Navel-Gazing: The Ethics Problem Caused by Merrick Garland’s Brad Weinsheimer Solution

/78 Comments/in , , , /by

I want to talk about DOJ’s career Associate Deputy Attorney General position. I think the way Merrick Garland is using that position to supervise Special Counsel investigations has contributed to the ethical lapses we’re seeing from them.

The current occupant of that role, Bradley Weinsheimer, has garnered attention in recent weeks for his role in some letters exchanged between lawyers for President Biden and DOJ. Between Politico, WaPo, and NYT stories on the letters, they describe the following exchanges:

There’s no report that anyone responded to any of Biden’s 2023 letters. Hur published the letter from Ricard Sauber and Bob Bauer letter in the report, without addressing most of his inappropriate statements. But, after Garland apparently referred the February 7 letter from Ed Siskel and Bauer to Weinsheimer, the ADAG responded to that, while referencing the letter to Hur.

Brad Weinsheimer blows off half Biden’s complaints

After describing that he “serve[s] as [DOJ’s] senior career official,” Weinsheimer proceeded to mischaracterize both the February 5 and the February 7 letters by claiming the complaints were “substantially similar.”

The objections you raise in your letter to the Attorney General are substantially similar to the objections you raised in your February 5, 2024 letter to Special Counsel Hur. In both letters, you contend that the report contains statements that violate long-standing Department policy.

That’s incorrect. They’re not substantially similar. The February 5 letter included the following:

  • Bullets one and two (about two pages total) complaining about prejudicial comments
  • Three bullets (three through five) about misrepresentations Hur made to substantiate his Afghanistan narrative, none of which Hur addressed in the report
  • Bullet six discussing the awareness of Biden’s staffers of his diaries
  • Bullet seven that included six other complaints, the last three of which Hur fixed, the first three of which — including the make-believe comment about an attorney-client privileged conversation — he left in

One of those items in bullet seven had to do with Hur’s claim, in the first draft, to have reviewed all the classified information in Reagan’s diaries; he added the word “some” in the final to make it accurate.

The letter to Garland addressed two topics, the second of which was Hur’s use of prejudicial language. Before it addressed Hur’s old geezer comments, though, the letter complained that Hur misrepresented DOJ’s past treatment of presidential and vice presidential diaries, a combination of bullet two, bullet six, and the Reagan diary complaint from the February 5 letter.

Rather than deal with the treatment of diaries, Weinsheimer appears to have just lumped the first part (bullet two in the original) in with the old geezer comments, resulting in Weinsheimer’s mischaracterization of the diaries complaint: Here’s how he described the two complaints.

In particular, you first highlight brief language in the report discussing President Biden’s use of the term “totally irresponsible” to refer to former President Trump’s handling of classified information. Second, you object to the “multiple denigrating statements about President Biden’s memory.”

And based on that mischaracterization, even while claiming to have “carefully considered your arguments,” Weinsheimer issued DOJ’s conclusion that Hur acted within DOJ guidelines.

Having carefully considered your arguments, the Department concludes that the report as submitted to the Attorney General, and its release, are consistent with legal requirements and Department policy. The report will be provided to Congress and released publicly, consistent with Department practice and the Attorney General’s commitment to transparency.

With that characterization, Weinsheimer blew off a number of requested corrections in the letter to Hur — such as the one that Hur invented a hypothetical attorney-client conversation to make the discovery of a box with classified documents in the Wilmington garage more suspicious — and also blew off most of the first half of the letter to Garland, addressing the past treatment of diaries.

The problematic function of the senior Associate Deputy Attorney General

I’m not so much interested in litigating Weinsheimer’s answer: that it was cool for Hur to use prejudicial language, including things like his invented attorney-client conversation. I’m interested in the fact that he claimed to address both the letter to Hur and the letter to Garland and, based on that claim, issued a definitive policy judgment. I’m interested in the function Weinsheimer is playing, because I think it is one thing contributing to the tolerance for ethical lapses among Special Counsels under Merrick Garland.

Politico describes Weinsheimer’s role in making that decision this way:

The next day, Feb. 8, Weinsheimer, the associate deputy attorney general, responded to the letter on behalf of the department. Weinsheimer, a civil servant who has worked at the department for decades, oversees the department’s most politically sensitive matters, including questions on ethics. He has fielded complaints from Hunter Biden’s lawyers about special counsel David Weiss and from Trump’s lawyers about special counsel Jack Smith.

That is, Politico treats Weinsheimer’s role as the traditional role of the career Associate Deputy Attorney General, the guy (if I’m not mistaken, it has always been a guy) one appeals to for ethical review.

That understanding of the role goes back to a guy named David Margolis, who is treated as a saint among DOJers. For 23 years, Margolis served as the guy who’d make the hard decisions — such as what to do with the prosecutors who botched the Ted Stevens prosecution or, worse yet, John Yoo’s permission to torture.

In 1993, he was named associate deputy attorney general. He worked for the deputy attorney general, essentially the chief operating officer of the department. “We would give all the hairballs to [Margolis], all the hardest, most difficult problems, the most politically controversial,” recalled FBI Director James B. Comey, a former deputy attorney general.

Vince Foster’s suicide. Ted Stevens’s botched prosecution for public corruption. The leak of Valerie Plame’s identity. The firings of U.S. attorneys. Margolis was involved — in some way — in them all.

Undoubtedly the most controversial issue he has dealt with came in the early years of the Obama administration. The department’s internal watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility, had determined that former Office of Legal Counsel lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee had engaged in professional misconduct in writing two memos that gave legal sanction to the use of torture tactics such as waterboarding, as well as wall slamming, extended sleep deprivation and other extreme techniques used by the CIA to interrogate terrorist detainees. Margolis had to decide whether to endorse the OPR’s recommendation that the two lawyers from the Bush administration, who by then had left government, be disciplined.

That was the decision “I agonized over most,” he said. “I knew it would be controversial whichever way it came down.”

In a memo written in January 2010, he conceded that “Yoo’s loyalty to his own ideology and convictions clouded his view” of his professional obligation. But, he concluded, Yoo did not “knowingly” provide inaccurate legal advice and he overturned the OPR recommendation.

That set off a firestorm of criticism from Democratic lawmakers, civil liberties advocates and human rights activists.

“I don’t want to accuse him of bad faith,” said David Luban, a Georgetown University Law Center professor of law and philosophy. “But I will accuse him of bad reasoning.”

But as bmaz wrote on Margolis’ passing, often as not decisions advertised as an ethical decision seemed instead to protect the institution of DOJ.

Sally Yates is spot on when she says Margolis’ “dedication to our [DOJ] mission knew no bounds”. That is not necessarily in a good way though, and Margolis was far from the the “personification of all that is good about the Department of Justice”. Mr. Margolis may have been such internally at the Department, but it is far less than clear he is really all that to the public and citizenry the Department is designed to serve. Indeed there is a pretty long record Mr. Margolis consistently not only frustrated accountability for DOJ malfeasance, but was the hand which guided and ingrained the craven protection of any and all DOJ attorneys for accountability, no matter how deeply they defiled the arc of justice.

After Margolis passed, a guy named Scott Schools played that role for a short period spanning the Obama and Trump years. In such role, in my opinion, he protected the Deputy Attorney General’s office more than DOJ. As one example, Schools was the guy who helped push Andrew McCabe out the door to serve Donald Trump’s whims.

Which is when, in 2018, Jeff Sessions put Weinsheimer, who had played a NatSec role prior to that, in the post.

For the purposes of this post, I’m not really interested in whether Weinsheimer is a good guy or not. There are journalists who are better placed than I am to go chase that down.

