Maryellen Noreika Falls for Derek Hines’ False Claims, Again

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If I were a newish judge like Maryellen Noreika, I’d be a bit wary about accepting the representations of a prosecutor like Derek Hines who once claimed that sawdust was cocaine. Particularly when bowing to his request to exclude the original form from a trial about whether Hunter Biden lied on that form.

My post yesterday describing that Judge Noreika had prohibited Hunter Biden from showing the jury the actual physical form on which he is alleged to have lied was based off Derek Hines’ reply to a supplemental response that Abbe Lowell filed on Saturday — but the supplement was still sealed.

So when I suggested that Noreika may have credited as accurate something Hines said, I was just basing that off the fact that every time Hines wails about Abbe Lowell lying, it has turned out that he was covering something up.

Noreika likely credited something misleading Derek Hines said in a reply posted shortly before her order which cites to it (he has, repeatedly, projected his own inaccurate claims onto Abbe Lowell, and this may be an instance where, at the very least, Hines misunderstood a reference Lowell made).

Hines made a big stink about a bracketed reference to “a second form of identification” that Lowell had included in a quote from a 302 recording either one (if you believe Hines) or two (if you believe Lowell) interviews of Gordon Cleveland, the guy who sold Hunter Biden the gun, in 2021.

Cleveland has been entirely consistent on the issue of identification in the two interviews where it came up. Defendants claims he has offered an “evolving story,” but that characterization is not accurate based on defendant’s own quotes from Cleveland’s Jencks material. Supp. Resp. at 5. The only form of ID Cleveland saw was the passport. He never saw a Delaware vehicle registration and never claimed to. Instead, in both interviews he stated that Turner, who handled the background check, may have, but Cleveland didn’t have first-hand knowledge of whether he did or didn’t. In his first interview on September 27, 2021, Cleveland told investigators:

“He said he would provide the copy of the U.S. Passport and the firearm information on a sheet of paper to the person sending the background check in. Mr. Cleveland said he did not see the document [a second form of identification] with the ATF Form 4473 he was shown [by the Agent on September 27, 2021].” (TAB 3, 10/12/21 ATF EF 3120 at 2, ¶6) (emphasis added). Supp. Resp. at 5 (emphasis added).

The government at this point is obligated to point out that the defendant is again making malpresentations to the Court. In the above quote from his filing, the defendant inserted brackets into a real quote from the September 27, 2021, interview report for Cleveland. The defendant writes in those brackets that “Mr. Cleveland said he did not see the document [a second form of identification] with the ATF Form 4473 he was shown [by the Agent on September 27, 2021]. Supp. Resp. at 5. What defendant inserted into those quotes in brackets isn’t accurate. The ATF never showed Cleveland “a second form of identification.” If you look at the report, which defendant has and attached to his filing, it says that the only documents that were shown to Cleveland, at any point during the interview, were the following:

The ATF did not show Cleveland “a second form of identification,” as the above list of documents make clear. Defense counsel made that up. [Hines’ bold, Lowell’s italics]

Then Derek Hines accused Lowell of deliberately leaving out part of the 302: Cleveland describing that his colleague, Jason Turner, may have gotten a second form of ID.

What defense counsel chose not to quote from that report was the next sentence: “He said Jason Turner may have gotten the vehicle registration due to the U.S. Passport issue.”

Lowell’s supplemental response got docketed overnight. And it makes clear that (as I predicted), Hines is the one misrepresenting things and leaving pertinent quotations out.

The contested quotation comes in a passage where Lowell lays out inconsistencies in Cleveland’s story.

Cleveland (a government witness) sold Biden the handgun on October 12, 2018 and gave him the 4473 form to fill out. Yet, as to what was and was not on the form, who completed it and when, Cleveland offers divergent explanations at different points in time.

Cleveland was interviewed by ATF Agent Hnat on September 27, 2021, just six days after the actual Form 4473 (with additions) was obtained by ATF, and again on October 7, 2021. The interview notes reflect:

Speaking of his general practice he said, “He then gathers the information provided by the customer for the background check, the customers two forms of identification . . .” (TAB 3, 10/12/21 ATF EF 3120 at 1, ¶2).

With specific reference to Biden, “He said he would provide the copy of the U.S. Passport and the firearm information on a sheet of paper to the person sending the background check in. Mr. Cleveland said he did not see the document [a second form of identification] with the ATF Form 4473 he was shown [by the Agent on September 27, 2021].” (TAB 3, 10/12/21 ATF EF 3120 at 2, ¶6) (emphasis added).

Now being shown the added information, “He said Jason Turner may have gotten the vehicle registration due to the U.S. Passport issue.” (TAB 3, 10/12/21 ATF EF 3120 at 2, ¶6).

Later, under oath before a grand jury in April 2022—months after the altered Form 4473 was obtained and after he was shown it on September 27, 2021—Cleveland was asked no questions about the identification issue, the added registration information, or the two forms. (See TAB 3A).

But after issues concerning the different versions of the form were raised at the May 14, 2024 status conference, the Special Counsel went back to Cleveland and this is what was explained:

When Biden presented his passport as identification, Cleveland went into the back and asked Ronald Palimere and Jason Turner if it could be used. Cleveland recalls going back out to Biden and saying something to the effect that if Biden was going to use a passport, they would need another form of identification. [] Cleveland thinks Biden went outside and got something, but he can not say with certainty. Cleveland would not have paid attention to the paperwork side of the sale because he had already done his part by working with the customer and making the sale. Cleveland does not think they would have competed the sale without the second identification, though. (TAB 3B, 5/17/24 Cleveland FD-302 at 1).

Thus, even with Cleveland’s evolving story, he cannot say that Biden presented the vehicle registration, but simply assumes that someone else at the gun store would have obtained a second form of identification. Biden should be allowed to challenge this assumption that the gun store would have followed the law in obtaining a second form of identification. [Lowell’s italics, my bold]

As a threshold matter, Hines either lied or is painfully sloppy. Lowell did include that quotation about Turner. It’s right there, on the next line, precisely where Hines said it should be!

I asked Weiss’ spox whether Hines’ false accusation was a lie or just sloppiness (I also asked him to clarify whether Hines got the number of Cleveland interviews wrong). He responded, “As this case is before the court, we will decline to comment beyond our filings.”

But what Hines didn’t include is the context (and here, I do fault Lowell for not indicating whether the 302, which he describes as recording two interviews, distinguishes between what Cleveland said on September 27 and what he said on October 7; also he’s the one who put that bracket in the quote that simply reflects a paragraph break).

Line one: What do you normally do? Cleveland: I ask customers for two forms of ID.

Line two: Did you do that with Joe Biden’s kid? Cleveland: Nope. I didn’t see any second form of ID.

Line three: Well then, who added the second ID to the form? Cleveland: I dunno. Maybe Jason did it?

Right there, Cleveland has already undermined his own testimony, making it clear that (he claims) he always gets two IDs, but then admitting he didn’t here.

And in context, that “second form of ID” refers to the previous line (that’s called an antecedent, Mr. Hines, look it up! You’ll be amazed how grammar works!!).

It’s clear to anyone who knows how to read that Lowell was not referring to what the ATF agent showed Cleveland. It refers to what Hunter did or did not show Cleveland back in 2018. But Hines left it off, perhaps because it would undermine his false accusations?

The rest of the story Lowell’s filing tells is just as interesting. He reveals that the cop who first went to the grocery store to search for the gun in 2018, Vincent Clemons, coordinated his story with the gun shop owner.

