DC Circuit Likely To Narrow Judge Chutkan Gag

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Ruby Freeman was not a public figure until Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani made her one, until they turned her into the villain of their feverish conspiracy theories about black women and voting. But early on in the appellate hearing on Judge Tanya Chutkan’s gag in the January 6 trial, Trump’s attorney John Sauer claimed there were no people covered by the gag who were not public persons.

That will become important if, as I suspect, the DC Circuit panel of Patricia Millett, Cornelia Pillard, and Bradley Garcia, upholds Judge Chutkan’s gag, but narrows it with regards to public persons. I suspect the court will throw out the gag on Trump comments about prosecutors (but not their family), limit the gag about public people like Mark Milley and Mike Pence to specifics about this trial, but adopt the gag as is for non-public people like Freeman.

Then we’ll have a fight about who counts as a public figure or not.

The most striking thing about the hearing, however, was how aggressively Trump attorney John Sauer dodged any accountability for his client. The judges, especially Millett, asked him a series of hypotheticals to try to get him to lay out a standard that wouldn’t fall astray of the First Amendment. And Sauer kept getting cornered saying, basically, only the clear harm standard could apply to a gag on his client’s speech. Effectively, he was saying that Trump has to be criminally charged with witness tampering rather than gagged. At one point, Sauer suggested that Trump must be permitted to wage this case in the public sphere, that there can be no consideration for the public interest in a fair trial. In another, he got awfully close to arguing that Trump should be treated as a stranger to this case, meaning no restrictions could be imposed, rather than the accused defendant. In a third, Sauer suggested that Trump must be permitted to run for election on a campaign of threats against his adversaries. Over and over, Sauer argued that Trump should be permitted to say things publicly — at campaign rallies or on his failing Social Media site — that Sauer he agreed would be prohibited under the gag order if he did it on the phone with a witness.

I doubt this will be a winning argument before the DC Circuit. But Sauer is really making a play for Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, not Patricia Millett.

Update: Fixed reference to Sauer as Lauro.

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David Weiss’ FBI FARA Headfake to Create a Hunter Biden Tax Mulligan

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Last week, CNN reported that the President’s brother, James Biden, is among some number of people who have received a grand jury subpoena for ongoing investigations into Hunter Biden. The investigative steps are unsurprising. As I noted, David Weiss spoke with Los Angeles US Attorney Martin Estrada on September 19 of this year about something that “goes to an ongoing investigation.”

According to materials released by Joseph Ziegler, the IRS interviewed James Biden on September 29, 2022, the last interview in the investigation before the failed plea deal. He was asked about a range of topics: a payment he received from Owasco before he was working with them, his and Hunter’s interactions with CEFC, Hunter’s relationship with Kevin Morris, and about several dodgy people whom Hunter paid in 2018 — payments he wrote off on his taxes. Prosecutors had discussed at least two of those people with Hunter’s legal team during the summer in 2022.

James Biden’s September 2022 interview was voluntary, suggesting investigators obtained any documents discussed in the interview — all but two of which appear to predate April 2019, and so might be among the non-Google materials that investigators first obtained from the laptop provided by John Paul Mac Isaac — via other means, including the laptop and warrants obtained downstream of the laptop. Again, any Google content is an exception to this; it appears the IRS obtained the first Google warrant for Hunter’s Rosemont Seneca account before getting the laptop, but it also appears that the government did not obtain things normally available in a Google warrant–such as attachments and calendar notices–with that warrant and so instead relied on the laptop.

As CNN describes, thus far the subpoenas seek documents; it’s unclear whether anyone (besides someone from the new IRS team put on the case after Weiss removed Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler) has or will testify in person. There are certainly documents that the IRS didn’t seem to have in last year’s interview with James Biden, such as details of his trips to California in 2018 to try to save his nephew from the throes of addiction.

But it’s also possible Weiss is using subpoenas to obtain records that otherwise would be tainted by the laptop.

When Estrada testified to the House Judiciary Committee about the recommendations about this case his senior prosecutors made in three different reports, recommendations he adopted and conveyed to Weiss in a call on October 19, 2022, he referenced Justice Manual rules. “We look at whether a Federal offense has been committed and whether we believe that there is admissible evidence sufficient to prove to an unbiased trier of fact that an individual has committed an offense beyond a reasonable doubt.” So the quality of evidence obtained in this investigation could be one reason Estrada’s career prosecutors advised him not to partner on this case.

The details about a renewed investigation into Hunter Biden are not surprising — Estrada’s testimony already suggested as much.

More interesting, however, is CNN’s report that the FBI has completed its part of the investigation, pertaining to FARA and money laundering, and expects no charges.

The FBI, which oversaw the money laundering and FARA portions of the investigation, concluded its findings and didn’t anticipate charges to emerge from those allegations, people briefed on the matter told CNN.

That’s important because potential FARA charges are the reason why this case didn’t end in a plea in July — or at least, the excuse David Weiss and his sheep-dipped prosecutor, Leo Wise, referenced to sustain a claim that the investigation was ongoing.

On July 10, in the wake of a Republican uproar about the Hunter Biden plea deal and public comments from Bill Barr about the FD-1023, Weiss told Lindsey Graham that the allegations of bribery Mykola Zlochevsky made, after outreach from Rudy Giuliani and sometime around when Bill Barr’s DOJ dropped their investigation of him, “relate to an ongoing investigation.” That was probably the second clue that Hunter’s legal team got that the investigation they believed had concluded remained (re)open — the first being Weiss’ press release on the charges on June 20. And in the failed July 26 plea hearing, a potential FARA charge is the specific criminal exposure Leo Wise raised which led Hunter to plead not guilty to a deal significantly negotiated by Delaware AUSA Lesley Wolf.

THE COURT: All right. So there are references to foreign companies, for example, in the facts section.

Could the government bring a charge under the Foreign Agents Registration Act?

MR. WISE: Yes.

THE COURT: I’m trying to figure out if there is a meeting of the minds here and I’m not sure that this provision isn’t part of the Plea Agreement and so that’s why I’m asking.

MR. CLARK: Your Honor, the Plea Agreement —

THE COURT: I need you to answer my question if you can. Is there a meeting of the minds on that one?

MR. CLARK: As stated by the government just now, I don’t agree with what the government said.

THE COURT: So I mean, these are contracts. To be enforceable, there has to be a meeting of the minds. So what do we do now?

MR. WISE: Then there is no deal.

Leo Wise refused to agree that FARA charges were off the table, even though — if you believe Abbe Lowell’s version of events — Lesley Wolf led Hunter’s team to understand, weeks earlier, that FARA charges were off the table. And based on that, Hunter refused to plead guilty.

That’s what gave David Weiss the opportunity to ask to be made Special Counsel: a claim, made after he had already filed tax and a gun charge on June 20, that he was still pursuing an investigation tied to the FD-1023, which would be bribery and money laundering. That’s what led to the three felony gun charges for owning a gun for 11 days in 2018. And that’s what led to a renewed investigation in Los Angeles. And now, David Weiss is using a Los Angeles grand jury to obtain evidence from James Biden that he didn’t think he needed a year ago.

That potential FARA charge is the excuse Weiss used to limit a deal his office had entered into a month earlier. And now, less than two months into any new investigative focus in Los Angeles, CNN says the evidence doesn’t support FARA charges. That’s not surprising. Joseph Ziegler and Gary Shapley released numerous documents showing Weiss’ team discarded various FARA theories months and years ago (though a CEFC theory was still active as of July 2022).

But it means, at least per CNN, the rationale Weiss and Wise used to sustain the investigation proved short-lived.

That’s important background to Hunter Biden’s request for subpoenas for Trump and others in advance of pretrial motions that Hunter Biden will likely file next month, which I will discuss in more length in a follow-up. Contrary to what some smart commentators, like Popehat, have repeatedly argued, there’s no reason to believe Biden is pursuing this “to develop more evidence that Trump people have it in for him that he can use in future prosecutions,” if Trump returns to the presidency.

Indeed, Abbe Lowell said these subpoenas are, “relevant and material to a fundamental aspect of issues in his defense that will be addressed in pre-trial motions.”

Lowell further explained he needs the subpoenas to figure out whether Weiss’ “change of heart” regarding charges was a “response to political pressure.”

From a Fifth Amendment perspective, it is essential for Mr. Biden to know whether anyone improperly discussed, encouraged, endorsed, or requested an investigation or prosecution of him, and to whom and under what circumstances. The information sought would demonstrate that fact. This is especially true in light of the fact that no new evidence related to these charges emerged between June 20 (when the plea deal was first presented to the Court) and July 26 (when the prosecution reneged on its deal), and in fact only more favorable case law on this issue has developed since then.18 Thus, the prosecution’s change of heart appears to be in response to political pressure, rather than anything newly discovered in the investigation of Mr. Biden. Because such evidence, only some of which has been disclosed already, would tend to undermine the prosecution’s allegation that this case was free from any political inference and was not of a selective or vindictive nature, Mr. Biden’s requests are relevant and material under the requirements of Rule 17(c). [my emphasis]

I imagine that if David Weiss is ever forced to explain what led to the head fake with the plea, he will claim that it had to do with the way he tried to sheep dip the investigation after he decided to charge the case even in spite of Shapley and Ziegler’s efforts to force the issue.

Last December, according to IRS Director of Field Operations Michael Batdorf’s September 12 testimony, Batdorf and Darrell Waldon made the decision to remove Shapley and Ziegler from the Hunter Biden investigation. They didn’t implement it, though, until May, after and because Weiss decided he would charge the case, at which point the IRS assigned a completely new team.

