October COVID Surprise: So Much Bullshit, So Little Time [UPDATE-4]

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Here’s a new post because the last post’s comment thread is now unwieldy, and there’s more fresh bullshit to wade through.

I have been wading through a bunch of material but don’t have anything ready for publication. Community members still need some white space in which to discuss the latest Trump bullshit.

Have at it — I’ll add content here shortly with any future updates to follow at the bottom of this post.

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Trump’s little joy ride this evening did himself no favors. His body’s under huge stress and he doesn’t appear to recognize this, even if the Regeneron multi-antibody therapy is working.

There’s a dearth of news about that antibody cocktail’s success under compassionate use with other COVID patients. Regeneron released information about a study in which 275 out of a total 1100 participants received this therapy.

What’s weird about the antibody cocktail is that they didn’t release a study with data but a goddamned press release on Tuesday September 29, at 4:01 p.m.

Conveniently one minute after market close but before the debate, and potentially after some persons in the White House knew they were COVID-positive.

The steroid Trump received — dexamethasone — was the next appropriate step in the protocol for COVID based on Trump’s depleted oxygen levels, which means the antibody cocktail wasn’t working as quickly or as well as needed.

Dexamethasone would have been dispensed because Trump’s oxygen level fell substantially; when asked, Conley said his level had not fallen into the low 80s — a level which would be cyanotic. This means Trump’s O2 probably did fall to 85% and likely needed oxygen and the steroid to prevent cyanosis.

A study this summer showed this steroid helps some patients:

RESULTS
A total of 2104 patients were assigned to receive dexamethasone and 4321 to receive usual care. Overall, 482 patients (22.9%) in the dexamethasone group and 1110 patients (25.7%) in the usual care group died within 28 days after randomization (age-adjusted rate ratio, 0.83; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.75 to 0.93; P<0.001). The proportional and absolute between-group differences in mortality varied considerably according to the level of respiratory support that the patients were receiving at the time of randomization. In the dexamethasone group, the incidence of death was lower than that in the usual care group among patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation (29.3% vs. 41.4%; rate ratio, 0.64; 95% CI, 0.51 to 0.81) and among those receiving oxygen without invasive mechanical ventilation (23.3% vs. 26.2%; rate ratio, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.72 to 0.94) but not among those who were receiving no respiratory support at randomization (17.8% vs. 14.0%; rate ratio, 1.19; 95% CI, 0.91 to 1.55).

CONCLUSIONS
In patients hospitalized with Covid-19, the use of dexamethasone resulted in lower 28-day mortality among those who were receiving either invasive mechanical ventilation or oxygen alone at randomization but not among those receiving no respiratory support.

Source: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2021436

But Trump is NOT receiving respiratory support consistently based on yesterday’s photos and proof-of-life video, this evening’s his stunt ride as well as the sketchy information his physicians have given. The steroid would not be as beneficial to him as it would be to patients on ventilators.

To my knowledge Trump’s physicians have already shot their COVID arsenal. If Trump has additional difficulty breathing he’ll likely be put under anesthesia into an induced coma and intubated. If he gets to that point he won’t have a choice about it because his low oxygen level could cause a cascade of organ failures — a crash.

We can deduce his lungs are compromised because of Dr. Conley’s hedging about their appearance (“There’s some expected findings, but nothing of any major clinical concern,” he said).

It’s likely Trump’s being monitored for cardiac symptoms given the use of ultrasound and the frequency with which COVID causes myocarditis. We can’t rule out the possibility Trump had cardiac symptoms when he went on an unscheduled visit to Walter Reed last November which may mean he’s at greater risk of myocarditis.

And it’s likely Trump’s got some degree of COVID brain as well, which the steroid will make worse — he’ll have cloudy thinking but with mania. A number of doctors from different fields have expressed concerns about dexamethasone’s affect on Trump’s capacity given the possibility of mania, delirium/confusion while under its influence.

We don’t even know yet if Trump has been free of fever without antipyretic medication.

I’m not a doctor, but none of this suggests to me that Trump will be ready to be released from Walter Reed tomorrow, joy ride or not.

Any future updates to follow at the bottom of this post.

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UPDATE-1 — 10:00 A.M. 05-OCT-2020 —

The cover-up continues. One of the White House correspondents, Michael D. Shear, has tested positive for COVID-19 and is now disclosing the White House has not made any effort to reach out to him as part of contact tracing. (Open pic link below to launch tweeted video clip of interview with Shear.)

There has been no mention of the White House or members of the Centers for Disease Control reaching out to anyone else who was in attendance at the Barrett ‘Rose Garden Massacre’ where it’s believed more than a couple people were infected.

As Marcy noted in Twitter, it looks increasingly like Trump was infected on Thursday or Friday, 24-25 September, and that he may be responsible for a number of the cases associated with the Barrett ‘Rose Garden Massacre’.

But this also means Trump was infectious at the debate and may have knowingly attempted to infect his opponent, Joe Biden.

Melania also tested positive and was the only family Trump family member to wear a mask, though she did so while seated in the audience and not while on the debate stage upon Trump’s entrance. Was she told not to wear a mask on stage not only because Trump is anti-mask but because Trump wanted to increase the viral load on the stage?

This isn’t just a case of indifference like that Trump showed yesterday by taking a joy ride in the presidential limousine, forcing Secret Service personnel into a hermetically-sealed vessel in which they could not escape any of his aerosolized exhalation which may have escaped his mask.

It’s a deliberate effort to avoid handling the COVID-19 outbreak surrounding Trump, and a deliberate effort to hurt the election process by biological assault against an opposing candidate.

Back in April when the White House COVID-19 Task Force was working on a national plan to respond to the pandemic, there was a pointed effort not to roll out a national plan:

… Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

That logic may have swayed Kushner. “It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,” the expert said….

It was Kushner’s political calculus, with Trump’s implicit imprimatur, to allow Americans in blue states to sicken and to die without testing or other federal public health assistance because their states didn’t support Trump.

Who is responsible for the political calculus to allow members of Congress, White House staff and correspondents, Trump campaign team members, spouses and children, to be exposed to COVID-19 without any attempt to trace the source of the infection, to avoid making Trump look bad?

Any future updates to follow at the bottom of this post.

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UPDATE-2 — 11:00 A.M. 05-OCT-2020 —

Uh-huh.

Reported through a Murdoch-owned outlet:

WASHINGTON—President Trump didn’t disclose a positive result from a rapid test for Covid-19 on Thursday while awaiting the findings from a more thorough coronavirus screening, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Trump received a positive result on Thursday evening before making an appearance on Fox News in which he didn’t reveal those results. Instead, he confirmed earlier reports that one of his top aides had tested positive for coronavirus and mentioned the second test he had taken that night for which he was awaiting results.

“I’ll get my test back either tonight or tomorrow morning,” Mr. Trump said during the interview. At 1 a.m. on Friday, the president tweeted that he indeed had tested positive.

Who are those “persons familiar with the matter” — Kushner? Others who’ve been covering Trump’s ass as well as their own because they have a vested interest in not getting embroiled in lawsuits or investigations?

