Robert Costello Reveals He Was Working for Steve Bannon a Year before He Was Publicly Hired

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After belatedly joining Steve Bannon’s defense team as DOJ was collecting evidence about whether his claims matched the available evidence, Robert Costello is now asking to withdraw, citing a concern — one DOJ raised in a phone call on December 2, the same day he filed his notice of appearance — that he might have to serve as a witness.

The decision to withdraw just days before trial is interesting in any case.

All the more so given Costello’s claim that he has represented Bannon for the past three years.

Maybe he has … maybe he has!

Curiously, though, that conflicts with the known timeline of how his relationship with Bannon came about. You’ll recall that until November 6, 2020, Bannon was ably represented — through a serially evolving story in the Mueller investigation — by Bill Burck. But then, on November 5, 2020, Bannon threatened to behead the FBI Director and the COVID Czar.

So Burck essentially fired Bannon. According to Burck’s court filing, Bannon was, at that point, hiring new counsel.

A month later, on December 11, 2020, at a time when according to public reports, Trump was offering pardons to those, like Bannon, implicated in the Build the Wall fraud, in exchange to those who helped his coup attempt, Costello filed his notice of appearance for Bannon — at least by context, he was the new counsel.

Maybe my math is off, but December 11, 2020 is less than three years ago — less than two, even!!

All that said, Costello — who was implicated in the Mueller investigation for attempting to broker a pardon to keep Michael Cohen silent — was being hired by someone roughly three years ago, though it wasn’t Bannon. It was this guy, Rudy Giuliani, the guy through whom Costello had previously attempted to broker a pardon.

The legal representation of Trumpsters is always so incestuous it’s hard to tell where representation for one person begins and the other ends (as a reminder, Bannon’s other two lawyers either used to — David Schoen — or reportedly still do — Evan Corcoran — also represent Trump). But at least according to Costello’s filing, he’s been representing both Bannon and Rudy all this time.

Georgia Grand Jury Subpoenas Include False State Farm Arena Claims

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As multiple outlets have reported, Fulton County DA Fani Willis has obtained subpoenas for Rudy Giuliani, Kenneth Cheesebro, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Jacki Pick Deason, Cleta Mitchell, and Lindsey Graham. (Thanks to Georgia Public Radio for releasing all the documents.)

The subpoenas reveal that the scope of the investigation is broader than originally understood (which previously was limited to Trump’s call to Brad Raffensperger to ask him for almost 12,000 votes).

For example, a number of the subpoenas have language similar to this, from Rudy’s subpoena.

As part of those efforts, on December 3, 2020, the Witness and other individuals known to be associated with both him and the Trump Campaign appeared publicly before the Georgia State Senate at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia. At that hearing, the Witness provided testimony, additional witnesses, and documentary evidence purporting to demonstrate the existence of election fraud in multiple Georgia counties during the administration of the November 2020 election. Among the evidence offered by the Witness was a video recording of election workers at State Farm Arena in Atlanta that purported to show election workers producing “suitcases” of unlawful ballots from unknown sources, outside the view of election poll watchers. Within 24 hours of the December 3, 2020, legislative hearing, the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office debunked the State Farm video and explained that its investigation revealed no voter fraud of any kind had taken place at State Farm Arena. Despite this, the Witness made additional statements, both to the public and in subsequent legislative hearings, claiming widespread voter fraud in Georgia during the November 2020 election and using the now-debunked State Farm video in support of those statements. There is evidence that the Witness’s appearance and testimony at the hearing was part of a multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.

That is, the investigation appears to have expanded to include the false claims made about the counting at State Farm Arena, including the vicious attacks on Shaye Moss and her mother.

Which means the investigation may incorporate threats not just against senior officials like Raffensperger, but also line workers like Moss who were terrorized by Rudy’s false claims.

South Carolinians Converging at the East Door … and Hampton Inn

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I’d like to look at how two men from South Carolina who stayed at the Hampton Inn together, George Tenney and Robbie Norwood, serially played key roles in opening the East Door on January 6.

As I noted in a post last July, Tenney was arrested with a former Marine named Darrell Youngers, though the subsequent investigation seems to have confirmed that they first met that day. The two of them entered the Capitol together at 2:19PM and went fairly directly to the East door by 2:24PM, where Tenney was the first to attempt to open that door to admit the thousands who had assembled outside. After tussling with the cops for a bit, the two gave up and left the Capitol.

Youngers was charged with just trespassing, but Tenney was charged with three felonies — obstruction, civil disorder, and assault — reflecting in part his contact with the cops and presumably also his premeditation in the weeks leading up to January 6.

When the men first started talking about pleading guilty, Youngers’ lawyer suggested they were sharing information with the government (though that doesn’t show up in their guilty pleas).

On March 30, Youngers pled guilty to parading, the trespassing charge most misdemeanor defendants plead to. His statement of offense focused on three things: Tenney’s efforts to open the East doors (and the contact he had with cops in doing so), Youngers’ own description of the “multiple doors” involved in breaching the Capitol, and an interview he and Tenney gave with William Norwood later that night.

12. YOUNGERS and Tenney proceeded to the area inside the Rotunda Doors. Tenney tried to force open the Rotunda Doors to allow more rioters to enter the Capitol, and he had contact with multiple federal employees in the course of doing so. Tenney and others succeeded in getting the Rotunda Doors open, allowing others to enter the Capitol.

