Bill Barr Hid Evidence of a Bribery for Pardon Investigation During the Election

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Beryl Howell just partially unsealed an opinion she wrote on August 28, permitting DOJ to access some attorney’s communications in a bribery-for-pardon scheme. It’s unclear who the targets of the investigation are — though their names are too short to be Rudy Giuliani.

But one thing is clear: Judge Howell asked DOJ to tell her whether the opinion could be unsealed.

The order associated with that opinion directed the government to submit a “report advising whether any portions of the accompanying Memorandum Opinion may be unsealed to the public in whole or in part and, if so, proposing any redactions.”

DOJ did not respond until November 25, and in their response, they asked her to keep the entire thing under seal.

On November 25, 2020, the government submitted a status report requesting that the Court “maintain the Memorandum Opinion under seal” because it “identifies both individuals and conduct that have not been charged by the grand jury” and declining to suggest any redactions for a publicly available version.

She made them go line by line to get the redactions issued with this opinion.

So basically Barr hid that someone tried to bribe Trump for a pardon through the entire election.

Update: Howell gave them 90 days so Barr didn’t intentionally hold it.

Hours before Trump Pardoned Flynn, “Phil” Weighed in a Pardon

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Update: This was not Phil. It was someone testing Phil’s identity. I’m removing the post (though I’m sure it’s archived).

Four Things Judge Emmet Sullivan Should Do in the Wake of Flynn’s Pardon

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As I noted, Trump attempted to be expansive with his pardon of Mike Flynn. He failed. I think the chances that Flynn does prison time are almost as high today as they were last week.

And while I think there is absolutely nothing defective in the pardon that Trump signed and while I’m certain that Judge Sullivan will honor that pardon (though DOJ is asking him to dismiss the charges with prejudice; Sullivan should dismiss them without prejudice), there are four things that Sullivan has the means of doing to raise the cost of Trump’s pardon. Those are:

  • Make Trump name Flynn’s crimes
  • Establish a record about whether Flynn or Sidney Powell traded electoral assistance for this pardon
  • Force DOJ to explain what went into the altered documents
  • Identify who wrote the pardon

Make Trump name Flynn’s crimes

While whoever wrote this pardon tried (but failed) to make it comprehensive, it only names one of Flynn’s crimes: false statements (indeed, that’s the only crime that DOJ lists for the pardon on its website).

But by moving to withdraw his plea, Flynn put his other crimes before Judge Sullivan. So Sullivan has every right to inquire whether this pardon includes all of Flynn’s crimes. He could issue an order for Trump to come before him to answer whether the pardon forgives Flynn for:

  • His lies about what he said to Sergey Kislyak during the transition
  • Serving as an undisclosed Foreign Agent for Turkey
  • Lying about serving as an undisclosed Foreign Agent for Turkey
  • Conspiring with others to hide that he was an undisclosed Foreign Agent of Turkey
  • Lying about his own guilt and the circumstances surrounding his guilty pleas
  • Lying about lying to Flynn’s Covington lawyers

The answer to all those questions is yes. Trump does mean to pardon Mike Flynn for secretly working for Turkey while getting classified briefings. Trump does mean to pardon Flynn for lying to Sullivan (and he does know that Flynn did lie to Sullivan). Sullivan has a need to know that explicitly and he should get Trump on the record.

Trump won’t show, of course.

Until he is made to, after January 20th.

Note, I’d also make Trump state, under oath, when he signed the pardon. It is dated with Wednesday’s date, but I highly doubt that DOJ had it written by then. If Trump signed it after having lunch with Mike Pence yesterday, it’s possible that Trump didn’t write it this broadly until broaching a pardon for himself with Pence.

Establish a record about whether Flynn or Sidney Powell traded electoral assistance for this pardon

Judge Sullivan also has reason to want to know if someone offered Trump something of value for this pardon. He has evidence they did — in the altered documents designed to serve as a campaign attack on Joe Biden. And the news is full of evidence that Sidney Powell may have offered further benefit, in her efforts to challenge Trump’s election loss.

Sullivan should put both Flynn and Powell under oath and require that they confirm or deny whether they have offered favors to Trump for the pardon.

They won’t show, of course.

Until they are made to, after January 20th.

