Leaders and Best Michigan and Some Other Football Trash

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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

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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.

 

 

Refusing to Take Yes for an Answer: Remember the Pardons in the Desk Drawer

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One notable aspect of yesterday’s hearing on Trump’s absolute immunity claims is the fact that James Pearce — and through him, Jack Smith — refused to take yes for an answer.

They refused to accept what Judge Florence Pan, at least, seemed to suggest would be the quickest way to get to trial.

Throughout the hearing, Judges Michelle Childs and Pan seemed persuaded by American Oversight’s amicus argument that Midland Asphalt prohibits this appeal. While Childs never seemed to fully concede that point, after Pearce responded to a Childs’ argument by stating that because this involves a President, the immunity analysis is different, Pan asked Pearce why he wasn’t adopting the American Oversight argument. Pearce responded, first, by emphasizing the goal of “doing justice” and so getting the law right, and only secondarily getting to trial quickly.

Judge Pan: Why aren’t you taking the position that we should dismiss this appeal because it’s interlocutory? Doesn’t that advance your interests?

Pearce: Our interests are two-fold. One, as in United States versus Nixon, it is in doing justice. And the second is to move promptly to satisfy the public’s and the defendant’s interest in a prompt resolution of this trial. But doing justice means getting the law right, and our view is even if a dismissal on jurisdiction might move this case faster — actually, empirically, that’s hard to know — we just don’t think that’s the right analysis here, on either immunity or the second claim.

So Pan set about figuring out how they could use the hypothetical statutory jurisdiction to reach the merits even if she and, especially, Childs still had doubts they were allowed to do that.

Pan: If we have discretion to reach the merits versus just dismissing this case under Midland Asphalt, which I think is a strong precedent which which suggests that this appeal is interlocutory and does not fall under the collateral order doctrine, how should we determine how to exercise that jurisdiction, about whether or not we should reach the merits?

Pearce: So I think in the American Hospitals decision, the 2020 decision, the court said, the formulation was something like, we’re doubtful as to our jurisdiction but nonetheless, invoking the line of cases you’ve just described, went on to decide the merits. We would urge the court to do the same here, even if it entertains doubts with respect to the jurisdiction. Yes, hypothetical statutory jurisdiction is available under the law of the circuit. The court should use that to reach the merits.

At least some of the panelists on this worthwhile Lawfare Podcast about the hearing took that “doing justice” line to be fluff, and took the “empirical” questions about whether rejecting this appeal on jurisdictional grounds would really speed things up.

But I’m not so sure.

Granted, later in the hearing, Pearce provided some explanation for why a rejection on jurisdictional grounds might not help move things along. It came as part of a discussion of two questions: Childs’ question about whether the panel should rule on the broad question of presidential immunity, as Judge Chutkan had, or whether — as Judge Henderson at least entertained — they should assess whether a president was immune from prosecution for the crimes, as charged in the indictment, as most Motions to Dismiss are treated. In the same discussion, Henderson asked twice about how to apply the Blassingame decision in this context. Both these questions are about whether Trump can be prosecuted only because of the nature of the charges in the indictment, or whether as an ex-President he can be charged, regardless of what the charges are.

But as the discussion proceeded, Pearce voiced some of the concerns about what a more narrow ruling would do to the prosecution.

Childs: Are we to look at the broader question that was dealt with by Judge Chutkan with respect to Presidential immunity, no, absolutely immunity for no criminal prosecution of official acts, versus looking at this indictment and accepting as true the allegations that are brought there. Or both?

James Pearce: So we have a strong preference that the court adopts the former view, and looks at the question — in the way, as the District Court did, which is to say, based on questions of separation of powers, of constitutional text, history, precedent, Is there, in fact, immunity for a former President?

We think the answer to that is no, for of course all the reasons we put in the brief and I’m happy to sort of address here. Candidly, I think if the court gets to that second question, there are some hard questions about the nature of official acts. And frankly, as I think Judge Pan’s hypothetical described, I mean, what kind of world are we living in if, as I understood my friend on the other side to say here, a President orders his Seal team to assassinate his political rival and resigns, for example, before an impeachment? Not a criminal act.

President sells a pardon. Resigns, or is not impeached? Not a crime.

I think that is [an] extraordinarily frightening future, and that is the kind — if we’re talking about a balancing and a weighing of the interests — I think that should weigh extraordinarily heavily in the court’s consideration.

Henderson: Let me ask you about the effect of Blassingame. How does it either bind us. How is it persuasive to us.

Pearce: So, I think it, formally, has no application at all, because of course very early on in the opinion, the court says, “we’re not dealing with any questions of immunity in the criminal context.” I tend to agree with my friend on the other side that in many respects, it does reinforce the nature of the Fitzgerald standard outer perimeter standard. It says, you don’t look at intent, or you don’t look at purpose. Context plays a more important role than — often — the content of communications. I think the significant change of course is the acknowledgement of looking at a President — whether that President is acting in his or her role as office-seeker or office-holder.

But, again, to go back to my response to Judge Childs’ question, although that would change the nature of whether — it may change the nature of whether certain things are or are not official acts in the indictment, we just think that’s entirely the wrong paradigm to use. We think that under Fitzgerald — in fact, that would be inconsistent with Fitzgerald’s reasoning — and it’s also just irreconcilable with the nature of how criminal law works. I mean, to say that we’re not going to take account of motive or intent? There are plenty of acts that, everyday, I mean, for example, if I were going to encourage someone not to testify at trial because I wanted to go on a hike with that person, it’s not a crime. If I were to encourage someone not to go on a hike because their testimony a trial — sorry, encourage them to skip their trial testimony because their testimony was going to incriminate me?

It’s the same underlying act.

And now, when you map that onto the criminal–onto the Presidential context, you come up with some of the frightening hypotheticals where as long as something is plausibly official, even if it involves assassinating a prominent critic, or a business rival? That would seem to then, be exempt, potentially, from criminal prosecution, we certainly wouldn’t concede that. If that’s the world we need to live in. I think we would advance plenty of arguments below, but we really — but those arguments themselves would create satellite litigation that are an additional reason not to go down this route.

Childs: But looking, and thinking about your answer about potentially not looking at, your argument about motive and intent, when there is a criminal prosecution, that mens rea and that intent is part of the actual statute charged criminally.

Pearce: Yes. Precisely. And that’s why it wouldn’t make sense to use this non-motive — as I understand how Fitzgerald outer perimeter standard might work, it could say, “those types of official acts, official conduct, that is something from which a President is immune.” You don’t ever get to that second question of, well, did that person act with mens rea, can we prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, because at least under a theory where it’s not available at trial, then there’s no way to reach that conduct.

Childs: When we’re looking at this indictment, though — back to Judge Henderon’s question about the use of Blassingame. Some of the acts are the same or similar, and there was direct discussion of that in that opinion as determining whether it was office-seeker versus office-holder. So do we use Blassingame, at least for that?

Pearce: So if this court decides the case the way the district court does — did, pardon me — then I don’t think Blassingame has any role to play at all. Because there is no question of whether, you know, is this act official, or were these sets of allegations official? The question is, based on a Fitzgerald analysis and history, precedent, et cetera, is there any quantum of immunity for a former President. We think the answer to that question is no. There’s no reason, as the district court also found, to turn to the indictment and consider the outer perimeter, this civil outer perimeter standard.

Henderson: How about if you don’t decide it? On the Blassingame. [inaudible]

Pearce: If you don’t, [inaudible, cross talk] so there are a lot of different ways this court could not decide it that way. I think, to pick up on my response to Judge Childs, we certainly stand by our view in the brief that some substantial number of allegations would fall outside of an outer perimeter, and that, I think, is enough to affirm, I think either party is encouraging the court at that point to send the case back to the District Court. I think that would then create a series of challenging questions that I mentioned earlier: What are the evidentiary theories under which that evidence could potentially come in? And, but it would be our strong view and we would want, if the court followed that route, which we would urge the court not to, to make clear that immunity is an on-off switch. Right? This is the immunity appeal. If the court says, we affirm, we send it back, there’s no immunity. Then other things become evidentiary questions, or questions of jury instructions, which any appeal is then an appeal from a final judgment, if any final judgment.

Childs: And the immunity defense is never lost?

Pearce: Um, well, I don’t think it’s immunity at that point. I think this court, in what I’ve just described, will have said there is no immunity. There may be some other types of challenges, as evidence comes in at trial, but again, I think that would lead to this extraordinarily complicated litigation that is, not the topline reason, but certainly among the reasons why the court should not go down that path. [emphasis added]

As Childs and Pearce laid out, one problem with defining immunity in the criminal context with regards to official (in Blassingame, actions taken as an office-holder) and non-official (in Blassingame, actions taken as an office-seeker) acts is that criminal law, including the laws charged here, pivot on mens rea. Trump can’t be convicted of obstructing the vote certification, for example (assuming SCOTUS sustains its adoption with January 6), unless prosecutors can prove he had “corrupt purpose” in doing so, however that ends up being defined.

But also, if you’re going to split presidential immunity based on a categorization about official and unofficial acts, the evidentiary disputes become impossible. It would draw out that phase of litigation, probably requiring several hearings, but also would create expansive basis for appeal.

One argument John Sauer made yesterday, for example, is that because in Knight, the Second Circuit held that Trump’s Twitter account was a public forum on which he could not conduct viewpoint discrimination, it made his Tweets official acts. If the DC Circuit rules on an official/unofficial split, Trump would undoubtedly argue that under Knight none of his Tweets could come in as evidence, at least three of which are among the most critical pieces of evidence in the case.

But, as Pearce said, the difficulties such a split would create was not the topline concern here. They want DC Circuit to reach the merits, and they want DC Circuit to rule broadly, as Chutkan did.

I don’t think that “doing justice” comment is fluff. Immediately after Pearce presented his not-topline concern about how a categorical ruling would affect the prosecution, he and Pan returned to the theme of the hearing: The Seal Team Six assassination.

And also, selling pardons.

Immediately after that exchange — which was close to the end of Pearce’s time — Pan came back to what, as this really accessible George Conway column lays out, she had stripped things down to be the key issue.

