emptywheel Archives - Page 13 of 243

DC Circuit Upholds Judge Chutkan’s Immunity Decision

February 6, 2024/215 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, emptywheel, January 6 Insurrection /by emptywheel

The opinion is here. They’ve also issued the mandate on a tight clock.

Today, we affirm the denial. For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.

They did use collateral order doctrine to establish jurisdiction.

Although both parties agree that the Court has jurisdiction over former President Trump’s appeal, amicus curiae American Oversight raises a threshold question about our collateral-order jurisdiction. In every case, “we must assure ourselves of our jurisdiction.” In re Brewer, 863 F.3d 861, 868 (D.C. Cir. 2017). Under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, which grants us jurisdiction over “final decisions of the district courts,” id., “we ordinarily do not have jurisdiction to hear a defendant’s appeal in a criminal case prior to conviction and sentencing,” United States v. Andrews, 146 F.3d 933, 936 (D.C. Cir. 1998). The collateral-order doctrine, however, treats as final and thus allows us to exercise appellate jurisdiction over “a small class of [interlocutory] decisions that conclusively determine the disputed question, resolve an important issue completely separate from the merits of the action, and are effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment.” Citizens for Resp. & Ethics in Wash. v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 532 F.3d 860, 864 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (cleaned up). The district court’s denial of former President Trump’s immunity defense unquestionably satisfies the first two requirements and thus we focus our analysis on the third: whether the denial of immunity is effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment.

Here’s how the opinion dealt with Trump’s Marbury argument. This language would have come from Judge Henderson (the opinion clearly has a lot of input from all three).

We therefore conclude that Article III courts may hear the charges alleged in the Indictment under the separation of powers doctrine, as explained in Marbury and its progeny and applied in the analogous contexts of legislative and judicial immunity. The Indictment charges that former President Trump violated criminal laws of general applicability. Acting against laws enacted by the Congress, he exercised power that was at its “lowest ebb.” Youngstown, 343 U.S. at 637 (Jackson, J., concurring). Former President Trump lacked any lawful discretionary authority to defy federal criminal law and he is answerable in court for his conduct.

This part of the ruling could be seen as limiting it to Blassingame.

We note at the outset that our analysis is specific to the case before us, in which a former President has been indicted on federal criminal charges arising from his alleged conspiracy to overturn federal election results and unlawfully overstay his Presidential term.8

8 We do not address policy considerations implicated in the prosecution of a sitting President or in a state prosecution of a President, sitting or former.

The opinion straight up says Trump’s Take Care Clause argument is bunk.

The President, of course, also has a duty under the Take Care Clause to faithfully enforce the laws. This duty encompasses following the legal procedures for determining election results and ensuring that executive power vests in the new President at the constitutionally appointed time. To the extent former President Trump maintains that the post-2020 election litigation that his campaign and supporters unsuccessfully pursued implemented his Take Care duty, he is in error. See infra n.14. Former President Trump’s alleged conduct conflicts with his constitutional mandate to enforce the laws governing the process of electing the new President.

This is an argument that I thought Jack Smith didn’t push enough.

Former President Trump’s alleged efforts to remain in power despite losing the 2020 election were, if proven, an unprecedented assault on the structure of our government. He allegedly injected himself into a process in which the President has no role — the counting and certifying of the Electoral College votes — thereby undermining constitutionally established procedures and the will of the Congress. To immunize former President Trump’s actions would “further . . . aggrandize the presidential office, already so potent and so relatively immune from judicial review, at the expense of Congress.” Youngstown, 343 U.S. at 654 (Jackson, J., concurring) (footnote omitted). As Justice Jackson warned:

Executive power has the advantage of concentration in a single head in whose choice the whole Nation has a part, making him the focus of public hopes and expectations. In drama, magnitude and finality his decisions so far overshadow any others that almost alone he fills the public eye and ear. No other personality in public life can begin to compete with him in access to the public mind through modern methods of communications. By his prestige as head of state and his influence upon public opinion he exerts a leverage upon those who are supposed to check and balance his power which often cancels their effectiveness.

Id. at 653–54 (Jackson, J., concurring).

We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power — the recognition and implementation of election results. Nor can we sanction his apparent contention that the Executive has carte blan che to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count.

* * *

At bottom, former President Trump’s stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches. Presidential immunity against federal indictment would mean that, as to the President, the Congress could not legislate, the Executive could not prosecute and the Judiciary could not review. We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter. Careful evaluation of these concerns leads us to conclude that there is no functional justification for immunizing former Presidents from federal prosecution in general or for immunizing former President Trump from the specific charges in the Indictment. In so holding, we act, “not in derogation of the separation of powers, but to maintain their proper balance.” See Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at 754.

This section, turning Trump’s impeachment argument on its head, is the fruit of Florence Pan’s work in the hearing, surgically narrowing and then narrowing still further the issues.

Former President Trump agrees that the Impeachment Judgment Clause contemplates and permits the prosecution of a former President on criminal charges — he argues only that such a former President first must be impeached by the House and “convicted” by the Senate. Appellant’s Br. 12–14, 31. In other words, he asserts that, under the Clause, a former President enjoys immunity for any criminal acts committed while in office unless he is first impeached and convicted by the Congress. Under that theory, he claims that he is immune from prosecution because he was impeached and acquitted. By taking that position, former President Trump potentially narrows the parties’ dispute to whether he may face criminal charges in this case consistent with the Impeachment Judgment Clause: If the Clause requires an impeachment conviction first, he may not be prosecuted; but if it contains no such requirement, the Clause presents no impediment to his prosecution.

Former President Trump also implicitly concedes that there is no absolute bar to prosecuting assertedly “official” actions. He argues elsewhere in his brief that his impeachment on the charge of inciting insurrection was based on conduct that was the “same and closely related” to the “official acts” charged in the Indictment. Appellant’s Br. 46 (“President Trump was impeached and acquitted by the Senate for the same and closely related conduct to that alleged in the indictment.” (emphasis omitted)); id. at 42 (“[A]ll five types of conduct alleged in the indictment constitute official acts.”). And he agrees that if he had been convicted by the Senate in that impeachment trial, he would not be immune from prosecution for the “official acts” at issue here. See id. at 31. Thus, he concedes that a President can be prosecuted for broadly defined “official acts,” such as the ones alleged in the Indictment, under some circumstances, i.e., following an impeachment conviction. [my emphasis]

They note that Trump’s argument about Alexander Hamilton is followed immediately by Hamilton saying that Presidents must be unlike Kings.

To counter the historical evidence that explains the purpose of the Impeachment Judgment Clause, former President Trump turns to one sentence written by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist 69: “The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.” The Federalist No. 69, at 337 (Alexander Hamilton) (Coventry House Publishing, 2015). He focuses on the word “afterwards” and suggests that a President is not “liable to prosecution and punishment” until “after[]” he has been impeached and convicted by the Senate. See Appellant’s Br. 14–15. But we think the more significant word in Hamilton’s statement is “liable,” which means “subject to.” Liable, 1 John Ash, New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language (1795). Hamilton specifies that a President would be subject to impeachment, trial, conviction and removal from office; and “afterwards” would be subject to prosecution and punishment, without regard to the verdict in the impeachment proceeding. 10 Moreover, in the very next sentence of the same essay, Hamilton stresses that the President must be unlike the “king of Great Britain,” who was “sacred and inviolable.” The Federalist No. 69, at 337–38. It strains credulity that Hamilton would have endorsed a reading of the Impeachment Judgment Clause that shields Presidents from all criminal accountability unless they are first impeached and convicted by the Congress.

The opinion names all the Senators who said they voted against impeachment because Trump was out of office.

Former President Trump’s interpretation also would permit the commission of crimes not readily categorized as impeachable (i.e., as “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”) and, if thirty Senators are correct, crimes not discovered until after a President leaves office. See U.S. CONST. art. II, § 4; see also, e.g., 167 CONG. REC. S736 (daily ed. Feb. 13, 2021) (statement of Senate Minority Leader McConnell) (“We have no power to convict and disqualify a former office holder who is now a private citizen.”). 13

13 See also statements of Senators Barrasso, Blunt, Braun, Capito, Cornyn, Cramer, Crapo, Daines, Ernst, Fischer, Grassley, Hoeven, Hyde-Smith, Inhofe, Kennedy, Lankford, Lee, Lummis, Moran, Portman, Risch, Rounds, Rubio, Shelby, Sullivan, Thune, Tillis, Tuberville and Wicker.

Here’s another section on the import of Blassingame. They’re saying this decision is categorical — that is, there’s no need for analysis of whether these were official acts or not. But because Blassingame already ruled they were not, there’s no need to here.

14 Because we conclude that former President Trump is not entitled to categorical immunity from criminal liability for assertedly “official” acts, it is unnecessary to explore whether executive immunity, if it applied here, would encompass his expansive definition of “official acts.” Nevertheless, we observe that his position appears to conflict with our recent decision in Blassingame, 87 F.4th at 1. According to the former President, any actions he took in his role as President should be considered “official,” including all the conduct alleged in the Indictment. Appellant’s Br. 41–42. But in Blassingame, taking the plaintiff’s allegations as true, we held that a President’s “actions constituting re-election campaign activity” are not “official” and can form the basis for civil liability. 87 F.4th at 17. In other words, if a President who is running for re-election acts “as office-seeker, not office-holder,” he is not immune even from civil suits. Id. at 4 (emphasis in original). Because the President has no official role in the certification of the Electoral College vote, much of the misconduct alleged in the Indictment reasonably can be viewed as that of an office-seeker — including allegedly organizing alternative slates of electors and attempting to pressure the Vice President and Members of the Congress to accept those electors in the certification proceeding. It is thus doubtful that “all five types of conduct alleged in the indictment constitute official acts.” Appellant’s Br. 42.

The opinion does rely, in part, on the fact that Jack Smith didn’t charge incitement to insurrection to dismiss Trump’s double jeopardy claim (I had wondered if Smith would add that charge based on the outcome here).

To the extent former President Trump relies on “double jeopardy principles” beyond the text of the Impeachment Judgment Clause, those principles cut against him. The Double Jeopardy Clause provides: “No person shall . . . be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” U.S. CONST. amend. V. It has been interpreted to prohibit “imposition of multiple criminal punishments for the same offense.” Hudson v. United States, 522 U.S. 93, 99 (1997) (citation omitted). Under precedent interpreting the Double Jeopardy Clause, former President Trump’s impeachment acquittal does not bar his subsequent criminal prosecution for two reasons: (1) An impeachment does not result in criminal punishments; and (2) the Indictment does not charge the same offense as the single count in the Impeachment Resolution.