None of this would invalidate the pardon, of course. But if Trump got some other benefit from Flynn’s lies that went into this pardon, especially efforts to undermine a legal election, then the Attorneys General in those states that already investigating Trump’s efforts to steal the election would have reason to want to know that, and Sullivan has the means to get them under oath to do that.

Force DOJ to explain what went into the altered documents

People at both FBI and DOJ altered documents submitted in Sullivan’s court, the FBI by adding false dates to exhibits and DOJ by redacting footers indicating that the documents were covered by the protective order. Sullivan has reason to ask how that happened and who was involved in the effort.

Even if Trump pardoned everyone involved, there would still be a means for Sullivan to punish most of those involved, because most of those involved have law licenses and can be disbarred.

Sullivan should schedule a hearing — no need to rush, he might as well schedule it for January 26, after everyone involved gets a COVID shot — to ask the following people if they had a role in altering the documents (or eliciting a corrupt interview with Bill Barnett):

  • AUSA Jocelyn Ballantine
  • AUSA Sayler Fleming
  • AUSA Ken Kohl
  • US Attorney Jeffrey Jensen
  • FBI Executive Assistant Director John Brown
  • FBI Agent Keith Kohne
  • Acting DEA Administrator Timothy Shea
  • AG Bill Barr
  • DAG Jeffrey Rosen

Again, most of these people have law licenses that Sullivan could put at issue, and he has good reason to want to hold someone accountable for altering documents in his court.

These people won’t want to show. But after January 20th, they may have no way of avoiding it.

Identify who wrote the pardon

In his confirmation hearing, Bill Barr said that pardoning someone for giving false testimony would be a crime. Trump just committed that crime. Whatever lawyer wrote up the pardon language — whether it’s Barr or White House Counsel Pat Cipollone — just conspired to commit a crime.

Judge Sullivan should identify everyone who had a role.

[Fourth item added after the original post.]

Kraken Clemency: Did Trump Issue the Flynn Pardon Wednesday To Avoid Potential Conflict with Sidney Powell’s Batshittery??

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I have to admit: given the certainty that Trump was going to pardon Mike Flynn eventually, I’m really grateful he did it on Wednesday, because it allowed for a truly epic headline, “Trump Pardons an Undisclosed Agent of Turkey Along with a Thanksgiving Bird.”

But I’m really mystified by the timing of it.

After all, there was still an outside chance that Judge Emmet Sullivan would agree to DOJ’s motion to dismiss, which would have eliminated Flynn’s guilty verdict more convincingly than this pardon. And, given that the pardon seems to exist only in Tweet form as of right now, Sullivan could still file his ruling, knowing that he’d be getting notice of a pardon sometime next week. Alternately, the early pardon could give Sullivan the opportunity to craft his other decisions, such as regarding Flynn’s motion to withdraw his plea, in ways that might have legal repercussions for Flynn and his son. So it seems risky to pardon Flynn before Sullivan rules.

I can think of several possible reasons for the timing. But the most intriguing is a tie between Sidney Powell’s efforts to sustain Trump’s most baseless conspiracy theories without any potential conflict for Flynn.

The upcoming Sullivan decision

Depending on how Trump words the pardon, the timing of this might still be an effort to pre-empt Sullivan’s decision. If Trump were to describe the pardon as all crimes Flynn committed from July 2016 to the present (meaning Wednesday), and if courts accepted that unspecific language, then it would cover not just Flynn’s lies to the FBI, but also his efforts to hide that he was an Agent of Turkey and his sworn materially conflicting statements before Judges Rudolph Contreras and Sullivan as well as the grand jury.

Or to put it another way, this may be an effort to write an even more abusive pardon in a way that few will notice.

Though I’ll notice.

The upcoming BuzzFeed FOIA release

On Tuesday, BuzzFeed will get another big drop of FBI 302s from the Mueller investigation. According to FOIA terrorist Jason Leopold, DOJ has not told them whether the drop will include the Flynn 302s, but does claim this will be the last release (which would seem to suggest it has to include the Flynn 302s).

Almost year ago, the government provided Flynn with his 302s, which make up 761 pages. They subsequently said that his cooperation with Mueller was not substantial and raised questions about his candor even after his initial interview. That’s consistent with Flynn’s own description of the early proffers, given that his Covington lawyers tried to get him back on track to cooperate after the first one.