[T]he government provided WhatsApp communications from October 2020 and February 2021 between Palimere, friends of his, and then-Delaware state trooper Vincent Clemons3 (see TABs 6 – 6C), all of which refer to the form, a plan to send it to others, needing to get their stories straight about what occurred in 2020, and wanting the gun sale issue and the form exposed during the Presidential campaign.

3 Not to be lost is the fact that Clemons was the Delaware State Police officer who first arrived at Janssens’ grocery store on October 23, 2018 when Hallie Biden threw a bag containing the handgun into a trash can in front of the store. It was Clemons who took statements about the handgun from both Hallie and Hunter Biden and was part of filling out an official police report on the issue. Two years later, he is in the communications with Palimere about the Form 4473, one of which states: “Yep your side is simple – Hunter bought a gun from you, he filled out the proper forms and the Feds approved him for a purchase.” (emphasis added). Palimere later responded, “I’ll keep it short and sweet as well: Hunter bought a gun. The police visited me asking for verification of the purchase and that’s all I can recall from that day. It was over 2 years ago.” (TAB 6B, 10/26/20 Palimere-Clemons Texts at 4, 6.) The reference to filling out the “proper forms” is not lost on defense counsel given what transpired thereafter. And, despite the importance of Clemons (e.g., the person who actually took the statements), the Special Counsel is foregoing him as a witness to call two other Delaware officers instead.

[snip]

Moreover, it turns out that profiting off an improper gun sale was not the gun shop’s only motive. The gun shop staff recognized Biden and the newly-disclosed evidence from the Special Counsel shows the store’s owner sought to politicize the sale to influence the election, which provides further evidence of bias.

Hines capitalized on Lowell’s mention of the election and Parlimere’s effort to politicize the purchase by presenting this description of a cop and a gun owner coordinating the story they plan to tell as exclusively political.

Among the items the defendant emailed to the Court on Friday night were proposed exhibits – identified as defense tabs “6,” “6A,” “6B,” and “6C” – which suggest that two witnesses are politically motivated. These selected portions3 of communications by Palimere to two friends and also to Sgt. Clemons – were made two years after the events in question when defendant’s father was a political candidate. The defendant inaccurately summarizes them as referring “to the form, a plan to send it to others, needing to get their stories straight about what occurred in 2020, and wanting the gun sale issue and the form exposed during the Presidential campaign.” Supp. Resp. p. 8 and n. 3. Nevertheless, he clearly wishes to confuse the jury by introducing these spliced, non-relevant communications to incite prejudice and emotion among the jury to distract from the elements of the crimes that were complete years before.

Thanks to this latest filing, the defendant’s strategy is now more apparent. He has returned to a claim that this prosecution was trumped up and politically motivated. But to suggest that the gun store owner’s political opinions, expressed two years after the fact, have bearing on whether or not he lied about his drug use on the form 4473 on Section A is absurd and must be excluded under the rules of evidence. There is no evidence to suggest these communications played any part in the witnesses’ actions or inactions with respect to the defendant. And there is no evidence that the defendant was the target of political animus by either witness.

The fact that witnesses in this case held political beliefs about which they communicated two years after the defendant’s alleged crime cannot possibly have any relevance to any fact at issue. The defendant should therefore not be permitted to present irrelevant, confusing and unduly prejudicial facts regarding witnesses’ political views to the jury. See Fed. R. Evid. 401, 402. Even if the communications were somehow relevant – and they are not – such evidence is unduly prejudicial to the government. Courts have excluded evidence at trial of a witness’s bias under Fed. R. Evid. 403 where admission would confuse the issues before the jury. E.g., Blair v. United States, 401 F.2d 387, 390 (D.C. Cir. 1968) (affirming trial court’s conclusion that the probative effect of the impeaching evidence was far outweighed by the potential prejudice)

That may be enough to get texts showing a cop working on a cover story; Judge Noreika cut and pasted Hines’ language treating these as political, and ruled that Lowell can’t raise politics at all, even though the gun shop owner says he rushed the sale to get Hunter out of the shop because his dad is anti-gun.

But it has me wondering something that Lowell apparently is also wondering.

He learned that Cleveland claimed that he always asks for a second ID because Hines just turned over the earlier 302 and Cleveland’s grand jury testimony, from April 2022, as Jencks. It seems that prosecutors may have provided these WhatsApp texts in response to a request for Brady, after Lowell started looking into the altered document.

But they haven’t provided any earlier interview reports from Ronald Palimere or Jason Turner, the latter of whom is the guy who actually altered the gun form.

2 Because the Special Counsel intends to call only Cleveland as a witness, but likely interviewed and has interview memoranda by other law enforcement who interviewed Palimere and Turner, the Special counsel produced only Jencks material for Cleveland (other than the only recently written FBI 302 of Palimere after the issue was raised at the May 14 status conference). Given the issues raised about the form’s accuracy and reliability, defense counsel believes statements byPalimere and Turner (if they exist) would be Brady material and asked again (after the initial discovery requests in October 2023) for Brady and Giglio material after the May 14, 2024 status hearing and again specifically on May 31, 2024. The Special Counsel has not responded.

It is virtually certain there is at least one earlier interview with Palimere, because Derek Hines began the interview by “remind[ing] Palimere of of the provisions of the proffer agreement,” rather than explaining them as if for the first time.

So … it gets worse, probably.

Nevertheless, Judge Noreika not only cut and pasted Hines’ exclusion of all discussion of politics, but she also parroted Hines’ mockery that someone might shade their testimony to protect their own immunity. (This entire footnote will be ripped to shreds if Hunter Biden has to appeal this case.)

The government has stated that it intends to call Gordon Cleveland, a gun shop employee, who will testify that he watched Defendant fill out Section A of the Certified Form and that Defendant checked “no” to question 11e about being an unlawful user or addict. Both the Certified Form and the 2021 Form have the same check mark (“X”) responding “no” to question 11e. The addition of “DE VEHICLE REGISTRATION” to a different section of the 2021 Form after the Defendant filled it out does not have “any tendency to make” those two facts, which are “fact[s] of consequence in determining” the charges – that he filled it out and that he said he wasn’t an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance – more or less probable. F.R.E. 401. The Court also agrees with the government that Defendant’s conspiratorial theory about “doctored” forms and currying favor with the government is unsupported rhetoric, which would be prejudicial and confusing to the jury.

This is not a judgement — that the fact that the gun shop altered a form after the fact to make it look like they had followed the law wouldn’t suggest they might do that more regularly — is not one I’d want to be living down for the rest of my career as a judge. Especially not given that with Hines, there’s usually something worse about to drop.

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On Eve of Opening Arguments, WSJ Launders David Weiss’ Russian Disinformation Problem

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WSJ has a weird story that purports to describe Merrick Garland’s oversight of Special Counsels.

It twice suggests only the left has complained about a perception that Garland slow-walked the January 6 investigation.

Garland has also become the subject of ridicule on late-night talk shows, including by comedian Bill Maher, who in May echoed the grievances of many on the left when he referred to Garland as “a purse dog” rather than a pit bull.

[snip]

But many on the left wanted more. Some wanted prosecutors to also pursue an aggressive case against Trump himself, specifically for inciting the mob.

That will come as a surprise to Liz Cheney, who was among those claiming that Garland was working too slowly.

It reveals that Robert Hur was considered for the job given to Jack Smith and confirms my suspicions that the decision to hire him came from Lisa Monaco’s office, not Garland’s.

An aide drafted a secret contingency plan, to assign the Jan. 6 investigation related to Trump to a special counsel. At the top of the list of candidates was Smith, a former U.S. prosecutor who was then the chief prosecutor at The Hague investigating war crimes in Kosovo. The deputy attorney general’s office also considered Hur, who at the time was a defense lawyer in private practice, for the post.

