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The third and last chapter of The Ethics Of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir applies the ideas in the first two chapters to the question how one should respond to oppression and tyranny. She focuses on the responses to the Nazis and to the oppression of the proletariat by the capitalists.

The Aesthetic Attitude

Many Frenchmen also sought relief in this thought in 1940 and the years which followed. “Let’s try to take the point of view of history,” they said upon learning that the Germans had entered Paris. And during the whole occupation certain intellectuals sought to keep “aloof from the fray” and to consider impartially contingent facts which did not concern them. Pp. 75-6.

De Beauvoir calls this the aesthetic attitude, and says it is merely flight from reality. In the real world, we are all in this together. What happens to others is our concern. Our freedom exists only in the presence and freedom of others. The aesthetic attitude is an effort to hide from the reality of our own freedom. These people aren’t free: they are locked in a tiny bubble of like-minded cowards (my word, not de Beauvoir’s), people afraid of the existential truth of human existence in the moment of crisis.

She says that the responsibility of the intellectual, the artist, and the critic is to create awareness of existential freedom as a common goal for all humanity, and to encourage everyone to accept the demands of that freedom in the face of tyranny.

How can we do that today? It seems to me that the people carrying whistles and filming the thugs attacking my neighbors in Chicago demonstrate their freedom and challenge to the rest of us to exercise our freedom as best we can. [As a former lawyer I remind everyone that if the goons arrest you while you’re demonstrating your freedom, STFU.]

Freedom And Liberation

The next two sections take up the ethics of dealing with oppression and tyranny. She says we must resist both, with violence if necessary. De Beauvoir follows Kant’s assertion that we are not to treat other people as means to our ends, or as objects, as we would a lump of coal, but as ends in themselves, autonomous creatures acting from their own freedom.

De Beauvoir conflates the ideas of tyranny and oppression, but there’s a useful distinction. The capitalist system is oppressive, in the Marxian sense. The capitalists extract most of the wealth created by systems of production. They claim that this is the natural order of things, and that nothing can be done to correct it. I tell that story in this post.

The oligarchs tell their story everywhere, and vilify every competing story as socialist or communist while never taking it on seriously. This is a standard tactic of the dominant class, as we saw reading Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, as here.

Outside the workplace, the proles are free to pursue their own projects. De Beauvoir is contemptuous of many of those projects, seeing them as tools of further oppression:

… the trick of “enlightened” capitalism is to make [the worker] forget about his concern with genuine justification, offering him, when he leaves the factory where a mechanical job absorbs his transcendence, diversions in which this transcendence ends by petering out: there you have the politics of the American employing class which catches the worker in the trap of sports, “gadgets,” autos, and frigidaires. Pp. 87-88.

Tyranny is better seen as the domination of a social order by one person who treats all others as ends, fit only to fulfill the desires of the tyrant. Tyrants can limit the freedom of every individual in all aspects of their lives at all times, whether or not they choose to do so.

The difference between these two is reflected in the means used to resist. Oppression operates largely by mystification. People are acculturated to the capitalist system from birth, and have no means to construct an alternate view or attract a significant number of people even to question it. Thus this post. But this kind of change only occurs when enough people are ready to move into a different form of economic organization, Violence won’t make anyone change their minds about capitalism.

Tyranny either dies when the tyrant’s line dies out, as with Soviet Russia, or it is resisted with violence, as with Hitler and Mussolini. Treating the tyrants and their minions as objects is necessary if we are to remove their ability to restrict the freedom of ourselves and others. And it is fully justified.

The desirable thing would be to re-educate [them]; it would be necessary to expose the mystification and to put the men who are its victims in the presence of their freedom. But the urgency of the struggle forbids this slow labor. We are obliged to destroy not only the oppressor but also those who serve him, whether they do so out of ignorance or out of constraint. P. 98.

The Future

De Beauvoir says that the struggle for freedom is never-ending. In part this is the necessary result of her notion of freedom as generating new ways to be human, opening new futures for all. But also it results from the fact that we are merely human, and thus operate under many different forces. Many people will not accept their freedom, some will not accept new freedoms, others will accept it partially, as with the Adventurer, and still others will use it for their own private ends. Some will use it to oppress or tyrannize others. Some will not be willing to see themselves as oppressors in the Capitalist System or otherwise. The future is open, but only if we make it so.

Conclusion

One problem with reading texts like this one is the nagging feeling of elitism they generate. Throughout this book, de Beauvoir is judgmental. The descriptions of her categories is a good example, as is her snide comment on Frigidaires above. In the end, she seems to say that most people will never achieve her notion of freedom, but that it is the goal of people like her to show everyone their freedom and let them choose. Should we characterize that as elitism? If so, is that bad, or just annoying to people unwilling to cope with her level of abstraction?

In the end, I don’t see answers to the question I raised at the outset: what should we do to defeat rising fascism. We see signposts for a bad future in Arendt and Polyani but we don’t see off-ramps. We get ideas about how people think in other readings. We see responses and justifications for those responses in de Beauvoir. It’s disappointing that the best minds of that era have no answers for their future readers. But there we are. People who want their freedom will find a way. Maybe it starts with whistles.

 

The arrest affidavit for Brian Cole, the 30 year old guy charged as the pipe bomber today, is here.

The evidence consists of:

Phone records placing him on Capitol Hill at the time the FBI believes the bombs to have been placed.

The seven transactions between the COLE CELLPHONE and Provider’s towers occurred at approximately 7:39 p.m., 7:44 p.m., 7:59 p.m., 8:14 p.m., 8:23 p.m., and 8:24 p.m. Two transactions took place at 7:39 p.m. During this time period, the COLE CELLPHONE had transactions with five different sectors on Provider’s cell towers.

a. At approximately 7:39:27 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE interacted with a particular sector of Provider tower 59323, which faces southeast (approximately 120˚) from its location at 103 G Street, Southwest in Washington, D.C. (“Sector A”). Also at 7:39:27 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE interacted with a particular sector of Provider tower 126187, which faces east1 (approximately 90˚) from its location at 200 Independence Avenue, Southwest in Washington, D.C. (“Sector B”). Video surveillance footage shows that at approximately 7:39:32 p.m., the individual who placed the pipe bombs walked westbound on D Street, Southeast and then turned southbound on South Capitol Street, Southeast. These locations are consistent with the coverage areas of Sector A and B.