Releasing the warrants in Flynn’s case was damning enough (though as a result of the timing, almost no one has scrutinized them closely). But these 302s may prove still more damning (not least because they should provide additional details of a meeting where Trump discussed reaching out to WikiLeaks after the Podesta emails dropped). They also may show that Flynn continued to lie to protect the President even while he was pretending to cooperate.

So Trump may have been tipped that if he wanted to limit the outrage over this pardon, he should get it done before the 302s come out on Tuesday, if indeed they will come out.

The conflict between Sidney Powell TV election lawyer and Sidney Powell TV defense attorney

Finally, I wonder whether some smart lawyer grew concerned that Sidney Powell was claiming to represent the President even while she was representing someone asking for a pardon.

On November 15, Trump explicitly named Powell as part of his team. On November 20, Powell appeared at Rudy the Dripper’s press conference. On November 22, Rudy and Jenna Ellis made a show of cutting ties with her.

Sidney Powell is practice law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.

According to Maggie Haberman, either he didn’t like her appearance and/or advisors convinced Trump to separate himself from her nutjobbery. Three days later, November 25, Trump pardoned Powell’s client. The next day, after days of promising to Bring the Kraken, Powell finally started releasing her epically batshit suits. Trump has promoted them.

Indeed, it even appears some Administration lawyers are still associated with Powell’s efforts.

I’m not sure I understand whether there would be a conflict between Powell representing Trump (for free, inevitably, as all lawyers do), making desperate efforts to overturn the election at the same time she was trying to ensure her client did no prison time. If that’s a conflict, it may still exist anyway given Powell’s admission to Judge Sullivan that she had repeatedly discussed Flynn with Trump’s campaign lawyer, Jenna Ellis. The fact that DOJ packaged up altered documents to support a Trump attack on Biden may make those ties more important anyway (or lead to more details about them becoming public).

But if Powell’s involvement made Pat Cipollone and/or Bill Barr — who presumably share the challenging task of helping Trump write pardons that don’t backfire — squeamish, it might explain the timing.

When Secret Servers Bump Up against Prosecutorial Independence and Following the Evidence

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CNN has a story reporting that President-Elect Biden will be granted access to the secret server where Trump has stashed the transcripts of his sensitive discussions with world leaders. It frames the story around the question of whether or not Biden will release those records, reporting that he probably will respect their sensitivity.

A person close to the Biden transition team told CNN that no decisions have been made about how these sensitive materials will be handled when the President-elect takes office on January 20, and that it’s likely they will maintain the Trump administration’s close hold on such information, at least at first, until they are settled in and Jake Sullivan, Biden’s pick for national security adviser, can assess their information security needs.

A senior US official said that the Biden team will be given access to a secret server containing sensitive information related to President Donald Trump’s more controversial conversations with foreign leaders on a need-to-know basis and the Trump administration is prepared to share any information that they deem to be relevant to their future decision-making process.

The story seems to be sourced to one Biden transition official, serving as a source for what the Biden administration will do, and a Trump official, serving as a source for how Trump White House will deal with this information during the Transition. In context, describing what to do about known conversations that got buried on Trump’s secret server, this comment is from the latter.

There are fast moving issues where policies or military technologies have changed in the four years since Biden’s political team left government, in particular, in relation to China and Turkey, something the current US official said will be a priority in discussions with the Biden landing teams.

The official said that basic details pertaining to Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, will only be shared if they are relevant to a pending policy or national security matter.

“There’s a lot to cover,” the senior US official said. “We are going to share anything that’s relevant for them to come to grips with reality when the keys are theirs. If there was something like that that’s actually of note… things on the covert side, for example, we will highlight them very quickly.”

That is, Biden will get news of Trump’s current plans involving Turkey and China, but will not get the details of what Trump promised away to Putin or whether he shared information on Jamal Khashoggi with MbS.

This particular frame comes from the sources, and while useful to know, doesn’t answer the question for the Biden administration. After all, Biden has answered questions about whether he would prosecute Trump or those close to him appropriately, by saying he plans to pick a good Attorney General and stay the fuck out of DOJ investigations. That means he might face difficult questions about what to do with these transcripts if a Congressional committee (they’ve already demanded the Putin transcripts) or prosecutors asked for known and/or relevant transcripts.

Just as an example, when the whistleblower revealed that President Trump had extorted the President of Ukraine to provide him election help, any normally functioning DOJ would have immediately identified the related case involving Rudy Giuliani’s associates Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas. That would have given SDNY jurisdiction over the fate of Trump’s extortionist call.