I want to talk about how his role on Special Counsels likely ensures an ethical conflict — and all that’s before you consider the extremely likely possibility that he signed off on the McCabe settlement and then was involved in Hur’s selection and supervision, which would be a separate conflict of his own.

Weinsheimer is the supervisor of David Weiss

I don’t dispute Politico’s characterization of how the ADAG position normally works. As laid out in the Margolis bio, the position is supposed to make the difficult decisions and then give such decisions, arguably meant to protect DOJ, the appearance of ethical gravitas. One is supposed to be able to appeal to the ADAG position, in case of ethical problems.

But that depends on the ADAG being outside of potentially unethical decisions in the first place. You can’t review decisions if you were part of them.

At least in the case of David Weiss, Weinsheimer can’t play that role because he is, for all intents and purposes, Weiss’ supervisor — apparently on all matters, not just the Hunter Biden investigation.

In his November testimony to Congress, Weiss described that he has never spoken to his nominal boss, Lisa Monaco, or the person via whom he would normally communicate to his boss, the current Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, Marshall Miller (as noted below, he described communicating via Miller’s predecessor until 2022, John Carlin).

Q When you have interactions with Justice Department Headquarters or Main Justice, how does that ordinarily happen? Who is your primary point of contact?

A I don’t know that there is an ordinary. I don’t know that I would designate anyone in particular.

Q Under the reporting structure, though, you report up through the Deputy Attorney General. Is that correct?

A That’s correct.

Q And how often do you talk with Ms. Monaco?

A I have never spoken with Ms. Monaco.

Q You’ve never spoken to her?

A Never.

Q Okay. And do you have communications with someone else in the office? Maybe the PADAG?

A I have — my point of contact for the last year, year and a half has been Associate Deputy Attorney General Weinsheimer.

Q Okay. So you’re not in contact on a regular basis with the PADAG, Mr. Miller?

A I am not.

Q Have you ever had communications with him?

A I have not.

Q Okay. So you’ve never had any communications with Marshall Miller or Lisa Monaco?

A I have not.

By his description, he speaks to Weinsheimer regularly, about once a month, and those communications primarily pertain to the President’s son.

Q Okay. And how often do you have communications with Mr. Weinsheimer?

A It varies depending upon what’s going on. But I would say we’ve spoken, before August of 2023, approximately once a month, sometimes more frequently.

Q And was it related to the Hunter Biden case, or was it related to your ordinary duties?

A Generally, it was related to the Hunter Biden case investigation.

That same pace has continued during the period since he had been named Special Counsel.

Chairman Jordan. Have you kept up the rhythm? You said earlier today that you had monthly contacts with the key people at the Justice Department. Have you kept up that same protocol? Has it increased or decreased as Special Counsel?

Mr. Weiss. I guess it’s been, I guess, 3 months. I don’t know that there is much of a practice or that I could say, you know, circumstances. You know, I’ve had several conversations in the last 3 months with Mr. Weinsheimer. I can say that.

Chairman Jordan. So it’s picked up?

Mr. Weiss. It’s — I’ve had probably — yes, several conversations. Whether that will continue or it was unique to the initial stages of the project, I really can’t speak to.

When Weinsheimer reached out to the then-PADAG, Carlin — again, the normal person he would report to — Carlin involved Weinsheimer in all discussions about how to get Special Attorney (not Special Counsel) status to charge the case in a different District with Weiss.

Q Okay. And when did Mr. Weinsheimer first start having communications with you about the Hunter Biden case?

A I think we first spoke about the case in the spring of 2022.

Q And, to the extent you can tell us, what were the nature of those discussions?

A In 2022?

Q Yeah.

A Actually, more accurately, February of 2022, I think, was the first time we spoke. And I would have reached out because we were looking to bring certain portions of our investigation to either D.C. or L.A. At that time, D.C.

Q Okay. Did you call him, or did he call you?

A I reached out by email to the Principal Deputy Attorney General at that time, John Carlin.

Q Okay. So he was the PADAG before Mr. Barr [sic]?

A Correct.

Q And how often had you spoken with Mr. Carlin?

A Before this? Never.

Q Okay. So you initiated email contact with Mr. Carlin, and he referred you to Mr. Weinsheimer?

A I initiated email contact with Mr. Carlin, and I subsequently had a conversation with John Carlin, and I believe Brad Weinsheimer was on the call.

Q Okay. And what did they tell you about bringing the case in D.C. or different jurisdictions from yours?

A We discussed the fact that I would — they wanted me to proceed in the way it would typically be done, and that would involve ultimately reaching out to the U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia. I raised the idea of 515 authority at that time because I had been handling the investigation for some period of time. And, as I said, they suggested let’s go through the typical process and reach out to D.C. and see if D.C. would be interested in joining or otherwise participating in the investigation.

So Weinsheimer was the primary supervisor of David Weiss on the Hunter Biden case.

That makes the meeting with Hunter Biden’s previous attorneys with Weinsheimer — which is fairly routine but was billed as a huge scandal by right wing nutjobs — something else entirely. As Politico described, after months of asking the people who should have had some supervisory role in the investigation, Clark finally emailed Weinsheimer asking whether he could appeal to him.

From the fall of 2022 through the spring of 2023, Clark sought meetings with people at the highest levels of the Justice Department — almost entirely without success. In multiple emails, he asked to meet with the head of the Criminal Division, the head of the Tax Division, the Office of Legal Counsel, the Office of the Solicitor General, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and the attorney general himself. On Feb. 21, 2023, Clark’s team reached out to multiple officials at Main Justice, who passed his request from one person to the next.

The search ended when Clark sent Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer an exasperated email, saying he had asked the government over and over to tell him who at headquarters they could appeal to if Weiss decided to charge their client.

“To date we have heard nothing in this regard,” he added.

“Please advise whether you would be the appropriate person to hear our client’s appeal, in the event that the U.S. Attorney’s Office decides to charge Mr. Biden,” he wrote.

Weinsheimer was indeed the right guy, and he met with Clark and Weiss on April 26.

As Weiss confirmed in his testimony, he attended that meeting with Weinsheimer.

Q Did Mr. Weinsheimer ever tell you that he met with Chris Clark?

A He — if — no. If he met with Chris Clark, I would have been at that meeting.

Q Okay. So there were no one-on-one meetings or telephone calls between Mr. Clark and Brad Weinsheimer?

A I am unaware of any such meeting, and I don’t think any such meeting would have occurred.

Of course Weinsheimer wasn’t going to accede to any of Clark’s requests, or even grant an independent review of some of the shitty things that had already gone on in the case. Presumably unbeknownst to Clark, Weinsheimer was signing off on Weiss’ actions all along.

And he didn’t. Two weeks after they met with Clark, Weinsheimer sent Clark a letter, “referring you back to” Weiss, saying that Weiss had full authority to charge the case wherever he wanted. It’s not clear that Weinsheimer ever revealed that he had assumed a supervisory role on the case a year earlier.

If Weinsheimer played a similar role with Robert Hur, the same would be true. Of course Weinsheimer wouldn’t, in that case, take action after Hur violated DOJ policy by smearing the President. That’s because Weinsheimer would have been in on it, part of the smear.

Except for the Special Counsel appointment

As David Weiss told it, there was an important exception that may have, may still, exacerbate all this.

He did not go through Weinsheimer when requesting Special Counsel authority.

Q And, when you submitted the request, was that through Mr. Weinsheimer?

A No. No, it wasn’t.

Q Did you have communications with Mr. Weinsheimer before you submitted the request?

A I did not have communications with Mr. Weinsheimer about the request before I submitted it.

Q Okay. You just went right to the Attorney General?

A I submitted the request on my own initiative, and, otherwise, I really can’t get into the particulars at all.

