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Roger Stone Points to Evidence His Witness Tampering Worked to Argue Selective Prosecution

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In an order rejecting most of Roger Stone’s first frivolous efforts to throw out his prosecution, Amy Berman Jackson explains why Randy Credico is not similarly situated to Stone for the purposes of his selective prosecution claim.

Defendant also characterizes Randy Credico as a similarly situated individual. In reliance upon a sealed transcript of Credico’s July 6, 2017 grand jury testimony, Stone identifies two statements Credico made about his communications with Stone that are inconsistent with the indictment and Stone’s own text messages. First, according to the defendant’s motion, Credico stated that he never discussed the head of Organization 1 with Stone, yet the Indictment in this case quotes an August 23, 2016 conversation between Stone and Credico in which they discuss the head of Organization 1.26 Disc. Mot. at 6; see Indictment ¶ 14(e). Second, Stone asserts that Credico provided information that he had never spoken to Stone about WikiLeaks prior to September 10, 2016, but Stone released text messages from August 19, 2016 in which Credico told Stone that he had a connection to Assange. Disc. Mem. at 7. [my emphasis]

What ABJ reveals — without saying so explicitly — is that Stone is pointing to lies Credico told at a previously undisclosed grand jury appearance. Credico’s previously known grand jury appearance was on September 7, 2018, over a year after the one in which Stone says he lied.

But that’s the entire point: Stone is accused of issuing threats to induce Credico to lie. And he has just made public evidence that — at a time when he was making those threats — Credico risked perjury charges in order to do as Stone wanted him to.

It’s a bad day for rat-fucking when in an attempt to mount a defense you make evidence public that your crimes were worse than previously known.

Right Wing “News” Site Deleted One of the Videos Prosecutors Wanted to Use at Roger Stone’s Trial

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Roger Stone and the government are beginning their fight over what evidence will be included and excluded in his November trial. The motions in limine submitted yesterday include:

  • A government motion to exclude any discussion about 1) Russian involvement in the hack of the DNC and 2) any coordination — or lack thereof — with Russia
  • A Stone motion to admit evidence that WikiLeaks did not receive the DNC, DCCC, or John Podesta emails from the Russian state (note the careful phrasing, which avoids addressing whether Russia did the hack itself); Stone does not explain what evidence he wants to submit, aside from mentioning his earlier motions related to this, which Amy Berman Jackson is sure to ding him for
  • A government motion to exclude claims of misconduct about the investigation
  • A government motion to admit this video from the Godfather II to explain what Stone’s allusions to Frank Pentangeli mean
  • A sealed government motion to submit two newspaper articles as part of 404(b) evidence (if I had to guess, I’d say these articles show that Stone not only had records of communications he denied having to HPSCI, but shared them with journalists when it became convenient)
  • A future government motion to admit the transcript of Stone’s HPSCI testimony (the government had tried to get Stone to stipulate to the accuracy of this transcript, but Stone ultimately refused a few days ago)
  • A government motion to admit the upload dates for various videos mentioned in the Indictment

The last motion is partly an attempt to lay out the timeline in these paragraphs of the indictment:

Starting in early August 2016, after receiving the August 2, 2016 email from Person 1, STONE made repeated statements about information he claimed to have learned from the head of Organization 1.

a. On or about August 8, 2016, STONE attended a public event at which he stated, “I actually have communicated with [the head of Organization 1]. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation, but there’s no telling what the October surprise may be.”

b. On or about August 12, 2016, STONE stated during an interview that he was “in communication with [the head of Organization 1]” but was “not at liberty to discuss what I have.”

c. On or about August 16, 2016, STONE stated during an interview that “it became known on this program that I have had some back-channel communication with [Organization 1] and [the head of Organization 1].” In a second interview on or about the same day, STONE stated that he “communicated with [the head of Organization 1]” and that they had a “mutual acquaintance who is a fine gentleman.”

d. On or about August 18, 2016, STONE stated during a television interview that he had communicated with the head of Organization 1 through an “intermediary, somebody who is a mutual friend.”

When the government requested the upload times for the videos in paragraphs a through c on June 5 (the August 18 appearance was on CSPAN, from whom the government asked separately and even earlier for that upload time), they asked for the upload times of seven videos, including the ones linked above, this video of Julian Assange talking about WikiLeaks’ upcoming dump on Hillary Clinton, this August 4 interview with Alex Jones alleging Russia didn’t do the hack, and a Media Matters version of Stone’s August 8 Broward appearance (they posted it over 24 hours before Stone did).

But, as noted, one of those videos — described as a August 16 Alex Jones interview of Roger Stone — is not linked. As Google noted,

Regarding your attached legal request, after a diligent search and reasonable inquiry, we have found no records for any YouTube video file(s) identified as HXXwf-9otzU, as specified in your request. Therefore, we do not have documents responsive to your request.

The video was a mirror of the Alex Jones interview hosted by the right wing “news” channel, OpenMind.

There actually is a video of the interview (which actually appears to have taken place on August 15, not August 16), available from another site that mirrors Jones. But it appears that other site deleted the video; I’m fairly sure that happened after the government asked for it (the request was revealed the day it was filed).

The discrepancy of a day is not that great (and the government covered itself in any case with the “on or about” language. But I do find it mildly interesting that a propaganda channel tried to make the video unavailable.

Roger Stone Lawyer Bruce Rogow Concedes His CrowdStrike Ploy Was Just That

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Most of the reporting on Roger Stone’s status hearing yesterday has focused on whether Judge Amy Berman Jackson would hold Stone in contempt for violating her gag. She did find he had violated her gag, but responded only by prohibiting him from using Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram — an outcome consistent with what I laid out here. Shortly after the hearing ended, Stone’s spouse, Nydia, posted a picture of the two of them on Instagram, though on terms that are within the terms permitted by ABJ’s gag.

I’m more interested, however, in the exchanges covering Stone’s Fourth Amendment challenge to all the warrants against him and his demand to obtain full copies of the CrowdStrike reports (including descriptions of what new defenses CrowdStrike implemented) provided to the Democrats and shared with the FBI, a pair of motions that Stone successfully used to inflame conspiracies among frothy right and denialist left.

It was always clear this was about disinformation. After all, the very same lawyers had argued for the very same client that Russia did do the hack in the DNC lawsuit.

Predictably, ABJ was clearly having none of the Fourth Amendment challenge. She repeatedly challenged Stone’s motion by undermining his false claim, noting that the FBI relied on the US Intelligence Committee’s attribution of the DNC hack to Russia and not — as Stone had claimed and the useful idiots responding to his motion had repeated unquestioningly — the CrowdStrike reports. Aaron Zelinsky sounded like a DFH blogger when he described the effort as an attempt, “to backdoor a debunked conspiracy theory.”

A more telling moment came when ABJ got Bruce Rogow to concede that Stone’s team had not acted as if they really needed the CrowdStrike reports, as they had claimed to inflame their useful idiots.

The government had represented they didn’t have the full reports (as noted, in the reports the Democrats shared with the FBI, they redacted the information describing what they did to harden their networks).

At the direction of the DNC and DCCC’s legal counsel, CrowdStrike prepared three draft reports.1 Copies of these reports were subsequently produced voluntarily to the government by counsel for the DNC and DCCC. 2 At the time of the voluntary production, counsel for the DNC told the government that the redacted material concerned steps taken to remediate the attack and to harden the DNC and DCCC systems against future attack. According to counsel, no redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors. The government has also provided defense counsel the opportunity to review additional reports obtained from CrowdStrike related to the hack.

[snip]

As the government has advised the defendant in a letter following the defendant’s filing, the government does not possess the material the defendant seeks; the material was provided to the government by counsel for the DNC with the remediation information redacted. However, the government has provided defense counsel the opportunity to review additional unredacted CrowdStrike reports it possesses, and defense counsel has done so. 3

1 Although the reports produced to the defendant are marked “draft,” counsel for the DNC and DCCC informed the government that they are the last version of the report produced.