Having an objective set of eyes — complete objective set of eyes on the case where the new investigative team came in and the case is good, the evidence is good, that was something that we just said, let’s — we removed the cooperating revenue agent that was doing tax calculations. We just got an entire new investigative team in there.

[snip]

My concern was the opposite, that if they remained on the case, the case would not go forward

[snip]

It was my interpretation from the phone conversation that we had in December [with Weiss] that there were concerns with the investigation and investigative team, and adding up all those concerns, so having a harder time jumping over that, you know, moving forward with this prosecution.

He never specifically stated that we had to remove the investigative team. He stated that he does not control IRS resources, and he understands that. But part of the concern of moving forward was our investigative team.

[snip]

There was no more investigative activities to take. We can get this to prosecution with a new investigative team.

Partly, this may have just been an effort to avoid having to provide Jencks material, some of which Ziegler and Shapley have since already provided Congress. Even last year, Weiss recognized that Ziegler couldn’t present the revenue assessments at trial that he has spent months sharing with Congress. With a new IRS team, Weiss has secured witnesses who can take the stand without requiring that Weiss share documentation of an obsession with charging Hunter Biden and, frankly, of including his father in the investigation.

It may also be an attempt to insulate any charges from a claim that a law enforcement official found by his supervisor to be making, “unsubstantiated allegations [about Weiss] of motive, intent, and bias” had forced a prosecutor’s decision. After which Shapley and Ziegler have spent months trying to do just that!

But it may not have been just the IRS team. Batdorf described that there had also been a change in AUSA, which would include Lesley Wolf, around the same time.

A It’s my understanding that there had been a change in the AUSA, the prosecution team.

Q And when was the change made? Do you know?

A I believe that was made in roughly — I think it was May or June of this year when we decided to move forward with the investigation.

When staffers asked FBI Special Agent in Charge Thomas Sobocinski in his September 7 interview the same question, he wasn’t sure whether that was true or not. “I don’t know that your statement is factually correct,” Sobocinski responded to an investigator asking why she had been taken off pleadings.

What Sobocinski did know, however, was that Lesley Wolf had received threats. It’s “fair” to say that “she may have concerns for her own safety,” Sobocinski agreed.

Weiss might argue that once Leo Wise took over as AUSA — if that’s what happened — then Weiss left prosecutorial decisions to Wise as a way to insulate charges from claims (made by the IRS agents trying to force more serious charges) that Wolf was biased.

The problem with that is that, on June 7, Lesley Wolf sent out what appears to be the final language on the immunity agreement tied to the plea deal.

Over the course of a few more emails, lawyers on both sides kept line-editing the deal. And on June 7, Wolf sent Clark a version that included the final language shielding Biden from future charges. The language is technical, but it would have immense consequences. Here it is in full:

“The United States agrees not to criminally prosecute Biden, outside of the terms of this Agreement, for any federal crimes encompassed by the attached Statement of Facts (Attachment A) and the Statement of Facts attached as Exhibit 1 to the Memorandum of Plea Agreement filed this same day. This Agreement does not provide any protection against prosecution for any future conduct by Biden or by any of his affiliated businesses.”

The language refers to two different statements of facts; one would accompany the guilty plea and the other would accompany the pretrial diversion agreement. Together, the two statements included substantial detail about the first son’s business dealings and drug use. The statements highlighted his time on the boards of a scandal-dogged Ukrainian energy company and a Chinese private equity fund, as well as his business venture with the head of a Chinese energy conglomerate. Wolf included those statements in her June 7 email.

Wolf was still on the prosecutorial team — and negotiating a plea deal that would have ruled out FARA charges — on June 7.

That’s the same day Weiss sent the first response, to a May 25 letter Jim Jordan sent Merrick Garland about the IRS agents’ complaints of being removed from the investigation. In it, he cited Rod Rosenstein’s explanation to Chuck Grassley in 2018 how congressional interference might politicize an investigation (in that case, the Mueller investigation).

The information sought by the Committee concerns an open matter about which the Department is not at liberty to respond. As then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wrote in 2018 in response to a request for information from the Honorable Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary:

Congressional inquiries during the pendency of a matter pose an inherent threat to the integrity of the Department’s law enforcement and litigation functions. Such inquiries inescapably create the risk that the public and the courts will perceive undue political and Congressional influence over law enforcement and litigation decision.

Less than two months after telling Grassley to butt out, or the public would believe the Mueller investigation faced undue political influence, Rosenstein would grovel to keep his job, assuring President Trump he could “land the plane.” In practice, the reference was not exactly a guarantee of prosecutorial independence, but if Weiss hoped Jordan would understand that, the all-star wrestler didn’t take the hint that corn farmer Grassley took to heart.

Weiss might claim that he replaced Wolf with Wise and in the process had Wise reassess the prior prosecutorial decisions. But, given the date of that letter, there was never a moment he had done so before the political pressure started. David Weiss cannot claim he did so before being pressured by Jim Jordan.

And Jordan’s letter wasn’t the only political pressure. On the same day that Weiss said he couldn’t share information — the likes of which Shapley had already started sharing — because it might politicize an ongoing investigation, Bill Barr (one of the people Lowell wants to subpoena) publicly intervened in the case, insisting the FD-1023 recording Mykola Zlochevsky making a new allegation of bribery had been a live investigative lead when it was shared with Weiss in October 2020, the FD-1023 Weiss specifically said he could not address because it was part of an ongoing investigation.

On a day when Lesley Wolf remained on the case, both Jordan and Barr had already intervened. And because there was never a time that Weiss had replaced Wolf with Wise before the political pressure started, there was little time he had done so before the physical threats followed the political pressure.

In fact, when Congressional staffers asked Sobocinski whether he and David Weiss spoke about Shapley and Ziegler’s testimony after it went public on the day the plea deal was announced, Sobocinski described that both agreed that Shapley’s testimony would have an effect on the case. “We both acknowledged that it was there and that it would have had it had an impact on our case.” But that effect was, to a significant extent for Sobocinski, about the threats that not just investigators, but also their family members, were getting.

I am solely focused on two things, and they’re not mutually exclusive. The first thing is, like every investigation, I want to get to a resolution in a fair, apolitical way. The second thing, and it’s becoming more important and more relevant, is keeping my folks safe. And the part that I never expected is keeping their families safe. So that, for me, is becoming more and more of a job that I have to do and take away from what I was what I signed up to do, which was investigate and do those things. So when you talk about potential frustrations with communication, I am personally frustrated with anything that places my employees and their families in enhanced danger. Our children, their children didn’t sign up for this.

In Weiss’ testimony to HJC, he described threats too. But unlike Sobocinski, he may not have pointed to the effect Shapley’s now debunked claims had in eliciting them.

Weiss said people working on the case have faced significant threats and harassment, and that family members of people in his office have been doxed.

“I have safety concerns for everybody who has worked on the case,” he said.

He added that he doesn’t know what motivates the people who have threatened his team.

“I’ve certainly received messages, calls, emails from folks who have not been completely enamored of my — with my role in this case,” he added, noting that he is also concerned for his family’s safety.

Weiss’ testimony that he wasn’t sure what motivated the people who threatened his team may not help him insulate his case, because Shapley’s testimony likely wasn’t the only likely source of threats.

Among the things Lowell cited in his request for subpoenas were the four Truth Social posts Trump made between the plea deal first was posted and the day the plea failed, one of which criticized Weiss by name and called for Hunter Biden’s death.

Trump Truth Social posts on June 20, 2023:

  • “Wow! The corrupt Biden DOJ just cleared up hundreds of years of criminal liability by giving Hunter Biden a mere ‘traffic ticket.’ Our system is BROKEN!”
  • “A ‘SWEETHEART’ DEAL FOR HUNTER (AND JOE), AS THEY CONTINUE THEIR QUEST TO ‘GET’ TRUMP, JOE’S POLITICAL OPPONENT. WE ARE NOW A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY!”
  • “The Hunter/Joe Biden settlement is a massive COVERUP & FULL SCALE ELECTION INTERFERENCE ‘SCAM’ THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN IN OUR COUNTRY BEFORE. A ‘TRAFFIC TICKET,’ & JOE IS ALL CLEANED UP & READY TO GO INTO THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. . . .”

Trump Truth Social post on July 11, 2023:

“Weiss is a COWARD, a smaller version of Bill Barr, who never had the courage to do what everyone knows should have been done. He gave out a traffic ticket instead of a death sentence. Because of the two Democrat Senators in Delaware, they got to choose and/or approve him. Maybe the judge presiding will have the courage and intellect to break up this cesspool of crime. The collusion and corruption is beyond description. TWO TIERS OF JUSTICE!”9 [my emphasis]

There is, thanks in significant part to Jim Jordan, abundant documentation that between the time Lesley Wolf first sent out language seemingly promising Hunter Biden he would not be charged with FARA and the time Leo Wise told Judge Maryanne Noreika that he still could be, Republicans started pressuring David Weiss about his decisions. Thanks to Jordan, there are also multiple witnesses who have described that between the time Lesley Wolf shared immunity language and the time when — Abbe Lowell claims — David Weiss reneged on that language, the investigative team started having to fend off credible threats, not just to themselves, but also their family members.

To be sure, between the time Hunter’s lawyers made clear they planned to argue Weiss reneged on a deal and the time Lowell asked for subpoenas, in part, “possibly as impeachment of a trial witness,” Weiss testified that he always planned on continuing the investigation.

At the time, Biden’s lawyers signaled that the deal meant the Justice Department’s probe of the president’s son was over. But, according to Weiss, the investigation hadn’t ended at that point.

“I can say that at no time was it coming to a close,” he said. “I think, as I stated in the one statement I made at the time, the investigation was continuing. So it wasn’t ending there in any event.”

