2020 Presidential Election Archives - Page 47 of 151

“Like fatter Tony Soprano” Attending the Arraignment and “Effect[ing]” Liz Harrington’s Pregnancy

August 11, 2023/55 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, January 6 Insurrection, Leak Investigations /by emptywheel

Two amusing phrases from yesterday’s news provide a wonderful opportunity to talk about how Trump will continue to manipulate his prosecution.

First, Peter Navarro continues to seek ways to stall his long-delayed trial on contempt charges, which is scheduled to start next month. In advance of his trial, Judge Amit Mehta has granted him an evidentiary hearing so Navarro can attempt to prove that the former President told him to invoke both testimonial immunity and executive privilege, as Trump did with Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino (which is almost certainly a big part of why they weren’t charged with contempt).

When granting Navarro the hearing, though, Mehta noted that Navarro has thus far not presented any evidence that Trump told him not to testify, and he’ll need to find “formal” evidence.

[T]he court does not at this time prejudge what type or manner of instruction from President Trump might suffice to constitute a “formal” assertion of privilege or immunity. See United States v. Navarro, No. 22-cr-200 (APM), 2023 WL 371968, at *2–3 (D.D.C. Jan. 19, 2023). The court previously left that question unanswered because Defendant had not come forward with any evidence of a presidential invocation. Id.; Jan. Hr’g Tr. at 12. Defendant’s burden will include showing that the claimed instruction to invoke was a “formal” one.

Now, Navarro is attempting to delay both hearings because Liz Harrington, Trump’s spox, is due to give birth.

The first two filings in this dispute (Navarro, DOJ) included redacted bits and exhibits explaining how Trump’s spokesperson could prove that Trump invoked testimonial immunity and executive privilege, though DOJ did make clear that they believe Harrington’s testimony is inadmissible. Navarro’s response provides more detail: He wants Harrington to describe how he wrote a press statement she could release claiming Trump had invoked executive privilege (but not testimonial immunity).

Along the way, he reveals that Harrington testified to the grand jury and DOJ believes his proffer of her testimony materially conflicts with what DOJ locked her into saying.

It’s clear from the Government’s Opposition that it would prefer that Ms. Harrington not testify at the evidentiary hearing.1 Although it claims that her testimony is “generally speaking not in dispute”, it challenges its relevance of the calls she had with Dr. Navarro and the email she received from him on February 9, 2022, the day the J6 Committee served its subpoena. Opp. n.1. Standing alone, Ms. Harrington’s testimony does not prove that former President Trump instructed Dr. Navarro to assert executive privilege in response to the Committee’s subpoena. But the testimony is corroborative of other evidence – including Dr. Navarro’s anticipated testimony – that he was following President Trump’s instructions when he notified the Committee that it should negotiate the privilege issue with its holder.2

Ms. Harrington will explain that after being served with the subpoena, Dr. Navarro called her and then followed up by sending the media statement he planned to publicly issue that day. The statement explained that President Trump had asserted executive privilege and noted that the J6 Committee should negotiate any waiver of the privilege with his attorneys and him. Ms. Harrington conveyed the statement to two of President Trump’s administrative assistants and, later that day, Dr. Navarro publicly released the statement. See Defense Exhibit 7

1 In its zeal to prosecute Dr. Navarro and keep Ms. Harrington from testifying, the Government has implicitly threatened her with perjury “if she intends to testify inconsistent with her grand jury testimony” and that she “must first waive her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself.” Opp. at 3. This assertion is at odds with long-standing precedent that: “Our legal system provides methods for challenging the Government’s right to ask questions – lying is not one of them,” United States v. Wong, 431 U.S. 174, 178 (1977), and so, “[e]ven constitutionally explicit Fifth Amendment privileges do not exonerate affirmative false statements.” United States v. North, 708 F. Supp. 380, 383 (D.D.C. 1988) (citing Wong, 431 U.S. at 178). Regardless of whether Ms. Harrington could assert the Fifth Amendment to avoid what the government submits would be perjured testimony, the reality is that Mr. Harrington’s anticipated testimony is wholly consistent with her grand jury testimony – the government just failed to ask probative follow up questions of her at the time.

Then, Navarro’s lawyers — the lawyer he shares with Kash Patel and Walt Nauta, Stan Woodward, the lawyer he shares with Carlos De Oliveira, John Irving, and the lawyer he used to share with Trump himself, John Rowley — attempt to disclaim simply using Harrington’s pregnancy as an excuse for delay.

The Government alleges without any basis that Dr. Navarro’s request for continuance of the hearing is “strategic” and done for improper reasons. Opp. at 1-2. Leaving aside the personal attack on defense counsel, there is no plausible strategic reason for the request and the Government provides none – Ms. Harrington’s pregnancy is not effected by the timing of the filing of Dr. Navarro’s motion. No prejudice to the Government would result from a short continuance and it would be fundamentally unfair to Dr. Navarro to deny calling Ms. Harrington as a witness on his behalf. [my emphasis]

But along the way, because they used “effected” instead of “affected,” they literally deny that the act of filing Navarro’s motion did not cause Harrington’s pregnancy.

I’m sure it didn’t.

But it also appears to be the case that DOJ locked Harrington — who may be the only one in Trump’s camp that Navarro spoke to during the period when he was subpoenaed — into testimony about the substance of their communication. And now Navarro is trying to admit his own hearsay to prove that Trump, absent any written filing, told Navarro to invoke both testimonial immunity (of which there’s no known evidence) and to raise executive privilege in the same informal way he did with Steve Bannon, which did not work for Bannon at trial but which is the substance of his appeal.

Mehta has called a pre-hearing hearing late this afternoon to sort all this out.

That phrase — “Ms. Harrington’s pregnancy is not effected by the timing of the filing of Dr. Navarro’s motion” would have been my favorite Trump-related phrase yesterday, if not for the description of Boris Epshteyn in this story of how he allegedly molested two women after getting drunk and belligerent at a bar in Scottsdale in 2021.

“We have a high tolerance of people like being weird, but that went above and beyond,” she said, adding that the man grabbed the women about 10 times. “I was like, stop touching my sister. Stop touching me. Stop touching my friends.”

Police asked the older sister to describe Epshteyn.

“Fat, ugly, like drooping face. White Ralph Lauren Polo,” she said. “Like fatter Tony Soprano.”

An officer asked: “Would you be willing to press charges?”

She responded: “Yes. (Expletive) that guy.”

The NYT — including Maggie Haberman — had reported directly from the arrest report in a beat sweetener burying this and even more damning criminal exposure earlier this year, but had left out the fat part.

I’m using the phrase “Like fatter Tony Soprano” as my excuse to pick up an observation that William Ockham made yesterday about DOJ’s proposed schedule for a Trump trial on the January 6 charges.

Furthermore, the defendant and his counsel have long been aware of details of the Government’s investigation leading to his indictment, having had first contact with Government counsel in June 2022. Indeed, at his initial appearance, the defendant was accompanied by an attorney familiar with certain relevant pre-indictment information. In sum, the defendant has a greater and more detailed understanding of the evidence supporting the charges against him at the outset of this criminal case than most defendants, and is ably advised by multiple attorneys, including some who have represented him in this matter for the last year.

In addition to noting that Trump’s attorneys have been aware of the course of this investigation because of repeated contacts with prosecutors going back to June 2022 — including Executive Privilege challenges to the testimony of Marc Short, Greg Jacob, Pat Cipollone, Pat Philbin, Mark Meadows, John Ratcliffe, Robert O’Brien, Ken Cuccinelli, and Mike Pence — it also noted that “an attorney familiar with certain relevant pre-indictment information” accompanied him to his arraignment.

I agree with Ockham’s supposition that that’s a reference to Boris “like fatter Tony Soprano” Epshteyn. Boris attended the arraignment — as he has some or all of Trump’s — but was not an attorney of record.

Back in April, before Rudy or Mike Roman or Bernie Kerik did so, Boris spent two days in interviews with Jack Smith and his prosecutors in what the press got told was a “proffer.”

The interview was largely focused on the efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss. The second day of questioning was planned in advance, the sources said.

Epshteyn did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.

Prosecutors’ questions focused around Epshteyn’s interactions with former Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Kenneth Chesebro and John Eastman, in addition to Trump himself, according to sources.

If the allusion in the proposed schedule is a reference to Epshteyn’s interviews, it confirms my general suspicion that Smith is using proffers as a way to get key subjects of the investigation on the record, rather than necessarily flipping them. It suggests that Smith is willing to show a few of the cards he has — at least on the prosecution focused largely on facts that were already public last year — in order to lock key subjects in on their testimony, just as DOJ would have been doing with Liz Harrington’s grand jury appearance.

But because Todd Blanche is an attorney of record for both Trump and Boris, this proffer would have been an especially obvious way for Trump to obtain information about the prosecution against him. In both the January 6 case and the stolen documents one, Boris is playing both a suspected co-conspirator and advisor on how to blow up the prosecution for political gain.