2 The defendant describes the reports as “ heavily redacted documents,” Doc. 103, at 1. One report is thirty-one pages; only five lines in the executive summary are redacted. Another runs sixty-two pages, and redactions appear on twelve pages. The last report is fifty-four pages, and redactions appear on ten pages.

3 These materials are likewise not covered by Brady, but the government produced them for defense counsel review in an abundance of caution.

As ABJ noted, given the representation that the government doesn’t have full unredacted reports, asking for them from the government is pointless, something Rogow conceded. The way to get the full reports, ABJ noted, would be to subpoena them from the Democrats or CrowdStrike itself.

And Stone’s lawyer admitted they hadn’t done that.

This is tantamount to a confession that Stone never really needed the documents in the first place, but instead only wanted to use them to stake a false claim about them in the press.

And given the large number of people who repeated the claim credulously, that effort succeeded.

Update: After issuing a minute order yesterday, ABJ issued a written one today, making it clear that Stone can’t just move to Gab or have Nydia post for him to get around the gag.

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

Jim Jordan’s Bubble Has Allowed Him to Remain Painfully Stupid about the Mueller Investigation

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Politico has a piece on Republican plans to blow up Robert Mueller’s testimony later this month with stupid questions. It’s a fair piece; it even quotes Louie Gohmert calling Mueller an asshole, in as many words.

The Texas congressman added that his reading of the special counsel’s report did little to temper his long history of animosity for the former FBI director: “It reinforced the anal opening that I believe Mueller to be.”

But it misses an opportunity when it presents what Jim Jordan imagines will be a doozy of a question with only a minimal fact check.

But Republicans preparing over the next two-plus weeks to questionMueller say they have their own points they hope to drive home to Americans as well. Several indicated they intend to press Mueller on when he first determined he lacked evidence to charge Americans with conspiring with Russia — insinuating, without evidence, that he allowed suspicions to linger long after he had shifted his focus to the obstruction of justice investigation.

“The obvious question is the one that everyone in the country wants to know: when did you first know there was no conspiracy, coordination or collusion?” said Jordan, one of the Republicans’ fiercest investigators. “How much longer did it take Bob Mueller to figure that out? Did he intentionally wait until after 2018 midterms, or what?”

Mueller emphasized in his report that he did not make a finding on “collusion,” since it’s not a legal term, and that his decision not to bring charges didn’t mean he found no evidence of them.

If Jim Jordan, who has been spending most of his time as a legislator in the last year investigating this investigation, were not so painfully stupid, he would know not only that not “everyone in the country” feels the need to know when Mueller finalized a decision about conspiracy, but that attentive people already do know that Bob Mueller wasn’t the one who decided to wait out the mid-terms.

The Mueller team told Amy Berman Jackson that Paul Manafort had breached his plea agreement on November 26, 2018. His last grand jury appearance — on November 2 — did not show up in his breach discussion (meaning he may have told the truth, including about Trump’s personal involvement in optimizing the WikiLeaks releases). But in his October 26 grand jury appearance, he tried to hide the fact that he continued to pursue a plan to carve up Ukraine well into 2018, and continued to generally lie about what that plan to carve up Ukraine had to do with winning Michigan and Wisconsin, such that Manafort took time away from running Trump’s campaign on August 2, 2016 to discuss both of them with his co-conspirator Konstantin Kilimnik. Mueller never did determine what that August 2 meeting was about or what Kilimnik and Viktor Boyarkin did with the Trump polling data Manafort was sharing with them. But the delay in determining that Manafort’s obstruction had succeeded was set by Manafort, not Mueller.

And until November 26, prosecutors still hoped to get Jerome Corsi to stop lying to them about how he and Roger Stone got advanced notice of John Podesta’s stolen emails — to say nothing about why Stone was talking to someone “about phishing with John Podesta.” Indeed, the government obtained a search warrant against Stone in February 2019 — possibly the one on February 13 to search multiple devices  — to investigate hacking allegations. If that warrant is the February 2019 one targeting Stone, the devices likely came in the search of his homes on January 25 of this year.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump refused to answer questions — all the questions he answered were about conspiracy, and most of his answers were non-responsive — until November 20, 2018. His answers about the Trump Tower Moscow deal were worse than non-responsive: they replicated the lies for which Michael Cohen is currently sitting in prison. Then, in December and January, Trump and Rudy Giuliani made comments that made it clear Trump’s answers were willful lies. Mueller offered Trump the opportunity to clarify his testimony, but he declined.

In light of the President’s public statements following Cohen’s guilty plea that he “decided not to do the project,” this Office again sought information from the President about whether he participated in any discussions about the project being abandoned or no longer pursued, including when he “decided not to do the project,” who he spoke to about that decision, and what motivated the decision. 1057 The Office also again asked for the timing of the President’s discussions with Cohen about Trump Tower Moscow and asked him to specify “what period of the campaign” he was involved in discussions concerning the project. 1058 In response, the President’s personal counsel declined to provide additional information from the President and stated that “the President has fully answered the questions at issue.” 1059

1057 1/23/19 Letter, Special Counsel’s Office to President’s Personal Counsel.

1058 1/23/ 19 Letter, Special Counsel’s Office to President’s Personal Counsel.

1059 2/6/ l 9 Letter, President’s Personal Counsel to Special Counsel’s Office.

In short, the public record makes it clear that the answer to Jordan’s question — when Mueller made a determination about any conspiracy charges — could not have happened until after the election. But the person who dictated that timing, more than anyone else, was Trump himself, who was refusing to tell the truth to Mueller as recently as February 6.

This is all in the public record (indeed, Trump’s role in the delay is described in the Mueller Report, which Jordan might have known had he read it). The fact that Jordan doesn’t know the answer — much less believes that his already-answered question is a zinger — is a testament to what a locked bubble he exists in, where even the most basic details about the investigation itself, rather than the fevered dreams Jordan has about it, don’t seep in.

Jordan should branch out beyond the spoon-fed journalists from whom he got this question, because even in its original incarnation, the question was utterly inconsistent with the public record.

When did you determine that there was no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia?

Some congressional Republicans have asserted that Mueller figured out early on in his investigation — which started on May 17, 2017 — that there was no conspiracy or collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

Mueller’s report said that prosecutors were unable to establish that the campaign conspired with Russia, but the report did not go into detail about when that conclusion was reached.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure Jordan is going to pose unanswerable questions that will feed conspiracists (which is one of the reasons I was somewhat sympathetic for Mueller’s preference for a closed hearing). But it’s only within the closed bubble that can’t be pierced by obvious facts that such questions are legitimate questions.

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

Roger Stone’s Latest: When Legal Categories of Innocent or Guilty become Disinformation and Pardon [Updated]

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Update, June 27: This post describes why Stone’s defense strategy — not to mount a legal defense, but to engage in disinformation — may pose a problem for Amy Berman Jackson’s enforcement  of her gag against Roger Stone. That’s because his magnification of other outlets’ coverage of his lawyers’ own bullshit filings questioning whether Russia hacked the DNC do amount to a magnification of his own defense strategy. ABJ ordered Stone to explain why his release conditions shouldn’t be changed. Stone’s response is here. As expected, his response largely claims he was within the terms of her order when commenting on his lawyers’ own filings.

The government’s disproportionate reaction is an effort to deprive Stone of the narrow latitude the Court left him; a latitude that was not violated by the posts, and a latitude which, if curtailed, based on the posts, would violate Stone’s First Amendment rights. The notion that “an appeal to major media outlets to publish information that is not relevant to, but may prejudice, this case” (Dkt. 136, p. 4, n.1), is oxymoronic, outré, and out of First Amendment bounds

Stone’s response is weakest in the explanation for calling for John Brennan to be hanged.