As of now, though, the Fruman and Parnas case remains ongoing (it will present one of the more difficult pardon decisions for Trump), and SDNY got David Correia to plead just before the election, while obscuring whether he will cooperate with prosecutors. If the case is not in some way entirely killed, then Trump’s call transcript, along with a lot of other evidence from the White House would become material to that prosecution. If Biden truly were taking a hands-off approach to prosecutions of Trump, he would not make the decision of whether to turn over this transcript (other stuff would not be covered by privilege and presumably would be handed over, including from State).

These will be the truly difficult decisions, not whether Biden gets notice now or in three months of what promises Trump made to Putin.

White House Statement Suggests Flynn Has Been Pardoned ONLY For the Charge He Pled Guilty To

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The White House statement on the Flynn pardon tells a lot of lies (which I’ll return to). But the important detail is its reference to a “full pardon” only references the charges Flynn pled guilty to and only his prosecution.

In fact, the Department of Justice has firmly concluded that the charges against General Flynn should be dropped.  This Full Pardon achieves that objective, finally bringing to an end the relentless, partisan pursuit of an innocent man.

If that’s right, then Flynn is still at risk of charges for both secretly working as an agent of Turkey and his lies to Judge Sullivan.

In which case, Judge Sullivan’s job is very much not over, and the DC Circuit’s order that he proceed with dispatch about the existing charges presumably no longer applies.

Even Bill Barr (in His Confirmation Hearing) Agreed that Trump Just Committed a Crime

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Three different times during Bill Barr’s confirmation to be Attorney General, he agreed that agreeing to pardon someone for false testimony — as Donald Trump just did for Mike Flynn — would be a crime.

Patrick Leahy, specifically invoking Barr’s sanction of the Caspar Weinberger pardon that squelched the Iran-Contra investigation, asked Barr about pardons.

Leahy: Do you believe a president could lawfully issue a pardon in exchange for the recipient’s promise to not incriminate him?

Barr: No, that would be a crime.

Then, in this exchange from Amy Klobuchar, it appeared to take Barr several questions before he realized she knew more about the evidence than he did, and started couching his answers.

Klobuchar: You wrote on page one that a President persuading a person to commit perjury would be obstruction. Is that right?

Barr: [Pause] Yes. Any person who persuades another —

Klobuchar: Okay. You also said that a President or any person convincing a witness to change testimony would be obstruction. Is that right?

Barr: Yes.

Klobuchar: And on page two, you said that a President deliberately impairing the integrity or availability of evidence would be an obstruction. Is that correct?

Barr: Yes.

Klobuchar: OK. And so what if a President told a witness not to cooperate with an investigation or hinted at a pardon?

Barr: I’d have to now the specifics facts, I’d have to know the specific facts.

Klobuchar: OK. And you wrote on page one that if a President knowingly destroys or alters evidence, that would be obstruction?

Barr: Yes.

Klobuchar: OK. So what if a President drafted a misleading statement to conceal the purpose of a meeting. Would that be obstruction?

Barr: Again, I’d have to know the specifics.

Shortly after that exchange, Lindsey Graham tried to clarify the issue, asking the pardon question at a more basic level, coaching another not to testify, as Trump has done on Twitter repeatedly.

Lindsey: So if there was some reason to believe that the President tried to coach somebody not to testify or testify falsely, that could be obstruction of justice?

Barr: Yes, under that, under an obstruction statute, yes.

Lindsey: So if there’s some evidence that the President tried to conceal evidence? That would be obstruction of justice, potentially?

Barr: [nods]

Admittedly, by the third exchange, both Lindsey and Barr were hedging far more carefully about the set of facts.

But on three different occasions during his confirmation hearing, Barr made some kind of statement that said floating pardons for false testimony would be a crime.

Thanks to records made available by Ric Grenell and Sidney Powell, we know that Trump was personally involved with Mike Flynn’s negotiations with Russia about the UN statement on Israel. We also know that within two days after Flynn intervened to undermine Obama’s sanctions, Trump knew of Flynn’s conversation with Sergey Kislyak.

Flynn lied to cover that up with the FBI, and lied about his knowledge of Trump’s involvement with Mueller.

According to Bill Barr’s own testimony to Congress then, Trump’s pardon of Mike Flynn is obstruction of justice.