But it makes no mention of how DOJ came to consider Hur for the job after settling Andrew McCabe’s lawsuit because he had been denied due process rights in his firing. Hur was a key player in that process of denying McCabe his due process, and yet Garland hired him to investigate Joe Biden.

It even gets the timeline of Hur’s hiring incorrect, ignoring the months of investigative steps taken by John Lausch before Hur was hired.

It mentions Brad Weinsheimer’s role in allowing Rob Hur to emphasize Biden’s age in his report, rather than the fact that Hur couldn’t even prove the documents that might have been intentionally withheld took the path he imagined they might have.

Biden’s lawyers read it and were aghast, objecting to “certain aspects of his draft report that violate Department of Justice policy and practice by pejoratively characterizing uncharged conduct,” they wrote to Garland. They wanted him to take a firmer hand with the special counsel he appointed and whose report they and some former Justice Department officials saw as gratuitous.

Garland didn’t respond, taking the same approach he had with other special counsels. He wasn’t going to step in to protect his boss. Instead, adhering to the Watergate-era policy he helped enshrine, he left it to the agency’s senior career official, Bradley Weinsheimer, who said the language in the report “fell well within the Department’s standards for public release.” Garland, as promised, released it the following day, Feb. 8.

But it doesn’t talk about how having Weinsheimer serve as supervisor for Special Counsels effectively eliminates any DOJ review of ethical violations, which role Weinsheimer would otherwise play.

Most bizarrely, it makes absolute no mention of John Durham, whose investigation Garland oversaw for over two years. It doesn’t explain, for example, why Durham was permitted to fabricate a conspiracy theory against Hillary Clinton in his report. It doesn’t explain why Durham’s lead prosecutor, Andrew DeFilippis, left with little advance notice, between Durham’s twin failed trials, at a time when many witnesses were making claims of abuse.

In short, whatever else this story is, it is not a story that is remotely useful for understanding Merrick Garland’s oversight of Special Counsels.

And in this story that doesn’t do what it says, on the eve of opening arguments in the Hunter Biden gun case, it launders David Weiss’ Russian disinformation problem.

By 2022, prosecutors and agents had already believed that Hunter Biden committed tax crimes, but Weiss still seemed no closer to charging him or resolving the case. FBI officials asked Garland’s office if he could help move Weiss along.

Garland refused to prod Weiss, saying he had promised him broad independence to pursue the inquiry as he saw fit.

FBI agents drafted a list of final steps to push the probe forward—including to follow up on allegations from an FBI source that tied Hunter Biden’s financial misdeeds directly to his father.

Weiss’s office reached a tentative plea deal with Hunter Biden in June 2023, in an agreement that would likely include no jail time. Republicans in Congress alleged that Hunter Biden was getting a sweetheart deal, which fell apart a month later. In August, Weiss asked Garland to make him a special counsel, pointing to the FBI’s list and asking for independence. Garland agreed, recognizing that he had earlier promised Weiss autonomy and any resources he sought. [my emphasis]

To be sure, this might be one of the only truly interesting pieces of news in the piece.

What WSJ is describing (including a journalist, Sadie Gurman, who has had good access to Bill Barr in the past) is that the FBI, including people senior enough to be able to complain to Garland personally, was demanding that David Weiss follow up on Alexander Smirnov’s attempt to frame Joe Biden.

Indeed, this passage wildly conflicts with what David Weiss claimed in the Smirnov indictment — that the FBI just came along in July 2023 and requested that Weiss help investigate (but we knew that was false in any case).

And it does seem to confirm what has been clear for a while: the reason David Weiss asked to be made Special Counsel is so he could chase Smirnov’s allegations.

But somehow WSJ neglects to mention the issue — the several issues — that go to the core of Garland’s inadequate oversight of Special Counsels. First, how was this allowed to get this far? How were senior FBI people bugging Garland about this allegation when the most basic vetting of travel records debunked it? How was the FBI chasing an allegation from a guy who had recycled debunked Fox News propaganda? How was David Weiss permitted to demand Special Counsel status, and renege on the plea deal he made with Hunter Biden, based on a tip he had been given back in 2020?

How is that not election interference?

Just as importantly for the issue of Special Counsel oversight, how can Garland leave Weiss in charge of the Smirnov allegation, when he is a witness to the process — implicating Bill Barr and Scott Brady — that ended up mainstreaming it?

And more importantly, WSJ never mentions that the tip turned out to be a hoax from a guy with close ties to Russian intelligence.

How do you write a piece describing that the FBI was pushing Garland to chase what may be Russian disinformation (and in any case is a hoax from someone with Russian ties), and fail to mention that it was a fabrication?

How, on the eve of opening arguments in the Hunter Biden case, do you launder the fact that David Weiss reneged on Hunter Biden’s plea deal because he was chasing false claims from a guy with close ties to Russian intelligence?

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Remaining Evidentiary Disputes in Hunter Biden Case

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As I laid out, Judge Maryellen Noreika has prohibited Hunter Biden from showing the jury the physical form that is the basis of two of the three charges against him. Her ruling may also have the effect of prohibiting him from explaining circumstances of the purchase — the gun shop owner says he was trying to get Hunter out of his store and so didn’t do the proper due diligence on the ID he showed because of his father, because she has prohibited any discussion of politics, even though by the gun shop owner’s own description, his view about Biden affected how he conducted the sale.

Judge Noreika also ruled against Hunter’s requested changes to the jury instructions and excluded the expert he wanted to call to testify about addiction, while deferring a decision on his forensic expert.

Abbe Lowell has submitted challenges to government exhibits (prosecutors will squeal that he did this late but this is a response to an updated exhibit list they provided on Friday).

Although Judge Noreika excluded lifestyle and spending claims from the trial, the government has listed all of Hunter’s Wells Fargo exhibits for September, October, and November 2018. Lowell objects to these coming in as a whole.

He also objects to three photos from the phone of a woman named Zoe Kesten, who may be the third female witness against him.

Biden objects to three photos included in GTX-38 (“Photos from Zoe Kestan’s iPhone”) as having no probative value and no relevance under Rules 401 and 403. The screenshots with Ms. Kestan and one photo of Mr. Biden sleeping, in which no drug paraphernalia is displayed or otherwise evidence, are not probative of drug use, drug purchasing, or drug-related activity and are more prejudicial than probative. Any testimony from Ms. Kesten about the nature of their interactions can be elicited on direct testimony, without introduction of these three photos.

Page 7: Photo of Mr. Biden sleeping on 6/18/2018 at 10:41 AM

Page 10: Photo of Mr. Biden on facetime with Ms. Kestan on 7/22/2018 at 7:13 PM

Page 11: Photo of Mr. Biden without clothing on and a tattoo on his back on 9/10/2018 at 5:09 PM

If she is the one who will testify that Hunter was smoking crack almost constantly when they were together, prosecutors probably want these photos to prove she was with him. The September photo would be particularly important as it is the single piece of evidence between one of Hunter’s attempts at rehab and his purchase of the gun in October.

Lowell has submitted his request for additional parts of Hunter’s memoir to come in under a rule of completeness; the government objects to all of them. Here’s one example of the kinds of things (Hunter’s requested inclusion is in red) the government is trying to exclude.

This excerpt, in particular, is bound to be very hotly contested.

Finally, and of most obscure interest, Lowell is trying to exclude a significant number of communications — basically the things marked in blue (remember that prosecutors say Hallie will validate the pink files).

They include:

  • All the laptop comms from the last two weeks it was in use
  • A text sent to Hallie about the gun on January 28, 2019
  • Two videos from late December 2018
  • Two photos from January 2019 from when he was at Keith Ablow’s

On paper this makes sense. The charges against Hunter pertain to his mindset on October 12, 2018, and his awareness of drug use and gun possession in the subsequent 11 days. His mindset in February 2019 is absolutely irrelevant to those charges (and, after all, prosecutors have just succeeded in arguing that the gun shop owner’s bias against Joe Biden in 2020 is irrelevant to his actions in 2018).

But these are some of the files that the prosecutors have had a prurient obsession with, repeatedly and falsely claiming that Hunter’s addiction in 2019 shows what his addiction in October 2018 was like.

The January 28, 2019 text to Hallie, however, is one that prosecutors will almost certainly argue goes to the heart of the case.

It describes him yelling at her for throwing away the gun the previous October (though there are related comms from that period that would put this one in context).

And the four visual files are among the sleaziest (and two are Murdoch favorites), several show Hunter nude.

The specific objections regarding those are of interest given questions about provenance. Lowell suggests that a late December video may record the voice of someone besides Hunter.

Pursuant to Federal Rules of Evidence 401 and 403, Biden objects to the use of this video dated 12/29/2018 because it is dated close to three months after the relevant period when Biden purchased a handgun and is more prejudicial and inflammatory than it is probative under Rule 403. GTX-18D is also cumulative of other documentary evidence the government will introduce. Furthermore, to the extent the government also intends to suggest the voice heard in the background is Biden’s, we object to any suggestion this is Biden’s voice.

And Lowell suggests that a January 31, 2019 photo doesn’t establish whose “smoking device” was in a photo.

Biden objects to the use of this partially-redacted photo displaying alleged drug paraphernalia dated 1/31/2019 because it is dated almost five months after the relevant period when Biden purchased a gun, does not establish where the photo was taken and, therefore, who might be the owner of the smoking device that is in the background, and is more prejudicial than it is probative under Rule 403. GTX18F is also cumulative of other documentary evidence the government will introduce

Several of these happen to be the communications whose authenticity are among the most suspect, and if Lowell excluded all the texts from February 25 and afterwards and the two January photos, it would have the effect of excluding all laptop communications not authenticated by Hallie. Which makes me wonder if Lowell is abandoning his plan to challenge the authenticity of any laptop communications.

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On Eve of Hunter Biden Gun Trial, Judge Maryellen Noreika Covers Up Possible Gun Crime

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Judge Maryellen Noreika has ruled that Hunter Biden cannot present evidence that, to cover up that StarQuest gun shop sold Hunter Biden a gun without requiring him to show an ID with his address on it, the shop owner and one of its employees falsely claimed they had seen such ID three years after the fact on the physical ATF form.

They doctored the form.

More importantly, the gun shop owner testified that he did so because Hunter Biden listed a celebrity address (his father’s), and also because he wanted to get Joe Biden’s kid out of his store as quick as possible.

By his own testimony, the gun shop owner only belatedly complied with the required record-keeping because of who Hunter Biden is.

Now I get that Hunter Biden cannot claim that he cannot be prosecuted because the gun shop owner also committed a potential crime. Judge Noreika is perfectly correct to prevent that kind of argument.

But Hunter Biden has to be able to use the shop’s admitted willingness to skip documentary steps with a celebrity client and doctor the forms after the fact, because it leaves open the possibility they did that with more than the identification.

In ruling against Biden, though, she said that the gun shop’s willingness to doctor the form after the fact on one issue would not have any tendency to make it more likely they did elsewhere on the form.

Indeed, she seems to misunderstand that the gun shop owner appears to have confessed to doctoring the form.

2. The Court finds that the 2021 Form is irrelevant and inadmissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 401 and excludes it at trial.2 Moreover, even if the 2021 Form were admissible, the Court finds that it is excluded under Federal Rule of Evidence 403 because any probative value it arguably has is substantially outweighed by a danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of issues, and misleading the jury.

2 The government has stated that it intends to call Gordon Cleveland, a gun shop employee, who will testify that he watched Defendant fill out Section A of the Certified Form and that Defendant checked “no” to question 11e about being an unlawful user or addict. Both the Certified Form and the 2021 Form have the same check mark (“X”) responding “no” to question 11e. The addition of “DE VEHICLE REGISTRATION” to a different section of the 2021 Form after the Defendant filled it out does not have “any tendency to make” those two facts, which are “fact[s] of consequence in determining” the charges – that he filled it out and that he said he wasn’t an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance – more or less probable. F.R.E. 401. The Court also agrees with the government that Defendant’s conspiratorial theory about “doctored” forms and currying favor with the government is unsupported rhetoric, which would be prejudicial and confusing to the jury.

One reason her logic he is especially problematic is because it’s clear the form wasn’t prepared at once. The multiple colors make it clear that the date on Gordon Cleveland’s signature — the employee on the hook for selling a gun without seeing an ID with an address on it — was added after the fact, and probably by someone else (Cleveland reportedly testified that his colleague wrote everything in red ink).

Noreika likely credited something misleading Derek Hines said in a reply posted shortly before her order which cites to it (he has, repeatedly, projected his own inaccurate claims onto Abbe Lowell, and this may be an instance where, at the very least, Hines misunderstood a reference Lowell made).

Hines took what appears to be a reference to Cleveland saying he never saw a Delaware registration, and instead insinuated that by that reference to “a second form of identification,” Lowell instead referred to what the FBI showed Cleveland, rather than what Hunter did.

Cleveland has been entirely consistent on the issue of identification in the two interviews where it came up. Defendants claims he has offered an “evolving story,” but that characterization is not accurate based on defendant’s own quotes from Cleveland’s Jencks material. Supp. Resp. at 5. The only form of ID Cleveland saw was the passport. He never saw a Delaware vehicle registration and never claimed to. Instead, in both interviews he stated that Turner, who handled the background check, may have, but Cleveland didn’t have first-hand knowledge of whether he did or didn’t. In his first interview on September 27, 2021, Cleveland told investigators:

“He said he would provide the copy of the U.S. Passport and the firearm information on a sheet of paper to the person sending the background check in. Mr. Cleveland said he did not see the document [a second form of identification] with the ATF Form 4473 he was shown [by the Agent on September 27, 2021].” (TAB 3, 10/12/21 ATF EF 3120 at 2, ¶6) (emphasis added). Supp. Resp. at 5 (emphasis added).

The government at this point is obligated to point out that the defendant is again making malpresentations to the Court. In the above quote from his filing, the defendant inserted brackets into a real quote from the September 27, 2021, interview report for Cleveland. The defendant writes in those brackets that “Mr. Cleveland said he did not see the document [a second form of identification] with the ATF Form 4473 he was shown [by the Agent on September 27, 2021]. Supp. Resp. at 5. What defendant inserted into those quotes in brackets isn’t accurate. The ATF never showed Cleveland “a second form of identification.” If you look at the report, which defendant has and attached to his filing, it says that the only documents that were shown to Cleveland, at any point during the interview, were the following:

The ATF did not show Cleveland “a second form of identification,” as the above list of documents make clear. Defense counsel made that up. What defense counsel chose not to quote from that report was the next sentence: “He said Jason Turner may have gotten the vehicle registration due to the U.S. Passport issue.” As defendant noted, Cleveland was not asked any questions about the form of identification that was used in the grand jury so there is nothing inconsistent between his first interview and his grand jury testimony.