Pan: Since President Trump concedes that a President can be criminally prosecuted under some circumstances — he says that is true only if he is first impeached and convicted by Congress, do you agree that this appeal largely boils down to whether he’s correct in his interpretation of the Impeachment Judgment Clause? That is, if he’s correct, that the Impeachment Judgment Clause includes this impeachment-first rule, then he wins, and if he’s wrong, if we think the Impeachment Judgement Clause does not contain an impeachment-first rule, then he loses?

Pearce: So I think that’s basically right. I mean, the defendant’s theory over the course of this litigation has evolved a bit, and I think, now, before this court, I understand the argument to be the principle submission to be as you’ve just described — what we call in our brief the conditioned precedent argument. That there is only liability — criminal liability for a former president — if that President has been impeached and convicted.

And that is wrong for textual, structural, historical reasons, and a host of practical ones, one of which I’ll start with again, to just amplify the point. It would mean that if a former President engages in assassination, selling pardons, these kinds of things, and then isn’t impeached and convicted? There is no accountability for that, for that individual. And that is frightening. [my emphasis]

While Pearce addressed Sauer’s historical argument briefly, this was close to the end of Pearce’s argument, and really the key point of the hearing. Pan had (as Conway laid out) stripped the issues down to whether Trump’s view on impeachment is correct, and then Pan had demonstrated, using hypotheticals, how impossibly absurd that outcome would be.

James Pearce and Florence Pan don’t want to give Joe Biden an easy way to legally assassinate Trump, only Trump is asking for that.

Pan’s laser focus on those hypotheticals provided Pearce opportunity to repeatedly do what he did far more subtly starting in October. As I argued then, the five hypotheticals that Pearce floated in October were all near analogues for Trump’s known actions.

  • Trading pardons to dissuade criminal associates from testifying against someone
  • Ordering the National Guard to murder his critics
  • Ordering an FBI agent to plant evidence on his political enemy
  • Taking a bribe in exchange for a family member getting a lucrative contract
  • Selling nuclear secrets to America’s adversaries

Todd Blanche (one of the lawyers representing Trump in both the stolen election and stolen documents cases, and so someone who is intimately familiar what kind of paperwork DOJ discovered, along with hundreds of classified documents, that Trump took with him when he left office) responded to this line of argument by calling the hypotheticals treason and suggesting they might be private acts, but arguing, as Sauer did yesterday that there would still be a remedy: impeachment.

10 Ignoring actual lessons from history, the Government provides a list of lurid hypotheticals that have never happened—including treason and murder. Response, at 20 (speculating that a President might “murder his most prominent critics” or “sell[] nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary”). Some or all of these hypotheticals, depending on the facts, would likely involve purely private conduct, rendering them irrelevant here. See id. Yet even if such examples somehow were within the outer perimeter of a President’s duties, it is overwhelmingly likely the House impeach and the Senate would convict, and the offending President would then be subject to “Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment” by criminal prosecution. U.S. CONST. art. I, § 3, cl. 7. That is the process the Constitution provides, and the prosecution may not ignore it here. [my emphasis]

As Pan had laid out, though, one part of Trump’s argument for immunity is actually bigger than that, arguing for immunity regardless. Indeed, that’s how Pearce presented this very same argument in his appellate response. He took Trump’s claims of absolute immunity at his word, describing that these scenarios — but not the pardon one — would be flat-out legal.

The implications of the defendant’s broad immunity theory are sobering. In his view, a court should treat a President’s criminal conduct as immune from prosecution as long as it takes the form of correspondence with a state official about a matter in which there is a federal interest, a meeting with a member of the Executive Branch, or a statement on a matter of public concern. That approach would grant immunity from criminal prosecution to a President who accepts a bribe in exchange for directing a lucrative government contract to the payer; a President who instructs the FBI Director to plant incriminating evidence on a political enemy; a President who orders the National Guard to murder his most prominent critics; or a President who sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary, because in each of these scenarios, the President could assert that he was simply executing the laws; or communicating with the Department of Justice; or discharging his powers as Commander-in-Chief; or engaging in foreign diplomacy. Under the defendant’s framework, the Nation would have no recourse to deter a President from inciting his supporters during a State of the Union address to kill opposing lawmakers—thereby hamstringing any impeachment proceeding—to ensure that he remains in office unlawfully. See Blassingame v. Trump, 87 F.4th 1, 21 (D.C. Cir. 2023) (President’s delivery of the State of the Union address is an official act). Such a result would severely undermine the compelling public interest in the rule of law and criminal accountability. [my emphasis]

An analogue for Pan’s (more vivid) Seal Team Six hypothetical was in there: the National Guard order. And an analogue for her military secrets was in there: selling nuclear secrets.

But pardons aren’t in that brief. The only discussion of pardons in it pertained to the Nixon pardon.

Indeed, it was Sauer who briefed pardons, not Pearce. In an attempt to “prove” that presidents had committed crimes that had not been charged before, he cited the Marc Rich pardon — or rather an Andy McCarthy paywalled column about it — to imply that Bill Clinton committed a crime that had not been prosecuted.

The government argues that the absence of any prior criminal prosecution of a President in American history merely “reflects … the fact that most presidents have done nothing criminal.” Resp.Br.37 (citation omitted). This claim is untenable. App.Br.17 (citing examples of Presidents accused of crimes in official acts, from John Quincy Adams to Barack Obama). American history contains many such examples—President Reagan’s alleged involvement in Iran-Contra, President Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich, President Bush’s claims of “weapons of mass destruction,” President Nixon’s firing of Archibald Cox, etc. 5 None of the above conduct was prosecuted. “Perhaps the most telling indication of a severe constitutional problem” with this prosecution “is a lack of historical precedent to support it.” Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, 140 S. Ct. 2183, 2201 (2020) (cleaned up).

5 Tim Arango, Ex-Prosecutor’s Book Accuses Bush of Murder, N.Y. TIMES (July 7, 2008), https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/business/media/07bugliosi.html; Andrew C. McCarthy, The Wages of Prosecuting Presidents for their Official Acts, NAT’L REVIEW (Dec. 9, 2023), https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/12/the-wagesof-prosecuting-presidents-over-their-official-acts/; The Editors, Iran-Contra Scandal Begins with Shredded Documents, HISTORY (Nov. 13, 2009), at https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/oliver-north-starts-feeding-documentsinto-the-shredding-machine.

With regards to Iran-Contra, Pearce noted that “in Chapter 27” of Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh’s report, “assumes that President Reagan is subject to prosecution and says, but we didn’t get there evidentiarily.”

In response to Judge Pan’s hypotheticals yesterday, he returned to noted authority, Andy McCarthy’s opinion, about Marc Rich, then said again that pardons had come up historically and not been charged. Pan raised it as a hypothetical, but Sauer wanted to make good and sure that pardons could not be charged because, he said, Andy McCarthy says so.

But then both times Pearce mocked the implications of Sauer’s logic, he did raise selling pardons, even though he left it off his response brief. And he added the scenario of corruptly getting someone not to testify against oneself by inviting them on a hike!

Incidentally, according to Anna Bower, Walt Nauta — the aide who has refused to explain what he knows about what happened to the stolen classified documents that got brought to Bedminster in 2022 — along with his attorney Stan Woodward (and of course Boris Epshteyn), were at yesterday’s hearing.

But the reason — one reason — why I find the way the way pardons have gotten floated repeatedly in this claim of absolute immunity is that, along with hundreds of documents, including nuclear secrets, found at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022, DOJ found documentation about clemency granted by Donald Trump, probably including that of:

Oh, and also, some kind of clemency document — one that has some tie to Emmanuel Macron and therefore possibly a pardon beyond the one we know about — for Roger Stone, the guy who was convicted after refusing to disclose the substance of conversations he had with Donald Trump about advance knowledge of the Russian hack-and-leak. The same guy who, in 2020, was allegedly plotting assassinations with his former NYPD buddy Sal Greco.

It’s certainly possible that James Pearce — and so Jack Smith — want to have a clear decision that presidents can be prosecuted for their official acts simply out of getting the law right.

But both sides in this argument seem to understand there’s something more going on.

The First Time Trump “Colluded” with Russia Was To Help Bibi Netanyahu

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The first time Donald Trump worked via back channel with Russia to undermine Barack Obama’s foreign policy, it was to help Bibi Netanyahu dodge repercussions for illegal settlements in the West Bank.

And yet that effort — and the way that Jared Kushner mobilized a group of countries to undermine the sitting President’s foreign policy decision — has gone unmentioned in recent months, even as Bibi blows off Joe Biden’s requests for moderation in advance of the November election, even as Vladimir Putin holds overt meetings with Hamas, even as Kushner — effectively an employee of Mohammed bin Salman at this point — meets with Qatar and tours Kfar Aza.

The Mueller Report actually soft-pedaled what happened in December 2016.

On December 21, 2016, Egypt submitted a resolution to the United Nations Security Council calling on Israel to cease settlement activities in Palestinian territory.1208 The Security Council, which includes Russia, was scheduled to vote on the resolution the following day.1209 There was speculation in the media that the Obama Administration would not oppose the resolution.1210

According to Flynn, the Transition Team regarded the vote as a significant issue and wanted to support Israel by opposing the resolution.1211 On December 22, 2016, multiple members of the Transition Team, as well as President-Elect Trump, communicated with foreign government officials to determine their views on the resolution and to rally support to delay the vote or defeat the resolution.1212 Kushner led the effort for the Transition Team; Flynn was responsible for the Russian government.1213 Minutes after an early morning phone call with Kushner on December 22, Flynn called Kislyak.1214 According to Flynn, he informed Kislyak about the vote and the Transition Team’s opposition to the resolution, and requested that Russia vote against or delay the resolution.1215 Later that day, President-Elect Trump spoke with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi about the vote.1216 Ultimately, Egypt postponed the vote.1217

On December 23, 2016, Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal, and Venezuela resubmitted the resolution.1218 Throughout the day, members of the Transition Team continued to talk with foreign leaders about the resolution, with Flynn continuing to lead the outreach with the Russian government through Kislyak.1219 When Flynn again spoke with Kislyak, Kislyak informed Flynn that if the resolution came to a vote, Russia would not vote against it.1220 The resolution later passed 14-0, with the United States abstaining.1221 [my emphasis]

1208 Karen DeYoung, How the U.S. Came to Abstain on a U.N. Resolution Condemning Israeli Settlements, Washington Post (Dec. 28, 2016).

1209 Karen DeYoung, How the U.S. Came to Abstain on a U.N. Resolution Condemning Israeli Settlements, Washington Post (Dec. 28, 2016).

1210 Michelle Nichols & Lesley Wroughton, U.S. Intended to Allow Passage of U.N. Draft Critical of Israel, Reuters (Dec. 21, 2016).

1211 Flynn 11/16/17 302, at 12; Flynn 11/17/17 302, at 2.

1212 Flynn 11/16/17 302, at 12-14; Flynn 11/17/17 302, at 2.

1213 Flynn 11/16/17 302, at 12-14; Flynn 11/17/17 302, at 2; Kushner 11/1/17 302, at 3; 12/22/16 Email, Kushner to Flynn; 12/22/16 Email, McFarland to et al.

1214 Flynn 11/16/17 302, at 13; Call Records of Michael T. Flynn

1215 Statement of Offense ¶ 3(d), United States v. Michael T. Flynn, No. 1:17-cr-232 (D.D.C. Dec. 1, 2017), Doc. 4 (“Flynn Statement of Offense”); Flynn 11/16/17 302, at 12-13.

1216 Flynn 11/17/17 302, at 2; Flynn 11/16/17 302, at 13.

1217 U.N. Vote on Israeli Settlement Postponed, “Potentially Indefinitely”, Reuters (Dec. 22, 2016).

1218 Somini Sengupta & Rick Gladstone, Rebuffing Israel, U.S. Allows Censure Over Settlements, New York Times (Dec. 23, 2016).

1219 Flynn 11/16/17 302, at 12-14; Kushner 11/1/17 302, at 3; 12/23/16 Email, Flynn to Kushner et al.

1220 Flynn Statement of Offense ¶ 3(g).

1221 Israel’s Settlements Have No Legal Validity, Constitute Flagrant Violation of International Law, Security Council Reaffirms, 7853rd Meeting (PM), United Nations Security Council (Dec. 23, 2016).

This account separates the description of the December 1, 2016 meeting including Sergey Kislyak and Flynn at which Jared suggested setting up a back channel via secure Russian channels, as well as the December 13, 2016 meeting with sanctioned banker Sergey Gorkov at Tom Barrack’s office, a meeting Jared claimed was diplomatic but Gorkov claimed pertained to business.

The Report doesn’t reveal which Senator’s office alerted Flynn to the risk that Obama would allow Israel be sanctioned.

The Report doesn’t describe all the calls that took place on December 22. In a warrant affidavit targeting Flynn, multiple calls are described as taking place on Flynn’s phone — suggesting the possibility that Trump used Flynn’s phone to call al-Sisi. McFarland later noted that Flynn, “worked it all day with trump from Mara lago.”

The Report did not mention that Jared asked to — and did — release a false report claiming that Egypt had initiated this effort.

Can we make it clear that Al Sisi reached out to DJT so it doesn’t look like we reached out to intercede? This happens to be the true fact patter and better for this to be out there.

Because it remained under investigation, the Report doesn’t mention the suspected $10 million payment an Egyptian bank had given Trump in September 2016, important background to Trump’s call to al-Sisi.

It doesn’t describe that KT McFarland had likened the effort to undercut Obama’s foreign policy to Richard Nixon’s effort to forestall peace in Vietnam and Ronald Reagan’s effort to delay the release of hostages from Iran.

Based on her study of prior presidential transitions, McFarland believed the sorts of things Flynn did were not unusual. She cited Richard Nixon’s involvement in Vietnam War peace talks and Ronald Reagan’s purported dealings with Iran to free American hostages during an incoming administration. Most incoming administrations did similar things. No “red light” or “alarm bells” went off in her head when she heard what Flynn was doing. The President-elect made his support for Israel very clear during the campaign and contrasted his position with President Obama, who he believed had not treated Israel fairly.

And Mueller — likely working under the normally safe assumption that the call intercepts with Sergey Kislyak would never be released — left out several damning details revealed when John Ratcliffe did release the transcripts in May 2020.

First, Mueller implies that Egypt, by itself, decided to delay the vote, but on their second call, Sergey Kislyak told Flynn that they would push for a delay too.

Kislyak: Uh, I just wanted as a follow up to share with you several points. One, that, uh, your previous, uh, uh, telephone call, I reported to Moscow and it was considered at the highest level in Russia. Secondly, uh, uh, here we are pointing [PH], uh, taking into account, uh, entirely your, uh, arguments.

Flynn: Yes.

Kislyak: To raise a proposal or an idea of continued consultations in New York. We will do it.

Flynn: Okay.

Kislyak: Uh, to give time for working out something, uh, that would be, would be, uh, less controversial.

Flynn: Okay. That. .. That’s good news.

[snip]

Kislyak: But, uh, responding to your, uh, telephone call and our conversations, we will try to help, uh, to~ uh~ postpone the vote and to allow for consultations.

Flynn: Okay. That’s .. that’s good.

In Kislyak’s call with Flynn (in which he had to cut off the blubbering General to make his carefully scripted points), he made it clear that he had discussed the topic with “the highest level in Russia,” which can only mean Putin.

When Flynn called Kislyak back on December 29, the Russian Ambassador told him that they were not going to support Obama’s other framework for the Middle East at the time.

KISLYAK: Oh, General, thank you very much for calling me back. I was trying to reach you for quite a while because I have several, uh, issues to raise with you —

FLYNN: Uh huh.

KISLYAK: – rather to inform you. If you’ll allow me, one by one.

FLYNN: Please.

KISLYAK: One, uh, since you were interested in the issue of the Middle East and you called me on that issue

FLYNN: Uh huh.

KISLYAK: We wanted to convey to you and through you to the President Elect that we had uh significant reservations about the idea of adopting now the principles for the Middle East, uh, that our American colleagues are pushing for. So we are not going to support it to — in the quartet, or in the Security Council. And we have conveyed to our American colleagues. So in the spirit of full transparency I was asked to inform you as well.

FLYNN: Okay.

KfSLYAK: So it’s not something that we – Russia – are going to support.

FLYNN: Okay that’s good.

Kislyak tied that, implicitly, to a demand to reverse Obama’s sanctions; he used Flynn’s discussion about cooperating on counterterrorism to note that GRU and FSB would need to be part of the cooperation.

FLYNN: We have to eliminate the common threat.

KISLYAK: We agree. One fo the problems among the measures that have been announced today is that now FSB and GRU are sanctions, are sanctioned, and I ask myself, uh, does it mean that the United States isn’t willing to work on terrorist threats?

FLYNN: Yeah, yeah.

KISLYAK: Because that’s the people who are exactly, uh, fighting the terrorists.

Most importantly, a point utterly inconsistent with the conclusion in the Mueller Report that it was never clear if Trump knew of this back channel, on their December 31 call, Flynn told Kislyak that “boss is aware” of an invite that Kislyak had extended.

Remember that a pro-Trump FBI agent was pushing the conclusion that all this was a big misunderstanding, a conclusion that largely held the day.

And that’s just what is included. Ratcliffe didn’t release the December 22 transcript, the one that started this discussion.

Flynn was in Mar-a-Lago on December 22 — and the December 29 transcript suggests that Flynn may have been on speaker phone (he made the call from his hotel phone, and so could have had his own phone connected back to MAL). So it’s not impossible that Trump was actually involved in the calls placed on December 22. As bolded above, in the Report, Mueller didn’t describe what he knew from the transcripts; instead, he attributed his version of the December 22 calls to Flynn.

At a time when Trump was advised — at least partly — by adults, he didn’t hesitate to intervene back channel to undercut his Democratic predecessor in order to help Bibi Netanyahu. Per KT McFarland, it was all in the tradition of Nixon and Reagan intervening in foreign policy to help win an election.

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.

How Trump Manipulated 3 NYT Journalists to Make a Campaign Ad for Fascism

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In the face of Trump’s gas-lighting, journalists are struggling mightily to report Joe Biden’s accurate warnings about the authoritarian threat Trump poses.

In advance of Biden’s Valley Force speech — which the AP dubbed his first campaign speech of 2024 — AP spun Trump’s lies about January 6 as just one interpretation driven by politics.

With Biden and Trump now headed toward a potential 2020 rematch, both are talking about the same event in very different ways and offering framing they believe gives them an advantage. The dueling narratives reflect how an attack that disrupted the certification of the election is increasingly viewed differently along partisan lines — and how Trump has bet that the riot won’t hurt his candidacy.

In a WaPo story chronicling how Trump has trained the GOP to love insurrection, Isaac Arnsdorf and Trump-whisperer Josh Dawsey allowed propagandist Julie Kelly to complain about her portrayal without ever noting a number of persistent lies she tells — about which January 6 defendants are held in pre-trial detention, how they’re treated there, and the number of people charged with assault.

“I was being considered an outlier, to put it nicely,” Kelly said in an interview. “Conspiracy theorist or whack job, to put it more accurately, how I was portrayed.”

It described Tucker Carlson at length without describing the depths of his lies (nor the overproduced propaganda piece he did for the first anniversary). It referred to Nazi Timothy Hale-Cusanelli’s views as simple “notoriety for wearing a Hitler-style mustache.” The only thing it affirmatively identified as false is the claim no rioters had guns (and focuses on Darren Beattie’s “conspiracy theory” about Ray Epps rather than his fabricated claims that Thomas Caldwell’s devoted spouse was instead an FBI informant who framed him. In short, it repeated the Big Lie about the Big Lie as an interesting political development, not something it has responsibility to debunk.

Then there’s the NYTimes, in a piece by Michael Bender, Lisa Lerer and Michael Gold. It seems to be a genuine attempt at cataloging Trump’s “brazen” attempt to “cast[] Mr. Biden as the true menace,” the subhead of the piece.