Trump Pardons an Undisclosed Agent of Turkey Along with a Thanksgiving Bird

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Update: Trump has indeed pardoned the Agent of Turkey along with a farmyard turkey.

The significance of this, however, will depend on the wording of the pardon. 

At least three outlets (CNN, Axios, NYT) have reported the entirely unsurprising news that Trump is considering pardoning admitted liar and undisclosed Agent of Turkey, Mike Flynn. Only the NYT provides a reasonable account of what has happened since DOJ moved to dismiss the case, and only after repeating Trump’s false claims about the investigation.

None of the outlets reviewed how complex successfully pardoning Flynn will be, without making Trump’s — or Flynn’s son’s — fate worse. That’s true because the posture of the Flynn case before Judge Emmet Sullivan is such that Sullivan has multiple possible options for holding Flynn accountable, depending on when Sullivan moves and when Trump does.

If Trump pardoned Flynn for the crimes to which Flynn pled guilty, false statements, today, a Foreign Agent of Turkey pardoned right alongside a Thanksgiving turkey — then DOJ’s motion to dismiss the prosecution for Flynn’s false statements charges would likely be mooted. But there’s still a pending motion to withdraw Flynn’s plea before Judge Sullivan, which by itself mooted DOJ’s promises not to prosecute Flynn for hiding that he was working for the government of Turkey rather than just a foreign business in a FARA filing in March 2017. Plus, when Flynn pled, it was understood that would end the investigation, but given that he reneged on his plea, there’s nothing stopping DOJ from investigating Mike Jr for his involvement with Turkey, if Flynn were pardoned.

So to get Flynn out of immediate legal jeopardy, Trump would need to pardon Flynn for crimes to which he pled guilty — the false statements to hide Trump’s involvement in “colluding” with Russian to undermine US policy — but also the crime to which Flynn didn’t plead guilty, hiding that he was an Agent of Turkey while getting classified briefings during the 2016 campaign. That’s all the more true given that DOJ’s appeal of the Bijan Kian case is still unresolved (it is scheduled for oral argument on December 11), and trying Kian along with Mike Flynn, charged as a co-conspirator, would eliminate many of the legal difficulties from the first trial.

Trump might even have to pardon Flynn Jr.

But that’s still not adequate. Flynn made multiple materially conflicting statements before Judge Sullivan and the grand jury. When directing amicus John Gleeson on what he should consider, Sullivan asked whether he should hold Flynn in contempt. Gleeson said that, instead, he should consider those additional lies when sentencing him on the charged crimes. DOJ argued that Sullivan should, instead, refer the charges to DOJ. Even if Sullivan referred those charges today and Bill Barr declined prosecution (as DOJ made clear in hearings they would), Biden’s DOJ could reopen the case. So to get Flynn out of trouble for his efforts to blow up his own prosecution, Trump would have to pardon those crimes as well. But if Trump pardoned Flynn today, Sullivan could wait and ultimately hold Flynn in contempt; while Trump succeeded in freeing Joe Arpaio of criminal contempt with a pardon, it’s not clear whether that could work preemptively.

Assuming Trump does pardon Flynn for some or all of these crimes, it would add several overt actions to obstruction charges against himself. So unless he’s sure that Mike Pence would give him a last minute pardon (or certain that his own self-pardon would withstand legal review), then pardoning all Flynn’s crimes would pile up his own exposure.

Then, if Trump does pardon Flynn, it will surely become a matter for a hearing before one or the other of the Judiciary Committees into Trump’s abuse of the pardon power. Flynn will have no Fifth Amendment privilege and Biden’s DOJ will have the ability to enforce contempt motions from Congress. As I have noted, in the process of attempting to blow up Flynn’s prosecution, Ric Grenell and Sidney Powell and DOJ have released documents that will make it far harder for Mike Flynn to sustain his claim not to remember what Trump’s involvement in the “collusion” with Russia was. Public testimony (or even depositions run by staffers) might elicit evidence that would subject Trump himself to conspiracy charges or might result in new false statements charges.