13. YOUNGERS and Tenney eventually moved into the Rotunda. Before leaving the area of the Rotunda Doors, YOUNGERS said, “Two stories. Two floors. Multiple doors. The Capitol Building’s been breached.” YOUNGERS and Tenney retreated to the Rotunda and made their way to the area near Senate Wing Doors, exiting the Capitol Building through a window at approximately 2:32 p.m.

14. That evening, YOUNGERS gave an interview from a hotel room with Tenney and William Robert Norwood III, where they wore masks and head coverings to conceal their identities.

Here’s that interview, which Youngers, Norwood, and Tenney (from left to right) gave while masked.

Norwood — who according to his first bail hearing used to be in a militia, about three years ago — was arrested months earlier than the other two. He had been turned in by family members shortly after the attack after he bragged (falsely) about assaulting a cop. He does appear to know Tenney from South Carolina, but entered the Capitol separately, four minutes after him at 2:23. In a second motion for detention, the government alleged that Norwood led rioters to Nancy Pelosi’s office before joining the later effort to open the East door — the one that led to the Oath Keepers and others breaching the building. After allegedly asking his estranged wife to lie about his case, he was detained, though he and the government are in plea discussions.

Youngers’ plea agreement included the standard language January 6 misdemeanor pleas include, consisting of either a social media review and/or an interview with the FBI, suggesting (though the inclusion of such boilerplate is not reliable) he had not yet done so.

Your client agrees to allow law enforcement agents to conduct an interview of your client regarding the events in and around January 6, 2021 prior to sentencing. Your client can accomplish this through an in-person meeting with a law enforcement agent to allow the law enforcement agent to look through social media accounts on your client’s phone or other device.

The plea agreement Tenney entered into last Thursday, however, lacks that language, which may suggest he already did one or some interviews with the FBI. If Tenney did, he didn’t get much of a deal: he pled to two of the felonies against him: civil disorder and obstruction, avoiding only an assault charge for wrestling with cops. Depending on whether DOJ succeeds in persuading Judge Thomas Hogan to apply an 8-level enhancement for official victim/property damage, Tenney’s sentencing guidelines will be 21 to 27 months (without the enhancement) or 41 to 51 months (with it) — the latter of which would be one of the stiffest sentences to date for a prosecution that didn’t involve assaulting a cop, but which might be appropriate for the tactically critical role that opening that East door played in occupying the Capitol.

But I’m more interested in Tenney’s statement of offense, particularly how it compares to his and Youngers’ arrest affidavit. That is, I’m interested in any sign that DOJ has learned why and how Tenney came to head right through the Capitol to the East side to open that door, where thousands were waiting, or whether Norwood’s subsequent successful efforts (as part of a larger group) to open the East doors was related.

With Tenney’s guilty plea, the government has included slightly more language from December 28 indicating that Tenney was coordinating with people who were planning for all eventualities.

In two bail proceedings the government focused on Norwood’s lies about leaving the vest and helmet he stole at the hotel. But he also appears to have lied about with whom he was staying at the Hampton, claiming he stayed with an older couple from Ohio rather than people close to his same age from nearby in South Carolina.

Finally, NORWOOD claimed that upon leaving the Capitol grounds, he and his wife met an older couple from Ohio, who invited them to stay in their hotel room at the Hampton Inn for the night. NORWOOD claimed that he left the police vest and helmet inside the hotel room, but he could not provide interviewing agents with any further details about the hotel.

After Norwood was interviewed. by the FBI, he let Tenney know about it, because Tenney told the FBI that he knew about it in an (similarly misleading) interview little over two weeks later.

TENNEY said that he was only inside the Capitol Building for three or four minutes before he and the people he was with realized that something bad was happening, prompting them to leave. He indicated that he did not think he was doing anything wrong at the time, but, in hindsight, wishes he had not gone inside the Capitol Building. TENNEY further stated that he did not engage in any violence inside or cause property damage. Instead, he said, he told people to stop damaging things and helped officers who had fallen to the ground to get back on their feet.

[snip]

During his February 9 interview, TENNEY also mentioned two other names: “Darnell,” (YOUNGERS’ first name is “Darrell”) and a person he identified as “Robbie” from Greenville, S.C., whom he said had already been interviewed by the FBI. TENNEY admitted to having met “Robbie” in the crowd at the January 6 rally, before he entered the Capitol.

In an interview after his arrest, Norwood admitted sharing a hotel room with Tenney.

In a subsequent interview on February 26, 2021, Norwood mentioned sharing a hotel room the night of January 6 with an individual named “George,” which is TENNEY’s first name.

What happened in that hotel room appears to be some of the substance of what Norwood was trying to convince his estranged wife to renege her testimony on months later, leading up to January (when prosecutors first asked Judge Emmet Sullivan to revoke Norwood’s bail).

The content of the defendant’s text messages with his estranged wife, appended as attachments to Pretrial’s Violation Report, show what appears to be a sustained campaign by the defendant to coerce, intimidate, threaten, and corruptly persuade a potential government witness to recant her statements to law enforcement and to obstruct justice. Communications between the estranged wife and defense counsel, which are also appended as attachments to Pretrial’s Violation Report, provide context for the text messages between the defendant and his estranged wife: “Robert Norwood has been trying to [coerce] me into emailing you, stating that, anything from my statements to the FBI were not true. However, I do not feel comfortable lying [sic] about anything. . . . I do not feel comfortable in anything that he was telling me to do.”