Finally, when asked in his second interview on May 17, 2024, about identification he repeated that he only saw the passport and did not see a Delaware vehicle registration:

When Biden presented his passport as identification, Cleveland went into the back and asked Ronald Palimere and Jason Turner if it could be used. Cleveland recalls going back out to Biden and saying something to the effect that if Biden was going to use a passport, they would need another form of identification. [] Cleveland thinks Biden went outside and got something, but he can not say with certainty. Cleveland would not have paid attention to the paperwork side of the sale because he had already done his part by working with the customer and making the sale. Cleveland does not think they would have competed the sale without the second identification, though. (TAB 3B, 5/17/24 Cleveland FD-302 at 1). Supp. Resp. at 5. [Hines’ bracket, which I’ve bolded, only marks paragraph break; my italics]

In every interview Cleveland stated that Turner handled the part of the form that covered forms of identification, Section B, and he, Cleveland, watched the defendant fill out Section A, where the defendant records information about himself and answers the required questions, including the one that is the basis of the charges, namely, whether he was an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance. Here is what Cleveland said in his first interview:

Defendant claims “Palimere was in discussions with Cleveland and Turner on that date about what was and was not on the form and, thereafter, the sale would be made regardless of legal compliance concerns.” Supp. Resp. at 7. That is not true. Defense counsel made that up, too. And the best evidence it is not true is that defendant cites nothing from any grand jury transcript or interview report in support of that assertion in his supplemental response. To be clear, no one has testified or stated in an interview—not Cleveland, not Turner and not Palimere—that they discussed “what was and was not on the form.” All that was discussed was whether a U.S. Passport could be accepted as a form of identification and whether a Delaware vehicle registration was needed as a second form of identification. And no one has testified or stated in an interview—not Cleveland, not Turner and not Palimere—that they discussed “the sale would be made regardless of legal compliance concerns,” because no such discussions occurred. [my italics]

The quote Hines accuses Lowell of excluding — that Jason Turner may have gotten a second form of ID — is utterly consistent with the reading that Lowell was referring to what Hunter showed Cleveland, not what the FBI did.

Even based off what is public, Hines appears to be misreading the rest, too.

Palimere, the gun shop owner, was in discussions with both Cleveland and Turner about what would be used on the form (the passport only). And while inapt, I believe Palimere’s testimony is only consistent with a claim that the sale would be made regardless.

That’s because it was made regardless, after a discussion about whether to get anything more.

In the case of Biden’s sale, Gordon Cleveland, was the salesman. Palimere was sitting at his desk in the back and Cleveland said something to the effect of, “Hey, Hunter Biden’s here. He wants to use his passport.” Palimere was familiar with Biden’s father’s not being a gun supporter so Palimere thought it would be bad for Palimere’s business to have Hunter Biden seen in his store. Palimere wanted to get the sale completed and get Biden out of the store, so Palimere said yes to using the passport as identification. Palimere never interacted with Biden.

[snip]

Normally, they would call a customer if they found an error/omission and needed to annotate the Form 4473. The ability to annotate the Fom 4473 is allowed by the ATF. For this case, a typical customer would have been called and told they needed to come back in and bring registration to show the residency.

Palimere was not about to call Biden. Palimere felt they could not have him come into the store. Plus, Palimere did not want to contact Biden and tell him he needed to come in and he was being investigated.

We can’t be sure (Lowell submitted his filing under seal because it included grand jury and non-public exhibits), but Hines’ representations seem to take imprecise comments from Lowell and read them in a way that makes no sense.

Noreika’s ruling becomes a problem (and likely will require at least clarification) for two reasons that seep into Hunter Biden’s Sixth Amendment right to impeach the government’s witnesses.

First, in the order, Noreika prohibited all discussion of political bias, which Hines suggested Lowell wanted to present exclusively through Palimere’s efforts to make this public before the 2020 election.

3. Questioning, testimony, evidence or argument, including but not limited to, the additional exhibits designated by the Defendant as tabs “6-6C” to his supplemental submission regarding any witnesses’ political bias are excluded from introduction or admission at trial because such questioning, testimony, evidence or argument is not relevant, is unduly prejudicial and invites nullification.3

3 The Court agrees with the government that the political views expressed in 2020 by the gun shop owner, Palimere (who did not witness Defendant fill out Section A of the Certified Form or check the box for question 11e in 2018), are sideshows aimed at tainting or confusing the jury. [my italics]

But Palimere described that he made an affirmative decision to treat the sale to Hunter Biden differently because of who his father is. Palimere freely confessed that he sold a gun without requiring the proper paperwork because Joe Biden is not a gun supporter.

Palimere was familiar with Biden’s father’s not being a gun supporter so Palimere thought it would be bad for Palimere’s business to have Hunter Biden seen in his store. Palimere wanted to get the sale completed and get Biden out of the store, so Palimere said yes to using the passport as identification.

This is politics. It affected the sale. Noreika doesn’t want that to come in because explaining that the gun store didn’t follow the rules with the sale to Hunter Biden and that they did so because of Joe Biden’s politics would be unduly prejudicial.

That strips Hunter of the ability to present key details about the sale.

And Noreika’s ruling may prevent Hunter from impeaching Cleveland.

A prosecutor can’t simply claim, nope, these statements Cleveland made about the form are not inconsistent. That usurps the role of the jury.

And they are inconsistent. In the first interview, Cleveland said that if a second ID was really requested, Turner handled it (it’s unclear whether Turner ever came to the front room, but since he’s the guy who doctored the form, it would be significant if he did). In the second interview, Cleveland claimed to remember asking for it. If his memory is inconsistent on that point, there’s no reason to credit his memory about how the form was filled out.

That, coupled with Cleveland’s claim he didn’t much care about the paperwork, should be fair game for questions about whether Hunter Biden’s part of the form really was filled out properly. As it is, Cleveland has signed the form even though he didn’t do key parts of it. But Noreika’s exclusion of the form will make it nearly impossible to argue that Cleveland’s testimony about the form is inconsistent.

Judge Maryellen Noreika may think it’s a conspiracy theory that the gun shop doctored the form because they wanted to get Joe Biden’s kid out of the shop quickly. Except it is also precisely what the gun shop owner’s testimony says.

Update: One piece of timing of note. ATF picked up the physical form on September 24, 2021. Cleveland was first interviewed on September 27, 2021. It appears they had to have used the physical form, not the scanned one, not least because the reference to the DE registration only appears on page 2 in the form, not the scan (which has a cover sheet). He was not interviewed again until a grand jury appearance. We know investigators did no basic investigative steps (getting a warrant, sending the pouch to be tested) until after the actual indictment.

Which makes me wonder whether they decided not to pursue charges because of this form and now are just (successfully, so far) bulldozing past this real evidentiary problem.

Update: According to the 302 from Cleveland’s May 2024 interview, he stated that he would not have paid attention to the paperwork side of the sale.

Cleveland thinks Biden went outside and got something, but he can not say with certainty. Cleveland would not have paid attention to the paperwork side of the sale because he had already done his part by working with the customer and making the sale. Cleveland does not think they would have competed the sale without the second identification, though.

This is a stunning comment from someone whose name is on the form transferring the gun. I could certainly see questioning about why he signed off on a form without personally taking responsibility for the paperwork, not least because he recognized the passport was not sufficient. His boss has basically put him in a position where he’s on the hook for a crime.

Now, he may contest this representation — 302s are only used to refresh memory, they never go back to the jury.

But if he does, it would be his word against the FBI agent who’ll submit much of the rest of the case, because they broke FBI protocol by not having a second FBI agent there. So Cleveland may be in the position of having to admit he violated gun purchase laws, knowingly, or trying to undercut another key witness.

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“Swept Up!” The Russian Payments that Led to Trump’s Felony Conviction

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There has been a lot of performed ignorance about the origin of the investigation that led to the felony conviction of Donald Trump.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ spox, Sarah Isgur, quoted Robert Jackson about prosecutors choosing defendants.

Kerri Kupec, the DOJ spox who helped Bill Barr spin key aspects of his unprecedented corruption at DOJ, likewise quoted Jackson.

Both mouthpieces for Trump’s DOJ insinuated that Alvin Bragg invented this case out of thin air, rather than pursuing the fraud revealed by an investigation that developed — and was substantially interfered with by Barr — while they were at DOJ.

Then, three of the NYT reporters who commented on Trump’s wild screed the other day mused about whence this investigation might have come from, with Maggie describing those whose own actions made them targets of the Mueller investigation in the passive voice, “swept up,” as she is wont to do (to say nothing about her refusal to discuss the way Trump’s pardons silenced key witnesses against him).

We know whence the investigation into Cohen, and therefore the investigation into Trump, came from, thanks in part to a media coalition including NYT, because the coalition liberated the warrants used to investigate Cohen.

As the first warrant targeting Michael Cohen, dated July 18, 2017, lays out, the investigation started from information “supplied by” — almost certainly in the form of Suspicious Activity Reports — a bank known to be First Republic Bank.

This Know Your Customer filing was submitted as an exhibit at the Trump trial.

The entity will be set up to receive consulting fees in the form of wires and ACH — all under 10K 1-2 a month, the wires and fees will be income from consulting work from personal clients, all domestic. He will then internally transfer the funds to his personal account at First Republic. He is setting this account to keep the income from his consulting work separate.

Even the original Stormy Daniels payment violated the representations Cohen made in that KYC statement (as likely explained in still-redacted passages in the warrant affidavit).

As Gary Farro, a witness who had worked at First Republic explained at trial, Cohen denied that the account (and an earlier one, Resolution Consultants, the plan for which he abandoned) had anything to do with political fundraising.

Q Looking now at the question in — labeled number 12. What does that say?

A “Is the entity associated with political 21 fundraising/political action committee PAC.”

Q And what answer is checked?

A “No.”

Q And do you know why the form includes a question about political fundraising?

A Because it would be something the bank would want to know.

Q And if somebody checked “yes,” is that something that would require additional review by the bank?

A Yes, it would.

[snip]

Q And looking at the questions towards the top third of 3 the page.

In the form does it say — does this have the same question that we saw in the Resolution Consultants form?

It says: “Is the entity associated with political fundraising or political action committee.”

A Yes. This is just the digital form of what was provided earlier, which would be the hard copy.

Q What’s the answer to the political fundraising question 11 on the form?

A Is “No.”

Q Now, turning to the business narrative portion in the middle of the page.

What business narrative is provided for Essential Consultants LLC?

A It’s Michael Cohen is opening Essential Consultants LLC as a real estate consulting company to collect fees for investment consulting work he does for real estate deals.

Within days after he set up the account on October 13, 2016, his October 27 transfer to Keith Davidson violated Cohen’s claims to be engaging in real estate deals. As Farro explained, had Cohen indicated the transfer had a political purpose, it would have invited more scrutiny from the bank — and possibly a delay in the payment.

Q Did any of the wire transfer paperwork indicate that money was being transferred on behalf of a political candidate?

A No.

Q Would the bank’s process for approving the wire transfer be different if Mr. Cohen had indicated that the money was being transferred on behalf of a political candidate?

A We would have additional due diligence.

Q Would that have delayed the transaction?

A It certainly could.

Had it ended with just that hush payment, had the hush payment remained secret, Cohen might have gotten away with it.

But it didn’t.

As that first warrant goes on to explain, after Cohen quit Trump Organization and announced he was serving as Trump’s personal lawyer, he used the same account to accept payment from a bunch of foreign companies, some of them controlled by foreign governments. That led the bank to provide more information — again, almost certainly in the form of SARs — to the Feds.

The most alarming of those payments involved $416,665 in payments over five months from Columbus Nova, which is ultimately controlled by Viktor Vekselberg.

The reason those payments were such a concern is that, as the NYT itself reported on February 19, 2017, Andrii Artemenko (Person 2) and Felix Sater (Person 3) had used Cohen to pitch a “peace deal” for Ukraine to Mike Flynn.

The warrant affidavit really downplayed the substance of the NYT story, which described Artemenko claiming that the “peace plan” “he had received encouragement for his plans from top aides to Mr. Putin.” In the story, Cohen excused chasing a plan with support from Russia based on Artemenko’s claim to have proof of corruption implicating then Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko.

After speaking with Mr. Sater and Mr. Artemenko in person, Mr. Cohen said he would deliver the plan to the White House.

Mr. Cohen said he did not know who in the Russian government had offered encouragement on it, as Mr. Artemenko claims, but he understood there was a promise of proof of corruption by the Ukrainian president.

“Fraud is never good, right?” Mr. Cohen said.

Cohen’s claim that, “Fraud is never good,” did not make the warrant affidavit that would set off an investigation that would lead to the conviction of Donald Trump on 34 counts of fraud.

The payments from Columbus Nova — along with payments from Korea Airspace Industries, Kazkommertsbank, and Novartis — would undoubtedly have resulted in SARs in any case. But given the report on the “peace deal,” it substantiated probable cause to suspect that Cohen was acting as an agent of a foreign power and/or violating FARA, which statutes were two of the four crimes the warrant authorized the FBI to investigate.

But false statements to a financial institution were also in there, in part, lying to First Republic about using the Essential Consultants account to pay off porn stars and accept big payments from foreign companies.

Michael Cohen, and so, Donald Trump, was not investigated simply because he had ties to Donald Trump. Claiming he was ignores the public record, including legal and reporting work done by the NYT. It ignores Cohen’s actions, including boneheadedly stupid moves he made as he tried to profit from his proximity to Trump.

He was investigated because he lied to his bank and then, even as he was making public comments about entertaining a “peace deal” with Russian involvement, used the bank account associated with the hush payment to accept big payments from a prominent Russian oligarch.

Importantly, this predication — a SAR implicating a politically exposed person about big payments from a foreign company — is far more than what predicated the investigation, and now six years of non-stop attention from the GOP, into Hunter Biden. That investigation started from a SAR about sex workers, from which an IRS agent fished out Hunter Biden’s name and then spent seven months digging before using Burisma to predicate a grand jury investigation.

If mouthpieces for Trump’s DOJ have a problem with this investigation, then they should be speaking out even more loudly about the investigation into Hunter Biden in which Bill Barr personally tampered.

Update: Corrected an error where I transposed the number of fraud counts Trump was convicted on. It’s hard to keep count!

Update: Isgur is out with an op-ed that scolds Hunter Biden he should plead guilty, without noting that to appeal the motion to dismiss based on the reneged plea deal, he can’t do that. Isgur also doesn’t mention that the gun shop doctored the form.

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Compelling Hallie Biden

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Hallie Biden is getting married this weekend, apparently between the time her youngest graduated from high school and the ninth anniversary of Beau Biden’s death and the start of the Hunter Biden trial, at which she will be the most important witness. I learned that when I perused the Page Six reporting on how Melania, Barron, and Ivanka all snuck into Trump Tower to commiserate with Donald after he was made a convicted felon.

Goodness knows that woman has been put through the wringer since Murdoch has made Hunter the primary focus of its obsession; I wish her a long, supportive, private marriage.

But first she has to make it through two Hunter Biden trials.

I want to focus on one aspect of the Hunter Biden trial, which starts next week, which has been missed by those doing scene-setters for the trial. This post, on how prosecutors plan to prove their case, and this one, on rulings thus far on motions in limine lay out much of how the trial will go.

Judge Noreika still has to rule on a dispute about whether Hunter Biden will be able to show the jury how the gun shop doctored his purchase form when the ATF asked for the hard copy of it. If she permits that, it makes two of the three charges against Hunter far sketchier, both of which rely on the way he filled out a form when he purchased the gun. Once gun shop employees admit that they didn’t require Hunter to provide a valid ID because they knew who he was, and then doctored the form years later to cover up that they had done so, it will provide an opening for Hunter’s lawyers to raise a doubt about what happened with the form on the front end and certainly whether it was material to the sale (materiality is required by just one of those two counts).

That leaves Count Three, that Hunter was either an addict or a user of illegal drugs during the period he knowingly owned the gun in 2018. As the government laid out and Judge Noreika adopted for her orders, they will only need to prove that he knew he had the gun and either knew he was an addict or that he used a controlled substance in those 11 days in 2018.

Thus, that leaves only the following issues for trial with respect to Count Three: (1) whether the defendant was either an unlawful user of a controlled substance or a drug addict;4 (2) whether the defendant knowingly possessed a firearm, (3) whether the defendant knew he was a unlawful user of a controlled substance or a drug addict at any point in time while he possessed the firearm (i.e., on any date between October 12 and October 23, 2018).

This is the charge that is most ripe to be overturned by post-Bruen constitutional charges, and Hunter plans an as-applied constitutional charge if he is convicted on it. But it is also the one that will be easiest to prove.

To prove it, though, prosecutors will rely heavily on Hallie Biden.

That’s because she exchanged a bunch of texts with Hunter both during the period he had the gun and as he almost immediately realized that she had done something with it on October 23, including these from October 14 where he seemingly describes smoking crack in a car.

Hunter had days earlier lost his phones, and so he was repurposing an old phone when he sent these texts.

The government has repeatedly described that they’ll have a witness — who by description is Hallie — who will testify that she sent and received those messages.

What we’re using on the laptop are messages that will be corroborated by a witness in this case who will testify that she sent those messages and received those messages.

If they can convince a jury these texts are valid representations of Hunter’s mindset at the time, it will be fairly compelling evidence on Count Three.

And that’s why the question of whether and if so how prosecutors compelled Hallie’s testimony is of interest.

In the face of representations from her attorney that she would invoke the Fifth Amendment on the stand, David Weiss has moved to compel her testimony in Los Angeles.

The Special Counsel hereby applies to this Honorable Court for an order compelling Hallie Biden to testify and produce evidence pursuant to the provisions of Title 18, United States Code, Section 6001 et seq., and respectfully represents as follows:

1. Hallie Biden has been subpoenaed to testify before this Court during trial beginning on June 20, 2024;

2. Counsel for Hallie Biden has advised that if Hallie Biden is called to the stand she will at that time refuse to answer questions, invoking the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination;

3. In the judgment of the Special Counsel, the testimony of Hallie Biden may be necessary to the public interest; and

4. Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg, an authorized Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States, has approved this application for an order instructing Hallie Biden to testify pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 6002 and 28 C.F.R. § 0.175(a).

Even though, absent statutes of limitation, her testimony in the Delaware case might be just as incriminating (because she’s the one who disposed of the gun), there’s no sign of such compulsion in the Delaware docket.

There is, however, a sealed filing (uncontested by Hunter’s team) pertaining to the testimony of a female witness that David Weiss has gotten permission to retain under seal until after the witness finishes testifying.

The United States of America, by and through its attorneys, David. C. Weiss, Special Counsel, and Derek E. Hines and Leo J. Wise, Assistant United States Attorneys for the District of Delaware, move that the enclosed filing be filed under seal as well as the accompanying proposed order and requested order from the court. The filing relates to a witness issue in the upcoming trial. The government will move to unseal this filing after the conclusion of the witness’s testimony at trial. In the interim, the government requests that the filings remain under seal to protect her identity from public disclosure so that her security is not compromised and so that there will be no witness intimidation issues that could undermine these proceedings. See United States v. Smith, 776 F.2d 1104, 1115 (3d Cir. 1985).

This isn’t necessarily Hallie: in addition to the female FBI agent and Hunter’s ex-wife, there’s a female witness who partied with Hunter in Los Angeles in spring 2018 whose testimony might have some unique circumstances behind it. But, given the motion to compel her testimony in Los Angeles, there’s a pretty good likelihood it is Hallie.

Indeed, it could be nothing more than a sealed version of the motion to compel in Los Angeles (which for some reason did not obscure her identity), which was filed just three days later.

Obviously, prosecutors have prepped Hallie’s testimony. They claim to know precisely how she’ll testify. So there shouldn’t be too many surprises next week at trial.

If nothing else, however, it would mean two of three key witnesses at trial (the other being the gun shop owner, who testifying under a proffer admitted he only retroactively created a record of having required the proper identification for the sale) had concerns about their own legal exposure for a gun sale made over five years ago. It would mean that prosecutors have decided to pick and choose who’ll face legal liability for those events, deciding that Joe Biden’s kid will be the one who faces legal consequences for a charge no one else would have been charged with under the circumstances.

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Trump Undone by the Truth of His Pecker

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In days ahead, the criminal protection racket known as the GOP will spend an enormous amount of energy reinforcing Trump’s spin on the crimes of which he was convicted.

The court room was so cold it violated his due process rights.

Any judges who have Democrats in their family are disqualified from presiding over trials of Donald Trump.

It is unfair for a man to be tried in the state where he lived for 70 years of his life, where he built a business, where he committed his crimes.

Trump cannot be prosecuted for cheating to win while he was President and cannot be prosecuted for cheating to win after he lost the presidency.

Trump’s practice of hiring liars to lie for him should immunize him from any criminal liability for crimes committed by those liars.

All of this is nonsense. But it is nonsense that has become an article of faith for members of a cult that make up 40% of the US voting population. All of this nonsense is the price of admission to the Republican Party. And because they all adhere to this nonsense, it serves as a kind of reality for those who adhere to that faith.

I’m of the belief that Trump’s prosecution will only matter if the entire GOP is held accountable for willfully sustaining the Reality Show that says Donald Trump, and only Donald Trump, must be immune from accountability. Indeed, the criminal protection racket must double down now, because if Donald Trump starts being held accountable for his own actions, then the years of coddling his misconduct — the corrupt choices they made to sustain his fiction of invincibility — may start to backfire on all those who made those corrupt choices.

Upholding the fraud Donald Trump has been spinning for eight years has become an object of survival for the entire party. And not just for the party, but for their psyches.

And that’s why it is important to emphasize why Donald Trump lost the case, as was made clear by the single substantive question the jurors had: To re-read four passages of testimony, three involving David Pecker.

Those passages made it clear that Trump was personally involved in efforts to kill stories that would harm Trump’s election chances — and that Pecker refused to kill a third, the Stormy Daniels story, in part because he couldn’t have his tabloid be associated with a porn star.

Q. Around this time, in October of 2016, did you also have any conversations with Michael Cohen about Stormy Daniels?

A. Yes, also a number of conversations.

Q. Can you tell the jury about some of those conversations?

A. Michael Cohen asked me to pay for the story, to purchase it.

I said, I am not purchasing this story. I am not going to be involved with a porn star, and I am not — which I immediately said, a bank. After paying out the doorman and paying out Karen McDougal, we’re not paying any more monies.

Q. How did Michael Cohen take that?

A. He was upset. He said that The Boss would be furious at me and that I should go forward in purchasing it.

I said, I am not going forward and purchasing it. I am not doing it. Period.

Pecker’s testimony, which validated Michael Cohen’s, came from a man who said he still considers Trump a friend. It came from a man who said he viewed Trump as a mentor.

David Pecker spent years spinning fictions. He put that fiction spinning machine to work for Trump’s campaign, attacking his opponents and killing harmful stories.

And then, he told the truth about spinning those fictions. He told the truth about why and how he spun those fictions. He told the truth about Trump’s role in spinning those fictions.

Trump’s success, his persona, has always been a careful creation built on fraud.

And that fraud became criminal in significant part because David Pecker told the truth about the fictions that go into sustaining the fraud.

Update: ernesto1581 reminded me that this account of the epic production efforts that went into making Trump look like a flashy CEO came out yesterday, thanks to the final lapse of the NDA.

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Trump Convicted of Fraud to Cover-up Fucking a Sex Worker

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The first five verdicts were guilty. Updates as they come.

Update: All 34 counts came back guilty.

Update: Sentencing will be July 11, the week before the GOP Convention.

Update: The Biden campaign has issued this statement.

Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain. But today’s verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.

The threat Trump poses to our democracy has never been greater. He is running an increasingly unhinged campaign of revenge and retribution, pledging to be a dictator ‘on day one’ and calling for our Constitution to be ‘terminated’ so he can regain and keep power. A second Trump term means chaos, ripping away Americans’ freedoms and fomenting political violence – and the American people will reject it this November.

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Jack Smith Invites Aileen Cannon to Protect the Country Rather than Just Donald Trump

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Jack Smith has asked Judge Aileen Cannon to prevent Trump from lying about a plot to assassinate him, as he has done since propagandist Julie Kelly made a stink about a routine Use of Force form Trump himself released and misrepresented and created a false scandal. But there’s a detail about how he asked the deserves attention.

The motion describes how Trump filed that routine form, without tying to his demand for suppression, and then started lying about it, only to have other propagandists (it includes an example from Steve Bannon’s show) join in.

On February 22, 2024, Trump filed under seal a motion to suppress evidence obtained through the search of Mar-a-Lago. See ECF No. 566. In setting forth what he described as the relevant facts, Trump stated that the Operations Form “contained a ‘Policy Statement’ regarding ‘Use Of Deadly Force,’ which stated, for example, ‘Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary [sic] . . . .’” Id. at 4. Although Trump included the warrant and Operations Form as exhibits to his motion, the motion misquoted the Operations Form by omitting the crucial word “only” before “when necessary,” without any ellipsis reflecting the omission. The motion also left out language explaining that deadly force is necessary only “when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.” Compare ECF No. 566-3 at 11 with ECF No. 566 at 6. Notwithstanding the misleading characterization of the use-of-force provision when describing the search, the motion did not seek suppression based on the policy, claim that the agents had acted inappropriately in following that standard protocol, or otherwise rely on the policy as part of the argument. See ECF No. 566 at 12-13.

On May 21, 2024, Trump filed a redacted version of his suppression motion and exhibits on the public docket. See ECF No. 566. The next day, Trump publicly claimed that he was just “shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mara-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE.” Exhibit 1. Trump also sent an email stating that the government “WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME,” was “just itching to do the unthinkable,” and was “locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.” Exhibit 2. Trump also publicly claimed that, “[s]hockingly,” the Department of Justice “authorized the use of ‘deadly force’ in their Illegal, UnConstitutional, and Un-American RAID of Mar-a-Lago, and that would include against our Great Secret Service, who they thought might be ‘in the line of fire.’” Exhibit 3. Predictably and as he certainly intended, others have amplified Trump’s misleading statements, falsely characterizing the inclusion of the entirely standard useof-force policy as an effort to “assassinate” Trump. See Exhibit 4. [my emphasis]

Now, that could have been all that Smith needed to do. As he lays out, Judge Cannon has the authority under the Bail Reform Act to modify Trump’s release conditions to protect the safety of the community.

Under the Bail Reform Act, a “judicial officer shall issue an order that, pending trial, the [defendant] be” either released on personal recognizance or an unsecured bond, 18 U.S.C. § 3142(a)(1), released “on a condition or combination of conditions under subsection (c),” id. § 3142(a)(2), temporarily detained pending revocation, deportation, or exclusion, id. § 3142(a)(3), or detained, id. § 3142(a)(4). Here, Trump was released on conditions under subsection (c). ECF No. 17.

Subsection (c) provides that, if a person is released on conditions, the “judicial officer shall order the pretrial release of the person” subject to (1) “the condition that the person not commit a Federal, State, or local crime during the period of release,” and (2) “the least restrictive further condition, or combination of conditions that such judicial officer determines will reasonably assure the appearance of the person as required and the safety of any other person and the community.” 18 U.S.C. § 3142(c)(1)(A), (B). The statute then lists several “further condition[s]” that the release order “may include.” As relevant here, those further conditions include that the defendant “satisfy any other condition that is reasonably necessary to assure the appearance of the person as required and to assure the safety of any other person and the community,” id. § 3142(c)(1)(B)(xiv). Subsection (c) further provides that “[t]he judicial officer may at any time amend the order to impose additional or different conditions of release.” Id. § 3142(c)(3).

The Court should exercise its authority to impose a condition that Trump may not make public statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to the law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case

But Smith didn’t stop there. Even before that, Smith invoked an argument Judge Cannon made herself last year, when choosing to stick her nose into the public reports that Jay Bratt was mean to Stan Woodward.

The Court has an “independent obligation to protect the integrity of this judicial proceeding,” ECF No. 101, and should take steps immediately to halt this dangerous campaign to smear law enforcement.

This is, at the very least, a subtle dig. Cannon has gone out of her way (with the original search, and then on two of these such occasions) at least three times to protect Trump.

But she has done nothing as Trump, “irresponsibly put a target on the backs of the FBI agents involved in this case,” as the filing describes.

At least one attorney has suggested that Cannon could ding Chris Kise for leaving out the limitations and thereby giving the Use of Force policy the opposite meaning than it really has (bolded above), setting up this propaganda attack.

Instead, Smith has used it as an opportunity to either force Cannon to rein Trump in — or to demonstrate that her bias in this case is contributing to a very dangerous situation.

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Fridays with Nicole Sandler, with Updates

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So much happened between when Nicole and I taped this and when she posted it:

  • In the Menendez trial, Judge Sidney Stein ruled that the jury can’t see key evidence because of Speech and Debate protections. (Here’s the earlier Politico article explaining the problem, which I referenced in the podcast.)
  • In the Hunter Biden pretrial hearing, Judge Noreika generally ruled favorably for Hunter, including that he will be able to challenge individual communications from the laptop on a case-by-case basis. In CNN’s report on the issue, AUSA Derek Hines’ assurances about Hallie Biden’s ability to validate the most important texts from the case was a bit less boisterous than in court filings; he said she could corroborate that she sent her side of the texts, not that she received Hunter’s responses: “What we’re using from the laptop are messages that will be corroborated by a witness who will testify that she sent those messages.” Btw, don’t read NBC’s coverage of the hearing — they had at least five journalists there and still missed basic details. Noreika did not yet rule on the three-colored gun form.
  • I meant to mention on the show that Trump has collected on the first $40M of his quid pro quo with energy executives.

Listen on Spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

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