Yet according to CNN, two months after Weiss spoke to Estrada, seemingly to renew investigative activity in Los Angeles, any FARA investigation has ended. Instead, Weiss appears to be conducting new investigative steps in the tax case, investigative steps that started a week after IRS’ head of Field Operations testified that he understood “there was no more investigative activities to take.”

Both David Weiss and Leo Wise have publicly suggested that the ongoing investigation which Weiss insisted to Congress had always been planned was FARA or bribery related. That claim seems to have served no other purpose than to have given themselves a chance to reconsider tax charges both once claimed could be settled with misdemeanor charges.

Update: Batdorf link corrected.

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What Matt Viser Won’t Tell You about Hunter Biden, His Dad, and Burisma

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Phil Rucker has wasted yet more journalistic space and time in his obsessive pursuit of Hunter Biden dick pics.

Today, it comes in a 4,800-word piece from Matt Viser rehashing what we already knew about Hunter Biden trading on his father’s name — a piece that couldn’t manage to find space to include specific emails where Hunter told potential business partners he would not lobby for them, as he told Vuk Jeremic in 2016 when they were discussing gas deals in Mexico: “[A]s I have also said many times I won’t  engage in I [advocating] on your behalf with my father or anyone else in the USG.”

Viser, who seems to think he is clever, ends his piece with an exchange between Hunter and his business partner, Devon Archer. Archer complains that Joe Biden didn’t step in and make Archer’s legal troubles go away.

“Why did your dad’s administration appointees arrest me and try to put me in jail? Just curious,” Archer asked in a text message, in an exchange found on a copy of Hunter’s hard drive and verified by a person familiar with it. “Why would they try and ruin my family and destroy my kids and no one from your family’s side step in and at least try to help me. I don’t get it.”

Archer declined to comment on the exchange.

“Buddy are you serious,” Hunter responded, going on to explain the role of an independent Justice Department and the need for checks and balances.

“It’s democracy. Three co equal branches of government,” he wrote. “You are always more vulnerable to the overreach of one of those Co equal branches when you are in power.”

Viser apparently didn’t find space — not in 4,800 words — to mention what Chuck Grassley and Scott Brady just revealed: According to Grassley, in 2016, while Biden was Vice President and his kid was on the board of Burisma, DOJ opened a corruption investigation into Mykola Zlochevsky.

[I]n December 2019, the FBI Washington Field Office closed a “205B” Kleptocracy case, 205B-[redacted] Serial 7, into Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of Burisma, which was opened in January 2016 by a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act FBI squad based out of the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

Again, according to Grassley, this investigation was opened when Biden was VP and Hunter was on the board of Burisma. It was closed (according to Grassley) in December 2019, even as Trump defended himself against impeachment by claiming that it was important to investigate claims of corruption related to Burisma.

Opened in January 2016. Closed in December 2019. Is that clear enough for you to understand, Matt?

And just weeks later, starting on January 3, 2020, Bill Barr set up a means to insert information Rudy Giuliani obtained — according to Lev Parnas, including from Zlochevsky — into the Hunter Biden investigation. The FD-1023 at the core of Republican efforts to gin up impeachment, one that records a claim Zlochevsky appears to have made in late 2019 that conflicts with what Zlochevsky said in spring 2019, has its roots in the corruption investigation into Zlochevsky opened during the Obama Administration and closed as Trump publicly staked his presidency on a claim to care about Burisma corruption.

The investigation into Zlochevsky got closed (again, per Grassley). And Zlochevsky made a claim that conflicted with his past claims about Hunter Biden. Both happened in roughly the same period.

I’m not sure how Viser didn’t consider that worthy of inclusion in his little story. Nothing demonstrates the irony he seemed to be chasing so much as that the investigation opened while Joe Biden was Vice President is now being weaponized by people like Viser while Biden is President.

Perhaps Viser and Rucker didn’t think that new news was worth sharing, because doing so would make it clear that the entire campaign against Hunter Biden — Viser’s little journalistic hobby that Rucker pays him for — has its roots in the fact that the Obama Administration didn’t protect even Joe Biden’s kid. Sharing that news would require thinking about how the WaPo’s Hunter Biden obsession routinely exhibits the kind of corruption they claim to be exposing.

And so you won’t find that in Viser’s 4,800-word story.

Update: Two more comments about what a corrupt person Viser is.

First, this story seems to be based on Devon Archer’s bid to provide testimony again, which his attorney offers to do in the story. It comes as DOJ just obtained an extension to brief his appeal before SCOTUS. As such, it could be read as an implicit threat from Archer that if President Biden doesn’t keep him out of jail, he will become a bigger political problem then he already is.

Second, as Viser has done in the past, he ignores statements from Abbe Lowell — such as that Tony Bobulinski lied to FBI — relevant to his recycling of certain of these emails (in this case, 10% for Big Guy).

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Election Interference: Aileen Cannon Denies Republicans Speedy Trial in Stolen Document Case

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In comments to my thread describing how Aileen Cannon had deferred decision on the Trump stolen documents case, I admitted a lot of smart people were warning that her order was a non-appealable death knell for the May trial.

Those smart people were right. Judge Cannon has all but ensured that Republican voters will not have a chance to learn whether Trump really did store nuclear documents in his bathroom before picking him as their candidate.

Yesterday, Jay Bratt asked her to set an earlier deadline for CIPA 5 — the part of the process where Trump describes what he wants to use at trial.

In the Court’s Order Granting in Part Government’s Motion to Continue Trial and Resetting Deadlines (ECF No. 83), it set November 17, 2023, as the deadline for the defense to file their CIPA Section 5 notice. In ECF No. 205, the Court stayed the November 17 deadline, among others, and in its Order Granting in Part Defendants’ Motion to Continue Pretrial Deadlines and Denying without Prejudice Motion to Adjourn Trial, the Court superseded all deadlines except those identified in the Order. ECF No. 215 at 8. The Court’s new set of CIPA deadlines did not include a date for the defense to file a CIPA Section 5 notice.

[snip]

Defense counsel now have full access to approximately 5,500 pages of classified discovery (see ECF No. 215 at 4) – the vast majority of the classified discovery in this case – and the laptops necessary to create pleadings referencing those materials. They therefore are in a position to provide notice under CIPA Section 5 as to which documents or pieces of information from these 5,500 pages, or from any other source, they reasonably expect to disclose at trial. Providing such notice by a set, near-term date will facilitate the completion of CIPA litigation before the May 20, 2024 trial date.

[snip]

The Government acknowledges that (a) rulings on its CIPA Section 4 motion will likely result in the production of a limited amount of additional classified discovery;2 and (b) the defense could be successful in compelling the production of other classified materials. However, rather than delaying setting any CIPA Section 5 deadline until the CIPA Section 4 and discovery litigation is complete, the Court should reset the initial CIPA Section 5 deadline for December 18, 2023, with the understanding that it may be necessary to permit a supplemental CIPA Section 5 notice after all classified discovery issues have been resolved.

Judge Cannon responded within short order.

No.

PAPERLESS ORDER denying without prejudice 219 Motion for CIPA Section 5 Notification. As stated in the Court’s November 10, 2023, Order 215, “[a]ll previously remaining deadlines in the Court’s July 21, 2023, Order are superseded except calendar call and trial.” The Court “reset[] the first set of pre-trial deadlines” as indicated on pages 8 and 9 of that Order 215 and scheduled a conference on March 1, 2024, “to address remaining deadlines.” To the extent the Special Counsel’s motion seeks reconsideration in part of the Court’s November 10, 2023, Order 215, that request is denied. CIPA Section 5 deadlines, and all other pre-trial deadlines not included in the first batch of pre-trial deadlines contained in the Court’s revised schedule 215, will be set following the March 1, 2024, scheduling conference.

At the very least, this ensures that Republicans will not know whether a jury finds that Trump harm the United States before they make him the party nominee. It may mean no voter gets to know that.

I’ve finally found Trump’s election interference!

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In Bid for a Trump Subpoena, Abbe Lowell Cites Trump’s Complaints about Politicization

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Abbe Lowell just asked for subpoenas to serve on Donald Trump, Bill Barr, Jeffrey Rosen, and Richard Donoghue so he can see if they have personal records of improper politicization of the case against Hunter Biden.

Lowell describes that he has specifically asked for such records in discovery, yet received nothing, even though some of it likely is (in fact — I would say — abundant records show it is) at DOJ.

To date, the defense has not received such material in discovery from the prosecution or elsewhere, notwithstanding specific discovery requests and that some of this information likely resides with the DOJ.

To support a claim that would be immediately rejected in almost any other situation and likely will still be rejected here, Lowell made two arguments.

First, an argument for the political press: Donald Trump has recently argued that his own case should be dismissed if he can prove political retaliation.

Subpoena recipient President Trump knows full well that improper pressure on prosecutors to bring criminal charges against an individual for political reasons is grounds for seeking to dismiss an indictment because President Trump recently filed a motion to dismiss on this very basis in one of his criminal cases. See United States v. Trump, No. 1:23-cr00257-TSC, D.E. 116 (D.D.C. Oct. 23, 2023).16 Similarly, subpoena recipient Attorney General Barr has explained precisely why the concern Mr. Biden raises here is problematic for this Indictment:

The essence of the rule of law is that whatever rule you apply in one case must be the same rule you would apply to similar cases. Treating each person equally before the law includes how the Department enforces the law. We should not prosecute someone for wire fraud in Manhattan using a legal theory we would not equally pursue in Madison or in Montgomery, or allow prosecutors in one division to bring charges using a theory that a group of prosecutors in the division down the hall would not deploy against someone who engaged in indistinguishable conduct.17

[snip]

16 Demonstrating hypocrisy and a lack of principles, just last week, Mr. Trump insisted that the weaponization of the judicial process is wrong (and it is), but Mr. Trump claims that he would be justified in weaponizing the judicial process against his political enemies because he believes that he has been a victim of such weaponization. See Kathryn Watson, Trump Suggests He Or Another Republican President Could Use Justice Department To Indict Opponents, CBS News (Nov. 10, 2023), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-weaponization-justice-departmentpolitical-opponents/. This claim certainly undercuts any notion that Mr. Trump is above such misconduct.