Finally, there’s the matter of the documents that got altered as part of DOJ’s effort to blow up Flynn’s prosecution. There, Flynn is probably totally safe from legal jeopardy. But the lawyers might not be, at least at DOJ and possibly including Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis. Importantly, at the time of that effort, there was no conceivable privilege protecting discussions between Flynn’s defense attorney and Trump’s campaign lawyer, nor between Powell and Trump. Since then, Powell’s involvement in Trump’s attempts to lie about the election have been contested (and Trump and Powell could both face consequences for their lies on that front). So Trump’s decision to pardon Flynn now after being told by Powell before September that Flynn didn’t want a pardon would raise questions about its tie to the election.

Don’t get me wrong: The pardon power is awesome, and assuming a competent lawyer like Pat Cipollone is involved in the process, Trump might manage to negotiate all these risks and successfully ensure that Flynn does no prison time for his crimes. But this is the kind of complexity that Trump will face as he tries to pay off those who protected him.

Roger Stone Takes Georgia, and the Senate, Hostage

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As far as I know, virtually no one else has accurately reported on the significance of this footnote in the Mueller Report, liberated by BuzzFeed hours before election day.

1279 Some of the factual uncertainties are the subject of ongoing investigations that have been referred by this Office to the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The footnote explains why, on March 22, 2019, the Mueller team had not yet charged Roger Stone for conspiring with Russian intelligence officers to steal files from Democrats that could be leaked to help Donald Trump get elected President: because DOJ was still investigating it. The footnote — and the entire public record since then — make it clear that that investigation into Stone on CFAA conspiracy charges was ongoing. Indeed, I have shown that the Stone trial for lying to Congress to cover up the identity of his claimed go-between with WikiLeaks strongly suggests that his go-between was neither Jerome Corsi nor Randy Credico, but Guccifer 2.0, quite possibly an American cut-out working with the Russians.

While there are signs that Bill Barr effectively shut down that ongoing investigation by forcing the four Stone prosecutors to withdraw from the case, an investigation into whether Stone conspired with Russia would neither be tolled nor precluded on double jeopardy grounds. Nor would such crimes be covered by Trump’s commutation of Stone’s sentence for covering up who his go-between with WikiLeaks was, which appears to have been an effort to distract from his ties directly to the Russian operation. They are entirely different crimes. To pardon Stone for conspiring with Russia, Trump might well have to specify that Stone did conspire with Russia, something that would not only create legal jeopardy for himself, but would require admitting what he has tried to deny for four straight years, that his campaign “colluded” — conspired even! — with Russia to win.

It would be uncontroversial for Joe Biden’s Attorney General to reopen a case against Roger Stone for conspiring with Russia.

That may be useful background to the news that, after remaining relatively quiet for much of the 2020 election (or at least fronted by Steve Bannon), Stone is now threatening to hold Georgia’s Senate seats — and with it, GOP control of the Senate — hostage.

Conservative operatives and a super PAC with ties to infamous GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone are calling for Trump supporters to punish Republicans by sitting out Georgia’s crucial Senate runoffs or writing in Trump’s name instead. And though their efforts remains on the party’s fringes, the trajectory of the movement has Republicans fearful that it could cost the GOP control of the Senate.

The most aggressive call to boycott or cast protest ballots in the two runoff races has, so far, come from a dormant pro-Trump super PAC with ties to Stone, which unveiled a new initiative to retaliate against the Republican Party’s supposed turncoats by handing Democrats control of the U.S. Senate.

The group, dubbed the Committee for American Sovereignty, unveiled a new website encouraging Georgia Republicans to write in Trump’s name in both of the upcoming Senate runoff elections, which could determine the party that controls the upper chamber during President-elect Joe Biden’s first two years in office. The PAC argued that doing so will show support for the president in addition to forcing Republicans to address the wild election-fraud conspiracy theories floated by Trump supporters and members of his own legal team.

The effort uses some of the same infrastructure that the Mueller team scrutinized as part of its investigation of Stone.

The Committee for American Sovereignty and a sister nonprofit group were set up in 2016 as vehicles for prominent pro-Trump operatives—most notably Stone and former Blackwater chief Erik Prince—to attempt to suppress the Black vote by amplifying claims that Bill Clinton had an illegitimate biracial son. It’s been mostly quiet since then. The PAC’s recent filings with the Federal Election Commission disclose nothing but outstanding federal and state tax liabilities, and its new effort in Georgia doesn’t appear to have received much pickup yet.

