates and journalists are exposing her at every turn.
Michael Volpe warned well before the fake hearing that Amato’s D.C. trip was “a farce” built on mischaracterizations. He was vindicated.
Amato is the “self-anointed author” of a federal bill that doesn’t exist. She promised her followers a revolution in family-court reform and a historic march on Washington. What she delivered instead was a copyright notice, a cease-and-desist letter, and a legal tantrum.
In other words, a giant flop. Lawmakers she name-dropped as supporters are distancing themselves or flat-out denying her claims.
Even within Amato’s circle, cracks are forming: at least several volunteers split from her team, citing the FJAA’s “unconstitutional issues” and refusing to be part of the sham.
The verdict is clear. The Family Justice & Accountability Act isn’t going anywhere – except maybe the garbage bin. It’s legally indefensible and built on false premises. Francesca Banfield Amato has been unmasked as a fraud exploiting a genuine crisis.
Real family court reform is desperately needed, but it won’t come from con artists peddling fantasies. The FJAA saga is a cautionary tale: justice can’t be conned. If you build a movement on lies and ego, it will collapse.
Amato’s bill is finished, undone by its own deceit and defects. And as this fraud falls apart, one truth stands tall: our children and families deserve better than a fake savior with a fake bill. They deserve real solutions – not a circus.