[snip]

Even if we assume that an impeachment trial is criminal under the Double Jeopardy Clause, the crimes alleged in the Indictment differ from the offense for which President Trump was impeached. In determining whether two charges are the “same” for double-jeopardy purposes, courts apply “the sameelements test” (also known as the “Blockburger test”): If “each offense contains an element not contained in the other,” the offenses are different. United States v. Dixon, 509 U.S. 688, 696 (1993) (citing Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 304 (1932)) (cleaned up). If the charges at issue are not the “same offense” under that test, double jeopardy does not bar prosecution. Id. at 696–97.

Under the Blockburger test, none of the four offenses alleged in the Indictment is the same as the sole offense charged in the article of impeachment. The indicted criminal counts include conspiracy to defraud the United States under 18 U.S.C. § 371; conspiracy to obstruct and obstructing an official proceeding under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(c)(2), (k); and conspiracy to deprive one or more individuals of the right to vote under 18 U.S.C. § 241. See Indictment ¶¶ 6, 126, 128, 130. By contrast, the article of impeachment charged former President Trump with incitement of insurrection. See H.R. Res. 24, 117th Cong. (2021). Each of the indicted charges requires proof of an element other than those required for incitement. And the offense of incitement of insurrection requires proof of incitement — an element that is distinct from those associated with each of the crimes of indictment. In other words, the charges are not the same under a straightforward application of the Blockburger test.

[my emphasis]

Hunter Biden’s Delayed Email Access on the JPMI Laptop

February 5, 2024/23 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Hunter Biden /by emptywheel

In both a footnote of his reply motion for discovery …

1 The prosecution’s opposition briefs reveal some new evidentiary issues (e.g., seizing electronic evidence for the gun charges for the first time pursuant to a December 4, 2023 warrant; using a grand jury in California in connection with the tax case to elicit evidence for already-indicted gun charges in Delaware; seeking a search warrant in December 2023 to search for evidence in support of its charges three months after having charged; testing a leather pouch for cocaine residue in October 2023 that it had in its possession for five years; denying there was Probation’s approval for the diversion agreement) in addition to those raised in Mr. Biden’s motions to dismiss themselves (e.g., how a Delaware agreement for a diverted gun charge and two tax misdemeanors turned into multiple felonies in two jurisdictions following massive political pressure to do just that). Based on the prosecution’s admissions made only recently in its filings, Mr. Biden will expeditiously file a motion to suppress improperly gathered evidence. [my emphasis]

And two footnotes in his motion to compel …

3 The search warrant on December 4, 2023, which post-dates the firearm indictment by almost three months, is the first time in the course of this five-year investigation that DOJ obtained a warrant to search the alleged laptop (and iCloud account and backup data) for evidence of federal firearms violations. The prosecution then used that warrant to purportedly review and seize, for the first time, text messages, photos, and other evidence in support of its felony charges, several of which the prosecution cited in its pleadings on January 16, 2024. (See DE 68 at 8–9.) Moreover, that warrant contained testimony (in support of finding probable cause) about the firearm obtained from a witness in a grand jury empaneled in the Central District of California in November 2023 after this indictment had already been brought. Accordingly, the issue raised—as a result of the prosecution’s recent filings—is one to explore at the evidentiary hearing Mr. Biden requested (DE 64) and a motion to suppress which will be filed promptly.

[snip]

18 Citing District of Delaware Search Warrant No. 23-507M. Unlike the Office’s prior search warrants during the five-year investigation that were for tax, financial, or foreign-business related offenses, this warrant was specifically for offenses pertaining to 18 U.S.C. §§ 922, 924 (firearms offenses). See supra n.3, and a further motion to suppress concerning this December 4, 2023 search will be forthcoming. [my emphasis]

Hunter Biden attorney Abbe Lowell said he would soon be filing a motion to suppress “improperly gathered evidence.”

Part of this will likely be a challenge to the belated pretextual testing of the gun for cocaine residue without also testing for fingerprints and dating of the residue to the time period immediately after Hunter purchased a gun.

But in all three footnotes, he promises to challenge the December 4, 2023 warrant, which would implicate the original search warrant to Apple, the exploitation of the laptop, and follow-on searches for four devices backed up to his iCloud:

iPhone X (Apple Backup 1)
iPhone 6S (Apple Backup 3)
iPad Pro (Apple Backup 4)
iPhone XR (Apple Backup 11)

After over three years of controversy about the laptop attributed to Hunter Biden, this challenge may finally unpack the reliability of the device that has driven right wing frothers nuts ever since.

Game on!

There’s a variety of things that Lowell might rely on to challenge the use of the laptop — and possibly, the four backed up devices, as fruits of the laptop — some sound and some less so. They include:

A complaint that David Weiss used testimony obtained from a Los Angeles grand jury focused on tax crimes to obtain the December 2023 warrant, which will almost certainly be dismissed as normal prosecutorial dickishness.
If any of the devices entirely predate 2018, there should be no probable cause to search them for the 2018 charges. Based on emails available at BidenLaptopEmails dot com, Hunter Biden started using at least three different iPhone Xes in 2018 (but at least one of those was likely lost to hostile people). He had an iPhone 6S with the droidhunter account he used to access adult entertainment in early 2019, though the only known iPhone XR may have been tied to that account, rather than his Rosemont Seneca account (or there could be a later one). Otherwise, his iPhone 6S use appears to have significantly predated 2018. An iPad backed up to the laptop is an iPad Pro, which itself dates to 2016, and much of Hunter Biden’s known iPad Pro use was also in 2016 and earlier, which is the time frame investigators were most interested when they obtained those warrants.
The fact that, per Gary Shapley’s notes, the FBI never validated when the files loaded onto the laptop were added to it in the first 10 months they used it (which also means they did not do so before obtaining four backup devices partly relying on it).
John Paul Mac Isaac’s acknowledgment that when his father first went to the FBI, the FBI agent with whom he spoke advised, “you should get a lawyer [because] You may be in possession of something you don’t own.”
JPMI’s description that the FBI was trying to boot up the laptop on December 9, 2019, before the FBI had the December 13, 2019 warrant.
The fact that the Attorney General’s Chief of Staff texted the Attorney General that he was sending him a laptop the day after the FBI obtained the known December 13, 2019 warrant, suggesting the laptop may have been used for something else, like potential impeachment defense.
Also per Shapley’s notes, that some of the means FBI used to determine the laptop was once associated with Hunter’s iCloud account — including call and email traffic with John Paul Mac Isaac and a cigar purchase made locally the day of the drop-off — could easily be spoofed by anyone in possession of the laptop.
The fact that, for two and a half months by the time the FBI claimed to have validated that the laptop was Hunter Biden’s, they had had full access for Hunter’s iCloud (and almost certainly had access to Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca Google account for at least that long), which would have given them full access to a bunch of metadata that very much should have raised concerns about who had control of Hunter’s devices at any given time.

Those are just some of the potential bases for a Fourth Amendment challenge to using the laptop as evidence. There may be more.

It’s the last bullet that I want to focus on here. Shapley’s notes show that on November 6, 2019 — over a month after obtaining Hunter’s full iCloud account on September 25, 2019 — Josh Wilson used the serial number provided by JPMI and “determined that device was registered to [Hunter Biden] via apple ID account/iCloud account.”

It is absolutely the case that at 8:50AM Delaware time on October 21, 2018 — nine days after Hunter bought a gun and two days before he no longer possessed it — the laptop that would eventually end up at the FBI logged into Hunter’s iCloud account, though unlike some devices before and after, there’s no public confirmation of a tie to Apple directly, such as Apple welcoming him to a new computer or a receipt.

But there’s something unusual about what came next.

Normally, when Hunter Biden started using one of the new devices that can be clearly tied to his account, he would log into iCloud, then shortly thereafter log into one or another of his two Google accounts, Rosemont Seneca and/or droidhunter. As a result, Google would send security alerts to both the Gmail account and a whichever of the iCloud emails were set as backup.

For example, after Hunter bought a new laptop (possibly the laptop found at Keith Ablow’s in March 2019) on August 31, 2018, he signed into his iCloud account the next day, then, also on September 1, signed into his droidhunter Gmail account, then into his Rosemont Seneca account on September 2.

Someone signed into one of his new replacement iPhones, ordered through Asurion, on October 14 and then, on October 17, signed into his Rosemont Seneca Gmail account.

Someone signed into a new iPhone 8 Plus on October 23, 2018 — possibly the other replacement phone from Asurion — and then signed into his Rosemont Seneca Gmail account that same day.

Things are a bit fuzzier with some phones replaced through Apple the next spring, after his life was packed up on a laptop for delivery to John Paul Mac Isaac.

On February 21, 2019, he got a new iPhone, associated with his droidhunter account, and signed in on his droidhunter Gmail right away.

On March 1, 2019, he got a new iPhone XR — possibly the one obtained with the 2020 warrant. Then bought an adult themed App on March 7, then signed into his droidhunter email on March 9.

There are an astounding number of other devices used to log into one or another account associated with Hunter Biden’s digital life. But for recognizable device replacements, the pattern generally holds: Sign into Apple, then sign into Google.

But based on what is available on the public emails, after someone logged into Hunter’s iCloud account with a new laptop on October 21, 2018, it was weeks before a new Mac device logged into his Gmail accounts, starting with a November 16 attempt to log into Rosemont Seneca that was rejected by Google, followed by a reset of the droidhunter account and a login into that on November 20, followed by a login into Rosemont Seneca on November 24. Not only did those attempts come in the midst of a bunch of attempts to get into Hunter Biden’s Twitter account from a Mac. But on November 27, someone appears to have gotten into his iCloud account from Troutdale, OR.

New Mac devices also accessed Hunter’s Rosemont Seneca account on February 9 and February 20, 2019.

As I’ve already described, a great deal of Hunter Biden’s “normal” activity on his devices in this period looked like he was hacking himself. For example, on at least 36 occasions in 2017 and 2018, Wells Fargo shut down Hunter’s online access because of activity that looked, to it, like a hack. Many if not most of that was probably, instead, just Hunter Biden doing erratic things. In other cases, it’s impossible without more data to show whether a particular access or expenditure was Hunter himself, someone who had acquired one of his devices, or someone more malicious.

But there is a pattern, and the laptop ultimately shared with the FBI, he deviated from that pattern.

Certainly, David Weiss might argue that the FBI just hadn’t looked at Hunter Biden’s digital fingerprints that closely when they got a warrant on December 13, 2019.

But they’ve had five years to look at it in the interim period, and might have a harder time arguing that this pattern was normal.

Update: Just catching up to the Delaware docket (JPMI’s suit and Hunter’s countersuit). Judge Robert Robinson will hold hearings in everyone’s motions on February 22.

Update: Abbe Lowell has amended his lawsuit against the IRS, tweaking it to make statements that lawyers for Joseph Ziegler and Gary Shapley made. He told Mark Scarsi had had some motion regarding the disgruntled agents, so I expect this filing will be cited in that motion.