And that is why, I suspect, DOJ is being so particular about whether “volunteer attorneys” might include co-conspirators who also happen to be lawyers.

Without a clearly defined relationship of employment or privilege, this language is boundless. For example, several co-conspirators are identified as attorneys, whom the defense might interpret as “other attorneys assisting counsel of record.” The Court should not accept the edit.

The method to both of these defense ploys is the same. It rests on an inter-locking and wildly conflicted set of attorney relationships to create — in first instance — an omertà leading many key witnesses to give partial testimony which, as both cases, plus Navarro’s, move toward trial, will evolve into an effort to rework existing sworn testimony to create some flimsy story for Trump or Navarro to use to attempt to stay out of prison. This is what DOJ has spent much of the last 14 months preparing for: Trump’s attempt to move the goalposts once he discovered how much of the truth prosecutors had uncovered.

It’s not, just, that DOJ has to try the former President in at least two venues, an already unprecedented task. It’s that the entire criminal gang is gambling that if they just get beyond the election, any and all lies can be excused in a wave of pardons like Trump used to escape his Russian exposure.

Update: CNN’s Katelyn Polantz suggested that the reference to lawyer accompanying Trump may be Evan Corcoran. Corcoran was a part of all the sealed proceedings going back 9 months.

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Citing Trump’s Executive Privilege Stalling, DOJ Asks for January Trial

August 10, 2023/80 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, January 6 Insurrection /by emptywheel

DOJ has proposed that Trump’s January 6 trial should start on January 2, 2024.

In addition to citing repeatedly from the things John Lauro has said on the Sunday shows, it cites Trump’s Executive Privilege claims at least two — and almost certainly three — times.

First, it cited the DC Circuit upholding Judge Chutkan’s own decision that the Archives could hand over Trump’s materials to the January 6 Committee.

The D.C. Circuit has determined that “[t]here is direct linkage between [the defendant] and the events of [January 6, 2021],” which it described as “the single most deadly attack on the Capitol by domestic forces in the history of the United States.” Trump v. Thompson, 20 F.4th 10, 35-36 (D.C. Cir. 2021), cert. denied, 142 S. Ct. 1350, 212 L. Ed. 2d 55 (2022)

Then, it cited Trump’s initial Executive Privilege challenge to J6C’s request.

The defendant has been aware of— and has responded forcefully in opposition to—certain relevant information made public through hearings and the report written by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. See, e.g., Letter from Donald J. Trump to Hon. Bennie G. Thompson, Chairman, House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol (Oct. 13, 2022).

Finally, it cites first contact with prosecutors in the case in June 2022, which probably was the initial challenge to the testimony of Greg Jacob and Marc Short.

Furthermore, the defendant and his counsel have long been aware of details of the Government’s investigation leading to his indictment, having had first contact with Government counsel in June 2022.

Trump says he can’t go on trial before the election because under the Speedy Trial Act, he’ll need more time. DOJ notes that STA also protects the interest of the public.

And then it notes that Trump has been delaying this investigation in various ways since October 2022.

Update: Technically, I may be wrong about the letter to Bennie Thompson. It is not cited in Trump’s lawsuit against Thompson at all, even though it was sent on the same day as Thompson moved to obtain Trump’s records.

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How 9 Months of Camera Footage became 8 Years

August 10, 2023/47 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, Leak Investigations /by emptywheel

Even while Trump’s attorneys argued that he should be permitted to discuss classified information on private property that was already targeted by foreign spies before it became clear he was hoarding boxes of classified records there and may not have turned everything back, they argued that to investigate what happened with the stolen classified documents while in Trump’s custody, the FBI had to get 8 years worth of camera footage.

Actually, more than that. Trump’s response claimed that three-quarters of the total surveillance video turned over to date makes up 8 years, meaning the total would amount to around 128 months of surveillance footage.

To be sure, this is part of competing efforts to inflate (Trump) or understate (DOJ) the amount of discovery in this case.

I’m tracking those competing claims about what has been turned over in this table.

The latest claims — that would suggest that DOJ had turned over around 128 months worth of surveillance footage — reflect an evolving methodology on Trump’s part. On July 10, Trump’s lawyers described the initial batch of surveillance footage to be “approximately nine months of CCTV footage.”

The initial production also included some 57 terabytes of compressed raw CCTV footage (so far there is approximately nine months of CCTV footage, but the final number is not yet certain).

On July 18, Todd Blanche described that the footage Trump’s discovery vendor had uploaded as of that morning amounted to 1,186 days — or “over three years” worth of video.

Your Honor, just starting with a question you asked Mr. Bratt a while ago about just one part of the discovery, which is the CCTV footage, which is extraordinarily significant to this case, not only as what’s obvious from the indictment, but it also in part gave rise to the search warrant, the affidavit, and the probable cause to search Mar-a-Lago. As of this morning, there’s 1,186 days of footage that we have uploaded so far, and our vendor is not finished uploading it. And again, I’m not questioning Mr. Bratt’s position about the time period, but there’s multiple cameras that were subpoenaed and that have been produced to us as Rule 16 discovery; and as of today, it’s over three years’ worth of video.

Now, I’m not suggesting to the Court that we’re going to sit for three years and watch three years’ worth of video, but it’s a tremendous amount of data and information, and we’re just — I’m just talking right now about the CCTV footage. While the Government is correct that they have pointed us to the few days that they believe are the most significant to them as it relates to the charges in the indictment and presumably the search warrant, they’re not the most significant to us. I mean, the movement of boxes and where boxes were on given days is extraordinarily significant not only to the justification for the search warrant of the President’s residence but also to the defense of the case. And so the CCTV footage alone, over 1,186 days, makes the schedule the Government proposed pretty disingenuous, Your Honor.

Yesterday’s filing describes that when Trump’s vendor finished uploading that first batch of surveillance footage — which was 57 terabytes out of 76 total — it amounted to 8 years of footage.

Furthermore, the government has produced approximately 76 terabytes of compressed raw CCTV footage, which is itself an incredible volume of material. Last week defense counsel finally finished processing the intake of CCTV footage that the government produced on June 21—the 57 terabytes of CCTV footage produced on June 21 totals nearly eight years of video. On July 31, the government produced an additional 19 terabytes of CCTV footage, including, according to the government’s production letter, “footage that was produced to the government in May that was not included in the government’s first discovery production.” Counsel recently received a hard drive with CCTV footage referenced in the government’s July 31 letter, and we are still processing that discovery to assess the total length of additional video the government produced.

That’s where my 128 months estimate comes from: if 57 terabytes amounted to eight years, then 76 might amount to 10.66.

To be sure, this effort to maximize the scope of the surveillance footage is just meant to impress Judge Cannon and it might well work.

But it also provides some way to reverse engineer what the scope of the surveillance footage really is.

For example, if the scope of this includes footage spanning 9 months of time, as Trump originally claimed, then 10.66 years of footage might suggest 10 cameras were ultimately obtained; according to the search affidavit, there were 4 cameras — from the hallway outside the storage room — covered by the initial production, and by counting using Trump’s new method, 2 months of footage from four cameras would amount to eight months of surveillance footage.

It’s funny math, but now there’s more than 16 times that.

Note that in July, Bratt confirmed the unsurprising detail that some of the footage is from Bedminster (which is probably why DOJ hasn’t done a search on Bedminster — because they could validate the thoroughness of the search done in November or December).

MR. BRATT: So it covers a nine-month period, but not all the cameras were — but it is not all the cameras at Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster; not all the cameras were always running. And the retention period that the Trump organization had varied from camera to camera, so it is not a solid nine months of video footage.

Now, I’m interested in the scale of the footage for several reasons. Yesterday’s motion pointed to the 8 years of footage as proof that nothing ever got deleted.

As relevant here, the charges allege various obstruction-related conduct arising out of false claims of efforts to destroy certain video tapes. No videotapes were deleted or destroyed and the government does not so allege; indeed, President Trump has produced to the Special Counsel’s Office what amounts to more than eight years of CCTV footage.

It’s certainly possible that when DOJ started the investigation that led to multiple obstruction charges, they were just trying to figure out why Trump totally blew off the part of the initial subpoena that asked for locations in addition to the hallway outside the storage room (which I laid out here).

Particularly given that the claim accompanied the suggestion that the alleged attempt to delete footage in June 2022 was “false,” I certainly wouldn’t credit the amount of footage eventually obtained by the government as proof that nothing was deleted. It’s not even clear that all the footage comes from Trump Organization, much less the guy who used to be President.

But the other reason I remain obsessed about the amount and types of surveillance footage here (besides, perhaps, my PhD in literature), has to do with the types of questions investigators may have been trying to answer.

Take, for example, the claim by Bratt on July 18 that the movement of boxes key to the initial obstruction conspiracy happened on May 24 through June 2.

With respect to the closed circuit television and the movement of boxes, I would just note that the movement of boxes occurred between May 24th and June 2nd. So it’s not years’ worth of video with respect to the movement of boxes.

If so, that would suggest Nauta’s movement of a single box on May 22 was something besides an attempt to obstruct the subpoena response.

Or consider the way Trump’s lawyers boast about what an unusual place Mar-a-Lago is.

We similarly reminded the government of the uniqueness of President Trump’s residence, including that it is in a highly protected location guarded by federal agents that previously housed a secure facility approved for not only the discussion, but also the retention, of classified information. The government’s Motion suggesting we anticipated discussing classified information in an unsecure area is wrong, and they are fully cognizant of that fact. Similarly, the government’s statement to the court in its Motion that President Trump’s personal residence should be compared to the residence of “any private citizen” is misleading. This is especially true given the necessary protections afforded to our nation’s leaders after they leave office and the uniqueness of the location of President Trump’s residence, coupled with the fact that a secure location already existed for the relief sought herein and can be re-established with appropriate safeguards.6

6The statement comparing President Trump’s personal residence at Mar-a-Lago to that of “any private citizen” is all the more disingenuous considering a member of the prosecution’s trial team has visited the Mar-a-Lago property during the course of the investigation and is therefore personally aware of the differences between President Trump’s residence and that of “any private citizen.”

This neglects to explain why no sane person would want to restore a SCIF at Mar-a-Lago as explained very easily in the indictment.

The Mar-a-Lago Club was located on South Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach, Florida, and included TRUMP’s residence, more than 25 guest rooms, two ballrooms, a spa, a gift store, exercise facilities, office space, and an outdoor pool and patio. As of January 2021, The Mar-a-Lago Club had hundreds of members and was staffed by more than 150 full-time, part-time, and temporary employees.

Between January 2021 and August 2022, The Mar-a-Lago Club hosted more than 150 social events, including weddings, movie premieres, and fundraisers that together drew tens of thousands of guests.

Mar-a-Lago shouldn’t be compared to the residence of “any private citizen,” sure, but for entirely different reasons than Trump’s lawyers want to admit: it’s a counterintelligence nightmare, and was long before Trump started hoarding classified documents in the gaudy shower, and was even ignoring the known targeting of the compound by foreign spy services.

One thing those surveillance videos are going to show is people besides Walt Nauta who got into the storage closet, perhaps to stash their guitar there, and in the process knocking over and discovering classified records that as a result have to be burned.

If there really is over 10 years worth of video surveillance, spread across a bunch of cameras and two properties, it’s likely some of the surveillance will show stuff Trump didn’t control, but stuff for which he should be held accountable.

Update: Added the quote about Bedminster bc as coalesced notes, Bratt’s comment about retention period is also worth noting.

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Shorter DJT: Mexico Will Pay for My New SCIF

August 10, 2023/142 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, Leak Investigations /by emptywheel

In Trump’s response to DOJ’s motion for a classified protective order in the stolen documents case, his lawyers clarified that they didn’t so much want to discuss classified documents with Trump while sitting in his offices, which is how the government represented their request, but instead wanted to restore the SCIF at one or another of his resorts.

Even there, the response itself says that Trump wants to review classified materials in a restored SCIF, while a footnote disavows that, then says he wants the space where he used to review such material, with another footnote disavowing a plan to transport classified documents there now.

President Trump opposes any portion of the Proposed CIPA Protective Order that prohibits counsel from simply discussing the relevant purportedly classified material with President Trump inside an approved secure location other than the designated SCIFs in the Southern District of Florida where the classified discovery will be housed. President Trump respectfully requests that the Proposed CIPA Protective Order be modified to approve re-establishment of a secure facility in which President Trump was permitted previously to discuss (and review2 ) classified information during his term as President of the United States.3

2 To be clear, President Trump is not asking for the proposed CIPA Protective Order to be modified to permit any classified materials to be transported to or reviewed or stored in, this location.

3 Counsel can provide additional information about President Trump’s proposed secure location but respectfully request that such information be provided in camera because of security concerns.

[snip]

So that President Trump and his legal team may discuss classified information in a substantive manner as regularly as necessary to prepare an adequate defense, we respectfully request that the Court approve re-establishment of a secure facility in which President Trump previously discussed (and reviewed5 ) classified information during his term as President of the United States.

5 Again, President Trump is not requesting that any classified materials be transported to or reviewed or stored in this location. [my emphasis]

Throughout this filing, Trump refers to purportedly classified material in the body of his argument, then disavows wanting to transport classified material in a footnote.

To that end, President Trump requests that the Court approve the renewed use of the previously approved and appropriately secure location so that he is then able to discuss the relevant classified information with his counsel without the need to mobilize his security detail and state and local law enforcement every time he has a conversation regarding his defense as it relates to purportedly classified information.8

8 Again, President Trump is not asking for the proposed CIPA Protective Order to be modified to permit any classified materials to be transported to, or stored in, this location.

[snip]

Indeed, the government has the authority to discuss the purported classified material in other approved facilities outside of a Court designated SCIF, and we anticipate it does so regularly. That is not inconsistent with the law so long as they are having those discussions in a secure, approved facility. Our request is to have the same opportunity. We are seeking the Court’s permission to discuss classified information in a secure facility that was long approved for such use and met then, and could easily meet now, the standard required by our nation’s intelligence community to ensure protection of information deemed classified. [my emphasis]

All the reassurances that Trump doesn’t want to store classified material back at Mar-a-Lago modify claims that it might not be classified. Given those caveats, there’s a big question whether stolen classified documents will end up right back at Mar-a-Lago.

Put aside the gimmick here — Trump is demanding that the government make his home a legal place for classified information, which still amounts to seeking, “permission to do so in the very location at which he is charged with willfully retaining the documents charged in this case.”

This is also a filing about Secret Service. The response and Todd Blanche’s related declaration describes that this proposal is based on, “multiple communications with several individuals who are familiar with the required security protocols surrounding President Trump and his family.” But it doesn’t describe any consultation with the people whose job it is to protect classified records.

6. When President Trump was in office, there was a designated, secure location where classified information was approved to be housed and discussed. We have had discussions with officials familiar with this arrangement.

Blanche says that because he had discussions with the Secret Service agents who know where the SCIF was, it’s the same as discussing security arrangements for building and maintaining one.

That is, this filing is about conflating the protection of Trump with the protection of classified records.

Indeed, Trump repeatedly minimizes the risk of storing classified records at Mar-a-Lago, with all the spies targeting it (which I’ll return to), because of the Secret Service detail there.

Similarly, the government’s statement to the court in its Motion that President Trump’s personal residence should be compared to the residence of “any private citizen” is misleading. This is especially true given the necessary protections afforded to our nation’s leaders after they leave office and the uniqueness of the location of President Trump’s residence, coupled with the fact that a secure location already existed for the relief sought herein and can be re-established with appropriate safeguards.6

6 The statement comparing President Trump’s personal residence at Mar-a-Lago to that of “any private citizen” is all the more disingenuous considering a member of the prosecution’s trial team has visited the Mar-a-Lago property during the course of the investigation and is therefore personally aware of the differences between President Trump’s residence and that of “any private citizen.”

[snip]

President Trump objects to the Proposed Protective Order insofar as it does not allow him and his counsel to discuss the relevant purportedly classified material inside an appropriate secure facility at or near his personal residence. Limiting any discussions with counsel to the government offered SCIFs is an inappropriate, unnecessary, and unworkable restriction, given the unique circumstances of President Trump’s access to security—namely that he resides and works in a secure location that is protected at all times by members of the United States Secret Service, and that the proposed alternate location previously housed an area approved for not only the discussion, but also the storage and review, of classified information

[snip]

The government’s Motion dismisses this fact and compares President Trump’s request herein to any other defendant’s request to discuss classified information in their “private” or “personal residences” or offices. (See ECF No. 84 ¶¶ 13–14). This characterization is misleading and misconstrues the facts of this case. Donald J. Trump served as President of the United States for four years, and he, along with other Presidents and senior government officials, have had access to remote facilities for the purposes of reviewing and discussing sensitive information while in office, and at times after leaving office.

Of course, Trump didn’t have access to classified information after he left office, at least not after Biden ended Trump’s classified briefings in February 2021.

But this dispute is likely partly an attempt to manufacture some conflict between the President and the guy who wants to replace him.

The argument here is based on inflated claims about how hard it is for Trump and his Secret Service detail — who are making multiple trips a week to give speeches in places like New Hampshire high school gymnasia — to travel from Mar-a-Lago to a SCIF in South Florida.

2. If President Trump travels to a public facility in the Southern Division of this District, most circumstances would require an overnight stay in the local area by his protective detail, including members of the Secret Service, as well as an overnight stay by President Trump, due to the distance between his residence and the public facility.

[snip]

5. In any of these scenarios, the required security measures take significant planning and effort, as well as financial resources.

6. The alternate secure location in which President Trump seeks to discuss (but not review) classified information is under 24-hour a day full security protection, whether President Trump is present or not. Furthermore, the government can re-establish a restricted area within the proposed secure location in which President Trump and his legal team can discuss classified information in a manner that is consistent with government security protocols.

7. Between 2017 and 2021, with reasonable effort and expense, a secure facility was established and approved at President Trump’s residence in the Southern District of Florida. In that facility, President Trump was permitted to review and discuss classified information. Reestablishing this secure facility is readily possible if the Court so directs.

Donald J. Trump — the same guy who never missed a chance to bilk the Secret Service for space in his own residences or hotels — is demanding that the US Government minimize the inconvenience of secure travel by him to defend himself for stealing classified information even as he is traveling all over the country — incurring the same costs and inconveniences for those around him — campaigning with nary a care about the cost that imposes on tax payers.

And he’s not offering to pay the US government to rebuild the SCIF in his beach resort.

Multiple people on Xitter joked that he’ll probably just ask Mexico to pay for it, and that’s about right: Trump is promising that the government can build something instantaneously without cost.

But given that Aileen Cannon is involved, it may well work.

This is not a good faith offer. It is an attempt to create a conflict that, if and when it is appealed to the 11th Circuit, will present closer calls than the ones on which Judge Cannon got her ass handed to her last year.

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The Overt Investigative Steps into Trump’s Co-Conspirators TV Lawyers Ignored

August 9, 2023/86 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, emptywheel, January 6 Insurrection /by emptywheel

The first overt act in the investigation into Donald Trump’s six co-conspirators happened on January 25, 2021.

The Jeffrey Clark investigation started at DOJ IG

On that day, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced that he was opening an investigation, “into whether any former or current DOJ official engaged in an improper attempt to have DOJ seek to alter the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election.” The announcement came three days after Katie Benner did a story laying out Jeffrey Clark’s efforts to undermine the election results. Horowitz explained that he made the announcement, “to reassure the public that an appropriate agency is investigating the allegations.”

We don’t know all the details about what happened between Horowitz’s announcement of that investigation and last week’s indictment describing Clark as co-conspirator 4. Probably, when Merrick Garland arranged for Joe Biden to waive Executive Privilege so Jeffrey Rosen and others could tell the Senate Judiciary Committee what happened in July 2021, that freed up some communications to DOJ IG. For the record, I raised questions about why it took so long — though I suspect the delay in restoring the contacts policy at DOJ was part of it. Some time before May 26, 2022, DOJ obtained warrants for a private Jeffrey Clark email account and on May 26, Beryl Howell approved a filter process. On June 23, 2022, the FBI seized Clark’s phone — with some involvement of DOJ IG — and the next day DOJ seized a second email account of Clark’s. When FBI seized Clark’s phone, I predicted it would take at least six months to fully exploit Clark’s phone, because that’s what it was generally taking, even without a complex privilege review. Indeed, five months after first seizing some of Clark’s cloud content, on September 27, 2022, he was continuing to make frivolous privilege claims to keep his own account of the events leading up to January 6 out of the hands of investigators.

The first overt act in the investigation into one of Trump’s co-conspirators happened 926 days ago. Yet TV lawyers continue to insist the investigation that has resulted in an indictment including Clark as Donald Trump’s co-conspirator didn’t start in earnest until Jack Smith was appointed in November 2022.

A privilege review of Rudy’s devices was set in motion (in the Ukraine investigation) in April 2021

Clark is not the only one of Trump’s co-conspirators against whom investigative steps occurred in 2021, when TV lawyers were wailing that nothing was going on.

Take the December 6, 2020 Kenneth Chesebro memo that forms part of the progression mapped in the indictment from Chesebro’s efforts to preserve Wisconsin votes to trying to steal them. NYT liberated a copy and wrote it up here. It’s not clear where DOJ first obtained a copy, but one place it was available, which DOJ took steps to obtain starting on April 21, 2021 and which other parts of DOJ would have obtained by January 19, 2022, was on one of the devices seized from Rudy Giuliani in the Ukraine influence-peddling investigation. The PDF of a December 6 Kenneth Chesebro memo shows up in Rudy’s privilege log in the Ruby Freeman suit, marked with a Bates stamp from the Special Master review initiated by SDNY.

While Rudy is claiming privilege over it in Freeman’s lawsuit, it is highly likely Barbara Jones ruled that it was not (only 43 documents, total, were deemed privileged in that review, and there are easily that many emails pertaining to Rudy’s own defense in his privilege log).

The way in which SDNY did that privilege review, in which SDNY asked and Judge Paul Oetken granted in September 2021 that the review would cover all content post-dating January 1, 2018, was public in real time. I noted in December 2021, that Rudy’s coup-related content would be accessible, having undergone a privilege review, at any such time as DC investigators obtained probable cause for a warrant to access it.

Since then, Rudy has claimed — to the extent that claims by Rudy are worth much — that all his coup-related content would be available, and would only be available, via materials seized in that review. (In reality, much of this should also have been available on Gmail and iCloud, and Rudy’s Protonmail account does not appear to have been captured in the review at all.)

But unless you believe that Rudy got designated co-conspirator 1 in the indictment without DOJ ever showing probable cause against him, unless you believe DOJ decided to forego directly relevant material that was already privilege-reviewed and in DOJ custody, then we can be certain January 6 investigators did obtain that content, and once they did, the decisions made in April and August and September 2021 would have shaved nine months of time off the investigation into him going forward.

Indeed, those materials are one likely explanation for why DOJ’s investigation, as represented by subpoenas sent starting in May 2022, had a slightly different focus than January 6 Committee did. The first fake elector warrants sent in May 2022 as well as those sent in June and November all included Victoria Toensing and Joe DiGenova. Rudy’s known J6C interview included the couple as key members of his post-election team. But no one else seems to have cared or figured out what they did. After Rudy listed them in his January 6 interview, the Committee never once raised them again. But they were always part of a sustained focus by DOJ.

The more explicit investigative steps targeting Rudy have come more recently. Rudy was subpoenaed for information about how he was paid in November 2022. He sat for an interview in June.

But a privilege review on the coup-related content on seven of Rudy’s devices would have been complete by January 19, 2022 — the day before the long privilege battle between J6C and John Eastman started.

DOJ’s investigation of Sidney Powell’s graft was overt by September 2021

The investigation into one more of the six co-conspirators described in Trump’s indictment was also overt already in 2021: Sidney Powell.

Subpoenas sent out in September — along with allegations that Powell’s associates had made damning recordings of her — were first reported in November 2021. The investigation may have started under the same theory as Jack Smith’s recent focus on Trump: That Powell raised money for one thing but spent the money on something else, her legal defense. Molly Gaston, one of the two prosecutors who has shown an appearance on Trump’s indictment and who dropped off her last crime scene cases in March 2021, played a key role in the investigation.

By the time of DOJ’s overt September steps, both Florida’s Nikki Fried and Dominion had raised concerns about the legality of Powell’s graft.

According to Byrne, Powell had received a wave of donations in the aftermath of the election after being praised by mega-popular right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh. But the donations were often given haphazardly, sometimes as a dollar bill or quarter taped to a postcard addressed to Powell’s law office. Byrne claims he discovered that Powell had amassed a fortune in contributions, somewhere between $20 and $30 million but provided no evidence to support the claim. A projected budget for Defending the Republic filed with the state of Florida lists only $7 million in revenue for the group.

Defending the Republic’s funds weren’t going towards the pro-Trump goals donors likely envisioned, according to Byrne. Instead, he claimed they were spent on paying legal bills for Powell, who has faced court disciplinary issues and a daunting billion-dollar defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems.

“It shouldn’t be called ‘Defending the Republic,’” Byrne said in the recording. “It should be called ‘Defending the Sidney Powell.’”

Attorneys for Dominion have also raised questions about the finances for Defending the Republic, which the voting technology company has sued alongside Powell. In court documents filed in May, Dominion accused Powell of “raiding [Defending the Republic’s funds] to pay for her personal legal defense.”

Dominion attorneys claimed in the filing that Powell began soliciting donations to Defending the Republic before officially incorporating the group. That sequence, they argued, meant that donations for the group “could not have been maintained separately in a bank account” and “would have necessarily been commingled in bank accounts controlled by [Powell].”

[snip]

Defending the Republic’s finances first attracted the scrutiny of regulators in Florida shortly after Powell founded the group in November 2020 when authorities received a complaint and subsequently issued a subpoena to internet hosting service GoDaddy for information about the group’s website.

In a June press conference, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried said Defending the Republic was “found to be soliciting contributions from the State of Florida or from persons within the State of Florida” on the internet “without having filed in the State of Florida” as a charitable organization.”

On Aug. 24, Defending the Republic paid a $10,000 fine as part of a settlement agreement with Florida authorities over its fundraising.

All that graft would directly overlap with the sole focus on Powell in the indictment: on her false claims about voting fraud, particularly relating to Dominion. Aside from a claim that Powell was providing rolling production of documents in January 2022, it’s not clear what further steps this investigation took. Though it’s not clear whether Powell showed up on any subpoenas before one sent days after Jack Smith’s appointment in November.

Unlike Clark and Eastman, there have been no public reports that Powell had her phone seized.

DOJ may have piggybacked off John Eastman’s legislative purpose subpoena

DOJ’s overt focus on John Eastman came after the January 6 Committee’s long privilege battle over his Chapman University emails. Two months after Judge David Carter found some of Eastman’s email to be crime-fraud excepted (at a lower standard for “corruptly” under 18 USC 1512(c)(2) than was being used in DC District cases already), DOJ obtained its own warrant for Eastman’s emails, and a month later, his phone.

While it seems like DOJ piggybacked off what J6C was doing, the phone warrant, like Clark’s issued on the same day, also had involvement from DOJ IG.

Whatever the import of J6C, it’s notable that J6C was able to get those emails for a legislative purpose, without first establishing probable cause a crime had occurred. DOJ surely could have subpoenaed Eastman themselves (though not without tipping him off), but it’s not clear they could have obtained the email in the same way, particularly not if they had to show “otherwise illegal” actions to do so, which was the standard Beryl Howell adopted in her first 1512(c)(2) opinion, issued orally on January 21, 2022.

DOJ’s focus on Kenneth Chesebro (whom J6C didn’t subpoena until July 2022, months after DOJ was including him on subpoenas; see correction below) and whoever co-conspirator 6 is likely were derivative of either Rudy and/or Eastman; J6C subpoenaed Rudy, Powell, and Epshteyn on January 18 — though Epshteyn did not comply — and Mike Roman on March 28. Epshteyn shows up far more often in Rudy’s privilege log than Roman does.

But of the four main co-conspirators in Trump’s indictment, DOJ opportunistically found means to take investigative steps — the DOJ IG investigation, probable cause warrants in another investigation, and a fundraising investigation — to start investigating at least three of the people who last week were described as Trump’s co-conspirators. Importantly, with Clark and Rudy, such an approach likely helped break through privilege claims that would otherwise require first showing the heightened probable cause required before obtaining warrants on an attorney.

We know a fair amount about where and when the investigation into four of Trump’s six co-conspirators came from. And for three of those, DOJ took investigative steps in 2021, before the January 6 Committee sent out their very first subpoena. Yet because those investigative steps didn’t happen where most TV commentators were looking — notably, via leaks from defense attorneys — those steps passed largely unnoticed and unobstructed.

Update, August 20: The J6C sent a subpoena to Chesebro in March, before the July one that was discussed at his deposition.

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Trump’s DC Trial Strategies, Helsinki, and Dumb and Dumber

August 8, 2023/106 Comments/in 2016 Election, 2020 Election, 2020 Presidential Election, January 6 Insurrection /by Peterr

After Trump was indicted in DC, the speculation — informed and otherwise — went to his possible defense strategies. “Delay delay delay” was an early one, following his increasingly successful efforts to do so in the Mar-a-Lago case before Judge Cannon. Judge Chutkan, however, is no Judge Cannon, and she has been pushing hard to move things along briskly. Trump sycophants have been putting some trial balloons out there, to see what might fly with the base, if not with the court, such as cries of “Free Speech!” and “First Amendment!” which pointed to a possible defense strategy. Another was the claim that Trump was relying on the advice of counsel, and thereby cannot be held liable.

That last one I found rather . . . what’s the correct legal term of art? Oh yes . . . silly.

White House Counsel Pat Cippolone told Trump that his claims of fraud were silly. He was more polite about it, but that’s what his advice boiled down to. Trump’s AG, DAG, Acting AG, head of OLC, and numerous other lawyers at the DOJ told Trump that his claims of fraud were silly. Christopher Krebs, a lawyer and the first head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at DHS told Trump that his claims of fraud were silly for multiple reasons. DNI John Ratcliffe (per Cassidy Hutchinson) said Trump’s claims were silly and dangerous.

But apparently the advice of all these lawyers he appointed to positions in his own administration wasn’t enough for Trump, because Rudy et al. said all these lawyers were wrong.

Out in the states, there were other lawyers weighing in, too. Ryan Germany, the general counsel to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, told him that his claims about fraud in Georgia were silly. Some of Trump’s own lawyers in Pennsylvania and Arizona withdrew from representing Trump before the courts in their states, which is a strong sign that their client would not listen to them and take their advice that his claims were silly. Then more of his PA lawyers did the same. Even the lawyers who stayed on to represent Trump in these election cases told the judges in their cases that Trump’s claims of fraud were silly, as there was no evidence to back up those claims.

But apparently the advice of all these lawyers wasn’t enough for Trump, either.

Which brings us to the judges. State judges and federal judges. Trial judges and appellate judges. The justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. In more than five dozen separate cases, the rulings issued by all these courts said that as a matter of law, Trump’s claims were silly. Let’s let US Judge Matthew Brann of the Middle District of Pennsylvania speak for the all lawyers who wear the black robes, who passed judgment on one or more of Trump’s claims. As Brann wrote in the Introduction to his ruling in DONALD J. TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT, INC., et al. v. KATHY BOOCKVAR, et al.:

In this action, the Trump Campaign and the Individual Plaintiffs (collectively, the “Plaintiffs”) seek to discard millions of votes legally cast by Pennsylvanians from all corners – from Greene County to Pike County, and everywhere in between. In other words, Plaintiffs ask this Court to disenfranchise almost seven million voters. This Court has been unable to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such a drastic remedy in the contest of an election, in terms of the sheer volume of votes asked to be invalidated. One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens.

That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more. At bottom, Plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Therefore, I grant Defendants’ motions and dismiss Plaintiffs’ action with prejudice.

Short Judge Brann: Mr. Trump, you’re being silly. Go away, and don’t bring this crap into my courtroom again.

So back to the case before Judge Chutkan. If Trump’s team tries to raise the “reliance on the advice of counsel” defense, I would hope that Jack Smith and his team would run through the list of each one of the Trump administration lawyers who told Trump his claims were silly, and each one of the judges who ruled that as a matter of law, these claims were silly, and ask whoever is representing Trump one simple question: how many MORE lawyers need to tell Trump he’s wrong before he accepts their conclusions?

Which brings me to the final question asked at Trump’s infamous July 2018 press conference alongside Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.

Jonathan Lemire: Thank you. A question for each President. President Trump, you first. Just now, President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did. What – who – my first question for you, sir, is, who do you believe? My second question is, would you now, with the whole world watching, tell President Putin – would you denounce what happened in 2016? And would you warn him to never do it again?

Donald J. Trump: So let me just say that we have two thoughts. You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server. Why haven’t they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee? I’ve been wondering that. I’ve been asking that for months and months, and I’ve been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media. Where is the server? I want to know, where is the server? And what is the server saying? With that being said, all I can do is ask the question. My people came to me – Dan Coats came to me and some others – they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia.

I don’t see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server. But I have – I have confidence in both parties. I really believe that this will probably go on for a while, but I don’t think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server. What happened to the servers of the Pakistani gentleman that worked on the DNC? Where are those servers? They’re missing. Where are they? What happened to Hillary Clinton’s emails? Thirty-three thousand emails gone – just gone. I think, in Russia, they wouldn’t be gone so easily. I think it’s a disgrace that we can’t get Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 emails. So I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. And what he did is an incredible offer; he offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators with respect to the 12 people. I think that’s an incredible offer. Okay? Thank you.

Given a choice between believing the conclusions of every US intelligence agency on Russian interference in the 2016 election on the one hand and the extremely strong and powerful denial by the leader of Russia on the other, Trump chose Putin.

Can you see why Helsinki came to my mind?

Trump has a pattern when it comes to getting advice from others, that revolves around two immutable statements:

Trump wants advice that supports his current thinking, OR advice that will provide him some kind of immediate or future benefit.
Trump does NOT want advice that tells him he is wrong about something, that he lost a court case or election, or that he otherwise failed.

When confronted by failure, Trump will seize on anything that suggests even the slimmest possibility of ultimate success.

Again, look at Helsinki. Sure, the unanimous conclusion of the US intelligence community was that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, but if Trump accepted that conclusion in public, while standing next to Putin, any hope Trump had of a grand Trump Tower Moscow (something he had worked on for years) would be gone. Also, if Putin held some kind of compromising information on Trump (a conclusion that Marcy leaned toward in her post on the press conference), Putin would surely release it. The result of backing the US IC would be immediate harm and future failure for Trump. Not good.

Would this loss and damage be outweighed by some other benefit, like being seen as the heroic leader of the US intelligence community? Hardly. In Trump’s eyes, these were Deep State folks who were out to get him, and even if he accepted their advice, they’d never accept him as their leader, and he’d piss off his other supporters who had been backing him against the IC. Also not good. Thus, Trump’s answer to Lemire’s question was simple: I believe Putin.

Faced with a mountain of evidence against him, either in Helsinki or in courtrooms across the country, Trump will always reject the advice of those who say definitively that he has lost and cling for his life to the advice of whomever tells him otherwise. Trump lives by the immortal line of Lloyd Christmas: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance . . . Yeah!”

Trump is not seeking out folks like Rudy “Four Seasons Total Landscaping” Giuliani, Sidney “Release the Kracken!” Powell, or any of his other lawyers to guide his legal strategy. He keeps them around because they keep telling him that there’s a chance.

Spoiler alert for Trump and anyone who hasn’t seen Dumb and Dumber: Lloyd’s 1 in a million chance did not come through for him, and he didn’t get the girl.

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Trump’s Means of Bullying and His Co-Conspirator Volunteer Lawyers

August 8, 2023/88 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, January 6 Insurrection /by emptywheel

There were three developments in the dispute over the protective order in Trump’s January 6 indictment yesterday.

Trump’s team filed their response to Judge Tanya Chutkan’s order and the government’s motion for a protective order, including not just a redline of the government’s proposed protective order, but also a rant claiming that Dark Brandon made public comments about Trump’s indictment he did not.

The government’s reply used John Lauro’s five Sunday show appearances to demonstrate that Trump is explicitly demanding to try this case in the public sphere rather than the courtroom.

Then Judge Chutkan issued an order that they find time for a hearing on this this week.

MINUTE ORDER as to DONALD J. TRUMP: Upon consideration of the government’s 10 Motion for Protective Order and Defendant’s 14 Response, as well as the government’s 15 Reply, the court will schedule a hearing on the parties’ respective proposals. The court will waive the requirement of Defendant’s appearance. Accordingly, it is hereby ORDERED that no later than 3:00 PM on August 8, 2023, the parties shall meet and confer and file a joint notice of two dates and times on or before August 11, 2023 when both parties are available for a hearing. Signed by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on 08/07/2023.

Both linked filings are worth reading, but I want to focus on two minor details in the government’s filing.

The method of Trump’s bullying madness

The government pitches their argument as one of regular order, about trying the case in the courtroom rather than the public. It is about John Lauro’s stated goals, not Donald John Trump’s.

The defendant’s proposed order would lead to the public dissemination of discovery material. Indeed, that is the defendant’s stated goal; the defendant seeks to use the discovery material to litigate this case in the media. But that is contrary to the purpose of criminal discovery, which is to afford defendants the ability to prepare for and mount a defense in court—not to wage a media campaign.

[snip]

Defense counsel’s stated goal—to publicly disseminate and discuss discovery materials in the public sphere—is contrary to the general principle against pretrial publicity and inconsistent with this District’s local rule regarding conduct of attorneys in criminal cases, and the Court should not enter a protective order that permits such harmful extra-judicial publicity. As an initial matter, the Court can and should exercise its discretion, with respect to the protective order, to prevent dissemination of discovery material that could prejudice the jury. Accord Gannett Co. v. DePasquale, 443 U.S. 368, 378 (1979) (“a trial judge has an affirmative constitutional duty to minimize the effects of prejudicial pretrial publicity.”); United States v. Brown, 218 F.3d 415, 423 n.8 (5th Cir. 2000) (“Other principal dangers [of pretrial publicity] include disseminating to the press inadmissible evidence, the exclusion of which at trial ‘is rendered meaningless when news media make it available to the public,’ as well as creating a ‘carnival atmosphere,’ which threatens the integrity of the proceeding.” (quoting Shepherd v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333 (1966)).

This District’s rules prohibit defense counsel from doing precisely what he has stated he intends to do with discovery if permitted: publicize, outside of court, details of this case, including the testimony of anticipated witnesses. Local Criminal Rule 57.7(b) provides that it is the duty of attorneys in criminal cases not to publicly disseminate “information or opinion” regarding, among other things, “[t]he existence or contents of any . . . statement given by the accused” or “[t]he identity, testimony, or credibility of prospective witnesses.” This is because such statements risk tainting the jury pool with inadmissible evidence or otherwise harming the integrity of these proceedings. See Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada, 501 U.S. 1030, 1074 (1991) (“Because lawyers have special access to information, through discovery and client communications, their extrajudicial statements pose a threat to the fairness of a pending proceeding since lawyers’ statements are likely to be received as especially authoritative.”). The Court should not grant a protective order that would allow defense counsel or the defendant to disseminate evidence such as snippets of witness interview recordings—no matter how short, misleading, or unlikely to be admissible at trial under the Federal Rules of Evidence—and claim that it supports some position the defendant later may make in pre-trial motions or at trial. Such conduct has the potential to unnecessarily inflame public opinion short of all relevant facts, intimidate witnesses, pollute the jury pool, and in general degrade the integrity of proceedings in this Court. See Bridges v. California, 314 U.S. 252, 271 (1941) (“Legal trials are not like elections, to be won through the use of the meeting-hall, the radio, and the newspaper.”). The goal of the defendant’s proposed protective order—prejudicial publicity—is antithetical to the interests of justice.

[snip]

The Government has proposed a standard, reasonable order that will streamline the flow of discovery to the defendant while preserving the integrity of these proceedings. The defendant has proposed an unreasonable order to facilitate his plan to litigate this case in the media, to the detriment of litigating this case in the courtroom. Normal order should prevail.

As many people have noted, however, as an aside to the description of Lauro’s press blitz over the weekend, the government included this reference to Trump’s attack on Mike Pence.

1 The defendant himself has made a number of additional social media posts related to this case since the Government filed its motion for a protective order. For example, the day before his counsel made comments about Mr. Pence, the defendant posted the following to social media: “WOW, it’s finally happened! Liddle’ Mike Pence, a man who was about to be ousted as Governor Indiana until I came along and made him V.P., has gone to the Dark Side. I never told a newly emboldened (not based on his 2% poll numbers!) Pence to put me above the Constitution, or that Mike was ‘too honest.’ He’s delusional, and now he wants to show he’s a tough guy. I once read a major magazine article on Mike. It said he was not a very good person. I was surprised, but the article was right. Sad!”

Nevertheless, the government doesn’t address whether this tweet violates Trump’s release condition, which would prohibit him from talking to Mike Pence about the case.

Given the inclusion of that tweet, though, I’m more interested in this note addressing one of Trump’s requested changes. It describes why Trump’s lawyers should have to inspect Trump’s own notes of discovery to make sure he’s not taking notes about specific witnesses.

In paragraph 10, the defendant seeks to prohibit his counsel from confirming that his notes do not contain personally identifying information subject to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 49.1. But this condition—which is included in the protective order on which the defense claims to model its proposal—is particularly important here because of the defendant and his co-conspirators’ practice, as described in the indictment, of publicly targeting individuals. See, e.g., ECF No. 1, Indictment, at ¶¶ 26, 32, 42, 44, 97.

DOJ justifies having Trump’s lawyers babysit his own note-taking because of “the defendant and his co-conspirators’ practice, as described in the indictment, of publicly targeting individuals.”

It then cites as examples the following paragraphs of the indictment:

The death threats that followed Rudy Giuliani’s baseless accusations against Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.
Trump’s accusation that Brad Raffensperger “has no clue” after he refused to find Trump 11,780 votes.
The death threats that followed Trump’s public attack on Al Schmidt.
Trump’s retweet of a tweet attacking PA GOP legislative leaders for stating that they could not throw out the popular vote in PA.
In response to Mike Pence telling Trump he would not throw out the vote certification, Trump telling Pence he would have to publicly criticize him.

It’s the last one I find so interesting. DOJ does not cite the various tweets Trump sent on January 6 or the revisions addressed to Pence Trump made sure to include in his Ellipse speech — comments that led directly to death threats targeted against Pence. Rather, DOJ pointed to what must rely on Pence’s testimony, of Trump telling Pence he would send those tweets and make those public comments.

Thus far, DOJ has steered well clear of focusing on Trump’s potential violation of release conditions (perhaps wisely wanting to forestall Trump’s attempt to turn this into more victimhood). It has also steered clear, in the indictment, of claiming Trump incited death threats against everyone from Ruby Freeman to Mike Pence and thousands of people in between.

But in this citation, it has suggested that a method of this conspiracy was to trigger death threats against those unwilling to bow to Trump’s demands.

Trump’s non-attorney of record consigliere

Another specific objection — one of several objections to Trump’s attempts to expand the circle of people with whom he can share discovery — pertains to the definition of lawyers permitted to obtain discovery. In a wildly pregnant comment, DOJ notes that “several” co-conspirators are IDed as attorneys.

In paragraph 2, the defendant proposes including “other attorneys assisting counsel of record.” Without a clearly defined relationship of employment or privilege, this language is boundless. For example, several co-conspirators are identified as attorneys, whom the defense might interpret as “other attorneys assisting counsel of record.” The Court should not accept the edit.

In fact, four people are identified as attorneys in the indictment’s description of them: Rudy, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and Kenneth Chesebro.

This post has led me to notice that the indictment doesn’t identify Jeffrey Clark as an attorney (perhaps because, while undoubtedly an attorney, he never had an attorney-client relationship with Trump during the conspiracy). Though he is obviously an attorney.

And then there is co-conspirator 6, described in the indictment as a political consultant and so someone who could be either Mike Roman (who does not have a JD) or Boris Epshteyn (who does). One reason it is not confirmed which of these two men it was is both were closely involved in the December recruitment of fake electors, the indictment’s primary focus on CC6’s activities. (The one other overt act was to help Rudy chase down contact information for Senators on January 6.)

As it happens, though, Epshteyn is not just someone who is known to have been closely involved in the fake elector conspiracy, but he is someone who in the stolen document case served as an “other attorney assisting counsel of record.” Crazier still, Epshteyn shares an attorney with Trump: Todd Blanche, who represents Trump in the Alvin Bragg case, the stolen documents case, and now the January 6 case. Epshteyn, who has never filed a notice of appearance for Trump, has followed him around to his various arraignments as if he is family.

If DOJ has a specific concern about Trump sharing discovery with Epshteyn — who has been centrally involved in Trump’s efforts to combat his legal jeopardy by attacking rule of law — this is the kind of objection they might raise.

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Judge Cannon Blows Off Concerns about Walt Nauta’s Conflicted Representation

August 7, 2023/253 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, Leak Investigations /by emptywheel

Before I attempt to explain the substance of the order that Aileen Cannon issued in response to DOJ’s request for a Garcia hearing, let me point out how it looks on the docket.

Before DOJ filed its motion for a hearing on potential conflicts, it tried to submit something under seal in dockets 95 and 96 — probably details on the two other witnesses whose representation by Stan Woodward may present a conflict. Judge Cannon said the government hadn’t provided sufficient reason to seal, and so ordered the request, and the sealed information, to be struck.

Simultaneously, the Special Counsel moves for leave [ECF No. 95] to file under seal a “Supplement” containing additional information “to facilitate the Court’s inquiry” [ECF No. 96; see ECF No. 97 p. 2 n.2, p. 6]. The Special Counsel states in conclusory terms that the supplement should be sealed from public view “to comport with grand jury secrecy,” but the motion for leave and the supplement plainly fail to satisfy the burden of establishing a sufficient legal or factual basis to warrant sealing the motion and supplement.

2. The Special Counsel’s motion for leave to file under seal [ECF No. 95] is DENIED.

3. The Clerk is directed to STRIKE from the docket sealed entries 95 and 96.

Before her order, there were two more docket entries missing — numbers 98 and 99. I’m not familiar enough with SDFL’s docketing rules to understand whether there’s something under seal in those dockets or not, but there could be. Perhaps Stan Woodward submitted something?

Then there’s Cannon’s order. Rather than scheduling a Garcia hearing to see whether Woodward can adequately represent Nauta going forward, she instead ordered briefing — adding two more weeks of delay, but more importantly, delaying the question of whether Woodward can represent Nauta without conflict.

Her order for briefing focuses primarily on something else: whether DOJ was pulling a fast one by using a non-SDFL grand jury to pursue matters pertinent to the SDFL matter before her.

Waltine Nauta shall file a response to the Motion for a Garcia hearing [ECF No. 97] on or before August 17, 2023. Among other topics as raised in the Motion, the response shall address the legal propriety of using an out-of-district grand jury proceeding to continue to investigate and/or to seek post-indictment hearings on matters pertinent to the instant indicted matter in this district. The Special Counsel shall respond to that discussion in a Reply in Support of the Motion [ECF No. 97], due on or before August 22, 2023. The remaining Defendants may, but are not required to, file briefs of their own related to the grand jury issue referenced herein, but any such briefs are due by August 17, 2023, and may be submitted in combined or individual fashion.

1 This request for supplemental briefing is not intended to substitute and/or to limit any future motion brought pursuant to Fed. R. Crim. P. 12(b). [my emphasis]

Contrary to some commentary on this, Cannon did not disclose the continued activity in the DC grand jury (bolded above). That was made clear both in DOJ’s motion for a Garcia hearing and in other materials.

The grand jury in this district and a grand jury in the District of Columbia continued to investigate further obstructive activity, and a superseding indictment was returned on July 27, 2023.

Woodward and Trump’s lawyers have been outspoken that they intend to question whether DOJ should have investigated this from the start in DC, or whether it should always have been in SDFL supervised by SDFL’s chief judge.

That issue was frivolous: DOJ didn’t know when the investigation was predicated where potential crimes happened.

This may be frivolous too. After all, most witnesses who testified before May testified in DC. So if one of them committed perjury, they would have to clean that up in DC (and that may be what happened with Taveras, either on his own or as part of a plea agreement).

But Cannon — perhaps prompted under seal by one of the defendants — seems intent on making it a big deal. And she made it clear that this set of briefing will be in addition to further motion practice, including motions complaining about misuse of a grand jury.

And it may well not be frivolous. DOJ is not permitted to use grand juries to continue to investigate an already charged crime. DOJ was explicit that it was not. It was investigating other kinds of obstruction. But we don’t know. And because Cannon struck DOJ’s sealed motion, she may have struck a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this, and instead left a sealed one from the defense.

This would be not dissimilar to a stunt Woodward pulled before Judge Trevor McFadden a few weeks ago, where he showed up late for Freddie Klein’s representations and — without prosecutors present — made accusations about what went down in a grand jury session that day with another of his clients.

The thing that matters in the short term, though, is Cannon seems to have no interest in walking Nauta through ways that Woodward’s continued representation of him may be a problem. And whatever other inquiry she may feels is necessary — whether frivolous or meritorious — she is causing at least two more weeks of delay before she’ll deal with that potential conflict.

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On January 19, 2022, SCOTUS Upheld Judge Tanya Chutkan’s Decision Rejecting Trump’s Executive Privilege Claims

August 6, 2023/116 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election, January 6 Insurrection /by emptywheel

On November 9, 2021, Judge Tanya Chutkan — the judge who randomly got assigned to Trump’s January 6 prosecution — rejected Trump’s request to enjoin the Archives from turning over documents to the January 6 Committee.

Chutkan held that because the incumbent President had waived Executive Privilege and the January 6 Committee had a legislative interest in preventing another attack on the peaceful transfer of power, she had no reason to second guess the political branches of government about the import of the investigation.

The legislative and executive branches believe the balance of equities and public interest are well served by the Select Committee’s inquiry. The court will not second guess the two branches of government that have historically negotiated their own solutions to congressional requests for presidential documents. See Mazars, 140 S. Ct. 2029-31.

Defendants contend that discovering and coming to terms with the causes underlying the January 6 attack is a matter of unsurpassed public importance because such information relates to our core democratic institutions and the public’s confidence in them. NARA Br. at 41. The court agrees. As the Supreme Court has explained, “the American people’s ability to reconstruct and come to terms” with their history must not be “truncated by an analysis of Presidential privilege that focuses only on the needs of the present.” Nixon v. GSA, 433 U.S. at 452-53. The desire to restore public confidence in our political process, through information, education, and remedial legislation, is of substantial public interest. See id.

Plaintiff argues that the public interest favors enjoining production of the records because the executive branch’s interests are best served by confidentiality and Defendants are not harmed by delaying or enjoining the production. Neither argument holds water. First, the incumbent President has already spoken to the compelling public interest in ensuring that the Select Committee has access to the information necessary to complete its investigation. And second, the court will not give such short shrift to the consequences of “halt[ing] the functions of a coordinate branch.” Eastland, 421 U.S. at 511 n.17. Binding precedent counsels that judicially imposed delays on the conduct of legislative business are often contrary to the public interest. See id.; see also Exxon Corp. v. F.T.C., 589 F.2d 582, 589 (D.C. Cir. 1978) (describing Eastland as emphasizing “the necessity for courts to refrain from interfering with or delaying the investigatory functions of Congress”).

Accordingly, the court holds that the public interest lies in permitting—not enjoining— the combined will of the legislative and executive branches to study the events that led to and occurred on January 6, and to consider legislation to prevent such events from ever occurring again.

On December 9, 2021, the DC Circuit upheld Chutkan’s ruling. Patricia Millett repeated Chutkan’s argument that the agreement of Congress and the Executive provided no basis for the courts to intervene. But she also described that even by a heightened standard — even if Trump were withholding these documents while still President — the need for the documents would overcome his privilege claim.

While former President Trump can press an executive privilege claim, the privilege is a qualified one, as he agrees. See Nixon v. GSA, 433 U.S. at 446; United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. at 707; Appellant Opening Br. 35. Even a claim of executive privilege by a sitting President can be overcome by a sufficient showing of need. See United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. at 713; In re Sealed Case, 121 F.3d at 292. The right of a former President certainly enjoys no greater weight than that of the incumbent.

In cases concerning a claim of executive privilege, the bottom-line question has been whether a sufficient showing of need for disclosure has been made so that the claim of presidential privilege “must yield[.]” Nixon v. GSA, 433 U.S. at 454; see United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. at 706, 713. 12

In this case, President Biden, as the head of the Executive Branch, has specifically found that Congress has demonstrated a compelling need for these very documents and that disclosure is in the best interests of the Nation. Congress, which has engaged in a course of negotiation and accommodation with the President over these documents, agrees. So the tests that courts have historically used to police document disputes between the Political Branches seem a poor fit when the Executive and Congress together have already determined that the “demonstrated and specific” need for disclosure that former President Trump would require, Appellant Opening Br. 35, has been met. A court would be hard-pressed under these circumstances to tell the President that he has miscalculated the interests of the United States, and to start an interbranch conflict that the President and Congress have averted.

But we need not conclusively resolve whether and to what extent a court could second guess the sitting President’s judgment that it is not in the interests of the United States to invoke privilege. Under any of the tests advocated by former President Trump, the profound interests in disclosure advanced by President Biden and the January 6th Committee far exceed his generalized concerns for Executive Branch confidentiality.

[snip]

Keep in mind that the “presumptive privilege” for presidential communications “must be considered in light of our historic commitment to the rule of law.” United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. at 708. In United States v. Nixon, the particular component of the rule of law that overcame a sitting President’s assertion of executive privilege was the “right to every [person]’s evidence” in a criminal proceeding. Id. at 709 (quoting Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 688 (1972)). Allowing executive privilege to prevail over that principle would have “gravely impair[ed] the basic function of the courts.” Id. at 712.

An equally essential aspect of the rule of law is the peaceful transition of power, and the constitutional role prescribed for Congress by the Twelfth Amendment in verifying the electoral college vote. To allow the privilege of a no-longer-sitting President to prevail over Congress’s need to investigate a violent attack on its home and its constitutional operations would “gravely impair the basic function of the” legislature. United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. at 712.

On January 19, 2022, the Supreme Court upheld Chutkan’s ruling. With only Clarence Thomas dissenting, Justice Kavanaugh noted that the DC Circuit’s ruling that Trump’s appeal would have failed even under more stringent standards made any review of this decision unnecessary.

The Court of Appeals concluded that the privilege claim at issue here would not succeed even under the Nixon and Senate Select Committee tests. Therefore, as this Court’s order today makes clear, the Court of Appeals’ broader statements questioning whether a former President may successfully invoke the Presidential communications privilege if the current President does not support the claim were dicta and should not be considered binding precedent going forward.

I have written repeatedly about how Merrick Garland set up a framework in July 2021 by which Congress’ investigative requests would provide an opportunity for President Biden to waive Executive Privilege without violating DOJ’s contacts policy. That is, in July 2021, Garland solved a tricky problem with investigating the former President: how to obtain privilege waivers while keeping the existing President entirely walled off from the criminal investigation.

But this legal background, in which, with just one dissent, SCOTUS upheld a Tanya Chutkan opinion pertaining to an investigation into Donald Trump, will prove critically important in the days ahead, for two reasons that go to the screeds the former President is engaging in on his failed social media platform.

Along with making a venue complaint that has failed the dozens of times other January 6 defendants have made it (here’s a Roger Parloff post from before the Riley Williams and Oath Keepers trials showed that juries will rule against the government on precisely the same charges), Trump is preparing to claim that Judge Chutkan is biased and must be recused.

And Trump has been claiming that DOJ could have brought this case years ago, before the election season.

As to the first point, on a topic directly pertinent to this investigation, eight Justices have already upheld Judge Chutkan. Three Trump appointees, with Justice Kavanaugh writing the decision, have already ruled with Judge Chutkan.

That will make it harder to claim her prior central involvement in the January 6 investigation presents a conflict.

More importantly, that Judge Chutkan decision in November 2021 led to a SCOTUS decision, on January 19, 2022, upholding the DC Circuit’s opinion that the peaceful transfer of power is a sufficiently important basis to overcome an Executive Privilege claim, even if only for a congressional investigation, which litigation in the stolen documents case noted was a significantly lower standard than a criminal investigation.

Yet, even in spite of that decision on January 19, 2022, Donald Trump continued to make Executive Privilege claims that delayed DOJ’s investigation. He did so to stall DOJ’s interviews with Mike Pence’s advisors in summer 2022. He did so to stall DOJ’s interviews of Trump’s White House Counsel later that summer. He did so to stall DOJ’s interviews with other top aides in January 2023. And he did so to stall Mike Pence’s testimony.

Donald Trump continued to stall DOJ’s investigation using Executive Privilege claims for 463 days after a Justice that he himself had appointed had already rejected such claims. At the very least, these frivolous Executive Privilege invocations were critically responsible for any delay from July 2022, when Greg Jacob and Marc Short first refused to answer some questions because of Trump’s privilege claims, until April 2023, when Mike Pence testified — nine months.

Nine months, Trump kept making Executive Privilege claims that it was clear SCOTUS wouldn’t uphold.

Indeed, Trump’s frivolous Executive Privilege claims are responsible for even more of any delay than his own Special Master demand in the stolen documents investigation caused — in that case, three months.

Donald Trump is complaining that he wasn’t charged for his attempt to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 until during his campaign to regain the presidency.

But he is personally responsible for much of that delay.

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Protection Racket: Donald Trump Thinks He’s More Special Than Steve Bannon

August 5, 2023/51 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election, January 6 Insurrection /by emptywheel

As you no doubt know, Trump and his January 6 prosecutors had a bit of a spat about the protective order governing evidence in the case.

The timeline goes like this:

August 2, 9:55PM: A Jack Smith prosecutor — given the initials, probably Thomas Windom — sends John Lauro a proposed protective order, “largely track[ing] the existing protective order in SDFL.”

“Evening of August 3 and early afternoon of August 4:” DOJ reaches out twice more.

Friday, August 4, 1:09PM: Trump’s latest defense attorney sends their own proposed protective order.

Friday, August 4, 2:39PM: A prosecutor (probably Windom) responds saying that Trump’s proposed order doesn’t make sense, notes that DOJ is again proposing the same order as adopted (by Aileen Cannon) in SDFL.

Friday, August 4, 2:45PM: Someone responds saying they adopted their proposal “form [sic] similar orders used in the district.”

Friday, August 4, 6:06PM: An AUSA responds, noting that Trump’s proposed order “would leave large amounts of material completely unprotected in a way not contemplated by standard orders in” DC.

Friday, August 4, 6:39PM: Someone responds saying they should brief it to Magistrate Judge Upadhyaya, whom they do not name, and ask that DOJ note “that we have did not have adequate time to confer.”

Friday, August 4: Trump tweets out video attacking the prosecutors prosecuting him and Joe Biden.

Friday, August 4: Trump tweets, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

Friday, August 4, at least 3 hours after Trump’s tweet: DOJ files for a protective order, noting that Trump plans to just spill out grand jury information. The proposed motion is closely modeled on the Steve Bannon one.

Saturday August 5: Judge Chutkan orders Trump to respond by 5PM Monday

MINUTE ORDER as to DONALD J. TRUMP: It is hereby ORDERED that by 5:00 PM on August 7, 2023, Defendant shall file a response to the government’s 10 Motion for Protective Order, stating Defendant’s position on the Motion. If Defendant disagrees with any portion of the government’s proposed Protective Order, ECF No. 10-1, his response shall include a revised version of that Protective Order with any modifications in redline

Saturday, August 5: Trump attorney John Lauro moves for reconsideration, claiming — while misrepresenting the timeline — that the government had not conferred with him about the protective order.

Saturday August 5: DOJ responds noting that Trump is holding things up and noting that Lauro left out other efforts to consult.

In emails not appended to the defendant’s extension motion, the Government followed up on the evening of August 3 and early afternoon of August 4. Thereafter, defense counsel finally responded by sending an entirely different protective order.

Saturday, August 5: Judge Chutkan denies Lauro’s motion, ordering him to comply by 5PM on Monday.

MINUTE ORDER as to DONALD J. TRUMP: Defendant’s 11 Motion for Extension of Time is hereby DENIED. Defendant may continue to confer with the government regarding its proposed protective order before or after the August 7, 2023 5:00 PM deadline for his response. The court will determine whether to schedule a hearing to discuss the proposed protective order after reviewing Defendant’s response and, if included, his revised proposed protective order with modifications in redline.

But what has been missed is this: The protective order the government proposed last Friday is the protective order Judge Carl Nichols, the former Clarence Thomas clerk appointed by Trump, issued for the Steve Bannon contempt case.

Here’s that order, which Chutkan has ordered Trump to modify.

Here’s the order Trump appointee Carl Nichols adopted in 2021 for a similarly situated defendant. They’re not identical: the one the government proposed includes more detail about what should be treated as sensitive. But otherwise, they’re the same.

What this boils down to is that Trump — after issuing threats targeting prosecutors and judges — thinks he’s more special than Steve Bannon.

And Judge Chutkan isn’t buying that bullshit.

Update: In Trump’s response, he didn’t include the protective order he wants. He included a great deal of other shit, including the docket from SDFL. But this is a protective order adopted in DC District that separates out sensitive material; it’s from the Russian troll farm case.

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Interesting links

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