Trump’s National Security Adviser Responded to an Attack on the Capitol by Sending Personal Tweets

As former National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien tells it — or told it, in his August 2022 interview with the January 6 Committee — he responded to an attack on the Capitol by sending personal tweets.

CNN reported last week that O’Brien will soon have the opportunity to tell a more credible story to both of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s grand juries, which is why I decided to read the transcript of O’Brien’s interview with the January 6 Committee.

Presumably, Smith wants to ask O’Brien about Trump’s firing of people who questioned his authority to invoke the Insurrection Act, a topic that like recent witness Johnny McEntee, O’Brien addressed in his January 6 interview. Perhaps Smith wants him to explain the plot to seize voting machines and other details surrounding the December 18 meeting, which recent witness Ken Cuccinelli addressed. O’Brien may be asked about his challenge to Cassidy Hutchinson’s credibility in his own January 6 testimony, perhaps the only person who has questioned her testimony who hasn’t since been discredited.

Given the CNN report that he would testify before both the January 6 and the stolen document grand juries, he may be asked about his knowledge of plans to take documents pertaining to topics Trump obsessed about, not just the Russian investigation (which O’Brien calls, “Russiagate hoax documents”), but also specific intelligence about Venezuela; O’Brien claims not to remember anything about the efforts to declassify documents to take.

But the most striking aspect of O’Brien’s transcript was his admitted failure to do much of anything as the Capitol was attacked.

To be fair, the appearance of O’Brien’s almost complete inaction as the Capitol was attacked stems, in part, from his own forgetfulness. He claims to remember only one interagency planning meeting in advance of January 6, even though other witnesses testified to several. He only recalls a concern about threats to the White House in advance, not the Capitol. He doesn’t recall briefing the President, the Chief of Staff, or the White House Counsel of intelligence in advance of the attack. He doesn’t recall any talk of Trump marching to the Capitol.

He recalls speaking to Mike Pence during the attack, but can’t recall most details about the conversation.

He recalls speaking to Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who would not assume power for another two weeks. But he can’t recall whether he spoke to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows during the attack.

He recalls that his Deputy Matthew Pottinger called him and told him he had to resign, but can’t recall that he did so specifically in response to Trump’s text targeting Mike Pence.

He’s certain he made no effort to speak to the President as a mob of his supporters attacked a co-equal branch of government. He did not do so, he explained, because he was in Miami and wanted to speak to the President in person.

The story O’Brien told of his actions leading up to and on January 6 was of breath-taking dereliction of duty.

When asked specifically how he responded to learning that the President’s supporters were attacking the Capitol, he explained he sent some personal Tweets.

Q Okay. All right. So let’s talk about then what you did after receiving that information. What steps did you take now that you’re aware of this violence at the Capitol and had this conversation with the [Vice, sic] President? What did you do next?

A So I did a couple of things. I’m not sure the exact order in which I did them.

Q Okay.

A One is I put out a series of tweets on my personal Twitter account.

[snip]

Q Okay. All right. So, again, you didn’t take any action in particular response to this [Trump’s tweet].

Your tweets don’t start until a bit later, your personal tweets that you sent out.

A Yeah, I’m not sure what time my tweets came out, but I wouldn’t say it’s in direct response to this, but I did tweet that I thought the Vice President was courageous.

Q Yeah, you did.

[snip]

All right. The next one up says, “My first experience in government was serving as an intern for Senator Hayakawa of California. What the mob did to our Senate chamber today was an utter disgrace.”

Again, what motivated you to put that out? And do you remember roughly when that was?

A So, again, I don’t recall — and I don’t have a time or a date stamp on this. I think that was the first tweet that I put out on my personal account.

Q I think this is — you’re right — from your personal account, not the official NSA account.

A Correct. And I wanted to get some tweets out on my personal account because I didn’t have to go through a White House clearance process or get others involved. I wanted to try and act, you know, somewhat quickly and make sure the people that — to the extent anyone followed it or was interested, that was my view.

There were some other calls — to Mike Lee and Mitt Romney, for example. But seemingly no coordination of any response. Just tweets about the internship he had when he was 14.

There are certainly reasons to doubt his forgetfulness. At other times, he uses other tactics to avoid discussing whether he had direct contacts with Trump or anyone else of substance, like invoke Executive Privilege over his own feelings.

Q Were you frustrated, Ambassador O’Brien, with the President’s conduct on January 6th?

Mr. Larson. I think this starts to get into — invariably gets into communications with the President and impressions of the President and all that. So I’m going to assert executive privilege here.

And there’s good question of how diligently O’Brien searched for communications relevant to his testimony.

For example, there was a damning document: a draft concession speech that O’Brien wrote for Trump on December 21. O’Brien sent it from his home email account to his White House email account — because maybe his printer was out of paper, he mused.

Q 9 o’clock at night on the 21st.

A Yeah. So I was obviously at home. I probably sent it because I didn’t have a printer. I probably didn’t want to print it or didn’t have a printer at home or it may have been out of paper or something.

And this is something I did on what I considered was my own time. I thought it was — I think by this time the electoral college had already voted, and I think that the primary lawsuits that the President’s legal team had brought had been decided. You know, I can’t be certain, but I’d probably seen that on the news.

And I thought it would be — I thought I’d draft up what was in essence a concession speech, but put it in language that might appeal to the President and I thought might be something that the President could — the type of speech that the President would feel comfortable giving, but at the same time would convey the message that he conceded the election. And I thought it would be good for him and for the country.

O’Brien claims the only one he shared it with at the White House was his own Chief of Staff, not Trump’s or not Trump himself.

Q Did you share this with anyone after you sent it to your own official White House account?

A Yes.

Q With whom?

A I believe I shared it with Alex Gray, my chief of staff.

Q Your chief of staff. I see.

A Right.

Q How about Mark Meadows or the President himself?

A No. I don’t believe I did.

What’s interesting is not just that O’Brien sent it, but that he didn’t turn over an email sent from his own account in his production to the committee. The document should have been turned over to the committee by both O’Brien himself and the Archives. The committee only got the Archives copy

Q Okay. Let me show you another exhibit, this is No. 9, that is an email from your personal account to your official account. I don’t recall if this came from your production or from the Archives.

A I think this came from your production.

Q Yeah. I think that’s right. This is a record produced by the National Archives.

O’Brien wasn’t giving anything up.

And that’s why I find this exchange showing the National Security Adviser — the National Security Adviser!!! — explaining how he was doing business on Signal and WhatsApp and no, he’s not entirely sure whether all his texts got archived properly so suspect.

Q Ambassador O’Brien, how about any other messaging applications, like Signal or Telegram or WhatsApp? Did you use any of those platforms to conduct any official business when you were National Security Advisor?

A I did.

Q Okay. Which of those platforms did you use?

A I think I received some messages from people on WhatsApp and on Signal.

Q All right. And again, tell us what the circumstances would be that would trigger the use of those platforms versus the White House email account or your official device.

A So on the official devices, there was no ability, I don’t think, to put on Signal or any of the other applications.

There were some foreign ambassadors or foreign ministers that would want to get in touch with you and they tended to us Signal or WhatsApp.

[snip]

Q  I’m just wondering sort of the general circumstances that would cause you to go to WhatsApp or Signal. Was it just, hey, it’s a foreign leader, so that’s the platform that he or she uses? Or would you, beyond that, use it for other reasons as well?

A Yeah. So I’m not a consumer of social media or those sorts of applications for the most part. There were some foreign leaders that asked for my cell phone number so that they could connect via Signal, because I think some foreign leaders from time to time would reach out and they were concerned about intercept and they felt there was some safety — that was their opinion — there was some safety. My opinion was different. But they wanted to communicate by Signal or WhatsApp, but it was on rare occasions.

Q I see. Okay. And beyond that, Ambassador O’Brien, would you use WhatsApp or Signal to talk to someone on a personal matter or campaign related or things that you wanted to ensure were kept off of the official government channel?

A Yeah, not that I recall. That was not my practice.

Given how little else he recalls about his job, suffice it to say this “do not recall” whether he used Signal or WhatsApp for other purposes deserves some skepticism, particularly given that everywhere he relies on the committee to pull up call records. Especially given his lackadaisical attitude about preserving whatever Signal texts he sent, at least with foreign ambassadors.

Q Got it. All right. Now, on the subject of these personal devices or accounts, did you provide all [inaudible] with the official communications from these personal accounts to the National Archives when you completed your tenure as National Security Advisor?

A So I don’t know if I had any information on those devices. I do know that when I left the job at the State Department there were some conversations I took screenshots of and I left those behind for the State Department for my files. So that was my practice there.

When it comes to the leaving as NSA, I may have had — you know, I don’t recall, I don’t recall if I screenshotted. I know I screenshotted a few things. I don’t know if they were left behind for the Archives. That would have been my practice. But again, I can’t recall.

It is undeniably true that Robert O’Brien responded to an attack on the Capitol by Tweeting, on his personal account, that Mike Pence was courageous.

But it is also the case that there’s a whole lot of forgetting going on here that looks more like a gap in communications records than anything else.

Which may be on of the biggest things for which Jack Smith would like to get O’Brien on the record.

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Alex Saab: The Businessman Inside the DEA Informant Inside the Claimed Venezuelan Diplomat Inside the Alleged Putin “Laundry Man”

When DOJ first announced the extradition of Alex Saab from Cabo Verde to the US in October 2021, they described him as a Colombian businessman accused of laundering money through Venezuela.

Alex Nain Saab Moran (Saab), 49, a Colombian citizen, will make his initial appearance in federal court in Miami, Florida, today after being extradited from the Republic of Cabo Verde. Saab is charged in an indictment with laundering the proceeds of violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with a scheme to pay bribes to take advantage of Venezuela’s government-controlled exchange rate. He is expected to make his initial court appearance today at 1:00 p.m. before U.S. Magistrate Judge John J. O’Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Specifically, on July 25, 2019, Saab was charged along with Alvaro Pulido Vargas, aka German Enrique Rubio Salas, 55, also a Colombian citizen, in an eight-count indictment with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and seven counts of money laundering. The indictment alleges that beginning in or around November 2011 and continuing until at least September 2015, Saab and Pulido conspired with others to launder the proceeds of an illegal bribery scheme from bank accounts located in Venezuela to and through bank accounts located in the United States. According to the indictment, Saab and Pulido obtained a contract with the Venezuelan government in November 2011 to build low-income housing units. The defendants and their co-conspirators then took advantage of Venezuela’s government-controlled exchange rate, under which U.S. dollars could be obtained at a favorable rate, by submitting false and fraudulent import documents for goods and materials that were never imported into Venezuela and bribing Venezuelan government officials to approve those documents. The indictment alleges that the unlawful activity was a bribery scheme that violated the FCPA and involved bribery offenses against Venezuela. It also alleges that meetings in furtherance of the bribe payments occurred in Miami and that Saab and Pulido wired money related to the scheme to bank accounts in the Southern District of Florida. As a result of the scheme, Saab and Pulido transferred approximately $350 million out of Venezuela, through the United States, to overseas accounts they owned or controlled.

But four months after that, in February 2022, the judge in his case in Miami, Robert Scola, ordered a document submitted before the extradition be unsealed. That revealed he had been a DEA informant, largely confirming the details behind his indictment.

[O]ver the course of nearly twelve (12) months, SAAB MORAN cooperated with agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”), provided DEA with information about his criminal activity, engaged in proactive cooperation as a confidential source for the DEA, and forfeited money to the United States and DEA as part of an agreement to self-surrender in the United States in order to face charges for his criminal conduct. In light of SAAB MORAN’s cooperation, which included providing law enforcement with information about the bribes that he paid and the crimes that he committed, the United States has concerns regarding the safety and security of SAAB MORAN and/or his family were this information to be disclosed to the Maduro Regime in Venezuela. See “Venezuelan charged in Miami money laundering case gunned down by motorcycle assassin,” Sept. 2, 2020, available at https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article245436795.html.

[snip]

On August 8 and August 10, 2016, SAAB MORAN, represented by criminal counsel in the United States and his Colombian lawyer, 1 met with special agents from the DEA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) in Bogota, Colombia. During these meetings, SAAB MORAN was debriefed and provided information relating to certain of his companies that contracted with the Government of Venezuela to build low-income housing, including how those companies were paid in connection with the contracts and how the money flowed after his companies received the funds. On November 28, 2017, SAAB MORAN, joined by his Colombian counsel, met with special agents from the DEA and an Assistant United States Attorney for another debriefing.

[snip]

On June 27, 2018, SAAB MORAN signed a cooperating source (“CS”) agreement with the DEA and became an active law enforcement source shortly thereafter, communicating with special agents from the DEA via telephone, text, and voice messaging. As part of his cooperation, SAAB MORAN also engaged in proactive cooperation.

[snip]

On April 4, 2019, SAAB MORAN, represented by his U.S. counsel, met with special agents from the DEA and prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Department of Justice in Europe. At that meeting, SAAB MORAN was provided a deadline by which to surrender to U.S. authorities in the Southern District of Florida in connection with his criminal conduct. SAAB MORAN was further advised that, if he failed to surrender by May 30, 2019, he would no longer remain a cooperating source and would be charged criminally in the Southern District of Florida.

Then, last October, Saab made an unsuccessful bid to claim that on top of being a businessman and sometime DEA informant, he was also a Venezuelan diplomat, the country’s Special Envoy to Iran.

For the two years following his appointment in April 2018, Mr. Saab fulfilled his role as a Venezuelan Special Envoy. To that end, he was issued a diplomatic passport that specifically identified him as a Special Envoy (“Enviado Especial”). See Exhibit 1.3 This activity culminated in spring 2020, in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic that shattered Venezuela’s already fragile social and economic condition when there was a need for Mr. Saab to negotiate for gasoline, food, and medical supplies.4 Even before the pandemic, Venezuela was facing an emergency shortage of gasoline and medicine due to crippling external economic sanctions.

The Venezuelan government tasked Mr. Saab with three official diplomatic missions to Iran, in March, April, and June 2020, to procure equipment to maintain and repair Venezuela’s oil refineries, as well as to obtain gasoline, goods, foodstuffs, and medicine that the country desperately needed. Mr. Saab also met with an Iranian diplomatic delegation in Venezuela. He was Head of Mission on each trip. Two missions were successfully completed, but the third was interrupted by Mr. Saab’s interception and detention while he was in transit through Cape Verde.

Judge Scola was unpersuaded. He noted, among other things, that Saab was unable to present a diplomatic passport in Cabo Verde. Saab will appeal that decision.

But in December, the January 6 Committee revealed Saab may be something else.

In August 23, 2022 testimony to the January 6 Committee, former National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien listed a bunch of reasons he didn’t think Mark Esper was a helpful Secretary of Defense. By far the most interesting of those is that, after Saab was arrested in Cabo Verde, Esper was unwilling to provide DOD resources to stave off a rescue attempt.

We had another situation where we had Alex Saab, who was Vladimir Putin’s finance laundry man and the financial go-between between Venezuela and the Kremlin and Iran. And he was arrested in Caba Verde, a small island off of Africa.

We were concerned that there may be a rescue attempt mounted, and we wanted to put — and the Caba Verdeans are good people, but they lack capability to defend against a — especially if there was a great power intervention to either kill or rescue Saab.

We needed a naval ship to get on post off the island to send a message of deterrence. Secretary Esper resisted that effort. And we ended up having to get a Coast Guard cutter, some poor guys who had just gotten back in off deployment, to cross the Atlantic to get there in time.

And Gina Haspel and Chris Wray and I and others had to do a few things to deter a  rescue operation there because we didn’t have help from the DOD.

The efforts to thwart any rescue attempts — presumably including the “few things” that O’Brien and CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Christopher Wray had to do to deter a rescue mission — were publicly reported in December 2020, as background to Esper’s firing.

The mission was set in motion in early June, when Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman who is widely believed to be the architect of the economic deals that are keeping the Maduro government afloat, was arrested in Cape Verde when his private plane stopped to refuel en route to Iran from Venezuela. The United States sought his extradition under American money laundering charges, and judicial proceedings began.

“Saab is critically important to Maduro because he has been the Maduro family’s frontman for years,” said Moises Rendon, a Venezuela specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Saab has access to privileged information to Maduro’s corruption schemes in and outside Venezuela.”

The subsequent stealthy arrival of the American warship coincided with President Trump’s firing of Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper in early November. For months, Mr. Esper had fended off pleas from the State and Justice Departments to deploy a Navy vessel to Cape Verde to deter Venezuela and Iran from plotting to spirit Mr. Saab away from the island. Mr. Esper scoffed at concerns over a cloak-and-dagger jailbreak, and said sending in the Navy was a misuse of American military might. A Coast Guard cutter was dispatched in August instead.

With Mr. Esper out of the way, however, his replacement, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher C. Miller, a former White House counterterrorism aide, quickly approved the San Jacinto’s deployment from Norfolk, Va. The ship sailed across the Atlantic to keep a close eye on the lone captive.

But not the claim that he was, “Vladimir Putin’s finance laundry man.” Saab’s alleged tie to Putin gets more interesting when you consider allegations that Oleg Deripaska was laundering funds through Venezuela. I’ve asked both SDFL and Saab’s attorneys at Baker Hostettler for comment on the allegation, but have not yet gotten a response.

The longer Alex Saab sits in one or another jail cell, the more interesting he becomes, it seems.

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A Book Author, A Religious Leader, and A Pollster Walk into Trump’s Classified Document Bar

As noted, yesterday Trump took the opportunity created by news of an additional document with classification marks at Mike Pence’s house to make a series of disclosures. Lawyers found another empty classified document folder, marked Classified Evening Briefing, as well as a laptop and a thumb drive with a classified document on it. The latter, described here by CNN, has generated a really inflammatory response.

Former President Donald Trump’s legal team turned over more materials with classified markings and a laptop belonging to an aide to federal prosecutors in recent months, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.

The Trump attorneys also handed over an empty folder marked “Classified Evening Briefing,” sources said.

The previously undisclosed handovers – from December and January – suggest the protracted effort by the Justice Department to repossess records from Trump’s presidency may not be done.

The Trump attorneys discovered pages with classified markings in December, while searching through boxes at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence. The lawyers subsequently handed the materials over to the Justice Department.

A Trump aide had previously copied those same pages onto a thumb drive and laptop, not realizing they were classified, sources said. The laptop, which belonged to an aide, who works for Save America PAC, and the thumb drive were also given to investigators in January.

Pete Strzok, popularizing my nifty (and now outdated) table, raised a lot of predictable questions about the thumb drive and laptop.

He’s not wrong that these are the kinds of questions FBI will now be asking. All the more so given the ABC report that the laptop, at least, was not found at Mar-a-Lago.

ABC News has also learned that after the information was recovered, federal agents retrieved the laptop from the aide. The laptop was not retrieved on the Mar-a-Lago grounds, the sources said.

But the answers may be somewhat simpler, particularly if — as I suspect — Trump’s lawyers went and found this laptop as a response to one of the other most-pressing questions about Trump’s stolen documents.

After all, there must be some reason why Trump’s lawyers went to look for this document, after having investigators search Mar-a-Lago already. There must be a specific reason they were looking for these documents, given that investigators had done a seemingly thorough search of everything.

And Trump’s lawyers have no doubt been scrambling to answer one of the most important questions revealed in the Special Master review: who had compiled a document — after Trump left the White House — with a Secret and a Confidential document. That document was described in one of the last Special Master filings. It’s a document that includes messages from a book author, a religious leader, and a pollster, probably something from a lawyer, and what were upon seizure a Secret and a Confidential document.

One potentially privileged document that had been scanned was removed from the database (SM_MAL_00001185 to SM_MAL_00001195). That document – excluding the one potentially privileged page (SM_MAL_00001190) – is discussed in the next section about the Filter Materials Log. The potentially privileged page is the subject of a separate letter from the Filter Team to Your Honor, which is sent today.

[snip]

This document is a compilation that includes three documents that post-date Plaintiff’s term in office and two classified cover sheets, one SECRET and the other CONFIDENTIAL. Because Plaintiff can only have received the documents bearing classification markings in his capacity as President, the entire mixed document is a Presidential record.

Besides the classified cover sheets, which were inserted by the FBI in lieu of the actual documents, none of the remaining communications in the document are confidential presidential communications that might be subject to a claim of executive privilege. Three communications are from a book author, a religious leader, and a pollster. The first two cannot be characterized as presidential advisers and all three are either dated or by content occurred after Plaintiff’s administration ended. [my emphasis]

It was, as I’ve been describing, a mini-smoking gun: Two classified documents “compiled” with a bunch of documents that post-date Trump’s Administration, seeming proof that someone accessed classified documents after they were removed from the White House.

The mini-smoking gun is a political document: it includes a message from a pollster. But what FBI meant by a “compilation” was never clear: Was it just two classified documents paper clipped onto messages from a pollster, a religious leader, and a book author? Was this digitally compiled, in which case it might appear to be one 11-page document with passages that were classified?

What would have happened after DOJ and Trump’s lawyers agreed that the messages post-dated Trump’s presidency is that Trump’s lawyers would have scrambled to come up with a non-criminal explanation for the document.

And one possible story to explain it is the one Trump is now offering: an entire box of documents were scanned, and an aide  — CNN appears to know who she is — took copies, not knowing they were classified. And then the aide used the classified documents in her job at Trump’s PAC.

Both the removal of the document, including some classified documents, and this aide’s integration of the documents into some kind of political document, could both be unwitting, and therefore not a crime. Particularly if she were represented by lawyers paid for by Trump, as is his habit.

Given that FBI only found one document like this, the story is not implausible.

And it would answer the really pressing question of the “compiled” classified document (which Trump lawyers have undoubtedly treated as a very pressing question, given that this is a mini-smoking gun). And it would answer the question of why they were searching an aide’s laptop and thumb drive.

Only, if that’s Trump’s final answer — and it may well be! — then it will raise other questions. Such as why Trump had Presidential Records Act documents that he would go on to use for his PAC in the first place.

Particularly at a time when his fundraising is under scrutiny for the other criminal investigation of Donald Trump, the answer to that question might get awkward quickly.

Update: Here is the Guardian’s explanation for the aide and the laptop (none of which makes sense):

[A]t Mar-a-Lago in December, the contractors found a box that mainly contained presidential schedules, in which they found a couple of classified-marked documents to also be present and alerted the legal team to return the materials to the justice department, the sources said.

The exact nature of the classified-marked documents remains unclear, but a person with knowledge of the search likened their sensitivity to schedules for presidential movements – for instance, presidential travel to Afghanistan – that are considered sensitive until they have taken place.

After the Trump legal team turned over the box of schedules, the sources said, they learned that a junior Trump aide – employed by Trump’s Save America political action committee who acted as an assistant in Trump’s political “45 Office” – last year scanned and uploaded the contents of the box to a laptop.

The junior Trump aide, according to what one of the sources said, was apparently instructed to upload the documents by top Trump aide Molly Michael to create a repository of what Trump was doing while in office and was apparently careless in scanning them on to her work laptop.

When the Trump legal team told the justice department about the uploads, federal prosecutors demanded the laptop and its password, warning that they would otherwise move to obtain a grand jury subpoena summoning the junior aide to Washington to grant them access to the computer.

To avoid a subpoena, the Trump legal team agreed to turn over the laptop in its entirety last month, though they did not allow federal prosecutors to collect it from Mar-a-Lago.

 

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Jeff Gerth Declares No There, Where He Never Checked

In Part One of this series, I noted that Jeff Gerth couldn’t make it through his first sentence without making an error (two errors, if you’re a hard grader). In Part Three, I noted that the fact set Gerth draws on is not the Mueller investigation itself or even the underlying Russian hack-and-leak campaign, but the investigations into that investigation.

That’s how Gerth came to rely on a Russian intelligence report of uncertain reliability to make claims about Hillary Clinton’s motives without actually disclosing he was doing it.

Gerth’s reliance on people like Lindsey Graham and Sidney Powell and John Durham and a host of angry men who post highlighted screen caps on Twitter is a problem, because they’re not reliable. They’re the obvious source of many of his outright errors.

Gerth falsely claimed the DOJ IG Report vindicated Devin Nunes’ memo – but he didn’t check that (I did). He applauded retractions based off John Durham claims that couldn’t withstand the scrutiny of a jury. At least twice, he falsely claimed that investigations – the SSCI investigation’s findings about Konstantin Kilimnik, Mueller’s investigations about Prigozhin’s ties to the Russian government – showed no evidence rather than that much of it remains classified.

These are just a few of a host of smaller errors that would have been caught in any robust fact check.

Gerth invents exculpatory evidence Bill Barr says doesn’t exist

Some of his bigger errors, though, are especially revealing.

Of particular interest, given how Gerth ignores much of NYT and (especially) WaPo reporting about Mike Flynn, he misrepresents what happened with Trump’s former National Security Adviser. In Part Four of his piece, Gerth accurately describes DOJ’s claimed reason for reversing the prosecution of Flynn.

In May 2020, the Justice Department dropped the case against Flynn for lying to the FBI after a review by Jensen, the US Attorney in St. Louis. The department cited the FBI’s “frail and shifting justifications for its ongoing probe of Mr. Flynn” and said that the FBI interview of Flynn was “conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.”

In making fact claims about the Flynn investigation, Gerth doesn’t describe how obviously false this claim was. He doesn’t meet his own standard of referring to competing sides of an issue – particularly egregious given how radically DOJ’s own position changed between January and May. 

But at least he accurately reported what DOJ claimed.

In Part Three, however, Gerth falsely claims that DOJ found “exculpatory” evidence, which Gerth surely knows has a legal meaning.

Flynn later tried to withdraw his plea after a Justice Department review found exculpatory evidence, including the fact that the lead agent on his case wanted to shut it down in early January but was overruled by higher-ups. The Justice Department then moved to have the charges dismissed, but a federal judge wanted to know more, so Flynn was pardoned by Trump.

[snip]

Other FBI documents, released in 2020, reflect the same assessment: the inquiry into possible ties between the campaign and Russia, according to one of the agents involved in the case, “seemed to be winding down” then. [my emphasis]

DOJ found no exculpatory evidence; if they had, it would have amounted to a Brady violation. Long before DOJ reversed course on the Flynn prosecution, it had argued that Flynn was not entitled to much of the evidence Bill Barr subsequently made available. In any case, Judge Emmet Sullivan, the judge who, since presiding over the Ted Stevens case, has adopted a particularly expansive view of Brady material, wrote a meticulous, 92-page opinion, ruling that none of that was Brady material. Jocelyn Ballantine, the AUSA stuck trying to reverse course on claims she had previously made to the court, described that DOJ’s reversal on Flynn was discretionary.

While those documents, along with other recently available information, see, e.g., Doc. 198-6, are relevant to the government’s discretionary decision to dismiss this case, the government’s motion is not based on defendant Flynn’s broad allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. Flynn’s allegations are unfounded and provide no basis for impugning the prosecutors from the D.C. United States Attorney’s Office. 

Barr repeated that assessment in testimony to the House Judiciary Committee – there was no Brady violation. 

Mr. Collins: (01:17:42)

Well, there’s another part of this as well that concerns what has been given to the courts and in the interviews, and that is that the facts were not disclosed to Flynn prior to the interview. That seems like a Brady violation, to me. Do you believe that there’s a Brady violation there in this case? [crosstalk 01:17:56]

Wiliam Barr: (01:17:56)

No, there wasn’t a Brady violation there, but I think what the council concluded was that the only purpose of the interview, the only purpose was to try to catch him in saying something that they could then say was a lie.

The only one who said there was exculpatory information was Sidney Powell, the same person who would go on to claim that “no reasonable person” would believe her election fraud claims were statements of fact. That’s the standard CJR adopted in this series, the Sidney Powell standard.

And when Sullivan issued a final ruling in the case – stating that Flynn’s pardon did not render him innocent – Sullivan noted that “the government had been aware of much of this evidence since early on in the case,” meaning it would be covered by his earlier Brady opinion (indeed, almost all of the “new” documents were specifically addressed in his earlier Brady opinion).

Along with his false claim about exculpatory information, Gerth’s relies on an unusual interview of case agent Bill Barnett (the bolded language above; Gerth neither names nor links the interview), which is particularly problematic. That’s true, first of all, because in the interview, Barnett suggests (improbably) he did not understand the counterintelligence side of the investigation (a point Jim Comey made in congressional testimony). His claims about the evidence conflict with known details. Even so, his interview shows that he believed that Flynn lied in his interview with the FBI, contradicting a key false claim made by “Russiagate” purveyors talking about Flynn’s case. Worse, from a legal perspective, when DOJ submitted his memo to the docket, they redacted AUSA Brandon Van Grack’s name in the interview report, which had the effect of hiding from Judge Sullivan material information – that Barnett had no complaints with Van Grack’s performance and that Van Grack made sure Barnett’s favorable views about Trump and KT McFarland were aired in prosecutorial decisions. That is, the memo actually proves that DOJ was trying to hide that there was no exculpatory information, not that there was any.

To sustain his false claims about Flynn, then, Gerth does the same thing he did with his purported review of NYT and WaPo reporting: rely on a “Russiagate” narrative, rather than the actual facts.

Gerth plays “gotcha” with thin evidence before the evidence is collected

Gerth’s errors about the investigation get far weirder in a series of instances where Gerth scolds the press for not covering statements – either released after some delay or spoken retrospectively – to claim there was no substance to the investigation.

WaPo only included James Clapper’s statement that, by the end of his tenure, the intelligence community had found no evidence of “collusion” at the end of a story otherwise focused on his denial that Trump himself had been targeted under FISA, Gerth complains, “while the Times ignored it” in their story. But, as Clapper noted himself in the interview in question, that reflected the investigation as it existed on January 20, 2017, over forty days earlier. “This could have unfolded or become available in the time since I left the government.” Clapper was right: In the interim period, Flynn had lied to the FBI about his calls with Sergey Kislyak during the transition (which, again, was covered in stories that Gerth omitted from his review of NYT and WaPo reporting) and Papadopoulos had confirmed he got advance notice of the Russian interference, while lying about the timing of it. This is a favorite “Russiagate” move, but it’s just stupid, demanding anyone measure the facts of an investigation by what it used to look like several months in the past.

Gerth also complains that the NYT “omitted” any mention of a text Pete Strzok sent Lisa Page on May 19, 2017 after it was publicly released on January 23, 2018. In the text, Strzok explains that he might not join the Mueller team because “my gut sense and concern there’s no there there.” Gerth suggests reporting it, eight months after the fact, “might have helped readers better understand why Mueller failed to bring any criminal charges involving collusion [sic] or conspiracy with Russia.”

Yet the disclosure in no way substantiates what Gerth fancies it does – because (as other documents he relies on show, as well as a great deal of public documentation about the investigation he does not mention) – with the very notable exception of the FISA warrants targeting Carter Page, the investigation had barely begun to obtain warrants to collect evidence yet in May 2017. Indeed, Strzok’s is one of several comments that Gerth seizes on that reveal the former FBI agent didn’t have it in for Trump and instead repeatedly took steps to protect Trump and Flynn’s interests. But Gerth never complains that the press didn’t cover that aspect of the leaked texts and declassified investigative records. As noted, Gerth opines that, “One traditional journalistic standard that wasn’t always followed in the Trump-Russia coverage is the need to report facts that run counter to the prevailing narrative.” The implications of the investigative steps Strzok actually took in the Russian investigation are clearly an example, but not one Gerth has any interest in.

A particularly bizarre example of this is when Gerth relies on a comment that Rod Rosenstein made, in 2020, about the state of the investigation when he approved a memo scoping the investigation on August 2, 2017. “By August, the collusion [sic] investigation had not panned out, according to 2020 testimony by Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who oversaw Mueller,” Gerth claims.

He appears to base that claim on this exchange with Lindsey Graham on June 3, 2020:

Lindsey Graham: (34:20) I’m not arguing with you about assigning it to Mueller. I’m saying, was there a legitimate reason to believe that any of the people named in this letter were actively working with the Russians in August, 2017?

Rod Rosenstein: (34:34) In August, 2017?

Lindsey Graham: (34:36) That’s when you signed the memo.

Rod Rosenstein: (34:38) My understanding, Senator, was that there was reasonable suspicion.

Lindsey Graham: (34:42) What is it? What was it?

Rod Rosenstein: (34:44) Now, again, Senator, the investigation has concluded and these people were not conspiring with the Russians, the information available at the time included-

Lindsey Graham: (34:55) Well, why do we have the Mueller investigation at all, if we had concluded they working with the Russians?

Rod Rosenstein: (35:00) I don’t believe we had concluded it at that time.

Lindsey Graham: (35:02) I am saying in January the 4th, 2017, the FBI had discounted Flynn, there was no evidence that Carter Page worked with the Russians, the dossier was a bunch of garbage and Papadopoulos is all over the place, not knowing he’s being recorded, denying working with the Russians, nobody’s ever been prosecuted for working with the Russians. The point is the whole concept that the campaign was colluding with the Russians, there was no there there in August, 2017. Do you agree with that general statement or not?

Rod Rosenstein: (35:39) I agree with that general statement. [my emphasis]

Gerth’s apparent citation of this exchange is telling. The hearing itself was part of a concerted effort by a Trump ally — relying on people like Bill Barnett — to muddle the actual results of the Mueller investigation. Gerth makes much of Mueller’s “painful” delivery during the Special Counsel’s May 2019 congressional testimony, but in this Senate hearing, Rosenstein – who was struggling to answer why he authorized the most problematic FISA application targeting Carter Page – proved easily bullied. Sure, he did “agree with [Lindsey Graham’s] general statement” that “there was no there there in August, 2017” when Rosenstein had written a new scope statement for the investigation. But Rosenstein said that just 61 seconds after he noted that he understood Mueller to have “reasonable suspicion” that Trump’s associates were working with Russia.

And as Gerth and Graham are both supposed to understand, the [Acting] Attorney General supervising a Special Counsel investigation is not involved in the day-to-day steps of it. Rosenstein’s answers make it clear he either didn’t remember, didn’t know, or didn’t want to talk about those details.

In fact, the public record shows, Mueller had more than reasonable suspicion that Trump’s aides had inappropriate contacts with Russians or others involved in the interference operation. 

Just days earlier, on July 28, 2017, DOJ had already established probable cause to arrest George Papadopoulos for false statements and obstructing the investigation. His FBI interviews in the days after August 2 would go to the core questions of the campaign’s knowledge and encouragement of Russia’s interference. On August 11, Papadopoulos described, but then backed off certainty about, a memory of Sam Clovis getting upset when Papadopoulos told Clovis “they,” the Russians, have Hillary’s emails. On September 19, Papadopoulos professed to be unable to explain what his own notes planning a September 2016 meeting in London with the “Office of Putin” meant.

The investigation into Paul Manafort, too, was only beginning to take steps that would reveal suspect ties to Russia. Also on July 28, for example, DOJ obtained the first known warrant including conspiracy among the charges under investigation, and the first known warrant listing the June 9 meeting within the scope of the investigation. On August 17, DOJ would show probable cause to obtain emails from Manafort’s business involving Manafort, Gates, and Konstantin Kilimnik that would (among other things) show damning messages sent between Manafort and Kilimnik using the foldering technique, likely including Manafort’s sustained involvement in a plan to carve up Ukraine that started on August 2, 2016 (which Gerth omits from his description of that meeting).

Similarly, Mueller was still collecting evidence explaining why Flynn might have lied about his calls with Sergey Kislyak. On August 25, Mueller obtained a probable cause warrant to access devices owned by the GSA showing that Flynn had coordinated his calls with other transition officials, including those with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, when he called Kislyak to undermine Obama’s sanctions against Russia.

Plus, Mueller was just beginning to investigate at least two Trump associates that Rosenstein would include in an expanded scope in October 2017. On July 18, Mueller would obtain a probable cause warrant that built off Suspicious Activity Reports submitted to Treasury. That first known warrant targeting Michael Cohen never mentioned the long-debunked allegations about Cohen in the Steele dossier. Instead, the warrant affidavit would cite five deposits in the first five months of 2017 from Viktor Vekselberg’s Renova Group, totaling over $400K, $300K in payments from Korean Aerospace Industries, and almost $200K from Novartis, all of which conflicted with Cohen’s claim that the bank account in question would focus on domestic clients. On August 1, Mueller would obtain a probable cause warrant for Cohen’s Trump Organization emails from Microsoft. Mueller did so using a loophole that Microsoft would sue to close shortly afterwards, a move which likely stymied the investigation into a suspected $10 million donation to Trump, via an Egyptian bank, that kept him in the race in September 2016. That warrant for Trump Organization emails likely obtained Cohen’s January 2016 contact with the Kremlin – the one not turned over, to Congress at least, in response to a subpoena – a contact that Cohen would lie to Congress about four week later

On August 7, Mueller used a probable cause warrant to obtain Roger Stone’s Twitter content, which revealed a mid-October 2016 exchange with WikiLeaks that disproved the rat-fucker’s public claims that he had never communicated with WikiLeaks during the campaign (a fact that Gerth gets wrong in the less than 1% of his series he dedicates to Stone). It also revealed that the day after the election, WikiLeaks assured Stone via DM that “we are now more free to communicate.” Those communications would, in one week (the subsequent investigation showed), turn into pardon discussions, which provides important background to the June 2017 Twitter DMs Stone had with Julian Assange, obtained with that August warrant, about “doing everything possible to address [Assange’s] issues at the highest level of Government.”

Gerth’s reliance on Rosenstein, at best, ignores the context of the former Deputy Attorney General’s quivering in the face of his own exposure in the errors in the Carter Page applications. It ignores Rosenstein’s statement, 61 seconds earlier, about reasonable suspicion. More importantly, it relies on a witness who wouldn’t know what investigators had discovered and by when, all the while remaining blissfully ignorant of (or, worse, suppressing) publicly available details that reveal the actual state of the investigation in August 2017.

Based on such a shoddy reporting approach, Gerth calls all these investigative discoveries – details about plans for a meeting with Putin’s office in September 2016, foldered emails about carving up Ukraine, coordination with Mar-a-Lago on Flynn’s calls about sanctions with Sergey Kislyak, $400K in suspicious payments from a Russian oligarch, and proof that Stone was lying about contact with WikiLeaks – “no there, there.” 

Gerth insists that journalists should disclose the known details about the investigation – such as that Strzok didn’t think there would be anything before Mueller started obtaining warrants to check — but rather than holding himself to that standard, he instead makes provably false statements about what investigators knew, and could have known, when. 

When asked about both the Flynn and the Rosenstein claims, twice, CJR did not respond. “[T]he vast majority of items” I raised “are editorial notes from you, as in ways you would have written the piece differently,” Pope said in response to my list of questions, “rather than issues of fact that need to be addressed by CJR.”

Sweeping misstatements about trolls

Gerth’s legal misrepresentations are perhaps most telling in his discussion of the case against Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, twelve human trolls who worked for Internet Research Agency, the IRA itself, and two shell companies Prigozhin allegedly used to fund the IRA. 

This is going to get weedy, but it’s important because it’s an instance where Gerth simply adopts the false claims of another “Russiagate” propagandist as his own.

Gerth makes two claims: That the judge handling the case “rebuked” “the Mueller [R]eport” for claiming the “IRA” was part of a “sweeping” Russian government effort when (Gerth claimed) prosecutors weren’t prepared to prove that tie. And, he claims, “one criminal case” was dropped by DOJ.

The Mueller report’s implication that the IRA was part of a “sweeping” Russian government meddling campaign in 2016 was later rebuked by a federal Judge handling an IRA-related case. The indictment of the IRA, the judge found, alleged “only private conduct by private actors” and “does not link the [IRA] to the Russian government.” The prosecutors made clear they were not prepared to show that the IRA efforts were a government operation. Mueller’s report does refer to “ties” between Putin and the owner of the IRA—he is sometimes referred to as “Putin’s Cook”—and the fact that “the two have appeared together in public photographs.” Mueller’s source for that was an article in the Times.

[snip]

(One criminal case involving Russian trolling that was prosecuted was dropped by the Justice Department in March 2020. The Times, in its story about the decision, only quoted the prosecutor, while the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post also included quotes from the Russian company’s American lawyer.)

Before I lay out the many errors here, let me address Gerth’s complaint that the NYT quoted only prosecutors in their stories about DOJ’s decision to drop charges against Concord, whereas the WSJ and WaPo “include[] quotes from the Russian company’s American lawyer.” He doesn’t mention that NYT quoted a Twitter account boasting of leaking Mueller’s materials, one proximate reason DOJ dropped the case. But the entire complaint underscores Gerth’s fundamental misrepresentation of this issue: The dispute in question was a dispute about prejudicial pretrial statements, not about what prosecutors planned to prove in court. After Judge Dabney Friedrich issued her rebuke, neither side was supposed to be giving quotes to journalists. 

And because DOJ didn’t dismiss an entire criminal case, DOJ remained gagged under Judge Friedrich’s order. DOJ dismissed only the charges against the defendants in question, which Gerth describes as the “IRA” (Internet Research Agency) five times in one paragraph.

But Gerth got the defendant wrong. Here’s the passage of the judge’s order Gerth claims to be citing.

But the indictment, which alleges that private Russian entities and individuals conducted an “information warfare” campaign designed to sow discord among U.S. voters, Indictment ¶ 10, does not link the defendants to the Russian government. Save for a single allegation that Concord and Concord Catering had several “government contracts” (with no further elaboration), id. ¶ 11, the indictment alleges only private conduct by private actors. [my emphasis]

“The defendants” here were Concord Management and Consulting, the shell companies Prigozhin allegedly used to fund the IRA, the same defendants against which DOJ dropped charges. (Friedrich refers to IRA as Concord’s “co-defendant” when she discusses them.) The difference matters because – as even that passage makes clear – there was no question about the contracts that Concord had with the Russian government.

DOJ dismissed the charges against Concord because it was acting as a true shell company, using its flexibility as a corporate person to show up to contest the charges and obtain sensitive discovery, while dodging parts of the protective order and any possibility it would ever be arrested. I laid out DOJ’s decision to drop the charges, rebutting false claims from both right and left, in this post. Gerth must know that the decision only pertained to two corporate shell defendants. The WSJ story he cites, for example, makes that clear in the headline: “Judge Dismisses Part of Robert Mueller’s Case Against Russian Firm.” The NYT version clarified the dismissal involved just “two Russian shell companies.” 

And as for Friedrich’s rebuke, as I noted, it was about pretrial prejudice, Concord’s ability to get a fair trial, not about what prosecutors planned to prove at trial. Gerth appears to have made up the claim that prosecutors “made clear they were not prepared to show that the IRA [sic] efforts were a government operation.” On the contrary, prosecutor Jonathan Kravis explained in a hearing on Concord’s motion that they had not yet decided whether they would present it at trial.

THE COURT: And is that something that the government plans to introduce at trial in this case?

KRAVIS: I’m not certain of the answer to that question at this point.

Given the charges, they didn’t need to prove that Concord was working with the Russian government. The single conspiracy count against Concord didn’t require proving Prigozhin’s substantial ties to the Russian government. It required showing only that members of the conspiracy deliberately thwarted FEC and DOJ’s ability to enforce campaign finance and FARA laws, both of which only require a tie to a foreign principal, not a foreign government.

Similarly, Gerth falsely insinuates that Mueller didn’t have evidence of such ties by suggesting the only evidence in the report was a reference to a NYT article. As he did with the SSCI case laying out reasons it judged Kilimnik to be a spy, Gerth is here referring to a two page, almost entirely redacted section, and insinuating that a bunch of redacted evidence is the same as no evidence, just a reference to the NYT. A sentence unsealed after this dispute shows that this passage relied, in part, on details of Prigozhin’s ties to the Russian military.

Finally, Gerth misrepresents both the substance of the rebuke and its primary target. Concord’s complaint about prejudicial language (both the alleged tie to Russia and outright claims it was illegal) focused first and foremost on Bill Barr’s language, and only secondarily on the Mueller Report. While Friedrich’s order rebuking the government did cite language in the Mueller Report, she deemed that language a violation in conjunction with Barr’s far more definitive tie between Russia and the corporate defendants, particularly made in Senate testimony. 

Similarly, the Attorney General drew a link between the Russian government and this case during a press conference in which he stated that “[t]he Special Counsel’s report outlines two main efforts by the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.” Press Conference Tr. (emphasis added). The “[f]irst” involved “efforts by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company with close ties to the Russian government, to sow social discord among American voters through disinformation and social media operations.” Id. The “[s]econd” involved “efforts by Russian military officials associated with the GRU,” a Russian intelligence agency, to hack and leak private documents and emails from the Democratic Party and the Clinton Campaign. Id. The Attorney General further stated the Report’s “bottom line”: “After nearly two years of investigation, thousands of subpoenas, and hundreds of warrants and witness interviews, the Special Counsel confirmed that the Russian government sponsored efforts to illegally interfere with the 2016 presidential election but did not find that the Trump campaign or other Americans colluded in those schemes.” Id. (emphases added). In context, it is clear that one of these “efforts” or “schemes” attributed to the Russian government was the information warfare campaign alleged in the indictment. Id. Thus, the Attorney General “confirmed” what the indictment does not allege—that Concord’s and its co-defendants’ activities were “sponsored” by the “Russian government” and part of a two-pronged attack on our nation’s democratic institutions. Id. This bottom-line conclusion was highlighted in multiple press articles following the Report’s release.

In fact, Friedrich pointed to Mueller’s closing press conference on May 29 as proof of the care with which DOJ was trying to avoid such prejudice.

In delivering his remarks, the Special Counsel carefully distinguished between the efforts by “Russian intelligence officers who were part of the Russian military” and the efforts detailed “in a separate indictment” by “a private Russian entity engaged in a social media operation where Russian citizens posed as Americans in order to interfere in the election.” Special Counsel Statement Tr. (emphases added). He also repeatedly referred to the activities described in the Report as “allegations” and made clear that his Office was “not commenting on the guilt or innocence of any specific defendant.” Id. The Special Counsel added that the defendants were “presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.”

As to Gerth’s insinuation that Friedrich was rebuking Mueller for including “IRA” in his observation that, “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion,” she did not include the “sweeping” comment quoted by Gerth. While Concord cited the “sweeping” language in its initial motion, it dropped it in its reply. The reference didn’t come up in the hearing on the matter. And Friedrich’s order did not mention the “sweeping and systematic” claim either, which in the report was tied to the hack-and-leak campaign. So not only wasn’t that claim rebuked, but by yoking that claim to IRA, Gerth is doing precisely what Concord complained about, applying language that pertained to other parts of Russia’s operation to Prigozhin’s corporations. Gerth is himself engaged in the kind of sloppy journalism that Concord complained about.

Virtually everything Gerth said in his comments about “IRA” was wrong in one way or another.

The sloppiness of this section is important for another reason.

As far as I’m aware, the claims were first made by Aaron Maté in a piece listing questions he wanted asked in Mueller’s congressional testimony.

Why did you suggest that juvenile clickbait from a Russian troll farm was part of a “sweeping and systematic” Russian government interference effort?

The Mueller report begins by declaring that “[t]he Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” A few paragraphs later, Mueller tells us that Russian interference occurred “principally through two operations.” The first of these operations was “a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton,” carried out by a Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).

The inference here is that the IRA was a part of the Russian government’s “sweeping and systematic” interference campaign. Yet Mueller’s team has been forced to admit in court that this was a false insinuation. Earlier this month, a federal judge rebuked Mueller and the Justice Department for suggesting that the troll farm’s social media activities “were undertaken on behalf of, if not at the direction of, the Russian government.” US District Judge Dabney Friedrich noted that Mueller’s February 2018 indictment of the IRA “does not link the [IRA] to the Russian government” and alleges “only private conduct by private actors.” Jonathan Kravis, a senior prosecutor on the Mueller team, acknowledged that this is the case. “[T]he report itself does not state anywhere that the Russian government was behind the Internet Research Agency activity,” Kravis told the court.

Maté made the claim that “sweeping” was included in there, he made the claim (and the substitution in brackets) that this was about the IRA, Maté made up the claim that this was about evidence rather than pretrial prejudice (indeed, his first version of this, since corrected, falsely attributed Concord’s complaint that DOJ had “improperly suggested a link” between “IRA and the Kremlin” to Friedrich). Most of Gerth’s errors first appeared in Maté’s piece, and Gerth doesn’t include Maté’s one quote – Friedrich’s judgment that the Mueller Report had suggested the trolling done by Concord’s co-defendant IRA was “undertaken on behalf of … the Russian government” – where Friedrich most directly condemned the Report.

From Maté’s piece, the claims were magnified through “Russiagate” channels and invoked days later in some erroneous questioning by Tom McClintock in the Mueller appearance that Gerth invoked in word 18 of his 23,000 word series.

MCCLINTOCK: But — but you — you have left the clear impression throughout the country, through your report, that it — it was the Russian government behind the troll farms. And yet, when you’re called upon to provide actual evidence in court, you fail to do so.

MUELLER: Well, I would again dispute your characterization of what occurred in that — in that proceeding.

Gerth, who starts his 23,000-word series citing Mueller’s testimony and scolds journalists repeatedly for not presenting contrary views, doesn’t include Mueller directly disputing the claim – made by McClintock, made by Gerth, and made by Maté – that the government failed to present such evidence. Gerth has been told his claims here are false, in the Mueller testimony he made the opening gambit of his series. And yet, he repeated Maté’s errors anyway.

Maté is one of the many “Russiagate” proponents – along with Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Paul Sperry, John Solomon, Barry Maier – of whom Gerth speaks favorably at length (curiously, he doesn’t mention Chuck Ross, who unlike the others did important, substantive reporting on the dossier). I asked Pope whether Gerth had assessed some of the erroneous reports of these “Russiagate” figures, and mentioned this misrepresentation of Friedrich’s order specifically.

Do you believe Aaron Maté’s treatment of the Concord prosecution is accurate (including his misrepresentation of an order Dabney Friedrich issued, which this piece appears to rely on)? [my emphasis]

Pope refused to address the erroneous reporting of “Russiagate” proponents that Gerth was citing approvingly. “[Y]ou ask us to comment on or defend the actions of other people and institutions, including Trump, the FBI, Erik Wemple, the Department of Justice, Glenn Greenwald, and others. Those questions should be addressed to them, not us.”

No. Since CJR adopted Maté’s errors as their own, the question was rightly addressed to Pope. 

Pope’s silence about questions specifically raised about Maté, his refusal to own up to the errors Gerth borrowed from him, are particularly telling: In Duncan Campbell’s recent description of how CJR spiked a story on the Nation magazine’s credulous Russian reporting, Campbell revealed that the last edits Pope made before sending it to an interminable fact check pertained to Maté.

Pope then wanted the 6,000-word and fully edited report cut by 1,000 words, mainly to remove material about the errors in The Nation article. Among sections cut down were passages showing how, from 2014 onwards, vanden Heuvel had hired a series of pro-Russian correspondents after they had praised her husband. Among the new intake was a Russian and Syrian Government supporting broadcaster, Aaron Maté, taken on in 2017 after he had platformed Cohen on his show The Real News.

Maté became the magazine’s prolific ‘Russiagate’ correspondent. Vanden Heuvel was later to tell Maté in a broadcast in October 2020 that “Steve always valued your work… your writing for The Nation was always important to him as it is to me… I think what you do at RealClearInvestigations is factual, is bullet–, and I was reading them to Steve in the last weeks, trying to rile him up.” Maté responded: “I’m forever indebted to you and Steve.”

That is, CJR has covered for Maté in the past, and here they refuse to hold themselves accountable for adopting his errors.

The Columbia Journalism Review blew off one or another clear error – errors that came from people like Sidney Powell! – by claiming the actual facts were mere “editorial notes.”

And along the way, Gerth declared that details about plans for a meeting with Putin’s office in September 2016, foldered emails about carving up Ukraine, coordination with Mar-a-Lago on Flynn’s calls about sanctions with Sergey Kislyak, $400K in suspicious payments from a Russian oligarch, and proof that Stone was lying about contact with WikiLeaks amounted to “no there there.” 

CJR claimed that it “has been examining the American media’s coverage of Trump and Russia in granular detail.” This review has shown how ridiculous that claim is. What it did, in the name of scolding other journalists while misrepresenting their work, was create the “Russiagate” narrative they defined the entire project by. They did so by skipping key events of 2016, ignoring the vast majority of the NYT and WaPo reporting they claimed to review, substituting the dossier for actual media coverage, and passing off a Russian intelligence product with no notice. To prove they found the “Russiagate” narrative they had dishonestly created, they simply parroted  the work of people from their same “Russiagate” bubble, all the while ignoring vast swaths of contradictory evidence in the documentary record. 

CJR invented a Russiagate narrative via omission and factual error. Then they boasted that they had found what their own journalistic failures created.

Update: A stats prof from Columbia caught Gerth making errors — or more likely, adopting others’ errors — in his key statistical claim about declining trust for media.

Links

CJR’s Error at Word 18

The Blind Spots of CJR’s “Russiagate” [sic] Narrative

Jeff Gerth’s Undisclosed Dissemination of Russian Intelligence Product

Jeff Gerth Declares No There, Where He Never Checked

“Wink:” Where Jeff Gerth’s “No There, There” in the Russian Investigation Went

My own disclosure statement

An attempted reconstruction of the articles Gerth includes in his inquiry

A list of the questions I sent to CJR

Update: Date of Papadopoulos’ claimed inability to read his own notes corrected.

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On emptywheel’s Continued Obsession with Oligarch Real Estate Seizures

DOJ rolled out another sanctions-related action targeting those who allegedly managed sanctioned Russian oligarchs’ real estate the other day. It charged Vladimir Voronchenko with making payments to maintain four properties, amounting to $75 million in value, owned by Viktor Vekselsberg. The properties include a big home in Southhampton, a condo on Park Avenue, a Penthouse on Miami’s Fisher Island, and a smaller apartment just around the corner from the Penthouse.

The story told in the indictment is simple. Between 2008 and 2017, Vekselberg purchased the properties via some shell companies. Voronchenko managed the properties through an IOLTA account funded by Vekselberg.  Then, after Vekselberg was first sanctioned in April 2018, Voronchenko started making the payments into the IOLTA fund himself. Both those payments, and attempts to sell the Southampton House in 2020 and the Park Avenue condo in 2021, required an OFAC license, the indictment alleges.

Two days after DOJ subpoenaed Voronchenko on May 13, 2022, he fled, first to Dubai and, from there, to Russia.

I’m interested in how and whom the indictment charges, as compared to two earlier actions against Russian oligarchs. The indictment against Oleg Deripaska, his girlfriend, and two women who managed his US-based properties charges only conspiracy to violate IEEPA (plus some obstruction-related charges). The EDNY indictment against Andrii Derkach charges conspiracy to violate IEEPA and conspiracy to commit money laundering, as well as bank fraud and some other financial crimes. Both of those were charged last September (though Derkach’s indictment wasn’t unsealed until they took action to secure the LA properties they’re attempting to seize).

Like those earlier indictments, this one also charges a conspiracy to violate IEEPA. Like the Derkach indictment, it also charges conspiracy to commit money laundering. But it also charges Voronchenko with those crimes individually, violation of IEEPA and money laundering, along with contempt for fleeing after receiving the subpoena.

I’m interested in the timing — the charges against Deripaska (which was actually a superseding indictment) and Derkach were September. For some reason, DOJ waited to charge this one (perhaps they were waiting to see if Voronchenko would return to the scene of his alleged crime).

More curiously, they charge Vorochenko alone.

Admittedly, that’s how DOJ initially charged Derkach, too. They superseded the indictment in January to include his spouse, Oksana Terkhova.

Which is why I’m interested in some other people described in his indictment.

Obviously, there’s Vekselberg himself, who unlike Deripaska and Derkach, was not charged for dodging sanctions to sustain his properties.

There are three Voronchenko family members, each treated a bit differently. Family member-1 applied, with Voronchenko, for membership in the club at Fisher Island.

Family member-2 lived in Russia, where he or she was helping to transfer funds for the upkeep of the properties.

A third family member, Family member-3, was involved in efforts to sell the Park Avenue property starting in December 2021.

A different Vorochenko relative in Russia, described as Individual-2, controlled a bank account in Russia from which the IOLTA was funded after Vekselberg was sanctioned. As described, Individual-2 seems to have more legal liability than Vorochenko’s other family members (because he or she would have been involved in any alleged money laundering).

The fact that Individual-2, who would seem to be implicated in money laundering, is described differently than the other family members is of interest because there is an Individual-1. As described, that person is only in the indictment to substantiate that Voronchenko was aware of the sanctions against Vekselberg.

[O]n or about May 9, 2018, approximately one month after Vekselberg’s designation, VORONCHENKO sent a WhatsApp message to an associate (“Individual-1”) with a link to the website of a law firm in Washington, D.C. that specialized only in OFAC sanctions. On or about December 8, 2018, VORONCHENKO sent a WhatsApp message to Individual-1 containing a link to an article that discussed Vekselberg’s designation as an SDN.

It’s not criminal at all for Individual-1 to receive texts about sanctions against Vekselberg. This person may only be in the indictment, described as such, for that substantiation of Voronchenko’s knowledge of the sanctions.

But I’m interested in that second WhatsApp text.

The day before Voronchenko sent the text, Bloomberg published a long story about Vekselberg. It’s not exclusively about sanctions.

Rather, it’s the story about how Vekselberg’s effort to cultivate Michael Cohen — his payment of vast sums starting in 2017 to, basically, do nothing — ultimately led to his questioning by Mueller and then, a month later, his sanctioning.

Not long after Michael Cohen stopped pursuing a Trump-branded property project in Moscow, another Russian connection to the future U.S. president’s entourage started to form.

Like the real estate plan, it didn’t end well—particularly for Russian tycoon Viktor Vekselberg. His effort to engage in statecraft at the highest level unraveled spectacularly, costing him billions, cleaving his family and severing the extensive ties to the U.S. elite that turned him into what one Moscow newspaper called the “most American” of Vladimir Putin’s plutocrats.

This saga, much of it previously unreported, began with a chance encounter between Cohen, Trump’s now-disgraced former lawyer, and Vekselberg’s American cousin, Andrew Intrater, in the fall of 2016. Soon, Trump would be in the White House and Vekselberg would be privately boasting of having the pull needed to help achieve the sanctions relief the Kremlin was craving, people familiar with the matter said. Instead, he became the richest victim of the most dangerous standoff between the U.S. and Russia since the Cold War.

[snip]

Through much of 2017, as the nascent Trump administration navigated controversies of its own making, Vekselberg was giving Russian officials and fellow businessmen vague yet certain assurances about his influence in the White House, according to six people who interacted with him at the time. He’d attended Trump’s swearing-in ceremony in Washington as a guest of Intrater, who’d donated $250,000 to the inaugural committee, and come back with a newfound sense of clout, they said.

As the story describes, Mueller was quite interested in whether Intrater was serving as a front for donations from Vekselberg.

In March, during one of his last trips to the U.S., he was stopped and questioned by Mueller’s team at an airport in the New York area. They asked about his ties to Cohen, who faces sentencing on Dec. 12 for confessed crimes that include violating campaign-finance rules. Investigators also asked why he attended Trump’s inauguration and if Intrater’s $250,000 gift was actually his money.

[snip]

Mueller’s interest in Intrater, who’s been questioned twice, is telling. One area his team is known to be exploring is whether wealthy Russians funneled cash into Trump’s campaign or inauguration through U.S. citizens to bypass rules barring foreign donations. Federal Elections Commission data show Intrater had never made a political donation of more than $2,600 prior to Trump.

I was reviewing all this just the other day (I link the affidavit showing how the payments from Renova to Cohen led to the investigation against him in my last post on Jeff Gerth, which I’ll post later today or tomorrow). Remarkably, Mueller never did anything with the Vekselberg’s outreach to Cohen. Neither Vekselberg nor Andrew Intrater show up in the Mueller Report.

Of course, the question of whether Intrater is laundering donations for Vekselberg has become urgently important again. As the WaPo and NYT have both covered, Intrater claims he was duped by Santos to invest in the Ponzi scheme for which he was working.

A month after the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit in 2021 accusing a Florida-based company of operating a Ponzi scheme, one of the firm’s account managers assured an anxious client that his money was safe.

The client, a wealthy investor named Andrew Intrater, had been lured by annual returns of 16 percent and had invested $625,000 in a fund offered by the company, Harbor City Capital — in part because he trusted and admired the account manager, an aspiring politician named George Santos.

Admiration aside, Mr. Intrater wanted to know about his investment and a promised letter of credit that secured it. Mr. Santos said that it was already on the way.

“All issued and sent over,” Mr. Santos assured him in a text message sent in May 2021.

The letter of credit did not exist, the S.E.C. would later tell a court. The $100 million that Mr. Santos told Mr. Intrater that he had personally raised for Harbor City did not exist either, the commission said. Nor, seemingly, did the close to $4 million that Mr. Santos claimed he and his family had invested in Harbor City.

Mr. Santos’s representations form the basis of a sworn declaration that Mr. Intrater gave the S.E.C. in May 2022, as part of its Harbor City investigation. Mr. Intrater’s interactions with the S.E.C. are the first indication the commission might be interested in Mr. Santos.

Mr. Intrater told the S.E.C. that the representations influenced his decision to invest in Mr. Santos’s business and political endeavors — an allegation that could leave Mr. Santos vulnerable to criminal charges.

Intrater’s claim to have been duped makes it all the more curious that he donated heavily to Santos, including after he was purportedly duped.

Santos received contributions in multiple installments from Intrater between 2020 and 2022. The financier made two donations to Santos’ joint fundraising committees in 2022; $12,200 to the Devolder Santos Nassau Victory Committee and $10,800 to the DeVolder Santos Victory Committee. These, along with additional donations from Intrater, were bucketed into Santos’ leadership PAC, Gads PAC, which received a total of $12,100 between 2021 and 2022, the Nassau County Republican Committee received $10,000 in 2022, and to Santos’ campaign directly, who received a total of $12,200 in four installments between 2020 and 2022.

So I’m sure DOJ has an acute, renewed interest in the propriety of Intrater’s political donations.

Vorochenko got indicted, in a conspiracy, all by himself.

But he was speaking to someone about matters covered by the conspiracy that quickly lead into far more suspicious matters.

Update: I’m down so many different rabbit holes I forgot to link the Vekselberg action charged last month against the guys maintaining Vekselberg’s yacht in Mallorca. It describes the front companies Vekselberg used for the yacht, which may be the same shown above in the graphic.

As I noted there, one interesting aspect of the charge was venue: DC instead of one of the places where foreigners would be flown into (like EDNY, for JFK, or EDVA, for any of the VA airports), which is how venue is often assigned. The venue is all the weirder now that we see this indictment charged in SDNY. The SDNY press release thanks the FBI, but doesn’t say whether this case was (like the yacht charges) investigated by MN FBI agents.

Update, February 23: SDNY is now moving to seize the properties.

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A Close Rudy Giuliani Associate Alerted FBI’s Assistant Director to Charles McGonigal’s Alleged Albanian Graft

I know of two journalists who had reported on parts of the charges against former FBI Special Agent in Charge Charles McGonigal before he was indicted: In December 2021, Scott Stedman (with an assist from Wendy Siegelman) reported on the relationship between McGonigal, Oleg Deripaska, Sergey Shestakov, and Yevgenyi Fokin that was disclosed in a November 29, 2021 FARA filing.

And in September 2022, Mattathias Schwartz reported on a subpoena that (this was made more clear later) had been served ten months earlier, in November 2021. In the story, Schwartz claimed the documents he had in hand showed that McGonigal was under investigation for his Deripaska ties, which he only substantiated with a link to the FARA filing. The story itself pertained entirely to the Albanian side of the investigation, based off that subpoena, part of which he published.

Schwartz published that story a month after he won a lot of attention for getting Paul Manafort to confirm on the record the cover story someone had fed a NYT team including Maggie Haberman and Ken Vogel in February 2019: that Manafort had shared (just) campaign data with Konstantin Kilimnik. When first published in 2019, that cover story successfully distracted attention from outlines of a more substantive exchange pitched by Deripaska associate Kilimnik at an August 2, 2016 cigar bar meeting (and, indeed, from Deripaska’s involvement generally).

Manafort’s calendar showed that before he went to that meeting on August 2, 2016, he met with Trump and Rudy Giuliani. And while Manafort was serving his abbreviated prison term, Rudy reportedly consulted with him about his efforts to dig up dirt helpful to Trump.

In the wake of McGonigal’s indictments, Schwartz wrote a story about the person that he all but confirms was the one who received the subpoena: Allison Guerriero, who had a year-plus long affair with McGonigal that started sometime before October 2017 and lasted until late 2018, past the time McGonigal retired from the FBI in September 2018. According to the story, their relationship covered the most important period of the corruption described in the two indictments against McGonigal (meetings with Albania in the the DC indictment start in August 2017 and end in August 2018; favors for a Deripaska agent described in the SDNY indictment start in spring 2018; the favors continued through 2021, at which point the investigation into Deripaska had become overt).

In fact, Schwartz suggests that Guerriero may have tipped off FBI’s Assistant Director William Sweeney to McGonigal’s corruption in a drunken act of revenge after the affair ended.

In late 2018, McGonigal and Guerriero broke up. She remembers receiving an anonymous and hostile note in the mail. Soon after, McGonigal told her he was still married and had no plans to divorce his wife. “I was shocked,” she said. “I was very much in love with him, and I was so hurt.” She started drinking heavily to cope. A few months later, Guerriero, after a bout of drinking, dashed off an angry email to William Sweeney, who was in charge of the FBI’s New York City bureau, and who, she recalls, had first introduced her to McGonigal. She remembers telling Sweeney in the email that he should look into their extramarital affair, and also McGonigal’s dealings in Albania. McGonigal had already befriended Albania’s prime minister and traveled to the country extensively, dealings that would appear later in one of his indictments. Guerriero told Insider that she had deleted the email.

As Schwartz describes it, Guerriero told Sweeney he should look at not just McGonigal’s ties to Albania but also their affair, which is a nutty thing to say to an FBI official.

It’s a weird claim, because elsewhere, the story implies that Guerriero believed McGonigal’s stories about why he had bags of cash lying around, including a bag of cash that (Schwartz convincingly argues) is likely the one McGonigal is accused of receiving in a parked car on October 5, 2017.

That day in October wasn’t the only time that Guerriero remembers McGonigal carrying large amounts of cash. After he brushed her curiosity aside, she tempered her suspicions. She told herself it was probably “buy money” for a sting operation, or a payoff for one of McGonigal’s informants.

The story never describes that Guerriero learned of McGonigal’s ties to Albania, much less how or when she learned about them. And yet one takeaway from the story is that she might be the source of the entire investigation into her former boyfriend.

If she did send that email, it’s virtually certain an Assistant Director of the FBI would not delete it.

Schwartz describes Guerriero as,

a former substitute kindergarten teacher who volunteered for law-enforcement causes and was working as a contractor for a security company while living at home with her father.

The Facebook page for the charity for which she works shows the kind of NY law enforcement people she networks with.

Which partly explains the really remarkable detail about Guerriero. She’s close enough with Rudy Giuliani — who was himself being cultivated by Russian assets during the same period that McGonigal was — that the by-then discredited mayor put her up in his guest room after she suffered a burn injury in 2021.

Guerriero’s troubles worsened in early 2021, when she was badly burned during a fire at her father’s house. She asked friends for help through a GoFundMe. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York City, whom she knew from law-enforcement circles, let her stay in a guest bedroom. Since then, Guerriero has been a frequent on-air caller for Giuliani’s radio shows. She maintains that the 2020 election was marred by widespread voter fraud, a belief pushed by Giuliani that has been repeatedly debunked. “Whatever Giuliani says about the 2020 election is what I believe,” she said.

What a small world, that the woman who may have triggered the investigation into McGonigal was staying with Rudy as the investigation developed? Presumably, for example, some of Guerriero’s communications with Rudy would have been found on his phones after they were seized in April 2021 (though the investigation into McGonigal was already very advanced by the time the FBI actually started getting any communications from Rudy’s phones in November 2021, and emails with Guerriero would be out of scope of any known or suspected warrant targeting Rudy).

Schwartz doesn’t pursue the fact that McGonigal has such close ties to Rudy, though the connection would be even more interesting if McGonigal’s role in the Trump Russian investigation were as central as Schwartz presented it (he’s not alone in overstating McGonigal’s known role).

But there are two additional reasons the detail is particularly interesting.

First, as noted, Schwartz published part of the subpoena that, this second story clarifies, Guerriero received in November 2021.

Regardless, by November 2021, the FBI was looking into McGonigal. Two agents showed up at Guerriero’s door, she says, showed her a picture of McGonigal with the Albanian prime minister, and interviewed her about their interactions. She also received a grand-jury subpoena requesting all of her communications with McGonigal as well as information about any “payments or gifts” he may have given her.

It tracks the DC indictment closely (and was sent by the LA-based team investigating it). Four bullets ask for information about the Albanians that are the central focus of the indictment. Bullet f references McGonigal’s ties to Kosovo, which show up in ¶28 of the indictment. Bullet h and i ask for information on the Bosnians who appear in ¶¶45, 46 and 48 of the indictment; bullet j asks for information about the alleged access peddling to the UN described in ¶¶50-52 of the indictment.

But the subpoena — bullet g — asks about another country, Montenegro, where much of Deripaska and Manafort’s long history began and where Deripaska was still allegedly interfering as late as 2016. If Montenegro shows up in the indictment at all, it’s only as one of the other locations in Europe to which McGonigal was traveling with his Albanian contact (for example, a spring 2018 trip described in ¶44). That may simply reflect Montenegro’s relative import in McGonigal’s paid travel, the quality of evidence, or maybe DOJ didn’t want to include it for some other reason. But if Montenegro were a key part of McGonigal’s Balkans travels — on which, ¶22 of the indictment makes clear, he worked to persuade Albania not to sign oil contracts with Russian front companies — it would put him in a country where Deripaska likely still has a rich network of sources.

In any case, the only other thing that doesn’t map directly from the subpoena to the indictment are any payments or gifts McGonigal gave to Guerriero. The DC indictment never explained why, “no later than August 2017,” McGonigal allegedly asked his Albanian contact if he could provide him money, but Schwartz’ story reveals that the indicted former SAC was giving Guerriero gifts of cash and taking her to high-end restaurants during their affair, which started at least by October 2017 (her subpoena asked for records going back to April 2017). The indictment never mentions her, but the affair with her may explain part of McGonigal’s urgent need for cash in September 2017, something that would make McGonigal ripe to compromise by anyone who learned of it.

As I noted earlier, there’s one more remarkable player in this little network that includes Rudy Giuliani: Seth DuCharme, who spent much of the last year of the Trump Administration implementing Bill Barr’s bureaucratic efforts to ensure that Rudy Giuliani would not be prosecuted for his efforts to obtain benefit for Trump — including, but not limited to, dirt on Hunter Biden — from people that included several suspected Russian agents. DuCharme, who works at Rudy’s former firm, Bracewell, is part of the team representing McGonigal.

And to the extent that Guerriero is one of the witnesses from whom DOJ learned the specifics about how much cash McGonigal received in bags in parked cars (though, again, Schwartz’ story is inconsistent about whether she knew none of that or whether she knew enough to tip off William Sweeney) it would be part of DuCharme’s job to discredit Rudy’s former houseguest as a witness. He would do so, presumably, by pointing to all the things Guerriero told Schwartz she regrets, including harassment of McGonigal’s family that was serious enough to merit restraining orders in two states.

By her own account, Guerriero contacted one of McGonigal’s children despite being prohibited from doing so by a court order, an incident that led to her spending the night in a New Jersey jail. The court order stemmed from a 2019 police report, obtained by Insider, that McGonigal’s wife, Pamela, filed with the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland. The report states that McGonigal and Guerriero “had a relationship” and that Guerriero had repeatedly harassed her with unwelcome emails and phone calls — including 20 calls in one day — despite her asking Guerriero to stop.

Guerriero confirmed that her contact with the McGonigal family led to a separate restraining order issued in New Jersey. “I am ashamed and embarrassed and sorry for my actions during the time that I was drinking,” she said.

In Schwartz’ story, Guerriero doesn’t say she regrets that email to Sweeney, which could well have sparked this entire investigation. She regrets the harassment of McGonigal’s family, which might come out if she were called as a witness.

All of which may provide insight into why the DC case against McGongial is charged as it is. Among the overt acts of which McGonigal is accused in DC are:

  • Networking with representatives of the government of Albania in late 2017 and early 2018 during the period when he used information from them to launch an investigation against the US citizen lobbyist for their rival.
  • Proposing that his prime Albanian contact be paid $500,000 (which may have been meant as repayment of money the Albanian gave McGonigal in 2017) to set up a high level UN meeting for some Bosnians.

Both of these overt acts could be charged under FARA and the Albanian tie, at least, could well have been charged under 18 USC 951. But McGonigal would likely offer the same kind of defense that Tom Barrack did in his EDNY trial: when McGonigal counseled the Albanian Prime Minister not to sign oil contracts with Russian on September 9, 2017, he could easily argue, he did so because he was genuinely opposed to Russian influence and not because he was seeking a benefit for his key Albanian contact.

Instead, DOJ charged him with inadequate disclosure to the FBI on forms FD-772b and OGE-278, with each inadequate disclosure charged as a false statement under either 18 USC 1001 or 1519 (though I don’t understand why McGonigal would not immediately challenge the three of the charges tied to filings submitted more than five years ago, especially if FBI had notice of all this in 2018). The 1001 charges would normally only get a few months sentence, though with a sentencing enhancement for abusing his official position, and by treating each inadequate disclosure as a separate crime, potential exposure could easily add up to years, or, with a plea deal, it could be pitched as “process crimes” meriting just months of prison time.

Charging it that way not only gives DC USAO more flexibility in plea discussions.

It would also make it a “paper case,” something that depends largely on documentation rather than the credibility of a witness like McGonigal’s primary Albanian contact (who seems to have told FBI that the cash payments were loans, not payments) or Guerriero. For each false form McGonigal submitted, DOJ will only have to show where he traveled, how his travel was paid, and that he didn’t properly disclose it. It would rely on travel records and bank statements and not the testimony of a witness who harassed McGonigal’s family out of jealousy.

I don’t want to make too much of Schwartz’ revelation that a key witness against McGonigal was staying in Rudy’s guest room as the investigation developed. Drunken jealousy is all the motive you need to explain her actions (though not, perhaps, inconsistencies about how much of the Albanian graft she knew about).

But once you throw Rudy and Montenegro into the mix, the trajectory on which McGonigal traveled, from arguing against Russian oil contracts in September 2017 to thinking he could manage ties to Deripaska in spring of 2018, gets a lot more interesting.

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More on Brandon Straka’s So-Called Cooperation

There was a funny moment in Brandon Straka’s February 24, 2022 January 6 Committee interview.

Close to the beginning of the interview, he provided a description of how, he claimed, the idea for Stop the Steal came about: someone, probably Ali Alexander, simply renamed a pre-existing MAGAt Twitter DM list sometime after the election.

A So there was a Twitter DM thread, which s to say, like, a private message thread that somebody had created — I have no idea who because in all likelihood it was probably created significantly before I was added to it. It was called MAGA Verified, which essentially means anybody who is a MAGA or, you know, Donald Trump supporter, who has a blue checkmark next to their name, so as in verified on Twitter.

And so somebody had created a group, a direct message group, and so I don’t know if anyone here maybe does or does not understand how Twitter works, but with a Twitter DM group, somebody can create a group and just add people. They don’t have to have your permission. Then it’s up to you to either leave the group or decide if you  want to stay in the group. 1) So, like, as right now as we speak, I’m probably added to hundreds of groups because I don’t really check my DMs that thoroughly, and I don’t make it an effort to go through and remove myself from every group that I’m added to.

But this particular group was called MAGA Verified, and it was a collection of people who are verified, you know, Republicans or Donald Trump supporters.

And then as (he claims) results started changing, people on the group decided to adopt the hashtag #StopTheSteal.

And at after the election, so I guess around November 5th, I would say, of 2020, 6several of us were in that group just sort of expressing confusion, exasperation, sadness about how the election results had suddenly changed during the night on November 4th going into November 5th.

And thenI think over the course I mean, I’d have to go back and look, but it was over the course of, I think, a day or two that plans started getting made to kind of deploy to swing States and host these First Amendment-protected events to encourage people to keep their spirits up and encourage their State legislators to hold a thorough forensic audit of the votes in theirStates, because people were very concerned about irregularities. So I’m going to go out on a limb and assume it was probably Ali Alexander who started using the Stop the Steal hashtag.

According to the cooperation memo the government filed in advance of Straka’s sentencing last year, which just got unsealed, it’s the same story he told to the FBI.

The “Stop the Steal” effort was formed through a private Twitter group of which Straka was a member. The group was formed “long before” the 2020 election and referred to itself as the “MAGA Verified” group because it was comprised of MAGA followers who were verified on Twitter. The members of the group used Twitter to exchange private direct messages with one another. Straka provided information about an individual, Ali Alexander, who was part of the MAGA Verified group.

There are a few problems with the story. First, as J6C pointed out to Straka, he was already organizing a vote fraud event, to take place after the election, before the election.

So we’ll give you time to look at this document, but it is it looks like it’s a permit 3 application filed by WalkAway Campaign. ~The date is October 28 of 2020. It’s for John 4 Marshall Park, and it’s scheduled — the proposed scheduled date is for November 15th.

If we go down to the second, page, the purpose of the event is a demonstration for free and fair elections. So help us understand, why did you –what were you thinking about on October 28th to want to have an event on November 15th about free: and fair elections?

In response to this observation, Straka bullshitted for a while and then gave up.

It just didn’t make sense, he said.

A Julie Hanson is an event planner that we’ve worked with over – for years on various events that we’ve done. I can’t answer this question, because this doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t know if she made a mistake when she put the date on the application, or if I don’t want to speculate why Julie put that date on the application, but I can tell you this doesn’t make sense to me, because I thought that Donald Trump was going to win the election, and my reaction to how the election turned out began on November 5th. So it makes no sense to me that I would’ve done – I would’ve asked to submit an application a week before the election. That doesn’t make sense to me.

Q So it’s your just want to make sure we have your testimony clear. You don’t recall instructing Ms. Hanson or approving an application in October for this event after the election on November 15th?

A Not in October, I don’t recall that. I — again, it just doesn’t make sense.

Right: This story doesn’t make sense. That’s the problem.

Plus, as J6C pointed out, the hash tag was actually in use well before the election. After Straka engaged in a really long spiel about how he didn’t much care of Ali Alexander registered the hash tag — “I just want[] to be told where to show up, what time, and where’s the microphone” — (as he said about January 6), J6C asked about the timing again.

Q Got it. That brings me back thank you, that was helpful. That brings me back, though, to the permit application from October 28th. It looks like Stop the Steal, the hashtag, I mean, was really starting to get traction early as September 7th of 2020.

We’ve seen tweets of Jack Posobiec doing it.

So do you recall maybe filing this application in October, for November 15th, to advance the Stop the Steal messaging that was starting to percolate in September, October, and November of 2020?

A Again, it just doesn’t make any sense to me. That – because I believed wholeheartedly that Donald Trump was going to win the election. ~ So it ~ it just doesn’t make sense to me that I would’ve decided a week before the election to submit a permit under the assumption that we’re going to lose the election. It just – that just doesn’t add up inmy mind.

In fact, J6C already knew that the hashtag had been in use even longer than that.

Though Ali Alexander, in his December 9, 2021 testimony, had tried to distinguish the hashtag from everything else, when asked why he suggested he should sue the Kremers after Roger Stone was denied a speaking slot on January 6, Alexander explained,

And there was all this pretense that, you know, Roger Stone is the gentleman who came up with the phrase Stop the Steal. I have, you know, this gentleman’s agreement with him that I  have a perpetual use of the license.

And the FBI would know that Stop the Steal went back to 2016, because abundant evidence about it would have been collected by Robert Mueller’s team.

So no one should have believed Straka’s explanation.

I have long raised questions about whether DOJ allowed itself to be snookered in giving Straka a sweet plea, when instead they should have charged him with obstruction. There’s nothing in the filings unsealed in recent days to alleviate my concerns.

That’s true, first of all, because two of the things he threw at prosecutors seem to have been chum, waste material thrown out to distract predators. Straka provided second-hand information from someone who may have been in Nancy Pelosi’s office.

Information that Elijah Schaffer was inside of Nancy Pelosi’s office that is currently being investigated. It is unknown whether any other information has been discovered by the Government concerning this lead.

The government still had not verified the tip a year later.

On March 5, 2021, Straka was interviewed by the FBI a second time. Sometime after his first interview, Straka recalled that an individual, David Leatherwood, told him that an individual, Elijah Schaffer, was inside of Nancy Pelosi’s office on January 6. This information is being investigated for its accuracy.

And Straka, just before sentencing, provided the name of a guy he lived close to in Nebraska (but had not previously known), an identification he claimed came from someone he didn’t even know on Twitter.

On information and belief, Mr. Straka positively identified Gavin Crowl as an individual who participated in January 6. Mr. Crowl’s identity had not been previously provided by anyone to Law Enforcement for almost eleven months. Mr. Crowl is a convicted Sex Offender who has been placed on the Sex Offender Registry in Nebraska. His identity was confirmed by using information provided on the Sex Offender Registry, and by cross-referencing public information from his LinkedIn profile with information he provided in an Internet interview with Bobby Powell, a Government-identified “insurrectionist advocate”. This individual can be heard encouraging the crowd to take the shield of the officer in the video recorded by Mr. Straka. Other video information provided by Mr. Straka shows this individual moving toward entering the Capitol before he was stopped. It is unknown whether this individual actually did enter the Capitol Building; and what other criminal activity he participated in.

His J6C interview makes it clear Straka shared this guy’s name for the purpose of floating conspiracy theories about Antifa.

A Okay. So I — it had been brought to my attention by somebody on social media who I  don’t know, a complete stranger, had essentially reached out to me to tell me that they had identified somebody in a video who was at the Capitol who they said this person told me that they identified a person who they said was a member of antifa.

This person told me, I watched this person dressed entirely in black from head to toe, and they said, then he went away for 10, 15 minutes or whatever, and he came back dressed asa Trump supporter. And he was causing agitation, you know, et cetera.

I engaged in a conversation with this person, because the person said to me, I have this on video, or something like that, and I said, Okay. So I looked at the video that the person was talking about, just because it sounded interesting to me, and I was shocked when I discovered that recognized this person as being somebody who was standing directly beside me in my video when I was on the Capitol steps.

Now, you know, I know for a fact that one of the crimes I’m — I was accused of committing was being in a restricted area. So this person had certainly committed the same crime that I committed, and I was also very curious if this person might’ve been encouraging the crowd in ways that it was alleged that I was encouraging the crowd.

And so, I asked this person if they knew the identity of this individual, and this person said, Yes. And so he gave me the name of this individual. I googled this individual and discovered that this individual has a violent criminal record.

At that point – and –and I also discovered that this person lives, coincidentally, very close by where I live.

According to the government sentencing memo, they did open an investigation into Crowl; it was new information for them.

On December 8, 2021, counsel for Straka provided the government with information regarding a United Capitol rioter who was at the U.S. Capitol. Straka recalled observing the individual while he was standing outside on the steps outside of the East Rotunda Doors. This individual stood nearby as a U.S. Capitol Police Officer’s protective shield was taken away from him. Straka believes that the individual joined in with the crowd yelling “take it, take it,” as rioters struggled with the officer to take his shield. After January 6, the individual, identified by Straka as Gavin Crowl, participated in an interview with insurrectionist advocate, Bobby Powell. Crowl recounted what he observed at the U.S. Capitol. Straka and Crowl reside in Nebraska and live within a short distance of each other. Straka’s information is beneficial in that Crowl was not previously identified by the FBI prior to Straka’s identification of Crowl.

[snip]

Based in the information provided by Straka, the FBI has opened an investigation into Crowl and his conduct at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

Crowl is the one, notably, that Straka claimed to be afraid of, not Trump people threatening to retaliate (though DOJ submitted exhibits of texts from someone else demanding that Straka recant his testimony).

This violent sex offender, if he learns of Mr. Straka’s cooperation in identifying him (which would be the primary reason for any subsequent arrest and prosecution) has a predatory and aggressive history, which could easily result in retaliation against Mr. Straka or his family.

Crowl has not yet — publicly, anyway — been arrested, and even if he was, it’s not clear he ever did anything more than trespass outside the building.

While the tip may have been helpful, it was not cooperation about things that Straka was uniquely positioned to know.

The single prosecution on which Straka’s cooperation was said to help (usually the standard for credit at sentencing) was Simone Gold, the anti-vax activist who was arrested even before Straka was in January 2021, and who had already been charged with felony obstruction six days before the February 11 Straka interview where he first provided the information. In its sentencing memo, the government said Straka provided a voice mail that might help get Gold to plead.

Straka provided the government with voicemail messages that he received from Gold, whom he met in Washington D.C. on either January 5 or 6. The information contained in the voicemail messages is valuable in the government’s prosecution of Gold and may assist in a plea resolution of the Gold prosecution.

After further delay, Gold did plead out, not to the felony obstruction count, but to the more serious trespassing count. Her plea agreement had the standard cooperation paragraph in it, which sometimes suggests that the person had not yet sat for the further FBI interview required by virtually all misdemeanor pleas. The government sentencing memo in her case laid out several ways she continued to delegitimize her prosecution — and fundraise, to the tune of $430,000 — off it. In short, there’s absolutely no evidence that DOJ used the information Straka provided on Gold to advance the overall investigation. It made a misdemeanor plea easier to get, but not much more than that.

Gold is more likely to be held accountable in a lawsuit by her anti-vax group, which has split into factions over how she grifted the fundraising from it (though the failed attempt by Gold’s attorney, Kira West, to drop her as a client may suggest there might be legal accountability for the grift, as well).

The combined memos make it clear that the government viewed Straka’s cooperation to be most valuable for his insight into Stop the Steal, especially Alexander. Straka himself describes identifying people on one of the Stop the Steal threads (though this sounds like the known Twitter DM list; in his J6C transcript, he described a Signal thread as well).

Contact information regarding the following members of the Stop the Steal text thread, to include: Ali Alexander, Michael Coudrey, Scott Presler, Ashley St. Clair, Nathan Martin, Courtney Holland, Megan Barth, CJ Pearson, Ryan Fournier, and another telephone number unknown to Mr. Straka.

There’s a non-zero chance that the tenth number is either that of Paul Gosar or one of his staffers, because he was on that Twitter thread (and Straka filibustered about him when asked by J6C).

There are reasons for concern, though. None of the documents pertaining to Straka — from either J6C or DOJ — mention Mike Flynn, next to whom Straka sat at the Ellipse rally, which is particularly important given Straka’s description that he went back to the Willard after the rally.

And in the discussion of Straka’s information on the organizers of Stop the Steal (Straka did not mention Caroline Wren, though he may not have understood her role), DOJ adopts the same misspelling of the Kremers’ name as Straka did: “Kremmer” rather than “Kremer.”

Straka provided information about “Stop the Steal” members Amy Kremmer, Kylie Kremmer, Cindy Chafian. This information was useful in that it identified members of “Stop the Steal.” Neither the Kremmers nor Chafian are being prosecuted by the government at this time.

Note that J6C seemed not to have communications between Straka and Chafian that should have been in his production.

How aggressively must prosecutors be following this if, over a year into an investigation of January 6, they’re still not clear on who the Kremers are, whether or not their actions are deemed suspect?

And Straka’s memo seems to confirm my fear that DOJ had not yet turned to the earlier incitement from Stop the Steal — which was a key threat to state lawmakers are they were considering whether to support Trump’s coup attempt — until his third interview, in January 2022.

Additional information concerning Michael Coudrey, Scott Presler, Ashley St. Clair, Courtney Holland, Megan Barth, CJ Pearson, and Ryan Fournier, Amy and Kylie Kremmer, Cindy Chafian, Alex “Bruisewitz” (spelling unknown), Crystal (LNU) (an organizer and logistics person involved in rallies for President Trump), and Jenny Beth Martin; as well as information about specific rallies held in the months prior to January 6, was provided during Brandon’s third interview. [my emphasis]

Brandon Straka played a central role in intimidating election workers in my state of Michigan in 2020, and the government got all the way to sentencing before asking him about that process. That pisses me off and raises real questions about how thoroughly they investigated Straka before agreeing to a misdemeanor plea.

In his J6C interview, almost seven weeks after that third interview, Straka revealed that FBI at that point still retained all his devices except his phone. Three months after his third interview, DOJ subpoenaed Alexander. DOJ may not be done with Straka.

It may be that the trade-off — of getting immediate access to his devices rather than waiting to crack whatever security he had — still made the plea worth it. It may be that that early cooperation, and more importantly, the follow-up in January 2022, provided DOJ information they couldn’t have gotten without a lot more effort.

But J6C, without warrants, was able to poke a key hole in Straka’s story. At least on the public record, it seems that FBI was not so thorough, even with warrants and seized devices in hand.

Links

Timeline

January 11, 2021: Tip on Straka’s post to Twitter

January 13, 2021: Interview with Straka relative

By January 13, 2021: Straka removes January 5 video from Twitter; last view date for December 19, 2020 video cited in sentencing memo but not arrest affidavit

January 20, 2021: Straka charged by complaint

January 25, 2021: Straka arrest

February 17, 2021: First FBI interview

February 18, 2021: First continuance

March 25, 2021: Second FBI interview

June 3, 2021: Second continuance

July 2, 2021: Protective order

August 25, 2021: Third continuance

August 31, 2021: Date of plea offer

September 14, 2021: Deadline to accept plea

September 15, 2021: Straka charged by information

September 30, 2021: Stuart Dornan files notice of appearance for Straka

October 5, 2021: Updated information

October 6, 2021: Change of plea hearing (plea agreementstatement of offense); sentencing scheduled for December 17, with initial memo due December 10 and response due by December 15

Between October 7 and November 19, 2021: Pretrial services interview (sealed docket #28)

November 19, 2021: Brittany Reed substitutes for April Russo

December 8, 2021: Sentencing reset for December 22; sentencing memo due by December 15; Straka “provide[s] counsel for the government with information that may impact the government’s sentencing recommendation”

December 9, 2021: Ali Alexander J6C testimony

December 10, 2021: Straka shares sentencing position (possibly filed under seal)

December 11, 2021: Government tells defendants it seeks to continue, tells Straka it will consider request to dismiss case

December 16, 2021: Last view date for 2018 Straka video, Walkaway Foundation website, WalkAway Campaign PAC website, WalkAway Campaign YouTube Channel; ProPublica article on Michael Courdrey message (and attempts to distance Alex Jones and Ali Alexander)

December 17, 2021: Motion to continue (presented as joint) 30 days

By December 23, 2021: Sealed motion attempting to seal publicly filed motion to continue, denied by Judge Friedrich

January 5, 2022: Third FBI interview, this time including prosecutors (plural)

January 13, 2022: Government sentencing memo (sealed addendum at docket #37); government denies Straka request to dismiss case

January 14, 2022: Bilal Essayli files notice of appearance for Straka

January 20, 2022: Straka sentencing

February 22, 2022: Brandon Straka J6C testimony

April 8, 2022: Ali Alexander reports receiving a subpoena

June 24, 2022: Ali Alexander grand jury appearance

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The Primary Thing Eric Herschmann Remembers from January 6 Is that Cassidy Hutchinson Was Wrong about That Note

There’s a funny detail in Cassidy Hutchinson’s September 14 January 6 Committee testimony.

She claimed that on May 20, after a third appearance before the committee and after firing her lawyer, Stefan Passantino earlier that day, Eric Herschmann called her and told her, “I didn’t know you remembered so much.”

And Eric called me that evening, and I just apologized. And he was like, you know, “I didn’t know that you remembered so much, Cassidy. Mark [Meadows] really put you in bad positions. I’m really sorry that he didn’t take care of you better. You never should’ve had to testify to any of that. That’s all of our jobs. I don’t know why they didn’t ask us, they asked you instead.”

And I was just like, “Look, Eric like, it is what it is.” And he kind of talked for — it was probably a 30-minute conversation.

“Remembered,” she described Herschmann saying, not “knew” or “witnessed.”

It’s an interesting word choice, if accurate, because in Herschmann’s testimony before the committee back on April 6 (and so after Passantino had sat through Hutchinson’s first two appearances before the committee, on February 23 and March 7), he didn’t remember much.

The word “remember” shows up (sometimes used as part of a question to him) 482 times in the transcript. The word “recall” shows up 166 times. The word “recollection” comes up 24 times.

Among the things Herschmann professed to have little memory of were the fake electors casting votes in December, Trump’s December 19 tweet announcing the January 6 event,  the date of a key January 5 meeting involving Marc Short and John Eastman, the details (beyond an “intellectual discussion about [John] Eastman”) of a call he had with Rudy Giuliani — out of the blue! — on the morning of the 6th, what he said to Pat Philbin to try to convince him to join him at the rally before proceeding on his own, what Trump said to him while waiting to speak at the Ellipse (Herschmann invoked Executive Privilege to cover a call between him and Trump at 10:50PM that day), any claims in Trump’s Ellipse speech that Herschmann knew to be bullshit,  what Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, and Trump were talking about in the dining room after returning from the Ellipse, and whether he had auto-delete set for his texts.

What Herschmann did recall — aside from the times he screamed at Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, and John Eastman, which made him a hero of the January 6 Committee hearings — was writing a note calling on people to leave the Capitol.

Q So do you recall, did you tell them what was happening or did they seem to already be aware?

A I don’t remember. I know I wrote out something, but I don’t remember if they were aware when they came back or I told them when I came in. I just don’t remember that detail.

Q And why did you write something out?

A I thought we should put out a statement.

Q Okay. Do you remember what you wrote?

A I don’t remember the exact words, but I remember going down to Mark’s outer office, chief of staff, and asking someone there to get me something to write on. And normally, if I had to — if I was grabbing something, it would be the chief of staff.

They have one of those cards, I don’t know, it’s a rectangular card that says chief of staff.

Q So this was a handwritten note?

A It was a handwritten note, yeah.

Q Okay. Let’s go — we’ll pull up Exhibit 11. Is that the note you’re referring to?

A That is the note.

Q Okay. And what did you do with the note?

A The actual physical note.

Q Yeah. Did you give it to the President?

A No, I didn’t give it to the President. I may have given it to Meadows, but I didn’t hand it to the President. I would have — I think the reason I edited “illegally,” is someone had a discussion, I don’t remember who it was — and it wasn’t the President, but someone had the discussion, how do we establish it’s illegally — that they entered illegally? Which I thought, okay, I don’t want to say overlawyering, but overlawyering, in my view. So I crossed out “illegally” and said “without proper authority.” Okay, that solves that issue, right? And I thought we should put out the statement.

Q Did you tell the President that he should put out a statement?

A Generally, I had discussions with the President about putting out a statement. I don’t remember if I read this or I handed it to Mark, or Mark and I discussed it in front of the President. I just don’t remember that detail. But this was my first reaction to seeing the violence and what I thought the White House should do.

Q Did the President have a reaction?

A I don’t recall his reaction, but obviously he didn’t put out this statement. [my emphasis]

It’s funny that that was one of the few things Herschmann recalled on April 4, because after Hutchinson testified in her May 17 testimony to remembering a whole bunch of things that Herschmann couldn’t remember (including a discussion between Meadows, Herschmann, and Pat Cipollone about Trump’s comment that Mike Pence might deserve to be hung), she went on to publicly testify, on June 28, that she physically wrote that note as Meadows dictated it, with Herschmann chiming into to offer the alternative, “without proper authority.”

LIZ CHENEY: Now let’s look at just one example of what some senior advisers to the president were urging. Ms. Hutchinson, could you look at the exhibit that we’re showing on the screen now? Have you seen this note before?

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: That’s a note that I wrote at the direction of the chief of staff on January 6th, likely around 3:00.

LIZ CHENEY: And it’s written on a chief of staff note card, but that’s your handwriting, Ms. Hutchinson?

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: That’s my handwriting.

LIZ CHENEY: And why did you write this note?

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: The chief of staff was in a meeting with Eric Hirschman and potentially Mr. Philbin, and they had rushed out of the office fairly quickly. Mark had handed me the note card with one of his pens, and sort of dictating a statement for the president to potentially put out.

LIZ CHENEY: And — no, I’m sorry. Go ahead.

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: That’s Ok. There are two phrases on there, one illegal and then one without proper authority. The illegal phrase was the one that Mr. Meadows had dictated to me. Mr. Herschmann had chimed in and said also put without legal authority. There should have been a slash between the two phrases. It was an — an or if the president had opted to put one of those statements out. Evidently he didn’t. Later that afternoon, Mark came back from the Oval Dining Room and put the palm card on my desk with illegally crossed out, but said we didn’t need to take further action on that statement.

LIZ CHENEY: So, to your knowledge, this statement was never issued.

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: It was — to my knowledge, it was never issued.

The difference between Herschmann and Meadows dictating the note to Hutchinson (who is not once mentioned in Herschmann’s testimony) and Herschmann writing it himself is negligible in the larger story, so he could have left it well enough alone. Especially given the number of times Herschmann claimed not to remember details of what happened with the note, such as how it was presented to Trump or how the then-President responded.

But Herschmann didn’t leave it well enough alone. Shortly after Hutchinson’s public testimony, Herschmann’s spox put out a formal statement claiming he had written the note.

“The handwritten note that Cassidy Hutchinson testified was written by her was in fact written by Eric Herschmann on January 6, 2021,” a spokesperson for Herschmann told ABC News Tuesday evening.

“All sources with direct knowledge and law enforcement have and will confirm that it was written by Mr. Herschmann,” the spokesperson said.

This statement became one of two bases — along with the pushback from people in the vicinity of Tony Ornato about the Beast story — on which Hutchinson’s credibility was attacked in the days after her testimony.

The discrepancy on the note could be just that, a discrepancy. All of Herschmann’s claimed memory lapses might one day come to be refreshed.

The dispute, however minor, between Herschmann and Hutchinson is noteworthy for several reasons though.

First, Hutchinson told the committee that the first time she met with Passantino, after being referred by Herschmann via Alex Cannon, she asked him if he was representing anyone else before the Committee. Passantino wouldn’t answer, but according to Hutchinson, he did say he had represented Eric Herschmann, among others, in the past, and that “we really want to work to protect Eric Herschmann.”

Ms. Hutchinson. ~ You previously asked about individuals he had raised with me. In my conversation with him earlier that afternoon, when I [sic] asking him about the engagement letter, I did also ask Stefan if he was representing any other January 6th clients. And he had said, “No one that I believe that you would have any conflicts with.”

And I said, “Would you mind letting me know?” Now, again, to this day, I still don’t know if that’s really a kosher question to ask an attorney, if they can share their clients with me, but I wanted to make sure that there actually weren’t any conflicts, because I didn’t have anything in writing.

He wouldn’t tell me anybody he was representing before the January 6th Committee, but he did tell me that he had previously represented Eric Herschmann and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump in unrelated matters.

And in that same conversation, he said, “So if you have any conversations with any of them, especially Eric Herschmann, we want to really work to protect Eric Herschmann.”

And| I remember saying sarcastically to him, “Eric can handle himself. Eric has his own resources. Why do I have to protect Eric?” He said, “No, no, no. Like, just to keep everything straight, like, we want to protect Eric with all of this.”

Ms. Cheney. Did he explain what he meant?

Ms. Hutchinson. No. And, to be honest, I didn’t ask. I didn’t have anything with Eric anyway that I felt that I had to protect. And I say that because, at the time of being back in Trump world — this is where I look back and regret some of this, but — like, I did feel a need to protect certain people. But with somebody like Eric, I didn’t feel that need, I didn’t find it necessary.  didn’t — I didn’t think that Eric did anything wrong at the time.

Ms. Cheney. Did it have something to do with NARA?

Ms. Hutchinson. He never really explained to me what it was exactly that we wanted to protect Eric on. I sort of erred on the side of: Maybe he just represents Eric in ongoing litigation, whether it’s financial disclosures or whatever it might be.

And, again, I just didn’t prod too much on that either, because, you know, I was under the impression that Eric helped set me up with Stefan, so I didn’t — I was worried that Stefan would then go back-channel to Eric and — this is my very paranoid brain at the time, but I was worried that if I, you know, pushed this subject a little too much, that he would then go back to Eric Herschmann and say, “Cassidy asked a lot of questions about you, like, why she needs to protect you.” So just didn’t really press the subject too much on that.

By the end of that first day, per her testimony, she learned that Passantino was business partners on the election-related business Alex Cannon had with Justin Clark and, possibly, Herschmann.

S0 I — “I want to make sure that I’m getting the dates right with these things?

He goes, “No, no, no.” He said, “Look, we want to get you in, get you out.

We’re going to downplay your role. You were a secretary. You had an administrative role. Everyone’s on the same page about this. It’s extremely unfair that they’re” “they’re” being the committee – “that the committee is putting you in this position in the first place. You really have nothing to do with any of this. It’s Mark’s fault that you’re even involved in this. We’re completely happy to be taking care of you now. We had no idea that you weren’t being taken care of this last year. So we’re really happy that you reached back out to us. But the less you remember, the better. I don’t think that you should be filling in any calendars or anything.”

[Redacted] When he said a

Ms. Cheney. Go ahead.

[Redacted] So everyone’s on the same page about this, did he explain who he was referring to when he said “everyone”?

Ms. Hutchinson. He didn’t at that moment. Then there are times throughout my working relationship with Stefan where he said similar things that I asked.

Later that day, sort of put together that the “they” he was referring to then were Justin Clark, Alex Cannon, Eric Herschmann. I think that’s — yeah, think that’s all of them.

Ms. Cheney. And how did you put that together?

Ms. Hutchinson.  Because he — he had said that — Justin — yeah, Justin Clark. Stefan had told me that — towards the end of the day that because he was involved with Elections, LLC, and tangentially, I guess Trump’s PACs, he had law partners. And unless I was extremely unwilling for him to share, he said it would be natural for him to have to share that information with the people that he works with that are his partners that are involved in Trump world.

Then, after her third interview — the one in which Hutchinson remembered a lot of details about the response to the attack that Herschmann had already testified to not remembering — Passantino responded by confirming to Maggie Haberman that Meadows’ former aide had testified, and telling Meadows’ lawyers, his partners, and Herschmann about her testimony, all in defiance of Hutchinson’s wishes, according to her testimony.

Ms. Cheney. Did he also – so you said that he talked to Terwilliger, to his law partners. Did he also talk to Herschmann?

Ms. Hutchinson. He did. I’m sorry. I neglected to mention that. He –as we were leaving that evening, I got an Uber, and he walked me to my Uber, and he reiterated that he was going to have a conversation with his law partners. He was going back to Michael Best, and he said that he was going to have a conversation with his law partners that night.

And he asked — he asked — I forget how he said it. He said something to the effect of, “I think its best if we tell Eric about this, too. He’s not technically my law partner, but I think Eric deserves to know some of this, too.”

And I said, “Look, at this point, one, I kind of know you’re going to do what you’re going to do.” And I said, “Whatever you think is best”

That’s what led to the 30-minute call from Herschmann, the one where he expressed surprise that she remembered so much.

The discrepancy looks somewhat different give Hutchinson’s claim that Passantino told her, from the start, “they” were trying to protect Herschmann.

Particularly given that the transcripts reveal just how amorphous Herschmann’s job was. He has often been referred to as part of the White House Counsel’s office. I’ve done it. General Keith Kellogg did it in his interview with the Committee, which is why, Kellogg explained, he was so surprised that Herschmann sat silent in the Oval Office as Trump told Mike Pence he could reject electors from contested states, some details of which were something else Herschmann claimed not to remember.

Herschmann’s job was providing legal advice (he was also involved in Jared Kushner’s portfolio of pardons and Middle East negotiations, though when asked, he was coy about his relationship with the kids: “I had met them beforehand,” he said) And he did report through Pat Cipollone. But he was not part of the White House Counsel’s Office.

It’s almost like he was an in-house minder, paid by taxpayers, installed by the family or Bill Barr for the last five months of the presidency.

While working at the White House, Herschmann teamed up with Passantino and Don Jr’s buddy, Arthur Schwartz, to pitch the first Hunter Biden smears to the WSJ, even before Rudy disseminated the “laptop.”

Yet even in that short time period, Herschmann became a key gatekeeper for the President, ostensibly to prevent him from getting outrageous pitches.

Which makes a key discrepancy between Pat Cipollone and Herschmann’s testimony rather interesting, particularly given Passantino’s concern (at least per Hutchinson’s testimony) with protecting Herschmann.

Herschmann claimed that the reason Cipollone wasn’t in that meeting in the Oval Office on January 6, sometime after he spoke with Rudy out of the blue and at which he didn’t remember the Joint Session of Congress coming up, is because Cipollone hadn’t arrived to work yet. In fact, Herschmann remembered that even after the Oval Office meeting, Cipollone still wasn’t in the office; Herschmann described talking to just Pat Philbin before deciding to go, without prior planning, to the Ellipse.

I don’t remember, I don’t think Cipollone was in the office yet, but Philbin was.

The way Cipollone remembered it is that he came to the Oval Office before the meeting, but Herschmann specifically told him he didn’t need to participate — it was just family.

I remember Eric Herschmann was standing there and came and my recollection is he came to me as I was standing in the door and said, this is — this is family — just kind of –you don’t need to be here. And said, fine. And believe I went back to my office at that point.

And so, as Herschmann described, when he was in the Oval Office not hearing a discussion about the Joint Session of Congress, he was just on a social visit, just saying hello.

Q You were not there for any legal purpose. It was just, you indicated, sort of a social gathering?

A Yeah, when I first came in, it was just saying hello.

I’m sure that relative veracity of these claims are all being weighed by Jack Smith and his prosecution team. Indeed, after these events, DOJ started adding Passantino’s name to subpoenas.

I’m interested in one more detail about it. Immediately after Hutchinson testified about her claims of obstruction to J6C on September 14 and 15 (testimony which should have been secret), Maggie Haberman came out with two stories pitching Herschmann — who worked so closely on Jared’s portfolio at the White House — in positive light. On September 16, Maggie Haberman reported on Herschmann’s demand to get an Executive Privilege invocation in writing just in time to avoid testifying sometime that month. In it, Herschmann got to impugn Boris Epshteyn’s legal ability, just like he was made a star of the J6C hearings by yelling at Eastman and Powell.

The claim that Herschmann was invoking Executive Privilege is particularly interesting given two things he said in his J6C interview. First, he said that “based on his understanding” with the two Pats, he would not invoke privilege, at least with respect to Trump’s call to Mike Pence on January 6.

Q And could you hear the Vice President, or only hear the President’s end?

A Only hear the President’s end.

Q Okay. And what did you hear him say?

A Well, I guess from this, based on my understanding with Pat Philbin and Pat Cipollone — I don’t want to assert privilege on that as much as tell you that, at some point, it started off as a calmer tone and everything, and then became heated.

Given his claimed status as a social visitor and his role as an aide giving legal advice reporting to, but not part of, the White House Counsel’s Office, I’m curious what privilege he would claim.

Almost immediately thereafter, Herschmann asked to review with his own lawyers (former colleagues of his from Marc Kasowitz’ firm who also repped Ivanka, Jared, Ivanka Trump’s Chief of Staff Julie Radford and aide Rachel Craddock, and two of Trump’s Executive Assistants, Molly Michael and Austin Ferrer, as well as Alex Cannon, the latter of whom was represented pro bono), in part, whether “if I don’t recall something” it’s invoking a privilege.

Q  Okay. Others have said that President Trump said, I made the wrong decision four years ago?

Do you recall that.

A Let me — can we take a two-second break, so I get the privilege down in my head? Because if I don’t recall something, I presume it’s not invoking anything, right?

So can we take a five-minute break, so I can get my own ground rules covered.

Herschmann did, as noted, invoke privilege to cover one of two private conversations he had with Trump that day, one after the attack on the Capitol. But that was it. The single solitary thing all day he invoked privilege over. And yet somehow, there would be a lengthy discussion about privilege before he appeared before a grand jury.

The reason I find these discussions of privilege so interesting, though, is because while we know that the two Pats testified before a grand jury after Beryl Howell overruled Trump’s privilege invocation, we’ve never heard whether Herschmann did.

That’s relevant, too, because (like Alex Cannon), Herschmann also reportedly has a role in the stolen documents case. A few days after the story on privilege, on September 19, Haberman reported that Herschmann had warned Trump to return his stolen documents at some otherwise vague meeting in 2021.

As Hutchinson’s testimony and years of past practice make clear, sometimes people share stories with Maggie as a way to telegraph what has gone on in an investigation.

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Special Master in Project Veritas Investigation Reviewed Crime-Fraud Submissions in December

Back in December, Paul Calli and his firm withdrew from the Project Veritas Special Master docket, and was replaced by Edward Greim, a partner in Matt “Big Dick Toilet Salesman” Whitaker’s firm. He also represents a number of Trumpsters before the January 6 Committee.

That’s interesting timing because, according to the invoice that Special Master Barbara Jones just submitted, she spent two hours that week reviewing Crime-Fraud submissions in the case.

 

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Trump Worked with People Who Allegedly Worked with the Proud Boys to Obstruct the Peaceful Transfer of Power

By my count, at least 14 people are known to have pled guilty to some kind of conspiracy on January 6, with four more cooperating against them. Another four were found guilty of one or more conspiracy in November’s Oath Keeper verdict. Eighteen people, in one way or another have been convicted of conspiring to prevent the peaceful transfer of power on January 6, most by obstructing the vote certification.

Trump played a key part in all those conspiracies.

Ronnie Sandlin, for example, first started planning to go, armed, to DC in response to Trump’s December 19 tweet, posting on December 23 that he planned to “stop the steal and stand behind Trump when he decides to cross the rubicon.” After he watched Trump’s speech on January 6, Sandlin did a live stream where he said, “I think it is time to take the Capitol.” Once he arrived at the Capitol, Sandlin and co-conspirator Nate DeGrave participated in tactically critical assaults on cops in two places, the East door and the door to the Senate gallery. After Sandlin helped him get into the gallery, Josiah Colt then rappelled from the gallery to the Senate floor.

Like Sandlin, Brad Smith started arming himself and planning to come to DC in response to Trump’s December 19 tweet.

The call to action was put out to be in DC on January 6th from the Don himself. The reason is that’s the day pence counts them up and if the entire city is full of trump supporters it will stop the for sure riots from burning down the city at least for awhile.

By December 31, Smith predicted, “Militias will be there and if there’s enough people they may fucking storm the buildings and take out the trash right there.” Smith and his co-conspirator, Marshall Neefe, participated in an assault on cops using an 8′ by 10′ Trump sign. And after the attack he boasted that the mission was successful because “we literally chased them out into hiding. No certification lol.”

Trump played a slightly different role in the Oath Keepers conspiracy. The Oath Keepers — Stewart Rhodes above all — viewed Trump as a means to prevent Biden’s election, because as President he could invoke the Insurrection Act and with it (the Oath Keepers believed) make the militias a legal arm of the state, defending Trump. Rhodes repeatedly called on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act — on November 9, December 12, December 23, and January 6.

He dictated a note to Trump after January 6 asking him to call on the militias as his army to stop Biden from taking power.

For the most part, none of the channels via which Rhodes tried to speak directly to Trump (including Kellye SoRelle’s attempt to work through Rudy Giuliani’s son) are known to have reached Trump.

One of his attempted interlocutors, though, undoubtedly had access to Trump: Roger Stone, on whose Friends of Stone list Rhodes was sharing his plans for insurrection shortly after the election.

DOJ has exploited at least four phones owned by members of the Friends of Stone list: Rhodes and SoRelle, Owen Shroyer, and Enrique Tarrio. Probably DOJ asked for content from Ali Alexander as well (though he disclaimed having any Signal texts to the January 6 Committee).

While a jury found all the Oath Keepers guilty of obstructing the vote certification, with the key exception of Kelly Meggs (who was also in contact separately with the Proud Boys, Roger Stone, Ali Alexander, and alleged 3 Percenter Jeremy Liggett, who in turn had ties to the MAGA Bus Tour) as well as Jessica Watkins, it found the greater part of their conspiracy either overthrowing the government or interfering with with official duties: not obstructing the vote count. Their larger plan to keep Trump in power used different means than Trump used.

That’s not true of the Proud Boy Leaders, who are three days into their trial.

Not only did the Proud Boys allegedly pursue the same plan that Trump was pursuing — obstructing the vote certification on January 6 — but they were in communication with people who were in communication, and central to, Trump’s plan: most notably, Alex Jones, Ali Alexander, and Roger Stone. They were in communication with people who were in communication with people close to Trump during the attack.

Even their telephony records show that Enrique Tarrio, Joe Biggs, and Ethan Nordean were in contact with Alex Jones and Owen Shroyer during the period.

Records for Enrique Tarrio’s phone show that while the attack on the Capitol was ongoing, he texted with Jones three times and Shroyer five times.124 Ethan Nordean’s phone records reflect that he exchanged 23 text messages with Shroyer between January 4th and 5th, and that he had one call with him on each of those days.125 Records of Joseph Biggs’s communications show that he texted with Shroyer eight times on January 4th and called him at approximately 11:15 a.m. on January 6th, while Biggs and his fellow Proud Boys were marching at and around the Capitol.126

Given the known communication habits of the men, it’s possible there are Signal or Telegram communications that were unavailable to the J6C as well.

Alex Jones and Ali Alexander knew in advance they would lead the mob to the Capitol (the January 6 Report offers an unpersuasive explanation that the request came exclusively from Caroline Wren). Roger Stone had planned to join them, probably until he got cranky about being denied a speaking role on the morning of January 6. Mike Flynn wanted to latch on, as well, until the General got too cold and had to go back to his posh hotel room. “Hell no,” he said, according to Caroline Wren. “It’s freezing.”

Meanwhile, even as Shroyer was in touch with Biggs, Alexander was in touch with Caroline Wren, who remained at the Ellipse, and asked for 5-minute updates on the Trump’s progress to the Capitol (the text in question appears to have come from Wren, but may not have been provided in Alexander’s production).

The communication between Proud Boys and Jones in real time is critical because once the riot police showed up and slowed the attack, the Proud Boy leaders pulled up, effectively waiting until Jones appeared. And after Jones did appear, he told the mob following him that Trump was coming to give another speech — something Alexander, and so almost certainly Jones — knew to be false because Wren had told Alexander. Nevertheless, Jones led his mob to the East steps, riled them up with a 1776 chant, and left them there, where they were soon joined by the Oath Keepers (led by Kelly Meggs, who also was in touch with Alexander) and Joe Biggs and some other Proud Boys (including one who had been directing traffic). That collective mob breached the East door of the Capitol, opening a second major front on the Capitol and adding to the invasion of the Senate chamber.

There are rioters who were sentenced to two months in jail because they followed Alex Jones credulously to the top of those steps and joined the mob storming the Capitol.

And it wasn’t just Jones and Alexander who were in touch with Trump’s handlers.

Mark Meadows was, per Cassidy Hutchinson, in communication with Stone about his plans for January 6, at a time when Stone still planned to march to the Capitol with Jones and Alexander.

LIZ CHENEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before we turn to what Ms. Hutchinson saw and heard in the White House during the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6th, let’s discuss certain communications White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows had on January 5th. President Trump’s associate, Roger Stone, attended rallies during the afternoon and the evening of January 5th in Washington, DC On January 5th and 6th, Mr. Stone was photographed with multiple members of the Oath Keepers who were allegedly serving as his security detail.

As we now know, multiple members of that organization have been charged with or pled guilty to crimes associated with January 6th. Mr. Stone has invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination before this committee. General Michael Flynn has also taken the Fifth before this committee. Mr. Stone previously had been convicted of other federal crimes unrelated to January 6th.

General Flynn had pleaded guilty to a felony charge, also predating and unrelated to January 6th. President Trump pardoned General Flynn just weeks after the Presidential election, and in July of 2020, he commuted the sentence Roger Stone was to serve.

The night before January 6th, President Trump instructed his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to contact both Roger Stone and Michael Flynn regarding what would play out the next day. Ms. Hutchinson, Is it your understanding that President Trump asked Mark Meadows to speak with Roger Stone and General Flynn on January 5th?

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: That’s correct. That is my understanding.

LIZ CHENEY: And Ms. Hutchinson, is it your understanding that Mr. Meadows called Mr. Stone on the 5th?

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: I’m under the impression that Mr. Meadows did complete both a call to Mr. Stone and General Flynn the evening of the 5th.

In an earlier interview, when she was still represented by Stefan Passantino, she had attributed the idea for this call to Peter Navarro or a Navarro staffer; the Navarro staffer who had let Mike Flynn into the White House on December 18, Garrett Ziegler, was another White House contact of Ali Alexander’s, in addition to Wren.

All this matters because of the way conspiracy law works, as laid out in the bullet points from Elizabeth de la Vega that I always rely on.

CONSPIRACY LAW – EIGHT THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW.

One: Co-conspirators don’t have to explicitly agree to conspire & there doesn’t need to be a written agreement; in fact, they almost never explicitly agree to conspire & it would be nuts to have a written agreement!

Two: Conspiracies can have more than one object- i.e. conspiracy to defraud U.S. and to obstruct justice. The object is the goal. Members could have completely different reasons (motives) for wanting to achieve that goal.

Three: All co-conspirators have to agree on at least one object of the conspiracy.

Four: Co-conspirators can use multiple means to carry out the conspiracy, i.e., releasing stolen emails, collaborating on fraudulent social media ops, laundering campaign contributions.

Five: Co-conspirators don’t have to know precisely what the others are doing, and, in large conspiracies, they rarely do.

Six: Once someone is found to have knowingly joined a conspiracy, he/she is responsible for all acts of other co-conspirators.

Seven: Statements of any co-conspirator made to further the conspiracy may be introduced into evidence against any other co-conspirator.

Eight: Overt Acts taken in furtherance of a conspiracy need not be illegal. A POTUS’ public statement that “Russia is a hoax,” e.g., might not be illegal (or even make any sense), but it could be an overt act in furtherance of a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Co-conspirators don’t all have to meet in a room together and agree to enter a conspiracy. That can happen (and did, in the Oath Keepers’ case) via a series of communications which networks everyone.

The demonstrative exhibit prosecutors used in the Oath Keeper trials showed how the various communications channels included everyone, even if some members of the conspiracy only interacted with a limited group of other co-conspirators.

I circled Rhodes and SoRelle in pink to show that even in the Oath Keeper trial, prosecutors treated the Friends of Stone list part of the communications infrastructure of the conspiracy.

Here’s what the larger conspiracy looks like, reflecting  the known communications between Rhodes, Meggs, Tarrio, Biggs, and Nordean and Jones and Stone, and the known communications between Jones and Stone and Alexander with Trump or his handlers, like Meadows, Wren, and Ziegler by way of Navarro.

The numbers and letters in parentheses come from one or another of the indictments charging conspiracy. As you can see, Trump’s known actions map onto the known, charged overt acts of various conspiracies to obstruct the vote count like a mirror.

Obviously, the pink part of this table has not been charged (yet). And it may not be unless prosecutors win guilty verdicts in the Proud Boys case. It also may not be if the obstruction charge gets narrowed on appeal.

For reasons I laid out here, the Proud Boys trial is far more complex than the Oath Keepers trial. And in the Proud Boys trial, like the Oath Keepers trial, prosecutors don’t have a clear map showing that the plan was to occupy the Capitol; instead they have testimony that Biggs and Nordean kept consulting, and everyone took orders from them, and those orders had the effect of sending cells of Proud Boys off to breach parts of the building. So it is not at all certain that prosecutors will win convictions of the men — Tarrio, Biggs, and Nordean — who were working with people who were working with Trump and his handlers.

But this is one of the means via which DOJ has been working to hold Trump accountable since just months after the attack (I first laid this out in July 2021, long before most commentators understood how DOJ was using obstruction).

Even with the disorganized conspiracy (Sandlin and friends), prosecutors have carefully shown how the men took Trump’s December 19 tweet as an explicit instruction, took instructions from a WildProtest flyer put out by Ali Alexander, believed Trump had ordered them to march to the Capitol. There are hundreds more rioters who took Trump’s December 19 tweet as an instruction, though in the case of Sandlin and his co-conspirators, they took steps that were critical to the occupation of the Capitol and the Senate chamber in response.

But with the Proud Boys, to an extent thus far only seen with Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs, the communication ties, via a two step network, to Trump’s own actions and directions. And with the Proud Boys, that coordination builds off years-long relationships, particularly between Biggs and Jones and Stone, and through them, to Trump.

Everyone was working towards the same goal: to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. There were, in various places, explicit agreements made. There were, as with Trump’s Stand Back and Stand By comment that prosecutors used to kick off this trial, more implicit agreements as well.

And DOJ is now at the point where it is beginning to show how those agreements, explicit and implicit, all worked together to make the assault on the Capitol successful.

Conspiracy guilty verdicts

Oath Keepers Stewart Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson, Kelly Meggs, Mark Grods, Caleb Berry, James Dolan, Joshua James, Brian Ulrich, Todd Wilson (11 conspiracy verdicts)

Proud Boys Matthew Greene, Charles Donohoe, Jeremy Bertino, with Isaiah Giddings, Louis Colon, and James Stewart cooperating (3 known conspiracy verdicts)

Disorganized Militia Ronnie Sandlin, Nate DeGrave, with Josiah Colt cooperating (2 conspiracy verdicts)

“Patriots” Marshall Neefe and Charles Smith (2 conspiracy verdicts)

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