But it proceeded to quote just 31 words of what it calls Joe Biden’s “forceful” speech, before it aired:

  • A 13-word false quote from Trump about his prosecution
  • 30 words of projection from Trump, attacking Biden
  • A 20-word false attack on Jack Smith
  • 11 more words lying about DOJ, quoted from a Trump fundraising email
  • Trump’s 3 word celebration of January 6 and another word rebranding convicted Jan6ers
  • 36 words from Trump’s campaign managers attacking Biden (a statement the AP also quoted)
  • In an attempt to label all this projection, Trump’s 5-word attack on Hillary Clinton
  • A 3-word attack on Biden that Trump uses in rally signage
  • 28 words of attack on DOJ from Marjorie Taylor Greene
  • 21 words from a Trump supporter at a rally

And they did so in an article talking about the import of focusing on democracy, not on Trump’s false claims about it.

Even including a 33-word quote from Josh Shapiro about how Pennsylvanians have learned to see through Trump’s bullshit and 30 words about the threat of violence, NYT still quoted Trump or his supporters’ false attacks on Biden and rule of law almost twice as much as they did true claims about Trump.

Effectively, it rewarded Trump for telling “audacious” lies. By telling them, he got three NYT journalists to quote his lies about Joe Biden and rule of law over and over and over.

The reason Trump projects his own failures on other people is because journalists never fail to reward him for it, presenting his false claims alongside true ones, leaving the impression that truth is up for debate, that professionals are helpless to discern which of these claims are true.

Trump’s goal is to degrade the very notion of truth. And this kind of journalism only helps him do that.

Update: After I wrote this, NYT changed the headline of this piece, from “Clashing Over Jan. 6, Trump and Biden Show Reality Is at Stake in 2024,” to “Trump Signals an Election Year Full of Falsehoods on Jan. 6 and Democracy.”

This Poll Is as Important as a Trump Trial

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Tomorrow marks the 3rd anniversary of Trump’s attack on the Capitol. People have used the opportunity to revisit their conspiracy theories about things that Merrick Garland didn’t do, all of which ignore the overt steps taken against Trump’s co-conspirators in 2021s.

Hopefully, I’ll complete a post on options Jack Smith would have if DC Circuit Judge Karen Henderson finds a way and the will to continue to delay Trump’s trial after Tuesday’s hearing on his Absolute Immunity claim.

For now, though, I want to argue that this poll, showing that an outright majority of Americans (still) believe a series of things that equate to January 6 being an attack on democracy. For example, 56% of all US adults think Trump is guilty of conspiring to steal the election.

After three years of concerted propaganda effort, thin majorities still believe:

  • January 6ers were “mostly violent” (50%)
  • Punishments for Jan6ers have been fair or not harsh enough (73%)
  • Trump bears responsibility for January 6 (53%)
  • DOJ is treating Trump like anyone else (57%)
  • Trump telling his mob to march to the Capitol threatened democracy (51%)
  • The mob entering the Capitol threatened democracy (58%)
  • Congress voting against certifying the election threatened democracy (53%)
  • The attack on the Capitol should never be forgotten (55%)
  • There is no solid evidence of widespread voter fraud (63%)

Only on whether Trump’s role disqualifies him for the presidency (or Republican members of Congress who voted to disqualify votes) did less than a majority vote for democracy (46%).

These aren’t great numbers — and they have slipped over time.

But there are about 7% of Republicans who recognize that Trump was in the wrong. Most independents agree with Democratic views on January 6, not Republicans.

The propaganda is working … but thus far it hasn’t won.

If 7% of Republicans reject Trump’s party of fascism, it could swing the election.

Trying and convicting Donald Trump for his January 6 crimes is necessary, but not sufficient, to reverse the tide of fascism in the United States. Just as important is defeating the Republicans who empowered Trump’s fascism, to punish them for doing his bidding for the last three years. Just as important is affirming the importance of democracy, is ensuring that Americans choose to protect democracy. A Trump trial should help convince swing voters; indeed, prosecutors plan to tie Trump directly to the violence that Republicans reject here.

But that effort must go hand-in-hand with defending democracy, defending the process of trying and prosecuting January 6ers, crime scene and not.

And that’s a political fight that everyone can engage. That’s a political discussion about what it takes to preserve democracy.

In Rudy Giuliani Affidavit, SDNY Hung Up the Perfect Phone Call

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Consider this: The April 21, 2021 warrant affidavit showing probable cause for the search of Rudy Giuliani’s home, office, and devices did not mention the Perfect Phone Call between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

It could have done so. Earlier warrant affidavits targeting Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, starting with a bunch obtained on October 21, 2019, included it.

On July 25, 2019, President Trump spoke to Ukrainian President [Zelenskyy]. According to a memorandum of the call, which the White House released publicly, President Trump noted that “[t]he former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news.” He also praised a “very good prosecutor,” which appears to be a reference to [Lutsenko,] who was still in place at that time following [Zelenskyy’s] election but subsequently removed from office, or possibly [Shokin,] the former prosecutor.

While SDNY did not release the affidavit for a December 10, 2019 warrant focused exclusively on the Foreign Agent charges, this same reference did appear in an affidavit to obtain the contents of Lev Parnas’ Instagram account the same day.

In context of the potential FARA charges tied exclusively to the firing of Marie Yovanovitch, the paragraph showed that Trump had been persuaded by Rudy Giuliani’s lobbying not just that Yovanovitch “was bad news,” but that the prosecutors behind the effort to oust her, Yuriy Lutsenko and/or Viktor Shokin, were “very good.”

Moreover, the paragraph is particularly relevant evidence in the affidavit targeting Rudy. Far more specifically than the (much earlier) affidavits targeting Lev Parnas, the Rudy affidavit describes that Rudy lobbied Trump to fire Yovanovitch at least three times (the affidavit clearly identifies two instances: once on February 16, 2019, and again on March 22) and lobbied Mike Pompeo at least twice (once on February 8 and again when the White House forwarded his packet of disinformation in March) before he and Parnas turned to a press campaign involving John Solomon to get her ousted.

Yet the only public affidavit targeting Rudy, unlike several targeting Lev Parnas, excluded the paragraph showing the extent of Rudy’s influence.

There may be a perfectly banal explanation, such as an attempt, relatively early in Merrick Garland’s tenure, to minimize the extent to which this was about Trump personally. Or, the Perfect Phone Call might embody some of the uncertainty, noted explicitly in the affidavit, about whether Rudy was targeting Yovanovitch to get contracts with Lutsenko, or whether he was doing it only to get disinformation, to benefit Trump, on Hunter Biden. Given the high likelihood that data seized in this search was also used in other, undisclosed investigations into Rudy — DOJ may not yet have had a January 6 warrant targeting Rudy, but in June 2021, DOJ took overt steps in the investigation into an anti-Hunter Biden film that Rudy plotted — the silence about the Perfect Phone Call may simply reflect the boundary line between investigative prongs. That is, maybe the Perfect Phone Call appears in another affidavit.

The anti-Hunter film was, reportedly, an investigation into possible foreign support. As this table, which compares the scope of investigation in three warrants for substantially the same Foreign Agent investigation, shows, the funding of Rudy’s shenanigans shifted focus over the course of the investigation.

The warrants include:

  • October 21, 2019, 19 MJ 9832, obtained days after Parnas’ arrest, as SDNY obtained warrants to expand the scope of the investigation to incorporate its expanding Foreign Agent focus
  • December 10, 2019, 19 MJ 11500, obtained days after Rudy met with Andrii Derkach, which would have been a natural follow-on investigation to the Parnas investigation, but which Barr moved to EDNY to protect Rudy’s ability to solicit dirt from Russian agents to help Trump’s 2020 campaign
  • April 21, 2021, 21 MJ 4335, obtained on Lisa Monaco’s first day as Deputy Attorney General, when SDNY finally obtained approval for warrants targeting Rudy’s home and devices

In October 2019, DOJ wasn’t looking closely at how the Ukraine caper was funded. In December 2019, it made up two bullets of the warrants, permitting the seizure of:

  • Evidence of any funds sent into any account controlled by or associated with [redacted] or Giuliani, or any instructions to send such funds. (c)
  • Evidence of money, actions, or information requested by, or offered or provided to Parnas, Fruman, Giuliani, or [Toensing] by any Ukrainian national in connection with efforts to remove [Yovanovitch], including but not limited to any Ukrainian investigation of [Burisma Holdings] Ltd., [Hunter Biden], or potential interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. (e)

That December 2019 focus on funding may have reflected details about Lev Parnas that SDNY had only just discovered. In an unsuccessful bid to have Parnas detained pretrial submitted the day after DOJ obtained that December 10 warrant targeting Lev Parnas, SDNY laid out what it had learned about the funding of the Ukraine caper.

Parnas poses a significant risk of flight for several reasons, the chief among which are his considerable ties abroad and access to seemingly limitless sources of foreign funding. Parnas has extensive and significant international ties, particularly in Ukraine, the country of his birth. Over the past two years, Parnas traveled repeatedly to Ukraine, and met with numerous Ukrainian government officials, including officials at the very highest level of government. More broadly, Parnas has traveled abroad more than twenty times over the past four years, including on a nearly monthly basis in 2019. Parnas took circuitous travel routes that obscured his final destination, such as by departing the U.S. for one country, but returning from a different country on a different airline. Parnas traveled internationally by private jet as recently as this year; bank account records from Account-1 show that Parnas spent more than $70,000 on private air travel in September 2019 alone.

[snip]

In addition, Parnas’s close ties abroad include connections to Russian and Ukrainian nationals of nearly limitless means, including [Andrey Muraviev] and a Ukrainian oligarch [Dmitry Firtash] living in Vienna who is currently fighting extradition to this country. Parnas has proven adept at gaining access to foreign funding: in the last three years, Parnas received in excess of $1.5 million from Ukrainian and Russian sources. In sum, given Parnas’s significant, high-level connections to powerful and wealthy Ukrainians and at least one Russian national, he could quickly and easily flee the United States for Ukraine or another foreign country, and recoup the security posted to his bond. It is difficult to overstate the extreme flight risk that Parnas poses.

[snip]

  • Between August and October 2019, Parnas received $200,000—not $50,000, as he told Pretrial Services—from the Law Firm into Account-1, which was held in Svetlana Parnas’s name, in what appears to be an attempt to ensure that any assets were held in Svetlana’s, rather than Lev’s, name.5 A portion of this money existed in Account-1 at the time that Parnas submitted his financial affidavit, and, to the Government’s knowledge, does so today, underscoring that Parnas continues to mislead the Government and the Court about his financial condition.
  • Parnas failed to disclose, in describing his income to the Government and Pretrial Services, the fact that in September 2019, he received $1 million from a bank account in Russia into Account-1. While the majority of that money appears to have been used on personal expenses and to purchase a home, as discussed below, some portion of that money existed in Account-1 at the time Parnas submitted his financial affidavit.
  • At the time of his arrest, Parnas had at least $200,000 in an escrow account, in connection with his intended purchase of a property located in Boca Raton, Florida, which was listed for sale at approximately $4.5 million. The escrow account was funded with $200,000 from Account-1 in September 2019. Parnas did not disclose this asset (either the property or the funds in the escrow account) to either Pretrial Services or the Government. It is unclear whether Parnas proceeded with this real estate purchase or received the funds back from the escrow account.

In an appearance on Michael Cohen’s podcast last month, Parnas addressed how various Ukrainian, Russian, and American oligarchs were funding his and Rudy’s efforts; he says it’ll also appear in his forthcoming book.

The warrant targeting Rudy 17 months later doesn’t reveal what SDNY had learned about the funding in the interim, nor does it sustain the focus on how this was all funded. It states with some certainty that in spite of two rounds of discussions of retainer agreements with Lutsenko and others, Rudy never got any money from them.

Based on my involvement in this investigation and my review of text messages, it appears that Giuliani was referring to the execution of [redaction] retainer agreement and the wiring of funds. However, based on my review of bank records, it does not appear that [redacted] wired funds to Giuliani at that time, or any subsequent time.

As NYT emphasized in their report on these warrants, the later warrant does describe that Rudy needed the money.

6 Based on my review of a financial analysis prepared based on bank records and public reports, it appears that around this time, Giuliani had a financial interest in receiving a retainer agreement from [redacted] Specifically, in May 2018, Giuliani left his former law firm and its substantial compensation package. Based on my review of a financial analysis of bank records that have been collected to date (which may not include all of Giuliani’s checking and credit card accounts), on or around January 25, 2018, Giuliani had approximately $1.2 million cash on hand, and approximately $40,000 in credit card debt. By contrast, on or around January 25, 2019, right before he met with [redacted] Giuliani had approximately $400,000 cash on hand in those same accounts and approximately $110,000 in credit card debt. By on or around February 16, 2019, his account balances had dropped to approximately $288,000 and his credit card debt remained over $110,000.

Perhaps because of what SDNY claimed were Parnas’ efforts to obscure his travel, the December 2019 warrant (for which, remember, it did not release the affidavit) added a bullet point, seemingly an afterthought unmarked by a letter, authorizing seizure of evidence that the men were hiding meetings with Ukrainians.

Evidence of efforts or attempts to conceal meetings with individuals acting on behalf of or associated with any Ukrainian national or government official. (no letter)

By contrast, the April 2021 affidavit targeting Rudy was interested in one single trip: His February 2019 trip, with Parnas, to Warsaw.

Evidence relating to a trip by Rudolph Giuliani to Poland in February 2019.(5)

As the affidavit describes, there was good reason to believe Rudy’s public claims about the trip — made in the days after the Perfect Phone Call was released — were lies, because immediately after the meeting, Rudy drafted a retainer shortly after the meeting and started lobbying Trump and Pompeo.

7 Based on my review of public reporting, I have learned that according to an article published on September 29, 2019 in Reuters, Giuliani admitted that he met [Lutsenko] in Warsaw in February 2019 after first meeting him in New York in January, but that the meeting with [redacted] in Warsaw was “really social . . . I think it was either dinner or cigars after dinner. Not opportune for substantive discussion.” However, this does not appear to be accurate, as described herein, Giuliani circulated a draft retainer agreement between [2 words redacted] and [redacted] (a firm owned by [Toensing] and her husband, [Joe DiGenova]) only five days after meeting with [redacted] and communicated with Parnas and [redacted] about lobbying [Pompeo] and Trump to remove [Yovanovitch] on the same day, and in the days following, his meeting with [redacted].

The reference to Lutsenko in that Reuters story is minor; far more of the story focuses on who paid for Rudy’s galivanting — again, a topic dropped in the later known warrant.

One of the key questions is who financed Giuliani’s globe-trotting as he pursued unsubstantiated allegations that Biden had tried to fire Ukraine’s then chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to stop him investigating an energy company on which his son Hunter served as a director.

“Nobody pays my expenses,” Giuliani said in an interview with Reuters on Friday. “What does it matter if I’m getting paid for it. Isn’t the real story whether he (Biden) sold out the vice presidency of the United States, not whether I got paid for it?”

The singular focus on that Warsaw meeting — a meeting that took place at an event designed to undermine Obama’s Iran Deal, which Rudy attended in conjunction with MEK (former NJ Senator, Robert Torricelli, with whom John Solomon has a past, also attended with MEK) — is all the more interesting given the temporal scope of the warrant.

The other two warrants I adress here were dictated by dates of collection. Because the October 21 warrant authorized an expanded search of materials obtained months earlier, its temporal scope necessarily ended at the collection date, May 16, 2019. Because the December 10 warrant authorized an expanded search of materials seized from the search of Parnas and Fruman’s residences (primarily Parnas’ — by this point, SDNY seemed to be scrutinizing Parnas far more closely than it did Fruman), its temporal scope necessarily ended on that collection date, October 9, 2019.

But the Rudy warrant extended long past the last overt act, the firing of Yovanovitch, described in the warrant, to December 31, 2019. Here’s how the FBI justified that:

To the extent materials are dated, this warrant is limited to materials created, modified, sent, or received between August 1, 2018, and December 31, 2019. Materials going back to approximately August 2018 are relevant to understand Giuliani’s relationship with Parnas and information he was provided in the fall of 2018 relating to, among other things, Ambassador [Yovanovitch] and Ukraine. Materials created, modified, sent, or received after approximately May 2019, when the Ambassador was removed from her post, through the end of December 2019, during which time Giuliani traveled to Europe to meet [Lutsenko] with are relevant because based on my review of the Prior Search Warrant Returns, it appears that Giuliani continued to make public statements about Ukraine and the Ambassador.

Thus, it rationalized extending the warrant’s temporal scope through December 2019 — a temporal scope that would include the trip for the anti-Hunter Biden documentary, on which Rudy again met Lutsenko, but also met known Russian asset Andrii Derkach and others who would later be deemed Russian assets — based on Rudy’s continued focus, vaguely, on Ukraine (as well as Yovanovitch).

But it’s not clear whether FBI would be able to access details of Rudy’s meeting with Derkach, as opposed to Lutsenko, with this warrant. The long redaction in this bullet point shields who else, in addition to Parnas and Lutsenko, was included in the scope of the known warrant.

In other words, though the temporal scope of the warrant would permit FBI to review information about Rudy’s later meetings with Lutsenko, in association with which trip Rudy also met a series of Russian assets, nothing unredacted in the warrant permitted FBI to seize information about that later meeting (or about the anti-Hunter Biden documentary).

For that matter, nothing unredacted in the April 2021 warrant explicitly permits the FBI to seize information about Rudy’s attempts to dig up disinformation targeting Hunter Biden and his father, even though the warrant affidavit likely mentions such efforts at more than twelve times (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve).

Still, as I’ve noted repeatedly, by the time Judge Oetken approved the Special Master process that Rudy himself had demanded, Special Master Barbara Jones was instructed to review all content post-dating January 1, 2018, a temporal scope significantly broader than the one laid out in the warrant. And according to her reports, while for some devices she focused more nearly on the timeframe of the Ukraine caper, those she reviewed first, she reviewed through the date of seizure.

We still know just a fraction of the story about how Bill Barr obstructed the investigation into Rudy Giuliani’s Ukrainian influence peddling — and the degree to which that let Rudy get rid of phones before the investigation would have otherwise developed (for example, the warrant describes that Rudy replaced a phone used with his main phone number on the date the House started subpoenaing records in advance of impeachment). That is, even though SDNY took aggressive investigative steps on Lisa Monaco’s first day as Deputy Attorney General, it was likely already too late.

Update: Back in real time, I posited that the first time Rudy pitched Mike Pompeo on firing Marie Yovanovitch was done while in Trump’s presence.

Timeline

Below, every bullet is a known warrant. The ones not linked were described in a passage that failed to be fully redacted in a Lev Parnas filing.

  • January 18, 2019, 19 MJ 1729: Yahoo and Google content

May 15, 2019: Marie Yovanovitch firing public

  • May 16, 2019, 19 MJ 4784: iCloud content
  • August 14, 2019, 19 MJ 7593: Yahoo and Google content since January, with expanded focus
  • August 14, 2019, 19 MJ 7594: Unknown warrant
  • August 14, 2019, 19 MJ 7595: Existing Yahoo and Google content, with expanded focus

September 25, 2019: Disclosure of Perfect Phone call

October 9, 2019: Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman arrested

  • October 17, 2019, 19 MJ 7595: Actual authorization of the warrant approved in August
  • October 21, 2019, 19 MJ 9829: iCloud content since May
  • October 21, 2019, 19 MJ 9830: Unknown warrant
  • October 21, 2019, 19 MJ 9831: Devices from Dulles
  • October 21, 2019, 19 MJ 9832: Existing iCloud content for expanded focus
  • November 4, 2019: Warrant for Rudy’s iCloud
  • November 4, 2019: Warrant for Rudy’s email
  • November 4, 2019: Warrant for Victoria Toensing’s iCloud
  • November 6, 2019: Warrant for Yuriy Lutsenko’s email

December 5, 2019: Rudy meets with known Russian asset, Andrii Derkach

  • December 10, 2019, 19 MJ 11500: Stuff seized from residences for foreign agent focus
  • December 10, 2019, 19 MJ 11501: Instagram
  • December 10, 2019, Warrant for Roman Nasirov’s email
  • December 13, 2019, Warrant for Victoria Toensing’s email

December 14, 2019: Barr aide texts him: “Laptop on way to you”

January 3, 2020: Barr establishes dedicated channel to ingest Rudy’s dirt

January 17, 2020: Jeffrey Rosen makes Richard Donoghue a gatekeeper for all Ukraine-related investigations

  • February 28, 2020: iPhone of Alexander Levin
  • March 3, 2020: iPad of Alexander Levin
  • March 20, 2020, 20 MJ 3074: Fruman iCloud content obtained with October 21, 2019 warrant to cover earlier periods

June 20, 2020: Barr fires Geoffrey Berman

November 2020: SDNY denied authority to seek devices of Rudy Giuliani

January 2021: SDNY denied authority to seek devices of Rudy Giuliani

  • April 13, 2021: Cell site data for Rudy and Toensing

April 21, 2021: Lisa Monaco sworn in

  • April 21, 2021, 21 MJ 4335: Rudy’s office, residence, and devices
  • April 21, 2021: Victoria Toensing iPhone

What Joseph Ziegler Didn’t Find When He Looked for Hunter Biden’s Sex Workers

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Joseph Ziegler, the disgruntled IRS agent who built a tax case on the digital payments Hunter Biden made during the depth of his addiction, is quite proud that he found one of the sex workers who slept with Joe Biden’s son. He brought it up twice in his testimony.

First, he boasted that he sought out women he called prostitutes and impressed the prosecutors.

Yeah. So standard practice is — for any transaction, you want to go out — and a lot of our job is hitting the pavement, going out and talking to people. There was a lot of different investigative steps that we took, that even going and talking to the prostitutes, we found multiple people that he called his employees that were also prostitutes, and that he would have them clean his hotel room or — there were a lot of these interviews that we ended up going and doing and talking to people that were so worth it, even though someone might — we were always being told by the prosecutors, you guys are wasting your time going and doing that. It’s not worth it. And literally, I would surprise them every time and find everyone.

Though maybe Ziegler was speaking loosely when he called these women prostitutes. Later in his testimony, he admitted that he had been calling Lunden Roberts, a former stripper and the mother of Hunter’s fourth child, a prostitute.

Then, he complained that prosecutors had withheld the sex videos involving a “potential prostitute” they had interviewed — effectively confessing that he had looked online for things that would have tainted his testimony.

But there was other things — we went out and talked to one of the potential prostitutes. And there were videos that I’ve seen out there on Twitter, on the internet, and information related to that person that I had never seen before.

He — or rather, Homeland Security Investigations — did find at least one sex worker, though.

In the documents Ziegler released last September, he included two interview excerpts, one with Hunter’s accountant, Jeffrey Gelfound, and another with a sex worker whom he calls “Gulnora.” Ziegler explained the two show that Hunter wrote off a payment to Gulnora, who admitted she met with Hunter as an escort.

EXHIBIT 1F & 1G: This was a memorandum of interview of Jeffrey Gelfound, Edward White & Company tax accountant who assisted with the preparation of RHB’s delinquent tax returns, to include the RHB’s personal and corporate tax returns for 2017 and 2018. When discussing deductions on RHB’s tax returns, Gelfound was asked about whole dollar transfers to Gulnora. Gelfound was asked if RHB verified this as a business expense in which Gelfound stated “Yes, we put it on the returns so …”. EXHIBIT 1G was an interview report turned over to the investigative team as a part of the RHB investigation. I have included a redacted excerpt of that interview of an escort by the name of Gulnora that was conducted on or about April of 2021 in which she admits to meeting RHB relating to escort work.

Note the interview with Gelfound, not the one with “Gulnora,” appears to have been in April 2021; the “Gulnora” one appears to have taken place in June 2021. Close enough for IRS-CI work, I guess.

In the Gelfound interview, DOJ Tax Prosecutor Mark Daly actually asks the accountant about two Venmo payments, one for $1,500 and another for $2,700.

DOJ-Tax Daly: [redacted] there is a series of large whole dollar transfers to something called Gulnora?

Jeffrey Gelfound: OK.

DOJ-Tax Daly: Do you know what that is?

Jeffrey Gelfound: I-I don’t.

DOJ-Tax Daly: OK – But Hunter verified to you that that was a business expense?

Jeffrey Gelfound: Yes, we put it on the returns so …

DOJ-Tax Daly: OK, um, there’s a series of Venmo transfers, large dollar ones, for example, [redacted]

Jeffrey Gelfound: OK.

DOJ-Tax Daly: On August 14th there’s a $1500 expense and on September 4th there’s a $2700 expense.

The $1,500 expense appears to be the one mentioned in the tax indictment, which I wrote about here. That payment was the first obvious charge on Hunter’s Venmo account after two new devices were added to Hunter’s Venmo account in two different cities. It appears to have happened a day earlier than described in the indictment (and than described in this interview, which will be admissible for impeachment at trial). To prove that Hunter intentionally wrote this off improperly, prosecutors will need to prove not just that Hunter — as opposed to the people who accessed his Venmo account days before this — made the payment, that Hunter, rather than the dancer, listed the payment as Art, and that he remembered all that in 2020.

And while the $2,700 payment doesn’t obviously appear in the indictment, it’s yet more proof of how problematic relying on payments Hunter made to sex workers will be for prosecutors (there are plenty of other payments they would have an easier time proving were improper write-offs, though).

The Venmo described as a September 4 payment appears to have been made on August 30, 2018. If that’s correct, then it was paid to a woman who was paid at least three times in two days, probably four. In addition to the $2,700 Venmo payment (shown in pink in the timeline below), she was paid a total of $1,800, via two payments, on Zelle. Then she was entered as a wire transfer recipient in Hunter’s Wells Fargo account, immediately after which someone was transferred $4,000. Those payments are shown in red on the timeline.

The three different methods of payment (from at least two bank accounts and a Visa debit card) are suspect enough.

They happened in a period when Hunter’s life was in remarkable turmoil, even by his standards. On Sunday, August 26, he left his bank card in an ATM machine. The next day, Monday, he either lost his phone or someone used the Lost Phone function to track Hunter as he moved across Venice, CA and ultimately to the AirBNB in the Hollywood Hills where he was staying for two nights. The next day, Tuesday, after he left the AirBNB, he discovered he had left a bag there. Ultimately the owner gave the bag to an Uber driver (but there’s no obvious Uber payment showing that Hunter got the bag back). The next day, Wednesday, Hunter either spent two hours trying to get onto Venmo; or someone spent hours trying to break into his account. Also that day, Hunter’s contact information for Wells Fargo was changed; it looks like Wells Fargo had two separate numbers ending in 9396 for him. That night appears to be when he first interacted with the sex worker the IRS calls Gulnora, because he paid her at close to 4AM. Consistent with what she told HSI 34 months later, they met again the next night, Thursday. He paid her via Zelle at 9:50PM, via Venmo at 11:04PM, and then probably via wire transfer at 6:41AM. Later that day, just after 7PM on August 31, Hunter would buy a new MacBook Pro using two credit cards; this is believed to be the laptop that would eventually end up in Fox News pundit Keith Ablow’s possession. Two and a half hours later, Hunter made an Account Recovery request to Apple (using a different phone number than the one(s) recently added to his Wells Fargo account), and the next day, Saturday, September 1, he started accessing his accounts from the new device. This was one of only two Apple Account Recovery attempts recorded in the publicly available emails, and unless he lost a laptop at the AirBNB, it’s not clear what device had been compromised (though he had lost an iPad earlier in August).

But that’s not all. The $4,000 wire transfer made in the same minute the sex worker was made a wire transfer recipient occurred immediately after something that also frequently occurred on Hunter’s Wells Fargo account: a reset of access after a suspected compromise.

On at least 36 occasions in 2017 and 2018 — and three times (marked in blue in the timeline) in the period in which this payment was made to a woman the IRS is calling Gulnora — Wells Fargo suspended his access because it suspected someone else was trying to access his account, which required him to change his password before he could access it. Most often, the password got changed and Face ID, allowing anyone with access to Hunter’s face or perhaps his fingerprint, would be turned back on. Probably, many if not most of those were not someone else trying to access the account; they were probably just Hunter trying to access the account, in ways that looked suspect. But the result is that he almost certainly repeatedly accessed his bank account while in the presence of a dealer or a sex worker awaiting payment, watching that he reset his password and then turned on Face ID. This would alert them that they could access Hunter’s account by using his face (or fingerprint), either of which would be accessible to them when he was wasted. As a result, like that Venmo payment made earlier in August, law enforcement wanting to prove that Hunter made a particular payment would need a whole lot of evidence about the circumstances of payment, to rule out someone else paying him or herself.

And unless someone interviewed the woman they call Gulnora (who was paid under a Russian last name) a second time, they didn’t get that evidence from her.

As it was, just two pages of nine in the interview pertained to Hunter Biden. The interview appears to have focused on how she became involved in an escort network run on Telegram. She claimed she only took two jobs with the madam who arranged the meeting with Joe Biden’s son — the two dates with Hunter, and one more, with a guy she called “John.” Though later in the interview she described interacting with the madam face to face once and with people she worked with on multiple “occasions,” which sounds like more than two clients (especially since, by description, Hunter called her directly to arrange the second date).  The woman wasn’t sure what website he would have used to contact the madam. She was not asked the dates of the trysts.

What she did describe is that she had some uncertainty about the ID Hunter used to verify his identity, because it was not a California Driver’s License. That’s what led Hunter to explain who his father was, after which the woman the IRS calls Gulnora “became afraid.” But then, when she returned to her apartment, a friend provided her more information.

After [Gulnora] left the location, she arrived back at her apartment and told her friend who she was just with. [Gulnora] stated that her friend told her “you have no idea who you’re dealing with.” [Gulnora] stated that she deleted [redacted] number.

So by the time she went back that second day — to be paid $1,200 via Zelle at 9:50 and then $2,700 at 11:04 in the first Venmo payment after whatever had happened with Hunter’s Venmo account days earlier, probably followed by $4,000 the next morning — she did know who she was dealing with.

One more thing about the payments to this woman. Someone attempted to wire her $100 from Hunter’s account on February 27, 2019, in between the time when Hunter’s digital identity was packed up on a laptop and the day when that laptop would walk into a computer repair shop in Wilmington. That payment failed.

I don’t doubt that the sex worker did meet Joe Biden’s son. But there are no less than six possible identity compromises in the days leading up to their meetings. The very same day she was probably paid a fourth time in two days, Hunter Biden attempted to reclaim his digital identity.

It’s not just that prosecutors would have a difficult time proving that Hunter made these payments. It’s that they decided that turning them into a tax felony was the appropriate response to six possible identity compromises of the former Vice President’s son in one week.

Timeline

August 26 at 12:16PM: DroidHunter added to Apple account.

August 26 at 4:16PM: Hunter reserves AirBNB.

August 26 at 4:34PM: Hunter withdrew $800 from an ATM but left the card.

August 26 at 7:24PM: Hunter arrives AirBNB.

August 27 at 1:40AM: Hunter added a new Zelle recipient and then, a minute later, sent him $750. Two hours later, at 3:40 AM Hunter sent another $750.

August 27 at 4:13AM: Wells Fargo suspended his online access. Eight minutes later, Hunter’s password was reset, Face ID was turned back on, a new recipient was added, and $2,000 was transferred to that new recipient.

August 27 at 11:15PM: A sound was played on iPhone.

August 27 at 11:18PM: Hunter’s phone put into Lost Mode.

August 27 at 11:18PM: Apple Pay was suspended on his phone.

August 27 at 11:18PM: iPhone found in Venice, CA.

August 28 at 1:41AM: Wells Fargo suspended his online access. Seven minutes later, Hunter’s password was set, Face ID was turned back on.

August 28 at 9:25AM: iPhone found 11 minute walk away in Venice.

August 28 at 9:30AM: iPhone found 20 minute walk away in Venice.

August 28 at 10:42AM: iPhone found 9 minute walk away in Venice.

August 28 at 11:17AM: iPhone found 26 minute walk away in Venice.

August 28 at 11:35AM: iPhone found 13 minute drive away in LA.

August 28 at 11:53AM: iPhone found 11 minute drive away in LA.

August 28 at 12:11PM: iPhone found 4 minute drive away at AirBNB where Hunter was staying.

August 28 at 5:04PM: Apple Pay was reactivated to a device called “ChatMa.”

August 28 at 5:04PM: A sound was played on iPhone.

August 28 at 10:08PM: Hunter informs AirBNB owner he left a bag there.

August 28 at 11:54PM: AirBNB owner arranges to drop bag off with Uber driver.

August 29 at 2:00AM: Face ID turned on for Wells Fargo (possibly a different account?).

August 29 at 2:13AM: $2,000 requested on Venmo (probably associated with attempt to rent a place).

August 29 at 2:14AM: Please verify your email address on Venmo.

August 29 at 2:15AM: Please verify your email address on Venmo.

August 29 at 2:18AM: Please verify your email address on Venmo.

August 29 at 4:27AM: Please verify your email address on Venmo.

August 29 at 9:23AM: A new recipient, OA, added to Zelle.

August 29 at 9:36AM: A device is registered with Wells Fargo.

August 29 at 9:37AM: $600 sent to OA.

August 29 at 9:43AM: Updated contact info for Wells Fargo (seemingly two numbers ending in 9396); Hunter had at least one other number at the time.

August 30 at 3:57AM: EK added to Zelle.

August 30 at 3:58AM: $600 sent via Zelle to EK from 4605.

August 30 at 4;45PM: $750 sent to Naomi Biden from 5858.

August 30 at 4:46PM: $750 sent to Roberta Biden from 5142.

August 30 at 4:46PM: $1000 sent to IS from 5858.

August 30 at 9:50PM: $1,200 sent via Zelle to EK from 5858.

August 30 at 11:04PM: $2,700 sent via Venmo to EK.

August 30 at 11:33PM: Wells Fargo suspends access.

August 31 at 6:03AM: Hunter’s password was reset. 

August 31 at 6:34AM: Face ID turned on for Wells Fargo.

August 31 at 6:41AM: EK added as wire transfer recipient.

August 31 at 6:41AM: $4,000 transferred from 5858.

August 31 at 7:04PM: Ablow laptop purchased, using two credit cards, at Best Buy.

August 31 at 9:36PM: Apple account recovery request.

September 1 at 10:29AM: Password change.

September 1 at 10:34AM: Sign into MacBook Pro.

September 1 at 10:42AM: Sign into iCloud from browser.

September 1 at 4:24PM: Sign into DroidHunter.

September 1 at 4:27PM: KD added as wire transfer recipient.

September 1 at 4:28PM: $10,000 to be transferred on September 4 from 5142.

September 1 at 9:36PM: Call or text from Apple alerting him his Account Recovery was available due.

September 2 at 5:00AM: Hide2Vault downloaded to new Mac.

September 2 at 6:15AM: Sign into Rosemont Seneca.

February 27, 2019: Attempted $100 Zelle payment to EK.

Jim Jordan Says Trump’s Years of Blowing Off Subpoenas May Merit Impeachment

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In another ploy to get journalists at dick pic-sniffing right wing outlets like JustTheNews and NBC to air false claims, Jim Jordan and James Comer sent the White House a letter demanding any communications the White House had with Hunter Biden or his lawyers about blowing off a subpoena that — the letter itself notes — was issued before the chairmen obtained support of the House to issue impeachment subpoenas.

They base their claim that the President knew his son was going to blow off a subpoena on a misrepresentation of what Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said later that day: that the President was familiar with what his son was going to say.

Look, as you know, Hunter Biden is a private citizen, and so I certainly would refer you to his representatives. Look, the President was certainly familiar with what his son was going to say, and I think what you saw was from the heart from his son. And you’ve heard me say this, you’ve heard the president say this, when it comes to the president and the first lady, they’re proud of him continuing to rebuild his life. They are proud of their son.

Perhaps Jean-Pierre was suggesting Joe Biden knew Hunter would say things like, “James Comer, Jim Jordan, Jason Smith, and their colleagues have distorted the facts,” a true statement similar to comments Joe himself has made. Perhaps Jean-Pierre’s comment meant that Joe Biden knew his son would say that Jordan and Comer, along with Jason Smith, “ridiculed my struggle with addiction [and] belittled my recovery,” something consistent with her own focus on his recovery. Given Jean-Pierre’s observation that “what you saw was from the heart,” perhaps she was referring to Hunter’s tribute to his parents’ love:

During my battle with addiction, my parents were there for me. They literally saved my life. They helped me in ways that I will never be able to repay. And of course they would never expect me to. In the depths of my addiction, I was extremely irresponsible with my finances. But to suggest that is grounds for an impeachment inquiry is beyond the absurd. It’s shameless. There’s no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen.

[snip]

They have taken the light of my Dad’s love — the light of my Dad’s love for me and presented it as darkness.

There is nothing in her statement that confirms foreknowledge that Hunter would blow off the subpoena, something conceded in the letter that her statement only, “suggests that the President had some amount of advanced knowledge that Mr. Biden would choose to defy two congressional subpoenas” [my emphasis].

Nevertheless, serial liar Comer and subpoena scofflaw Jordan use Jean-Pierre’s statement to insinuate that Joe Biden has committed what they themselves call a potentially impeachable offense of dissuading a subpoena recipient from complying with it.

Later on December 13, when asked whether President Biden had watched Mr. Biden’s statement, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated that President Biden was “certainly familiar with what his son was going to say.”11 Ms. Jean-Pierre declined, however, to provide any further details about the President’s actions or whether the President approved of his son defying congressional subpoenas.12 Nonetheless, Ms. Jean-Pierre’s statement suggests that the President had some amount of advanced knowledge that Mr. Biden would choose to defy two congressional subpoenas.

Under the relevant section of the criminal code, it is unlawful to “corruptly . . . endeavor[] to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any investigation or inquiry is being had by . . . any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress[.]”13 Likewise, any person who “aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures” the commission of a crime is punishable as a principal of the crime.14

In light of Ms. Jean-Pierre’s statement, we are compelled to examine the involvement of the President in his son’s scheme to defy the Committees’ subpoenas.

[snip]

[T]he fact that the President had advanced awareness that Mr. Biden would defy the Committees’ subpoenas raises a troubling new question that we must examine: whether the President corruptly sought to influence or obstruct the Committees’ proceeding by preventing, discouraging, or dissuading his son from complying with the Committees’ subpoenas. Such conduct could constitute an impeachable offense.

11 Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and NSC Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby. White House Briefing Room (Dec. 13, 2023).

12 Id. 13 18 U.S.C. § 1505 (Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees).

14 18 U.S.C. § 2(a).

Once you wade through all the bad faith and misrepresentation, this is a breathtaking development: Donald Trump’s most vigorous defender in Congress, Jim Jordan, someone who himself defied a subpoena to cover up Trump’s actions, has accused Donald Trump of committing an impeachable offense.

There are a slew of ways that Donald Trump, “prevent[ed], discourag[ed], or dissuad[ed]” witnesses from complying with subpoenas, during both his impeachments, the January 6 Committee, and elsewhere. Most famously, during the first impeachment, for example, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow got Trump to permit Trump attorney John Dowd to represent Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. In a response to a subpoena that was very similar to the pre-impeachment vote subpoena sent to Hunter Biden, Dowd made a bunch of claims about attorney-client relationships that, with the exception of the tie to Dmitry Firtash, have since been disproven, all in an attempt to deprive Congress of their testimony. While Parnas eventually cooperated with impeachment, neither Fruman nor Rudy did. Indeed, Trump’s entire Administration blew off the inquiry.

Trump did the same with the January 6 inquiry. Trump attempted to pressure Cassidy Hutchinson about her testimony. Even better documented, Robert Costello described that Trump’s lawyer instructed him to withhold materials about a meeting involving a bunch of lawyers but also Mike Flynn based on an attorney-client privilege claim. On Jordan’s logic, Trump should join Bannon in his 4-month contempt sentence for that intervention.

In short, while Comer and Jordan manufactured the claim that President Biden knew Hunter was going to blow off a subpoena, the evidence that Trump has ordered everyone in his orbit to do the same for years is overwhelming.

Once you argue that instructing people to blow off subpoenas merits impeachment, you’ve made the case for a third Trump impeachment.

Comer and Jordan have already surfaced far more evidence supporting an impeachment of Donald Trump than Joe Biden. Three major examples are:

  • Ties between DOJ access and dirt on Hunter Biden: In response to Comer’s allegations about Hunter and Joe Biden, Lev Parnas has renewed allegations he made in the past, much of which are backed by known communications and the recently released warrants from SDNY. Of particular note, he described that Rudy floated access with Trump’s DOJ in exchange for dirt on the Bidens with both Yuriy Lutsenko and Dmitry Firtash. Parnas also claimed that when he attempted to fly to Vienna on October 9, 2019, he believed he would retrieve content stolen from a Hunter Biden laptop.
  • Efforts to funnel Rudy Giuliani’s dirt to the investigation into Hunter Biden: Chuck Grassley revealed that during his first impeachment, when Trump was emphasizing the import of investigating Burisma corruption, his own DOJ shut down a 3.5-year old investigation into Mykola Zlochevsky. Testimony from Scott Brady enhanced what we already know about the dedicated channel Bill Barr set up days later for dirt Rudy had obtained, including from known Russian agents. Of particular import, Brady revealed that he mined the recently closed Zlochevsky investigation to obtain informant testimony about how Zlochevsky changed his story about Joe Biden during the course of impeachment. Brady and Gary Shapley both provided new details of how that information got shared with the Hunter Biden investigative team, with Brady submitting interrogatories about what they were investigative and getting David Weiss’ intervention to brief the information they obtained. Ultimately, after Trump yelled at Bill Barr about the Hunter Biden investigation, Richard Donoghue ordered the Delaware investigators to accept the FD-1023 memorializing Zlochevsky’s changed story about Biden; Bill Barr confessed that he was involved in this process. In short, Jordan and Comer, with an assist from Grassley, have confirmed many of the suspicions that drove the first impeachment.
  • Trump’s involvement in Tony Bobulinski’s inconsistent FBI testimony: The disgruntled IRS agents released Tony Bobulinski’s draft interview report (from the same day as the briefing about Zlochevsky’s changed Biden claims), key claims in which are not backed by previously unreleased communications. The disclosure of testimony that Hunter Biden alleges to be false comes even as Cassidy Hutchinson’s book describes a secret meeting Mark Meadows had weeks after that FBI interview, at which Trump’s chief of staff handed Bobulinski something that could be an envelope.

Thanks to Comer and Jordan — with an important assist from Grassley — Republicans have exposed that Trump has been corruptly involved in the Hunter Biden investigation — the Hunter Biden investigation they’re using to impeach Joe Biden — from the start.

But this letter is different.

Comer and Jordan never admitted that all the rest — all the evidence that Trump corruptly ginned up an investigation into Joe Biden’s kid — merited impeachment. They have claimed the opposite, even in the face of Grassley’s stunning claim that Trump’s DOJ shut down an investigation into Zlochevsky opened when Biden was Vice President.

But here, at long last, they’re admitting that Trump’s years-long efforts to stonewall Congress may merit impeachment.

Mind you, the outlets that believed this letter was newsworthy didn’t mention that fact. Instead, they treated Jordan’s stunning hypocrisy as if it were a good faith intervention. They didn’t even mention that Jordan himself blew off a subpoena to protect Trump!

We know why John Solomon — implicated himself in all these events — pretended this was all good faith. Solomon doesn’t pretend to be anything but a pro-Trump propagandist.

But NBC has no excuse. Either it is too stupid to recognize that this Jordan letter is the height of bad faith … or it is too addicted to dick pic-sniffing clicks to explain all that to their readers.

At some point, Jim Jordan’s confession that Donald Trump really did deserve impeachment becomes the story.

Update: I should have included Luke Broadwater — the NYT scribe who can’t do basic things like test the provenance of documents — in the right wing outlets that simply parroted Jordan’s garbage.

In Lev Parnas Investigation, SDNY Decided that Ivana Trump Is Not Political

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I really should be writing a responsible article describing, in detail, the three phases of the Lev Parnas investigation. But instead, I need to obsess about Ivana Trump.

There were, roughly speaking, three phases of the investigation into Parnas:

January through August 2019: Campaign Finance crimes

The first — which I laid out here — focused primarily on the campaign finance crimes. SDNY obtained two warrants in this period:

  • January 18, 2019, 19 MJ 1729: For Yahoo and Google content
  • May 16, 2019, 19 MJ 4784: For iCloud content

When DOJ did a search of Parnas and Fruman’s residences the day they were arrested, the only crime listed on the warrants were the campaign finance crimes; they did this to hide the scope of the ongoing investigation. SDNY only unsealed the Fruman warrant, not the Parnas one (nor warrants in other districts targeting their co-defendants).

August through December 2019: Foreign Agent suspicions

After the firing of Marie Yovanovitch, SDNY investigated whether all Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman’s influence-peddling served the interests of foreign principals — chiefly Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko, but also other Ukrainians and maybe some Russians too.

SDNY obtained at least 8 warrants in this period (there are at least two, 19 MJ 7594 and 19 MJ 9830, which must be related — perhaps targeting their Russian backer, Andrey Muraviev? — but which SDNY withheld). And SDNY also withheld the November 2019 warrants targeting Rudy Giuliani.

  • August 14, 2019, 19 MJ 7593: Yahoo and Google content since January, with expanded focus
  • August 14, 2019, 19 MJ 7595: Existing Yahoo and Google content, with expanded focus
  • October 17, 2019, 19 MJ 7595: Actual authorization of the warrant approved in August
  • October 21, 2019, 19 MJ 9829: iCloud content since May
  • October 21, 2019, 19 MJ 9831: Devices from Dulles
  • October 21, 2019, 19 MJ 9832: Existing iCloud content for expanded focus
  • November 4, 2019: Warrants targeting Rudy
  • December 10, 2019, 19 MJ 11500: Stuff seized from residences for foreign agent focus
  • December 10, 2019, 19 MJ 11501: Instagram

As I’ll return to, it looks like Bill Barr intervened to halt SDNY’s expanding investigation even earlier than previously disclosed, in December 2019 rather than January 2020.

The only additional warrants SDNY served after December 10, 2019 in the foreign agent investigation was a warrant obtained in March 2020 because Fruman had not synced his iCloud with his phone until after SDNY obtained the May 2019 warrants, meaning some of the texts and chats he had already sent were not in the earlier warrant return.

  • March 20, 2020, 20 MJ 3074: iCloud content obtained with October 21, 2019 to cover earlier periods

Effectively, SDNY discovered that they had obtained content in October 2019 pertaining to events in 2018 and earlier in 2019 that hadn’t been available when they first got Fruman’s iCloud in May 2019, so they asked to use the October 2019 warrant for the earlier periods.

This may mean that Fruman, like Parnas, deleted some of his content on his phones.

December 2019 through March 2020: Fraud Guarantee fraud

Starting on December 12, 2019 — two days after the foreign agent investigation halted — SDNY spent several months trying to figure out what Fraud Guarantee actually was.

  • December 12, 2019, 19 MJ 11651: Google for longer period and expanded focus
  • January 21, 2020, 20 MJ 740: Existing email content for expanded focus
  • February 28, 2020, 20 MJ 2240: Google from creation date for Fraud Guarantee
  • February 28, 2020, 20 MJ 2241: Parnas iCloud for expanded focus

SDNY originally had believed, in 2018, that Fraud Guarantee was a recent creation, one serving as another means to launder political donations. But they had to keep digging further and further back, to 2012, to try to figure out what Fraud Guarantee really was.

The Instagram pivot

I’m still triple checking my own work, but SDNY appears not to have complied with SDNY’s order to release all this backup. In addition to withholding the warrant for the search of Lev Parnas’ residence on October 9, 2019 (though that’s likely to be nearly indistinguishable from the one used to search Fruman’s residence, which was obtained in the same docket), I don’t think they released the affidavit for the December 10, 2019 search of the devices seized at the residences for foreign agent crimes.

That’s the one that should have the most expansive description of the foreign agent investigation (and, I suspect, of the financing behind the effort to fire Marie Yovanovitch and obtain dirt on Hunter Biden, which I’ll return to). I suspect the affidavit is closer in content to the one used to seize Rudy’s email in November 2019 than what was unsealed the other day.

The Instagram warrant obtained that same day necessarily used a different affidavit, partly because it included all the crimes under investigation (broadly, the campaign finance crimes and the suspected foreign agent crimes), but also because it was looking for a different kind of information: mostly, but not entirely, photos that Parnas had posted.

But there’s something really weird about it, which has made me obsess about Ivana Trump.

The warrant suggests SDNY learned about the Instagram account from this WSJ video.

As you’ll note, WSJ describes that the oldest thing on the account was an April 2015 photo of a dog, then this photo, showing Parnas and co-defendant David Correia with Ivana Trump, at what he billed as a “Fraud Guarantee pow wow.”

As WSJ notes, the next things in Parnas’ Instagram account are photos showing him getting access to Trump from very early on in Trump’s campaign, in 2015 (as I’ll return to, Parnas’ 2016 access peddling is something that the warrants focus on more than the coverage of Parnas ever did). Then there’s a break in the Instagram account until summer 2018, when it returns to its focus on political access. The Instagram shows Parnas’ work with Rudy to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden and the 2016 election. It ends (again, per WSJ), with their trip days after the Perfect Phone Call to Madrid, to continue that effort.

SDNY obtained this warrant just two days before the investigation shifted focus to Fraud Guarantee. When they obtained the warrant, they undoubtedly had all the questions they spent the next two months pursuing.

Yet SDNY limited the temporal scope of this warrant to postings starting on October 1, 2015 — effectively excluding only the photo of the dog and some event with Ivana trump six months before Parnas started insinuating himself into Trump’s political orbit, one pertaining to Fraud Guarantee.

To the extent materials are dated, this warrant is limited to materials created between October 1, 2015, which is the month in which it appears Parnas first posted a photo related to a political event, to the present.

Did Ivana have some pre-existing relationship with Lev Parnas, one that dates to months before Lev started serially insinuating himself into Donald Trump’s orbit?

And if she did, why didn’t SDNY want that photo?