June 2, 2019 (Gov’t Ex. 8): “This psycho must be charged, tried, convicted . . . . [John Brennan] and hung for treason.” Dkt. 136-9. Stone: No comment was made by Stone about the “case” or about the “investigation.” Analysis: As background, Mr. Brennan, in a July 16, 2018 Tweet (about which 133,000 people were “talking”) wrote: “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to and exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors. It was nothing short of treasonous’.” The First Amendment protected Brennan’s remarks. Likewise, Stone’s remarks are also protected. This posting has nothing whatsoever to do with Stone’s case and therefore posed no fair trial threat, nor did it violate the Order.

This is clearly an attempt to explain away what Stone’s deletion of the post seems to recognize did violate the gag.

Anyway, I may be alone in thinking this, but I suspect ABJ won’t do anything more than restrict Stone’s use of the Internet, if even she does that.

I will add, however, that the government would do well to formally notice what I pointed out here: that in the DNC lawsuit, his attorneys are arguing the opposite of what they’re arguing here, that Russia definitely did the DNC hack.

Yesterday, the government asked Judge Amy Berman Jackson to hold a hearing to determine whether Roger Stone didn’t violate his gag order earlier this week by trying to get mainstream press outlets to pick up marginal outlets’ reports of his attorneys’ effort to undermine the attribution of the DNC hack to Russia. They point to several Instagram posts Stone made that referred to conspiratorial interpretations of his lawyers’ own frivolous arguments and ask why other outlets aren’t picking up the story. [I’ve added links to the posts.]

On June 18, 2019, Stone posted a screenshot of an article about one of his recent filings in this case. The screenshot read: “US Govt’s Entire Russia-DNC Hacking Narrative Based on Redacted Draft of CrowdStrike Report.” Ex. 1. He tagged the post, “But where is the @NYTimes? @washingtonpost? @WSJ? @CNN?” Id. Later that day, Stone posted a screenshot of another piece about his filing with the title, “FBI Never Saw CrowdStrike Unredacted Final Report on Alleged Russian Hacking Because None was Produced.” Ex. 2. Next, Stone posted an article titled, “Stone defense team exposes the ‘intelligence community’s’ [sic] betrayal of their responsibilities.” Ex. 3. The text further stated, “As the Russia Hoax is being unwound, we are learning some deeply disturbing lessons about the level of corruption at the top levels of the agencies charged with protecting us from external threats. One Jaw-dropping example has just been exposed by the legal team defending Roger Stone.” Id. Stone tagged the article, “Funny , No @nytimes or @washingtonpost coverage of this development.”

On June 19, 2019, Stone posted a screenshot of an article with the title, “FBI Never Saw CrowdStrike Unredacted or Final Report on Alleged Russian Hacking Because None Was Produced.” Ex. 4. He tagged the post, “The truth is slowly emerging. #NoCollusion.” Id.2

They argue this violates ABJ’s ban on,

making statements to the media or in public settings about the Special Counsel’s investigation or this case or any of the participants in the investigation or the case. The prohibition includes, but is not limited to, statements made about the case through the following means: radio broadcasts; interviews on television, on the radio, with print reporters, or on internet based media; press releases or press conferences; blogs or letters to the editor; and posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other form of social media.

Thus far, ABJ has not responded to this request, though in that same time she assented to another of the government’s requests, to submit a sur-reply to Stone’s claim that the FBI never had any direct evidence Russia hacked the DNC.

I want Roger Stone to go to jail as much as the next opponent of rat-fucking. But I think the government’s claim, on this point, is problematic. Back when ABJ set Stone’s gag, she said,

You may send out as many emails, Tweets, posts as you choose that say, Please donate to the Roger Stone defense fund to help me defend myself against these charges. And you may add that you deny or are innocent of the charges, but that’s the extent of it. You apparently need clear boundaries, so there they are.

But in the same hearing, prosecutor Jonathan Kravis — the guy who signed yesterday’s filing — laid out that defensible public statements would include articulating a defense.

And because the conduct we’re talking about now, because the message we’re talking about now are not just messages about proclaiming innocence or articulating a defense, but are messages that could be construed as threatening, the government believes that the restriction on extrajudicial statements would be appropriate under the Bail Reform Act.

And the posts from this week that prosecutors lay out do nothing more than point to poor analysis of Stone’s own lawyers’ filings, and as such probably count as an effort to articulate a defense.

The problem is precisely what prosecutors explicitly explain is their real concern, that these posts are designed to generate more attention for conspiracy theories that totally undermine the public record of the Mueller investigation.

Stone’s posts appear calculated to generate media coverage of information that is not relevant to this case but that could prejudice potential jurors. They relate to Stone’s claims—made in both filings before the Court and in public settings—that Russia did not hack the DNC servers, that the FBI and intelligence community were negligent in investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, that the government improperly “targeted” Stone and others, and that the entire investigation was somehow invalid and any crimes flowing from it (including Stone’s witness tampering and lies to Congress) were justified.3 If those theories were relevant to this case (which they are not), public statements aimed at the media and meant to bolster the claims would risk prejudicing the jury pool. But these posts are arguably even worse, because they risk tainting the jury pool with information that is not relevant but that may appear, to some, to be relevant. At best, Stone’s efforts could create the misimpression that this case is about issues that are not charged in the Indictment, and risk the trial “devolv[ing] into a circus” (Tr. 49:19-20). But worse, it could confuse prospective jurors or color how they later view the actually-relevant evidence and understand the Court’s instructions about that evidence.

Prosecutors are absolutely right: the reporting on Stone’s lawyers filings misrepresent what his case is about. But that’s because Stone’s own lawyers are engaging in a legal strategy of disinformation, not legal defense.

I’ve repeatedly said that I think Stone will be pardoned before his November trial. Currently, there are no charges against him which could be refiled in NY or FL (the latter of which wouldn’t do it anyway). DOJ has already ruled that Stone’s known underlying activity — optimizing the release of documents stolen by Russians — does not reach the level of illegal conspiracy. So if Trump pardoned Stone before November, the fact that Stone would lose his Fifth Amendment rights over his charges would pose no legal risk to Trump (unlike, say, Manafort). Yet November’s trial, if it goes forward, will be unbelievably damning for the President.

And that means that Stone’s lawyers have an even bigger incentive than Manafort’s lawyers did to mount a defense that undermines the credibility of the Russian investigation, even if it does nothing to increase Stone’s chances for acquittal (which, if this goes to trial, are slim).

Which leaves ABJ and the prosecutors attempting to litigate a trial that will find innocence or guilt, while Stone’s lawyers are litigating to push disinformation in support of a pardon.

All that said, Stone may still be in trouble. Prosecutors note that this is not the first time Stone has violated the letter (if not spirit) of ABJ’s gag. They include several more examples.

1 These posts are not the first statements that appear to have run afoul of the Court’s order. See, e.g., Ex. 5 (Instagram Posting of April 4, 2019, stating “FBI Refuses Records Request for Emails to CNN on Day of Roger Stone Raid,” with the tag, “How curious? What could they possibly be hiding?”); Ex. 6 (Instagram Posting of May 8, 2019, with the headline “Judge demands unredacted Mueller report in Roger Stone case,” with the comment, “The Judge has ruled but @Politico gets most of the story wrong because they are biased elitist snot-nosed fake news [expletive] who’s [sic] specialty is distortion by omitting key facts to create a false narrative.”); Ex. 7 (Instagram Posting of May 16, 2019, with headline, “Roger Stone Swings For the Fences; Court Filing Challenges Russiagate’s Original Premise,” with the comment, “My attorneys challenged the entire “Russia hacked the DNC/CrowdStrike” claim by the Special Counsel in public court filings[.]”); Ex. 8 (Instagram Posting of June 2, 2019, picturing a former CIA Director and writing, “This psycho must be charged, tried, convicted . . . . and hung for treason.”) (ellipses in original) (subsequently deleted). The government is bringing this matter to the Court’s attention now because Stone’s most recent posts represent a direct attempt to appeal to major media outlets to publish information that is not relevant to, but may prejudice, this case.

Three of these, like the other four, might be viewed as articulating a defense, with the defense being, engaging in disinformation.

The fourth, however, solidly violates the spirit and letter of ABJ’s gag, because it would be likely to incite violence directed at John Brennan, because it calls for his hanging (Click through to see the post; I don’t want to magnify Stone’s violent language).

I’m not sure what the remedy is for lawyers whose defense strategy is to sow disinformation inside and outside the court room (in both filings this week, the government has said they’re going to move to prevent any such discussion from the trial). But I think these Instagram posts were probably designed, with advice of counsel, to be defensible as part of a defense strategy.

It’s Stone’s defense strategy that’s the problem.

Update: ABJ has given Stone until Thursday to convince her he didn’t violate her gag.

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

The Ongoing Proceeding into Paul Manafort’s Kevin Downing-Related Texts

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Yesterday, Judge Amy Berman Jackson finally released texts between Paul Manafort and Sean Hannity that she first considered releasing on April 29. While lots of people are looking at the texts, I haven’t seen any reporting on why we got them — or the significance of the texts we didn’t get.

ABJ received those texts on February 26 of this year as Attachment F to the government’s sentencing memorandum. They are one of at least seven attachments to an attachment to the memorandum objecting to the probation office’s presentence investigation report into Manafort — presumably making an argument noting that he contemptuously violated ABJ’s gag order. The government appears to have first objected to the PSR on February 14.

Importantly, there’s another set of communications, Attachment 7, that ABJ didn’t release yesterday that are the subject of an ongoing proceeding of some sort.

Amy Berman Jackson considered referring Kevin Downing for criminal contempt

On the same day as Manafort’s sentencing (where the government objection did not come up), on March 13, ABJ issued an order for a hearing on March 22 to explain why she, “should not institute proceedings against [Manafort lawyer Kevin Downing] under Fed. R. Crim. Pro. 42 alleging a past violation of this Court’s” gag order. She also instructed both sides to tell her by March 19 whether the texts — Attachments 6 and 7 — should be filed on the public docket or not. The hearing on whether Downing should be sanctioned was postponed and ultimately held on April 2; a transcript of that hearing, with grand jury and privilege information redacted, should be released imminently. After the hearing, on April 25, ABJ asked both sides, again, if she should release Attachments 6 and 7. The government responded by May 17. Manafort’s lawyers only responded, in two separate filings, sometime after June 12. Which is what led ABJ to finally issue her order yesterday ordering that her March 13 order reviewing Downing’s behavior be released, the April 2 transcript be released in redacted form, and Attachment 6 — the texts released yesterday — be released with privacy redactions.

But ABJ did not release Attachment 7, the other set of texts (or some other kind of communication), because “Attachment 7 is covered by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure Rule 6(e) and relates to ongoing matters, and therefore, it shall remain under seal.” That is, Attachment 6 — yesterday’s release — is neither covered by grand jury rules nor part of an ongoing matter. But Attachment 7 is.

Which raises questions about how the two sets of texts were obtained and what they show.

Manafort’s witness tampering probably retroactively disclosed his gag violation

It’s almost certain that the Manafort-Hannity texts weren’t discovered in real time. Had they been, it would have been Manafort’s second violation of his gag order, and a much more severe violation than his first (where he helped draft an op-ed defending himself that was published in Ukraine). Had the government found these in real time, it’s likely Manafort would have been jailed six months earlier than he ultimately was (as Manafort’s lifelong friend Roger Stone might be next week for second violation of ABJ’s gag order).

They probably, instead, were discovered as part of the government’s investigation into Manafort’s witness tampering last spring. The texts released yesterday span from July 14, 2017 to June 5, 2018. They appear to have been obtained via cell phone extraction of a phone owned by Manafort (note, too, that the time shown on the texts is UTC, not ET, something a lot of the commentary suggesting these are middle of the night chats gets wrong).

On May 25, 2018, just as ABJ was about to reconsider Manafort’s final attempt to show adequate liquid assets to get out of house arrest on bail, the government filed a sealed notice of the witness tampering Manafort and Kilimnik engaged in starting immediately after the Hapsburg project was first charged on February 23, 2018. That witness tampering was charged in a second superseding indictment obtained June 8, 2018. In a declaration submitted with the May 25 filing, FBI Agent Brock Domin noted that,

The government is actively investigating the evidence regarding Manafort and obstruction of justice while under home confinement, in violation of title 18, U.S.C. section 1512. I submit that there are pending investigative inquiries whose completion could be jeopardized by disclosure, and the outcome of which could be relevant to the Court’s determination regarding bail herein.

And prosecutors informed ABJ that,

During the next ten days, the government anticipates taking additional investigative steps pertinent to the investigation.

The cell phone extraction of these texts was likely one result of the pending investigative inquiries described on May 25.

One possible explanation for a cell phone extraction on June 5, 2018 is that, as a result of being informed by Manafort’s former consultants that Manafort and Kilimnik were trying to persuade them to lie, the government identified another cell phone Manafort was using and got a warrant to obtain that in advance of the June 8 superseding indictment. Indeed, among the very last texts are two where Manafort tries to convince Hannity that the witness tampering allegations — which he calls “jury tampering” — were bullshit.

Manafort may have thought they were bullshit (or, just as likely, was lying to Hannity about it). But they appear to have given the government probable cause to obtain a new copy of the contents of his phone, which would lead to the discovery of these texts, including abundant evidence that Manafort was violating his gag order, continually, from the time it was imposed.

To obtain these texts, the government likely obtained a new search warrant. But the other set of communications may have been obtained with some kind of grand jury process — perhaps a grand jury subpoena requiring that, in addition to testifying, a witness turn over all the texts he had with Manafort. That would be one reason why ABJ could not release that second set of texts (or whatever they are): if they were obtained through grand jury process, they would be (and are) protected by grand jury secrecy rules.

The Downing-Hannity outreach took place not long after Manafort learned he’d be facing tax charges

The Hannity-Manafort texts show that in the days before the latter was first indicted, the two had a plan to pre-empt the indictment with a media campaign. Because ABJ imposed a gag right away, that effort kept getting delayed, with Hannity asking for Manafort or his lawyer to go on his shows over and over, and with Manafort deferring first because of his gag order and his first violation of it (the publication in Ukraine of an op-ed defending him) and then by his ultimately futile efforts to get out of house arrest. On January 3, 2018, Manafort suggested that the filing of a civil complaint might give Downing a way around the gag order. On January 17, Manafort said he’d connect Downing with Greg Jarrett on background. On January 24, 2018, Manafort told Hannity he needed to brief him on something. So even before January 25, the texts make it clear that both Manafort and one of his lawyers were violating ABJ’s gag.

But in threatening a criminal contempt referral, ABJ pointed, “in particular, [to] the communications dated January 25, 2018, found on pages 26-27 of Attachment 6.” Those are the texts that make it clear — because Manafort referred to Downing ahead of time and discussed their call after the fact — that Downing was the Manafort lawyer who violated the gag.

On January 24, 2018, after telling Hannity he needed to brief him on something, Manafort confirmed that Downing would speak with Hannity the next day, on January 25 at 11:30 AM. The next morning, Manafort reminded Hannity again. Later that day, Manafort asked Hannity how the call went, and Hannity said that Downing needed to send him stuff every day.

Something happened that made Manafort willing to violate his gag order (and ask his lawyer to violate his gag) where beforehand he had some hesitation.

One of the things that likely happened is that, sometime in the days leading up to January 16, the government informed Manafort and Gates they were filing new (tax) charges within a month.

GREG ANDRES: We’ve notified both defendants of our intention to bring additional charges. Those charges — the venue for those charges don’t lie in this district. So we asked each of the defendants whether they would be willing to waive venue so that those charges could be brought before Your Honor and all of those issues be tried together. One defendant agreed to waive venue, the other defendant did not.

So our intention is to move forward in a separate district with those separate charges. We just wanted the Court to be aware of that. The government’s view is that shouldn’t prevent the Court from setting a trial date because those issues will all be before a different court in a different district and not before Your Honor. And again, we’re asking for a trial date so that we can get this case moving and scheduled. But we certainly wanted the Court to be aware of that additional fact.

THE COURT: All right. Do you have a sense of the timing of that?

MR. ANDRES: You know, there are different variables, but we’re hoping within the next 30 days to have that indictment returned.

Among the things Hannity and Manafort discussed later in the day after Hannity spoke with Downing were the new charges Manafort had learned about prior to the January 16 hearing.

Manafort may also have had a sense that Gates was considering flipping. After all, at some point in January, he and Gates discussed pardons, but Manafort was unable to promise Gates that he would get one.

In January 2018, Manafort told Gates that he had talked to the President’s personal counsel and they were “going to take care of us.”848 Manafort told Gates it was stupid to plead, saying that he had been in touch with the President’s personal counsel and repeating that they should ” sit tight” and “we’ll be taken care of.”849 Gates asked Manafort outright if anyone mentioned pardons and Manafort said no one used that word.850

In the days after Downing and Hannity first spoke — on January 29, 30, and 31, 2018 — Gates would have his first known proffer discussions with Mueller’s team, discussions that likely led to the Hapsburg charges filed the same day the new tax charges were filed.

When Gates flipped, a month later, Hannity asked Manafort if Gates had given him a heads up. Manafort never responded.

That suggests he may not have been honest with Hannity in real time about his risks.

Also of note, the first thing Hannity raised in the same conversation after he and Manafort spoke was Jared Kushner.

In other words, the Downing contact with Hannity happened at a time when Manafort had to have realized he was in much deeper shit than he was telling Hannity. He likely realize that the new charges — cut-and-dry tax charges — were far more likely than the untested FARA charges to land him in prison, where he would have to trust Trump to bail him out with a pardon.

What are the ongoing matters that prevent disclosure of the second set of texts?

All that provides one possible explanation for why Manafort decided it’d be a good idea to put his lawyer directly in touch with Hannity, in violation of her gag order. But that doesn’t explain the other reason ABJ decided not to release the second sent of texts: some “ongoing matters” that require the communications remain secret.

It’s possible that she did refer Downing, as she threatened to do, for criminal contempt (!!!). [See update: she did not.] Except if that were the case, both sets of texts would pertain to an ongoing matter. It appears that Attachment 7 is more important to those ongoing matters than Attachment 6, which we got yesterday.

There’s one other notable date in that time period. As I’ve noted, the Downing – Hannity discussions came just before Howard Fineman reported, on January 30, 3018, not only that Trump planned to beat Mueller by having Sessions investigate him…

Instead, as is now becoming plain, the Trump strategy is to discredit the investigation and the FBI without officially removing the leadership. Trump is even talking to friends about the possibility of asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to consider prosecuting Mueller and his team.

… But also reported that Trump was confident that Manafort would not flip on him.

He’s decided that a key witness in the Russia probe, Paul Manafort, isn’t going to “flip” and sell him out, friends and aides say.

Chris Ruddy was one source for the Fineman story. And Ruddy was interviewed by the FBI about his knowledge of Trump’s efforts to obstruct justice on June 6, 2018, the day after the FBI extracted the Hannity texts from Manafort’s phone.

On Monday, June 12, 2017, Christopher Ruddy, the chief executive ofNewsmax Media and a longtime friend of the President’s, met at the White House with Priebus and Bannon.547 Ruddy recalled that they told him the President was strongly considering firing the Special Counsel and that he would do so precipitously, without vetting the decision through Administration officials.548 Ruddy asked Priebus if Ruddy could talk publicly about the discussion they had about the Special Counsel, and Priebus said he could.549 Priebus told Ruddy he hoped another blow up like the one that followed the termination of Corney did not happen.550 Later that day, Ruddy stated in a televised interview that the President was “considering perhaps terminating the Special Counsel” based on purported conflicts of interest.551 Ruddy later told another news outlet that “Trump is definitely considering” terminating the Special Counsel and “it’s not something that’s being dismissed.”552 Ruddy’s comments led to extensive coverage in the media that the President was considering firing the Special Counsel.553

547 Ruddy 6/6/18 302, at 5.

548 Ruddy 6/6/18 302, at 5-6.

549 Ruddy 6/6/ l 8 302, at 6.

550 Ruddy 6/6/18 302, at 6.

551 Trump Confidant Christopher Ruddy says Mueller has “real conflicts” as special counsel, PBS (June 12, 2017); Michael D. Shear & Maggie Haberman, Friend Says Trump ls Considering Firing Mueller as Special Counsel, New York Times (June 12, 2017).

If you’re going to contact one of Trump’s close media allies — Hannity — to send Trump an ultimatum about Manafort and get the media person on board for a plan to undercut Mueller, you’re likely to contact Trump’s other closest media ally, Chris Ruddy.

None of that answers what Downing had to explain to Hannity and what the ongoing proceeding might be. But it does suggest that Ruddy was in the same kind of discussion circle in January 2018 as Hannity was.

ABJ’s timing

I’m particularly curious about ABJ’s persistent interest in releasing these Attachments and her timing. Here’s what the docket for the month of June looks like:

599 (June 6): Unrelated order on encumbered property

[June 6: first John Solomon report]

600: Sealed filing

601 (June 12): ABJ Order unsealing the April 2 hearing transcript

602: Manafort

603: Manafort

604: Sealed filing, with Sealed copy of Attachment 6

[June 19: second John Solomon report]

605 (June 21): Order releasing materials

606 (June 21): Docketed copy of Attachment 6

As noted in bold, there’s still two sealed filings, dockets #600 and #604 (though 604, which includes a sealed copy of Attachment 6, must relate to this issue). Some time since June 6 — perhaps not coincidentally the first of two John Solomon reports that appear to be based off Manafort discovery — Manafort finally responded to ABJ’s order on unsealing.

In other words, this publication of Downing’s contempt for ABJ’s gag order comes as some other reporting seems to align not just with the narrative that Manafort was pushing for the entirety of his chats with Hannity, but seems to rely on perspective that Manafort’s lawyers seem uniquely well suited to have.

But it also comes as ABJ prepares to deal with Manafort’s lifelong friend Roger Stone latest violation of her gag order, who seems to be showing similar signs of contempt for Judge Jackson.

Update: While it’s almost certainly a coincidence, the Manafort outreach to Hannity happened just days before, on January 27, someone impersonating Hannity got Julian Assange to respond to her DM and direct her to a different communications channel. Assange was dealing Hannity information on Mark Warner (probably about his discussions with Adam Waldman).

Also, CNN (which appears to have paid for the newly unredacted transcript, which will otherwise become available July 2) notes that ABJ decided not to do anything with the texts unless prosecutors showed more of a pattern.

The texts were released along with the transcript of an April hearing where Judge Amy Berman Jackson was considering whether Manafort or his attorney Kevin Downing had violated a gag order through the communications.

Jackson decided to have the lawyers involved in the case determine what, “if any,” portions of the texts and hearing transcript should be publicly released once “some portion of the Mueller Report becomes publicly available.”

In the transcript of the April 2 hearing, Jackson says she is unlikely to do anything more with the texts.

“And absent further information from the government that there were more communications, I’m unlikely to do anything beyond today,” she said.

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

Paul Manafort Seemed Certain Mueller Would Indict Jared Kushner

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Amy Berman Jackson just released texts that she used to consider sanctioning Manafort lawyer Kevin Downing for violating her gag order by speaking with Sean Hannity. They include almost a year of remarkably friendly texts between Hannity and Manafort.

There’s a whole lot to unpack in these texts, starting with how certain Manafort was that Mueller would prosecute Jared Kushner. he first raises it shortly after he got raided in summer 2017, just before he complains that “Russia is history now that they have the spec counsel.”

Then Hannity raised it in January 2018, not long before a story revealed that Trump was telling people Manafort could incriminate him.

In March, Hannity asked Manafort why he didn’t get a plea deal like Gates got. Manafort said prosecutors would expect him to give up Kushner, though claimed Kushner hadn’t done anything wrong.

After the search on Michael Cohen, Hannity said it was war. Manafort predicted Mueller would get Jared.

All this happened months before Manafort accepted a plea deal. As part of that, he agreed to cooperate in another DOJ investigation about an effort in August 2016 to save the Trump campaign. As soon as he got the plea deal, however, he changed his story to match the one being told by the target of that other investigation.

Effectively, Manafort was asked some questions in a proffer session before his plea on September 13, in response to which he offered information that implicated someone with a 7-character name. [These dates are in the government’s January 15 filing at 23.] Then, in a debriefing on October 5, he changed his story to make it less incriminating — and to match the story the subject of the investigation was telling to the FBI at the time (last fall). When pressed by his lawyers, Manafort mostly changed his story back to what it had been. But the head fake made Manafort useless as a witness against this person.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson summed up this change this way:

The allegation is that the defendant offered a version of events that downplayed [redacted; “the President’s” or “the Candidate”s might fit] role and/or his knowledge. Specifically, his knowledge of any prior involvement of the [16-17 character redaction] that was inconsistent with and less incriminating of [7 character redaction] than what he had already said during the proffer stage and now consistent with what Mr. [7 character redaction] himself was telling the FBI.

This investigation pertains to events that happened “prior to [Manafort] leaving the campaign (on August 19).” [January 15 filing at 26]

As Andrew Weissman described in the breach hearing, Manafort’s version of the story first came when prosecutors, “were asking questions about an e-mail that Mr. [5 character name] had written about a potential way of saving the candidate. That’s sort of paraphrasing it. And this was a way of explaining, or explaining away that e-mail.” In the Janaury 15 filing, this conversation arises to explain “a series of text messages.” [See 25]

Weissmann describes that the revised story Manafort told was, “quite dramatically different. This is not I forgot something or I need to augment some details of a basic core set of facts.” Manafort’s original story involved Mr. [7 character redaction] providing information about a [redacted] who was doing something. Manafort appears to have made a representation about what Mr. [7 character name] believed about that (likely important to proving intent).

But in the second session, Manafort appears to have shifted the blame, implicating Mr. [5 character name] whom, “Mr. Manafort had previously said, I did not want to be involved in this at all,” but leaving out what Mr. [7 character name] had said. Manafort’s testimony effectively left out that when Mr. [5 character name] had called previously, Manafort had said, “I’m on it, don’t get involved.”

It appears that Manafort had something very specific in mind in which he could implicate Jared.

Update: On second read, it’s clear why ABJ released these: it has taken that much time to get the two parties to weigh in. First, the government weighed sometime before May 17. It took until sometime this month for Manafort’s team to respond to ABJ’s order to decide whether it can be released. Which is why it is only now being released. Note that there’s a second set of communications that she has withheld, as it is grand jury material related to an ongoing matter.

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

A New Form of Victim Blaming: Demanding that Rat-Fucker Roger Stone Get to Learn the Defensive Measures DNC Implemented in 2016

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Roger Stone’s ongoing effort to float hoaxes rather than mount a credible defense has gotten the left and right denialists into a tizzy about CrowdStrike again. But this time it’s not just an effort to raise doubts about whether Russia hacked the DNC, but an effort to suggest that Democrats can only obtain law enforcement help in response to being hacked if they’re willing to share their own network defenses with the FBI, and do so while their candidate is under active investigation by the FBI.

As I noted back in May, Stone demanded unredacted CrowdStrike reports in the guise of challenging warrants based off a claim that Russia didn’t actually hack the DNC. In the latter motion, Stone claimed to have received three redacted CrowdStrike reports (though as is typical of the sloppy work his lawyers do, they can’t even get that citation correct).

CrowdStrike’s three draft reports are dated [sic] August 8 and August 24, 2016. The Mueller Report states Unit 26165 officers also hacked into a DNC account hosted on a cloud-computing service on September 20, 2016, thereby illustrating the government’s reliance on CrowdStrike even though the DNC suffered another attack under CrowdStrike’s watch. (See Mueller Report at 49-50). [my emphasis]

The government’s response to the Fourth Amendment challenge notes that the fourteen warrant affidavits for hacking (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) violations don’t rely on Russian attribution to establish probable cause, but instead point to Stone’s, WikiLeaks’, Guccifer 2.0’s, and Jerome Corsi’s communications to establish that a hack was committed and Stone’s facilities likely had evidence about it.

In brief, each of these affidavits (at a minimum) states that Stone communicated with the Twitter account Guccifer 2.0 about hacked materials Guccifer had posted. Each affidavit states that on June 15, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 publicly claimed responsibility for the hack of the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee (“DNC”). Each affidavit states that Organization 1 published materials stolen from the DNC in the hack. Each affidavit describes Stone’s communications (including his own public statements about them) with Guccifer 2.0, Organization 1, and the head of Organization 1. Each affidavit submits that, based on those communications, there was probable cause to believe that evidence related to the DNC hack would be found in the specified location.

[snip]

On the contrary, the 1030 warrant affidavits contain detailed descriptions of Stone’s communications with Guccifer 2.0, Organization 1, and the head of Organization 1, and, in some cases, detailed descriptions of witness tampering and false statements. See, e.g., Doc 109, Ex. 10 at ¶¶ 35-40 (discussing Stone’s communications with Organization 1 and the head of organization 1), Ex. 11 at ¶ 24 (discussing private Twitter message between Stone and Guccifer 2.0); Ex. 18 at ¶¶ 64-77 (relating to Stone’s conversations with Person 2).

[snip]

The various showings of probable cause in the 1030 warrant affidavits did not depend on the identity of the hacker, but rather were based on evidence showing that Stone communicated with a Twitter account that publicly claimed responsibility for the DNC hack, and that Stone communicated with the very organization that was disseminating materials from the DNC computers in the months after the hack. This evidence established probable cause that searches of the target locations would yield evidence of a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030, regardless of whether the Russian state was involved.

If Judge Amy Berman Jackson agrees that those warrant affidavits establish probable cause independent of any attribution, then then entire question of CrowdStrike reports is moot.

Yet the government still had to explain why the CrowdStrike demand was frivolous. In the response to the CrowdStrike demand, then, the government noted that these reports are unrelated to the false statements charges Stone is facing.

The defendant is not charged with conspiring to hack the DNC or DCCC. Cf. Netyksho, Doc. 1. The defendant is charged with making false statements to Congress regarding his interactions with Organization 1 and the Trump Campaign and intimidating a witness to cover up his criminal acts. Any information regarding what remediation steps CrowdStrike took to remove the Russian threat from the system and strengthen the DNC and DCCC computer systems against subsequent attacks is not relevant to these charges. And, in any case, the government does not need to prove at the defendant’s trial that the Russians hacked the DNC in order to prove the defendant made false statements, tampered with a witness, and obstructed justice into a congressional investigation regarding election interference.