Q Right. Have you had subsequent conversations with Mr. Weinsheimer? Is he the individual that you reported to, or —

A After I was appointed?

Q Correct.

A Yes. I continue to discuss the matter with Mr. Weinsheimer.

Q So he’s your primary point of contact still?

A He continues to be my primary point of contact, yes.

And that communication with Merrick Garland was, at least at the time of Weiss’ testimony on November 7 (and so just over a week before Abbe Lowell started asking for discovery and subpoenas on the side channel and the Smirnov FD-1023), the only time he had ever communicated, in any form, with the Attorney General.

Q So the Attorney General has had a couple of silent appearances where this topic has come up, and I guess the question is, did you have direct communications with the Attorney General?

A I’ve never had any direct communications with the Attorney General, save my communication in requesting Special Counsel authority in August of 2023.

Q When you did request Special Counsel authority in August of 2023, how did you request it? Was it in writing or on the telephone?

A It was in writing, and that’s about all I’m going to say about that process.

Q Okay. Did you reach out directly to the Attorney General, or did you go through Mr. Weinsheimer?

A I’m not going to get into anything further. I requested it, and it was granted.

Q Okay.

I started writing this post before the arrest of Alexander Smirnov. At the time, I thought that Weiss might have gone directly to Garland only because Garland had promised the Senate he’d give Weiss Special Counsel authority if ever he asked it. That is, before the Smirnov arrest, it looked only like Weiss collecting on Garland’s promises.

No longer.

The significance of this has been missed. The FD-1023 assessment number, 58A-PG-3250958, cited Executive Branch public corruption. The only way the FD-1023 could be basis for ongoing criminal investigation is if Joe Biden were a subject of the investigation as well. That would make the Special Counsel request not a request for authority to charge in other Districts.

It would arise from the conflict of investigating the President.

Before even interviewing the informant’s handler — to say nothing of Smirnov himself — David Weiss got himself Special Counsel authority.

Few agree with me. But I think Weiss has walked himself into a shitshow. Even assuming that none of Abbe Lowell’s bids to throw out the indictments in Delaware and Los Angeles succeed — and the Smirnov indictment would seem to raise still more questions about why Weiss reneged on the plea deal — there’s good reason to believe the motion to suppress evidence from the laptop will surprise a good number of people, including the prosecutors. Consider what it means that attorneys for John Paul Mac Isaac abandoned their argument that the blind computer repairman had legal authority to snoop through and disseminate data he claims to believe belonged to Hunter Biden, focusing seemingly exclusively on a claim that Delaware’s two year statute of limitations for complaint from Hunter has expired: Judge Robert Robinson may not rule on that question, but that legal challenge may have confirmed that JPMI did not own the data he shared with the FBI after the FBI told his father he might not own it. The implications of that are fairly staggering, though I’ll wait before I lay them out explicitly.

And that’s before Smirnov — a 14-year source for the FBI, whose charged report was championed by Attorney General Bill Barr after Scott Brady claimed to have vetted it — starts challenging his own indictment. That’s before either Smirnov or Abbe Lowell raises Weiss’ conflict in charging it. I don’t think David Weiss has the team to pull that prosecution off without major blowback.

If there were a figure like Weinsheimer outside of this investigation to step in, to call a halt to this shitshow, now would be the time to do it. But as I understand it, Weinsheimer can’t do that, because — apparently aside from the Special Counsel request — he has been part of the process every step of the way.

I get why Merrick Garland would have chosen to do it this way: having a career ADAG oversee Special Counsels rather than the PADAG (in which role Hur supervised Mueller). But in SCO investigation after SCO investigation, it has turned the supervisory role into navel-gazing. And the attempt to ensure a higher level of independence has led to grave ethical problems.

Ken Vogel Covers Up Rudy Giuliani and His Alleged Russian Spies

/58 Comments/in , , , /by

Amid rising criticism that it is burying the Alexander Smirnov scandal while continuing to flood the market with yet more transphobia and complaints that Biden’s age might be worse than Trump’s promise to let Russia attack NATO states, NYT has added Ken Vogel to the Hunter Biden beat.

Congratulations, Devlin Barrett. You are no longer the most inappropriate mouthpiece to work the dick pic sniffing beat.

Vogel wrote a story with Glenn Thrush that really struggled with basic details about the Hunter Biden investigation. For example, like Devlin in his own story, the men claimed to be unable to understand how David Weiss’ renewed focus on Smirnov’s FD-1023 might explain why Leo Wise said that FARA charges were still on the table on July 26, 2023 when Weiss’ First AUSA had told Chris Clark a month earlier on June 19, “there was not another open or pending investigation.”

In a court filing, they contended that Mr. Smirnov’s false claims “infected” the cases, and suggested, without providing evidence, that prosecutors reneged on a plea deal last summer because they had followed “Mr. Smirnov down his rabbit hole of lies.”

There was no ongoing investigation on June 19. And then, facing pressure from Congress and Bill Barr, David Weiss twice said (the second time in his House Judiciary Committee testimony) that the FD-1023 was part of the newly ongoing investigation. The September 27 interview of Smirnov could not, yet, have been an investigation of Smirnov, because Weiss treats his indictment as a “matter[] that arose” in his investigation of Hunter Biden. Weiss had to have been chasing Smirnov’s manufactured bribery claim, not Smirnov himself, yet.

It’s not the struggle with basic facts about the Hunter Biden investigation that I find so remarkable, though. That’s pretty typical from people on the dick pic sniffing beat.

It’s the shamelessness by longtime Rudy Giuliani mouthpiece Ken Vogel of his cover-up of Rudy’s role in all this.

The men claim, for example, that it was the sheer volume of tips about Hunter Biden that led Bill Barr to set up a secret special intake process starting on January 3, 2020, at a time when there was already an investigation into Hunter Biden that could have … just taken those tips.

For instance, he appears to have told the F.B.I. that a business associate who introduced him to Burisma executives had ties to Russian organized crime, according to notes of this conversation, which do not indicate whether there is proof of the claim.

It is the sort of raw intelligence that law enforcement routinely collects and vets behind closed doors before determining whether to act on it, the investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings attracted so much of it that the Justice Department created a special intake process.

They make that claim while linking to this NYT story (still one of the best on the Scott Brady side channel), which mentions Rudy Giuliani two dozen times, including in the headline.

They claim Smirnov’s tip was simply shared with Scott Brady’s side channel, when the testimony they link describes Brady asking the FBI to search for Hunter Biden and Burisma (still an unconvincing claim, particularly given Chuck Grassley’s claim that the tip came from an investigation into Mykola Zlochevsky that had been shut down days earlier).

A federal prosecutor involved in screening claims about Mr. Biden’s foreign work testified last year that Mr. Smirnov was an “important confidential human source” who “had been used in other investigations.”

They don’t mention that the Brady transcript they link mentions Rudy 126 times, including descriptions of the interview Brady conducted with Rudy, an interview with someone under active criminal investigation that was not shared with the people conducting that criminal investigation, an interview in which Seth DuCharme had requested Brady participate personally, “so we get a sense of what’s coming out of it,” an interview in which Rudy was less than forthcoming about Rudy’s indirect interview of Zlochevsky the previous year.

But the most astonishing aspect of Ken Vogel’s claim that “the investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings attracted so much [raw intelligence] that the Justice Department created a special intake process” — again, NYT is making this claim about a side channel to an existing investigation that even Brady says is where such intelligence could actually be vetted, with subpoena power — is that Ken Vogel broke the story of Rudy’s December 2019 trip to meet with, among others, a bunch of people who have since been sanctioned as participants in Russian influence operations.

Vogel described, in real time, Rudy meeting with Kostiantyn Kulyk and Andrii Telizhenko, who both would be sanctioned by Steve Mnuchen’s Treasury on January 11, 2021. Vogel’s story about Andrii Derkach’s sanctioning on September 10, 2020 — again, by Mnuchen’s Treasury — describes that Giuliani met with Derkach on that same trip.

Vogel knows that the leads that Bill Barr set up a special side channel to claim to vet (Brady’s transcript reveals how shoddy his vetting was, including his claim that Smirnov’s travel records were consistent with Smirnov’s bribery allegation when the indictment alleges that the travel records prove his claims to be false) didn’t just appear out of nowhere. It wasn’t the volume of the leads that required some intake process before the leads got shared with the preexisting investigation of Hunter Biden.

It was the fact that the President’s lawyer had solicited help from people US spooks were pretty sure were Russian agents, and rather than warning Rudy off that effort, DOJ instead set up a special accommodation via which DOJ might share information from Russian spies with those investigating Trump’s rival’s son, a special accommodation that could, and did, protect Rudy from any legal consequences for soliciting campaign help from Russian spies.

And then by some remarkable coincidence, while purportedly vetting all this dirt solicited by Rudy Giuliani, Scott Brady went out and through still unexplained means found the guy who happened to be willing to fabricate a claim about Burisma bribing Joe Biden.

Only, it probably wasn’t a wild coincidence. The Smirnov indictment ties Smirnov’s dangles of claims against Biden to this article about Rudy soliciting help from Andrii Derkach.

Ken Vogel knows Rudy’s role in the side channel that led to the Smirnov claim as well as anybody. But his story about the side channel covered up Rudy’s role — two dozen mentions at one of his links and over a hundred at the other — and in the process covered up the Russian spies that necessitated the side channel.

Update: In a really good timeline of the back history of the FD-1023, Glenn Kessler describes that Bill Barr doesn’t want to talk about it.

Barr spoke briefly to The Fact Checker, off the record, before hanging up the phone.

Update: Jerry Nadler has asked Michael Horowitz to investigate Scott Brady for, among other things, his misleading testimony.

Update: Fixed year on Rudy’s trip to visit the Russian spies.

Happy Delaware Laptop Day, for Those Who Celebrate

/144 Comments/in , , /by

If I read the docket correctly, in a courtroom in Delaware today, Judge Robert Robinson will hear John Paul Mac Isaac’s motion to dismiss and Hunter Biden’s motion for summary judgement in the suit and countersuit over whether JPMI was legally entitled to first snoop through and then start disseminating data from a laptop JPMI claims to believe was dropped off by Hunter Biden, and whether a single statement Hunter Biden made about possibly being hacked that didn’t even name JPMI could be considered defamation.

Because CNN and Politico will also be arguing their motions to dismiss against the blind computer repairman in a follow-on to the same hearing, we might get some press coverage of the hearing. If not, it’s possible that a hearing that has the possibility of roiling 40 months of relentless Murdoch propaganda and both criminal cases against Hunter Biden will go uncovered.

No dick pic sniffer can control their glee that Hunter Biden has a deposition before Congress next week; they don’t seem to give a shit — or, even know — that a hearing that may determine the legal status of the laptop is happening today.

To mark the day, I wanted to return to a few details from Hunter Biden’s reply motion to compel from the other day.

First, on pages 3-4 in the section rebuking David Weiss for calling Keith Ablow’s photo of a photo of a table saw and sawdust a picture of Hunter Biden’s cocaine, the filing includes the text exchange explaining the photo.

2 The message excerpt on the following page is found on the data image provided to Mr. Biden by the prosecution (iPhoneXS_Chat_00000132). There is no Bates stamp for this material as discussed in Mr. Biden’s opening motion. (See Mot. at 18.)

The text appears to come from the iPhone XS that Gus Dimitrelos described as being encrypted on the device, along with a handy password stored right there on the laptop. Readers who have been following my voyage down the Hunter Biden rabbit hole will remember it all started when I read Gary Shapley’s notes indicating that the FBI, too, used a password discovered on the laptop to access the phone.

Laptop — iphone messages were on the hard drive but encrypted they didn’t get those messages until they looked at laptop and found a business card with the password on it so they were able to get into the iphone messages [my emphasis]

I opined at the time that, while the FBI might get away with accessing this encrypted device without a separate warrant, anyone else who accessed it — as Garrett Ziegler keeps confessing he did — may have committed a CFAA violation. Curiously, though, the FBI did get separate warrants for all the other devices backed up separately. That’s what the July 10, 2020 warrant did: permit the FBI to access four device backups that were already in hand, but that were separate backups.

Not this phone, though, the phone on which the photo of the photo of the table saw and sawdust that David Weiss claimed was cocaine might be found.

So on pages 3-4, Abbe Lowell explained that one place you might find Keith Ablow’s photo of the photo of the table saw and sawdust that Weiss misstook for cocaine was on a phone that was encrypted when the FBI first got the laptop.

Starting 16 pages later, Lowell returned to his request that prosecutors actually describe where they found particular pieces of evidence. Lowell explained that, yes, while it is true that last August he asked for an exact copy of the laptop, which “will be needed, for example, to challenge the chain of custody, provenance, or likely tampering with the data before it came into the possession of the government,” he also expected that prosecutors would provide some roadmap for where they’ve found things.

The prosecution mixes apples with oranges in charging that Mr. Biden is being “dishonest and misleading” in objecting to what the prosecution contends was a laptop it obtained being produced in the native format that he requested (Opp. at 19), but that is disingenuous. To be sure, Mr. Biden asked for an exact copy of the laptop so it could be examined in the same way in which it was originally found, which is helpful in making a forensic examination of the laptop. That will be needed, for example, to challenge the chain of custody, provenance, or likely tampering with the data before it came into the possession of the government.

However, this motion seeks something more—something traditionally provided in discovery. The crux of Mr. Biden’s complaint here is that the prosecution has not supplemented that production with an index or some other means that would identify which of the vast materials on the laptop the prosecution believes are relevant to this case. The request for the forensic copy is not the same. If the prosecution is claiming that it has not indexed the 220 gigabytes of data (which would be an odd statement), then it needsto say that, and, as with other requests, the dispute will end. If it does have what it normally has with vast amounts of e-data, without providing more, the defense is in a needle in a haystack situation.

Then he noted that the labels Derek Hines used for where investigators found things weren’t all that helpful, because those “titles [] are not even remotely descriptive of what they contain.”

This amount of mixed media data in this tech age is difficult to navigate. The text messages and photos cited by the prosecution in its motions, for example, are difficult to locate. They are “buried” in a convoluted collection of different backup folders and files and are not stored in one streamlined digital backup or application. The messages and photos cited come from “Apple iCloud Backup 01”; “Apple iTunes Backup”; “Apple iCloud Backup 04”; and “iTunes Backup (iPhone 11),” titles that are not even remotely descriptive of what they contain. (See DE 86-1.) For this reason, Mr. Biden requested an index of material (which the prosecution has now clarified it does not have), or Bates stamps for that which it had cited. (Opp. at 19.)

And not just what they contain, I’d add. The label, “iTunes Backup (iPhone 11),” which is where Hines described finding the photo of a photo of a table saw and sawdust almost certainly couldn’t be what Hines described it as — an iPhone 11 — because (as zscoreUSA noted) Apple didn’t announce the iPhone 11 until September 10, 2019, after the laptop was dropped off at JPMI’s shop and after a warrant was served on Apple.

I asked David Weiss’ spox about this, but it was another of a growing stack of questions of mine to which he didn’t even bother responding.

And Abbe Lowell — curse you! — isn’t much more help. Given his response that prosecutors have now fulfilled his request for guidance on where they found things, he must know whether iTunes Backup (iPhone 11) is that iPhone XS that was encrypted on the hard drive, but he’s not telling either.

In his opening motion, Mr. Biden merely requested, following the prosecution’s citation to myriad text messages and photos in its responses, that the prosecution indicate where on the image it provided Mr. Biden could find those referenced materials. (Mot. at 18.) The reason for this request was straightforward at the time: defense counsel could not locate certain of the messages and photos given the broad date ranges used by the prosecution to describe them (e.g., photos taken “Prior to October 12, 2018”; messages sent “prior to his gun purchase”; and photos taken “During November and December 2018”). (DE 86-1.) Mr. Biden appreciates that with the Exhibit filed with its opposition, the prosecution has now fulfilled this part of his request.

But Abbe Lowell did say this: at a meeting in August of last year, the first time when Lowell asked for a complete copy of the laptop (he had to ask again a month later), prosecutors told him that they had “independent sources” for everything helpful to their case.

As to the meeting between Mr. Biden’s counsel and prosecutors in Wilmington on August 29, 2023 (Opp. at 19), Mr. Biden notes that prosecutors indicated, during that meeting, that they possess “independent sources” for any material on the laptop device that would be helpful to the prosecution’s case, presumably referring to material subpoenaed from third parties, such as Apple, Inc. or various cellphone carriers. For this reason, it was curious to Mr. Biden’s counsel when reviewing the prosecution’s response that it elected to cite to and quote from messages and photos contained on the device it possessed (lacking any Bates stamps) rather than from those “independent sources” included in the discovery produced to the defense. That is precisely why Mr. Biden requested the prosecution indicate where on the device he could find the quoted messages and referenced photos, and why he suggested these files were “left buried” among a set of voluminous files that, as made clear now, span multiple iPhone, iTunes, and iCloud backups. (Opp. at 19 (quoting Mot. at 17).) Nevertheless, Mr. Biden appreciates the prosecution providing the folder locations of the messages and photos it referenced. [my emphasis]

Remember: when they said that on August 29, 2023, they still had never obtained a warrant to search the laptop, or any of Hunter’s Apple content, for that matter, for evidence to support the gun crime. They also had not, and still have not, indexed the laptop so they know what is on there and how it got there.

And prosecutors are still saying that everything they need is available on Hunter’s iCloud account. Sort of. In the passage of the response where Hines raised this August 2023 request, he insisted that, “the primary source of evidence in this case is the evidence obtained from the defendant’s Apple iCloud account, which was produced to the defendant in a readily searchable format.”

No. No it is not. Here’s my updated table of what Hines included in his exhibit, updated so that the photo of a photo of a table saw and sawdust appears where it temporally belongs, showing that an iPhone XS received a text from Keith Ablow on November 20, 2018, the same day that some anomalous activity was happening with Hunter’s droidhunter account and in a period when an iPad attributed to Hunter was otherwise sending (but with just one exception, not necessarily delivering) a whole bunch of texts about being an addict. I’ve highlighted the records that don’t include hex numbers and aren’t obviously sourced to one of the iCloud backups for dramatic effect. Lowell’s comment seems to confirm that Derek Hines sourced the highlighted records to the laptop.

In addition to the sawdust photo and one of a box that, a new commenter noted is also not from Hunter, it is from Hallie, and even if it indicates drug use, it is much earlier drug use, the most important texts to the government’s case, the ones between Hunter and Hallie while he possessed the gun, appear to be sourced to the laptop.

So in August, at a point when prosecutors had never gotten legal permission to search the laptop for evidence of gun crimes, they nevertheless assured Abbe Lowell that everything they needed was available via verifiable sources. And then this month — just days before a Delaware court may resolve the matter of whether JPMI owned the laptop when, he claims, an FBI agent told his father to lawyer up because, “You may be in possession of something you don’t own” — Hines claimed that, “the primary source of evidence in this case is the evidence obtained from the defendant’s Apple iCloud account, which was produced to the defendant in a readily searchable format.”

And then he sourced the most important texts to his case to the laptop — a source that not only isn’t readily searchable, but is not even indexed.

Happy Delaware laptop day, everyone. Things might start to get interesting.

Update: The docket reflects that Judge Robinson reserved judgment on Hunter Biden’s motion for summary judgment and CNN and Politico’s motions to dismiss.

Update: NBC’s Gary Grumbach did a thread on the hearing. By his description, Hunter Biden will kill the suit against him easily (unsurprisingly, as he didn’t even mention JPMI’s name). But Grumbach didn’t include much of what must be a legal discussion about JPMI’s decision to release the information to Rudy.

Update, from comments: A detailed local report on the hearing, providing the detail that the biggest problem for Hunter’s claims are that he waited too long to sue.

Illustration of all the dissemination implicated in today’s hearing from Thomas Fine.

Click here for Hunter Biden’s Eight Legal Chessboards including links to all filings and schedules for other cases, including the Delaware lawsuit.

David Weiss Was Planning on Using Alexander Smirnov’s Claims against the Bidens Until He Wasn’t Anymore

/124 Comments/in , , /by

On November 16, CNN reported on David Weiss’ ongoing use of a California grand jury. It reported that by that point, the FBI had concluded its renewed look at money laundering and FARA violations and was not going to file charges.

Prosecutors working under Weiss told a judge earlier this year that in addition to tax charges, they could also bring charges related to possible violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. Internal Revenue Service investigators who were part of the Hunter Biden investigation have alleged that the prosecutors slow-walked and blocked efforts to look into possible money laundering and foreign lobbying allegations.

The FBI, which oversaw the money laundering and FARA portions of the investigation, concluded its findings and didn’t anticipate charges to emerge from those allegations, people briefed on the matter told CNN.

That was over a month after the September 27 interview at which Smirnov renewed and expanded his lies. No charges were going to be filed on November 16, CNN reported.

But on November 15, Abbe Lowell asked for discovery on the Scott Brady side channel and subpoenas to serve on people like Trump and Bill Barr.

  1. All documents and records reflecting communications from January 20, 2017 to the present (the “Relevant Time Period”) to, from, between, or among Donald J. Trump, William P. Barr, Geoffrey Berman, Scott W. Brady, Richard Donoghue, or Jeffrey A. Rosen relating to or discussing any formal or informal investigation or prosecution of Hunter Biden, or a request thereof.
  2. All documents and records reflecting communications from the Relevant Time Period to, from, between, or among Donald J. Trump, William P. Barr, Geoffrey Berman, Scott W. Brady, Richard Donoghue, or Jeffrey A. Rosen and any Executive Branch official, political appointee, Department of Justice official, government agency, government official or staff person, cabinet member, or attorney for President Trump (personal or other) discussing or concerning Hunter Biden.

Lowell raised the Brady side channel in his selective prosecution filing, too. David Weiss’ responses to such requests always misrepresented the ask, pretending it pertained to no more than directions from Jeffrey Rosen’s office to avoid overt pre-election investigative steps.

And all the while, according to the Alexander Smirnov detention memo, he kept getting on planes to meet Russian spooks.

In October 2023, SMIRNOV had in-person conversations with RUSSIAN OFFICIAL 1 overseas. During these conversations, RUSSIAN OFFICIAL 1 discussed his knowledge and seeming control of two groups of Russian operatives who were previously tasked with the assassination of a high-ranking official of COUNTRY C. RUSSIAN OFFICIAL 1 offered to stop the assassination efforts in exchange for certain things, including an agreement by COUNTRY C to stop targeting civilian-family members of certain Russian officials living in Moscow

[snip]

SMIRNOV attended a meeting in COUNTRY A [probably UAE] in December 2023 that was attended by RUSSIAN OFFICIAL 2, a high-ranking member of a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. The primary purpose of the meeting was to discuss a potential resolution to the Russia-Ukraine war.

Against that background, there’s a detail in the Smirnov indictment that hasn’t attracted the attention it deserves.

David Weiss bases his authority for charging Smirnov — in California, not Delaware — on his Special Counsel authority.

41. In July 2023, the FBI requested that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware assist the FBI in an investigation of allegations related to the 2020 1023. At that time, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware was handling an investigation and prosecution of Businessperson 1.

42. On August 11, 2023, the Attorney General appointed David C. Weiss, the United States Attorney for the District of Delaware, as Special Counsel. The Special Counsel was authorized to conduct the investigation and prosecution of Businessperson 1, as well as “any matters that arose from that investigation, may arise from the Special Counsel’s investigation, or that are within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a).”

The only way Smirnov could be covered under that Special Counsel grant of authority is if, when investigators interviewed Smirnov on September 27, they were investigating Hunter Biden. David Weiss was made Special Counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, not those who framed him and his father.

There’s a lot that Weiss left out of the indictment, like Scott Brady’s claim to have vetted Smirnov’s travel records and Bill Barr’s claim that Weiss was ordered in 2020 to further investigate the claim and Richard Donoghue’s order to Weiss, just days after Trump yelled at Bill Barr for not doing enough to investigate Hunter Biden, to accept a briefing on Smirnov’s claims.

But that detail makes it clear that the point of the interview was to investigate Hunter Biden, not — not at first, anyway — to investigate Smirnov. This is why, if Abbe Lowell gets discovery on this issue, I think this footnote will be vindicated (an argument I made back in November).

4 The discussion about the scope of the immunity agreement appears shaped by the prosecution’s investigation of the Smirnov allegations, which it began looking into just days before the July 26, 2023 hearing. (Smirnov Indict. ¶ 41 (noting the prosecution team began investigating Smirnov’s claims in July 2023).) While a host of possible crimes had been investigated, the defense understood that the FARA/bribery investigation had been closed and that the only pending issues concerned gun and tax charges. The Diversion Agreement resolved the gun and tax charges, which is why defense counsel believed the immunity agreement covered everything and would conclude the investigation. The push back from the prosecution and its discussion of an “ongoing” investigation—apparently tied to the Smirnov allegations—came as a surprise to defense counsel. (7/26/23 Tr. at 50, 54.) Having taken Mr. Smirnov’s bait of grand, sensational charges, the Diversion Agreement that had just been entered into and Plea Agreement that was on the verge of being finalized suddenly became inconvenient for the prosecution, and it reversed course and repudiated those Agreements.

The reason why David Weiss reneged on a plea deal was to chase this bribery claim. The reason why David Weiss charged Hunter Biden with a bunch of felonies rather than resolving this in a diversion and misdemeanors was because he wanted to chase the false claims floated by someone dallying with Russian spies.

And I’d be willing to bet that if Lowell hadn’t asked for discovery that may expose that fact, David Weiss would never have indicted Alexander Smirnov.

Hunter Biden’s Motions to Dismiss: The Technical Complaints

/12 Comments/in , /by

As noted, yesterday Hunter Biden filed eight motions to dismiss and a ninth motion to strike. Three of these — an immunity argument, a claim that David Weiss was not eligible to be Special Counsel, and a selective prosecution claim — are versions of MTDs filed in Delaware. A fourth argues that the disgruntled whistleblowers engaged in outrageous conduct.

The rest are technical complaints about the way David Weiss charged this. In combination, those motions to dismiss describe Weiss as having charged a scheme not to pay taxes that extended into the period of Hunter Biden’s sobriety, rather than a failure to pay taxes during the period of his worst addiction. If some or all of these motions succeed, it will chip away at much of the indictment against Hunter.

To understand how this works, consider a detail from the filing arguing that the statutes of limitation for one of the charges, pertaining to 2016, have expired. It notes that the indictment charges 2016 as a failure to pay, rather than a failure to file.

Trying to avoid the SOL bar for Count 1, the prosecution alleges that Mr. Biden’s failure to pay his 2016 taxes did not occur until June 2020, when his accountants late-filed his 2016 returns noting an outstanding amount,

But that creates a problem, because if Hunter’s crime occurred in 2020, then all the evidence in the indictment regarding 2017 — and, Abbe Lowell argues, all the other tax years — is worthless.

Alternatively, the prosecution’s allegation that Mr. Biden’s alleged failure to pay first became willful in 2020 means all counts (all of which require the prosecution to prove willfulness) must be dismissed for failure to state an offense pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12(b)(3)(B)(v). This is because the prosecution would be conceding that its allegations of Mr. Biden’s knowledge and failure to meet his tax obligations in 2017 are insufficient to allege willfulness. (See Indict. ¶¶ 53–59 (alleging willfulness in 2020 when Mr. Biden late filed his returns based on the same or similar allegations of knowledge alleged in 2017).) And if the prosecution concedes that the facts in 2017 do not allege willfulness, it must agree the same allegations do not allege willfulness any other year.

In short, the prosecution cannot escape its dilemma. If it asserts, consistent with the allegations in the Indictment, that Mr. Biden willfully refused to pay his taxes when they were due on April 18, 2017, then Count 1 is barred by the SOL. If the prosecution instead claims that Mr. Biden did not willfully fail to pay until he filed his returns in 2020, then it relies solely on allegations it agrees are insufficient to allege willfulness in 2017, which requires dismissal of all counts for failure to state an offense pursuant to Rule 12(b)(3)(B)(v) since all counts relay on the same evidence. And if the prosecution refuses to clarify its position on willfulness one way or another, then the Indictment fails to meet the specificity requirements of Rules 7(c) and 12(b)(3)(B)(iii). Thus, while the prosecution may, in its opposition, pick its poison, either Count 1 or all counts must be dismissed.

Lowell describes a similar problem in the duplicity filing. Prosecutors are simultaneously claiming that Hunter failed to pay his taxes in the tax year in question and in the year he filed — 2018 and 2019, as well as 2020.

Count 2 charges Mr. Biden with willfully failing to pay income taxes due on April 17, 2018 and February 18, 2020 for the same tax year, while Count 4 charges Mr. Biden with willfully failing to pay income taxes due on April 15, 2019 and February 18, 2020 again for the same tax year.

And there’s another problem with the 2019 taxes: COVID. Lowell argues that because Hunter has since paid the 2019 taxes that would have been due while the government was providing COVID restrictions, that count is itself problematic.

Among the collection procedures implemented, “[s]ome individual taxpayers who only owe for the 2019 tax year and who owe less than $250,000 may qualify to set up an Installment Agreement without a notice of federal tax lien filed by the IRS.”1 (Ex. A) Other terms included that the IRS would offer “flexibility for some taxpayers who are temporarily unable to meet the payment terms of an accepted Offer in Compromise.” For the 2019 tax year, Mr. Biden had a self-assessed tax due of only $197,372, so he was in the range of taxpayers who were not being targeted for criminal enforcement.

Moreover, a records search indicates that, at the time, the IRS chose not to file a notice of federal tax lien2 regarding Mr. Biden’s 2019 taxes, even though Mr. Biden did not formally seek such relief under the IRS’s COVID-19 program.

This is less persuasive: the described leniency is for those who are otherwise current. Hunter wasn’t in 2020. Still, it makes the decision to charge 2019 all the more problematic.

Which seems to be the point of the surplussage filing, which is not a motion to dismiss, but instead a request for Weiss to lose the salacious commentary about Hunter’s lifestyle.

Moreover, the Indictment includes numerous allegations about Mr. Biden’s finances at irrelevant times, such as 2020 when he late filed his tax returns. (DE 1 at 55.) As Mr. Biden explains in the contemporaneously filed Motion to Dismiss Count I, the fact Mr. Biden’s accountants late filed his past returns in 2020 does not render the 2020 filing date any sort of legal payment or filing deadline. See Motion to Dismiss Count I at 10. Therefore, even if allegations about Mr. Biden’s finances had any relevance, allegations about his finances long after he is accused of committing the charged offenses are irrelevant and present a high risk of prejudice and jury confusion

Lowell also complains that prosecutors made a big deal about where Hunter got money from.

Finally, the Indictment includes a whole section of allegations related to incoming payments to Mr. Biden from different sources that it alleges indicate Mr. Biden’s ability to pay his taxes at various times. (DE 1 at 29 – 30.) As noted, Mr. Biden’s ability to pay is irrelevant to his intent to pay taxes or file returns and the Court should therefore strike these allegations as well.

By excluding such allegations (except for 2018, where payments to sex workers are key to claims of improper business deductions), Lowell would exclude a lot of what would draw the dick pic sniffers, if this goes to trial.

Finally, there’s a bigger technical complaint: for all years but 2019, Hunter (claims he) wasn’t a California resident.

With respect to failure to pay claims (Counts 1, 2, and 4), the CTM explains “a person required to pay a tax must pay the tax at the place fixed for filing the return” and “[v]enue would therefore normally be in the district in which the return was filed.” CTM Section 10.06[5] (2024). That is because if the return is not filed on time, the prosecution “normally would [charge] failure to file rather than a failure to pay.” Id. Counts 1, 2, and 4 allege Mr. Biden failed to file his returns on time, yet the prosecution nevertheless proceeded with failure to pay charges. More specifically, Count 1 alleges Mr. Biden willfully failed to pay his 2016 taxes by April 18, 2017, Count 2 alleges Mr. Biden willfully failed to pay his 2017 taxes by April 17, 2018, and Count 4 alleges Mr. Biden willfully failed to pay his 2018 taxes on April 15, 2019.

The CTM explains that, for failure to file claims, the district “in which the taxpayer was required to file a return for the year at issue” is where “the crime was committed.” CTM Section 10.05[7] (2024). For individuals, tax returns must be filed in the district in which the taxpayer lives. Id. Count 3 of the Indictment alleges Mr. Biden failed to file his 2017 returns by the extended deadline of October 15, 2018.

As noted, Mr. Biden moved to California in the summer of 2019, which the prosecution knows. Because the Indictment alleges Counts 1-4 occurred before then when Mr. Biden was living outside of California and was required to file and pay his taxes outside of California, venue is not proper in California for those charges, and they must be dismissed from the Indictment pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 18.

This is certainly true of 2016 and 2017.

If these technical filings succeed — and some of them seem quite clear — it will chip away at much of the indictment (though may result in charges in DC).

Technical filings

Untimely

Duplicity

Specific selective prosecution (2019)

Machala declaration

IRS announcement

IRS Covid announcement

IRS Covid announcement 2

Venue

Surplussage

Machala declaration

Indictment

Alexander Smirnov Admits Russian Spies Passed on Lies about Hunter Biden

/66 Comments/in , , /by

The detention memo for Alexander Smirnov is here. David Weiss’ team says Smirnov can’t be released because he had plans for a months long trip starting on February 16, he has $6 million in the bank, and he has ties to spies from multiple countries.

Apparently, after he was arrested last week, he admitted that some of the claims about Hunter Biden he repeated came from Russian spies.

During his custodial interview on February 14, Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Businessperson 1.

[snip]

While Smirnov has no ties to the community in Las Vegas, what he does have is extensive foreign ties, including, most troublingly and by his own account, contact with foreign intelligence services, including Russian intelligence agencies, and has had such contacts recently. Smirnov could use these contacts to resettle outside the United States.

As noted, law enforcement knows about Smirnov’s contact with officials affiliated with Russian intelligence because Smirnov himself reported on a number of those contacts to his FBI Handler.

Update: David Weiss and his team are dangerous incompetents. The Nevada judge released Smirnov with a GPS monitor. It’s the right decision, but insane from a national security perspective.

Smirnov and [a]Blow

/55 Comments/in , , /by

There should be a slew of Hunter Biden filings coming in today, most in CA.

I’ll post them here until I do a longer read.

But they’ve filed their first one — a reply on their motion to compel — that we can have fun with in the meantime.

Hunter’s lawyers mock David Weiss, first, for mistaking sawdust for cocaine (they cite me), and then raise the arrest of Alexander Smirnov.

The Smirnov bit is the more important argument, because it makes the same (in my very humble opinion) compelling argument I did: That the renewed focus on the Smirmov allegations are probably what led David Weiss to renege on a plea deal.

Another development, just last week, further informs Mr. Biden’s request for an now motion to compel discover. On February 15, 2024, Special Counsel David Weiss unsealed the remarkable indictment of former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov. United States v. Smirnov, 2:24-cr-00091-ODW (C.D. Cal.). The Special Counsel’s indictment notes that Mr. Smirnov expressed his “bias” against President Biaden and was telling a farcical tale that Burisma, a Ukrainian company, enlisted Mr. Biden as an unregistered foreign agent and paid bribes to him and then-Vice President Biden that proved to be so outlandish and unsubstantiated that the FBI field team recommended its investigation be closed and the then-FBI Deputy Director and thenPrincipal Associate Deputy Attorney General (Richard Donoghue) agreed in August 2020. 3 (Id. DE1 at ¶ 40 (“Smirnov Indict.”).) Nevertheless, with prodding from extremist Republican Members of Congress (who initiated an impeachment inquiry of President Biden based on the same baseless allegations) and the right-wing media, the prosecution team that was already pursuing Mr. Biden resuscitated the baseless investigation of Mr. Smirnov’s ridiculous claims against Mr. Biden thirty-four months later. (Id. ¶ 41.) It now seems clear that the Smirnov allegations infected this case, and why, on July 26, 2023, the Special Counsel answered as it did the Court’s question about whether the Diversion Agreement’s immunity provision would bar charges under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (7/26/23 Tr. at 55). 4

Lo and behold, some seven months later, the Special Counsel finally figured out that Mr. Smirnov was lying—which should have been obvious to everyone, certainly by August 2020 when DOJ closed the investigation. The Special Counsel charged Mr. Smirnov with lying and obstruction, but the more interesting part of this story is not that Mr. Smirnov lied. It is more remarkable that beginning in July 2023, the Special Counsel’s team would follow Mr. Smirnov down his rabbit hole of lies as long as it did. (Smirnov Indict. ¶¶ 41–46.) Disclosure about why the Special Counsel abandoned its June/July 2023 agreements with Mr. Biden and the role played by the Smirnov allegations may reveal flaws worse than mistaking sawdust for cocaine.5 Despite the prosecution’s strong words in its opposition to this motion, its actions demonstrate that the prosecution has gotten much wrong and provides good cause for Mr. Biden to question whether it has gotten its discovery obligations right.

3 Mr. Biden’s DOJ requests (see infra at 18–19), as well as his Rule 17 subpoena requests (DE 58) seeking communications and records from, among others, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue and former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania Scott Brady, bear directly on and are probative of the allegations in the Smirnov Indictment. The fact that Special Counsel Weiss handled the Smirnov investigation and is prosecuting the case makes Mr. Biden’s requests all the more important.