b. At approximately 7:44:36 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE interacted with Sector B of Provider tower 126187. Video surveillance footage shows that at approximately 7:44:36 p.m., the individual who placed the pipe bombs walked east on Ivy Street, Southeast. This location is consistent with the coverage area of Sector B.

c. At approximately 7:59:36 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE interacted with a particular sector of Provider tower 147990 which faces south (approximately 180˚) from its location at 200 Independence Avenue, Southwest in Washington, D.C. (“Sector C”). Video surveillance footage shows that at approximately 7:59:38 p.m., the individual who placed the pipe bombs walked southbound on New Jersey Avenue, Southeast then turned eastbound on E Street, Southeast. These locations are consistent with the coverage area of Sector C.

d. At approximately 8:14:36 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE interacted with Provider tower 45111 which faces west (approximately 255˚) from its location at 101 Independence Avenue, Southeast in Washington, D.C. (“Sector D”). Video surveillance footage shows that at approximately 8:14:15 p.m., the individual who placed the pipe bombs exited Rumsey Court and walked westbound through an alley between the Capitol Hill Club and the RNC then walked northbound onto First Street, Southeast. This location is consistent with the coverage area of Sector D.

e. At approximately 8:23:59 p.m. and 8:24:06 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE interacted with Provider tower 144340, which faces west (approximately 295˚) from its location at 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Southeast in Washington, D.C. (“Sector E”). Video surveillance footage last captures the individual who placed the pipe bombs at 8:18 p.m. walking eastbound on Rumsey Court in the direction of tower 144340, which is approximately 1/2 mile east of the individual’s last recorded location. The last recorded location is consistent with the coverage area of Sector E.

A license plate reader showing his car arriving at Capitol Hill that evening.

On January 5, 2021, at approximately 7:10 p.m., COLE’s Nissan Sentra was observed driving past a License Plate Reader at the South Capitol Street exit from Interstate 395 South, which is less than one-half mile from the location where the individual who placed the devices was first observed on foot near North Carolina and New Jersey Avenues, Southeast at 7:34 p.m. Approximately 5 minutes later, at 7:39:27 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE began to interact with Provider towers in the area.

Purchases of components consistent with the construction of the pipebombs, including paying cash for a battery connector consistent with the pipe bombs in 2019.

Both pipe bombs were manufactured using a nine-volt (9V) battery connector with attached red and black wires. The nine-volt battery connectors used in the pipe bombs had identifying information on the black and red insulated wires that were consistent with those distributed in North America by a known company and its predecessors (the “Nine Volt Distributor”). COLE purchased five of the Nine Volt Distributor’s nine-volt battery connectors from Micro Center in northern Virginia on or about November 12 and December 28, 2019, including cash purchases made during the December transaction. Fewer than 8,000 of Nine Volt Distributor’s nine-volt battery connectors were distributed in the United States between December 2017 and January 5, 2021. [my emphasis]

A purchase made across the street from the alley way on December 14.

Approximately three weeks before the pipe bombs were placed, on or about December 14, 2020, COLE made a purchase at a restaurant located near First and D Streets, Southeast. The restaurant is located across the street from the entrance to Rumsey Court on D Street, Southeast.

There’s nothing that ties those weird sneakers to Cole at all. [Corrected]

Certainly, he’s a candidate, and should have been IDed as such in 2021. But the affidavit lacks the kind of thing we saw all the time in real January 6 affidavits: Personal communications. Signs of planning in the period after Trump announced the rally. While there are a bunch of components purchased in November 2020, after the election, there’s not a single data point in the affidavit between when Trump announced the rally on December 19 and when Cole was on Capitol Hill on January 5, 2021.

Surely, FBI has already obtained warrants for all that and it is at least consistent with someone who had been playing with bomb-making for two years before placing these bombs.

But they’re not telling what’s in them.

You get the feeling they might not tell the story Kash Patel and Pam Bondi want to tell. What if finding the pipe bomber gets them fired, just like responding competently to COVID got Anthony Fauci fired and targeted?

DOJ has assigned Jocelyn Ballantine to this case. You may recall that she made false claims in support of efforts to throw out the Mike Flynn case in 2020.

Update: Per Ryan Reilly, Cole (who wouldn’t have been assigned an attorney yet) told the FBI that he believed in 2020 election fraud claims.

DOD IG has released the unclassified version of the report confirming what was clear months ago: Whiskey Pete Hegseth has no business leading DOD.

He was wildly uncooperative with the investigation, refusing to be interviewed, refusing to let DOD inspect his phone, refusing to turn over other threads.

But Whiskey Pete may not look quite as stupid as JD Vance.

You see, Whiskey Pete turned over the Signal chat that was left on his phone after all the autodeleting these scofflaws had been doing. Most of the thread was gone. But there was a single text that post-dated Jeffrey Goldberg’s departure from the list, something the Deputy General Counsel used to suggest the Atlantic thread might not be reliable (a claim DOD IG refused to put in the body of the report because, some people still refuse bullshit).

After Jeff Goldberg left the group, JD Vance said, “This chat’s kind of dead. Anything going on?”

One after another participant on the thread changed their ID, perhaps in hopes … I don’t know what they fuck they were thinking.

These are dumb people.

No one more so, though, than JD.

Unless DOJ disguised him, the hack of John Bolton described in his indictment didn’t show up in the Iranian hack-and-leak indictment. It should have. After listing the 2022 attempt to assassinate Bolton (where he is described as “a former US National Security Advisor,” the indictment lists a slew of people that Iran IRGC attempted to hack (starting in 2020) and (starting in 2021) nine people it succeeded in hacking before it hacked Roger Stone and four other Trump flunkies.

Bolton should have, could have, been included along with those nine people.

As the (nifty color-coded) timeline below makes clear, Bolton told the FBI about the hack of him, on July 6, 2021, just as the Iranian hackers were setting up infrastructure to hack a set of people that include those, like Bolton, who played a role in the Qasem Soleimani assassination and Trump’s hardline first term approach with Iran.

To be sure, there are potentially good reasons why Bolton is not in there. There’s a sealed notice of related case in the Bolton docket (at docket entry 6), which could reflect charges against the people who hacked him, charges that might have been filed shortly after he alerted the FBI about the hack. Prosecutors could have left Bolton out to obscure that he told the FBI about the hack (and that therefore the FBI had been working backwards from that ever since, which is consistent with the timeline). Prosecutors could have left Bolton out because the criminal investigation into him remained open.

All plausible reasons to leave him out.

But when you put the hack and assassination targeting of Bolton on the same timeline as the hack-and-leak targeting first fellow Iran hawks and then the Trump campaign, as well as the second alleged assassination attempt by Asif Merchant, all presumed to be IRGC, it raises further questions.

First, one reason I was interested in Merchant’s disclosure yesterday that he was under surveillance from the moment he arrived in the US in April 2024 is because it suggests US spies were already well aware of the efforts to retaliate for the Soleimani killing. Indeed, the timeline explains how the FBI was magically able to get CHSes in both the Shahram Poursafi and the Asif Merchant attempt to hire hit squads to target Bolton and others: the FBI identified those people via those intercepts and flipped them early on in the plot.

It does raise questions about whether the FBI also knew of the hack-and-leak targeting Bolton in advance. The FBI would have been tracking the IRGC closely after their 2020 effort to attack Democrats under the guise of the Proud Boys (an earlier plot that makes the targeting of Proud Boy ally Roger Stone more interesting).

There is some separation between these two plots. While Poursafi eventually had access to non-public intelligence targeting Bolton, he didn’t even know Bolton’s home address at first, which he would have known if he had the emails stolen from Bolton available to him. But the hack-and-leak indictment, at least, lists as one of the goals of the hacking campaign, “to advance the IRGC’s malign activities, including ongoing efforts to avenge the death of Qasem Soleimani,” and the first hack included, of someone at State who led the Abraham Accords, implies that’s how they used, “travel, lodging and other information” from someone who was “a senior U.S. Department of State official at the time of Qasem Soleimani’s death and therefore of interest to the IRGC.” Near the tail end of the Poursafi complaint, so just weeks before the hack of that victim, Poursafi turned to another target.

But that’s the other reason this timeline is of such interest. The progression with Bolton went Hack > Extortion > Assassination Attempt. Bolton could simply have cooperated with the IRGC, but instead he went to the FBI (which has now led to his prosecution).

Trump, however did not.

It was over two months between the time hackers got into Roger Stone’s Hotmail account in May 2024 and the time the hack became public. In July, when they first became aware of the hack, the campaign affirmatively decided not to report it to the FBI.

Trump’s mistrust of federal agencies has complicated the investigation into Iran’s cyberattack on his campaign. When a technology firm first discovered the breach, campaign aides huddled to discuss what they should do. After hours of discussions in July, they decided they trusted the software experts to handle the matter and did not call the FBI. Co-campaign manager Susie Wiles, whose email account was targeted, was among those who questioned whether they could trust the Justice Department. The fears centered on giving federal officials access to campaign email servers and whether they would leak information out publicly.

As I noted at the time, Trump made that decision after relentlessly (and falsely) accusing the FBI of failing to get the server from the DNC hack. The decision was understandable (once you account for Trump’s venality and paranoia), because according to the initial reports, the hackers claim to have gotten information on Trump’s legal cases, not just his campaign.

The sender would not speak on the telephone with a Post reporter but indicated they had access to additional information, including internal campaign emails and documents related to Trump’s court cases.

And one reason that’s interesting is because — as Reuters disclosed only this summer — the lawyer targeted in the attack was Lindsey Halligan, who had no public role on the campaign but who did represent Trump on the stolen documents case.

In online chats with Reuters on Sunday and Monday, the hackers, who go by the pseudonym Robert, said they had roughly 100 gigabytes of emails from the accounts of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Trump lawyer Lindsey Halligan, Trump adviser Roger Stone and porn star-turned-Trump antagonist Stormy Daniels.

Which brings me back to Merchant, to the delay in turning over his own conversations until October 28.

Two public things might explain that delay (there are no doubt a bunch of secret things that could too): The conviction of Ryan Routh, who did have Iranian ties, though no Iranian role in his assassination attempt was publicly disclosed, and the indictment of Bolton, which disclosed that Bolton alerted the FBI to this hack back in 2021, just months before the FBI would preempt an assassination effort targeting Bolton as well.

The FBI took far greater efforts to rein in any publication of the materials stolen from Trump’s people than they ever have on another leak save WikiLeaks’ biggest document dumps. I can’t help but wonder whether there’s more about the Trump hack we weren’t told.

Timeline

December 19, 2018: Hackers establish account using Israeli politician’s name.

April 15, 2019: IRGC designated as FTO.

January 3, 2020: Trump kills Qasem Soleimani.

April 11, 2020: Hackers get an account in the name of a SCOTUS spouse.

October 22, 2020: Treasury sanctions IRGC for tampering in 2020 election.

June 16, 2021: Bolton and DOJ enter settlement on book.

July 6, 2021: Bolton representative tells FBI Iran has hacked Bolton.

July 7, 2021: Hackers register fake domain mailerdaemon.online.

July 25, 2021: Hacker threatens to release Bolton materials.

I do not think you would be interested in the FBI being aware of the leaked content of John’s email (some of which have been attached), especially after the recent acquittal. 

This could be the biggest scandal since Hillary’s emails were leaked, but this time on the GOP side!

Contact me before it’s too late…

July 28, 2021: Bolton representative tells FBI about threat.

July 29, 2021: Bolton rep tells FBI he would delete account.

August 5, 2021: Iran threatens Bolton again.

OK John … As you want (apparently), we’ll disseminate the expurgated sections of your book by reference to your leaked email…

October 22, 2021: Shahram Poursafi asks Individual A to photograph Bolton. Individual A suggests CHS.

November 9, 2021: Hackers register fake domain mailer-daemon.live. CHS contacts Poursafi; Poursafi asks if he could hire someone to “eliminate someone.”

November 14: Poursafi tells CHS he doesn’t need pictures anymore. After searching for it online, Poursafi provides Bolton’s DC office address with name of scheduling assistant.

November 18: Poursafi note with Bolton’s name, website, social media handle, and former title.

November 19: CHS asks for home address and asks how to do it.

November 21: Poursafi ups the payment to $300,000.

November 23: CHS tells Poursafi he traveled from Texas to DC; Poursafi still did not have home address, but that Bolton walked or was driven to work.

December 7, 2021: Poursafi says because of a recent failed operation, Iran did not approve payment.

December 10, 2021: Poursafi told the CHS that Bolton didn’t go outside often.

December 12, 2021: Hackers register tinyurl.ink.

December 14, 2021: Hackers create persona based on DC think tank employee and phish State employee (Victim 1). 

December 16, 2021: Poursafi asked CHS to refer to Bolton by name “Benham.”

December 20, 2021: With Bolton’s consent, CHS sent pictures of Bolton leaving his office.

December 22, 2021: Poursafi sends picture of cash he claims is for CHS.

January 3, 2022: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi says Trump and other high ranking Trump officials need to face trial for Soleimani killing. Poursafi tells CHS the murder was not timed to coincide with anniversary of Soleimani death. Poursafi says he has a source who says Bolton is at home.

January 5, 2022: CHS tells Poursafi he would do the job on January 16 or 17.

January 7, 2022: IRGC head Esmail Ghani promises revenge.

January 10, 2022: CHS asks if Ghani’s speech was a reference to this job.

January 15, 2022: CHS claims to have three vans. Poursafi warns not to talk operational details on phone, instructs CHS to crush phone and/or change Poursafi contact to “Mark” in it.

January 18, 2022: CHS sent Poursafi public information stating that Bolton might be traveling; Poursafi said that Bolton was not. “The information does not appear to have been publicly available. POURSAFI did not specify whether his source was a person conducting surveillance, a cyber intrusion, or another type of source.”

January 20, 2022: Poursafi told CHS Bolton did not have a body guard, had not yet left town.

January 28, 2022: Poursafi instructs CHS to get surveillance cameras for Bolton’s home and office.

January 29, 2022: Poursafi instructs CHS to restore social media account.

February 1, 2022: Poursafi told CHS the area around Bolton’s home was clear.

April 13, 2022: Poursafi pushes CHS to do a second job.

April 28, 2022: Poursafi told CHS to finish the second job in six days.

April 30, 2022: Hackers create another persona, persona 3.

May 9, 2022: Jalili accesses persona 3 account, other hackers arrive in office, send test message to book author.

May 31, 2022: Hackers register mailer-daemon.me.

June 18, 2022: Hackers create persona 4, phish victim 1.

August 2, 2022: Hackers create spoof of think tank, with two more personas.

August 5, 2022: Shahram Poursafi complaint.

August 6, 2022: Hackers start stealing from victim 1, including his passport.

Early August 2022: Hackers create persona based on DC journalist/think tanker (victim 4).

August 23, 2022: Victim 4 responds to phish.

August 29, 2022 through October 5, 2022: Hackers hack former Homeland Security Advisor (Victim 5).

October 4, 2022: Hackers pose as assistant to Victim 1 to contact peace organization employee (Victim 2), using stolen passport and get Victim 2 to buy business class ticket for Victim 1.

October 26, 2022: Hackers used Victim 1 passport to query about UAE conference.

November 23, 2022: Hackers create persona based on UAE embassy employee in DC, then use account to invite Victim 1, a former senior CIA person (Victim 6), a former US Ambassador to Israel (Victim 7), and a former Deputy CIA Director (Victim 8) as well as other targeted persons to a party at UAE embassy.

December 20, 2022 to January 23, 2022: Hackers compromise Victim 6’s personal email.

January 16, 2023: Hackers create encrypted app account in the name of DC think tank employee and phish Iranian Human Rights worker (Victim 9).

April 2024: Hackers try to phish Victim 5.

April 13, 2024: Merchant arrives in Houston.

April 22, 2024: Merchant pitches CHS on business.

May 23, 2024: Hackers attempt to log into Roger Stone’s account.

May 24 ,2024: Hackers use recovery code to access Stone’s account.

June 3-4, 2024: Merchant presents plan.

June 10, 2024: Merchant and CHS meet fake hitmen.

June 12, 2024: Hackers access Stone’s account and access campaign official (Victim 11).

June 13, 2024: Merchant establishes code.

June 15, 2024: Hackers use Stone’s account to attempt to phish Victim 13 (Susie Wiles?).

June 18, 2024: Merchant arranges payment with US-based associate.

June 20, 2024: Hackers hack a second Stone account.

June 21, 2024: Via WhatsApp Merchant’s cousin arranges payment.

June 27, 2024: Hackers send Trump debate prep to two people on Biden’s campaign; neither responded.

July 3, 2024: Hackers send Trump info to another Biden associate; that person did not respond.

July 12, 2024: Merchant arrest.

July 20, 2024: Hackers use 2FA hack to access Trump lawyer [Lindsey Halligan?], Victim 12.

July 22, 2024: Hackers started pitching content to journalists, including by pitching one journalist on things campaign official said to Susie Wiles about that journalist’s reporting.

August 9, 2024: Microsoft report on Iran hack.

August 10, 2024: Politico reports hack; WaPo follows.

August 13, 2024: Hackers ousted from Victim 11 account and Victim 12 account.

August 14, 2024: Google report on Iran hack.

August 31, 2024: Hackers pitch more journalists (including me).

September 24, 2024: Iran hack-and-leak indictment.

October 2, 2024: FISA notice in Merchant prosecution.

December 20, 2024: Initial CIPA request in Merchant prosecution.

July 1, 2025: Hackers attempt to sell Susie Wiles, Lindsey Halligan, Stone, and Stormy Daniel emails.

July 11, 2025: CIPA filing in Merchant prosecution.

August 11, 2025: CIPA meeting in Merchant prosecution.

September 23, 2025: Ryan Routh guilty verdict.

October 18, 2025: Bolton indicted.

October 28, 2025: Delayed discovery provided in Merchant prosecution.

November 12, 2025: Ex parte communication in Merchant prosecution.

 

---

Purple: Shahram Poursafi complaint

Blue: Iran hack-and-leak indictment

Pink: Asif Merchant complaint

Green: Bolton prosecution

 

Asif Merchant wants EDNY to provide all the spying the FBI did targeting him — or at least the spying that they say matches the calls he made while they were surveilling him.

As you’ll recall, Merchant is the Pakistani guy that EDNY arrested in July 2024 for allegedly soliciting someone to kill political targets, possibly including Donald Trump. Since then, Merchant has been sitting in prison, under communication restrictions, awaiting trial, which is currently scheduled for February 23, 2026. On October 2, 2024, DOJ informed Merchant they used FISA to find him. Just over a year ago, on December 20, 2024, DOJ kicked off the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) process. It filed a CIPA Section 4 motion (where the government asks to withhold certain materials that aren’t relevant or helpful to the defense) on July 11, and met with Judge Eric Komitee about it on August 11, after which point Komitee ordered the government to provide the materials they had discussed with the Court Information Security Officer.

In a letter asking the judge to intervene in a discovery dispute, Merchant’s lawyers reveal that the initial story DOJ told — that the guy Merchant asked to help him find a hit squad simply went to the FBI which is where the FBI first learned of the plot — is inaccurate. In fact, Merchant was under FISA surveillance even before he arrived in the United States in April 2024 and he was closely surveilled the entire time he was in the US.

Discovery has revealed that Asif was under investigation before he arrived in the United States, and he was under surveillance from the moment he arrived in this country. In addition, Asif was the subject of electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”). (See Notice of Intent to Use ForeignIntelligence Surveillance Act, Docket Entry No. 20). As a result, the government is in possession of his communications which it obtained through this electronic surveillance. In addition, Asif was also under surveillance by teams of agents. The government produced reports from these surveillance teams, which indicate that Asif was constantly speaking on his phone. In addition, Asif was also under surveillance by teams of agents. The government produced reports from these surveillance teams, which indicate that Asif was constantly speaking on his phone. The government also set-up a hidden camera in a hotel room where he stayed for a number of days, which also indicates that Asif made a number of calls on his cellphone (though the calls can be difficult to hear). Both the surveillance reports and the hidden camera cover only a portion of the time between Asif’s entry into the United States and his arrest. 

On November 8, 2024, the government produced five recordings of Asif’s intercepted telephone calls. On October 28, 2025,1 Defendant received sixty-four additional audio-recordings of Asif’s telephone calls from the government. These sixty-nine recordings, however, do not match up with the phone calls noted in the surveillance reports. Moreover, given the frequency with which Asif used his phone while under surveillance and while his phone was subject to monitoring (as can be observed on the surveillance videos produced by the government, for example), the government is likely in possession of many additional recordings that have not been produced. In addition to the sixty-four recordings, the October 21, 2025, production included a number of FBI reports that were redacted.

1 The government’s cover-letter is dated October 21, 2025. (See Docket Entry No.60).

Among the many concerns Merchant’s lawyers raised was why they didn’t get this discovery until October 28 (with a letter dated October 21).

During the November 25, 2025, meet and confer, the Defense (1) expressed concerns about the timing of the October 28, 2025, production and asked why the government had not produced the recordings at an earlier date, since they appear to have been in the government’s possession throughout the pendency of this case;

But his attorneys are also asking for all the intercepts of Merchant, particularly those that match with the surveillance of him.

Both the surveillance reports and the camera recording indicate that he used his cellphone constantly. The recordings produced by the government, however, do not match the communications which occurred during the surveillance. In other words, many more recordings of Asif should exist that correspond to telephone calls noted in the reports or indicated by the footage. Second, the additional recordings are material. Asif is accused of coordinating anti-American activity and assassinations on behalf of a foreign government over the course of the approximately three months he was in the United States. The content of the recordings is relevant to show his actual activity during that time period, and the government’s refusal to produce the recordings implies that these communications do not constitute evidence of the alleged plot. On the other hand, the additional recordings would show him engaging in activity and discussing matters unrelated to the allegations in this case.

Probably, these problems simply reflect a delayed CIPA decision that they had to share the intercepts and incompetence, possibly arising from the competence drain under Trump.

But the revelation that the FBI was watching Merchant when he arrive in April 2024 is interesting for a slew of reasons, which I’ll return to.

Where Murder Dances With Law

A while back, maybe a decade and change ago during the Obama administration, I was drinking with some nerdy friends in a San Francisco hackerspace. We got to talking about National Security law, hacktivism, and terrorism. I had been Wired’s correspondent on Anonymous, and probably understood The hacktivist collective better than anyone. They had recently tore through the net, hacking companies and governments like they were wet paper towels. I was explaining to my fellow nerds that Anonymous was very similar to Al-Qaeda. Though in form only, not in content.

There was no crossover between the shit-talking data “liberators” I had embedded with in 2011/12 and the religious extremist terrorist group founded by Osama bin Laden. They had no members in common, (that I ever knew of) and the ethos of the two groups were so far apart as to not just be in opposition, but to be mutually unintelligible.

A lawyer friend also drinking with us explained that US law struggled to categorize these kinds of leaderless collectives. Al-Qaeda has leaders, but they’re more the winners of a local popularity contest than they are formally appointed, ordained, coronated, or what not.

The answer legislators came up to deal with these groups with was a bit of legalistic nailing jello to a wall. Much like Anonymous, if you wanted to go start your own Al-Qaeda cell, you just did it. It was entirely possible that as an Al-Qaeda terrorist, you would talk your friends into doing some terrorism with you. Then presumably go and blow something up, possibly yourself, possibly random innocent victims, or both.

Anons also would pick a target, usually a perceived terrible company or government, and try to hack the hell out of it. They’d bring down servers, steal secret data and dump it on the net for anyone to see, jam the websites of badly behaved companies, and so forth.

By being essentially more internet/media brand than traditional organization, both Al-Qaeda and Anonymous were particularly hard to prosecute as a group, or even legislate against. They were collectives architected by speech acts, mostly on the internet. Law enforcement could and did go after both groups, but to do so they had to find someone breaking a law and pursue them for that one single act of law breaking.

Unlike the Mob or a criminal gang, there was no illicit organization to target, there was just “the memes.” When you caught one Anon, you caught exactly one Anon. Even in the case of the notorious Anonymous operation run by the FBI, they only managed to arrest one person. (That was a shit show, mainly put together to make Shawn Henry’s exit from the FBI and move over to Crowdstrike as lucrative as possible, as far as I could tell.)

Lawmakers eventually found a way around the strange status of groups like Al-Qaeda, but it was pretty terrible lawmaking. To make a very long set of laws and recent history very short, the provision basically amounted to this: if you called yourself Al-Qaeda, you were Al-Qaeda. That meant you could be killed, on sight, without due process, because you were Al-Qaeda. That name meant that you were an enemy of the state.

I found this situation so absurd that I started the Radical Queer Wing of Al-Qaeda. I was curious how I could be (theoretically) the most murderable non-combatant possible, both by my own government and a terrorist organization. We (mostly me) were a pretty tame branch of Al-Qaeda.  All our bombs were glitter bombs, and we touted ourselves as the most fabulous of the Al-Qaedas. Straight people were not allowed to join our Al-Qaeda, but they could hang, if they were cool.

The lawyer friend (who declined our offer to join the Radical Queer Wing of Al-Qaeda, as he was straight and also definitely not going to do that) confirmed that, yes, maybe, even probably, I could be killed on sight, without due process, under the existing law. He pressed me to make sure I understood that no one was going to do that, it would simply never happen or even come up. This was all a hypothetical. “But they could,” I replied, “And that’s the important part!” The weirdly violent ridiculousness of the situation was the point.

We all continued drinking. Later, I had a few Radical Queer Wing of Al-Qaeda brunches at my co-living space in San Francisco, before getting bored and running off to find new ways to get in fights with, and make fun of, my government.

A 21st Century of Rot

George Bush’s 2001 PATRIOT act had so many horrific provisions to fight and make fun of, and even as some parts were repealed, others persisted into future administrations, and still others became not just part of law, but also part of culture. The War on Terror normalized killing the bad guys, because they were bad. Because we were told they were bad. Americans mostly learned not to question their badness, or the slow and sneaky erosion of our rights to the presumption of innocence.

Obama not only kept the PATRIOT Act provisions in place, he expanded them, including the open killing of children. Obama loved murder by drone. Famously, he killed a 16-year-old American citizen, Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, a few days after he’d already killed the kid’s father. Killing people with drones in the Obama era became common enough that it didn’t really make the news after a while. Obama seemed to have loved a good techno-assassination.

He held “Terror Tuesdays” every week where he’d work with staff to pick a new person to kill. Presumably, what Trump calls “bad hombres,” but are, one way or another, still people. They were people we were once required to provide with due process, to be presumed innocent if arrested, be they citizens of the United States or not, because that’s who we were supposed to be. But now we call it war, and then murder some guys because they’re in boats off the coast of Venezuela.

Well before Trump, we had left the principles of the Fifth Amendment (due process) dying in a ditch. He’s gone on to attack free speech. Trump shat on the right to assemble (using AI), denied literally thousands the right to trial before forced deportation. He even tried to strike out birthright citizenship with a stroke of his sharpie. His government has engaged in unreasonable searches and seizures. Trump has tried to confiscate the rights of both the people and the States. Trump did not merely come to weaken Bill of Rights, he came to destroy it altogether. In this task, he has faced barely any resistance, in part because the last few presidents loosened the bolts on the system for him.

No one should be surprised at this point that Whiskey Pete Hegseth kills people with impunity. He’s tacked on “terrorist” to a narco- prefix to make the whole thing look vaguely legal, as if that one magical word abrogates all human rights. But “Narco-terrorist” is just a term he made up to justify what remains murder. That is what is going on in the Caribbean. It’s the logical conclusion of what I was trying to parody all those years ago with my Al-Qaeda glitter bombs — laws that allow for extrajudicial killing, based on the slippery idea that anything we don’t like is terrorism, can only arrive at the place we are now. It’s not quite within legal regimes, but colored by laws that seem to contradict the Constitution in both meaning and plain language.

But here we are, and here is where we have to come back from.

Pete Hegseth’s campaign of terror against poor fishermen in the Caribbean may have taken us out of the rule of law more than any other single act, but Bush and Obama prepared the ground for Trump. This situation would be recognizable to the Founding Fathers as the kind of thing that we rebelled against those centuries ago.

Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda never really had the power to destroy America, anymore than gays or communists did. But he invited us to destroy ourselves. Standing on the shoulders of the last few administrations, Trump has taken up bin Laden’s dream of making America into a pseudo-religious hellscape of gerontocratic corruption and vice, just with more fake Jesus and less fake Muhammad.

It’s Not Too Late for US

We don’t have to settle for this. We can save America. Somewhere beneath the layers of corporate corruption, bigotry, and jingoism, we still have values. We are often good neighbors. Americans have some of the highest rates of volunteerism in the world — we don’t just sit at home, we work the problems around us, and we go work abroad. We donate, but we also get off our butts and help people. To defeat that, the ghouls running our government have tried to convince us that no one else matters. Right now, we have to remember who we are and take care of each other. We have to protect ourselves and our communities against the avaricious.

This administration tried to make us selfish. But they are failing. According to polling by YouGov and the Economist, Trump has 38% approval, and falling. The message that we should work together to make our world a better place was key to Zohran Mamdani’s recent win in New York, and it’s key to how we rally Americans against this venal administration. But it does mean we have to look past our own troubles and begin to engage in community together.

Trump voters voted on prices more than anything else. They didn’t see the larger picture, but it’s coming into focus now.

Donald Trump’s grand bet is that our selfishness will keep us weak and atomized, but we can prove him wrong. When we reach out and take care of each other, when we organize, rally, and commit, we build the community we need to defeat this rising darkness.

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A previous version of this piece described Obama as targeting Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, which was incorrect He was killed in a targeted attack, but he was not the target himself. I regret the error.

I’ve written several times (one, two, three) about the possibility that Maurene Comey’s wrongful termination lawsuit might provide transparency on DOJ’s larger weaponization against people like her father.

But (aside from vindication for Ms. Comey), I always conceived it in terms of the specific disclosures it might bring. Because she claims she was fired because of Trump’s gripes about her father, if the lawsuit survives motion to dismiss, Ms. Comey might well get more details of how Trump installed his Insurance Lawyer just in time to try to prosecute her father. (Indeed, Judge Jesse Furman, who presides over this case, suggested in an order he might grant Ms. Comey discovery before the motion to dismiss.)

A filing submitted in advance of a hearing scheduled for tomorrow reveals it may be more than that.

As part of a discussion in defense of suing now, before Merit Systems Protection Board adjudicates her case, Ms. Comey revealed a lot of what has been going on at MSPB, which normally would review Civil Service violations like her firing.

It starts by arguing that MSPB cannot adjudicate novel legal issues, such as whether the President can unilaterally ignore the Civil Service Reform Act.

[T]he MSPB lacks expertise to adjudicate this novel dispute: whether, as the government will likely argue, Article II of the Constitution overrides a federal employee’s rights under the Civil Service Reform Act (“CSRA”) and the Bill of Rights. See, e.g., Jackler v. DOJ, MSPB DA-0752-25-0330-I-1, DOJ submission, available at: https://washingtonlitigationgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Jackler-Motion.pdf. Because this case raises foundational constitutional questions with respect to the separation of powers, the MSPB is not the appropriate forum for this dispute. See Axon Enterprise Inc. v. Federal Trade Commission, 598 U.S. 175, 195-96 (2023) (district court retains jurisdiction over “collateral” claims “outside the [agency’s] sphere of expertise”); Thunder Basin Coal Co. v. Reich, 510 U.S. 200, 212, 214-215 (1994) (claims not of type Congress intended to be reviewed within statutory structure if “wholly collateral” to statute’s review provisions and “agency expertise” not “brought to bear on the statutory questions presented”) (cleaned up).

Then, it notes that all the legal precedents requiring people with termination complaints to first go through MSPB process are predicated on the MSPB being independent of the President.

Second, the Supreme Court decisions that outline the MSPB’s jurisdiction presumed an MSPB that functioned independently of the President, which is no longer true. The “CSRA’s adjudicatory scheme was predicated on the existence of a functioning and independent MSPB,” See Nat’l Ass’n of Immigr. Judges v. Owen, 139 F.4th 293, 304 (4th Cir. 2025) (rejecting channeling to MSPB because “Congress enacted the CSRA on the bedrock principle that the members of the MSPB and the Special Counsel would be protected from removal on political grounds, providing them independence from the President”). However, the President has pronounced that independent agencies must follow his interpretation of the law. See Exec. Order 14215 (Feb. 18, 2025) §§ 1, 2(b), 5, 7 (directing that the President and the Attorney General “shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch,” and their “opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees”—including on “so-called independent agencies”; “No employee of the executive branch… may advance an interpretation of the law… that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law”).2 Further, the President terminated the sole Democratic member of the MSPB Board and insists he has the unlimited right to do so,

Then, it noted that in the days after Ms. Comey wrote this in her complaint (Ms. Comey is represented by Margaret Donovan, who is handling several other Article II and other politicized firings) …

As of September 1, 2025, 891 PFRs are pending.47 Finally, on information and belief, in recent cases, the Government itself has argued before the MSPB that the CSRA is unconstitutional because it violates the President’s alleged Article II prerogatives, and that the MSPB has no jurisdiction over a challenge to an Article II removal. The MSPB, for its part, has previously ruled that it does not have the authority to adjudicate the constitutionality of statutes. 48 On information and belief, the MSPB is currently treating agencies’ Article II-based challenges to its authority consistent with this precedent, which is to say, it is declining to rule on the issue.

… The Office of Legal Counsel all of a sudden decided that the MSPB, and not Article III courts, should decide constitutional matters.

Indeed, the MSPB itself has repeatedly concluded that it lacks authority to adjudicate such sweeping constitutional questions, see Malone v. DOJ, 14 M.S.P.R. 403, 406 (1983), and until two months ago, so did the government, as discussed below, see Dkt. 1 ¶ 84.

[snip]

[A]nd the Department of Justice recently and suddenly reversed its position and now insists that the MSPB must review constitutional issues, compare Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, Slip Opinion, 49 Op. O.L.C. __ (Sept. 26, 2025), to, e.g., Dkt. 1 ¶ 84 (alleging that the government argued, before September 15, 2025, that MSPB has no jurisdiction over a challenge to an Article II removal). The OLC’s reversal came immediately after an MSPB administrative judge declined to rule on the constitutionality of Article II removals; that issue is now on appeal to the very Board that the President has ordered must adhere to his interpretation of law. This is a thorough evisceration of the MSPB’s independence. As a matter of due process and constitutional principle, the President’s decision to remove a career civil servant without cause, in violation of Congress’s explicit prohibition, cannot fairly be adjudicated by an agency that is subservient to that same President.

Then it reveals that MSPB has been dismissing cases, like hers, challenging her firing on Article II authority until it decides whether the President’s Article II authority can override civil service protections, which is where Kafka gets invoked.

Third, any MSPB proceeding would be futile. On November 25, 2025, an MSPB administrative judge notified Ms. Comey that the MSPB intends to dismiss her appeal without prejudice, while awaiting a ruling from the Board (now beholden to the President) about whether the President’s Article II power overrides the CSRA. Today, the government consented to that dismissal. To the best of our knowledge, Ms. Comey is not alone. Since November 17, 2025, MSPB administrative judges have dismissed without prejudice multiple MSPB appeals of “Article II” firings, and the government has acquiesced in each case. See, e.g., Law360, “Ex-US Trustee Director’s Firing Appeal Tossed, For Now,” November 21, 2025 (citing Tara Twomey v. DOJ, MSPB DC-0752-25-1950-I-1). This procedure is Kafkaesque: the Executive Branch maintains it can fire Ms. Comey without the due process afforded by the CSRA, yet insists that she submit adjudication of that question to the body created by the CSRA, all while advocating for the premature termination of the CSRA process. Meanwhile, the Executive Branch contends it can dictate the outcome of her appeal (should it eventually proceed) by controlling the “authoritative interpretations of the law” and removing any decisionmaker who dares to disagree. This scheme has been transformed into a dead end that provides no due process. See Carr v. Saul, 593 U.S. 83, 93 (2021) (“It makes little sense to require litigants to present claims to adjudicators who are powerless to grant the relief requested.”). It is not what Congress intended. See Axon Enterprise, 598 U.S. at 191 (plaintiffs need not submit to administrative process where they would face “an illegitmate proceeding, led by an illegitmate decisionmaker,” because “being subjected to such an illegitmate proceeding causes legal injury” that “cannot be undone”); Thunder Basin, 510 U.S. at 212 (Congress did not intend to preclude district court jurisdiction where statutory scheme “forecloses all meaningful judicial review”). [my emphasis]

Thus far, Ms. Comey has not mentioned that John Sarcone, the only one willing to defend against this lawsuit, is playacting at being US Attorney just like Lindsey Halligan is or was.

Just to add to the abuse of power going on here.

It all sounds like the kind of case that could be headed for SCOTUS.

For now, Ms. Comey has more modest goals, like figuring out whether the President personally fired her, or whether some flunky (or former Defense Attorney) at DOJ did it for him.

First, initial discovery can be narrowly tailored, if necessary, to critical questions relating to the circumstances of Ms. Comey’s termination, including who made the decision and on what basis.

[snip]

For example, if the President terminated Ms. Comey, then the question before the Court is whether the President’s Article II powers supersede Congress’s Article I powers and the Bill of Rights. On the other hand, if, as the White House claims (Dkt. 1 ¶ 51), someone within the Department of Justice terminated Ms. Comey, then the Court must decide the additional question of the extent to which the President can delegate his alleged Article II power to supersede Article I.

Of course, even that detail may intertwine with her father’s potentially ongoing persecution.

Twenty-eight paragraphs into the story that first focused attention on the murder Pete Hegseth ordered back in September (though as it notes, Nick Turse first revealed the second shot just days after the attack) is this revelation: it took four strikes to kill first the people then destroy any debris from the targeted boats.

The boat in the first strike was hit a total of four times, twice to kill the crew and twice more to sink it, four people familiar with the operation said.

It took the most powerful military in the history of the world four shots the get the job done.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

That fact lies at the core of a whole bunch of other senselessness about Trump’s feckless rule. There’s Trump’s release of Juan Orlando Hernández, a proven high-level threat, even as forces that normally prevent turbulence in the Middle East gather off of Venezuela’s oil fields. There’s the many ways, starting with the destruction of USAID and definitely including Trump’s trade war, that has added to global instability. There’s the cost involved in drone-striking small boats. There’s the neutering of legal advisors who might have saved Admiral Frank Bradley from being underbussed by the guy who promoted him. There’s the pretend press corps filled with nutballs and cranks that ensures that Whiskey Pete will never be challenged with actual knowledge.

But at root, you’ve got Pete Hegseth sitting atop that most powerful military boom boom boom boom, treating it like a children’s game.

And he doesn’t realize that on this, his first attempt, and twice more after that, the most powerful military in the history of the world could not take out an unarmed boat in uncontested waters with one shot.

Donald Trump thinks murderboats make him look strong (though the video he released of this one hid that it took four shots to get the job done).

Pete Hegseth thinks murderboats make him look strong.

But holy hell, can we talk about how feckless the reality is?

Update: This timeline of the conflicting things Trump and his minions have said about the September 2 strike is useful.

There are a number of articles (Reuters, Politico) describing discussions about reindicting Jim Comey and Letitia James. Neither addresses the issue I lay out here — namely, that the ultimate goal of the Comey prosecution, at least, is to support the Grand Conspiracy in Florida, perhaps by obtaining at least probable cause that Comey lied to cover up the import of (Grand Conspiracy nutballs claim to believe) the “Clinton Plan” CIOL and Comey’s decision to release a memo documenting Trump’s corruption.

More importantly, neither addresses a new wrinkle: That Dan Richman wants his data back. (Anna Bower first noted the suit.)

Last Wednesday, Richman moved under Rule 41(g) to get his property, in the form of an image of his computer made by the Inspector General, as well as emails and additional content obtained derivative to that.

While there are redacted bits describing the original imaging by DOJ IG of the computer and the overcollection at that stage (as well as the warrants themselves, which would have been unsealed by now if the indictment hadn’t been dismissed), it relies heavily on and largely tracks William Fitzpatrick’s ruling effectively cataloging the many Fourth Amendment violations involved in the searches of Richman’s data, which Richman points to in order to claim that Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly need not consider the normal balancing considerations.

While the government may argue that it needs the Hard Drive to obtain evidence to prosecute Mr. Comey, the Comey case has now been dismissed and any charges related to the underlying conduct are time-barred. [citation omitted] (noting that had Mr. Comey not been indicted, the statute of limitations would have expired on September 30, 2025). Even if the case were to somehow proceed, the government should be barred from using evidence from the Hard Drive. The materials from the Hard Drive that the government presented to the grand jury in the Comey case were only identified by the government because it (1) exceeded the scope of the Warrants and seized non-responsive data, (2) illegally retained materials it should have destroyed or returned, and (3) searched the illegally seized and retained data without a warrant.

As Comey was preparing to move to suppress this content, the Loaner AUSAs claimed that he had no Fourth Amendment interest in Richman’s data. That was contestable for at least a subset of the data. But Richman clearly has a Fourth Amendment interest in it.

If this effort by Richman is successful, in particular his request for “a temporary restraining order enjoining the government from using or relying on in any way the improperly seized materials until such time as the Court can further consider the merits of his claims,” all the data would become inaccessible, both for any reindictment of the false statements indictment or for the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy.

Oh sure, the FBI could attempt to obtain new warrants — or subpoena Richman for the same material. But much of their use of this data (Exhibits 8, 9, and 10 post-dated Richman’s departure from the FBI, and Exhibits 3 through 7 involved sourcing for which Richman was public) did not fit basic criteria arising from the imagined crimes, Richman leaking information while still at FBI. Of what the Loaner AUSAs presented to the grand jury, they’d be stuck with the “Clinton CIOL” that the jury no-billed.

• Exhibit 1: DOJ IG Investigation into Comey’s Memos
• Exhibit 2: Comey letter reopening investigation
• Exhibit 3: January 2, 2015: Letter stating that Richman would not comment on matters he “work[s] on for the Bureau”[1st Columbia email]
• Exhibit 4: October 29, 2016: Text saying, “The country can’t seem to handle your finding stuff” [2nd Columbia email]
• Exhibit 5: October 30, 2016: Richman offering to write an op-ed for NYT [2nd Columbia email]
• Exhibit 6: November 1-2, 2016: Comey suggests perhaps Richman can make Mike Schmidt smarter [2nd Columbia email]
• Exhibit 7: November 2, 2016: Richman noting story about Hillary [2nd Columbia email]
• Exhibit 8: April 23, 2017: Email to Richman thanking him [Columbia email]
• Exhibit 9: February 11, 2017: Richman recruiting Chuck Rosenberg for article [1st Columbia email]
• Exhibit 10: May 2017: Texts between Schmidt and Richman [Dan Richman’s phone]
• Exhibit 11: DOJ IG Investigation into Comey’s Memos
• Exhibit 12: July, 27, 2025: 18 USC 2071 Opening memo
• Exhibit 13: September 26, 2016: Notes on Russian investigation briefing
• Exhibit 14: Transcript of Lindsey Graham question about the CIOL

And to get the files they really want — Exhibit 10 — the FBI would undoubtedly rely on the tainted searches Richman invokes here to justify demanding the return of his data. Plus, there’s a chunk of data DOJ unlawfully seized that went through 2019; if DOJ found anything enticing in there, it too would become inaccessible.

Kash Patel’s FBI fucked up pretty badly in the way they searched Richman’s data for dirt on Jim Comey. The dismissal of the indictment might have otherwise shielded them from consequences. But at the very least this effort may thwart their ongoing witch hunt targeting Comey.