Josh Schulte Sentenced to 40 Years

February 3, 2024/32 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Cybersecurity, emptywheel, WikiLeaks /by emptywheel

Aldrich Ames was arrested at the age of 53 in 1994 after 9 years of spying for Russia. He remains imprisoned in Terre Haute to this day — 30 years and counting — at the age of 82. (My math here is all rough.)

Robert Hanssen was arrested in 2001 at the age of 57 after 22 years of spying for Russia. He died last year, at the age of 79, in Florence SuperMax.

After six years in jail — most under Special Administrative Measures sharply limiting his communication — Josh Schulte, aged 35, was sentenced Thursday to 40 years in prison. He will presumably go to either Florence (most likely, because Judge Jesse Furman recommended he should go to someplace close to Lubbock) or Terre Haute.

Since his guidelines sentencing range was life in prison, I’m not sure how much, if any, of his sentence could, hypothetically, be dropped for good behavior.

Furman sentenced him concurrently on his Child Sexual Abuse Material conviction and the Espionage Act charges. Barring any successful appeal, he would be in prison for at least 20 years on top of time served, if he were to get credit for good behavior. That would put him back on the street at age 55, still the prime of his life (says someone in precisely that prime of her life, someone still learning some of the forensic techniques Schulte mastered as a teenager).

But the possibility that Schulte would be released before 2058, when Schulte will be 69, is based on two very big assumptions (on top of my uncertainty about whether he could get time off). First, that Schulte could sustain “good behavior” in prison, when he has failed to do so even while being held under SAMs in New York. Most recently, the government alleges he somehow obtained more CSAM in 2022 while in prison, where he would consume it in his cell after days representing himself in his second trial, the one in which he was convicted of the Espionage Act charges.

Even while Schulte’s family was traveling to attend his trial in 2022, he chose to retreat to his cell to view the child pornography that he had secreted on his prison laptop. (See D.E. 1093-1 at 3-4 (describing examples of times when videos were played).)

And there’s good reason to believe he attempted to — may well have succeeded at — conducting further hacks from prison.

That’s some of what I’ve been pondering since the government first requested that Schulte be treated like four men, including Ames and Hanssen, who gave America’s secrets to Russia rather than giving them to WikiLeaks, as a jury convicted Schulte of doing, by sentencing him to life in prison.

It took years of tradecraft to recruit and cultivate sources like Ames and Hanssen.

Many of the details about what led up to Schulte’s leaks of the CIA’s hacking tools remain unknown — including via what server he shared the files, because WikiLeaks’ submission system could not have accepted them at the time, meaning Schulte necessarily had some kind of contact with WikiLeaks in advance.

But the current story is that Schulte reacted to being disciplined at work fairly directly by stealing and then sharing the CIA hacking tools in one fell swoop. In a matter of days in April and May 2016 (perhaps not coincidentally, the same period when Russian hackers were stealing files from Hillary Clinton’s team), Schulte took steps that burned a significant part of CIA’s capabilities to the ground.

As a result of that reactive decision, Schulte delivered a set of files that would allow their recipients to hunt down CIA’s human sources based off the digital tracks they left in highly inaccessible computers. As I’ve noted, Schulte was well aware of the damage that could do, because he wrote it up in a self-serving narrative after the fact.

I told them the confluence server was the one that seemed to be compromised, and while horrible and damaging at least it wasn’t Stash; At least not at this point–Hopefully they could stop any additional leaks from the network at this point. From the news articles I’ve read, wikileaks claims to have source code, but we don’t know what code or from where. However, at this point, I knew the SOP was a complete stand down on all [redacted] operations. We had no idea what had been leaked, when, for how long, or even who else had seen the materials leaked. Have they been steadily accessing our network every day? Have all our ops been blown since we wrote the first line of code? Perhaps only confluence had been leaked, but the individual(s) responsible are/were planning to exfil the other parts of DEVLAN too? So much still unknown, and with potential (yet unconfirmed) link between wikileaks and Russia–Did the Russians have all the tools? How long? It seems very unlikely that an intelligence service would ever leak a nation’s “cyber weapons” as the media calls them. These tools are MUCH more valuable undiscovered by the media or the nation that lost them. Now, you can secretly trace and discover every operation that nation is conducting. I told them all this was certainly very disturbing and I felt bad for my friends and colleagues at the agency who likely weren’t doing anything and most likely had to completely re-write everything. [my emphasis]

What gets virtually no coverage is that this is precisely what happened: the bulk of the most sensitive files Schulte stole, the source code, has never been publicly accounted for. That’s why I find credible the unsealed and sealed filings submitted with sentencing claiming that Schulte caused what Judge Furman claimed (as reported by Inner City Press) was $300 million in damage and a cascading series of compromises.

Because DOJ couldn’t trade a death sentence in exchange for cooperation about how Schulte did it, as they did with Ames and Hanssen, because digital encryption is much more secure than a dead drop in a Virginia park, it’s not clear whether the government even knows all of it.

I don’t even know what Schulte was trying when he attempted to social engineer me from jail in 2018 — but I have my suspicions.

Later this month, Julian Assange will get a last chance to stave off extradition. I have long suspected if the UK approves the extradition, Russia will attempt to swap Evan Gershkovich for Assange. One way or another, we may learn more about what the US government has learned about the WikiLeaks operation in the 7 years since Schulte was part of one of the most successful, sustained attacks by Russia on the US.

But until then, Schulte will be moving to new long-term accommodations in a highly secure prison.

In Peter Navarro Sentencing, No Mention of Competing Claims about Official Acts

January 25, 2024/37 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, emptywheel, January 6 Insurrection /by emptywheel

As you’ve no doubt heard Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Peter Navarro to four months in prison plus a $9,500 fine. Here’s Kyle Cheney’s account.

The punishment matched the sentence imposed — but stayed pending appeal — by Trump appointee Carl Nichols, but with a bigger fine.

At first, Navarro attorney Stan Woodward told Judge Mehta that Navarro would say nothing.

But then he did. He claimed, as a Harvard-educated gentleman, he was helpless to figure out what to do in response to a subpoena.

Navarro made a last-ditch appeal for leniency to Mehta, addressing the court even after his lawyers had initially said he wouldn’t. He said he grew confused about the thicket of precedents and rules around executive privilege and believed he didn’t have to comply with Congress’ subpoena.

“I’m a Harvard-educated gentleman, but the learning curve when they come at you with the biggest law firm in the world is very, very steep,” Navarro said.

Judge Mehta, a mere Georgetown/UVA grad, was having none of it. He noted that by the time Navarro defied the January 6 Committee, Steve Bannon had already been charged.

I’m just as interested in what wasn’t said at the sentencing. In spite of unsealing part of the communications pertaining to the Presidential Records Act lawsuit still pending against Navarro, which I wrote about here, I saw no mention of it in today’s hearing.

If I’m right that Navarro continues to withhold communications about the coup based on a claim they’re not protected by the Presidential Records Act, nothing would prevent Jack Smith from handing Navarro a subpoena. Indeed, Navarro’s testimony today would validate that Navarro now knows exactly how to respond to a subpoena — and that he doesn’t believe these are official records.

The big drama going forward is whether Judge Mehta lets Navarro stay out of jail pending appeal, as Judge Nichols did with Bannon.

But if Navarro were to defy another subpoena, it might be a way to get him jailed more quickly.

How One New Hampshire Voter and One Politico Journalist Refused to Hold “a Pig … a Womanizer … [an] Arrogant Asshole” Accountable

January 23, 2024/51 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

Politico has an interesting profile of a two-time Obama voter, who will today become a three-time Trump voter, New Hampshire voter Ted Johnson.

It demonstrates that Johnson is driven by the very same false beliefs that Scott Perry is, which I laid out here.

Johnson admits that Trump is a pig. He even admits some concern about Trump’s stolen documents — before he parrots the false claims he learned on Fox News about that investigation.

And the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case in Florida? It’s the one that gives Johnson a modicum of pause. “You don’t f— around with classified material. Whoever advised him he could have that — he should have gave that s— up,” he said. “But he was being the stubborn, arrogant person that he is.” And he added, “I didn’t like the way the FBI did it. The raid was ridiculous. And that just emboldened me.”

But nevertheless Johnson will vote for the pig … womanizer … arrogant asshole today because he believes that Trump will bring accountability.

“And trust me, the guy’s a pig, he’s a womanizer — arrogant a—–e,” Johnson said of Trump. “But I need somebody that’s going to go in and lead, and I need somebody that’s going to take care of the average guy.”

“But is taking care of the average guy and breaking the system the same thing?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “Because they’re all in it for themselves.”

“And if you break the system, what does that look like?”

“Accountability,” he said.

Go read it. It’s precisely the dynamic that I’m preparing to write about: how Trump trained people like Scott Perry and Ted Johnson to hate rule of law while calling that disdain for rule of law “accountability.”

But while you’re reading it, watch journalist Michael Kruse’s own blindspot. For much of the article, Kruse lets Johnson babble on, voicing his false beliefs about Trump’s legal woes.

Kruse largely lets Johnson spout those false beliefs unchallenged. But he pushes back when Johnson raises Hunter Biden.

Sort of.

Johnson started talking about “Russia-gate” and “Biden’s scandals” and Hunter Biden. What, I wondered, did Hunter Biden have to do with Nikki Haley? “She’s not going to hold anybody accountable for what they’ve done,” Johnson told me. “People need to be held accountable. That’s why you’ve got to break the system to fix the system,” he said. “Because it’s a zero-sum game right now. And to be honest with you, the Democrats are genius. They did anything they could do to win and gain power, even if they lie, cheat, steal. … What they’re doing is they’re destroying the country. Who could bring it back?” He answered his own question: “Trump’s the only one.” [my emphasis]

Rather than contest Johnson’s premise that Joe Biden has scandals, Kruse instead challenges Johnson as to what Hunter has to do with Nikki Haley.

Then later in the story, Kruse himself raises Hunter Biden as the counterpart of accountability to Trump.

“Accountability is accountability. But they’re throwing so much stuff at this guy, and it’s almost like I’m rooting for him,” he told me. “This is a whole system of government going after one man who, probably, I bet, right now, 85 million people want to be president.”

“But accountability is accountability,” I said.

“Accountability is accountability,” he said.

“Whether it’s Hunter Biden or Donald Trump,” I said.

“But do I trust the system?” he said. “I don’t.”

Kruse himself, who has actually been pretty sympathetic to Joe Biden in the past, likens the President’s son’s alleged crimes to Trump’s coup attempt.

Now, perhaps Kruse allowed Johnson to make all these false claims uncontested simply to let him talk. It’s a useful interview. I shouldn’t gripe.