[snip]

The estranged wife’s communications with Norwood and with Norwood’s counsel show that the defendant has, at the very least, been pressuring his estranged wife to recant her statements to the FBI, to not be truthful, and to “keep [her] mouth shut.” ECF No. 29, Att. 3. In fact, when the estranged wife texted the defendant, “I will tell the whole truth,” the defendant responded, “No you won’t . . . You’ll tell them you reached out to me and made the offer. That I didn’t respond to you . . . Do not throw me under the bus . . . What part of spousal privilege don’t you get???” Id. Additionally, when the estranged wife texted the defendant, “I refuse to write another bogus f***ing email,” the defendant responded, “It’s not bogus, and it will help us both. . . . Do what you said you already did. You lied to me. STUP F***ING LYING ABOUT EVERYTHING AND HELP ME LIKE YOU SAID YOU WOULD.”

To be clear: it’s not clear what relationship there is between Tenney and Norwood, aside from their shared hotel room and proximity in South Carolina. It’s their shared focus on the East door.

At 2:24, after making a beeline through the Capitol, Tenney was the first person to open the East door.

And about fourteen minutes later, Norwood similarly helped open the East door.

Then later that night, the two men donned masks and told their stories of the day, stories that presumably explain how both came to help rioters amassed on the East side of the building open a second front of attack.

By December 28, 2020, Tenney knew of plans to siege the Capitol. On January 6, he and fellow South Carolinian Norwood both played key roles in that siege.

So what happened in between?

Thanks to @CapitolHunters for pointing me to this video, which takes forever to download, which shows both breaches, and to talk me through some of the other people of interest who have yet to be arrested.

Amid Claims of Witness Tampering, Revisiting Peter Navarro’s Alleged Contempt

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Last week, Steve Bannon engaged in a stunt, claiming that a Carl Nichols order requiring DOJ to provide official documents on things like executive privilege and testimonial immunity must cover DOJ’s declination decision with respect to Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino.

The stunt itself isn’t all that interesting.

Bannon claimed that he refused to testify in part on the same basis that Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino did, and so understanding how DOJ had distinguished them (whose prosecution DOJ declined) from him (who got charged) would reflect official policy.

The letters Trump lawyer Justin Clark sent to Meadows and Scavino made one difference clear, however (which the Bannon filing obliquely acknowledges). In instructing Meadows and Scavino to refuse to testify to the January 6 Committee as much as possible, Clark included language invoking testimonial immunity, on top of Executive Privilege.

Furthermore, President Trump believes that Mr. Meadows is immune from compelled congressional testimony on matters related to his official responsibilities. See Testimonial Immunity Before Congress of the Former Counsel to the President, [citing the Don McGahn OLC opinion]

The letter that Clark sent Bannon on the same day, October 6, had no such language on testimony immunity.

Indeed, after Robert Costello kept making claims about Trump instructing Bannon not to testify, Clark emailed him twice more, the first time to resend the same letter, and the second time to explicitly say that they didn’t think Bannon had testimonial immunity.

In light of press reports regarding your client I wanted to reach out. Just to reiterate, our letter referenced below didn’t indicate that we believe there is immunity from testimony for your client. As I indicated to you the other day, we don’t believe there is. Now, you may have made a different determination. That is entirely your call. But as I also indicated the other day other avenues to invoke the privilege — if you believe it to be appropriate — exist and are your responsibility.

Effectively, Trump’s team told Bannon to stall, but gave him no legal tools to do so. Bannon didn’t entirely ignore testimonial immunity. In a footnote, he accused Carl Nichols of misapplying the law with respect to immunity and privilege.

Finally, on this question, the Court’s oral Order of June 15, 2022, appears to indicate a view by the Court that Justin Clark’s view on the question of “immunity” is either relevant or somehow undercuts the invocation of executive privilege. It certainly is not relevant – immunity, unlike, executive privilege is not a legal concept for the President to invoke or confer and his view on “immunity” is of no consequence at all on the question of whether executive privilege was invoked. It was.

But he said the common invocation of Executive Privilege was itself enough to merit a more formal comparison (ignoring, of course, that Meadows provided some materials to the Committee that did not involve the President, whereas Bannon withheld even his public podcasts).

Though some of the news reports he cites name Peter Navarro, Bannon doesn’t invoke his case. In Navarro’s now-withdrawn lawsuit against the Committee, he invoked both testimonial immunity and Executive Privilege. But he cites no letter from Trump; instead, he relies on the same Don McGahn OLC opinion Bannon invoked in his filing. Of course, by the time Navarro was subpoenaed — February 9, as compared to the September 23 subpoenas for Bannon, Meadows, and Scavino (as well as Kash Patel) — SCOTUS had already ruled against Trump’s privilege claim.

So it may be that DOJ’s decision tree regarding charges looks like this:

Bannon’s filing may be a stunt, but he may be right that DOJ didn’t charge Meadows and Scavino because they could claim to have been covered by both Executive Privilege and testimonial immunity (and in Meadows’ case, even attempted to comply with non-privileged materials).

Given the evidence in Tuesday’s hearing that Trump and his associates continued to try to influence Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony at least through March 7, I want to return to something I noted before: because Navarro didn’t lawyer up, whatever communications he exchanged with Trump’s lawyers would not be privileged.

