How to Read the Immunity Appendix
I’m still working through a deeper dive of the appendix to his immunity brief that Jack Smith released on Friday.
But I thought I’d share how I’m reading it, as I’ll need to refer back to that when I write up some of the interesting things I’ve found.
The appendix was released in four volumes:
Volume II: GA 723 through GA 965
Volume III GA 968 through GA 1503
Volume IV: GA 1503 through GA 1885
There are also a bunch of GA 1900 references in the immunity brief; those are to video and other multimedia, but we don’t get them.
But what we’ve got may be better understood in sections:
GA 1 through at least GA 653: Most of Volume I consists of interview transcripts arranged in alphabetical order, Barr to Wren, in what is visible. Once you understand that that section is in alpha order, it helps to substantiate whether citations in the immunity brief are to one or another person. For example, it seems highly likely that the GA 97 to 102 range is Kenneth Chesebro, because citations to those pages describe stuff he was involved with, and those pages appear between the visible Rusty Bowers and Justin Clark sections, and after material that must be from Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr and former MI House Speaker Lee Chatfield. I’ll return to both Chesebro and Chatfield tomorrow.
These transcripts are generally truncated, including just the pages necessary to substantiate the material in the brief — though there are transcripts in there, such as that of Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel in the GA 323 to GA 342 range, that cover the full range of activities in which she played a part.
There are people, like former MI Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, whose only citations are to January 6 transcripts (and so are visible). There are far more people (like Chatfield, Chesebro, and McDaniel) whose only citations are to DOJ interviews, so are sealed. But some people, starting from Bill Barr, have citations to both J6C and DOJ transcripts. In general, the DOJ transcripts appear to come after the J6C ones (though I’m not sure that’s the case with Jason Miller).
GA 654 through GA 722: The balance of the first volume may also be transcripts, but it’s not in obvious order. Although one or several Eric Herschmann interviews appear from around GA 190 through GA 238 in the alpha order section, a great deal of GA 654 through GA 722 is also Herschmann-related material (including the blacked out pages starting at GA 709). There’s a lot of Herschmann in this brief, and I thought prosecutors did a less compelling job of explaining why those were unofficial than the Mike Pence material.
I had considered whether this section consists of more sensitive files, and it may. But it’s not the sensitivity I first considered: that of Executive Privilege (or grand jury versus interview transcripts). Mike Pence’s interviews appear starting at least by GA 413, between the visible Jason Miller and Katrina Pierson transcripts.
GA 723 through GA 771: The first 50 pages of Volume II are from the President’s Daily Diary, which documents all of the President’s calls and meetings. That the section tracked calls involving Trump was already evident from this footnote, which substantiates Steve Bannon’s near-daily phone calls with Trump resuming in mid-December:
And footnote 546 identifies GA 742 as PDD explicitly.
GA 772 to GA 965: The rest of that volume is Tweets and other social media, by Trump and by others. One interesting aspect of this volume is the type of Tweet. For example, it appears prosecutors attempted to include both the legal process version and the screen cap of all of Trump’s Tweets, but they don’t always do that. Trump’s RTs, in particular, appear to have been difficult to reproduce; remember that, because Trump’s account was suspended, there were some difficulties in reconstituting parts of it. There’s a bunch obtained from the Trump Twitter archive, suggesting they may not have been preserved at Twitter. There’s also just the text of the Mike Pence courage Tweet and his “sacred landslide” Tweet, which may come from a dump of the phone (and serve to substantiate that it was written with that phone). And there are a bunch of what appear to be text versions of Trump’s Tweets or Team Trump disseminations of them, the latter of which prosecutors point to to substantiate their argument that these are campaign, as opposed to Presidential, Tweets. If this ever goes to trial, how these got used will often say as much as the actual content included.
The other two volumes provide all the other kinds of backup to the immunity brief, largely documentary evidence.
This documentation generally follows the structure of the immunity brief itself, though obviously there’s a lot of overlap, particularly between Trump’s pressure on state parties and his fake elector plot. That may explain why prosecutors broke the Volumes where they did.
In addition to some random stuff (not included in my table), Volume III has the state-focused evidence.
GA 966 to GA 999: Forming the conspiracy
GA 1000 to GA 1236: Pressuring states to help deceive
GA 1245 to GA 1502: Fake Electors plot
Volume IV picks up from the effort to pressure Pence to throw out the votes and includes January 6. But it also includes a bunch of things — like campaign advertising and funding records — in there to substantiate an argument that Trump was acting in his role as a candidate, not as President.
GA 1503 to GA1663: Pressure Pence
GA 1664 to GA 1684: January 6
GA 1685 to GA 1869: Prove this is Unofficial
So Volume III and IV both have the same type of evidence: documentary backup. But rather than showing what happened, there’s a part of Volume IV that aspires to show that what happened amounted to campaign activity.
With that as a framework, one can figure out almost all of what is in the appendix in sealed form, based off the footnotes. And while none of the good stuff — the dickish comments Mike Roman made while on a conference call trying to tamp down a revolt from Pennsylvania’s fake electors, for example — are unsealed in the appendix, those two pages of text messages that appear at GA 1407 and 1408 do appear in the text itself.
We can’t see most of what’s in the appendix. But understanding how it works does provide some insight about the investigation.
Update: Corrected post to reflect beginning of Volume II as entries from the Presidential Daily Diary.
Witnesses
Update: Here’s a list of my best guesses for the interviews included in Volume I. I’m fairly certain about the identity of the people listed here; I’m fair less certain about where they begin and end. I’ve bolded the people I’m pretty certain have both sealed and unsealed content. I’ve italicized the people who, I think, have only unsealed content. The rest have just sealed content.
This is very rough!!!
GA 2-6: A cop who will testify about the riot.
GA 7-13: Bill Barr, sealed and unsealed.
GA 15: A Chapman/Shirkey related witness.
GA 20: Rusty Bowers.
GA 55-56: A lawyer who worked with Chesebro to deliver fake certificates.
GA 58-59: Probably Alex Cannon, testifying to the quasi campaign role Herschmann had.
GA 62-67: GA Attorney General Christopher Carr.
GA 70-82: Former MI Speaker of the House Lee Chatfield.
GA 97-103: Kenneth Chesebro.
GA 105-122: Pat Cipollone, testifying about things he wasn’t involved in, as well as efforts to get Trump to do something on January 6.
GA 126-?: Justin Clark has both sealed and sealed content. His testimony may extend to where Kellyanne Conway’s begins.
GA 160: Kellyanne Conway. [May be an unsealed only.]
GA 164-5: A fake elector.
GA 166: White House valet.
GA 170: Ruby Freeman.
GA 173: Details of the targeting of PA electors.
GA 175: Details of the riot; possibly Pence’s Secret Service.
GA 180: Stephanie Grisham.
GA 184-189: WI Supreme Court Judge Hagedorn.
GA 190: Vincent Haley, testifying about adding attacks on Pence back into speech.
GA 194 – ??: Where Eric Herschmann begins and ends is tough to tell, but it’s roughly from GA 194 through GA 238.
GA 246-259: Hope Hicks.
GA 261: Chris Hodgson.
GA 266: Greg Jacob. It’s unclearhow much of this is Jacob, but at least through 283.
GA 295-296: Chris Krebs.
GA 297: Amy Kremer.
GA 310-319: Nick Luna.
GA 320: Tom Marino (he dropped off as a fake elector in PA).
GA 323 through 359: It’s unclear how much of this is Ronna McDaniel, but her testimony covers a range of topics.
GA 361 to 368: Mark Meadows. This may go further.
GA 374 until around 397: Jason Miller.
GA 399-406: The then SAC of the Washington Field Office Secret Service office.
GA 405-406: This may be Stephen Miller (in which case the SAC’s last name is Miller too).
GA 411-467: It’s unclear where Mike Pence begins and ends (and where Pat Philbin begins, but something like this.
GA 476: Pat Philbin.
GA 481: Katrina Pierson.
GA 488-495: Fake elector.
GA 497-501: I think this is Reince Priebus.
GA 513: Brad Raffensperger.
GA 517-523: Fake electors.
GA 525-541: Dan Scavino.
GA 550-551: Al Schmidt.
GA 553-578: Mike Shirkey.
GA 578-588: Marc Short.
GA 600: There may be a senior campaign advisor besides Bill Stepien in here.
GA 609: Bill Stepien. [If there is sealed testimony, it may only be a page.]
GA 616-633: Larry Tabas.
GA 634-642: Ross Worthington.
GA 643: Caroline Wren.
After Wren, there may be someone who was involved in calls to Doug Ducey.
As always, inquiring minds want to know.
It is both exhilarating and anxiety-inducing to have this prosecution occurring concomitantly with a bizarrely close and seemingly existential presidential election. Will our democracy perish? Will karma be a bitch? Is orange the new black?
I hope I can be pointed to further readings on musings about how the plethora of post-election voting suits that are already being prepared and filed will impact further actions in this case. How might the release of redaction-free documents prepared by Jack Smith’s prosecution team be affected by suits claiming election fraud?
OT but color me skeptical that the election is close. It’s better to assume that of course but the encouraging early voter numbers likely indicates a significant dem turnout in republican districts PLUS a number of crossover votes. IOW Trump counties in GA that favored him by 75% now at 52. Still a red county but much less so. Fingers crossed.
We’re in very red Ga-14 (Marjorie) and my son had to wait nearly an hour in line to vote yesterday. This on a college football Saturday. I’m thinking there were an awful lot of those radical left voting!
If Trump wins and this suit goes away because of it, redacted stuff will be all we have, Trump is unsure to live cogently for four years, and he will have had his two terms, if surviving or not. Calling the election existential seems extreme, but a Trump win with Vance cemented into being the likely successor in his party will alter the pace of globalization. Trending toward isolationism and “buy American” will slow things, but ultimately in China and here and worldwide, machinery will take over the bulk of commercial activity – manufacturing and trade dealings – to where U.S. consumers will have to learn how to live with more discretionary time but less adult toys and real goods, without going as JD worries, to drugged escapism.
In effect changes will happen, things being different kinetically but not in seeking a tech-altered equilibrium.
That is OT, but responding to an earlier OT speculation.
BOTTOM LINE: Not existential, but kinetic change seems likely from a Republican Party reorientation. The system is fragile in balance and I could be wrong. I believe all world leaders are sane enough to avoid a nuclear war, which *would* be existential, but long term we’re all dead anyway, in geo and cosmic time scales.
One reason this election keeps feeling “more at stake” is because of Trump’s connections to Russia/Putin.
Putin ordered Alexander Litvenenko assassinated via poisoning with radioactive material in 2006. So that puts a floor on what sort of things he’s willing to do, which has something to do with why he did it. We had a report from the Republican-led Senate Intelligence committee, and indictments of Russians who tried to stir up shit in the 2016 election. Do we think they have stopped for some reason?
And yet all this stuff sounds like conspiracy theories, and one aspect of the constant parade of conspiracy theories is that it makes everything less credible. This is a strategy, not a random happenstance.
So yeah, I’ve got a level of anxiety about this that isn’t normal. I’ve lived under Republican presidents a lot, and it usually was mostly annoying.
No other Republican president has talked about terminating the Constitution, joked about staying in office for more than two terms (and actually tried to use guile and force to stay in office after losing), promised to be a dictator on day one, called his domestic opponents and out-groups “vermin” and “evil” and promised to use the DoJ or even the U.S. millitary against them.
If Trump wins its very possible the U.S. will fall into dictatorship before the end of his 2nd term. Anyone who doesn’t take that risk seriously may live to regret it.
Thank you for making the hidden visible.
LOVE this info!
Now, I (sorta’) know what’s going on.
OT: Is Marcy now writing headlines for PBS? It’s got the right sound. :-)
“Trump kicks off a Pennsylvania rally by talking about Arnold Palmer’s genitalia”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-kicks-off-a-pennsylvania-rally-by-talking-about-arnold-palmers-genitalia
Does Elon wash Trump’s balls or vice versa?
Elmo washes Trump’s, Trump washes Putin’s.
Y’know, if deployed properly, “ball-wash” could be the new “sane-wash.”
Just sayin’.
New men’s fragrance: “Trump”. A toxic masculine scent with notes of Musk and fake Chinese leather. Women say they’ve never smelled anything quite like it.
That is verbatim also the AP headline, so I wonder if NPR is, in this case, using AP as a wire service?
Trump: “Arnold Palmer had a big dick.”
Repubs: “Why is the media talking about Arnold Palmer’s dick?”
Trump: “I won 2020.”
Repubs: “Why is the media talking about 2020?”
Trump can now brag he “worked” at McDonalds. Trump Special: $3 fries for $60. Make Americans Healthy and Wealthy Again!
Hope you’re sitting down for this shocker: the whole thing was staged. The McDonalds was closed for several hours so Fox cameras could show Trump “working”. I’m sure he’s convinced this will get under Kamala’s skin.
He is a desperate man.
OK, Ya got me, I couldn’t resist:
*** Do Lies Go With That Fake? ***
(Do Fries Go-With-That-Shake?) P-Funk
https://youtu.be/mm18evaMzJo
She could respond, only in Trump’s America would an almost eighty year old man need to take an entry level job from a younger worker
Drive thru windows are notoriously insecure. I would rather he close it down for a stunt we can all laugh at than have unsuspecting motorists told to get out of their car by antsy SS agents before they could proceed. At least the only ones hurt by his almost certainly unsafe food handling practices were MAGA
I really appreciate [am very much in awe of] how you lay this all out, Marcy!
I did a little digging and documenting [with a lot of help from Savage Librarian]
at the first post on the appendix…could be useful to you or others.
For example, here’s what we did on Volume 1:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/10/18/jack-smiths-appendix/#comment-1074929
And here’s Volume 4:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/10/18/jack-smiths-appendix/#comment-1074882
Here’s the beginning of digging into Volume 2:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/10/18/jack-smiths-appendix/#comment-1074784
And Volume 3:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/10/18/jack-smiths-appendix/#comment-1074786
TY for linking.
FWIW, it’s now clear that DOJ has made the issue of who owns the rally very simple: just the Kremer, Pierson, and Wren stuff we see plainly here.
So all those other people who might be interesting, like Caporale? Not in here.
Ok, great. Thanks for that. Am I understanding correctly that some [most? / all?] of the SEALED sections of Volume 1 may be? / are probably? Grand Jury transcripts of the people we already know?
[There are 7 SEALED pages before the BARR J6C transcript,
and 9 SEALED pages between BARR and Bowers]
GJ or interviews. I hope to address that in my follow=up post.
At least 4 pages before Barr are the same expert cop who has testified in a slew of Jan6 cases. The subject is entirely about the riot.
But at least three of the pages AFTER Barr are from his interview/GJ appearance. Then there’s a Chatfield/Shirkey related witness before Bowers.
Thanks for the insight, Marcy! Looking forward to your continued sleuthing!
I’ve been looking at the courtlistener version which doesn’t seem to have the footnotes. I’ve never been able to see the documentcloud version. But when there is something that has a 3 documentcloud, I can access that. Don’t know why that is, but I feel like I’m missing quite a bit.
Marcy, I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit of a pain in the ass. Not my intention at all, as I hope you know. I’m probably a bit OCD or have PTSD type symptoms sometimes. I think my body is missing that adrenal gland that got removed.
Caroline Wren seems like a piece of work. And the plane in Lakeland, FL that Fancelli let Stone and his Proud Boy friends hitch a ride on is interesting. Lakeland is in Polk county. Weirdly, that is the county where the militia leader who threatened me was located. The white supremacist group (started by David Duke) that my staff, customers, and I encountered used to meet and train with their militia.
Thanks, harpie, for all your excellent questions and work. And, Marcy, I’m ever grateful for your brilliance and fortitude. But I’m especially grateful for your tolerance. Thank you.
In my mind I see 1000 code breakers sitting in front of their machines putting above post all together. It’s scary.
Naturally: Marcy is “The Bombe”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe
Überkewl: Bombe.
Thanks.
I am vastly grateful you take this time and enjoy the puzzle, and expect other readers feel the same.
If I read things you wrote correctly, the brief and exhibits are liner in time. Another puzzle, much more speculative, is if there is a trial how does Smith see presenting evidence which Chutkin sees as unofficial action, in what sequence?
Big picture, Pence first, then filling in detail, or more cumulative and time linear? It is too early to guess, most likely, but keep in mind the trial evidence sequence is a strategic decision once the question of what evidence Chutkin deems unofficial or official — and not too remote – more prejudicial than probative – or otherwise out.
Clearly the evidence pretrial is vast, and getting vetted with some surprise possible but unlikely because SCOTUS required pretrial vetting. Yes/no? Also, what Smith actually uses, vs what he decides to hone out in streamlining will be interesting if there is a trial.
At this stage he is throwing much into pretrial view – but might not choose to use it all. Presenting a snow storm of possible things keeps the defense guessing how to prepare.
In reference to:
GA 62-67: GA Attorney General Christopher Carr.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr was also the chair of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) until he stepped down in protest. Here is an excerpt from the article below. But there is additional valuable information in the article:
“Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr stepped down as RAGA chairman after Bisbee was elected executive director, citing disagreements over the direction of the organization. Carr was also among the minority of Republican attorneys general who did not back Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s failed effort at the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge Joe Biden’s victory in four states, including Georgia.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/publix-heiress-capitol-riot-wren/2021/10/16/34b7d55a-2481-11ec-a6ad-9ee7deda7f34_story.html
“Publix heiress, funder of Jan. 6 rally, gave $150,000 to GOP attorneys general association” – 10/16/21
Billionaire her must think highly of them with that bigly funding.
Darn…now I have to stop shopping at Publix.
I’m already and not buying a Tesla – car, solar roof, or storage batteries – or digging a Boring Hole in my backyard, nor any plans to go into space much less to Mars on SpaceX.
Refuse to subscribe to the NYT, WaPo, and others. Hanging on at X until KH wins and is actually inaugurated next year.
I wish all these MAGAts would and enablers would just move to one state – and secede. But I live in Florida and that is probably where they would go and do that. I hear Texas is nice.
You had ample reason to stop shopping at Publix several years ago when DeSantis and Fancelli worked out some deal when the COVID vaccine first released for distribution to the benefit of wealthy whites.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fabiola-santiago/article248817950.html
This shit may have led to higher death rates among non-white Floridians who couldn’t get the vaccine sooner.
Palm Beach was among the counties served first thanks to the deal Fancelli cut with DeSantis. Gee, who’d also benefit from that distribution map…
These fascists have been killing people for years. Don’t wait to catch them with their hands on people’s necks before you take action.
“Don’t wait to catch them with their hands on people’s necks…”
Our version is “their boots on OUR necks…”
Here’s a new CapitolHunters THREAD re: PAXTON and this election:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1847885351492149699.html
2:19 AM · Oct 20, 2024
Sorry, I’ll bring this to the 10/18 post about the Appendix.
I’ve also put a link there to Hunter Walker’s new article about the J6 pipe bombs.
This CH take is my view also. That’s where a lot of the money is going (besides funding felon Trump’s multiple desperate attempts to evade justice).
Next month is shaping up to be a repetition of Florida in 2000 but on an epic scale: Trump megaphoning “I won, I won” regardless, litigation as contagion, and a reprised Greek chorus of Thomas and Alito-in-place-of-Scalia crooning “stop counting, voting is sooo harmful“.