But adopting Hunter Biden as the counterpart of accountability for Trump is itself a false claim. It’s why I spend so much time calling out shoddy dick pic sniffing stenography.

The record shows that even if everything Republicans allege about Hunter Biden were true (and at this point, DOJ has let statutes of limitation on FARA crimes expire without charges, so it seems that in going-on-six-years of looking, DOJ never substantiated FARA crimes), his actions still wouldn’t come close to those of Paul Manafort, whom Trump pardoned with nary a whisper.

Perhaps a better response to Johnson’s complaints about Hunter Biden would be a question about Trump’s decision to pardon Manafort for doing far worse? How is that accountability? Manafort is the quintessential sleazy insider and he gets a pass.

Plus, the record shows that Trump’s crimes are not a mirror of Hunter’s; rather, Trump’s crimes cannot be dissociated from the charges against Hunter.

The record shows that Trump started pushing Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas to gin up an investigation into Hunter Biden no later than December 2018, at such time as Joseph Ziegler was struggling to come up with some excuse to turn non-payment of taxes into a criminal case.

The record according to Johnathan Buma shows that before DOJ opened a grand jury investigation into Hunter Biden, FBI agents on the investigation enthusiastically accepted dirt on Hunter Biden from two Ukrainians that Buma would acknowledge were part of an influence operation.

The record shows that four days after Joe Biden announced he was running for President, DOJ decided the grand jury investigation into Hunter Biden would be in Delaware, where Joe might one day become a target, rather than Washington DC or Los Angeles, where any tax crimes would have happened. Ziegler first claimed, then backed off a claim, that Bill Barr made this decision personally.

The record shows that the first IRS supervisor on this case documented what he viewed to be problems with the predication of it and ongoing political influence into it.

The record shows that Donald Trump extorted Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an attempt to get an investigation into Hunter Biden and his father. In that same conversation, he asked Zelenskyy to work with both his personal attorney and with Bill Barr to gin up such an investigation.

The record according to Chuck Grassley shows that even while Trump was claiming to care about Burisma corruption, his DOJ shut down an investigation into Mykola Zlochevsky, one that had been opened while Joe Biden was Vice President and Hunter was on the board of Burisma. Grassley says DOJ shut that investigation down in December 2019.

The record shows that the day after DOJ obtained a warrant to access a laptop obtained from John Paul Mac Isaac, Barr’s chief of staff texted him to say, “laptop on way to you.”

The record shows that days later, Bill Barr set up a dedicated channel by which Rudy Giuliani could share dirt he had obtained, including from a known Russian spy and almost certainly from Burisma, such that it could be laundered into the investigation into Hunter Biden.

The record shows that that process resulted in DOJ obtaining an informant report describing a conversation with Zlochevsky. Remarkably, the FBI neglected to write down what date that conversation happened even though that’s how they validated that it did occur, but it almost certainly dates to the period when DOJ was shutting down an investigation into Zlochevsky. The informant report recorded a claim of bribery of Joe Biden that conflicted with claims Zlochevsky had made just months earlier, when DOJ was (per Chuck Grassley) still investigating him.

The record shows that FBI made Steve Bannon associate Peter Schweizer an informant so he could pitch Hunter Biden dirt leading up to the 2020 election.

The record shows that Trump bitched Bill Barr out about the Hunter Biden investigation shortly after the October 14, 2020 NYPost story on the hard drive from Hunter Biden. Days later, Richard Donoghue ordered the Hunter Biden investigators to accept a briefing about that bribery allegation.

The record shows that, shortly before David Weiss used the FD-1023 obtained during the course of Scott Brady’s effort to launder dirt into the Hunter Biden investigation to justify reneging on the plea deal he had agreed to, Bill Barr described being personally involved in the handling of it.

The record shows that, the day after Trump hosted Tony Bobulinski at a Presidential debate, Bobulinski told the FBI things that conflict with his own communications.

The record according to Cassidy Hutchinson shows that shortly after that Bobulinski interview with the FBI, he had a secret meeting with Mark Meadows at which Trump’s Chief of Staff handed Bobulinski something that might be an envelope.

The record shows that, in the same call where Trump threatened to replace Jeffrey Rosen if he didn’t start endorsing Trump’s claims of voter fraud, he also criticized the handling of the Hunter Biden case.

The record shows that Trump repeatedly, publicly, demanded criminal charges against Hunter Biden, including in the January 6 speech that set off an insurrection.

The record shows that when Trump first learned he’d be indicted, he raised pressure on the Hunter Biden investigation.

The record shows that on the day Hunter’s plea deal was released, Trump complained three times, twice suggesting Joe Biden was implicated in this plea deal.

“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. . . .”

The record shows that, among the other complaints and false claims Trump made about Hunter’s prosecution, one targeted David Weiss and demanded a death sentence.

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. . . .

The record shows that when Trump attacks people on social media, they get threats, often so bad as to uproot their entire lives.

The record also shows that former President Trump’s words have real-world consequences. Many of those on the receiving end of his attacks pertaining to the 2020 election have been subjected to a torrent of threats and intimidation from his supporters. A day after Mr. Trump’s “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” post, someone called the district court and said: “Hey you stupid slave n[****]r[.] * * * If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly b[***]h. * * * You will be targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it.” Special Counsel Br. 5; see United States v. Shry, No. 4:23-cr-413, ECF 1 at 3 (Criminal Complaint) (S.D. Tex. Aug. 11, 2023). The Special Counsel also has advised that he has received threats, and that a prosecutor in the Special Counsel’s office whom Mr. Trump has singled out for criticism has been “subject to intimidating communications.” Special Counsel Mot. 12.

The record shows that investigators in the Hunter Biden case were, just like prosecutors on Trump’s own cases, threatened in response to manufactured political outrage. That includes David Weiss himself. Here’s how former AUSA Lesley Wolf described those threats.

My desire to serve my community and my country, such a great source of pride, has recently come at significant cost. As a private person, the once routine and mundane details of my life have become the subject of public interest in an invasive and disturbing manner. Far worse, I’ve been threatened and harassed, causing me to fear for my own and my family’s safety.

I mentioned earlier that I recently left the U.S. Attorney’s Office. My decision to do so long predated and was unconnected to the baseless allegations made against me. In fact, I agreed to stay with the office months longer than planned because of my belief that my family and I were safer while I remained an AUSA.

I have no doubt that after today the threats of harassment and my own fear stemming from them will heighten. This not only scares me, but as someone who loves this country, it also breaks my heart.

We are living in a day and age where politics and winning seem to be paramount, and the truth has become collateral damage.

In short, the record shows that Trump was always a part of the Hunter Biden investigation.

I think the record is pretty clear that Hunter Biden owned a gun for 11 days during the worst days of his addiction. The record is pretty clear that as he tried to rebuild his life, it took several years to straighten out his taxes — but less time than it took Roger Stone to straighten out his taxes, even while the rat-fucker was using a shell company to shield his funds from the IRS.

But the story of Hunter Biden’s alleged crimes — the things that Michael Kruse seems to think mirror Trump’s 91 felony charges — is a story that cannot be told (or should not, were journalism engaged in a responsible pursuit), without also telling the story of Trump’s extortion, Rudy’s consorting with Russian spies, Bill Barr’s hijacking of DOJ for partisan purpose, Bobulinski’s seemingly inconsistent story and whatever role the secret meeting with Meadows had in that story, and Trump eliciting dangerous threats against every participant in the legal system who does not bow to his will, including on this case.

I get that journalists believe that the story of Hunter Biden is a story of DOJ holding Biden’s family member accountable for what they gleefully report are real crimes.

But it is, no less than that, a story of Trump crimes, including, possibly, under two statutes that prohibit this kind of pressure explicitly, 26 USC 7217 and 26 USC 7212. The story of Hunter Biden’s prosecution is the story of Trump’s successful going-on-six-year effort to hijack rule of law to target Joe Biden, an effort that builds on years of similar conduct targeting Hillary Clinton.

I’m grateful that Kruse has depicted Johnson’s nonsensical beliefs in all their absurdity. It’s an absolutely critical step in underestanding how Trump taught Republicans to hate rule of law.

But another step is in unpacking how journalists have come to reflexively equate Hunter Biden with Donald Trump, how journalists have come to simply ignore the five years of corruption that Trump and his lawyers engaged in to get us here, how journalists are not remotely curious about details in the public record about this case.

The reflexive equation of Hunter Biden with the President who targeted him for over five years is an equation every bit as manufactured by Donald Trump as Ted Johnson’s pathetic belief that Trump brings accountability rather than the opposite.

Peter Navarro and the Office-Seeker Using ProtonMail Challenge

January 23, 2024/27 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

The two Peter Navarro litigations are drawing to a head in a way that reveal just how difficult it is to prosecute a President who attempts a coup.

First, Navarro is set to be sentenced for his contempt of Congress on Thursday. Navarro has asked for no more than a year’s probation with a request any detention be stayed while he appeals based on his claim that Trump invoked Executive Privilege without saying or doing anything specific with regards to Navarro to assert that. DOJ asked for six months on each count while (deeper in the sentencing memo) noting that each count requires a one month sentence and they can be imposed concurrently. Judge Amit Mehta, who is presiding over this case, is a namby pamby former public defender Democratic appointee, and it’s unlikely he’ll sentence Navarro for longer than Carl Nichols did Steve Bannon.

In his sentencing memo, Navarro’s attorneys, including Stan Woodward (who is party to Trump’s baseless arguments about the Presidential Records Act in the stolen documents case), included Joe Biden’s waiver of Executive Privilege over documents at NARA among his list of firsts tied to this prosecution.

Dr. Navarro’s trial and conviction involves a series of firsts: the first time an incumbent President waived the executive privilege of a former President; the first time a senior presidential advisor was charged with contempt of congress by the Justice Department, let alone the Justice Department of a political rival; the first time a District Court held an evidentiary hearing on whether a former President had properly invoked executive privilege; and the first time a senior presidential advisor was convicted, and now is to be sentenced, for following what that advisor reasonably believed was an instruction by the former President not to comply with the Select Committee’s subpoenas.

I believe I remain the only person who noted how craftily Merrick Garland obtained that waiver, doing so in such a way that adhered to DOJ contact policies and kept Biden shielded from any information about the criminal investigation into his predecessor. The TV lawyers were and remain too busy claiming that Garland dawdled to notice the steps Garland took in July 2021 to negotiate this difficult problem.

Subsequent to those initial filings, DOJ asked to file an extra-long reply. It addresses some of Navarro’s novel theories, but also includes a long passage rebutting Navarro’s bid to stay out of jail pending his appeal that argues that Navarro’s claim that Executive Privilege entitled him to entirely blow off a subpoena could not be sound.