After Bannon got indicted for contempt, DOJ obtained the call records for his lawyer, Robert Costello’s, communications going all the way back to when Costello’s previous representation of Bannon ended. If they did that with Navarro, they could get more than the call records, though.

Whatever else DOJ did with their charging decision, they also allowed themselves the greatest visibility into ongoing obstruction, while sustaining the case in chief.

The Men Disputing Cassidy Hutchinson’s Retelling of Trump’s SUV Lunge Got Warnings about Plans to Flood the Capitol

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Since Cassidy Hutchinson’s startling testimony on Tuesday, credulous journalists have reported anonymous sources pushing back against one of her most dramatic stories: that when told he was not going to the Capitol on January 6, Donald Trump lunged towards the steering wheel of the SUV taking him back to the White House and then went after the clavicle of the head of his detail, Bobby Engel.

On top of being anonymous, the pushback never disputed Hutchinson’s claim: that she was told this story by Tony Ornato, the Secret Service Officer that Trump elevated into an important political position at the White House, Deputy Chief of Staff, in front of Engel, who did not dispute the story. Plus, Alyssa Farrah has described that Ornato, in the past, has disputed things she said under oath (about Trump’s stunt in Lafayette Square), without himself going under oath.

Nevertheless, that anonymous pushback has distracted from a far more alarming detail in Tuesday’s testimony that Ornato and Engel have not disputed, neither on or off the record: that they got warnings about plans to occupy buildings in DC and, implicitly, warnings about Proud Boy involvement.

That revelation came just before Hutchinson affirmed a detail I’ve been almost alone in reporting for over a year: Not just Roger Stone, but also Rudy Giuliani, had links to the Proud Boys.

Cheney: US Secret Service was looking at similar information and watching the planned demonstrations. In fact, their Intelligence Division sent several emails to White House personnel, like Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato and the head of the President’s protective detail Robert Engel, including certain materials listing events like those on the screen.

Cheney: The White House continued to receive updates about planned demonstrations, including information regarding the Proud Boys organizing and planning to attend events on January 6. Although Ms. Hutchinson has no detailed knowledge of any planning involving the Proud Boys for January 6, she did note this:

{video}

Hutchinson: I recall hearing the word[s], “Oath Keeper,” hearing the word[s], “Proud Boys,” closer to the planning of the January 6 rally when Mr. Giuliani would be around.

The reference to Ornato and Engel is among the first in Tuesday’s hearing: while Cheney had previewed Hutchinson’s interactions with Ornato and the Secret Service in her introduction, this reference was the first substantive description of Ornato’s activities. That description, as well as Hutchinson’s explanation of how she told Trump’s National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien that Ornato had had a conversation with Mark Meadows about the warnings of violence, came even before Cheney cued Hutchinson to explain what an important role the Deputy Chief of Staff played.

Some time later, the hearing revealed texts between Hutchinson and Ornato reflecting the latter’s awareness that Trump’s supporters were trying to avoid the metal detectors.

Importantly, Cheney mentioned something about this text exchange that doesn’t appear in the texts shown on the screen: a discussion between the two of them — Hutchinson and Ornato — about an “OTR,” an “off the record” movement to get Trump to the Capitol. The Committee appears to be withholding precisely what those texts say — involving Trump personally, and so colorably covered under Executive Privilege.

That may not be the only thing the Committee withheld from its presentation: note in my transcription above that Cheney doesn’t say Ornato and Engel received the warnings that were flashed on the screen. She says they received, “certain materials listing events like those on the screen.” [my emphasis] Particularly given the reports that the Committee met in a secure facility in advance of this hearing, that phrasing could allow for other records, records too sensitive to show publicly, tying the Proud Boys to plans to occupy buildings on January 6.

The story of Trump lunging in the SUV is a distraction, and Ornato, a loyal Trumpster, is likely using his pushback to distract from far more damning details of Hutchinson’s testimony:

  • Both Engel and Ornato had warnings of plans to occupy buildings
  • Hutchinson linked Rudy Giuliani in advance of the attack to both militias that attacked the Capitol
  • Ornato discussed these warnings in advance with Mark Meadows, who pushed Hutchinson away twice during the early moments of the attack
  • In spite of foreknowledge of a plan to occupy buildings and the involvement of militias, Ornato nevertheless continued to plan to take Trump to the Capitol

Secret Service loyalists, for all their anonymous pushback, are denying none of these far more damning details, details that put them — and Meadows and Trump — in far more complicit position with respect to the attack.

Pat Cipollone Predicted the Obstruction and ConFraudUS Prosecutions

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This morning, for the second time in two weeks, Liz Cheney called out former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, by name, to cooperate with the January 6 Committee.

Yesterday’s testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson revealed one reason why his testimony would be so important. He predicted — on January 3 or 4th — that Trump might be prosecuted under the very same crimes DOJ has been charging for well over a year: conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of the vote certification.

Cheney: We understand, Ms. Hutchinson, that you also spoke to Mr. Cipollone on the morning of the Sixth, as you were about to go to the rally on the Ellipse. And Mr. Cipollone said something to you like, “make sure the movement to the Capitol does not happen.” Is that correct?

Hutchinson: That’s correct. I saw Mr. Cipollone right before I walked out onto West Exec that morning and Mr. Cipollone said something to the effect of, “Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy. Keep in touch with me. We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.”