But along with that, the government also provides some details about how it came into possession of the CrowdStrike reports — which basically amounts to the Democrats sharing them with the FBI when they informed the FBI of a crime. The government describes that the redacted materials don’t actually pertain to evidence about the hack, but instead pertain to what CrowdStrike did — while their client was trying to win a presidential election, remember, and while the party’s presidential candidate was being investigated by the FBI — to protect the Democrats against further hacking. The government also demonstrates that Stone exaggerates when he claims these are “heavily” redacted.

At the direction of the DNC and DCCC’s legal counsel, CrowdStrike prepared three draft reports.1 Copies of these reports were subsequently produced voluntarily to the government by counsel for the DNC and DCCC. 2 At the time of the voluntary production, counsel for the DNC told the government that the redacted material concerned steps taken to remediate the attack and to harden the DNC and DCCC systems against future attack. According to counsel, no redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors. The government has also provided defense counsel the opportunity to review additional reports obtained from CrowdStrike related to the hack.

[snip]

As the government has advised the defendant in a letter following the defendant’s filing, the government does not possess the material the defendant seeks; the material was provided to the government by counsel for the DNC with the remediation information redacted. However, the government has provided defense counsel the opportunity to review additional unredacted CrowdStrike reports it possesses, and defense counsel has done so. 3

1 Although the reports produced to the defendant are marked “draft,” counsel for the DNC and DCCC informed the government that they are the last version of the report produced.

2 The defendant describes the reports as “ heavily redacted documents,” Doc. 103, at 1. One report is thirty-one pages; only five lines in the executive summary are redacted. Another runs sixty-two pages, and redactions appear on twelve pages. The last report is fifty-four pages, and redactions appear on ten pages.

3 These materials are likewise not covered by Brady, but the government produced them for defense counsel review in an abundance of caution.

This makes it clear that, on top of being totally irrelevant to the probable cause consideration of the warrants for Stone’s communications, Stone is basically arguing that as part of asking the FBI to investigate a crime targeting them — at a time when the FBI was actively investigating Hillary!!! —  the Democrats should have had to share the new network security measures installed in response to the crime. This amounts to demanding that a crime victim who might also be under FBI investigation provide the FBI with investigative benefit — the equivalent of handing over their passwords — just to report the crime.

But what Stone has done is worse. He has demanded that he — modern America’s greatest rat-fucker, and someone against whom the FBI was able to show probable cause for hacking crimes — be informed of the opposing party’s defenses against being hacked for no good reason at all.

And a bunch of chumps are magnifying Stone’s demand, as if it has credibility, because they’re still clinging to some kind of hope that Russia didn’t hack the DNC.

Below, I’ve put a list of all the obvious investigative sources cited in the GRU indictment (cited by paragraph number) and the Mueller Report (cited as MR and page number) aside from CrowdStrike reports on the server activity and the witness reports of Democratic employees (hoaxsters often assume that no one in the Democratic Party conducted their own investigation, which is false). This is a fairly conservative list, and primarily consists of stuff the FBI would obtain from subpoenas for third party records. There are twenty-nine sources of information totally independent of CrowdStrike, and those sources include Google, Facebook,  Microsoft, and AWS — all of which have global visibility and conduct their own tracking of GRU’s hacking for their own security purposes, plus Twitter and WordPress (the latter of which also has superb security resources). The list also includes a server in AZ that I assume the FBI seized; it does not include a server in TX that I’ve also been told got seized in the FBI’s investigation.

And that’s just the unclassified stuff.

The notion that the attribution of the DNC hack to the GRU relies on CrowdStrike reports or FBI possession of the alleged single DNC server has always been nonsense. But that nonsense is now being wielded to demand that victims of a crime turn over to their political adversaries — and not just any adversary but an epic rat-fucker — details of what they did to make sure they would not be victimized in the next election. As Rayne explained in May, this is not just an attempt to obfuscate what happened in 2016; it’s an attempt to continue to damage the Democrats going forward.

And left and right wing denialists are playing along like chumps.

Update: I should have noted something that is obvious to anyone who follows cybersecurity but which hoaxsters pretend not to know: CrowdStrike gave the FBI forensic images of the servers and other affected hardware and software. That is the norm for computer investigations.

  1. URL-shortening service (WADA hack used bit.ly) [Indictment ¶21a]
  2. Gmail, including accounts of victims [Indictment ¶21b, MR 37]; accounts used by GRU [MR 47]; and their own security
  3. Linked In [Indictment 21c]
  4. Probe of DNC’s IP address
  5. Search on open source info on DNC [MR 37]
  6. AZ server — FBI with direct access, possible seizure [Indictment ¶24c, ¶58, MR 39]
  7. Malaysian server [Indictment ¶25, MR 39]
  8. Other redacted servers [MR 39]
  9. Microsoft  [MR 41]
  10. Romanian domain registration site [Indictment ¶¶33b, 35, 58]
  11. ActBlue [Indictment ¶33b]
  12. AWS [personal reporting, ¶34, MR 49]
  13. Smartech Corporation [¶37, MR 42]
  14. Facebook [¶38, MR 42]
  15. Twitter [¶¶39, 44, MR 44]
  16. WordPress [¶¶42-43, 46]
  17. BTC exchanges [¶63]
  18. VPN purchase [¶45a]
  19. gfade147 email account [¶60]
  20. US payment processor [¶62]
  21. Forensic images of DNC servers and traffic logs [MR 40]
  22. Stolen document forensics [MR 47]
  23. Aaron Nevins [MR 43]
  24. AOL [MR 43]
  25. Online archives [MR 46]
  26. Ecuadorian Embassy network [MR 46]
  27. [email protected] email [MR 46]
  28. WikiLeaks email [MR 47]
  29. Clinton personal office domain [MR 49]

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

BREAKING: Roger Stone Insists Russia Hacked the DNC

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Last month, Roger Stone argued in his criminal case that the government knows that Russia did not hack the DNC.

Roger Stone is challenging the main underpinning of the search warrant applications supporting the warrants – the Russian government hacked the DNC, DCCC, and one Clinton Campaign official from locations outside where the computer servers were stored. First, Stone will demonstrate that the Government’s proposition is untrue.

[snip]

The government’s agents knew that they could not prove the Russian state hacked the DNC or the other targeted servers, and transferred the data to WikiLeaks when it presented the search warrants to the various magistrates and district court judges.

The government debunked this claim last week.

That’s pretty interesting, given that the very same lawyers just argued in the DNC lawsuit that Russia definitely did hack the DNC.

The factual background and context of Plaintiff’s complaint cannot survive the Report’s significant and substantial findings supporting the Special Counsel’s conclusion that no American conspired with any agent of the Russian state to break in to the DNC’s computers (hack); steal any of its data, transmit any of its data to WikiLeaks, or aid in the public dissemination of that data.2

2 In fact, the Mueller Report explicitly states that the Office of Special Counsel’s investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interreference In The 2016 Russian Presidential Election, Volume I of II, 1-2 (2019). Furthermore, the Mueller Report makes abundantly clear that in April 2016 it was “units of the Russian Federation’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU) [that] hacked into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC),” not the Defendants. Mueller Report at 36.

Both here and elsewhere, Stone misstates what the Report found in really interesting ways, which I may return to in more depth (as it may indicate where Stone thinks the discovery he has seen suggests the government may be headed).

But for now, I just want to note that after insisting to Judge Amy Berman Jackson that Russia didn’t hack the DNC, Stone lawyers Grant Smith and Robert Buschel are arguing to Judge John Koeltl that Russia did hack the DNC.

I wonder what Donald Trump will say when he discovers his rat-fucker has given up on the hoaxes claiming Russia didn’t do the hack?

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

What the Stone Search Warrants Suggest about the Ongoing Investigation into Him

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In a filing opposing Roger Stone’s effort to suppress the fruits of 18 searches against him, the government lays out some details about the investigation into Stone that — especially combined with reports of Andrew Miller’s testimony yesterday — provide some idea of how the investigation into Stone evolved. Here’s how the government describes the 18 search warrants against Stone.

Between August 2017 and February 2019, the government obtained eighteen search warrants for electronic facilities and properties related to Roger Stone. Doc. 109, Exs. 1-18. Many of these search warrants were issued in the District of Columbia by Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell. Doc. 109, Exs. 1-10, 16, 18. Three warrants were issued in the District by other district judges. See Ex. 11 (Judge Contreras); Ex. 12-13 (Judge Boasberg). Others were issued by magistrate judges in other districts. Exs. 14 (S.D.N.Y); Exs. 15, 17 (S.D. Fl.).

Fourteen of the affidavits (“the 1030 warrant affidavits”) allege probable cause that the search will yield evidence of a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030, which makes it a crime to “intentionally access[] a computer without authorization or exceed[] authorized access and thereby obtain[]…information from any protected computer.” 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(C). See Exs. 1- 13, 18. In brief, each of these affidavits (at a minimum) states that Stone communicated with the Twitter account Guccifer 2.0 about hacked materials Guccifer had posted. Each affidavit states that on June 15, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 publicly claimed responsibility for the hack of the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee (“DNC”). Each affidavit states that Organization 1 published materials stolen from the DNC in the hack. Each affidavit describes Stone’s communications (including his own public statements about them) with Guccifer 2.0, Organization 1, and the head of Organization 1. Each affidavit submits that, based on those communications, there was probable cause to believe that evidence related to the DNC hack would be found in the specified location. Many of these affidavits contain additional evidence alleging probable cause to believe evidence will be found of violations of additional crimes, including 18 U.S.C. § 3 (accessory after the fact); 18 U.S.C. § 4 (misprision of a felony); 18 U.S.C. § 371 (conspiracy); 18 U.S.C. §§ 1505 and 1512 (obstruction of justice); 18 U.S.C. § 1513 (witness tampering); 18 U.S.C. § 1343 (wire fraud); 18 U.S.C. § 1349 (attempt and conspiracy to commit wire fraud), and 52 U.S.C. § 30121 (foreign contribution ban). See, e.g., Exs. 7-13 (all crimes). Stone raises no arguments regarding these other crimes.

In addition, four of the affidavits (the “false statement warrant affidavits”), issued close in time to Stone’s indictment, allege probable cause that the search will yield evidence of false statements, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering. See Exs. 14-17. Those affidavits set forth evidence supporting the allegations in the indictment that Stone made false statements in his September 2017 testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (“HPSCI”), obstructed ongoing investigations, and tampered with a witness.

The warrants laid out may look something like this: [Note: per this ABJ opinion, this is not correct; Stone’s lawyers did not list the warrants in order.]

  1. Beryl Howell, August 2017, CFAA
  2. Beryl Howell, CFAA
  3. Beryl Howell, CFAA
  4. Beryl Howell, CFAA
  5. Beryl Howell, CFAA
  6. Beryl Howell, CFAA
  7. Beryl Howell, CFAA: include “all crimes” (18 U.S.C. § 3 (accessory after the fact); 18 U.S.C. § 4 (misprision of a felony); 18 U.S.C. § 371 (conspiracy); 18 U.S.C. §§ 1505 and 1512 (obstruction of justice); 18 U.S.C. § 1513 (witness tampering); 18 U.S.C. § 1343 (wire fraud); 18 U.S.C. § 1349 (attempt and conspiracy to commit wire fraud), and 52 U.S.C. § 30121 (foreign contribution ban)
  8. Beryl Howell, CFAA: includes “all crimes”
  9. Beryl Howell, CFAA: includes “all crimes”
  10. Beryl Howell, CFAA: ¶¶ 35-40 discuss Stone’s communications with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange: includes “all crimes”
  11. Rudolph Contreras, CFAA: ¶ 24 discusses private Twitter message between Stone and Guccifer 2.0: includes “all crimes”
  12. James Boasberg, CFAA: includes “all crimes”
  13. James Boasberg, CFAA: includes “all crimes”
  14. SDNY, January 2019, False Statements
  15. SDFL, January 2019, False Statements
  16. Beryl Howell, January 2019, False Statements
  17. SDFL, January 2019, False Statements
  18. Beryl Howell, February 2019, CFAA and False Statements: ¶¶ 64-77 relate to Stone’s conversations with Randy Credico

A May 14, 2019 Amy Berman Jackson minute order demanding that Stone clean up the first iteration of an exhibit list reveals that there were some warrants obtained in August 2018, which may be those from the other DC District judges (and which may suggest they did not come from Mueller’s grand jury, or maybe that Howell took a vacation in August last year).

The Court notes that defendant’s Search Warrant Exhibit, Dkt. 101 (sealed), purports to be a list of the search warrants attached to the motion, but the list lacks exhibit numbers, and the order of the items listed does not correspond to what was actually provided. For instance, the first item on the list indicates that one of the warrants included in the motion was a warrant for the search of defendant’s former home issued by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, but neither that warrant nor the application has been supplied to the Court. Also, the Search Warrant Exhibit lists warrants issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on August 3, 2018 to three recipients, but only two warrants issued on that date were submitted to the Court (with one of them being filed twice). Finally, a search warrant issued by U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on August 8, 2018 was filed with the Court but not listed on the Search Warrant Exhibit.

Even though Stone was listed among those Richard Burr told the White House Counsel’s Office on March 16, 2017 that the FBI was investigating, the government did not obtain a search warrant on him until August 2017. Probably, the government started with searches of Stone’s Twitter accounts.

If the warrants are listed in temporal order in Stone’s exhibit (which seems likely given the timing), then it appears that for 13 months, the government pursued Stone for some involvement in the actual hack and leak, with various theories implicating him in the crime, including conspiracy, accessory after the fact, and misprison of a felony.

It appears that got the government to the point where they were trying to get Jerome Corsi to explain how he and Stone learned that WikiLeaks would release John Podesta’s emails. Then he went all Jerome Corsi on the government, and appears to have diverted the investigation, such that the government finalized the false statements, obstruction, and witness tampering indictment currently being prosecuted, but moved away from charging a CFAA-related crime.

It appears likely the government got warrants for his properties in NY and FL and some other facilities in advance of his arrest on January 25. The additional warrant in Florida may reflect a search of a phone or other devices obtained in the raid.

Then (again assuming Stone’s cleaned up exhibit is temporal) there’s a February 2019 warrant, again from Howell (so presumably Mueller’s grand jury). The timing of this may coincide with the threat Stone issued against ABJ herself, possibly including a warrant to Instagram. And/or it could be a follow-up warrant based off something (such as previously unknown devices) discovered in the January 25 searches.

Yesterday, Andrew Miller finally testified after his year long attempt to avoid doing so. He reportedly testified about his relationship with Stone, Stone’s movements and schedule at the 2016 RNC, and Miller’s relationship since then. Given that prosecutors may have returned to their pursuit of a CFAA related case against Stone in February, there may be something about the RNC that they’ve been trying to pin down.

The Mueller Report seems to have a section, starting at Volume I page 176, explaining why distributing stolen emails isn’t a crime, which is consistent with what Barr has said publicly. It clearly has a section, starting at Volume I page 188, explaining why having stolen emails released for you is not an illegal campaign gift. The latter section clearly includes significant discussion of Stone. But given what this description of warrants shows, the first section might, as well.

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.