With respect to Court Two, the Department of Justice has made clear that testimonial immunity should apply only with respect to questions seeking information from a close presidential adviser concerning “matters that occur[red] during the course of discharging [the adviser’s] official duties.” See Immunity of the Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Political Strategy and Outreach from Congressional Subpoena, 38 Op. O.L.C. 5 at 7 (July 15, 2014) (“Simas Opinion”); Testimony Before Congress of the Former Counselor to the President, 43 Op. O.L.C. _ (2019) (“McGahn Opinion”) at 19; Conway Opinion at 1. Arguably, no president, current or former, would have the authority to make a categorical invocation of testimonial immunity over all the information sought by the Committee from the Defendant because most of the information the Committee sought did not concern matters that occurred in the course of the Defendant’s discharge of his governmental duties.

For example, the subpoena sought, among other things, “all documents and communications relating in any way to protests, marches, public assemblies, rallies, or speeches in Washington, D.C. on November 14, 2020,” and “all communications, documents and information that are evidence of the claims of purported fraud in the three-volume report you wrote, The Navarro Report.” See Ex 1 at 19-20.

Defendant was a trade adviser, and responsible in part for the Trump administration’s response to the Coronavirus crisis. In contrast, the Select Committee subpoena sought information wholly related to the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the threat to the peaceful transition of power between administrations. 7 As with the alleged assertion of executive privilege, any such assertion of testimonial immunity therefore would have been germane only (at most) to the Defendant’s testimony about a fraction of the subjects about which the Committee informed him it wished to inquire at the deposition.

Accordingly, a reasonable assertion of executive privilege or testimonial immunity, had one actually occurred, could not have been grounds for the Defendant to refuse to testify altogether; instead, the most it would have justified would have been an assertion of privilege at the former President’s request regarding particular documents or testimony seeking information about communications between the Defendant and the former President himself (or, in the case of a proper immunity assertion, about testimony concerning matters related to the Defendant’s official duties). Therefore, even if the Defendant could establish that former President Trump instructed him to assert privilege as to all questions that might be asked of him at the deposition, such an assertion would not have been proper. It follows that such an assertion could not preclude the Defendant’s conviction on Count Two of the Indictment.8 But of course, the record is devoid of any assertion at all. As the Defendant’s own testimony at a pretrial hearing made clear, even the Defendant’s conversation with the former President included nothing – not even a wisp – that could constitute an actual invocation of executive privilege.

7 Given his own assertions to the contrary, mostly notably in the press releases accompanying the release of his “reports,” it is not credible to believe that the Defendant thought the subpoena related exclusively to his official responsibilities. See, e.g., ECF No. 79-4 (Press Release).

8 Moreover, as previously briefed, because the Defendant failed to raise an immunity claim with the Committee, he is not allowed to invoke testimonial immunity before this Court or the Court of Appeals after the fact to foreclose prosecution for a violation of Section 192. Such argument has been waived. See United States v. Bryan, 339 U.S. 323, 330-34 (1950) (“[I]f respondent had legitimate reasons for failing to produce the records of the association, a decent respect for the House of Representatives, by whose authority the subpoenas issued, would have required that she state her reasons for noncompliance upon the return of the writ. . . . To deny the Committee the opportunity to consider the objection or remedy it is in itself a contempt of authority and an obstruction of its processes.” (citation omitted)); Hutcheson v. United States, 369 U.S. 599, 608- 611 (1962) (stating that a constitutional objection “must be adequately raised before the inquiring committee if [it] is to be fully preserved for review in this Court. To hold otherwise would enable a witness to toy with a congressional committee in a manner obnoxious to the rule that such committees are entitled to be clearly apprised of the grounds on which a witness asserts a right of any assertion at all. As the Defendant’s own testimony at a pretrial hearing made clear, even the Defendant’s conversation with the former President included nothing – not even a wisp – that could constitute an actual invocation of executive privilege.

Meanwhile, DOJ’s civil suit against Navarro to force him to hand over communications covered under the Presidential Records Act that he conducted using ProtonMail may be drawing to a close. Things hit an impasse last summer when, after a previous attorney had told the government that Navarro had 800 PRA-covered communications on his ProtonMail, while represented by Stanley Woodward, he only turned over 211.

Last August, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered Navarro to provide her records of his search by October.

Partially out of deference to defense counsel’s burgeoning trial calendar, the Court deferred ruling until after it had further opportunity to review the record. After further consideration, and in an effort to finally bring this litigation to a close, the Court will opt for both courses of action. On or before October 15, 2023, Defendant shall file under seal a notice listing all search terms used, the metadata fields searched, and the email accounts searched. Also on or before October 15, 2023, Defendant shall deliver to Chambers a random sample of fifty emails across each account searched that were not identified as responsive in his last review. The Court will maintain these records under seal.

Navarro complied in October.

Then Judge Kollar-Kotelly issued what appears to be an order to the government to weigh in on whether his search was adequate.

Then, last week, Woodward asked to unseal those exchanges so he could submit the government one to Judge Mehta in support of sentencing (I think he only asked to unseal the documents to share with Mehta; thus far, at least, we don’t get to see them).

In Navarro’s own sentencing reply, he described what he was after: the government’s argument, in December (and so after Blassingame — a decision upholding Amit Mehta’s ruling that actions Trump took as a candidate are not immune from civil suit — distinguished between presidential actions taken as a candidate for office and holder of that office), that some of Navarro’s communications pertaining to the attempted coup might include official records.

The government’s betrayal is manifest of its true motive – the prosecution of a senior presidential advisor of a chief political opponent. By way of a second example, consider the position taken by the Department – representing one United States – in its litigation against Dr. Navarro for allegedly refusing to return purportedly presidential records to the National Archives and Records Administration under the Presidential Records Act. 44 U.S.C. §§ 2201- 2209. Here, the government claims that Dr. Navarro’s work related to the 2020 Presidential Election could only have been conducted in his personal capacity.4 Yet there, because it suits their interests, the government recently asserted – originally under seal – that Dr. Navarro, and the Administration of President Trump, could very well have worked to ensure election integrity as part of his official duties. See Notice, at 4 (Dec. 29, 2023) (ECF No. 35) (“However, the United States has not taken the position that every action that Defendant took in connection with the 2020 Presidential Election was done in his personal, and not official, capacity; nor has the United States taken the position that any communications related to the 2020 Presidential Election are not Presidential records.”).

So in the civil suit, Navarro appears to have decided that almost 600 communications sent on ProtonMail — those pertaining to his role in a coup attempt — were not sent in the conduct of his official duties and therefore don’t need to be turned over under the PRA to NARA (whence Jack Smith could subpoena them).

But in the criminal case, Navarro claims to have believed and still believe that everything Congress subpoenaed from Navarro, which would have covered every communication pertaining to his role in a coup attempt, was covered by Executive Privilege.

ProtonMail, because it is less often used on phones and because it is hosted in Switzerland, happens to be among the most difficult platforms from which to obtain communications in a criminal investigation — harder even than the Signal and Telegram apps on which much of this coup was plotted. At least based on what DOJ showed in the Josh Schulte case, as recently as 2018, FBI didn’t have a means to access Proton content without a password under criminal process. So for a contemnor like Navarro who blows off subpoenas, you’re not going to get his ProtonMail content without his involvement in some way. It seems likely that Navarro has effectively conceded there are almost 600 records about the coup that DOJ still wants, records he refused to give January 6 Committee based on a frivolous claim of Executive Privilege, records that he now refuses to give NARA under a claim they’re not Presidential Records at all.

The facts at this point are fairly clear: along with two aides, Navarro spent much of his last month in office focused not on his trade duties or even his COVID response, but instead on ginning up false claims that the election was stolen. That is, in his apparent claim that his coup communications were not official duties, Navarro seems to confess he spent the last month in office defying the Hatch Act. And the false claims he ginned up played a key role in the coup (and one of those aides, Garrett Ziegler, was one of Ali Alexander’s direct ties to the White House).

The government has been attempting to retrieve the communications Navarro conducted on ProtonMail since December 2021, shortly after a COVID-related investigation surfaced their existence. And over two years later, Navarro apparently continues to withhold almost 600 records relating to the coup.

I assume there are still steps DOJ can take once these two legal cases are resolved — such as subpoenaing Navarro directly for the communications he now claims were not official records (he invoked the Fifth Amendment and demanded immunity from prosecution in refusing to turn them over before). That is, Navarro could end up facing a second criminal contempt charge, which is one reason Stan Woodward keeps making bullshit claims about politicization.

Nevertheless, through a combination of frivolous claims of privilege and reliance on technology that thwarts the FBI, it appears that a significant chunk of coup communications remain outstanding.

Scott Brady Admitted He “Was in the Room” for One Partisan Errand; Was There for a Second?

January 18, 2024/9 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, 2020 Presidential Election, emptywheel, January 6 Insurrection, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

It should surprise no one that in Scott Brady’s deposition before House Judiciary Committee last October, he refused to say whether he believes that voter fraud undermined the 2020 election.

Q Okay. All right. I think we’re almost done. You were U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh through, I think, you said the end of February 2021, correct?

A Correct.

Q So you were there during the 2020 election, correct?

A Yes.

Q Are you aware of allegations that there was widespread voter fraud in 2020?

Mr. [Andrew] Lelling. You’re a little outside the scope.

Q All right. So he’s declining. It’s fine. I’m just making a record. You’re declining to answer?

Mr. Lelling. He’s declining to answer.

Q Are you aware of allegations that President Biden was not fairly elected in 2020?

Mr. Lelling. Same. He’s not going to answer questions on that subject. [] Okay.

Q And do you believe that President Biden was fairly elected in 2020?

Mr. Lelling. He’s not going to answer that question.

This shouldn’t be a surprise because, in 2022, DOJ IG rebuked Brady for impugning a career prosecutor whose spouse signed a letter (also signed by Hunter Biden prosecutor Leo Wise, by the way) calling on Bill Barr to adhere to past practice regarding interference in voter fraud investigations.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) initiated an investigation after receiving a complaint regarding a then U.S. Attorney’s response, during a press conference on an unrelated case, to a reporter’s question about a letter signed by a number of Assistant U.S. Attorneys (AUSA) that was critical of a voting fraud investigations memorandum issued by then Attorney General William Barr. The complaint alleged that the U.S. Attorney responded to the reporter’s question about whether the U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) had signed the letter by personally attacking the AUSA from that USAO who signed the letter.

The OIG investigation substantiated the allegation. The investigation determined that the U.S. Attorney, in response to the reporter’s question, sought to undermine the AUSA’s professional reputation by referencing that the spouse of the AUSA who signed the letter had previously worked for two U.S. Attorneys General of the previous administration, thereby inappropriately suggesting that partisan political considerations motivated the AUSA to sign the letter.

As with much of his testimony before House Judiciary, the Brady comment in question spun the adherence to norms as political interference.

“I can’t comment on any existing investigations,” Brady said. “To the second [question], one of our two district election officers, who was married to the former chief of staff of [Attorneys General] Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, did sign onto that unbeknownst to anyone in leadership before he signed onto that and did not talk about that with his fellow district election officer, who’s also our ethics advisor.”

Nadler’s staffers elicited Brady’s predictable non-answer about whether Joe Biden was fairly elected just as the deposition ended. Perhaps they asked the question to demonstrate Brady’s partisanship if he were ever to testify in impeachment.

But it’s worthwhile background to something Brady said that did shock me — more than his refusal to affirm that Joe Biden was fairly elected President, more than his blasé description of ingesting information from at least one Russian spy to be used in an investigation of Donald Trump’s rival.

Brady, the one-time US Attorney for Pittsburgh, similarly dodged when asked whether he believed that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election.

Q Okay. And were you aware of Mr. Giuliani’s claim that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 Presidential election?

A I don’t believe I was aware of that.

Q Okay. And just were you aware of the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia actually interfered in the 2016 Presidential election?

A Wait. Let’s unpack that. So could you ask that again, please?

Q Are you aware of the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 Presidential election?

A I am aware of allegations of Russian interference. Conclusive determinations by the entire intelligence community of the United States, I’m not certain, especially in light of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Q Have you read the Mueller report?

A The whole Mueller report? Parts of it. I have read parts of it.

Because of that answer, Nadler’s staffers asked Brady if he was familiar with the Intelligence Community Assessment that Russia had interfered in 2016. After first suggesting that Barr’s stunts to undermine the Mueller investigation had raised doubts for him, Brady then admitted that the office he oversaw had investigated GRU both before and after Mueller did.

Q Okay. And so you don’t have any opinion of whether the findings, the conclusions of this report are true and accurate or not?

A Well, I don’t know what the findings are. I am generally aware of allegations of Russian interference in U.S. elections. My office has investigated Russian investigations I’m sorry. My office has investigated Russian interference in French elections, Georgian elections.

Q Uhhuh.

A So I have no doubt that Russia and other adversaries attempt to interfere in our elections on a regular basis.

Q And you have no evidence to dispute the findings of the Director of National Intelligence in this report?

A Other than what is publicly available given Mr. Mueller’s report and then his appearance before Congress and then General Barr’s disposition of that matter.

Q But you have no personal knowledge. In other words, you have not personally investigated the matter.

A Could I have a moment, please?

[Discussion off the record.]

Mr. Brady. I am aware of this.

Q Uhhuh.

Mr. Brady. The Pittsburgh office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Pennsylvania, had an investigation into the hacking of the DNC.

Q Uhhuh.

Mr. Brady. We were investigating that until it was transmitted to Director Mueller’s office for part of his investigation. So, yes, I am I am aware.

Andrew Weissmann has described that after Mueller’s team started, first Jeanie Rhee and then he asked for a briefing on the investigation into the hack-and-leak, only to discover no one was investigating the dissemination of the stolen documents.

As soon as the Special Counsel’s Office opened up shop, Team R inherited work produced by other government investigations that had been launched before ours: These included the Papadopoulos lead, the National Security Division’s investigation into Russian hacking, and the Intelligence Community’s written assessment on Russian interference.

Ingesting this information was the domain of Team R, and Jeannie had quickly gotten to work untangling and synthesizing the facts. A few weeks after I arrived, I asked attorneys in the National Security Division of the Department of Justice to give me the same briefing they had given Jeannie, so I could familiarize myself with the investigation they’d been conducting into Russian hacking.

The meeting was in a SCIF at Justice’s imposing art deco headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue.

[snip]

Because my debriefing with the National Security Division involved classified information, I cannot discuss its content substantively here. It took a couple of hours, as a team of NSD lawyers graciously walked me through what they had been up to and answered all my questions. As soon as I got back to our offices, however, I made a beeline to Jeannie’s office and immediately asked her: “What the fuck?”

“I know,” she said. She didn’t need me to finish my thought.

We had both been shocked by something we’d heard in our briefings—but it was less the substance of the Justice Department’s investigation than its approach. Jeannie knew that she was going to inherit some evidence that Russia had hacked the DNC and DCCC emails, but she was astonished that the National Security Division was not examining what the Russians had done with the emails and other documents they’d stolen from those servers—how the release of that information was weaponized by targeted release, and whether the Russians had any American accomplices. More alarmingly, the Department was not apparently looking beyond the hacking at all, to examine whether there had been other Russian efforts to disrupt the election. It was staggering to us that the Justice Department’s investigation was so narrowly circumscribed. Election interference by a foreign power was, inarguably, a national security issue; we expected the National Security Division to undertake a comprehensive investigation. Once again, Jeannie and I were left to speculate as to whether this lapse was the result of incompetence, political interference, fear of turning up answers that the Department’s political leaders would not like, or all of the above. The Intelligence Community’s investigation had assessed that Russia was behind the hacking, but remained seemingly incurious as to everything else. “The rest is going to be up to us,” Jeannie explained. [my emphasis]

The failures to investigate before Mueller got involved couldn’t have been Brady’s doing. He wasn’t nominated (in the same batch as the Jones Day attorney who represented him here, Andrew Lelling, in his deposition) until after this happened, on September 8, 2017; he wasn’t confirmed until December 14, 2017.

But his answer seems to reflect exposure to the investigation after the fact.

That makes sense, for two reasons. First, in October 2018, his office indicted some of the GRU hackers for their hack of the World Anti-Doping Agency. As I’ve noted in a post comparing the two indictments, that hack used some of the same infrastructure as the DNC hack did, though the WADA indictment adopted a different approach to describing the dissemination of the hacked materials.

Then, weeks before the 2020 election, his office indicted GRU hackers again, focused largely on NotPetya and the hack of the Pyeongchang Olympics, but also including the French and Georgian hacks that Brady mentioned. The primary hacker involved in the French and Georgia hacks, Anatoliy Kovalev was also charged in the DNC indictment.

The 2020 indictment adopted a different approach, a third one, to discussing the dissemination of the stolen files as I describe below.

But those later two indictments are one reason it’s so surprising that Brady would suggest any doubt on the DNC attribution. If you believe what was in the 2018 and 2020 indictments, if you signed your name to them, it’s hard to see how you could doubt the 2018 DNC indictment. They involved some of the same people and infrastructure.

The other reason I was alarmed by Brady’s comment is that he described these GRU indictments, along with the Rudy laundering project and the response to the Tree of Life synagogue attack, as the three events where Brady was in the room for the prosecutorial decisions.

Q Is it unusual for a United States attorney to participate in witness interviews directly, personally?

A No. It depends on the scope and sensitivity of the matter.

Q Okay. And have you, as a U.S. attorney, ever participated in a witness interview in an investigation or matter under your direction?

A As U.S. attorney, I have been involved in many meetings with the line AUSAs and agents, including our Tree of Life prosecution for the synagogue shooting. We had a number of highlevel investigations and indictments of the Russian intelligence directorate of the GRU, and I was in the room and a part of those meetings. I can’t remember if we had a witness interview that I was involved in, but I may have been.

This is where I took notice.

Particularly given my observation that one way in which the Macron hack-and-leak, the French hack Brady mentioned, differed from the DNC indictment released by Mueller is in the claimed failure to discover how the stolen Macron files got disseminated.

The Olympic Destroyer indictment obtained weeks before the election held Kovalev (and the GRU) accountable for the spearphish and communications with some French participants.

27. From on or about April 3, 2017, through on or about May 3, 2017 (during the days leading up to the May 7, 201 7, presidential election in France), the Conspirators conducted seven spearphishing campaigns targeting more than 100 individuals who were members of now-President Macron’s “La Republique En Marche!” (“En Marche!”) political party, other French politicians and high-profile individuals, and several email addresses associated with local French governments. The topics of these campaigns included public security announcements regarding terrorist attacks, email account lockouts, software updates for voting machines, journalist scoops on political scandals, En Marche! press relationships, and En Marchel internal cybersecurity recommendations.

28. KOVALEV participated in some of these campaigns. For example, on or about April 21, 2017, KOVALEV developed and tested a technique for sending spearphishing emails themed around file sharing through Google Docs. KOVALEV then crafted a malware-laced document entitled “Qui_peut_parler_ aux journalists.docx” (which translates to “Who can talk to journalists”) that purported to list nine En Marche! staff members who could talk to journalists about the previous day’s terrorist attack on the Champs-Elysees in Paris. Later that day, the Conspirators used an email account that mimicked the name of then-candidate Macron’s press secretary to send a Google Docs-themed spearphishing email to approximately 30 En Marche! staff members or advisors, which purported to share this document.

29. From on or about April 12, 2017, until on or about April 26, 2017, a GRU-controlled social media account communicated with various French individuals offering to provide them with internal documents from En Marche! that the user(s) of the account claimed to possess.

But it professed utter and complete ignorance about how the stolen documents started to get leaked.

30. On or about May 3 and May 5, 2017, unidentified individuals began to leak documents purporting to be from the En Marche! campaign’s email accounts.

But they weren’t unidentified, at least not all of them! As a DFIR report released 15-months before this indictment laid out, while there was a Latvian IP address that hadn’t been publicly identified at that point (one the FBI surely had some ability to unpack), the American alt-right, including Stone associate Jack Posobiec, made the campaign go viral, all in conjunction with WikiLeaks.

[snip]

MacronLeaks was, openly and proudly, a joint venture between the GRU, far right influencers in Stone’s immediate orbit, and WikiLeaks. It was an attempt to repeat the 2016 miracle that elected Donald Trump, by supporting the Russian-supporting Marine Le Pen by damaging Macron.

That is, one of the three investigations in which Brady said he had a more involved role is the one where an indictment happened not to name the far right figures known to have “colluded” with Russian spook hackers.

On October 19, Scott Brady’s office released an indictment that pulled its punches regarding the Trump boosters who were involved in a Russian hack-and-leak operation. On October 23, his team laundered an uncorroborated accusation of bribery into the Hunter Biden investigation. Then less than a month after that, on November 18, Brady ignored a warning about protected speech and made a baseless accusation of politicization.

Scott Brady thought to raise questions regarding things to which others signed their name. But his HJC testimony raises far more questions about things to which he signed his name.

This post is part of a Ball of Thread I’m putting together before I attempt to explain how Trump trained Republicans to hate rule of law. See this post for an explanation of my Ball of Thread.

The Non-Visible Networks behind the More Visible Networks of Fascism

January 15, 2024/180 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, 2020 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election, emptywheel, January 6 Insurrection, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

There’s an RT posted at the Guccifer 2.0 Twitter account in 2016 that has always puzzled me: a stupid meme, posted on Labor Day, about what unemployed people do on Labor Day.

Virtually all Guccifer 2.0’s other public Tweets served to sustain a cover story about the hack-and-leak operation and its tie to WikiLeaks, disseminate stolen documents, or network with those who might be used to disseminate stolen documents. This RT does not do that — at least not obviously — and it deviates from the BernieBro culture adopted by the Guccifer persona up to that point. It suggests either there was an unseen tie to far right meme culture, or that someone had access to this account who was part of it.

The RT is especially interesting given that three different GRU indictments (DNC, Anti-Doping, Macron Leaks) adopt different approaches in discussing the dissemination of the documents stolen by GRU, which I’ve addressed here and here. In 2016, the Guccifer persona cultivated ties with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and released select files (on Black Lives Matter) to then-Breitbart, future-Sputnik writer Lee Stranahan. By the time of the Macron Leaks in May 2017, Jack Posobiec played an even more central, overt role in the leak part of the operation, via still unidentified Latvian account. But this meme suggests some other tie in real time.

Keep this RT in mind as you read the following discussion, about the extent to which much of what we visibly see in the Republican slide to fascism is just the public manifestation of a far more instrumental and far uglier infrastructure that exists in chat rooms.

Some of what we know about the 2016 state of that infrastructure comes from exhibits introduced at the Douglass Mackey trial. On the very same day Guccifer 2.0 RTed that meme, for example, the trolls in the Madman Twitter DM list were pushing memes to push a narrative, one picked up from Trump, that Hillary Clinton was unwell and might not make the election — a narrative about a Democrat replicated, with far greater success, in this election.

White nationalists plotted in private about how to get minorities to turn on Democrats. They explicitly focused on ways to affect turnout in ways that could swing the election.

As I’ve written here and here, the far right efforts to set a narrative that would (and did) help Trump win the presidency started over a year before the election. Both Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer — the webmaster for Daily Stormer — and Microchip worked hard in early months to professionalize the effort. They planned campaigns that would bridge from reddit, 4Chan, and The Donald onto Twitter, including efforts that started at Daily Stormer. This effort was transnational: the trolls reached back to efforts made during Brexit and looked ahead to EU elections, and planned to build a bigger bot army. They complained about Twitter’s shoddy efforts to moderate and plotted ways to defeat any moderation.

The effort by far right trolls to hijack the virality of Twitter to get mainstream journalists to echo their far right themes had at least two direct ties to Trump’s campaign. Anthime “Baked Alaska” Gionet, whom Microchip alerted when the FBI first came calling, claimed to be part of a Trump campaign Slack, to which he invited others.

More importantly, Don Jr has confessed he was part of this network (curiously, when the Mackey took the stand at trial, he claimed to know nothing about the identities of his unindicted co-conspirators. As I have noted, there’s a troll in that channel who used the moniker P0TUSTrump and whom other trolls called Donald that was pushing hashtags pushing stolen documents on the same days Don Jr was doing so on his eponymous Twitter account. From there, trolls like Microchip made them go viral. If P0TUSTrump is Don Jr, then, it shows that he was a key channel between WikiLeaks through this far right channel to make things go viral.

Between 2016 and 2020, people associated with this far right group orchestrated PizzaGate, may have had a hand in QAnon, and helped disseminated documents stolen by GRU from Emmanuel Macron. PizzaGate and QAnon served as powerful recruiting narratives. I’ve shown how Doug Jensen, the QAnoner who chased Officer Eugene Goodman up the Senate stairs on January 6, went from a lifelong union Democrat to hating Hillary to throwing away his life in QAnon to attacking the Capitol via that process of radicalization. Early prosecutions, at least, suggested that QAnon was actually more successful at getting bodies where they could obstruct the vote certification than the militias.

But even as that cult narrative of QAnon was radicalizing people from all walks of life, the same network was replicating networks of more overtly partisan, paramilitary mobilization.

I suppose I or someone else should draw a network map of this.

But we know that Roger Stone had a Signal list call Friends of Stone, which included among its 47 members Stewart Rhodes, Enrique Tarrio, Ali Alexander, and Owen Shroyer, along with anti-vaxxers, Bundyists, Mike Flynn associate Ivan Raiklin, and longtime aides Jacobs Engels and Tyler Ziolkowski (who, along with Tarrio, were both implicated in the meme targeting Amy Berman Jackson during Stone’s prosecution).

Both Rhodes and Tarrio ran parallel sets of communication leading up to the insurrection — more public, accessible communications, and more select lists (on Signal in Rhodes’ case and on Telegram in Tarrio’s) that planned for the operation. Unlike Twitter, Signal and Telegram would only be accessible to law enforcement after exploiting the phones on which they were used, and only then if the comms hadn’t been successfully deleted.

Tarrio would also be networked into the Latinos for Trump group, along with Bianca Gracia and Oath Keeper Kellye SoRelle, with whom he visited the White House in December 2020 and both of whom were present for the parking garage meeting Tarrio had with Rhodes on January 5, 2021. One court filing submitted in advance of the trial of the cop who allegedly tipped off Tarrio to his arrest shows Tarrio also has a “Christian Nationalist” group that officer Shane Lamond joined on November 9, 2020. Another filing shows how Lamond warned Tarrio about investigations into Harry’s Bar and the Proud Boys organizing on Parler.

Ali Alexander and Brandon Straka provided the January 6 Committee (entirely unreliable) descriptions of the all-important Stop the Steal threads on which Alexander organized — first — early mob scenes at state capitols and then events around January 6 itself (though unlike Alexander, who fully attributed getting the brand from Roger Stone, Straka disclaimed knowledge of all that). Straka did acknowledge that Paul Gosar had ties to the Stop the Steal effort. The sentencing memorandum for Alan Hostetter, a key player in the SoCal anti-vax community with ties to 3Percenters, actually contacted Alexander on December 16, 2020, to suggest Stop the Steal organize a rally for January 6, though it’s not clear via what channel he knew him. While the leaders of the Stop the Steal effort were on Twitter until a late move to Signal (again, if we can believe unreliable J6C testimony), it spawned a massive viral effort on other platforms, including Facebook.

In addition to being the big draw for the donation from Publix heir Julie Fancelli, Alex Jones has his own media infrastructure. Organizers claim some percentage — a fifth or a third — of those at the Capitol were there for Jones, not Trump. Like Alexander, he also mobilized the earlier mobs in the states.

It’s not entire clear how Baked Alaska continues to fit into this network. But in order to avoid felony charges (as Straka had earlier), he reportedly agreed to share the kind of network information that would further elucidate these networks.

And that network of lists and threads maps onto this one, the list of people who, in 2020, were the most effective at spreading disinformation on Twitter.

We just don’t know via what chat rooms and threads they map, who else is in that map, and what international ties they have.

What kind of chat rooms did Don Jr inhabit, four years after he networked with Douglass Mackey, that helped him direct a broader network to make false claims go viral? Today, as Ric Grenell — Trump’s troll turned Ambassador to Germany turned Acting Director of National Intelligence — returns from supporting a coup attempt in Guatemala, what international networks was he mobilizing?

I’m always most fascinated by the role of Mike Roman on this list, punching well above his modest Twitter following of 29,610 people. Roman, a charged co-conspirator in Trump’s Georgia indictment, is claiming Fani Willis has a conflict arising from a personal relationship with one of the prosecutors she brought in for the case. He’s often thought of someone who ferried documents from fake electors around, but before that he was a kind of internal intelligence service for Trump targeting Republicans, and before that, the Kochs. Like Grenell, he has branched out to push far right policies internationally, in Canada. None of those activities, however, explain what chat rooms he was in that allowed him to help spread the Big Lie in 2020. They must exist, and yet they’re not yet visible.

Mike Roman is one of the Trump associates whose phone DOJ seized before Jack Smith was appointed. To the extent he didn’t delete them, that should disclose his networks to prosecutors.

As I noted above, increasingly, these networks have moved to platforms, especially Telegram and Signal, that are harder to investigate, particularly without advance notice. It took years (starting before January 6, with the seizure of Tarrio’s phone, which nevertheless took a full year to exploit) before the government had collected at least three sets of the Friends of Stone list.

That’s true even though some network effect — whether including anyone named here or not — likely explains a swatting campaign that has targeted:

While not all targets are seen as adversaries of Trump, or even Democrats, his top adversaries have been targeted. The swatting campaign is, at a minimum, terrorism (and could be part of a campaign to do real violence).

And there’s a non-zero chance that behind it is the same kind of non-visible infrastructure the far right has been professionalizing for a decade.

My effort to describe how Trump trained the Republican party to hate rule of law will describe the visible aspects of that effort. But behind it all, these non-visible networks form an integral part of the effort.

Update: Took out reference to Pepe.

This post is part of a Ball of Thread I’m putting together before I attempt to explain how Trump trained Republicans to hate rule of law. See this post for an explanation of my Ball of Thread.

Leaders and Best Michigan and Some Other Football Trash

January 13, 2024/178 Comments/in emptywheel, Trash Talk /by emptywheel

On this day, University of Michigan’s footbball team is the uncontested champion of the 2023 season and the Detroit Kitties are the NFC North Champions, hosting a home playoff game for the first time in decades.

I had stopped watching much football even before I moved to Ireland, on account of the injuries. I didn’t take the trouble to find someone screening the games (which started after bar time here).

But I remember how magical was the 1997 season, when I was a student right alongside Tom Brady and others who were bigger superstars at the time.

Go Blue! Go Kitties!

Everything has gotten discombobulated in college football since I have watched, with Alabama losing in the Rose Bowl before the championship game, only to have two old style Rose Bowl teams play for the Championship in Houston. Confusing!

I’m instructed there are other big games in the NFL this weekend, with Buffalo digging out their stadium again to host the Stillers tomorrow, KC hosting the Fins in subzero temperatures today, and Flacco leading the Browns to Houston today. Plus some teams from the NFC East we’re more used to.

Plus, this week has also marked other generational transitions in football, as Bill Belichick, Nick Saban, and Pete Carroll also left the game. I’m hoping Harbaugh sticks with the college game.

A number of you have asked in the last week where bmaz is, and this is a post he might have otherwise have posted. Over the holidays, after months of difficulties, I yelled at bmaz. I understand he felt his role was not appreciated here. I regret I did not better show my appreciation, because I do value the contributions he has made to the site. He remains free to comment and I hope one day to resolve our difficulties.

The Seth DuCharme Confession in the Charles McGonigal Sentencing Memo

January 12, 2024/11 Comments/in emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

In his sentencing memo for Charles McGonigal’s DC case, former Bill Barr flunky Seth DuCharme twice misstated the nature of the false statement for which Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced.

In a passage comparing other government officials who had omitted information from government filings, as McGonigal pled he had, DuCharme asserted that Clinesmith was prosecuted for making “false statements,” plural, “in application for” FISA warrant.

United States v. Clinesmith, No. 1:20-cr-165 (D.D.C. 2020) (imposing probation against FBI attorney for false statements in application for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) warrant); [my emphasis]

Even before that, in arguing that Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly should not apply a sentencing enhancement, he turned to Clinesmith. This time, he accused Clinesmith of causing false information to be submitted to FISC.

Mr. McGonigal disagrees with the application of the cross reference in Section 2B1.1(c)(3), which would increase his base offense level to 14, as inconsistent with case precedent. In United States v. Clinesmith, No. 1:20-cr-165 (D.D.C. 2020), the government did not seek and the sentencing court did not independently apply the cross reference to the obstruction Guideline at the sentencing of an FBI attorney who caused false information to be submitted to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“FISC”) in an application for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) warrant sought in connection with an active FBI investigation. The government’s position that false statements to the FISC during an active investigation does not warrant application of the cross reference while Mr. McGonigal’s conduct does is perplexing. While Mr. McGonigal concedes that this Court in United States v. Hawkins, 185 F. Supp. 3d 114 (D.D.C. 2016) held that it may consider conduct in the statement of the offense, and the court in United States v. Saffarinia, 424 F. Supp. 3d 46 (D.D.C. 2020) held that at the motion to dismiss phase Section 1519 is broad enough to cover false statements on OGE-278 forms, it is difficult to reconcile these cases with the Clinesmith court’s more recent analysis. In Clinesmith, the District Court declined to apply the obstruction cross reference in determining the applicable Guidelines range, and we respectfully request that this Court similarly decline to apply the cross reference to the facts at issue here. [my emphasis]

Kevin Clinesmith altered an email and with it, misled a colleague, thereby preventing the FBI from fully informing the FISA Court on something material to the application. In that, he “caused” information not to be shared with the FISC. He did not make false statements in the application (and in any case, the original decision not to notify the court that Page had years earlier shared information with the CIA about Russian spies, which Clinesmith had no part of, had in significant part to do the the fact that Page had not been an approved contact of the CIA for several years before 2016, when he went out of his way to contact the Russians about his role in a counterintelligence investigation). Nor did Clinesmith cause affirmative false statements to be made.

His was a crime of omission, not commission, as DuCharme claimed. I emailed DuCharme about the basis for these claims but got no response.

More importantly, whether you agree with him or not, Judge James Boasberg explained why he sentenced Clinesmith to probation: because he didn’t think Clinesmith believed he was lying and the former FBI lawyer got no benefit from his false claim.

First, he obtained no real personal benefit from his actions and he had no active intent to harm.

Although the government has contested this, my view of the evidence is that Mr. Clinesmith likely believed that what he said about Dr. Page was true, namely that he was a subsource but not a source of the Other Government Agency. By altering the e-mail, he was saving himself some work and taking an inappropriate shortcut. But I do not believe that he was attempting to achieve an end he knew was wrong.

I’m on the record saying Clinesmith should have gotten some jail time, even in spite of the wildly unsubstantiated claims Durham’s team made about politicization. I think DuCharme is totally right to compare how lenient courts have been with government officials who fail to disclose things, including by invoking the Clinesmith sentence. That’s all sound lawyering.

But his sloppy treatment of Clinesmith — the appointment of John Durham to prosecute for which DuCharme played a central role — comes off as petulant and partisan. Indeed, Barr’s office took personal interest in this prosecution all the way through the time DuCharme swapped back to EDNY, as revealed by a text exchange Barr had with his Chief of Staff, probably complaining that Boasberg remained on this case, after the plea deal.

There are few factual similarities to the two cases, and by focusing so much on him, DuCharme seems to be saying, “if Kevin Clinesmith didn’t have to go to jail based on our conspiracy theories about him, my guy shouldn’t have to either.”

All the more so given another enhancement argument DuCharme made. He argues that a 3-level enhancement should not be applied because McGonigal trumped up a FARA investigation into the rival of the Albanian paying him to travel around Europe, the thing he failed to disclose.

Mr. McGonigal further disagrees with the application of Section 2J1.2(b)(2) resulting in a three-level enhancement for “substantial interference” with the administration of justice. According to the PSR, the enhancement is applied to Mr. McGonigal because he admitted to “speaking with a foreign official about a matter in which Person A had a financial interest, and opening a criminal investigation based on information provided to him by Person A.” PSR ¶ 57. While the enhancement is appropriately applied to the “premature or improper termination of a felony investigation,” we are aware of no authority supporting its application to the opening of a felony investigation, as is the case here. 7 As Special Agent in Charge (“SAC”) of Counterintelligence for the New York Field Office, it was Mr. McGonigal’s job to pass along information he received that could be indicative of criminal activity. Had Mr. McGonigal taken the alternative route and concealed or withheld the information he received from Person A concerning potential criminal activity in the United States, that would be troubling. Instead, he passed the tip and lead to the FBI, to be appropriately vetted by the Bureau and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Accordingly, the application of Section 2J1.2(b)(2) is unwarranted.

7 U.S.S.G. § 2J1.2 (“Substantial interference with the administration of justice” means “a premature or improper termination of a felony investigation; an indictment, verdict, or any judicial determination based upon perjury, false testimony, or other false evidence; or the unnecessary expenditure of substantial governmental or court resources.”); see e.g., United States v. Baker, 82 F.3d 273 (8th Cir 1996) (applying enhancement to police officer who improperly terminated a felony investigation). [my bold, italics original]

The technical issue — whether this enhancement can be used because someone initiated an improper investigation rather than improperly ending one — will make an interesting appeal if Kollar-Kotelly applies the enhancement and and sentences McGonigal to serve his sentence concurrent to the 50-month sentence Judge Jennifer Rearden gave McGonigal for trying to trump up sanctions against an Oleg Deripaska rival in SDNY, something DOJ is not requesting. But it’s likely that would be unsuccessful: As the government notes in its sentencing memo and even the footnote here makes clear, after the termination language DuCharme focuses on, the guideline continues, “or the unnecessary expenditure of substantial governmental or court resources.” And McGonigal’s opening an investigation against his business partner’s rival used counterintelligence resources that should have been spent on more serious threats.

FBI officials even questioned the propriety of opening up the criminal investigation at the time it was initiated, but cited the defendant’s directive. See Ex. 1 at 1.

[snip]

Here, initiating the investigation based on Person A’s information was particularly egregious given its lack of substantiation, which is why it was promptly closed following the defendant’s retirement.

DOJ provided records showing that one of McGonigal’s colleagues was genuinely troubled about the propriety of opening a FARA case against someone who had already registered under FARA regarding a country, Albania, that isn’t among the countries of priority for such things. By opening an investigation into a lobbyist for an Albanian political party (reportedly former Ted Cruz Chief of Staff Nicholas Muzin), McGonigal was drawing resources away from more pressing threats.

So my question is with all the talk of shortage of resources and most field offices having difficulty covering Band 3 and 4 threats, and FARA cases from banded threat countries rarely prosecuted by DOJ, why is NY requesting a SIM FAR investigation be opened on Albania for an improper FARA registration as a threat to national security?

I of course will fully support anything NY wants to do in their AOR, but once the paperwork to restrict the case gets reported up my chain of command, I would like to be able to explain to them why we are working an Albanian SIM/FARA case when every day I am in there fighting for resources on some national security matters pertaining to banded countries such as [redacted]. I am assuming since this directive is coming from SAC McGonigal there is more to this story?

Per those records, McGonigal appears to have caused a politically connected Republican to have nine of his bank accounts scrutinized before the investigation got closed. The Albanian section of Oversight Democrats’ report on Trump’s acceptance of emoluments provides more background on the political wranglings involved; Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and two aides spent almost $3,500 at Trump’s hotel on a trip when they met with McGonigal.

Notably, the investigation against this lobbyist, like Crossfire Hurricane, was opened as a Full investigation from the start.

And after the FBI discovered that McGonigal had opened up an investigation to help his business partner, the FBI has had to review all the other cases he was working on to make sure he hadn’t similarly used criminal investigations for self-interested purposes.

Moreover, given the defendant’s senior and sensitive role in the organization, the FBI has been forced to undertake substantial reviews of numerous other investigations to insure that none were compromised during the defendant’s tenure as an FBI special agent and supervisory special agent. The defendant worked on some of the most sensitive and significant matters handled by the FBI. PSR ¶¶ 98-101. His lack of credibility, as revealed by his conduct underlying his offense of conviction, could jeopardize them all. The resulting internal review has been a large undertaking, requiring an unnecessary expenditure of substantial governmental resources.

The misrepresentation of the Clinesmith plea might be reasonable coming from someone else. Like all criminal defendants, McGonigal deserves zealous advocacy.

But this argument came from Seth DuCharme.

It came from someone who opened a four year follow-on investigation in which the only crime ever identified was that Clinesmith alteration — and that crime was discovered by someone else, and could easily have been, and should have been, prosecuted by the very same prosecutors who did prosecute it, only instead reporting to the Trump appointed US Attorney in DC rather than Durham. And among the prosecutions pursued as part of that four year investigation that Seth DuCharme opened was a false statements case against Michael Sussmann based off logic directly contrary to what DuCharme argues here, that McGonigal would have failed to do his duty if he hadn’t opened the investigation into his business partner’s rival. That logic, applied to the Durham investigation, says it would have been remiss not to investigate the Alfa Bank allegations that Sussmann shared with Jim Baker — which is exactly what Sussmann said from the start.

Worse still, that argument DuCharme makes, that, “it was Mr. McGonigal’s job to pass along information he received that could be indicative of criminal activity,” is precisely the argument that Bill Barr made to explain a similar laundering of self-interested information that Seth DuCharme effected: the channeling of information from Rudy Giuliani to the Hunter Biden investigation.

The DOJ has the obligation to have an open door to anybody who wishes to provide us information that they think is relevant.

That is, the dishonest argument that Seth DuCharme is making, trying to dismiss the seriousness of Charles McGonigal’s use of FBI resources to conduct an investigation in which he had an undisclosed personal interest? It’s an argument that might also exonerate his own twin efforts to launch massive investigations into Donald Trump’s political rivals.

In fact, in McGonigal’s Deripaska-related sentencing hearing, DuCharme said something shocking. In that case, he said that McGonigal’s enthusiasm for working with someone whom the former FBI agent himself had identified as a Russian spy was only a problem because he was no longer covered by public authority defense. “[O]ne of the critical mistakes he makes in embracing this is that he no longer has the public authority that he had as an FBI agent.” That is, Seth DuCharme, who did set up a way to use dirt from a known Russian spy for a politicized investigation, argued that’s all cool if you’ve got the legal cover of official employ.

By all means, lawyers for Charles McGonigal should point out that DC judges rarely punish government officials who lie by omission that harshly. But in attempting to do that, Seth DuCharme said as much about his own ethics and actions than he did about his client’s crimes.