Cheney: And do you remember which crimes Mr. Cipollone was concerned with?

Hutchinson: In the days leading up to the sixth, we had conversations about obstructing justice of defrauding the electoral count.

Cheney: Let’s hear about some of those concerns that you mentioned earlier in one of your interviews with us.

{video clip}

Hutchinson: … having a private conversation with Pat on the after noon of third or fourth, um, that Pat was concerned it would look like we were obstructing justice, or obstructing the electoral college count. I apologize for probably not being very firm with my legal terms here.

Or rather, Cipollone didn’t predict Trump would be charged with ConFraudUS and obstruction. He predicted “we” would, presumably including himself and even Hutchinson.

Here I’ve thought I was ahead of the curve by predicting — last August — that if Trump were prosecuted, it would be for those crimes. It turns out that Trump’s White House Counsel was way ahead of me, predicting the same even before the insurrection!

Cipollone’s recognition of this legal exposure is important for a number of reasons. First, it validates DOJ’s approach — and does so in advance of the DC Circuit’s consideration of DOJ’s appeal of Carl Nichols’ outlier opinion rejecting such an application.

Those are also the crimes named in the warrant served on Jeffrey Clark last week.

But Cipollone’s awareness of this exposure also may explain why Cipollone has been reluctant to testify (though it’s possible he has testified with DOJ and simply doesn’t want that to be public). Hutchinson laid out a number of things that Cipollone did on January 6 that made it clear he was not willingly going along with Trump’s actions, most notably his efforts to get Trump to call off his mob before Trump re-ignited them with his 2:24 text attacking Mike Pence again. If there was a conspiracy to obstruct the vote certification, he took overt acts to leave that conspiracy before and during the conspiracy on January 6.

By that point, however, it may have been too late for Cipollone to avoid all exposure to Trump’s corrupt actions. That’s because Cipollone would have been involved in the pardons of those — Cheney focused on Roger Stone and Mike Flynn last night, but Bernie Kerik and Paul Manafort also got pardons — who would go on to play key roles in Trump’s insurrection. (I assume Cipollone was not involved in the Bannon pardon that came after the attack, and I noted in real time that Cipollone likely prevented a bunch of other pardons that would have made obstruction more likely.) That is, Cipollone might have exposure for obstruction for actions already taken by January 3 or 4 when he explained this legal exposure to Hutchinson.

Even Bill Barr said that rewarding false testimony with a pardon would be obstruction. And Roger Stone, Mike Flynn, and Paul Manafort all delivered on that quid pro quo.

For all Liz Cheney’s specific exhortations, Cipollone may know better than to testify to Congress. Because without testifying to DOJ, first, that may cause him more legal trouble than his current (presumed) silence.

Update: As a number of people in comments noted, the Committee has formally subpoenaed Cipollone.

Cassidy Hutchinson Proves that Trump Knew the Mob He Sicced on Mike Pence Was Armed

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Cassidy Hutchinson just gave absolutely historic testimony implicating Donald Trump, Mark Meadows, and other in January 6. (My live tweet is here.) The woman is incredibly poised and courageous. Her testimony might help to turn the tide against Trumpism in this country.

But her testimony is not enough, yet, to charge Trump in January 6.

Without taking anything away from her dramatic testimony, I’d like to boil down what she said that will be useful in holding Trump accountable.

She only recently committed to delivering this testimony

The Committee announced Hutchinson’s testimony just yesterday, less than 24-hours before her testimony, in spite of the fact that she had already sat for three interviews with the committee, as well as a fourth quite recently. The decision to testify was so recent that members of the Committee had to fly back from their recess to attend.

A key reason she was willing to testify more forthrightly, it seems clear, is she recently (earlier this month) replaced her lawyer from a Trump loyalist to Jody Hunt. Hunt, once Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Chief of Staff, is still a conservative Republican, but he has spent years holding up principle against Trump.

Particularly given his ties to the department, it’s likely that Hunt will happily guide Hutchinson to share this testimony with DOJ.

For those asking why DOJ didn’t have this testimony earlier, the answer is simple: It has taken a process for Hutchinson to get here.

She is a firsthand witness to important details

A number of things Hutchinson said are damning direct evidence against Trump or others. But it’s important to break that down, because while all of it would be admissible in a conspiracy, not all of it would be admissible against Trump.