17 Remarks by Att’y Gen. William P. Barr at Hillsdale College Constitution Day Event (Sept. 16, 2020) (emphasis added), https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/remarks-attorney-general-william-p-barr-hillsdale-college-constitutionday-event.

Lowell doesn’t note what I did: Trump invoked his own attacks on Hunter Biden by name in that filing, arguing that he is only being prosecuted because he has demanded that Hunter be prosecuted. Indeed, Trump went so far as claiming a document released after he was indicted in DC on August 1 was the reason why he was indicted in DC.

Without question, this is a “high-profile prosecution with international ramifications no less,” which has a “far greater potential to give rise to a vindictive motive.” United States v. Slatten, 865 F.3d 767, 799-800 (D.C. Cir. 2017). That motive is manifest. President Trump criticized the process and results of the 2020 election. He criticized Biden and his family before, during, and after that election, including with respect to misconduct and malfeasance in connection with the Ukrainian oil and gas company known as Burisma,4 China’s State Energy HK Limited, 5 and Russian oligarchs such as Yelena Baturina.6

4 See Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns, U.S. Senate Comm. on Homeland Security and Government Affairs and U.S. Senate Comm. on Finance (Sept. 22, 2020), https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wpcontent/uploads/imo/media/doc/HSGAC_Finance_Report_FINAL.pdf, at 3.

5 See Second Bank Records Memorandum from the Oversight Committee’s Investigation into the Biden Family’s Influence Peddling and Business Schemes, House of Rep. Comm. on Oversight and Accountability (May 10, 2023), https://oversight.house.gov/wpcontent/uploads/2023/05/Bank-Memorandum-5.10.23.pdf, at 5, 9.

6 See Third Bank Records Memorandum from the Oversight Committee’s Investigation into the Biden Family’s Influence Peddling and Business Schemes, House of Rep. Comm. on Oversight and Accountability (Aug. 9, 2023), https://oversight.house.gov/wpcontent/uploads/2023/08/Third-Bank-Records-Memorandum_Redacted.pdf, at 2. [my emphasis]

That political argument won’t work.

His argument that he’s asking for known documents probably won’t either — but Lowell is right that the public record that such documents exist distinguishes the claim from most other similar requests.

For example, on December 27, 2020, then Deputy Attorney General Donoghue took handwritten notes of a call with President Trump and Acting Attorney General Rosen, showing that Mr. Trump instructed Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue to “figure out what to do with H[unter] Biden” and indicating Mr. Trump insisted that “people will criticize the DOJ if he’s not investigated for real.”6 (These notes were released by the House Oversight Committee as part of the January 6 investigation.)

[snip]

Before the government intones its stock phrase, this is no fishing expedition. The statements described in this Motion actually occurred, and the events that transpired both before and after June 20, 2023 are well known to the Court. Mr. Biden seeks specific information from three former DOJ officials and the former President that goes to the heart of his defense that this is, possibly, a vindictive or selective prosecution arising from an unrelenting pressure campaign beginning in the last administration, in violation of Mr. Biden’s Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution. Moreover, each of the former DOJ officials had known contacts with then President Trump concerning Mr. Biden, and according to recently released IRS investigative case files, each had a hand in one way or another in the still ongoing investigation of Mr. Biden, either in Delaware or elsewhere. Lastly, as reflected by both the handwritten notes taken contemporaneously by Mr. Donoghue (involving Mr. Rosen and Mr. Trump) and Mr. Barr’s vignette in his recent book, these individuals are in fact likely to have relevant materials in their possession that are responsive to Mr. Biden’s document requests. [my emphasis]

There is abundant proof that Trump was intervening with DOJ in this case. Lowell claims he hasn’t gotten that proof from DOJ. So he’s asking for it from DOJ officials directly.

To be fair, only Barr (and Trump) are likely to have documents in their personal possession, because only Barr and Trump have continued to engage in this case since leaving government.

One I’m most interested in is, after Joseph Ziegler testified that Barr, personally, made the decision to put Delaware in charge of the investigation in 2020 (at a time when Rudy Giuliani was already seeking dirt on Hunter Biden and Burisma), whether Barr reached out to someone to get Ziegler to correct his testimony and claim he wasn’t certain that Barr was personally involved.

Again, these requests almost never work. But not even Peter Strzok was able to point to known documentation tying Trump directly to efforts to retaliate against him. Probably, David Weiss will argue and Judge Maryanne Noreika will agree that Trump’s intervention didn’t pertain to the gun investigation, but instead related to the tax and influence peddling investigation which is probably being pursued in Los Angeles right now. Probably, this is an issue Lowell would have to revisit if and when Hunter is charged in such a case. I have suspected that Weiss has delayed any action on related cases to force Lowell to try this selective prosecution claim in Delaware, where it is less relevant, leaving Hunter on the hook for three felony charges, before Lowell tries such a claim where it might work in some other venue.

But it is, nevertheless, the almost unheard of case where a defendant can point to Trump’s personal involvement.

Update: Lowell referenced something I didn’t realize. This passage from Richard Donoghue’s notes shows Trump intejecting a complaint about Hunter Biden (and tying it directly with the Mueller investigation) into his demands that DOJ get involved in overturning the vote on December 27, 2020.

Here’s how Donoghue described that passage to the January 6 Committee.

A Then he went back to Detroit. He said in Detroit they “threw the poll watchers out.” He was complaining, saying they’re not allowed to do that, it’s a violation of the law, they had violated the law all over the county.

He said, you “don’t even need to look at the illegal aliens voting – don’t need to.

It’s so obvious.”

Then he was talking about the FBI. He said, the “FBI will always say there’s nothing there. The leaders there oppose me; As,” which means special agents, “support me.” He didn’t use the term “special agents,” but he said, “the agents” or “the line guys,” something like that, “support me.” I just wrote that down as “SAs.”

Q Yeah. He’s claiming that the FBI leadership somehow is against him or isn’t taking these claims seriously because they dislike himor they oppose him?

A Correct.

Q Was that consistent with your impression of Director Wray and the FBI leadership?

A No a okay.

Then the next page, this is him continuing about the FBI. He says, “I made some bad decisions on leadership there, but I was laboring under an illegal investigation.

The special prosecutor should never have been commenced.”

Then he says he was complaining about the appointment of the special prosecutor, and he says, “You,” meaning DAG Rosen and I, “figure out what to do with Hunter Biden.” That’s up to you guys. But “people will criticize the DOJ if Hunter’s not investigated for real.”

That was sort of an aside. That’s all he said about it. It was a very brief comment. But it was off-topic, and I wrote it down.

Of course, the topic wasn’t off topic. It came in the same conversation where Trump first raised replacing Rosen with Jeffrey Clark and around the time he was talking about replacing Chris Wray with Kash Patel. That is, the Hunter Biden investigation was, along with stealing the vote, one of the things that Trump would install Clark to do for him.

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The Two Impeachment Treason Trip: Ukraine Charges Rudy Giuliani’s Sources

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Yesterday, Ukraine’s SBU charged with treason three of the people from whom Rudy Giuliani sought dirt on the Bidens to help Donald Trump get reelected. The announcement names Andrii Derkach and Kostyantyn Kulyk and describes someone that Politico reports to be Oleksandr Dubinsky.

The allegations say the threesome took $10 million from Russia’s GRU to discredit Ukraine.

“The main task of this organization was to take advantage of the tense political situation in Ukraine and discredit our state in the international arena. For this, the group was getting money from Russian military intelligence. Financing amounted to more than $10 million,” SBU said.

According to SBU, Dubinsky, guided by GRU, spread fake news about Ukraine’s military and political leadership, including claims that high-ranking Ukrainian officials were interfering in U.S. presidential elections. SBU said the Ukraine group was run by GRU deputy head Vladimir Alekseyev and his deputy Oleksiy Savin.

The propaganda described in the announcement preceded but is closely linked to Rudy’s December 5, 2019 trip to Kyiv to obtain dirt from Derkach. This Just Security timeline provides a good summary of how the trip to Kyiv — right in the middle of House impeachment proceedings — fit into Rudy’s year-long effort to find campaign dirt.

Why wasn’t Rudy ever charged?

The US Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach for election interference on September 10, 2020. Treasury added Kulyk, Dubinsky, and several other Derkach associates on January 11, 2021.

On September 26, 2022, EDNY charged Derkach with sanctions violations and money laundering. On January 23, 2023, EDNY superseded that indictment to add Derkach’s wife. On December 7, 2022, EDNY moved to seize a condo it claims the couple owns in Beverly Hills.

The Intelligence Community knew of Rudy’s trip to meet Derkach before he went to Kyiv and warned Trump, but Trump did not care.

The warnings to the White House, which have not previously been reported, led national security adviser Robert O’Brien to caution Trump in a private conversation that any information Giuliani brought back from Ukraine should be considered contaminated by Russia, one of the former officials said.

The message was, “Do what you want to do, but your friend Rudy has been worked by Russian assets in Ukraine,” this person said. Officials wanted “to protect the president from coming out and saying something stupid,” particularly since he was facing impeachment over his own efforts to strong-arm Ukraine’s president into investigating the Bidens.