4 The discussion about the scope of the immunity agreement appears shaped by the prosecution’s investigation of the Smirnov allegations, which it began looking into just days before the July 26, 2023 hearing. (Smirnov Indict. ¶ 41 (noting the prosecution team began investigating Smirnov’s claims in July 2023).) While a host of possible crimes had been investigated, the defense understood that the FARA/bribery investigation had been closed and that the only pending issues concerned gun and tax charges. The Diversion Agreement resolved the gun and tax charges, which is why defense counsel believed the immunity agreement covered everything and would conclude the investigation. The push back from the prosecution and its discussion of an “ongoing” investigation—apparently tied to the Smirnov allegations—came as a surprise to defense counsel. (7/26/23 Tr. at 50, 54.) Having taken Mr. Smirnov’s bait of grand, sensational charges, the Diversion Agreement that had just been entered into and Plea Agreement that was on the verge of being finalized suddenly became inconvenient for the prosecution, and it reversed course and repudiated those Agreements.

5 The prosecution’s outrage over criminal activity by those associated with its investigation remains rather selective. Last month, a former government contractor working at the IRS, who unlawfully leaked private taxpayer information concerning former President Trump , was sentenced to five years in prison—a significant sentence for a serious crime. United States v. Charles E. Littlejohn, No. 23-cr-00343-ACR (D.D.C. 2023). Nevertheless, two IRS agents on the prosecution’s team investigating Mr. Biden blatantly and publicly did the same thing, on television no less, and yet they have not been prosecuted or even fired by the IRS. Mr. Biden raised the agents’ misconduct several times with the Inspector General and Mr. Weiss. Neither have yet acknowledged the complaint. Thus, Mr. Biden brought a civil action based on these agents’ misconduct and their agency’s failure to act. Biden v. IRS, No. 23-cv-02711-TJK (D.D.C. 2023). Still, however, neither the IRS nor the prosecution has taken action against them. Ironically, the same extremist Republican voices who now angrily complain that Mr. Trump’s leaker got off too easy simultaneously claim the two IRS agents who leaked confidential tax information concerning Mr. Biden should be hailed as courageous “whistleblowers.” Chairman Jordan Opens Inquiry into DOJ’s Sweetheart Deal for Trump Tax Return Leaker, H. Judiciary Comm. (Feb. 8, 2024), https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/chairman-jordan-opens-inquiry-dojs-sweetheartdeal-trump-tax-return-leaker; Arjun Singh, Top GOP Rep Calls On More Whistleblowers To Come Forward, Pledges ‘Zero Tolerance’ For Retaliation, Daily Caller (July 19, 2023), https://dailycaller.com/2023/07/19/jason-smith-irs-whistleblower-retaliation/. The prosecution’s various actions and inactions send the very message that Mr. Biden’s motions to dismiss allege— misbehave when dealing with former President Trump and there will be consequences; do the same in the unprecedented charges against Mr. Biden and you will be praised.

This will be the last briefing Judge Maryellen Noreika gets before deciding on the motions to dismiss, so the timing of the Smirnov indictment becomes important.

Anyway, I’ll update when those other filings get posted.

Robert Hur Snooped Through Joe Biden’s Diaries after White House Warned It Would Be Unprecedented

/48 Comments/in , , /by

Much of the press focus (Politico, NYT, WaPo) on the correspondence between Joe Biden’s lawyers and DOJ has focused on Biden’s complaints about Robert Hur’s old geezer comments.

But a September 2023 letter (published by WaPo) regarding the way Robert Hur snooped through Biden’s diaries, which Hur called notebooks to excuse his own prurience, is actually far more troubling.

The letter asserts, then substantiates, a claim that, “at no time in the last thirty years has the Government, including the Department, viewed as actionable the possibility of classified information in the individual writings of a former President or Vice President.”

It describes what happened with Biden’s diaries:

  • January 20, 2023: Hur seizes Biden’s personal diaries and notebooks
  • February 27, 2023: Stuart Delery writes letter noting that DOJ, courts, and Congress have recognized the unique status of presidential and vice-presidential writings
  • Hur reviews diaries in their entirety without prior review by the White House Counsel’s Office
  • Hur sends selections for “classification review” by the Intelligence Community
  • October 8-9, 2023: Hur questions President Biden in the context of a criminal investigation about these materials

It then goes through the record, showing how the government found classified information in not just Reagan’s, but also Poppy Bush’s diaries, as part of Iran-Contra, but didn’t do anything about the diaries themselves outside the context of the focus on Iran-Contra.

It then goes through the publication history of Jimmy Carter’s diaries and memoirs from George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, and Mike Pence to suggest they had used memorializations to write books that had classified information in them when first submitted to National Security Council for discretionary review.

The description of what happened with Pence’s memoir is most telling. In the very same weeks when Hur was blowing off a letter from Stuart Delery telling him no one had done this before, DOJ’s investigation of Mike Pence made no apparent move to do the same with any notes he used to write his memoir.

Former Vice President Mike Pence published his own memoir on November 15, 2022. Mike Pence, SO HELP ME GOD (2022). Even though Mr. Pence, as a Vice President, had not signed any agreement requiring pre-clearance review, he voluntarily submitted his manuscript to the NSC prior to publication for review for classified information.

Emmet Flood of Williams & Connolly submitted the manuscript to the NSC in June 2022. Ryan Cole, an Indiana writer, was copied on correspondence. We are unaware of whether these two individuals possessed security clearances at the time, or whether draft manuscripts were handled in accordance with security protocols for classified information, but the manuscript was not sent to the NSC under the requirements for transmitting classified materials.

The NSC review resulted in a number of proposed redactions of presumably classified information, which Vice President Pence and his team accepted to the manuscript before it was published.

Two months after the publication date, Vice President Pence’s attorneys discovered classified government documents in his home in Indiana, and the National Archives was notified two days later. Katherine Faulders et al., FBI finds Another Classified Document in Search of Former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home, ABC NEWS (Feb. 10, 2023). A consent search of the home was conducted by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents on February 10, 2023, during which an additional classified document was found and “six additional pages” were also seized. Id. It is unclear the nature of the additional pages. We do not know whether the agents searched for drafts of the manuscript that the NSC had determined contained material that needed to be redacted.

But one thing is clear: the manuscript prepared by Mr. Pence with the help of Mr. Cole and Mr. Flood, which presumably also was reviewed by the publishers at Simon & Schuster, contained material that the NSC required to be redacted. Yet, even including the later search for classified documents, we know of no law enforcement inquiry into this writing.

Hur might retort that Trump’s notes got seized in 2022, along with marked classified documents and a whole shit-ton of other documents that belong to the archives under the Presidential Records Act.

But there’s no public hint that Jack Smith assessed those for criminal exposure. There’s just one document charged against Trump, in any case, that has neither date nor classified markings, such that it might be a note.

There’s an unstated reason why Hur’s obstinance about treating Biden’s diaries differently than other prosecutors before him: because when he was making the decision to snoop through all of Biden’s diaries, Biden was under investigation for a crime that was never going to get charged, but his son was under investigation for crimes that — under Hur’s former colleagues and subordinates in the Maryland US Attorney’s Office — did end up getting charged, probably only because one of them reneged on a diversion and plea deal because an FBI informant empowered by Bill Barr attempted to frame Biden and his son. Hur’s descriptions of Biden’s diaries, which he describes to “include[] gut-wrenching passages about his son’s death and other highly personal material,” make it pretty clear they include information that could be detrimental to Hunter. In fact, it’s not yet clear whether DOJ has returned Biden’s diaries, or whether they’re still treating him differently, even as Hur’s former subordinates use pictures of sawdust to try to convict Hunter Biden.

It’s really hard to treat Hur’s decision to treat Biden differently as anything else but an attempt to snoop through Biden’s diaries in search of other dirt.

And he did that in spite of fairly compelling arguments that he was doing something unprecedented.

Update: Bob Bauer wrote a Lawfare piece debunking some claims made by Ben Wittes that gets at the diaries distinction.

image_print