  • In a conversation on January 2, Giuliani told Hutchinson Trump was going to go to the Capitol; when she asked Meadows about this, he said “things might get real bad on the Sixth.” This implicates both Rudy and Meadows in foreknowledge, though not Trump directly.
  • Hutchinson provided evidence that there was intelligence warning of violence (and that John Ratcliffe knew about it); she did not say — though it’s likely — that Meadows and Trump had the same awareness.
  • Hutchinson described that there were mentions of militia in advance in discussions implicating Rudy in advance of the insurrection. These would need to be more specific to be worthwhile evidence, but she may be able to point DOJ to where to get more specifics.
  • Hutchinson described advance knowledge of Trump supporters bringing weapons both in advance of January 6 and that day. Hutchinson specifically said that Meadows did not act on these warnings. She also made it clear that Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato had spoken to the President about the weapons, but she did not say she knew what happened in that conversation.
  • Hutchinson’s testimony on a really critical point includes some ambiguity. In conversations at the White House and then later at the rally, Trump saw the crowd on January 6 and was furious more of his supporters weren’t inside the arena. He was aware many supporters were staying outside the arena because they didn’t want to go through the magnetometers because they had weapons. He asked to ditch the magnetometers because “they weren’t there to hurt him.” This detail is most important because it reflect knowledge on Trump’s part they were armed, before he riled them up and sent them to the Capitol. But in a trial, he would excuse letting them into the rally itself by pointing to his long-standing crowd narcissism, exhibited most famously at his inauguration.
  • Some of Hutchinson’s most damning testimony involved his insistence on going to the Capitol. Some of this — the most damning, her description of how he lunged at his Secret Service detail when he refused to take Trump to the Capitol — was second-hand. It would require Ornato or Trump Secret Service Agent in Charge Bobby Engel to present that in a trial. Plus, Trump would offer less incriminating explanations for why he wanted to go to the Capitol. Hutchinson mentioned he wanted to enter the chamber, though, which should be developed more (because he would require an invitation). The Secret Service is now pushing back on this.
  • During the rally at the Ellipse, Mark Meadows twice pushed Hutchinson away when she was trying to warn him of violence at the Capitol. This squandered 20-25 minutes in which he might have responded to the initial violence, but since he did nothing for hours anyway, it made little difference. It does, however, reflect Meadows’ own disinterest in protecting the country.
  • Hutchinson’s description of efforts to keep belligerent language out of Trump’s speech reflects on Pat Cipollone’s foreknowledge of Trump’s criminal exposure, but probably would require Cipollone’s testimony to be admissible against Trump. Hutchinson described Cipollone’s legal concerns about going to the Capitol, as well, but not necessarily that he explained that to Trump.
  • Hutchinson alluded to discussions involving Mark Meadows, Rudy, and Scott Perry about what they would have done if Trump had made it to the Capitol, but she explicitly said she wasn’t sure which of those plans were shared with Trump.
  • At Trump’s request, Mark Meadows remained in the loop with Mike Flynn and Roger Stone on January 5 which may help implicate Meadows in the militia planning; Hutchinson discouraged Meadows from attending the War Room at the Willard in person, but he did call in.
  • After the attack started Hutchinson described, Meadows telling Cipollone that “he doesn’t want to do anything,” suggesting the President didn’t want to respond at all to the Capitol attack. But that would require testimony from one or both of them to clarify the meaning.
  • Perhaps the most damning part of her testimony described that Meadows and Cipollone were in the Oval with Trump discussing the hang Mike Pence chants just before Trump put up the 2:24 tweet claiming Pence hadn’t shown courage. It’s in that conversation where Trump said, “Mike deserves it.” This goes a long way to proving the deliberate effort by Trump to put Pence at more risk. But DOJ would need another witness and/or some corroboration for the timeline to place the “Mike deserves it” comment to just before Trump sent the tweet.
  • The Committee presented some of the calls from others, including Ivanka, for Trump to call off the rioters; Hutchinson’s testimony will be one part of the evidence that Trump did nothing during the attack (though Meadows’ comment that “Trump didn’t want to do anything” may be more important to show affirmative refusal, but DOJ would need to get Meadows’ testimony on that point).
  • Hutchinson also testified that both Rudy and Meadows wanted a pardon after January 6, which implicates them, but not Trump.

Hutchinson may lead to or force the testimony of others

Whether it happens with the January 6 Committee or DOJ, Hutchinson’s is the kind of testimony that might identify witnesses who would cooperate with DOJ or against whom Hutchinson’s testimony could be used to coerce cooperation.

For example, there’s a greater (Cipollone) or lesser (Kevin McCarthy) that her testimony will embarrass or otherwise convince other witnesses to cooperate with the Committee.

Her testimony identified other White House staffers who were also witnesses to Trump’s demands that the Secret Service ditch the magnetometers or that he go to the Capitol, who would make key witnesses for DOJ.

If Ornato and Trump’s Secret Service detail have been unwilling to testify, this may make it easier to obtain their testimony.

Hutchinson’s testimony tied Rudy to the militias in advance. She also established Rudy’s foreknowledge of a plan to go to the Capitol. These might be really important details implicating Rudy (plus she was witness to some of his earlier efforts to sow the Big Lie.

Her testimony tied Meadows into the plotting at the Willard (on Trump’s orders). And she otherwise depicted Meadows as taking no action because Trump didn’t want to. The case against Meadows would/will need to be far more robust, but having testified against him publicly, she’s likely to be able to offer DOJ far more.

Liz Cheney raised witness tampering in this hearing, without naming names. It’s quite possible Hutchinson has firsthand knowledge of that.

Trump sicced a mob he knew to be armed on his Vice President

To sum up, the most important pieces of testimony show that Trump knew well a significant number of the people at his rally were armed. And after siccing them on his Vice President (and trying to join them), instead of calling them off, he instead further incited violence against Pence, claiming at the moment he did so that they were right to attack Pence.

House January 6 Committee: Public Hearings – Day 6

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This post and comment thread are dedicated to the House January 6 Committee hearings scheduled to begin Tuesday June 28, 2022 at 1:00 p.m. ET.

This hearing has been convened on short notice issued yesterday afternoon.

Please take all comments unrelated to the hearings to a different thread.