But O’Brien emerged from the meeting uncertain whether he had gotten through to the president. Trump had “shrugged his shoulders” at O’Brien’s warning, the former official said, and dismissed concern about his lawyer’s activities by saying, “That’s Rudy.”

[snip]

Several senior administration officials “all had a common understanding” that Giuliani was being targeted by the Russians, said the former official who recounted O’Brien’s intervention. That group included Attorney General William P. Barr, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.

Later reporting made, then retracted a claim, that the FBI had warned Rudy before he made the trip to Kyiv.

At the time Rudy made the trip to Kyiv, he was already under investigation, by SDNY, for serving as an unregistered agent of a different Ukrainian dealing dirt, Yuri Lutsenko, an investigation that grew out of the campaign finance prosecution of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. SDNY obtained warrants for Rudy’s iCloud account on November 4, 2019 and, in April 2021, seized 18 devices from the former President’s attorney. That investigation concluded with no charges in August 2022. Rudy’s lawyer, Robert Costello, subsequently revealed that a number of the devices FBI seized in April 2021 were corrupted and therefore useless to the investigation, which likely is a big part of the reason Rudy was not charged by SDNY.

But Rudy was never charged for his ties to known Russian agent Derkach, either. Indeed, the Derkach indictment was written to focus on his NABULeaks site, attacking Ukrainian efforts to combat corruption; it does not mention Rudy (though it does mention that his sanctions pertained to the 2020 election).

Not only wasn’t Rudy charged, but he was permitted to share the information he obtained while in Ukraine directly with DOJ.

How that happened remains among Bill Barr’s most corrupt and complex machinations, one that deserves far more attention given the ongoing efforts to gin up a Ukraine-related impeachment against Joe Biden.

On January 3, 2020 — less than a month after Rudy met Derkach and while Trump’s first impeachment remained pending — Barr tasked Pittsburgh US Attorney Scott Brady with the “discreet” assignment of ingesting dirt from the public, primarily meaning Rudy, to “vet.”

Brady’s recent deposition before the House Judiciary Committee revealed he did little real vetting. What he did do, though, was to query prosecutors in SDNY about the ongoing investigation into Rudy and obtain “interrogatories” from prosecutors in Delaware about the ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden. He also spoke with prosecutors investigating Dmitry Firtash and Ihor Kolomoyskyi, two of three Ukrainian oligarchs from whom Rudy had also solicited dirt.

Brady also spoke with DC investigators who — according to Chuck Grassley — had just one month earlier, right in the middle of the impeachment effort directly tied to Burisma, shut down an investigation into Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky, the third Ukrainian oligarch from whom Rudy solicited dirt. From the DC investigators, Brady learned of a passing reference to Hunter Biden in a 2017 informant report, which led Brady to reinterview the same informant. The informant revealed that in a late 2019 phone conversation, one that almost certainly took place during impeachment, Zlochevsky claimed to have bribed Joe Biden in such a way that it would take ten years of searching to find the payoff.

In his HJC deposition, Brady admitted that Rudy did not tell him — and his team did not seek out any information — about the President’s lawyer’s efforts to solicit dirt from Zlochevsky.

Q Okay. But you never asked, for example, the House Permanent Select Committee investigators or anyone associated with that investigation to do a similar inquiry for evidence relating to Zlochevsky?

A No, I don’t believe we did.

Q Okay. And, like you said, you were not aware that this interview had taken place in 2019. Is that fair to say?

A I don’t believe I was, no.

Q Okay. And anyone on your team, as far as you know, was not aware that Mr. Zlochevsky had been interviewed at the direction of Giuliani before your assessment began?

A I don’t believe so.

In September 2020, Brady provided Richard Donoghue with a report on the results of his “vetting.” On October 23, 2020, Brady’s investigators briefed David Weiss’ investigators on the FD-1023 describing the late 2019 Zlochevsky claim of bribery. Weiss claims that aspect of his investigation remains ongoing, and Republicans have made the FD-1023 part of their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.

But Barr did more than provide a way for Rudy to share information obtained from a known Russian agent such that it might be used in the investigation into Joe Biden’s son and, now, an impeachment stunt targeting Joe Biden himself. He also ensured that SDNY would not be able to expand their investigation to cover Rudy’s dalliances with Derkach.

On January 17, 2020, Jeffrey Rosen issued a memo making the US Attorney in EDNY — then Richard Donoghue, but Donoghue would swap places in July 2020 with Seth DuCharme, who was at the time overseeing the Brady tasking — a gatekeeper over all Ukraine-related investigations.

Any and all new matters relating to Ukraine shall be directed exclusivelyl to EDNY for investigation and appropriate handling. Unless otherwise directed, existing matters covered by this memorandum shall remain in the Offices and components where they currently are being handled, subject to ongoing consultation with EDNY. Any widening or expansion of existing matters shall require prior consultation with and approval by my office and EDNY.

This memo had the known effect of prohibiting SDNY from following the evidence where their existing investigation into Rudy Giuliani would naturally lead — to Rudy’s relationship with known Russian agent Andrii Derkach.

Geoffrey Berman’s book revealed that Barr also prohibited the New York FBI Field Office — which supports investigations in both SDNY and EDNY — from obtaining the 302s from Brady’s January interviews with Rudy.

There were FBI reports of those meetings, called 302s, which we wanted to review. So did Sweeney. Sweeney’s team asked the agents in Pittsburgh for a copy and was refused. Sweeney called me up, livid.

“Geoff, in all my years with the FBI I have never been refused a 302,” he said. “This is a total violation of protocol.”

This would have prevented SDNY from holding Rudy accountable for any lies he told Brady and prevented EDNY from obtaining Rudy’s first-hand account about where he obtained his dirt and what he had to trade to get it. That may explain why Rudy doesn’t show up in Derkach’s indictment.

But Barr wasn’t done with his efforts to protect Rudy from any consequences for his dalliance with a known Russian agent. In June 2020, Barr fired Geoffrey Berman in an attempt to shut down the ongoing “tentacles” of the investigation into Rudy.

The reason Rudy Giuliani was not charged for soliciting election disinformation from a known Russian agent is that the Attorney General of the United States set up a system that separated the investigation of that Russian agent from the investigation of Rudy, all while channeling whatever disinformation Rudy obtained from Derkach (or Zlochevsky) into the investigation of Joe Biden’s son.

It’s that simple. Bill Barr set up a system that protected Russian disinformation and made sure it could be laundered into the Hunter Biden investigation and also protected the President’s personal lawyer from any consequences for soliciting that Russian disinformation from a known Russian agent.

That’s why Rudy Giuliani wasn’t charged.

How does this relate to the “Hunter Biden” laptop?

The system that Barr set up absolutely has to do with the FD-1023 that remains part of both the Biden impeachment effort and the Hunter Biden criminal investigation.

There’s far less evidence that Rudy’s effort has anything to do with the “Hunter Biden” laptop.

To be sure, Lev Parnas has described that in May 2019 — the month after the laptop ultimately shared with the FBI was dropped off in Wilmington — he first learned that people were shopping a laptop with dirt on Hunter Biden, though he understood it to be one stolen in 2014, not 2019.

At the same time, the BLT Team was exploring many different angles to get information on the Bidens. In June, Giuliani asked me to accompany him to a lunch in New York with Vitaly Pruss, a Russian businessman who claimed to have deep connections to Burisma, including with Hunter Biden’s business partner Devon Archer, and had recommended powerful people to Zlochevsky that he should put on the company’s board. During this meeting, Pruss shared a story with us: He said earlier that year, while doing business related to Burisma, he had taken Hunter Biden to meet Kazakhstan’s minister of foreign affairs, and that Biden had gotten substantially intoxicated with drugs and alcohol on this trip. While he was incapacitated, his laptop was compromised and copied by a representative of FSB (Russia’s secret police) and members of Zlochevsky’s team.

It’s important to note that certain aspects of Pruss’s story are verifiably true. This trip with Hunter Biden did happen, and his computer hard drives were taken and duplicated. But Pruss specified that while the contents of the laptop were personally embarrassing to Hunter Biden – pictures of him doing drugs and surrounded by girls — there was no evidence of financial crimes or any data on his laptop that suggested illegal activities of any other kind, which is the sort of proof that Giuliani desperately needed. Pruss never mentioned anything about the hard drives containing criminal information, only the embarrassing images. It was not until Giuliani began disseminating the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop that the idea of proof of financial and political crimes was introduced.

Parnas also described that he expected to obtain a hard drive from Hunter’s laptop on the trip to Vienna that got preempted by his arrest.

In the early part of October 2019, I got a call telling me to go to Vienna with Giuliani, where the former Chief Financial Officer of Burisma, Alexander Gorbunenko, would meet Giuliani and give us Hunter Biden’s hard drive and answer any questions we had.

The timing of the known laptop parallels Rudy’s efforts in chilling fashion.

The laptop ultimately shared with the FBI was first linked to Hunter Biden’s Apple account in October 2018, at the beginning of Rudy’s efforts to solicit dirt on Biden.

On a November 14, 2018 check, Hunter linked his Fox News pundit shrink to a Russian or Ukrainian-linked escort service he was frequenting at the time — likely the same escort service on which the investigation, now entering its sixth year, was first predicated. But that reference on a check memo line could as easily be explained by addiction or his efforts to cover up or write off such expenses.

Most of the materials on the laptop got packaged up in January and February 2019 while Hunter was again receiving treatment from his Fox News pundit shrink. At the time, Hunter may have had limited access to the Internet, much less the ability to package all that up. The laptop ultimately shared with the FBI was packaged up at a time when Hunter also had a different, older laptop in his possession that was ultimately left at the guest house of the Fox News pundit shrink.

The laptop ultimately shared with the FBI was delivered to the Delaware repair shop — by someone who had access to Hunter Biden’s phone and credit card — in April 2019.

Depending on whether you believe John Paul Mac Isaac or the FBI, JPMI’s father first reached out to the FBI about the laptop hours before or seven days after Parnas was arrested, either October 9 or October 16, 2019. The FBI ultimately obtained the laptop on December 9, 2019, days before the House voted to impeach Donald Trump, and the same month when (per Chuck Grassley) Barr’s DOJ shut down an investigation into Zlochevsky, the guy whose former CFO had been offering Rudy such a hard drive two months earlier. If you can believe JPMI (and you probably can’t), the FBI tried to boot up the laptop before obtaining any known warrant for it.

The day after the IRS obtained a warrant for the laptop on December 13, 2019, one of Barr’s aides texted him on his private phone to let him know they were sending him a laptop.

And then months after Barr jerry-rigged a system to ingest dirt from Russian spies into the investigation of Hunter Biden while protecting Rudy, in August 2020, JPMI shared a hard drive of the materials from that very same laptop with Rudy Giuliani, the same guy who had solicited dirt from Burisma in October 2019 and from a Russian agent back in December 2019.

After the NYPost first revealed the laptop, Rudy dismissed concerns that it may have come from Russian spies and even called obtaining it an “extension” of his earlier efforts to obtain such dirt, including (if you can believe Parnas) a laptop from Zlochevsky’s former CFO.

But that’s some Deep State talk, he added. “The chance that Derkach is a Russian spy is no better than 50/50.”

[snip]

Asked, for instance, whether he was concerned if the materials he obtained might in some way be linked to the hacking of Burisma late last year—an act attributed to Russian intelligence—Giuliani said: “Wouldn’t matter. What’s the difference?”

[snip]

Giuliani said he viewed his latest leak to the New York Post as an extension of his years-long efforts to work with Ukrainians to dig up dirt on the Bidens.

According to Scott Brady, Rudy never told him he had obtained the laptop, even though Rudy got it before Brady submitted his report to Donoghue in September 2020.

There are a great deal of remarkable coincidences in the parallel timelines of Barr’s complex system to obtain dirt on Hunter Biden while protecting Rudy and the timeline of the laptop first shared with the FBI and then shared with Rudy. But thus far that’s all they are: coincidences.

There’s not even proof — at least not publicly — that anyone besides Hunter Biden packaged up the laptop that ultimately got shared with the FBI. To the extent someone did, there’s more evidence implicating American rat-fuckers than Russian ones.

There are a great deal of questions about how the laptop got packaged up and the legality of JPMI’s sharing of it with anyone but the FBI. But for now, those are different questions than the questions about Rudy’s efforts to solicit dirt from a Russian agent.

Did John Durham meet these same Russian agents on behalf of Barr?

There’s one more question these charges in Ukraine raise, however: Whether John Durham met with one or several of these men Ukraine now accuses of working for Russian spies.

On the day that Treasury sanctioned Kulyk and Dubinsky, January 11, 2021, Durham sent an aide some group chats he had participated in with Barr’s top aides in September 2019, just as the impeachment panic started.

Those group chats, which Durham referred back to on the day Derkach’s associates were sanctioned, seem to have arisen out of a panic Barr had on the morning of September 24, 2019, the day the White House would release the Volodymyr Zelenskyy transcript showing that Trump asked the Ukrainian President to deal dirt on the Bidens to both his Attorney General and personal lawyer.

“Call me ASAP,” the Attorney General texted Durham that morning, followed almost twelve hours later by Durham asking to speak, possibly for a second time.

The next day, September 25, DOJ issued a statement revealing that Durham had received information from several Ukrainians who weren’t part of government.

A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,” DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said Wednesday. “While the Attorney General has yet to contact Ukraine in connection with this investigation, certain Ukrainians who are not members of the government have volunteered information to Mr. Durham, which he is evaluating.”

That’s what led up to the group chats Durham would share months later.

At 3:44 PM on September 26, the day the White House released the whistleblower complaint, someone from Durham’s team — probably Durham himself — participated in a chat with 8 people.

Less than an hour later, a bunch of people — including Will Levi, Seth DuCharme (who would be in charge of Scott Brady’s “vetting” project and then take over any investigation in EDNY), and “John” — convened in a lobby bar together, waiting for Barr to arrive.

The following day, when Kurt Volker resigned, there was another group chat, the second one Durham would share months later.

Barr was still focused on CYA regarding his own involvement. In advance of Lindsey Graham going on the Sunday shows that weekend, Barr made sure to get Lindsey his statement claiming not to have spoken to the Ukrainians personally.

 

Later on October 2, Kerri Kupec apologized to Barr that “Sadie” hadn’t gotten editors to change a particular story, probably a reference to this WSJ story, which discusses Barr’s request that Trump give introductions to some foreign leaders.

On October 30, the day after the Democrats released the impeachment resolution, Kupec sent Barr the statement he had made about Ukraine back in September.

A minute later Barr sent that statement to Will Levi, with no further comment.

There’s far more about Barr’s panic as impeachment unrolled in 2019, as I laid out here.

The panic likely includes Eric Herschmann, who was then in private practice but who would join Trump’s impeachment defense and then ultimately serve as a babysitter for Trump in the White House. While at the White House, Hershmann pitched the “laptop” to the WSJ before Rudy discredited it.

But one thing is clear: In the wake of the disclosure that Trump asked Zelenskyy to work with Barr in addition to Rudy, Barr attempted to pawn off any contacts with Ukraine onto Durham — an effort that appears to have been discussed in both group chats and a face-to-face meeting in a hotel bar.

And then, over three months later, on the day that Rudy’s sources were sanctioned, two of whom were just charged with treason along with Derkach, Durham revisited those group chats.

That may explain why Barr worked so hard to ensure that Rudy never faced consequences for soliciting disinformation from a known Russian agent.

Update: Fixed timing of Parnas arrest per zscore.

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The Kinds of Laptop Documents the Hunter Biden Investigation Used

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Back in July, while I was mocking the latest Devlin Barrett transcription of right wing spin about the Hunter Biden laptop, I contested his claim that the laptop had had little role in the investigation of Hunter Biden.

WaPo had ignored the bank records on which this investigation was predicated and built. And while bank records were surely more important to the tax investigation than anything on the laptop, the laptop would have been key to influence peddling allegations against the President’s son, both by the FBI and journalists (and now by Dick Pic sniffers in Congress, who keep using documents from a hard drive of the laptop the provenance of which they refuse to share publicly with Democrats).

[T]he IRS agents’ testimony (taken in conjunction with the report that the Washington Examiner was ethical enough to release), shows that the IRS didn’t obtain what is probably Hunter Biden’s rhb iCloud account — from which the cited, contested WhatsApp messages were probably obtained a second time — until August 2020, after it got some of the same material on the laptop. That potential taint may be why someone told Barrett to downplay the import of the laptop.

While the laptop may not have played a key role in substantiating a tax case against Hunter Biden, it may well have tainted the evidence in the case. It may well be part of the reason why Hunter Biden is getting to plead to misdemeanor rather than felony tax charges — because as even Whistleblower X explained that he had been told, there are emails that raised concerns about whether this could be charged at all, suggesting this case couldn’t withstand discovery.

Since then, Joseph Ziegler has proven that I was right (well, not about Hunter getting to plead to misdemeanor tax charges; we were all wrong about that).

But if anything, I underestimated how much the government used the laptop.

For example, Ziegler shared the filter term document for the laptop, with a creation date of February 7, 2020, focused exclusively on the tax investigation. While the filter term document for Hunter’s Google account was dated December 16, 2019, some documents that Ziegler says were obtained from Google warrants have creation dates of May 4, 2020 or August 12, 2020. These dates may reflect when the investigators obtained the filtered and scoped materials from the filter team; we know the team was working on a warrant for Blue Star Strategies in August 2020; that would have been central to a Burisma-related FARA investigation.

The FARA-related filter term document for the laptop Ziegler shared may not have been originally shared with him at all; the copy he shared has the same creation date, January 26, 2021, as the date he asked for all the filter documents (perhaps not coincidentally, just days after Joe Biden was inaugurated).

More interesting still, Ziegler provided part of an Excel spreadsheet that he described this way:

[A] relevant document timeline which was utilized throughout the investigation (Over 2,100 line items). This would have included emails and attachments recovered from the multiple electronic search warrants, calendar entries and open source (public) records. In this document, specifically in the “Description” column, the case investigators would summarize the relevant information found in the documents. The source of the document was included in the “Type Misc” column (For example, if the document came an electronic search warrant served on Google). The “related to” and “type of Doc” columns were utilized by the investigators to further sort the overall timeline. Pursuant to the Congressional Committees request, I have filtered this timeline for all relevant documents related to Burisma, U.S. and Foreign Government officials (Including former Government Officials). In addition, I have also provided the emails and attachments for some of the referenced documents in this Exhibit (Exhibits 302 through 313). [my emphasis]

This is it, folks: What Ziegler claims are all the (unclassified, at least) documents pertaining to Burisma.

This fragment of the spreadsheet is a good way to assess how the team spun particular records. It also shows their documentation of the open source records they claimed to rely on, for things including, “Archer reportedly meets with VPOTUS Biden,” “VPOTUS allegedly withholds $1B to Ukraine,” and “VPOTUS Biden allegedly pressures Ukrainian Poroshenko to fire Prosecutor Shokin (tied to $1 billion U.S. loan guarantees).” It was not very rigorous and in the descriptions of Biden’s role in pressuring Ukraine reflects clear bias.

I’ve never seen a criminal investigator willfully torch internal aspects of his own investigation like this, but I’m grateful for the insight on the investigation. Thanks Joe Ziegler!

Perhaps the most interesting part of this timeline, though, is that as of the time when Ziegler secured a copy for himself, it reflected that of the 150 or so items in this spreadsheet (remember, just a fragment of a much larger one), 14 are sourced to the laptop. The spreadsheet may be outdated; there’s no mention of a Dropbox warrant that investigators definitely got, nor of any warrants targeting Devon Archer or Vadym Pozharskyi that investigators seemed to at least be contemplating in August 2020.

Still, whenever Ziegler saved a copy of this spreadsheet, almost 10% of the sources came from the laptop.

This table pulls together the documents Ziegler provided and lists those sourced to the laptop.

They seem to have sourced two kinds of things consistently to the laptop: calendar notices (items 2, 5, and 12, and possibly 7 and 13) and emails with attachments (items 6, 9, 10, and — I think — 11). That’s curious because both should be available — with far better provenance — with a Google warrant. Indeed, attached Burisma documents are one of the things of most suspect provenance on the public versions of the laptop.

But remember that these emails wouldn’t have been Hunter’s personal Google account; most of his personal email, with the exception of a Google account he used for sex-related accounts, was one or another iCloud address. These were Rosemont Seneca emails hosted by Google. Depending on how RS set that up, it may have complicated getting the emails, and so made sourcing certain things to the laptop easier. Note that Ziegler describes the “Schwerin” sourced documents as also a warrant, which would be similar.

That leaves the following seven emails sourced to the laptop rather than a more reliable warrant.

  • 1: May 7, 2014 email from Archer to Vadym’s Gmail ccing Hunter’s Rosemont Seneca email regarding plans for a trip to Kazakhstan (possibly the one where, Lev Parnas alleges, the first Hunter laptop was compromised) that references a meeting with the Kazakh Prime Minister
  • 3: April 8, 2015 email from Serbian diplomat Vuk Jeremić’s NGO email to Hunter’s iCloud email discussing a backchannel with “the bear” likely relating to Iranian talks
  • 4: May 29, 2015 email from Jeremić’s Gmail to Hunter’s iCloud, ccing Archer, clearly asking Hunter if he had asked his father (whom he referred to as the big guy) about something
  • 7: October 23, 2015 email from Rosemont Seneca’s Joan Mayer to both Hunter and Schwerin noting Sally Painter meeting with Vadym and Hunter; this should have been included in Google warrants, but may have been set up as a pre-set meeting notice
  • 8: October 30, 2015 email from Schwerin to Hunter forwarding an email from Sally Painter at Blue Star Strategies, linking a story about about Serhiy Kurchenko; it should have been available in warrants targeting all three though perhaps the way it was forwarded had it treated as an attachment?
  • 13: February 23, 2016 email from Rosemont Seneca’s Joan Mayer to both Hunter and Schwerin at their Rosemont Seneca emails regarding meeting with Frank Mermoud about Burisma; this should have been included in Google warrants, but may have been formally a pre-set meeting notice
  • 14: August 14, 2016 email from Jeremić’s gmail to Rosemont Seneca emails, asking Hunter to lobby for him to become UN Secretary General, in response to which Hunter explained, “as I have also said many times I won’t engage in I advocati ng on your behalf with my father or anyone else in the USG;” this is their last email in the public set, though Jeremic definitely tried to stay in touch via DM and WhatsApp after that; it should have come up in the Hunter and Schwerin warrants

There are two emails on this list — the two 2015 Jeremić ones — that wouldn’t hit a Google warrant at all (though depending on the dates of the iCloud backups the government obtained, should be in those). But the other Jeremić emails on this list that would be in Google as well.

So it may, instead, be a scope issue: that the filter team (and which agency provided the filter team over time varied) excluded Jeremić entirely from the Google batches, but included him in the laptop batches (plus, we can’t guess the date of that filtering process, so it could reflect later developments in the investigation). Most of these emails would fit under the suggested relevancy terms by dint of including Archer, but the one about the “bear” doesn’t appear to.

Which is to say one thing investigators may be getting from the laptop are documents that would be excluded from other filters.

And that’s just the Burisma (which spanned both the tax and FARA investigations) and FARA focused documents. Ziegler has not shared his list of tax documents, so there could — likely are, given Ziegler’s obsession with the sex workers Hunter slept with — be quite a lot of laptop documents from there.

As Lesley Wolf reportedly described on October 22, 2020, almost all emails were available in two sources anyway. But if someone packaged up this laptop, as I suspect, then it would mean the government got a collection of documents tailored to make a particular kind of impression that they wouldn’t have gotten without a lot more investigation.

That is, depending on what was done with the laptop before it got to the FBI, it may not be a matter of doctored records, but it could amount to packaging up a criminal investigation in a box, just what Rudy was looking for when the laptop walked into John Paul Mac Isaac’s shop.

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John Lauro’s DC Delay Tactics Backfire in Florida

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As I noted, right after Judge Aileen Cannon suggested, during a hearing on November 1, that conflicting trial schedules in DC and Florida meant she’d likely delay the stolen documents trial scheduled for May 20, Trump’s lawyers in DC filed to stay their DC trial. DOJ notified Judge Cannon right away that Trump had done that — basically proving the contention they made in the hearing that Trump was just stalling.

Having secured that delay, Trump turned to delaying his DC trial, with a motion to stay all other DC proceedings until his absolute immunity claim is decided, a 3-page motion Trump could have but did not submit when he was asking for a delay before submitting his other motions. Everything he points to in that 3-page motion, the completed briefing on the absolute immunity bid, was already in place on October 26. But he waited until he first got Cannon to move her trial schedule.

As I laid out the other day, Trump is not making legal arguments sufficient to win this case — certainly not yet. He is making a tactical argument, attempting to run out the clock so he can pardon himself.

Update: LOL. Trump filed the DC motion too soon, giving DOJ a chance to notice the cynical ploy in DC before Aileen Cannon issues her order.

Yesterday, the Court conducted a hearing on the defendants’ motion to adjourn trial, in which defendant Trump claimed that trial in this matter should be delayed in part because “[t]he March 4, 2024 trial date in the District of Columbia, and the underlying schedule in that case, currently require President Trump and his lawyers to be in two places at once.” ECF 167 at 1. Defendant Trump’s counsel reiterated that argument during the hearing yesterday. However, defendant Trump’s counsel failed to disclose at the hearing that they were planning to file – and yesterday evening did file – the attached motion to stay the proceedings in the District of Columbia until their motion to dismiss the indictment based on presidential immunity is “fully resolved.” See United States v. Donald J. Trump, No. 23-cr-257-TSC, ECF No. 128 at 1 (D.D.C. Nov. 1, 2023), attached as Exhibit 1. As the Government argued to the Court yesterday, the trial date in the District of Columbia case should not be a determinative factor in the Court’s decision whether to modify the dates in this matter. Defendant Trump’s actions in the hours following the hearing in this case illustrate the point and confirm his overriding interest in delaying both trials at any cost. This Court should [sic] allow itself to be manipulated in this fashion.

Judge Cannon hates to be embarrassed and probably was particularly perturbed that DOJ suggested she was allowing herself to be manipulated. She filed an order basically telling them never to do that again.

The parties are hereby reminded of the requirements of Local Rule 7.8 on Notices of Supplemental Authority. Except as authorized by Court order, the substantive content of any such notice (or response) may not exceed 200 words and may not be used as a surreply absent leave of Court. Future non-compliant notices or unauthorized filings will be stricken without further notice. Signed by Judge Aileen M. Cannon on 11/3/2023.

But it worked, at least for now. Judge Cannon has issued an order revising pretrial deadlines, some of which (such as a December response to a government motion already filed) don’t make sense at all. But she has not delayed the May 20 trial date and won’t consider it until March 1, at which point it will be clear whether the DC case will go forward that month.

Following review, it is ORDERED AND ADJUDGED as follows. Defendants’ Motions to Continue Pre-Trial Deadlines are GRANTED IN PART for the reasons stated below. Defendants’ Motion to Continue Trial, currently set for the two-week period commencing on May 20, 2024, is DENIED WITHOUT PREJUDICE, to be considered at a scheduling conference on March 1, 2024, following the initial set of pre-trial and CIPA steps in this proceeding as outlined below.

This increases the chances that at least one of these trials will go foward before the election.

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James Comer Subpoenas Dick Picks While Rome Burns

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As long expected, yesterday Jamie Comer subpoenaed Hunter Biden, his uncle James, and his former business partner Rob Walker; the Kentucky Congressman also sent voluntary interview requests to four more family members and Tony Bobulinksi.

By sending a voluntary interview request rather than a subpoena to Bobulinski, the Hunter accusar will be able to dodge questions about why, as Cassidy Hutchinson described, he wore a ski mask to a covert meeting with Mark Meadows in November 2020 and what the President’s Chief of Staff handed him at that meeting.

Comer even sent a request to Hunter’s current spouse, Melissa Cohen, rationalizing doing so — after having shut down an investigation into why the Saudis gave Jared Kushner $2 billion to invest — this way:

Evidence also shows that President Biden was at least aware of some of his family’s business ventures and sought to influence potential business deals that financially benefited his family. Indeed, a Biden business associate, Devon Archer, testified how the Biden “brand” was used in retaining business, and that Joe Biden met with some of the foreign nationals who paid his family. 5 The Committees have identified you as possessing information relevant to their investigation and seek your testimony regarding these and other related topics. This request is made pursuant to that inquiry.

In particular, the Committees have identified over $20 million in payments to Biden family members and their associates, the majority of which is attributable to Biden family members. 6 The Committees believe you have received proceeds derived from a foreign source in which the Biden family has held a substantial financial interest. This source is concerning to the Committees because of its significant ties to a foreign government. The Committees seek to understand the extent of the Biden family’s involvement in transferring money to each other, and therefore seek clarity regarding your role in the movement of money originating from certain foreign sources.

As part of their investigation, the Committees also seek to craft legislative solutions aimed at deficiencies they have identified in the current legal framework regarding ethics laws and the disclosure of financial interests related to the immediate family members of Vice Presidents and Presidents—deficiencies that may place American national security and interests at risk. Specifically, the Committees are concerned that foreign nationals appear to have sought access and influence by engaging in lucrative business relationships with high-profile political figures’ immediate family members.

The Committees are investigating the national security implications of a Vice President’s or President’s (and candidates for such offices) immediate family members receiving millions of dollars from foreign nationals, foreign companies, or foreign governments without any oversight. Current financial disclosure laws and regulations do not require non-dependent family members of senior elected officials to provide any information to the public. The Committees are seeking meaningful reforms to government ethics and disclosure laws that will provide necessary transparency into a Vice President’s or President’s immediate family members’ income, assets, and financial relationships.

Cohen didn’t even meet Hunter until May 2019, over two years after Biden left the Obama White House. Meanwhile, the degree to which Trump and his family have committed fraud using their family brand is literally on trial in New York as we speak.

To say nothing of Comer himself. The Daily Beast describes that not only has Comer serially swapped land with his brother, but has done so while directly overseeing the industry.

According to Kentucky property records, Comer and his own brother have engaged in land swaps related to their family farming business. In one deal—also involving $200,000, as well as a shell company—the more powerful and influential Comer channeled extra money to his brother, seemingly from nothing. Other recent land swaps were quickly followed with new applications for special tax breaks, state records show. All of this, perplexingly, related to the dealings of a family company that appears to have never existed on paper.

In other words, not only has Comer not found anything against the Bidens. He is using his charade against the Bidens to hide his own corruption and that of the Trump’s.

And meanwhile, as Comer continues to waste taxpayer dollars subpoenaing dick pics, Republicans still can’t fund government.

Republicans continue to fail to do their most basic job. And they continue to fail even as they harass Joe Biden’s family for supporting other family members.

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Donald Trump’s DOJ Shut Down a Burisma Corruption Investigation Opened while Joe Biden Was VP

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Right in the middle of an impeachment for extorting Volodymyr Zelenskyy to dig up dirt on the Bidens and Burisma, Bill Barr’s DOJ shut down a corruption investigation into Burisma’s Mykola Zlochevsky.

Then, days later, Barr set up a process that would insert an allegation that Zlochevsky bribed Joe Biden into the ongoing investigation of Hunter Biden.

That is — by far — the most scandalous allegation that has come out of the Jamie Comer and Jim Jordan-led effort to gin up an impeachment of Joe Biden. Bill Barr’s DOJ shut down an investigation into Zlochevsky’s corruption, and then mainlined an allegation of corruption involving Zlochevsky into the investigation of Joe Biden’s son.

To be fair, the claim that Bill Barr’s DOJ shut down a corruption investigation of Zlochevsky didn’t come from Comer or Jordan. It came from Chuck Grassley.

In a letter Grassley sent Merrick Garland on October 23, he described what he knew about the genesis of an FD-1023 he and Comer released during the summer. He described that the 2017 informant report that included a mention of Hunter Biden and led Scott Brady to reinterview that informant in June 2020 came from a Kleptocracy investigation — a bribery investigation — into Mykola Zlochevsky which “was opened in January 2016 by a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act FBI squad based out of the FBI’s Washington Field Office.”

While Joe Biden was Vice President and his son was on the board of Burisma, according to Chuck Grassley, DOJ opened a corruption investigation into Burisma’s owner.

That corruption investigation into Mykola Zlochevsky was shut down — again, per Chuck Grassley — around five months after Donald Trump tried to extort the President of Ukraine for dirt on the Bidens and Burisma and just two months after Rudy Giuliani planned to fly to Vienna to get dirt on Hunter Biden from Dmitry Firtash and a Burisma executive. Grassley described that it was shut down in the very same month, December 2019, the House voted to impeach Donald Trump for soliciting dirt on the Bidens and Burisma, the same month that IRS and FBI obtained a laptop purported to be owned by Hunter Biden — followed, a day later, by Barr’s aides telling him they were sending him a laptop.

“[I]n December 2019, the FBI Washington Field Office closed a “205B” Kleptocracy case, 205B[redacted] Serial 7, into Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of Burisma,” Chuck Grassley revealed.

Weeks or days after that investigation was (again, per Grassley) shut down, on January 3, 2020, Bill Barr set up a process by which dirt on Hunter Biden — in part, dirt that Rudy Giuliani obtained from a known Russian agent, Andrii Derkach, and possibly even dirt that Rudy obtained directly from Burisma, dirt that was once pitched to include a laptop from Hunter Biden — could be shared with the ongoing investigation of Hunter  Biden.

On January 3, 2020, Seth DuCharme “discreetly” tasked the US Attorney for Pittsburgh, Scott Brady, to accept the information from Rudy. But Brady did more than that. He did a search on Hunter Biden and Burisma — or maybe it was Zlochevsky and Burisma, he claimed not to remember in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee — which led his team to discover the 2017 informant report. That’s the process that led to the re-interview of an informant used in 2017 in that Zlochevsky investigation, which led to the report that in 2019 that Zlochevsky claimed to have made payments to Joe Biden that were so well hidden it would take ten years to find. Unbelievably, FBI failed to write down the date when Zlochevsky made that claim, even though Scott Brady testified his team learned the precise details surrounding the informant’s travel to London where he had the conversation; it had to have happened relatively late in 2019, probably during the impeachment investigation.

As Lev Parnas and anyone else who knows these details remotely well will tell you, that claim from Zlochevsky was a new claim. When Rudy sent questions to Zlochevsky during the spring of that year, Zlochevsky said that Hunter Biden had never lobbied for Burisma.

At a meeting of the BLT Team, Giuliani and Solomon came up with a series of 12-14 questions about the Bidens that we would propose to Zlochevsky. Eventually, we managed to get Zlochevsky’s answers back. But his answers gave us nothing – because there was nothing. On reading Zlochevsky’s reply, Giuliani turned red and yelled, “What is this shit? This is bullshit. Make sure nobody sees this. Bury this.”

I will remind you that Zlochevsky’s answers are in the report that the House Oversight Committee published. In this document, he stated that Hunter Biden was never asked or assigned to speak with anybody in the U.S. on behalf of Burisma, that there were no political or lobbying efforts on behalf of Burisma, that nobody from the company had ever spoken to Joe Biden, and that Hunter Biden was essentially innocent of what people had been implying. His letter debunked all the conspiracy theories.

The truth is Burisma tried to compromise Joe Biden, with Vadym Pozharskyi making much, for example, of a 2015 World Food Program dinner to which Biden dropped in to meet someone else. And a lobbying campaign by Blue Star Strategies set up through Devon Archer and run by Eric Schwerin did push Ukraine to halt its investigation into Zlochevsky. It did set up two meetings for Zlochevsky’s attorney in the United States. Here’s how BSS described that effort in a filing submitted retroactively in 2022.

Registrant was asked in 2016 to help schedule meetings with U.S. Government officials so counsel for Mr. Zlochevsky could present an explanation of certain adverse proceedings in the U.K. and Ukraine involving Mr. Zlochevsky. Registrant scheduled 2 meetings, and a representative of registrant accompanied counsel for Mr. Zlochevsky to the meetings. Registrant did not have a written agreement or letter creating any engagement on behalf of Mr. Zlochevsky, and no compensation for Blue Star Strategies’ assistance was provided by Mr. Zlochevsky.

In an October 2016 email not involving Hunter Biden (who had a role in setting up the relationship with BSS, but not once they were brought in), BSS noted — and took credit for — Ukraine halting the investigation into Zlochevsky.

According to Chuck Grassley, by that point, DOJ under Obama had opened its own investigation into Zlochevsky.

In spring 2019, Zlochevsky said he had no dirt on Joe Biden but — again according to Lev Parnas — he said he could get dirt, possibly in the form of a laptop, if Rudy could do something to “curry favor” at DOJ. And then, in the same month that DOJ obtained a Hunter Biden laptop, DOJ shut down the investigation into Zlochevsky. And around the same time, Zlochevsky randomly offered up to an FBI informant, for the first time, that he had bribed Joe Biden.

Here’s the thing that Chuck Grassley doesn’t understand. It makes no sense to shut down a corruption investigation into the head of Burisma, then interview an informant about what he knows of corruption allegations involving the head of Burisma. (Remember, at the time, the US Attorney for EDNY served as a gatekeeper for any investigations pertaining to Ukrainian corruption, so to reopen that investigation, DC would have had to get EDNY’s approval.) If you care about corruption allegations, you pursue both sides of that, the guy alleged to be making the bribe along with the guy whose bank accounts and public actions show no sign of accepting one.

Unless the guy alleged to be making the bribe only made the allegation after being bribed to do so.

This claim is not coming from Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell. It’s not Jamie Raskin claiming that Barr shut down a bribery investigation into Burisma. It’s Chuck Grassley making the claim.

Bill Barr’s DOJ shut down a bribery investigation into Mykola Zlochevsky in December 2019. And then days later, on January 3, 2020, he set up a way to get a claim that Mykola Zlochevsky had bribed Joe Biden injected into the investigation of Hunter Biden.

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