A request for comment sent to the Committee for American Sovereignty email address on file with the FEC was not returned. Efforts to reach Pamela Jensen, a California political activist who leads the group, were not successful. Her husband, an attorney named Paul Jensen who describes Stone as a “long time client,” told The Daily Beast in an email his wife “has no comment, and nor do I.” Stone did not respond to inquiries about his present involvement with the group.

Stone made fairly naked threats in the days leading up to Trump’s commutation of his sentence, in that case to share information with prosecutors about Trump’s knowledge of his 2016 activities. The threats worked. This time around, Trump may not have the power to respond to Stone’s threats.

But Stone has proven in the past he’s willing to take reckless actions when he is cornered.

Shirkey and Chatfield: No One Else Was in the Room Where It Happened

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Yesterday, Michigan certified its vote, declaring Joe Biden the winner of its 16 Electoral College votes.

That should not be surprising. After all, Biden won by a sound margin, and there were no credible claims of irregularities. Nevertheless it was treated as big news, with tens of thousands glued to the live feed of the certification meeting.

After the certification, per AP’s David Eggert, the Dick and Betsy DeVos backed Michigan Freedom Fund issued a statement backing the certification.

The Board of State Canvassers did the right thing today. We believe the vote to certify should have been 4-0. The election is over, & the person with the most legal votes – & in this election that person is Joe Biden – must prevail. Period.

Not long after the certification, Trump’s GSA Administrator, Emily Murphy, released a letter announcing she was going to let the President-Elect begin the transition process, even while she bitched about the pressure she had been put under and stopped short of using the word, “ascertainment,” that gives the letter full legal weight.

I wonder whether there’s not more to how it happened that Trump began the process of conceding.

All this happened just days after DeVos machine politicians Mike Shirkey and Lee Chatfield flew to DC and sat for a meeting with the President, at his request. It’s not clear who, from the White House, attended, but none of Trump’s competent lawyers were planning on it.

Within the White House, a number of the president’s top aides were expected to skip the late-afternoon huddle, including representatives from the White House Counsel’s Office. Also not attending was Ronna McDaniel, a former head of the Michigan Republican Party who chairs the Republican National Committee, according to an RNC spokesperson.

Already in the post-election period, Trump had the GOP Republican Senate candidates and Lindsey Graham pressure election officials in Georgia, in Lindsey’s case, arguably aggressively enough to break the law. The meeting with MI’s legislators came at an even more desperate moment for Trump.

After the meeting, the MI politicians released a statement offering an explanation of their own actions that would provide legal cover — they delivered a letter asking the President for COVID relief. More interestingly, they insisted that MI’s vote be free of threats and intimidation.

Michigan’s certification process should be a deliberate process free from threats and intimidation. Allegations of fraudulent behavior should be taken seriously, thoroughly investigated, and if proven, prosecuted to the full extent of the law. And the candidates who win the most votes win elections and Michigan’s electoral votes. These are simple truths that should provide confidence in our elections.

If Trump did do something inappropriate in that meeting — as he has done over and over and over before and during his presidency — it would mean multiple people, all with close ties to the DeVos political machine, were witnesses. Given how easy it has been for grifters like Lev Parnas to record sensitive meetings, it would be a cinch for these politicians to do so as well. If they did, that would put a good deal of leverage into the hands of that DeVos machine, a machine that prefers organized raping and pillaging of the public good to the kind of chaotic looting Trump has been pursuing.

The DeVos machine would greatly like to ensure that its brand of corporatist, Christian ideology reclaim dominance in the Republican party over the unreliable Trump frothers.

Given how poorly Trump has hidden his bribes and threats in the past, it would be fairly easy to anticipate more of the same, and to exploit them if they happened during an in-person meeting with more witnesses from Michigan than from the White House. One could do so while pretending to give a fuck about good governance (as Shirkey et al did pretend after they left the meeting). And legal exposure in the State of Michigan, with a fearless Democratic Attorney General, Dana Nessel, is not the kind of risk that Trump has any power over.

Something happened over the last several days that led Trump to grudgingly start ceding power. And no one else was in the room where that something may have happened.

Update: Eggert has a thread reporting out an interview with Shirkey. In it, Shirkey claims that “only half” of the meeting talked about the election.

Shirkey estimated that in the 60- to 90-minute meeting with Trump, ‘less than half’ was devoted to discussions on the election – ‘especially if you take out the dialogue we had with Giuliani, it was far less than that.’

“Less than half” doesn’t really help Trump here.