The hearings will stream on:

House J6 Committee’s website: https://january6th.house.gov/news/watch-live

House J6 Committee’s YouTube page: https://youtu.be/HeQNV-aQ_jU

C-SPAN’s House J6 hearing page: https://www.c-span.org/video/?521387-1/sixth-hearing-investigation-capitol-attack

C-SPAN’s YouTube page: https://youtu.be/hSNBe-Wt6Q4

Check PBS for your local affiliate’s stream: https://www.pbs.org/ (see upper right corner)

Twitter is carrying multiple live streams (NBC, PBS, Washington Post, Reuters, CSPAN, Bloomberg): https://twitter.com/i/events/1541478015770603520

Broadcast and cable network coverage TBD.

Twitter accounts live tweeting the hearing:

Marcy’s Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1541829534248566784

Brandi Buchman-DailyKos: https://twitter.com/Brandi_Buchman/status/1541826101588140034

Scott MacFarlane-CBS: https://twitter.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/1541825113938616321

Laura Rozen: https://twitter.com/lrozen/status/1541829799169122308

Chris Geidner: https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1541841253939253253

If you know of any other credible source tweeting the coverage, please share a link in comments.

The witness scheduled for today’s hearing is:

Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows

Hutchinson will appear today before the committee to “present recently obtained evidence and receive witness testimony” and out of concerns for her physical safety, according to Punchbowl News’ newsletter.

Hutchinson also recently changed legal representation. Her lawyer had been Stefan Passantino who was connected to Trump; he has been replaced with Jody Hunt who in turn is connected to the Trump administration’s first attorney general, former senator Jeff Sessions. Hutchinson is reported to have become more cooperative with the committee once she changed attorneys.

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Any updates will appear at the bottom of this post; please bear with any content burps as this page may be edited as the day progresses.

Again, this post is dedicated to the House January 6 Committee  and topics addressed in testimony and evidence produced during the hearing.

All other discussion should be in threads under the appropriate post with open discussion under the most recent Trash Talk.

To new readers and commenters: welcome to emptywheel. New commenters, please use a unique name to differentiate yourself; use the same username each time you comment.

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If you are sharing active links your comment may be delayed by auto-moderation.

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Side note:

According to Fox News’ Pergram in the Twitter thread above, Stenger had cancer.

Do note Stenger’s death has set off a lot of right-wing conspiracy trolling.

As Ali Alexander Returns to DC in Wake of Grand Jury Appearance, Alex Jones’ Associates Owen Shroyer and Joe Biggs Share a Lawyer

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In an attempt to quash rumors that he was the surprise witness before the January 6 Committee today (he’s not; former Mark Meadows assistant Cassidy Hutchinson is), Ali Alexander complained that the January 6 Committee didn’t let him testify publicly.

On at least four occasions, my legal counsel asked the Committee to allow my deposition to be taken publicly so that the American public could operate from a shared set of facts. The Committee denied our requests to make my testimony public again and again. Instead, they me behind closed doors for 8 hours, at my own expense, depriving me of meals or making my return flight back home. [emphasis original]

That follows a statement issued last Friday, after his (first?) grand jury appearance complaining that DOJ didn’t just use his transcript from the January 6 Committee.

I provided the documents requested and suggested they obtain my full transcript of my testimony from the January 6 Committee. They responded then that they cannot obtain those transcripts due to separation of powers and thus, they needed me to repeat my testimony here today.

I almost feel a little sorry for Alexander. This Roger Stone mentee has been sent out with the same lawyer, Paul Kamenar, who helped Stone evade real accountability for his Russian operation in 2016 (in that case, by helping Andrew Miller challenge a subpoena for a year before he ultimately joined Stone’s defense team). Perhaps Alexander thought he was going to replay that same Roger Stone script, with him playing the role that Jerome Corsi did, publicly releasing a cover story as a way to get everyone telling the same false story.

To be sure, Alexander was always fucked, because by the time he told his cover story in December, DOJ had already debunked that cover story when Owen Shroyer tried to tell it. So not only was Alexander stuck, Friday, trying to retell the same story that he told in December, but even if he succeeded, he’d be on the hook for a story that Judge Tim Kelly has already ruled to be inaccurate specifically as regards the choices that the Alex Jones retinue made after they arrived at the Capitol on January 6.

In any case, Alexander will be back in DC today talking to “officials” some more about January 6. It’s unclear whether this is a follow-up interview with DOJ, now that they’ve locked Alexander into a story, or whether the GOP will attempt to serve as a clearinghouse for stories, as HPSCI did with the Russian investigation.

But Ali Alexander, a key member of Alex Jones’ retinue, is not done telling his currently operative story yet. Perhaps, if he is interviewed further, Alexander will be asked about Stop the Steal communications first made available by Brandon Straka in spring 2021, and probably bolstered by Baked Alaska earlier this year, communications that also seem to be inconsistent with Alexander’s currently operative story.

Like I said, I almost feel sorry that Alexander agreed to play the role of Roger Stone’s patsy in this go-around, because DOJ is better situated to deal with Stone’s games this time around.

For all the focus on Alexander, that makes two other recent developments rather interesting.

First, in a status hearing on Thursday, prosecutors revealed that they had only recently received the content from Alex Jones sidekick Owen Shroyer’s phone. They were providing it, unscoped, to Shroyer’s attorney, Norm Pattis, so he can have a sense of what’s there in advance of DOJ providing him the “scoped” content (“scoped” content is the stuff that the FBI determines complies with the warrant). In that case, the sides at least claim they’re discussing a plea, with plans for a status or that plea in 45 days.