Meanwhile,

We’ve seen feedback leaking out across Twitter indicating staff and their network are very unhappy with how the White House has handled this outbreak and Trump’s joy ride which risked the health of Secret Service agents for a campaign stunt.

How do we reconcile what WSJ reported when other details don’t stack up and staffers are fearful and unhappy?

Any future updates to follow at the bottom of this post.

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UPDATE-3 — 11:30 A.M. 05-OCT-2020 —

By the way, lest we forget: as of this update there have been 209,603 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.

The country is on track to exceed 210,000 deaths from COVID-19 within the next 24-48 hours.

There were an estimated +618,756 new cases this past week, compared to less than 1,000 around the Pacific Rim countries.

I think I predicted 200,000 deaths by Election Day. I guess I was wrong, putting too much faith in state governments and in Americans to take the right measures to protect themselves since the Trump administration is intent on failing them.

The cherry on top of this disaster: Team Trump is now attacking Joe Biden for not having COVID-19 — utter insanity.

Any future updates to follow at the bottom of this post.

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UPDATE-4 — 11:40 A.M. 05-OCT-2020 —

I wish somebody could shut down this firehose.

Press Secretary McEnany attacked the media yesterday.

She should have self-isolated after being in contact with multiple infected persons but no. She deliberately attacked the press by exposing them to a biological agent during her maskless briefing.

I mean we’ve seen some hacks come and go as press secretary but I don’t recall any of them being this malicious with the people who are the reason they have a job at all.

Any future updates to follow at the bottom of this post.

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Andrew McCabe Delays Testimony to SJC, Calling In-Person Testimony a “Grave Safety Risk”

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Virtually every book about the FBI or the Mueller investigation that has come out in recent years has described that Andrew McCabe is a superb briefer — meaning, in part, he can present complex issues to a hostile audience clearly. That’s why the reason his attorney, Michael Bromwich, gave for delaying testimony that was scheduled makes a lot of sense.

As a letter Bromwich sent to Lindsey Graham laid out, McCabe agreed to a voluntary interview in September, provided a series of conditions were met. One — that McCabe have access to his unclassified calendars and notes — has already been thwarted by DOJ, which refused to turn them over (as Bromwich laid out in a letter to Michael Horowitz last week, after inventing reasons not to share the materials that might make McCabe’s testimony more useful, FBI admitted they wouldn’t turn them over because of McCabe’s lawsuit against the Bureau).

But another of the conditions was that the testimony be in person. Bromwich noted that Republicans spoke over both Sally Yates and Jim Comey when they earlier testified remotely. “[A] witness answering questions remotely via videoconference is at a distinct disadvantage in answering those questions,” Bromwich wrote. “A fair and appropriate hearing of this kind – which is complex and contentious – simply cannot be conducted other than in person.”

But the COVID outbreak among those who attended the Federalist Society super-spreader event last weekend has made such in-person testimony too dangerous.

Mr. McCabe was still prepared to testify voluntarily and in person on October 6 as recently as the latter part of this past week. However, since that time, it has been reported that at least two members of your Committee – Senators Mike Lee and Thom Tillis – have tested positive for Covid-19, and it may well be that other members of the Committee and staff who plan to attend the hearing will test positive between now and then, or may have been exposed to the virus and may be a carrier. Under these circumstances, an in-person hearing carries grave safety risks to Mr. McCabe, me, and senators and staff who would attend.

McCabe is not wrong. There’s abundant reason to distrust Lindsey Graham’s claimed negative test. Mike Lee was haranguing publicly at several public events last week before he was diagnosed. And Chuck Grassley (who has far more mask discipline than his colleagues, but who was unmasked for part of the Comey hearing last week) refuses to be tested.

Still, it’s crazy that SJC has become too dangerous for a regular oversight hearing, but Lindsey still plans to push on with the Supreme Court confirmation process that caused that COVID outbreak.

October COVID Surprise, Part Deaux [UPDATE-4]

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Rayne’s original October Surprise post is getting very top heavy in the number of comments. There are ongoing revelations, including KellyAnne and Bill Stepian now being COVID positive. There are going to be more because the Trump Administration continues to be a walking and talking superspreader.

At any rate, a new thread is needed. And Rayne and/or Marcy may add to it later (heck, I may even add more content later), but a new stub was needed.

So bring all yer COVID talk here.

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UPDATE-1 — 10:10 A.M. —

Hey. Rayne here, adding to bmaz’s overflow post. Recall my concern about the timeline of events from my previous October Surprise post?

This medical professional has similar concerns:

An M.D. and former public health official can’t make sense of the timeline based on the information given to the public. I don’t agree with her that we need to know exactly what an oximeter says about Trump’s condition, but we do need to know at what point Trump is in the expected course of COVID-19. We have a right to know how close we are to a transition of authority to VP Pence, temporary or otherwise.

IMO — and I am not a doctor — Trump had to have been sicker than we’ve been told to be given an experimental therapy yesterday. (Frankly, we can’t be certain he didn’t receive the antibody infusion on Wednesday based on what has been reported.) He had to have been sicker earlier than we’ve been told, likely at the debate on Tuesday night, posing a risk to Biden and to every person in the venue with whom Trump came in contact.

Apart from the malignant handling of the Barrett super spreader event in the Rose Garden this past weekend, Trump’s disclosures about his illness is wholly disqualifying for re-election. He is failing to communicate a national security risk we can all see unfolding before us after failing to protect national security at the Barrett event.

He couldn’t even be bothered to ensure Barrett’s children were protected when Barrett herself failed to do so by either leaving them at home or making them wear masks.

Most community members at this site wouldn’t trust Trump with their health or their kids. We don’t need yet another Justice who can’t protect ours let alone hers or her children.

Additional updates will appear here at the bottom of this post.

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UPDATE-2 — 12:10 P.M. —

Rayne here with the next update.

Trump’s physician Dr. Sean Conley gave an update on Trump’s condition. The presser was scheduled for 11:00 a.m. ET and didn’t start until nearly 40 minutes later. Make of that what you will.

Video of the presser is linked in the tweet above but it’s via Fox News. Fuck them. See the video link in this tweet:

The oxygen issue isn’t going to go away. If he was on oxygen his O2 levels were low; at that point the public should have been told about Trump’s condition because it could have gone (may yet go) south rapidly, requiring sedation and ventilation. Just too hedgy about this:

But the big takeaway from today’s presser: Trump may have been hiding his COVID-positive status.

Conley said Trump was 72 hours post-diagnosis — that’s +72 hours to testing, ++72 hours to whatever triggered the testing.

When was Trump tested? When did Trump first have symptoms? Did he go to the debate with symptoms and test results pending? Did he already know he was sick, exposing everyone including Biden?

Meanwhile, the Republicans’ Red Wedding Massacre continues. Chris Christie has now disclosed his COVID positive status; he’d helped prepare Trump for the debate and he’d attendend the Barrett super spreader event.

I want to know which GOP members of congress were on Air Force One:

It’d be nice for the public to know who to avoid at campaign events, you know? It’d also be nice to know if COVID-positive Sen. Ron Johnson was one of them, though he says he flew to D.C. on the 29th.

Heaven help all the support people around these careless and indifferent Republican motherfuckers — from the pilot and crew on Air Force One and Marine One, to the wait staff at the Barrett super spreader event.

Heaven help even these ethically-deficient White House staffers who are terrified and should quit for their safety and that of their friends and family (open pic link).

Additional updates will appear here at the bottom of this post.

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UPDATE-3 — 1:40 P.M. —

Rayne here yet again (yes, I have no life…).

Immediately following the presser with Trump’s physician, there was an off-the-record update with White House press pool in which the anonymous source said,

The source has now been identified as White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows:

So…not good, which matches the seriousness necessitating infusion with antibody therapy and then remdesivir.

One of our community members, pdaly, noted some missing specificity in journalists’ questions to Dr. Conley which might have offered far more detail about Trump’s condition:

The doctor mentioned Trump’s oxygen saturation is 96% (on room air, implied, if not receiving supplemental oxygen). The reporters could ask if that reading is “at rest” or “with activity.”

The follow up question could be: “What is Trump’s O2 saturation with ambulation?”

If there is no reading, why not? Is he bedridden? Or does he desaturate with exertion?

One other big tell, in my opinion: the lack of a proof-of-life video. Trump, who is a camera hog and lives for TV ratings, couldn’t possibly have missed an opportunity to share a short video clip from within Walter Reed in which he smiles and waves to his base, giving them a thumb’s up.

Unless he’s far sicker than we are being told even by Meadows in an off-the-record update.

It’d certainly explain Trump’s dearth of tweeting today.

Additional updates will appear here at the bottom of this post.

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UPDATE-4 — 7:50 P.M. —

Hey, it’s Rayne again, with yet another update.

Looks like somebody was worried we’d miss his sorry ass mooching our tax dollars on the golf course. More likely Trump didn’t want to sound weak after his chief of staff Mark Meadows was caught on audio and video earlier.

Rudy Giuliani gave a statement for him after a 2:30 p.m. phone call with Trump but it wasn’t enough — too many people thinking it sounded like more of Rudy’s smarmy bullshit.

So Trump sat down and gave a proof-of-life video — not embedding it here, only giving you a link.

To me he sounds a little breathless for somebody used to rambling at full volume for an hour behind a podium at rallies.

He’s still full of shit, exaggerating what he’s doing in the hospital as if he’s taking it on for everyone around the world — talk about a narcissistic messiah complex — but he manages to choke out four minutes of happy talk.

He may literally be a “happy hypoxic,” too, since we don’t know if he’s been on oxygen today or not.

His color is bad but then he’s addicted to wearing foundation. He also looks like he’s lost weight; perhaps he’s lost his sense of taste and smell which are common enough symptoms of COVID, making food and beverages less appealing.

But of course he’s lied to us so goddamned much over the last 4-plus years it’s hard to believe this is a straight-up honest update. I’m skeptical of the timing and location because the backdrop doesn’t match anything in the photos of the Presidential Suite at Walter Reed.

We’re supposed to believe a small crew of a couple people with a mic and camera couldn’t have shot this four-minute clip in the Presidential Suite?*

Like I said, he’s lied so much it’s hard to believe anything he says let alone anything we see in which he appears.

Doesn’t help matters that there are noticeable, um, hiccups. Holly Figueroa O’Reilly pointed to one:

Did they edit out a mistake? Did they cut out a cough? Or was this simply a dystonic jerk of his shoulders we’ve seen frequently when he’s speaking at podiums, likely related to whatever neurological problem also causes his right foot to drag and his speech to be sporadically garbled?

* Note: Apparently USA Today published an article explaining the photos making the rounds today of Walter Reed’s Presidential Suite are from 2007. That said, we still have little information about when/where/how the proof-of-life video was recorded.

Additional updates will appear here at the bottom of this post.

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DOJ Has Submitted Proof They Knew the January 5, 2017 Meeting Took Place on January 5, 2017

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I’ve been harping on the process that facilitated Sidney Powell — and then President Trump — falsely blaming Joe Biden for raising the Logan Act in the context of the government’s response to Mike Flynn’s attempts to secretly undermine sanctions on Russia.

That process started on June 23, when prosecutor Jocelyn Ballantine sent an undated copy of Peter Strzok’s notes to Sidney Powell, explaining that they had been found as part of Jeffrey Jensen’s review. Using the royal “we,” she professed uncertainty about when those notes were written.

The enclosed document was obtained and analyzed by USA EDMO during the course of its review. This page of notes was taken by former Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok. While the page itself is undated; we believe that the notes were taken in early January 2017, possibly between January 3 and January 5.

Sidney Powell, referencing those notes, claimed they were believed to date from January 4 and asserted that they showed Joe Biden raising the Logan Act.

Strzok’s notes believed to be of January 4, 2017, reveal that former President Obama, James Comey, Sally Yates, Joe Biden, and apparently Susan Rice discussed the transcripts of Flynn’s calls and how to proceed against him. Mr. Obama himself directed that “the right people” investigate General Flynn. This caused former FBI Director Comey to acknowledge the obvious: General Flynn’s phone calls with Ambassador Kislyak “appear legit.” According to Strzok’s notes, it appears that Vice President Biden personally raised the idea of the Logan Act.

Then, on September 23, Ballantine sent Powell a set of Strzok’s notes with a different Bates stamp than the first. When it was submitted — by Powell — to the docket, it had a date on it that did not appear on the earlier set: 1/4-5/17.

Then, five days after Powell (who has had multiple conversations with Trump’s campaign lawyer, Jenna Ellis, including about this case) loaded the now-dated notes onto the docket, President Trump publicly accused Joe Biden of giving “the idea for the Logan Act against General Flynn” in their first debate.

President Donald J. Trump: (01:02:22)
We’ve caught them all. We’ve got it all on tape. We’ve caught them all. And by the way, you gave the idea for the Logan Act against General Flynn. You better take a look at that, because we caught you in a sense, and President Obama was sitting in the office.

Thus it happened that an error introduced into the Flynn proceeding got turned into a campaign prop.

The thing is, DOJ has abundant proof that Jeffrey Jensen knew (or should have known) there was no uncertainty about the date when those notes were handed over to Powell. Indeed, if he did not know, then the entire premise of their motion to dismiss falls apart.

In Timothy Shea’s motion to dismiss, he obliquely attributed the radical change in DOJ’s view of Mike Flynn’s prosecution to Jeffrey Jensen’s review of the case, citing three dockets where Powell uploaded information that Ballantine had shared with the explanation (one, two) that the material came out of Jeffrey Jensen’s review.

After a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information appended to the defendant’s supplemental pleadings, ECF Nos. 181, 188-190,1 the Government has concluded that the interview of Mr. Flynn was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn—a no longer justifiably predicated investigation that the FBI had, in the Bureau’s own words, prepared to close because it had yielded an “absence of any derogatory information.”

1 This review not only included newly discovered and disclosed information, but also recently declassified information as well.

All the purportedly “newly discovered” information, then, comes from Jensen.

Bill Barr cited Jensen’s review even more explicitly in an interview with Catherine Herridge.

What action has the Justice Department taken today in the Michael Flynn case?

We dismissed or are moving to dismiss the charges against General Flynn. At any stage during a proceeding, even after indictment or a conviction or a guilty plea, the Department can move to dismiss the charges if we determine that our standards of prosecution have not been met.

As you recall, in January, General Flynn moved to withdraw his plea, and also alleged misconduct by the government. And at that time, I asked a very seasoned U.S. attorney, who had spent ten years as an FBI agent and ten years as a career prosecutor, Jeff Jensen, from St. Louis, to come in and take a fresh look at this whole case. And he found some additional material. And last week, he came in and briefed me and made a recommendation that we dismiss the case, which I fully agreed with, as did the U.S. attorney in D.C. So we’ve moved to dismiss the case.

So this decision to dismiss by the Justice Department, this all came together really within the last week, based on new evidence?

Right. Well U.S. Attorney Jensen since January has been investigating this. And he reported to me last week.

In other words, both Shea and Barr represented that the case laid out in the motion to dismiss is the case that Jensen made that persuaded Barr to drop the prosecution.

That means we should expect Jensen to have deep familiarity with all the documents that — the motion to dismiss claims — formed the basis of his review.

I put a list of those exhibits here (along with an explanation that virtually everything cited in it was already known when DOJ first charged Flynn, when Michael Horowitz concluded the investigation was properly predicated, and when Bill Barr’s DOJ called for prison time in January).

Among those documents that Timothy Shea — and before him, Jeffrey Jensen — relied on to claim that DOJ should drop Flynn’s prosecution is the 302 from Mary McCord’s July 17, 2017 interview with Mueller’s team. The motion to dismiss cites McCord at least 26 times, relying on her interview to understand details of what happened in early January 2017, after the government discovered Flynn’s calls that explained why Russia didn’t retaliate for sanctions. Of particular note, the motion to dismiss that arose from Jensen’s analysis cites McCord’s interview regarding the discussion about the Logan Act — including that the investigation remained a counterintelligence one after discussing the Kislyak description. McCord’s description of the Logan Acti discussion reveals precisely who first raised it: ODNI GC Bob Litt.

General Counsel at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Bob Litt raised the issue of a possible Logan Act violation. McCord was not familiar with the Logan Act at the time and made a note to herself to look it up later.

DOJ should never have let Powell form the conclusion that Joe Biden first suggested the Logan Act, because they were relying on a document that made it clear that Litt had already raised it. That’s where Jim Comey got the idea, before he went into that January 5, 2017 meeting.

Another document Shea and Jensen relied on in arguing that DOJ should end the Flynn prosecution is the 302 from Sally Yates’ August 15, 2017 interview with Mueller’s team. Shea’s motion to dismiss — based off Jensen’s analysis — cites Yates’ 302 at least 20 times, including in its discussion of the Logan Act. What Shea didn’t cite, but what shows up in the first substantive paragraph of the 302, is a description of how Yates first learned of the Flynn-Kislyak calls at a meeting at the White House on January 5, 2017.

Yates first learned of the December 2016 calls between (LTG Michael) Flynn and (Russian Ambassador to the United States, Sergey) Kislyak on January 5, 2017, while in the Oval Office. Yates, along with then-FBI Director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and the-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, were at the White House to brief members of the Obama Administration on the classified Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Activities in Recent U.S. Elections. President Obama was joined by his National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, and others from the National Security Council. After the briefing, Obama dismissed the group but asked Yates and Comey to stay behind. Obama started by saying he had “learned of the information about Flynn” and his conversation with Kislyak about sanctions. Obama specified he did not want additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information. At that point, Yates had no idea what the President was talking about, but figured it out based on the conversation. Yates recalled Comey mentioning the Logan Act, but can’t recall if he specified there was an “investigation.” Comey did not talk about prosecution in the meeting. It was not clear to Yates from where the President first received the information. Yates did not recall Comey’s response to the President’s question about how to treat Flynn. She was so surprised by the information she was hearing that she was having a hard time processing it and listening to the conversation at the same time.

That long paragraph that very clearly describes the meeting at the White House captured in Peter Strzok’s notes directly precedes one that Shea (and so by association, Jensen) rely on heavily. According to Yates, Jim Comey was the one who raised the Logan Act in that meeting, not Joe Biden. And McCord, which they also rely on, makes it clear Comey got the idea from Litt.

Finally, the Shea motion to dismiss based on Jensen’s analysis relies on Jim Comey’s HPSCI testimony — one of just two documents that DOJ may not already have reviewed before Mike Flynn’s guilty plea. It cites the Comey transcript 16 times, including for a paragraph on the Logan Act.

As Sally Yates did, Comey described that the meeting at the White House involving the two of them took place on January 5.

I had not briefed the Department of Justice about this, and found myself at the Oval Office on the 5th of January to brief the President on the separate effort that you all are aware of by the Intelligence Community to report on what the Russians had done during the election. And in the course of that conversation, the President mentioned this [redacted] And that was the first time the Acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, had heard about it.

In no place does the Timothy Shea motion to dismiss, based off Jeffrey Jensen’s analysis, raise any questions about the veracity of these witnesses. Indeed, the motion relies on those documents as reliable descriptions of what happened in January 2017.

That means that either the DC US Attorney’s Office and Jeffrey Jensen are very familiar with the documents they rely on heavily to argue that Judge Sullivan must dismiss Flynn’s prosecution, in which case they affirmatively misled the court when they claimed to have no idea on what date the meeting described by both Yates and Comey occurred. That would mean, though, that Jensen affirmatively misled the court about a detail three months before the President used that error to make a campaign attack. And somehow an exhibit got altered to match that affirmative misinformation.

Alternately, none of the people claiming that these documents justify dismissing Flynn’s prosecution really know what these documents say.

Certainly, all parties should be on the hook for an exhibit that got altered to suggest the meeting could have taken place on January 4.

October Surprise: Didn’t Have COVID-19 on the Bingo Card [UPDATE-2]

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[NB: Check the byline, thanks! Updates, if any, will appear at the bottom of the post. / ~Rayne]

So…back on August 22, I asked folks to offer their best bets on what Team Trump would pull for an October Surprise given the long history of such election gaming in American presidential politics.

I suspected Team Trump would try to force both the Durham investigation to announce a skewed finding, and development of a COVID-19 vaccine through testing and approval by some time in October.

But I didn’t have Trump testing positive for COVID-19 on the bingo card of possible surprises.

Only one community member, Terrapin, saw that as a possibility (and not with a good outcome).

But after all the squirrelly reporting around Hope Hicks’ positive test earlier on Thursday, it wasn’t clear when Trump and his wretched wife were tested and with what kind of test.

Is this being gamed, too?

Trump managed to shoot himself in the foot politically again by blaming military personnel as the source of Hicks’ infection:

… Trump suggested Hicks could have contracted it from members of the military or law enforcement.

“It is very, very hard when you are with people from the military, or from law enforcement, and they come over to you, and they want to hug you, and they want to kiss you because we really have done a good job for them,” the president said. “You get close, and things happen. I was surprised to hear with Hope, but she is a very warm person with them. She knows there’s a risk, but she is young.” …

Exposure to COVID-19 didn’t cause that kind of stupid.

The situation is annoying no matter how much anyone may like/dislike Trump. He’s still the White House’s occupant, still the president and commander-in-chief even if the means by which he came to those roles has been in question since day one. The American people deserve better transparency about the health of the person occupying the White House and whether he is or isn’t incapacitated at any time.

The other challenge before us: After mocking his opponent for wearing a mask, Trump was on stage this week with Joe Biden, and neither wore masks during their debate. Trump spent a lot of time pushing aerosols as he spoke and may have been contagious.

A whole host of other problematic scenarios emerge:

The October Surprise may be one we never thought of or planned for in August.

What other fresh surprises should we expect this month before the election?

~ ~ ~

UPDATE-1 — 12:00 P.M. 02-OCT-2020 —

No, fuck no. This Brit needs to do some basic research, like reading the U.S. Constitution before flapping off like this.

Trump tried to float this same lead balloon back in April. Not going to happen; that’s why he attacked the U.S. Post Office to damage its capacity to handle ballots on a timely basis.

Rick Hasen has already written about the possibility Trump leaves office due to illness or death before the election, and how that might be handled.

LOL GMTA

Just wish I knew how they’re going to wrap up this season — will it be a series finale?

Would be nice to know how to hedge this. My retirement fund is getting seasickness from all the ups and downs.

~ ~ ~

UPDATE-1 — 7:00 P.M. 02-OCT-2020 —

Trump has been taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. His doctor says he’s been given Regeneron’s polyclonal antibody infusion — a drug cocktail which is still in testing phase. Earlier reports said Trump was running a low grade temperature.

Look, it’s time for media people to do a better job of reporting by which I mean GET THE TIMELINE OF EVENTS.

Did the temperature come on before/after going to Walter Reed?

Was the infusion administered before/after going to Walter Reed?

Do you see what I’m getting at?

Going through Twitter I can piece together part of the answers:

Mid-day — Trump did not attend a conference call for which he was scheduled; VP Pence attended in his place a planned discussion about COVID-19 support for at-risk seniors.

4:11 p.m. — Press Sec McEnany released via Twitter a copy of a memo from Trump’s physician, Sean P. Conley. Conley wrote that Trump received the Regeneron infusion as a precautionary measure.

4:18 p.m. — NBC News reported President Trump has a low-grade fever.

5:19 p.m. — CNN reported Trump would be transported to Walter Reed.

6:17 p.m. — CNN’s Jim Acosta reported Trump didn’t take questions as he walked to helicopter Marine One.

Based on what little I pulled together, it looks like Trump received an experimental drug administered by IV at the White House, that he continued to experience symptoms typical of COVID-19 including a temperature, and that he was then moved to Walter Reed.

Something is still missing in this tick-tock. Why did the President of the United States receive an experimental drug? When was it administered today, or was it administered last night before/immediately after the positive test was reported? Why was he moved to Walter Reed after the infusion rather than before it was administered?

Were they waiting for the goddamned market to close before they revealed he received this drug therapy? Or that they decided to move him to Walter Reed?

Pay attention to the timing.

And note the black holes: there’s no mention of hydroxychloroquine, no mention of Gilead’s remdesivir (though this may not be administered this early in the illness and only to more seriously ill patients).

Over 72 Hours, Trump and Chuck Grassley Provide Emmet Sullivan Proof that Peter Strzok’s Notes Were Altered for Political Reasons

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Over the past 72 hours, the following events have proven not just that Peter Strzok’s notes were altered, but that that was done for political purpose.

It started on Monday, when Strzok lawyer Aitan Goelman sent Judge Emmet Sullivan a letter confirming that the handwritten dates on two sets of his notes were, “not written by Mr. Strzok.”

That the notes memorializing what Jim Comey briefed others about a January 5, 2017 meeting were altered is not in doubt. Sidney Powell and DOJ have already provided the original notes (which I’ve annotated to show that the notes did not originally have a date) and the altered ones (which I’ve annotated to note where a date has been added).

The second set of notes were provided to Flynn’s lawyers on September 23 and submitted to the docket on September 24. It’s not clear whether they were altered before or after they got sent from DOJ. I hope Judge Sullivan gets to the bottom of that question.

Then, in Tuesday’s hearing, Sidney Powell admitted not just that she has spoken with the President about this case (insanely asking him not to pardon her client), but also that she speaks — apparently regularly — with President Trump’s campaign lawyer, Jenna Ellis, betraying that Flynn’s efforts to blow up his prosecution are a matter of interest to Trump’s campaign.

Then, hours later, on Tuesday night, the President made this prepared attack on Joe Biden during the first debate.

President Donald J. Trump: (01:02:22)
We’ve caught them all. We’ve got it all on tape. We’ve caught them all. And by the way, you gave the idea for the Logan Act against General Flynn. You better take a look at that, because we caught you in a sense, and President Obama was sitting in the office.

As I noted when Jeffrey Jensen handed over the first set of notes pretending to be uncertain about what date they were from, by altering the date about a meeting that has been publicly dated as January 5, 2017 for over two years, it presented a false chronology whereby Joe Biden suggested the FBI investigate Flynn for the Logan Act (which is what DOJ is falsely claiming was the only basis for investigating Flynn, even though every single witness and every single contemporaneous record has said Flynn was interviewed under an 18 USC 951 predication to see if he would tell the truth about his calls with Sergey Kislyak), and then Jim Comey returned to the FBI and ordered his minions to do just that.  That is, it would create the (false) possibility that the meeting at the White House happened, and then a discussion between Strzok and Page discussing the Logan Act started. The reality is that Strzok and Page were talking about it the day before the meeting.

From that false appearance, Powell asserted in a representation to Emmet Sullivan that the meeting was believed to have happened on January 4 and Biden apparently had been the one to suggest Logan Act, thereby suggesting (falsely) that Biden was the one who raised the Logan Act.

Strzok’s notes believed to be of January 4, 2017, reveal that former President Obama, James Comey, Sally Yates, Joe Biden, and apparently Susan Rice discussed the transcripts of Flynn’s calls and how to proceed against him. Mr. Obama himself directed that “the right people” investigate General Flynn. This caused former FBI Director Comey to acknowledge the obvious: General Flynn’s phone calls with Ambassador Kislyak “appear legit.” According to Strzok’s notes, it appears that Vice President Biden personally raised the idea of the Logan Act. That became an admitted pretext to investigate General Flynn.

That transparently false accusation that Sidney Powell (who has been speaking with Trump’s campaign lawyer) made on June 24 then showed up as a prepared attack in President Trump’s very first campaign debate on September 29. The altered notes appeared in the docket on September 24, and then five days later the President of the United States made a false claim that depends on the alteration.

Sidney Powell is using her purported defense of Mike Flynn as a campaign prop.

Yesterday, Chuck Grassley — who has been chasing all matter of conspiracy in the service of President Trump and is staffed by diehard Republicans — gave up the game. At the Jim Comey hearing, this exchange occurred.

Grassley: Did you ever speak with President Obama or Vice President Biden about any aspect of the Flynn case. If so, what did you discuss?

Comey: I remember the Flynn investigation coming up once. I think it was January the Fifth, when President Obama held me back to urge me to do the case in the normal way, and to let him know if there was any reason that he should not be sharing sensitive information about Russia with the Trump transition. I assured him that I would keep him informed and that I would conduct the investigation in that way.

Grassley [reading a prepared question]: During the January 5, 2017 meeting between you, President Obama, Vice President Biden, Sally Yates, and Susan Rice, did you mention that Flynn’s calls with the Russian Ambassador appear, quote unquote, “appear legit”?

Comey: I don’t remember using that word. If I used it I would have meant “authentic” and “not fabricated.” I wouldn’t have meant appropriate. But I don’t remember using that word.

It’s clear, from the way Grassley is reading a prepared question and the way he provides details about that January 5 meeting that he already knew of the meeting, and that that’s why he asked Comey the initial question in the first place.

Critically, an 87-year old Senator reading from notes his staffers — whose portfolios include many other tasks in addition to writing imagined gotcha questions based off Peter Strzok’s notes — stated as unquestionable fact that the meeting occurred on January 5. Unlike Jeffrey Jensen, they have no doubt about the date.

That’s not at all surprising. After all, Chuck Grassley first started pursuing this question around August 2017, when he obtained Susan Rice’s notes to the file recording the meeting (from unknown sources, but I find it interesting that Barbara Ledeen obtained it as if receiving it directly in discovery even as Robert Mueller got it).

But the question Grassley read came straight from Strzok’s notes, the ones that got altered. And even he knows — with access to far less evidence than Jeffrey Jensen — that the meeting happened on January 5.

Again, it’s not clear who altered the notes — DOJ or Flynn’s lawyers. But in a sense, it doesn’t matter. The first fraud on the court came when Jeffrey Jensen claimed there was any doubt about what date the meeting occurred. Yesterday, Chuck Grassley just made it clear that no credible person could believe that.

The Proud Boys Have Already Been Used to Intimidate Those Holding Trump Accountable — and Bill Barr Has Protected Them

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As a number of people have observed, in last night’s debate, Donald Trump not only refused to condemn white supremacist terrorists, but seemed to call on them to stand by to support him.

President Donald J. Trump: (42:10)
What do you want to call them? Give me a name, give me a name, go ahead who do you want me to condemn.

Chris Wallace: (42:14)
White supremacist and right-wing militia.

President Donald J. Trump: (42:18)
Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right wing problem this is a left wing.

He named the Proud Boys explicitly.

Today, I noted that the reason why Randy Credico took Roger Stone’s threats seriously — the reason the witness tampering charge merited the full enhancement — was because of Stone’s ties to the Proud Boys. Credico confirmed that by posting a picture of Stone with his gang.

In Stone’s sentencing hearing, Judge Amy Berman Jackson described how Credico told the grand jury he was worried about Stone’s gang.

I note, since the defense has informed me that I can consider this material, that that is not consistent with his grand jury testimony, which was closer in time to the actual threats, at which time he said he was hiding and wearing a disguise and not living at home because he was worried, if not about Trump, about his — about Stone, but about his friends. So, I think his level of concern may have changed over time.

It’s not just Credico. When ABJ held a hearing to consider a gag on Roger Stone, she first got him to explain how his associates — whom he first declined to identify but then, when pressed by prosecutor Jonathan Kravis, named Proud Boys members Jacob Engles and Enrique Tarrio — had been working with him on that post but he couldn’t really describe who had picked the image of Judge Jackson with the crosshairs on it.

Amy Berman Jackson. How was the image conveyed to you by the person who selected it?

Stone. It was emailed to me or text-messaged to me. I’m not certain.

Q. Who sent the email?

A. I would have to go back and look. I don’t recognize. I don’t know. Somebody else uses my —

THE COURT: How big is your staff, Mr. Stone?

THE DEFENDANT: I don’t have a staff, Your Honor. I have a few volunteers. I also — others use my phone, so I’m not the only one texting, because it is my account and, therefore, it’s registered to me. So I’m uncertain how I got the image. I think it is conceivable that it was selected on my phone. I believe that is the case, but I’m uncertain.

THE COURT: So individuals, whom you cannot identify, provide you with material to be posted on your personal Instagram account and you post it, even if you don’t know who it came from?

THE DEFENDANT: Everybody who works for me is a volunteer. My phone is used by numerous people because it can only be posted to the person to whom it is registered.

[snip]

Jonathan Kravis. What are the names of the five or six volunteers that you’re referring to?

Stone. I would — Jacob Engles, Enrique Tarrio. I would have to go back and look

When she imposed a gag on Stone, she explained that his Instagram post amounted to incitement of others, people with extreme views and violent inclinations.

What concerns me is the fact that he chose to use his public platform, and chose to express himself in a manner that can incite others who may feel less constrained. The approach he chose posed a very real risk that others with extreme views and violent inclinations would be inflamed.

[snip]

The defendant himself told me he had more than one to choose from. And so what he chose, particularly when paired with the sorts of incendiary comments included in the text, the comments that not only can lead to disrespect for the judiciary, but threats on the judiciary, the post had a more sinister message. As a man who, according to his own account, has made communication his forté, his raison d’être, his life’s work, Roger Stone fully understands the power of words and the power of symbols. And there’s nothing ambiguous about crosshairs.

Then, again at the sentencing hearing, ABJ talked about the risk that, “someone else, with even poorer judgment than he has, would act on his behalf.

Here, the defendant willfully engaged in behavior that a rational person would find to be inherently obstructive. It’s important to note that he didn’t just fire off a few intemperate emails. He used the tools of social media to achieve the broadest dissemination possible. It wasn’t accidental. He had a staff that helped him do it.

As the defendant emphasized in emails introduced into evidence in this case, using the new social media is his “sweet spot.” It’s his area of expertise. And even the letters submitted on his behalf by his friends emphasized that incendiary activity is precisely what he is specifically known for. He knew exactly what he was doing. And by choosing Instagram and Twitter as his platforms, he understood that he was multiplying the number of people who would hear his message.

By deliberately stoking public opinion against prosecution and the Court in this matter, he willfully increased the risk that someone else, with even poorer judgment than he has, would act on his behalf. This is intolerable to the administration of justice, and the Court cannot sit idly by, shrug its shoulder and say: Oh, that’s just Roger being Roger, or it wouldn’t have grounds to act the next time someone tries it.

Both Credico and ABJ, then, pointed to the white supremacist gang that Roger Stone hangs out with to explain why Roger Stone’s threats must be taken seriously.

And Bill Barr dismissed the seriousness of both those threats — the threats Roger Stone makes that might lead one of his associates to take violent action — when he undermined the sentencing recommendation on Stone.

Trump’s invocation of the Proud Boys is no idle threat. Because the Proud Boys have already been used to intimidate those holding Donald Trump accountable.

2020 Presidential Debates: Station Hope [UPDATE-1]

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[NB: Update at bottom of post. /~Rayne]

I’m putting up a post so community members can hash out the first of three presidential debates.

This one is located in Cleveland, Ohio, which was code named “Station Hope” by the Underground Railroad during the mid-1800s.

The entire day has been rife with bullshit rumormongering among the right-wing monkey horde, which claims Democratic candidate and former VP Joe Biden will use an earpiece for prompts by others as well as performance enhancing drugs.

Sure sounds like a lot of projection to me.

Trump’s campaign has already jumped the gun and sent out a fundraising email before 5:37 p.m. EDT claiming he’s won the debate which doesn’t start until 8:00 p.m. CDT (I’m writing this at 8:00 p.m. EDT).

Joe and his team are taking this all in stride.

Do open the graphic. The right-wing horde has gotten their panties in a twist about $12-13/pint ice cream, failing to take the time to check its provenance. It’s made by a woman-founded ice creamery headquartered in Columbus with a scoop shop in Chagrin, Ohio just east of Cleveland, with pints available in many Cleveland-area grocery stores.

Way to go, MAGAts. Good luck winning over more women and small businesses.

Anyhow…a list of online streams is available at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU12uITxBEPFAvcROsHJwIopn-Q-FMTSp

Fox is hosting which is a joke given their role in spreading disinformation today about Biden.

CNN’s Daniel Dale will be doing a real time fact check which Fox is apparently incapable of doing. Best wishes to Dale who will surely be exhausted at the end of the debate; he’s the best Canadian import we have next to Molson.

Best of luck to you all. I will check in later; I simply don’t have the patience for Trump’s lies while the U.S. has now lost 205,591 Americans as of this evening to COVID-19 because Trump’s such a useless fraud.

~ ~ ~

EDIT: Mark these dates on your calendar for the next two presidential debates —

Thursday, October 15, 2020 9:00–10:30 p.m. ET
Location: Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami, Florida
Moderator: Steve Scully, C-SPAN

Thursday, October 22, 2020 8:00–9:30 p.m. ET
Location: Curb Event Center at Belmont University, Nashville, Tennessee
Moderator: Kristen Welker, NBC

~ ~ ~

UPDATE-1 — 11:45 P.M. ET —

Jumpin’ Jehosaphat, what a spectacular waste of time and a massive national embarrassment. Trump has all the manners and grace of a toddler who’s missed his lunch and his nap, and yet he has all the maliciousness of an old man with permanent grudges.

Van Jones, who has been on board with Trump, may have had the scales removed from his eyes tonight:

I don’t know what took Jones so damned long to realize that Trump is a white supremacist who intends to keep his grip on power illegitimately and with the support of white supremacist terror groups.

The media isn’t taking this debate well, either. Many of them realize that Trump couldn’t be reined in even if Fox’s Chris Wallace had tried harder because Trump was intent on venting his meanness. Any one of them in Wallace’s shoes would have had difficulty salvaging any of the debate because Trump has no respect for the media if they aren’t kissing his ass.

Joan Donovan of the Shorenstein Center has an important message for the media, though:

Don’t give white supremacists a platform. Doing so lends them legitimacy. It’s bad enough Trump had one tonight which he used to ask them to stand by — in essence, calling to armed preparedness a seditious entity.

It’s past time to discuss both the illegitimacy of Trump’s power and the threat of seditious insurrection if he loses to Biden in an effort to prevent the peaceful transition of power.

Two more debates seem useless at this point, don’t they?

On a Key Issue in Mike Flynn’s Case — which FBI Agent to Believe — DOJ Argued against DOJ

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The epic five hour hearing in the Mike Flynn case just wrapped up.

The most notable events, one which may utterly sway Judge Sullivan’s opinion, were two details that would give Sullivan reason to say this is the exceptional case where he should not grant the motion to dismiss.

The first was Sidney Powell’s admission that she has spoken to the President about this case, and also spoken with Trump’s campaign lawyer, Jenna Ellis, about it, the latter apparently more than once. Powell tried to claim Executive Privilege for her conversation(s) with the President about the case, until Sullivan pointed out the sheer absurdity of that. Powell was never asked why she was speaking to a lawyer, Ellis, whose job it is to make sure the President doesn’t break any campaign finance laws about this case. Still, those admissions, handled with all the leaden aplomb that Powell exemplifies, will provide Sullivan ample basis (on top of Trump’s tweets and everything else) to prove that this was all politicized by the President.

The other detail that might really sway Sullivan was the judge’s mention of Aitan Goelman’s letter informing Judge Sullivan that someone — and Goelman did not speculate on who might have done this — altered the notes of his client. Sullivan said he was “floored” when he read the letter.  Later on, Powell accused Strzok of being the dirtiest FBI agent of all time. Some other things make me wonder — though this would make the logistics rather interesting — whether Powell was the one who altered the notes. In any case, Sullivan ordered that someone authenticate the filings submitted to the court.

Judge Sullivan was already bugged by the letter Sidney Powell wrote to Billy Barr asking that he do all the things he subsequently did, notably appoint a lawyer to review the entirety of the prosecution. The confirmation that Powell has been personally lobbying Trump’s (!!!) campaign lawyer for intervention seems to seal the proof that this is political.

Still, perhaps a more substantive problem with the pro-Flynn argument is that DOJ’s two representatives (Ken Kohl for the DC US Attorney’s Office) and the Solicitor General’s counsel, Hashim Mooppan) contradicted each other on a key issue.

Mooppan repeatedly claimed, “what if it were true that this was a witch hunt”? He relied, significantly, on two things. First, Bill Priestap’s notes clearly recording that FBI did the interview to figure out whether Mike Flynn would tell the truth.

Rather than focusing on what Priestap and every witness confirmed in real time and since was the purpose of the interview, Mooppan instead focused on Priestap’s notation of the debate before this, about whether they just wanted to get Flynn to lie. As John Gleeson pointed out, though, that would not make Flynn abnormal at all. That happens to defendants all the time. But in fact, Gleeson further noted, that’s not what happened; Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka actually cued Flynn with his own words to make sure he had an opportunity to fix the record, and Flynn did not do so. Moreover, all other witnesses said the same thing Priestap did: the point of the interview was to see if Flynn would tell the truth.

Plus, there’s a real problem with Mooppan’s reliance on Priestap’s notes. As the NYT reported, DOJ rushed to move to dismiss the case while Priestap’s 302 was being finalized.

Priestap, the former head of F.B.I. counterintelligence, two days before making their extraordinary request to drop the case to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. They did not tell Judge Sullivan about Mr. Priestap’s interview. A Justice Department official said that they were in the process of writing up a report on the interview and that it would soon be filed with the court.

The department’s motion referred to notes that Mr. Priestap wrote around the bureau’s 2017 questioning of Mr. Flynn, who later pleaded guilty to lying to investigators during that interview. His lawyers said Mr. Priestap’s notes — recently uncovered during a review of the case — suggested that the F.B.I. was trying to entrap Mr. Flynn, and Attorney General William P. Barr said investigators were trying to “lay a perjury trap.”

That interpretation was wrong, Mr. Priestap told the prosecutors reviewing the case. He said that F.B.I. officials were trying to do the right thing in questioning Mr. Flynn and that he knew of no effort to set him up. Media reports about his notes misconstrued them, he said, according to the people familiar with the investigation.

The department’s decision to exclude mention of Mr. Priestap’s interview in the motion could trouble Judge Sullivan, who signaled late on Tuesday that he was skeptical of the department’s arguments.

In spite of its ability to turn Bill Barnett’s 302 around in a week, DOJ has never disclosed Priestap’s 302 debunking this claim to Judge Sullivan. These notes don’t say what Mooppan falsely claimed to Sullivan they did. And that may become more clear in days ahead.

The other thing Mooppan relied upon, repeatedly, was the claim that Pientka and Strzok didn’t believe Flynn had lied after they interviewed him (he also relied on a Jim Comey comment, made without knowledge of all the evidence that FBI subsequently gathered, that corroborated the evidence that Flynn had lied). Except that’s not what they said (and some of the texts that DOJ has released make this clear). They believed Flynn either believed what he said (though they’d get proof later he did not), or that he was just a very accomplished liar.

Meanwhile, Ken Kohl, who was named Acting Principal AUSA at around the same time as this motion to dismiss, and who seemed genuinely ignorant of key details of the case but nevertheless wanted to claim that DC USAO wasn’t acting politically (Roger Stone’s case did not come up), said a number of things that conflict with what DOJ has already said (including that any of this was Brady).

Significantly, however, he seemed really impressed with Bill Barnett’s 302, perhaps because he doesn’t know the case well enough to know how many glaring contradictions there are in the 302 (which makes me wonder whether he was a source for WaPo’s supine treatment of the interview). Kohl talked about all the claims — belied by actual primary documents, basic logic, and gravity — Barnett made that don’t hold up to scrutiny.

The question of whether Bill Barnett sent pro-Trump tweets on his FBI phone — making him the mirror image of Peter Strzok — never came up in today’s hearing.

But John Gleeson did note that Barnett had none of the doubts that Mooppan claimed (falsely) that Strzok and Pinetka had.

That means, ultimately, DOJ was arguing against DOJ.

Mooppan claimed that Strzok and Pientka’s alleged doubts that Flynn lied — refuted by documents already shared with Sullivan — proved DOJ had to dismiss the case. Kohl, meanwhile, claimed that Barnett’s 302 — which showed he had absolutely no doubt that Flynn lied to the FBI — proved DOJ couldn’t prosecute the case.

There’s not actually a controversy here: At least Strzok and Barnett agree that Flynn lied, which should be all it takes. (Indeed, Barnett could testify that Flynn did lie, if DOJ needs an aggressively pro-Trump agent to put on the stand.)

But the Solicitor General’s office relies on the agents who said that Flynn was a good liar and DC USAO sides with the agent who states clearly that Flynn lied.

John Gleeson has noted that DOJ can’t keep its story straight from week to week. In today’s hearing, they couldn’t even keep their story straight from lawyer to lawyer.

DOJ [or Flynn’s Team] Altered an Exhibit in the Mike Flynn Case to Support a False Smear of Joe Biden

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As noted, Peter Strzok’s lawyer has confirmed something I laid out earlier: DOJ submitted at least two sets of Strzok’s notes in its effort to blow up the Mike Flynn prosecution that had been altered to add a date that Strzok did not write himself.

This post will lay out why it matters.

I discovered that DOJ [or Flynn’s team] had altered Strzok’s notes because DOJ shared — and Sidney Powell submitted in purported support of her claim of prosecutorial abuse — two sets of those notes.

This set, shared on June 23 (the red rectangle is my annotation).

And this set, shared on September 23. Again, my red rectangle shows where DOJ added a date, January 4-5, 2017.

As Strzok’s lawyer, Aitan Goelman, explained that date is wrong.

On at least one occasion, the date added is wrong and could be read to suggest that a meeting at the White House happened before it actually did.

The correct date is January 5, 2017. The notes could not have been written on January 4 because they memorialize a meeting that happened on January 5.

As I demonstrated here, there was never a doubt about the date of the notes. They were written on January 5, 2017, after the meeting in question. The notes clearly match the known details — as laid out in this contemporaneous memo to the file by Susan Rice and elsewhere — of a meeting in the White House, attended by the President, Sally Yates, Joe Biden, Susan Rice, and Jim Comey, regarding what to do about the discovery that Mike Flynn had secretly called up the Russian Ambassador and undermined the sanctions President Obama imposed, in part, to punish the Russians for tampering in our election.

In spite of the fact that there was never a doubt that the notes were from January 5, 2017, when DOJ shared the notes with Powell, they claimed that DOJ was uncertain of their date, and claimed falsely they could have been from January 3, 4, or 5.

This page of notes was taken by former Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok. While the page itself is undated; we believe that the notes were taken in early January 2017, possibly between January 3 and January 5.

Then, having been told, falsely, that the date of the notes was uncertain, Sidney Powell claimed they had been written on January 4, and used that to falsely claim that the idea of investigating Mike Flynn under the Logan Act came from Joe Biden.

Strzok’s notes believed to be of January 4, 2017, reveal that former President Obama, James Comey, Sally Yates, Joe Biden, and apparently Susan Rice discussed the transcripts of Flynn’s calls and how to proceed against him. Mr. Obama himself directed that “the right people” investigate General Flynn. This caused former FBI Director Comey to acknowledge the obvious: General Flynn’s phone calls with Ambassador Kislyak “appear legit.” According to Strzok’s notes, it appears that Vice President Biden personally raised the idea of the Logan Act.

Thus far, all DOJ did was falsely claim not to know key details of this investigation, allowing Powell to set off a frenzy designed to impact the election.

But then DOJ [or Flynn’s team] submitted the second version of the notes and Powell submitted them again, claiming they pertained to a March 2017 meeting.

Now, had DOJ told Powell when they shared the altered notes and told Judge Sullivan, by association, when they filed the notice of discovery correspondence (belatedly) last night that these were annotated copies of Strzok’s notes, they would not be at risk of committing the crime of making false statements by altering a record (the same crime Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty to). Had they just explained, “these come from so-and-so’s investigative notebooks and they show that he, the investigator, [falsely] concluded that the notes could be from January 4, 2017 and that’s why poor Sidney Powell made a false, still-uncorrected attack on Joe Biden in a filing before this court,” then this wouldn’t be a problem. I mean, they’d still have to explain why they submitted an altered copy of the notes, rather than just correcting the record before Sullivan. But it would not amount to a false representation that these were — as Ballantine’s letter to Powell claimed they were — “handwritten notes of former Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok (23501 & 23503).”

But now it is the case that the record before Sullivan shows that DOJ [or Flynn’s team] submitted these altered notes while claiming that they were Strzok’s hand-written notes (having already submitted proof that the annotation is not part of the original).

It’s not just that — as Goelman explained — the notes, “could be read to suggest that a meeting at the White House happened before it actually did.”

It’s that DOJ already did read the notes to suggest a meeting happened before it actually did. DOJ, and by association, Flynn’s lawyer, already made that false claim. And they did so specifically to support an attack on Presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Update, 9/30: I’ve altered this to reflect that the alterations to the notes could have come from Flynn’s team, which might explain why Sidney Powell was so nasty about Strzok’s lawyer’s letter yesterday.