Which makes the other recent development more interesting. On June 14, Norm Pattis joined Joe Biggs’ defense team.

 

This means that Pattis formally represents two Alex Jones associates — one who currently works for InfoWars and one who worked for Jones until he got “fired” for pushing PizzaGate in 2016 — who converged at the top of the East steps on January 6; Pattis has a longtime affiliation with Jones too.

And unless and until DOJ raises conflict issues with the men (which they’re not likely to do unless and until Jones himself is charged), Pattis will have full access to what are believed to be both sides of conversations that took place in advance of and on January 6 which resulted in an Alex Jones-led mob arriving just as the carefully orchestrated Proud Boy attack on the Capitol needed large numbers of additional, unwitting “normies” to fill the building. That’s a pretty critical set of discovery.

So one member of the retinue is struggling quite obviously with his effort to come up with a consistent story (after telling one that has already been debunked), while the other members of the retinue have arranged to be in a position to share the most important discovery from the day back and forth.

Things have gotten downright interesting with the convergence of once and current Jones flunkies at the East side of the Capitol on January 6.

“All Texts Demanded!” Right Wingers No Longer Worried about “Wiped” Phones, John Eastman Edition…

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As noted in the last thread, more than twelve hours later on the same day that federal agents conducted a search on Jeffrey Clark’s home in Virginia, FBI agents seized John Eastman’s phone as he was leaving a restaurant in Santa Fe. He has launched a bozo lawsuit attempting to get the phone back. And as part of that, he released the warrant used to seize his phone.

Orin Kerr has a long thread treating the bozo lawsuit seriously here — noting among other things that Constitutional law professor John Eastman forgot he was in New Mexico and therefore in the Tenth Circuit, not the Ninth. File411 has a post treating it like the bozo suit it is here.

But I’m interested in the warrant itself. As many people have noted (including Eastman himself), the warrant is from DOJ IG’s Cyber Division, not DC USAO. CNN has a helpful explanation for that: at least on the Eastman search, DOJ IG is engaged in fairly unusual coordination with the USAO (which explains all the squirreliness about which Federal agents had searched Clark’s home).

Federal agents from the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General, which is coordinating with the wider FBI and US attorney investigation into January 6, 2021, last week raided the home of former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, a source familiar previously told CNN. That search — during which the Justice Department inspector general’s participation had not been previously reported — came the same day as Eastman’s.

The inspector general investigates accusations of legal violations by Justice Department employees and has the ability to conduct searches and seizures. After investigating, the inspector general can refer possible criminal matters to prosecutors.

That makes a reference in the search warrant more interesting. This is just a seizure warrant, not a warrant authorizing the search of the phone. And it states that agents will bring the phone either the DOJ IG forensic lab in Northern Virginia or to some unidentified location in DC; it doesn’t mention the FBI’s Quantico facility, though that is also in NoVA and even experts on DOJ IG aren’t aware of any dedicated forensic lab DOJ IG has.

This warrant would be consistent with use in parallel investigations, the DC (or Main) investigation into Trump and Eastman as well as a DOJ IG investigation into January 6 that Michael Horowitz announced in early 2021. I’ve been wondering whether DOJ IG’s investigation(s), which can be quite slow, have delayed the review of DOJ’s conduct. This may be the solution: coordinated investigations. In his January 2021 announcement, Horowitz addressed that concern.

The DOJ OIG is mindful of the sensitive nature of the ongoing criminal investigations and prosecutions related to the events of January 6. Consistent with long-standing OIG practice, in conducting this review, the DOJ OIG will take care to ensure that the review does not interfere with these investigations or prosecutions.

In other words, this seizure may actually reflect at least two underlying search warrants, and as such may be an attempt to obscure (like the original Rudy Giuliani warrants would have) the focus of the underlying January 6 investigation. That is, DOJ IG could hand Eastman a warrant for an investigation into Jeffrey Clark, and that would be sufficient to answer his demands for a warrant, even if there were a more substantive warrant for the DCUSAO investigation.

That’s why the timing is of interest. As File411 notes, it was authorized on June 17, so after the Big Lie January 6 Committee hearing, but five days before it was executed on June 22. If this warrant was a response to the January 6 Committee hearings, it wasn’t a response to the hearing focused on Jeffrey Clark, but rather on one focused on Eastman.

In the days ahead, you will hear wailing about how poor Constitutional attorney John Eastman had his privacy abridged — that’s the point of the bozo lawsuit, just like Russian oligarchs do. But the very same people who’ll be whining were huge fans of DOJ IG’s best known cyber work — a 2018 report explaining why the FBI’s text archiving system hadn’t captured 19,000 texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

Trump Strzok Text

That investigation, like this one, appears to be focused on a DOJ employee who has already resigned (though the earlier report was started when Strzok and Page were still at FBI). And given the seizure of devices, it may be focused on inappropriate politicization of DOJ — the allegation at the core of investigations into Strzok and Page, yet for which DOJ IG never substantiated proof.

Both Rudy and Trump are on the record supporting such DOJ IG investigations into phones for evidence of improper politicization. Chances are they’re going to be less enthusiastic now that the subjects of the investigation are John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark.