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Earlier This Year, Billy Barr Minimized Threats of Violence against Judges

July 20, 2020/40 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

Billy Barr lies, a lot.

One of the things he has lied about — first anonymously to irresponsible beat reporters and then repeatedly on the record — is that Amy Berman Jackson agreed with his sentencing recommendation in the Roger Stone case. To Steve Inskeep, for example, Barr first lied by hiding that he created a dispute by replacing Jesse Liu with his crony Timothy Shea so Shea could start disagreeing with prosecutors.

I was the decision maker in that case because there was a dispute. And usually what happens is, disputes, especially in high profile cases, come up to the attorney general. It’s not unusual for there to be a dispute in a high-profile case and for it to be resolved by the attorney general. And what actually happened in that case is that the four prosecutors who had prosecuted the case, the first line, they wanted to recommend a seven to nine year sentence on Stone, and the U.S. attorney felt that was too severe and was not justified under the circumstances.

Barr then claimed that all he did, in replacing the sentencing memo written by prosecutors adhering to DOJ guidelines on calling for the maximum sentence with one calling for far less, was to lay out the relevant information and let Amy Berman Jackson decide.

And what I said was set forth all the relevant information and leave it to the judge’s discretion to select the right decision, which is also not uncommon in the department. And that judge actually gave the sentence that I thought was correct, which was half of what the line prosecutors were recommending. They could not point to any case even remotely close to the seven to nine year sentence. The cases were essentially centered on about two and a half to three years. The judge gave him three years and four months, which I thought was a fair sentence under the circumstances. And it was essentially what I was proposing, or thought was fair. And so the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I made that decision based on what I was felt was fair to that person.

Aaron Zelinsky has made it clear that, in fact, even in the first memo, prosecutors were ordered to downplay certain information.

The more important detail — given that an anti-feminist Trump supporter allegedly targeted the family of federal judge Esther Salas, killing her son and also shooting her spouse — is how he overrode the sentencing recommendation of prosecutors.

As I laid out in this post, prosecutors asked for the following enhancements:

8 levels for the physical threats against Randy Credico
3 levels for substantial interference
2 levels for the substantial scope of the interference
2 levels for obstructing the administration of justice

The last of these, per the original sentencing memo, had to do with Stone’s threats against ABJ.

Finally, pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1, two levels are added because the defendant “willfully obstructed or impeded, or attempted to obstruct or impede, the administration of justice with respect to the prosecution of the instant offense of conviction.” Shortly after the case was indicted, Stone posted an image of the presiding judge with a crosshair next to her head. In a hearing to address, among other things, Stone’s ongoing pretrial release, Stone gave sworn testimony about this matter that was not credible. Stone then repeatedly violated a more specific court order by posting messages on social media about matters related to the case.

This enhancement is warranted based on that conduct. See U.S.S.G. § 3C1.C Cmt. 4(F) (“providing materially false information to a magistrate or judge”); see, e.g., United States v. Lassequ, 806 F.3d 618, 625 (1st Cir. 2015) (“Providing false information to a judge in the course of a bail hearing can serve as a basis for the obstruction of justice enhancement.”); United States v. Jones, 911 F. Supp. 54 (S.D.N.Y. 1996) (applying §3C1.1 enhancement to a defendant who submitted false information at hearing on modifying defendant’s conditions of release).

Barr’s memo got to the outcome he wanted by eliminating the 8-point enhancement for physically threatening Credico and the 2-point enhancement for threatening ABJ.

The memo suggested the 8-level enhancement shouldn’t apply, first, because doing so would double Stone’s exposure.

Notably, however, the Sentencing Guidelines enhancements in this case—while perhaps technically applicable— more than double the defendant’s total offense level and, as a result, disproportionately escalate the defendant’s sentencing exposure to an offense level of 29, which typically applies in cases involving violent offenses, such as armed robbery, not obstruction cases. Cf. U.S.S.G. § 2B3.1(a)-(b). As explained below, removing these enhancements would have a significant effect on the defendant’s Guidelines range. For example, if the Court were not to apply the eight-level enhancement for threatening a witness with physical injury, it would result in the defendant receiving an advisory Guidelines range of 37 to 46 months, which as explained below is more in line with the typical sentences imposed in obstruction cases.

[snip]

Then, Barr’s memo argued (and this is the truly outrageous argument) that Stone’s attempts to obstruct his own prosecution overlapped with his efforts to obstruct the HPSCI investigation.

Second, the two-level enhancement for obstruction of justice (§ 3C1.1) overlaps to a degree with the offense conduct in this case. Moreover, it is unclear to what extent the [defendant’s obstructive conduct actually prejudiced the government at trial.]

Effectively, this language treated threats against a judge as unworthy of enhancement.

The Attorney General of the United States found a way to go easy on the President’s life-long rat-fucker by downplaying the importance of threats against those participating in trials.

ABJ disagreed with both of those changes (though she did rule against the government’s enhancement on scope), taking Credico’s letter asking for leniency into account but also noting that in his grand jury testimony Credico had described being genuinely fearful of Stone’s thuggish buddies, and insisting on the import of the threat against her.

She got to close to the same conclusion as Barr, however, because she believes that sentencing recommendations are too harsh.

On one side, Barr dismissed the import of physical threats against a witness and a judge (while otherwise backing harsh sentencing). On the other side, ABJ insisted in the import of threats to participants in the judicial system, while finding sentencing recommendations generally too harsh.

ABJ in no way agreed with Barr’s logic, in part because she felt it important to punish threats against judges. Barr, however, thought it more important to go easy on Trump’s rat-fucker than reinforce the danger of threats to judges.

Then Trump commuted Stone’s sentence, showing that he doesn’t much give a damn if people threaten witnesses and judges either (unsurprisingly, because he does so much of it himself).

In the wake of the attack on Salas, Barr has taken to the press, proclaiming how serious he thinks such attacks to be.

U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr also offered his condolences to Judge Salas and her family.

“This kind of lawless, evil action carried out against a member of the federal judiciary will not be tolerated, and I have ordered the full resources of the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service to investigate the matter,” Barr said in a statement.

Bullshit.

You don’t get to proclaim how serious you think attacks on judges are if earlier this year you took extraordinary measures to minimize threats on a judge. The actions Barr and Trump took earlier this year sent the message that it doesn’t much matter if someone undermines the entire judicial system by intimidating judges and witnesses — particularly if they’re supporters of Trump.

Billy Barr wants you think he’s a hard ass on such violence. But earlier this year, he took unprecedented action to dismiss the import of violence against judges. No credible journalist should print his statements without explaining that Barr is part of the problem.

“Hinky:” NPR Permitted Billy Barr to Lie More than Once

The other day, NPR’s public editor did a piece exploring how the NPR allowed itself to spread Billy Barr’s lies about vote by mail uncontested. It reviews the exchange, noting where Steve Inskeep did not ask obvious follow-ups.

Inskeep had 20 minutes to do the Barr interview, which was conducted at the Justice Department. In the portion of the interview on election security, Inskeep sounds, to my ear, off his game. His follow-up questions don’t reflect the facts that NPR had already reported, and are therefore ineffective at holding Barr accountable for his statements.

The transcript is available here. When Barr conflates the broad issue of foreign interference with the specific claim of ballot tampering, Inskeep does not call him out.

[snip]

When Barr compares the ballots to paper money, to suggest they can be easily duplicated, Inskeep asks: “Do they not also go through procedures like that with mail-in ballots?” Barr answers: “You’ve seen them. They’re pretty primitive.”

A journalist specializing in election security would have pressed Barr more firmly, by asking again whether intelligence of ballot tampering exists, and getting him to explain exactly how he imagines outsiders would attempt to circumvent the numerous safeguards in place, including barcodes, enumerated ballots, duplicating the specific paper stock and printing methods and signature verifications. Suggested question: How would a ballot counterfeiting scheme work at scale, to get around the well-established and tested controls, including the individual codes on each ballot and the signature comparisons?

It talks about the decision to include Barr’s lies (about vote-by-mail) rather than take more time and edit them out.

Inskeep worked with a show editor and producer to prepare the package. Together, they chose to air the bulk of Barr’s claims rather than truncate the statements to air only those not widely disputed as false. He could have decided to delay the air date of that particular segment in order to do more reporting and bring additional voices into the conversation, an internal or external expert to say that Barr is making a false statement.

Running an extensive portion of the exchange could only be a good option if Inskeep was willing to add more context, as you are about to see below.

And it described how NPR could have made it far clearer that Billy Barr lied to NPR.

There are many techniques to prepare listeners to hear false information. You can straight-up tell the audience the upcoming statements are inaccurate — while also explaining that part of our job is to sometimes allow public officials to make such statements so that the listener can hear it for herself. Stewart said he was grateful Inskeep got Barr on tape falsely claiming mail-in ballots will jeopardize the election. “This looks like pure, unadulterated Barr,” he said. “And I’m really glad the country got to hear that.”

I wish Inskeep would have spent a little air time making clear in the set-up that state election officials use several well-tested methods to ensure the integrity and security of mail-in ballots, and that transparency of those checks and balances is baked into the system.

Given that Barr primarily does interview with old friends from the Poppy Administration or propaganda outlet, I’m grateful that NPR reviewed this interview and laid out how Barr has successfully, relentlessly lied to the American people.

But they should have gone one step further, and noted all the other times Barr lied to Inskeep. And even before he lied about vote-by-mail, he falsely claimed that his interventions in both the Mike Flynn and Roger Stone case was proper. In the Stone case, for example, he explained his intervention in the sentencing recommendation because there was a dispute.

I was the decision maker in that case because there was a dispute. And usually what happens is, disputes, especially in high profile cases, come up to the attorney general.

To the extent there was a dispute, it was only because he had removed the Senate confirmed US Attorney and put in someone he told to dispute the sentencing guidelines. NPR also let Barr claim that his recommendation is what Amy Berman Jackson adopted, which is not at all true (she adopted most of the prosecutors’ guidelines sentence but gave Stone a lenient sentence on her own).

Worse still, NPR let Barr claim as fact that there was a lot hinky with Flynn’s case.

There was a lot of hinky stuff in the Flynn case. Everyone knew that. Everyone was wondering why was this case ever brought?

That’s not only false, but both DOJ Inspector General and Judge Emmet Sullivan had reviewed it and found nothing “hinky.” Effectively, Barr put in a flunkie to override the judgement of those people who are supposed to assess whether something is hinky.

Importantly, only people who haven’t consulted the public record believe that — which is why it is so dangerous for NPR to let the claim go unchallenged. So here, as with the vote-by-mail, Inskeep simply gave Barr the opportunity to provide false excuses for unprecedented abuse of power.

And the public editor should note that.

Reggie Walton Seems Interested Revealing Some of Mueller’s Referrals

July 11, 2020/46 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

I made at least one error in this post. I surmised, based on the exemptions DOJ had claimed in a reprocessed version of the Mueller Report released last month, that there might be ongoing investigations into Rudy Giuliani’s grifters reflected in it.

But the sentencing of George Nader a week later reminded me that it cannot be the case that DOJ did a full reprocessing of the Mueller Report. Warrants made it clear that Nader’s prosecution for child porn — which developed into a prosecution for sexually abusing a boy — was a referral from the Mueller team.

Yet the reprocessed Mueller Report continues to redact all the referrals in Appendix D not previously unsealed (that is, all but the Michael Cohen and Greg Craig ones), including one that must be the Nader prosecution, under b7A redactions signaling an ongoing investigation, quite possibly this one.

The Nader referral, because it was prosecuted, should not be redacted under any exemption. Well before this reprocessing, Nader’s prosecution was public (meaning the privacy exemptions are improper), and by the time of this reprocessing, his conviction had been entered, so was no longer ongoing.

The reprocessing did change two Stone-related referrals to the same privacy exemption used for most other referrals — b(6)/b(7)(C-4) instead of b(6)/b(7)(C-3). (These are the newly reprocessed redactions; compare with pages 240-241 of the initial FOIA release.)

The change from C-3 to C-4 signifies that the person involved was only mentioned in the report, but that category is unrelated to whether or not the person remains under a separate investigation. But all referrals still use the b7(A) exemption, even though we know at least one — that of George Nader — is no longer ongoing.

That’s a very complicated way of saying that we can be certain DOJ is claiming some of these referrals are ongoing investigations even though no investigation is ongoing, whether because — like Nader — the investigation has been completed, because the investigation was properly closed, or because Billy Barr intervened and improperly closed them (as might be the case for investigations known to be targeting Erik Prince and Jared Kushner).

And that’s why some filings this week in this lawsuit are so interesting.

A month ago, Judge Reggie Walton, after having reviewed an unredacted copy of the Mueller Report, canceled a public status conference and instead scheduled an ex parte hearing on July 20 at which DOJ would have to answer his questions about the redactions.

Knowing that it would have to answer Walton’s questions, yet claiming to respond to an earlier BuzzFeed/EPIC filing, DOJ offered up that it was preparing to reissue the report in light of the completion of the Roger Stone prosecution. It released that copy — the one that claims at least one investigation that has been completed is ongoing — on June 19.

Which brings us to this week. On Monday, Judge Walton ordered the government to answer questions he raised in an Excel spreadsheet addressing the redactions.

To accord the Department knowledge of the questions that the Court has regarding some of the redactions prior to the ex parte hearing, the Court has prepared an Excel spreadsheet that catalogues these questions, which is attached as Exhibit A to this Order. 1 To the extent that the Department is able to respond to the Court’s questions in writing, it is hereby

ORDERED that, on or before July 14, 2020, at 5:00 p.m., the Department shall file2 under seal its responses to the Court’s questions by completing Column G of Exhibit A. 3

SO ORDERED this 6th day of July, 2020.

1 Exhibit A will be issued under seal and will remain under seal unless otherwise ordered by this Court.

2 The Department shall coordinate with chambers regarding the delivery of a hard copy of its submission.

3 The Court will advise the Department as to whether the Department’s written explanations obviate the need for the ex parte hearing currently scheduled for July 20, 2020.

Judge Walton gave DOJ just over a week to answer the questions.

Yesterday, DOJ asked for more time. DOJ described that they needed to consult with other entities to respond to Walton’s questions, and explained that they had not yet gotten answers from some of the “entities” they needed to hear from.

The Department has been diligently working to comply with the Court’s Order. That work has involved consultations with numerous Department components, including the Office of Information Privacy, the National Security Division, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices. However, the Department requires one additional week—until 5:00 PM on July 21, 2020—to coordinate and provide responses to all of the Court’s questions. This additional time is necessary because the majority of Court’s inquiries concerning the redactions require the Department to consult with various entities with equities in the information at issue, both within and outside the Department. The Department has received information from some, but not all, of the entities. Once the Department has completed its consultation with these entities, the Department needs time to compile information received from those entities into a detailed response that addresses all of the Court’s questions. Those entities then need time to review the compiled draft responses before the responses are filed under seal with the Court.2 The Department’s goal with this process is to ensure fulsome responses to the Court’s questions that would obviate the need for a hearing. [my emphasis]

This paragraph is fairly dense, but two things are worth noting. First, after describing “Department components” it would need to consult, the filing then notes that the entities with which DOJ must consult aren’t all inside the Department. This reference may be innocent. After all, any investigations into Russians or other foreigners might implicate foreign intelligence agencies, and Treasury has an ongoing sanctions process working against Oleg Deripaska, another possible referral. So those non-departmental entities could be CIA, NSA, and Treasury, among others.

Or, those non-departmental entities could be the White House.

There has already been abundant evidence that DOJ is consulting with the White House on its response to the BuzzFeed/EPIC FOIA (or at least deferring to their goals), particularly with regards to the 302 releases. Perhaps they’re doing so in the guise of honoring executive privilege claims that Trump never claimed during the investigation. But particularly if this involves hiding details about the investigation into Don Jr and/or Jared, it would be particularly abusive here.

Meanwhile, the reference to US Attorney’s Offices, plural, strongly suggests that these questions get into b7(A) redactions, because the primary reason to need to ask US Attorney’s Offices about these redactions is if they’re investigating or prosecuting cases.

We know of Mueller referrals to, at least, DC, SDNY, and EDVA. The GRU indictment was sent back to WDPA, where it started. And there were reports that investigations into Jared, Tom Barrack, and Elliot Broidy were in EDNY (though it’s unclear which of those, if any, were referrals from Mueller).

That doesn’t necessarily mean these consultations are about unknown referrals. But a footnote to the DOJ filing strongly suggests they are.

2 Although “the question in FOIA cases is typically whether an agency improperly withheld documents at the time that it processed a FOIA request,” in the interest of saving resources and promoting efficiency, if the Department determines during its review that there no longer exists a basis for a redaction, the Department plans to indicate as such in its response to the Court’s questions, withdraw the redaction, and reprocess the Report with the redaction lifted at the appropriate time. ACLU v. Dep’t of Justice, 640 F. App’x 9, 13 (D.C. Cir. 2016) (unpublished); see also Bonner v. Dep’t of State, 928 F.2d 1148, 1152 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (“To require an agency to adjust or modify its FOIA responses based on post-response occurrences could create an endless cycle of judicially mandated reprocessing.”). The Report was originally processed in spring 2019. A basis may no longer exist for a redaction if, for example, material was redacted concerning a prosecution that had been ongoing at the time of the redaction that has now been completed. See Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Wash. v. Dep’t of Justice, 746 F.3d 1082, 1097 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (stating that because a “proceeding must remain pending at the time of our decision,” an agency’s “reliance on Exemption 7(A) may become outdated when the proceeding at issue comes to a close”).[my emphasis]

DOJ directly addresses b7(A) redactions, claiming that if the investigation was ongoing when it originally did the FOIA review, it is not in violation of FOIA if it hasn’t since released the information (the filing is silent on the reprocessing done last month).

Mind you, DOJ will argue that all of these redactions are still proper under privacy protections. But on that point, DOJ (and Billy Barr personally) has outright lied publicly, claiming that these redactions only protect tangential third parties and not people like the President’s son or son-in-law.

Having looked at Walton’s questions, DOJ directly addressed redactions that originally protected ongoing investigations and contacted more than one US Attorney’s Office for consultations. That says he may consider ordering DOJ to release information about investigations that were started but did not end in prosecution.

Which makes the delay more interesting. It may be totally innocent, the slow pace of bureaucracy, particularly as offices still recover from COVID shut-downs. But one US Attorney’s Office of interest has undergone a sudden change of leadership between the time Judge Walton asked for this information and the time DOJ will respond. Last night, Billy Barr swapped EDNY US Attorney Richard Donoghue with PDAAG Seth DuCharme. While Barr has shown trust in both (he put Donoghue in charge of reviewing Ukraine related allegations), DuCharme has been one of the people who has orchestrated his efforts to undermine the Russian investigation. Whatever answers DOJ provides to Walton, then, will be answers that Barr’s newly appointed flunky will oversee. That’s by no means the most suspicious part of DuCharme’s appointment, but it is something DuCharme will review in his first week on the job.

DOJ may successfully argue that all of this should remain redacted for privacy reasons. And, with the possible exception of an Erik Prince referral, if they’re disclosed as closed investigations, it would not necessarily indicate whether they were closed through more Barr interference. But it certainly suggests Walton may be thinking that some of this should be public.

Trump Prepares to Do Something Even Billy Barr Has Said Might Be Obstruction

July 10, 2020/126 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

Update: Trump did, indeed, commute Stone’s sentence. Kayleigh McEnany put out a ridiculous press release here.

According to just about every major outlet (here’s Fox’s story), Trump will use his clemency power — possibly tonight — to keep Roger Stone out of prison, preventing him from spending even one day in prison for lying to Congress about how he tried to optimize the release of emails stolen by Russia and intimidating witnesses (most notably, but not only, Randy Credico) to adhere to Stone’s false cover story.

That Trump was willing to let Paulie Manafort do time, but not Stone, is a testament to how much more damning Stone’s honest testimony against Trump would be.

Trump will presumably commute Stone’s sentence, rather than pardon him, so Stone doesn’t lose his Fifth Amendment privileges that will allow him to avoid testifying about his calls with Trump. Trump is a dummy on most things, but not bribing people to cover up for his own crimes. Plus, he is personally familiar with how George Bush bought Scooter Libby’s silence with a commutation, given that Trump finally got around to pardoning Libby.

While every outlet is reporting on this imminent (presumed) commutation, virtually none are reporting that it will be an act of obstruction, Trump’s payoff for Stone’s lies about what he did.

Stone invented an elaborate story, post-dating the time when he made efforts to optimize the WikiLeaks releases by months, and attributing those efforts to someone he knew had no ties with Julian Assange or anyone else involved in the hack-and-leak. Stone threatened Randy Credico to adhere to that story, his thuggish friends gave Credico real reason to worry about his safety (concerns that continue today), and even hired a PI to find out where Credico moved after he went underground to continue the pressure.

The government has alleged that Stone knew and was coordinating what was coming even before the leak was publicly announced (their public evidence for that is sketchy, however). The government has further pointed to something for which there is abundant evidence: that in return for optimized publication, Assange was promised a pardon, a pardon that Stone tried to deliver from days after the election until early 2018, well after the Vault 7 releases made such a pardon untenable.

Plus, we know that Trump’s personal involvement in the optimization of the WikiLeaks releases is one topic that Trump lied to Mueller about (though not as brazenly as he lied about the Russian Trump Tower deal).

No lesser authority than Billy Barr has said that this kind of clemency might be obstruction of justice. He said as much three times during his confirmation hearing.

Patrick Leahy, specifically invoking Barr’s sanction of the Caspar Weinberger pardon that squelched the Iran-Contra investigation, asked Barr about pardons.

Leahy: Do you believe a president could lawfully issue a pardon in exchange for the recipient’s promise to not incriminate him?

Barr: No, that would be a crime.

Then, in this exchange from Amy Klobuchar, it appeared to take Barr several questions before he realized she knew more about the evidence than he did, and started couching his answers.

Klobuchar: You wrote on page one that a President persuading a person to commit perjury would be obstruction. Is that right?

Barr: [Pause] Yes. Any person who persuades another —

Klobuchar: Okay. You also said that a President or any person convincing a witness to change testimony would be obstruction. Is that right?

Barr: Yes.

Klobuchar: And on page two, you said that a President deliberately impairing the integrity or availability of evidence would be an obstruction. Is that correct?

Barr: Yes.

Klobuchar: OK. And so what if a President told a witness not to cooperate with an investigation or hinted at a pardon?

Barr: I’d have to now the specifics facts, I’d have to know the specific facts.

Klobuchar: OK. And you wrote on page one that if a President knowingly destroys or alters evidence, that would be obstruction?

Barr: Yes.

Klobuchar: OK. So what if a President drafted a misleading statement to conceal the purpose of a meeting. Would that be obstruction?

Barr: Again, I’d have to know the specifics.

Shortly after that exchange, Lindsey Graham tried to clarify the issue, asking the pardon question at a more basic level, coaching another not to testify, as Trump has done on Twitter repeatedly.

Lindsey: So if there was some reason to believe that the President tried to coach somebody not to testify or testify falsely, that could be obstruction of justice?

Barr: Yes, under that, under an obstruction statute, yes.

Lindsey: So if there’s some evidence that the President tried to conceal evidence? That would be obstruction of justice, potentially?

Barr: [nods]

Admittedly, by the third exchange, both Lindsey and Barr were hedging far more carefully about the set of facts.

But on three different occasions during his confirmation hearing, Barr made some kind of statement that said floating pardons for false testimony would be a crime.

And unlike Barr’s effort to erase Mike Flynn’s serial betrayal of the country, the Attorney General has admitted that Roger Stone’s was a “righteous” prosecution, even if only to prevent a rebellion on the part of DC federal prosecutors. Barr at least publicly disputes Trump’s claim that this was a witch hunt.

Trump is going to keep Roger Stone out of prison to ensure his silence.

That’s obstruction. And yet, almost no one is reporting on the crime in progress.

Billy Barr’s OLC Declinations

June 26, 2020/80 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

The NYT reported yesterday that, in a bid to retroactively exonerate the President, Billy Barr pursued ways to overturn the campaign finance conviction of Michael Cohen.

But Mr. Barr spent weeks in the spring of 2019 questioning the prosecutors over their decision to charge Mr. Cohen with violating campaign finance laws, according to people briefed on the matter.

As part of that effort, Barr got the Office of Legal Counsel to write a memo (though not a formal opinion) about the applicability of criminal campaign finance law to efforts to squelch public information.

At one point during the discussions, Mr. Barr instructed Justice Department officials in Washington to draft a memo outlining legal arguments that could have raised questions about Mr. Cohen’s conviction and undercut similar prosecutions in the future, according to the people briefed on the matter.

[snip]

The New York Times reported previously that Mr. Barr had questioned the legal theory of the campaign finance charges against Mr. Cohen, but it was not known that the attorney general went so far as to ask for the draft memo or had raised his concerns more than once.

The memo, written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, addressed the Southern District’s somewhat novel use of campaign finance laws to charge Mr. Cohen. Before Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea, the only person known to face criminal charges for payments meant to keep negative information buried during a political campaign was the former senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who was not convicted.

Mr. Barr argued, among other things, that such cases might be better suited to civil resolutions by the Federal Election Commission than to criminal prosecutions, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

Mr. Cohen, who reported to prison in May 2019, was recently released on furlough and is currently serving his sentence at his Manhattan home, after citing health concerns related to the coronavirus.

There is no indication that the Justice Department planned to issue a formal opinion on the campaign finances charges. Such a step, if taken, might have raised questions about the validity of the case against Mr. Cohen and affected any future effort to investigate Mr. Trump or others in his circle for similar conduct.

The news that Barr got OLC involved in criminal charging matters has repercussions on several other levels.

First, it means that potentially before Mueller finished his report, OLC would have established new ground on campaign finance crimes. That’s important because two of the declinations in the Mueller Report involve Trump’s acceptance of campaign dirt from foreigners — both the people at the June 9 meeting, and Roger Stone’s apparent optimization of the WikiLeaks releases. While that’s a different application of campaign finance (and not one that’s a clear cut case), OLC’s involvement on one application before the Mueller Report release opens the possibility that Steve Engel similarly weighed in on another, with direction from Barr about what they should decide.

Add in the fact that Engel, along with PDAG Ed O’Callaghan, did the analysis behind Barr’s decision to decline to prosecute Trump for obstruction of justice. It would be inappropriate for OLC to make a prosecutorial decision in any case, all the more so given that OLC has an opinion saying that no one DOJ should be making such decisions at all. Now add in the fact that Engel must have weighed in during the weeks leading up to this decision about campaign finance issues.

It’s now widely agreed (though was always clear from the public record) that Trump lied in his responses to Mueller about his conversations with Roger Stone about WikiLeaks. And his hints that Stone would be pardoned are one of his most obstructive acts. Effectively, then, Engel would be playing both sides of the prosecutorial decision, setting the rules and then applying them, which isn’t how justice is supposed to work.

Finally, consider that the Stone prosecutors were prepared to introduce Stone’s lies to HPSCI about coordinating with Trump on his campaign efforts as 404(b) evidence (effectively to show that his lies were systematic). That Stone was coordinating (he kept asking Rick Gates for lists, which should have been purchased from the campaign, and he asked Steve Bannon to get him funding from Rebekah Mercer during the period when Bannon was running the campaign) would seem to be a campaign finance issue. This is another matter that OLC’s review of campaign finance may have implicated.

It’s not just that Barr went out of his way to make it legal for outsides to pay to suppress bad news, but it’s that he’s secretly rewriting campaign finance law in ways that may have wider implications. And by doing so, Barr may have limited other prosecutorial decisions implicating Trump.

Even the First Roger Stone Sentencing Memo Was Politicized

June 23, 2020/35 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

Mueller prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky’s testimony for a House Judiciary Committee hearing on how Trump and Barr are politicizing DOJ has been released. As a number of outlets are reporting, he will testify about how, when Bill Barr flunky Timothy Shea was bending to pressure to “cut Stone a break,” Shea did so because he was “afraid of the President.”

I’m more interested in a few details about the actual drafting of the memos, some of which I’ll return to. The original draft of the sentencing memo was drafted by February 5; it was not only approved, but deemed “strong.”

The prosecution team – which consisted of three career prosecutors in addition to myself – prepared a draft sentencing memorandum reflecting this calculation and recommending a sentence at the low end of the Guidelines range. We sent our draft for review to the leadership of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. We received word back from one of the supervisors on February 5, 2020, that the sentencing memo was strong, and that Stone “deserve[d] every day” of our recommendation.

On February 7, the hierarchy started intervening. In addition to asking to drop the enhancements (which is what the final memo did), DOJ big-wigs also asked prosecutors to take out language about Stone’s conduct.

However, just two days later, I learned that our team was being pressured by the leadership of the U.S. Attorney’s Office not to seek all of the Guidelines enhancements that applied to Stone – that is, to provide an inaccurate Guidelines calculation that would result in a lower sentencing range. In particular, there was pressure not to seek enhancements for Stone’s conduct prior to trial, the content of the threats he made to Credico, and the impact of his obstructive acts on the HPSCI investigation. Failure to seek these enhancements would have been contrary to the record in the case and to the Department’s policy that the government must ensure that the relevant facts and sentencing factors are brought to the court’s attention fully and accurately.

When we pushed back against incorrectly calculating the Guidelines, office leadership asked us instead to agree to recommend an open-ended downward variance from the Guidelines –to say that whatever the Guidelines recommended, Stone should get less. We repeatedly argued that failing to seek all relevant enhancements, or recommending a below-Guidelines sentence without support for doing so, would be inappropriate under DOJ policy and the practice of the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, and that given the nature of Stone’s criminal activity and his wrongful conduct throughout the case, it was not warranted.

In response, we were told by a supervisor that the U.S. Attorney had political reasons for his instructions, which our supervisor agreed was unethical and wrong. However, we were instructed that we should go along with the U.S. Attorney’s instructions, because this case was “not the hill worth dying on” and that we could “lose our jobs” if we did not toe the line.

We responded that cutting a defendant a break because of his relationship to the President undermined the fundamental principles of the Department of Justice, and that we felt that was an important principle to defend.

Meanwhile, senior U.S. Attorney’s Office leadership also communicated an instruction from the acting U.S. Attorney that we remove portions of the sentencing memorandum that described Stone’s conduct. Again, this instruction was inconsistent with the usual practice in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and with the Department’s policy that attorneys for the government must ensure that relevant facts are brought the attention of the sentencing court fully and accurately.

Ultimately, we refused to modify our memorandum to ask for a substantially lower sentence. Again, I was told that the U.S. Attorney’s instructions had nothing to do with Mr. Stone, the facts of the case, the law, or Department policy. Instead, I was explicitly told that the motivation for changing the sentencing memo was political, and because the U.S. Attorney was “afraid of the President.”

Ultimately, Tim Shea approved the prosecutors’ inclusion of the enhancements, but took out the language about Stone’s conduct.

On Monday, February 10, 2020, after these conversations, I informed leadership at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. that I would withdraw from the case rather than sign a memo that was the result of wrongful political pressure. I was told that the acting U.S. Attorney was considering our recommendation and that no final decision had been made.

At 7:30PM Monday night, we were informed that we had received approval to file our sentencing memo with a recommendation for a Guidelines sentence, but with the language describing Stone’s conduct removed. We filed the memorandum immediately that evening.

That means even the first sentencing memo — the one that made a strong case for prison time — had been softened by Barr’s flunkies, in some way not laid out in Zelinsky’s opening statement.

Here’s the first sentencing memo. One thing lacking from that memo — but in Zelinsky’s opening statement — pertains to Stone’s discussions directly with Trump.

And that summer, Stone wasn’t just talking to the CEO, Chairman, and Deputy Chairman of the campaign. He was talking directly to then-candidate Trump himself.

On June 14, 2016, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced that it had been hacked earlier that spring by the Russian Government. That evening, Stone called Trump, and they spoke on Trump’s personal line. We don’t know what they said.

On August 2, [sic — this should be July 31] Stone again called then-candidate Trump, and the two spoke for approximately ten minutes. Again, we don’t know what was said, but less than an hour after speaking with Trump, Stone emailed an associate of his, Jerome Corsi, to have someone else who was living in London “see Assange.”

Less than two days later, on August 2, 2016, Corsi emailed Stone. Corsi told Stone that, “Word is friend in embassy [Assange] plans 2 more dumps. One “in October” and that “impact planned to be very damaging,” “time to let more than Podesta to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC. That appears to be the game hackers are now about.”

Around this time, Deputy Campaign Chairman Gates continued to have conversations with Stone about more information that would be coming out from WikiLeaks. Gates was also present for a phone call between Stone and Trump. While Gates couldn’t hear the content of the call, he could hear Stone’s voice on the phone and see his name on the caller ID. Thirty seconds after hanging up the phone with Stone, then-candidate Trump told Gates that there would be more information coming. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, also stated that he was present for a phone call between Trump and Stone, where Stone told Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and in a couple of days WikiLeaks would release information, and Trump responded, “oh good, alright.” Paul Manafort also stated that he spoke with Trump about Stone’s predictions and his claimed access to WikiLeaks, and that Trump instructed Manafort to stay in touch with Stone.

Surely there’s someone sharp enough on HJC who can note this discrepancy and ask Zelinsky whether there was similar language in the sentencing memo that Tim Shea took out because he’s “afraid of the President.”

Zelinsky knows little about the drafting of the second memo — he describes that he heard about it in the press and the rest of his understanding appears to come from what he was told in the office.

What he was told was that DOJ actually considered attacking its own prosecutors in the memo.

We repeatedly asked to see that new memorandum prior to its filing. Our request was denied. We were not informed about the content or substance of the proposed filing, or even who was writing it. We were told that one potential draft of the filing attacked us personally.

This is akin to the Mike Flynn motion to dismiss, which insinuated that prosecutors had engaged in misconduct. The Attorney General and his flunkies are attacking career officials at DOJ to perform for the President like trained seals.

In the passage where Zelinsky offers his opinion of that second memo he notes that it matched Trump’s tweet of the interim day.

The new filing stated that the first memo did not “accurately reflect” the views of the Department of Justice. This new memo muddled the analysis of the appropriate Guidelines range in ways that were contrary to the record and in conflict with Department policy. The memo said that the Guidelines were “perhaps technically applicable,” but attempted to minimize Stone’s conduct in threatening Credico and cast doubt on the applicability of the resulting enhancement, claiming that the enhancement “typically” did not apply to first time offenders who were not “part of a violent criminal organization.” The memo also stated that Stone’s lies to the Judge about the meaning of the image with the crosshairs and how it came to be posted on Instagram “overlaps to a degree with the offense conduct in this case,” and therefore should not be the basis for an enhancement.

The new memo did not engage with testimony in the record about Credico’s concerns. Nor did the new memo engage with cases cited in the old memo where the obstruction enhancement was applied to non-violent first-time offenders. And the memo provided no analysis for why Stone’s lies to Congress regarding WikiLeaks overlapped at all with his lies two years later to the judge about his posting images of her with a crosshairs. The new memo also stated that the court should give Stone a lower sentence because of his “health,” though it provided no support for that contention, and the Guidelines explicitly discourage downward adjustments on that basis.

Ultimately, the memo argued, Stone deserved at least some time in jail– though it did not give an indication of what was reasonable. All the memo said was that a Guidelines sentence was “excessive and unwarranted,” matching the President’s tweet from that morning calling our recommendation “horrible and very unfair.” [my emphasis]

Zelinsky’s read of that second memo also complains that it left out the record on Randy Credico’s response to Stone’s threats. In his opening statement, he provides this detail, which I don’t recall from the trial (Amy Berman Jackson was able to rely on Credico’s grand jury transcript in her sentencing, because Stone had submitted that with one of his filings).

Then, fearful of what Stone’s associates might do to him, Credico moved out of his house and wore a disguise when going outside.

Credico explains that he grew a thick mustache and wore a cap and sunglasses. Dressing up as John Bolton is indeed a fearful disguise.

The detail that Credico moved out of his house, taken in conjunction with the detail from the Stone warrants that Stone hired a private investigator to find an address to “serve” Credico with a subpoena he never served him, is especially chilling.

Stone hired a PI to hunt Credico down after Credico took measures to hide from him and (Credico has always emphasized) Stone’s violent racist friends.

In addition to making it clear that Shea politicized even the first memo in some way, Zelinsky hints at ways that Stone’s witness tampering was more aggressive than widely understood.

Let’s hope those details come out in tomorrow’s hearing.

Jeff Wall Admits that Any Scrutiny of DOJ’s Motion to Dismiss Flynn Prosecution Will Cause Irreparable Harm to Bill Barr

June 12, 2020/121 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

The hearing in Mike Flynn’s petition for a writ of mandamus just ended.

The key takeaway, given the make-up of the court, is that for the majority of the hearing, Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson seemed clear that it was too early to overturn any action Judge Emmet Sullivan has made. He has the authority to hold a hearing, she was clear. But if he decides not to grant the motion to dismiss, she seemed to indicate, she would favor a writ of mandamus overturning Sullivan’s decision. Henderson clearly believes that Gleeson’s filing, thus far, is intemperate, which is pretty funny given what Sidney Powell has done in this case.

At the very end of the hearing, she invited Principal Deputy Solicitor General Jeff Wall to address a claim made in DOJ’s brief: that DOJ should be permitted to self-correct the harm of a bad faith prosecution. So she may have been reserving that as a reason to rule for Flynn — ultimately ruling instead for DOJ. But her comments through the rest of the hearing suggest this petition will fail.

But the notion this might involve ruling for DOJ is the most interesting part of this hearing. Flynn filed the petition, not DOJ. Powell’s argument for Flynn was predictably flimsy, self-contradictory, and false. Even Judge Neomi Rao, who will clearly rule for Flynn, seemed to be struggling to find a way to agree with Flynn.

The more interesting argument came from Wall. He argued, repeatedly, that DOJ will be irreparably harmed if Sullivan is permitted to hold a hearing on DOJ’s motion to dismiss. In particular, he seemed horrified that Sullivan might require sworn declarations of affidavits.

As Beth Wilkinson, arguing for Sullivan, mentioned, neither Sullivan nor Amicus John Gleeson has called for such a thing. Both are simply moving towards a hearing scheduled for July 16. Wilkinson also noted that District courts hold such hearings all the time. (And they predictably will have to in another case where DOJ has moved to end a prosecution recently, in which — unlike this case — there appears to have been prosecutorial misconduct, Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad, which I’ll return to).

Wall is literally arguing that DOJ will be permanently damaged if it has to show up and answer for its actions in this case (in particular, to explain why the prosecutors in this case didn’t sign the motion to dismiss).

That Wall argued so forcibly as to the injury that DOJ would suffer if it had to show up and defend its motion to dismiss is all the crazier given that they didn’t file the petition. The only harm that matters here procedurally is any harm to Flynn, not DOJ, and Powell really made no such case.

When Robert Wilkins pointed out that DOJ had not filed this petition, Wall basically asked for a mulligan, the opportunity to file their own mini-writ of mandamus. Judge Henderson responded by asking (as she had more generally) why this case shouldn’t proceed under regular order, in which when DOJ missed the opportunity to file their own writ, they can’t be granted a mulligan to do so after the fact.

Along the way, Wall and Powell both repeatedly misrepresented the status of the case. More importantly, both claimed DOJ’s motion was very detailed, without noting that it also made false claims, claims on which DOJ has reversed itself at the Circuit level. That will matter in a hearing, which may be why Wall was so insistent that a hearing would do real damage to DOJ.

As noted, given Henderson’s questions for the bulk of the hearing, the Circuit will likely deny this petition. But the most striking takeaway is how panicked Wall was that DOJ might be asked to explain itself.

Setting the Scene: Today’s Flynn Hearing

June 12, 2020/35 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

I’m still doing household chores so haven’t read the Judge Emmet Sullivan response and government and Flynn reply briefs at the DC Circuit in Mike Flynn’s petition for a writ of mandamus as closely as I would have liked.

But before today’s hearing, I wanted to recall what the posture is.

The question before the Circuit should be whether Flynn is entitled to any help at the DC Circuit. It should be whether Sullivan has taken an action that is so egregious — and so injures Flynn — that it merits the DC Circuit weighing in to overturn Sullivan’s action.

The only action Sullivan has taken, though, is appointing an amicus, something that is soundly within normal judicial discretion.

The Circuit — with a panel including the shamelessly hackish Neomi Rao — ordered the sides to brief whether Sullivan had to grant DOJ’s motion to dismiss right away, what should be a premature question in any case. Effectively, Flynn has argued that DOJ had a reason to dismiss the prosecution and DOJ has argued that this is a separation of powers issue (in both its response and reply, the government has argued against what it argued before Sullivan and what Bill Barr has conceded publicly). Even while strictly arguing the mandamus issue (including the DC Circuit’s approach to Roger Stone’s similar premature petition for mandamus, which was properly rejected), Sullivan’s response also raised the outstanding allegations against Flynn on his Turkish influence peddling.

All of which is to say the arguments (Flynn, DOJ, and Sullivan will have have 15 minutes to argue) likely won’t be addressing the legal issues that should be before the court, and Flynn and DOJ have already made claims that aggressively conflict with the record in this case. One detail Flynn has relentlessly obscured is what information was available before Flynn allocuted to his guilt a second time; basically everything that is public already was known to him.

Add in the fact that DOJ is now claiming that a judge cannot stop DOJ from dismissing a prosecution of the President’s buddy for no good reason, and we should expect that today’s hearing will pose a grave risk to the rule of law in this country.

You can stream the hearing here.

Defendant Barr’s Flip-Flops Finally Attract Press Attention

June 8, 2020/106 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, Department of Justice, emptywheel, Racism /by emptywheel

Bill Barr’s sloppy lying may finally be catching up to him.

The press should have stopped treating the Attorney General as credible after he obviously lied about the contents of the Mueller Report. But he continued to be accorded the courtesy of the office, through changing DOJ stories about his involvement in Trump’s effort to coerce a quid pro quo in Ukraine (and the impeachment that followed) and his cover stories to explain unprecedented interference in the prosecution of Trump flunkies.

But over the course of the last week, the press has gone from reporting anonymous DOJ scoops, to noting how later DOJ claims conflicted with that scoop, to outright debunking of Barr (even if they’re not yet treating him as the consistent liar they recognize Trump to be).

On Tuesday, WaPo had a scoop citing an anonymous DOJ official stating that Barr personally ordered the attack on protestors, perhaps an effort to shift the focus from Trump.

Attorney General William P. Barr personally ordered law enforcement officials to clear the streets around Lafayette Square just before President Trump spoke Monday, a Justice Department official said, a directive that prompted a show of aggression against a crowd of largely peaceful protesters, drawing widespread condemnation.

The claim took the heat off of President Trump.

In a presser on Thursday, Barr offered a more elaborate explanation. He claimed he made the decision to move the perimeter around the White House on Trump’s orders — to protect the White House from protestors — before the arrival of protestors on Monday.

On Monday, the president asked me to coordinate the various federal law enforcement agencies, not only the multiple department of justice agencies, but also other agencies such as those in the Department of Homeland Security. So we had a coordinated response and worked with the National Guard and also with the DC police. That morning, we decided that we needed more of a buffer to protect the White House and to protect our agents and secret service personnel who could be reached by projectiles from H Street. I made the decision that we would try to move our perimeter northward by a block to provide this additional protection. And later at 2:00 on Monday, I met with all the various law enforcement agencies and we set our tactical plan. And that plan involve moving our perimeter a block North to I Street. It was our hope to be able to do that relatively quickly before many demonstrators appeared that day.

Unfortunately, because of the difficulty in getting appropriate units into place, by the time they were able to move our perimeter up to I street, a large number of protestors had assembled on H Street. There were projectiles being thrown and the group was becoming increasingly unruly. And the operation to what… They were asked to three times if they would move back one block, they refused. And we proceeded to move our perimeter out to I Street.

In the same presser, he claimed that he saw “instigators” before the move to push them back, thereby claiming both advance planning but also an imminent threat.

I think one of the difficulties is that while there are peaceful demonstrators and participants in these protests, the instigators, those committed to violence, basically shield themselves by going among them and carrying out acts of violence. I saw the projectiles on Monday when I went to Lafayette Park to look at the situation. And as one of the officials said, he pointed out various knots of people where the projectiles were coming from and we could see… and it was a lot of demonstrators. And it’s hard to know exactly where they’re coming from. Frequently, these things are thrown from the rear of the demonstration, but we could not continue to protect the federal property involved and protect the safety of our agents with such a tight perimeter. And so our object was to move it out by one block. Next question, please.

On Friday, however, Barr started backing away from responsibility. That day, the AP reported that Barr had not given the tactical move to attack the protestors. Instead, some unnamed person who could not be directly tied to a Barr (and therefore a Trump) command did that.

On Friday, Barr told the AP that both he and U.S. Park Police were in agreement on the need to push back the security perimeter. He said he attended a meeting around 2 p.m. Monday with several other law enforcement officials, including Metropolitan Police Chief Peter Newsham, where they looked at a map and decided on a dividing line. Under the plan, the protesters would be moved away from Lafayette Park and federal law enforcement officials and members of the National Guard would maintain the perimeter line, Barr said.

[snip]

Barr said it was a Park Police tactical commander — an official he never spoke to — who gave the order for the law enforcement agencies to move in and clear the protesters.

“I’m not involved in giving tactical commands like that,” he said. “I was frustrated and I was also worried that as the crowd grew, it was going to be harder and harder to do. So my attitude was get it done, but I didn’t say, ‘Go do it.’”

Barr insisted there was no connection between the heavy-handed crackdown on the protesters and Trump’s walk soon after to St. John’s Church.

Finally, on Sunday, Margaret Brennan interviewed Barr on Face the Nation, one of the first times during this tenure as AG Barr has sat for an interview with someone who was neither (like Pete Williams or Pierre Thomas) someone he knew from the Poppy days, nor (like Catherine Herridge) a right wing stenographer. Brennan challenged a lot of these inconsistencies, leading to Barr to make a comment — that pepper balls are not tear gas — that has been widely mocked since.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you about some of the events of the week. On Monday, Lafayette Park was cleared of protesters. You’ve spoken about this. The federal agents who were there report up to you. Did you think it was appropriate for them to use smoke bombs, tear gas, pepper balls, projectiles at what appeared to be peaceful protesters?

BARR: They were not peaceful protesters. And that’s one of the big lies that the- the media is- seems to be perpetuating at this point.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Three of my CBS colleagues were there. We talked to them.

BARR: Yeah.

MARGARET BRENNAN: They did not hear warnings. They did not see protesters–

BARR: There were three warnings.

MARGARET BRENNAN:–throwing anything.

BARR: There were three warnings given. But let’s get back to why we took that action. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, OK, there were violent riots in- at Lafayette Park where the park police were under constant attack at the- behind their bike rack fences. On Sunday, things reached a crescendo. The officers were pummeled with bricks. Crowbars were used to pry up the pavers at the park and they were hurled at police. There were fires set in not only St. John’s Church, but a historic building at Lafayette was burned down.

MARGARET BRENNAN: These were things that looters did.

BARR: Not looters, these were- these were the- the violent rioters who were- dominated Lafayette Park.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But what I’m asking about–

BARR: They broke into the Treasury Department,–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –on Monday when it was a peaceful protest.

BARR: I’m going to- let me get to this, because this has been totally obscured by the media. They broke into the Treasury Department, and they were injuring police. That night,–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Sunday night?

BARR: Sunday night, the park police prepared a plan to clear H Street and put a- a larger perimeter around the White House so they could build a more permanent fence on Lafayette.

MARGARET BRENNAN: This is something you approved on Sunday night?

BARR: No. The park police on their own on- on Sunday night determined this was the proper approach. When I came in Monday, it was clear to me that we did have to increase the perimeter on that side of Lafayette Park and push it out one block. That decision was made by me in the morning. It was communicated to all the police agencies, including the Metropolitan Police at 2:00 p.m. that day. The effort was to move the perimeter one block, and it had to be done when we had enough people in place to achieve that. And that decision, as I say, was communicated to the police at 2:00 p.m.. The operation was run by the park police. The park police was facing what they considered to be a very rowdy and non-compliant crowd. And there were projectiles being hurled at the police. And at that point, it was not to respond–

MARGARET BRENNAN: On Monday, you’re saying there were projectiles–

BARR: On Monday, yes there were.

MARGARET BRENNAN: As I’m saying, three of my colleagues were there.

BARR: Yeah.

MARGARET BRENNAN: They did not see projectiles being thrown–

BARR: I was there.

MARGARET BRENNAN: –when that happened.

BARR: I was there. They were thrown. I saw them thrown.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And you believe that what the police did using tear gas and projectiles was appropriate?

BARR: Here’s- here’s what the media is missing. This was not an operation to respond to that particular crowd. It was an operation to move the perimeter one block.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And the methods they used you think were appropriate, is that what you’re saying?

BARR: When they met resistance, yes. They announced three times. They didn’t move. By the way, there was no tear gas used. The tear gas was used Sunday when they had to clear H Street to allow the fire department to come in to save St. John’s Church. That’s when tear gas was used.

MARGARET BRENNAN: There were chemical irritants the park police has said–

BARR: No, there were not chemical irritants. Pepper spray is not a chemical irritant.

It’s not chemical.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Pepper spray, you’re saying is what was used–

BARR: Pepper balls. Pepper balls.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right, and you believe that was appropriate. What I want to show you is what a lot of people at home who were watching this on television saw and their perception of events. So while the president says that he appreciates peaceful protest, around the same time, this crowd–

BARR: Well, six minutes- six minutes difference–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right, around same time the area is being cleared of what appear to be peaceful protesters using some force. And after the speech is finished, the president walks out of the White House to the same area where the protesters had been and stands for photo op in front of the church where the protesters had been. These events look very connected to people at home. In an environment where the broader debate is about heavy handed use of force in law enforcement, was that the right message for Americans to be receiving?

Along the way, however, Barr’s explanation got more and more inconsistent.

What started out as an apparent effort to shield the President from direct responsibility for attacking protestors to clear way for his photo op became, by the end of the week, an effort to create a legal justification — protestors throwing things — while still distancing the time of the order from the photo op.

That’s a conflict Phil Bump highlighted in a particularly good job of shredding Barr’s statements, relying on an earlier detailed timeline he did. In addition to mocking Barr’s claim that pepper balls are not tear gas because they’re naturally occurring, Bump shows how Barr’s statements yesterday conflict with the justification for using tear gas.

“Here’s what the media is missing,” Barr said to Brennan on Sunday. “This was not an operation to respond to that particular crowd. It was an operation to move the perimeter one block.”

The problem with that framing is twofold.

First, it contradicts that same statement from the Park Police that serves as the backbone of the tear-gas defense. In that statement, the Park Police claim that protesters “began throwing projectiles including bricks, frozen water bottles and caustic liquids” at 6:33 p.m. This prompted the effort to clear the square to “curtail the violence that was underway.” There’s nothing about this being a planned operation.

What’s more, Barr himself made the claim to Brennan that the protesters were being violent at the time that the effort to remove them began.

“Three of my colleagues were there,” Brennan told him. “They did not see projectiles being thrown.”

“I was there,” Barr replied. “They were thrown. I saw them thrown.”

The timing of Barr’s visit is important, and we’ll get to it in a bit. But suffice it to say that video evidence from the period not only doesn’t back up the Park Police claim, it also doesn’t show Barr reacting to any such events.

It has been rare, possibly unprecedented, for the press to track Barr’s obvious lies this closely, even in the case of legal cases (like the Flynn prosecution) where Barr’s flip-flops are docketed.

I think a lot of things explain the unusual attention to Barr’s flip-flops. The assault on protestors and Trump’s tone-deaf photo op was so pathetic, the White House went into damage control. And because there were so many journalists at Lafayette Park, there were a slew of witnesses attesting to inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the official version of the story (starting with the Park Police’s flip-flops on the tear gas). Now, Barr is in a position of accusing three CBS reporters and at least one WaPo reporter, whose versions of this story differ dramatically from his own, of lying: His word against the reports of outside observers who have film to backup those reports.

But Barr’s changing excuses may also be partly explained by one other thing.

As noted, Barr’s first instinct seemed to be to distance the President from the order targeting peaceful protestors, and as he has repeatedly done, he took responsibilty (and Kayleigh McEnany happily gave him responsibility). But that created new problems: including why the Attorney General was ordering cops, many of them not within his chain of command, but more importantly, why Trump — through orders given to Barr who executed those orders by issuing orders of his own — had responded to First Amendment protected activities with a violent assault.

The stakes of the answers to that question may have gone up with the filing of a lawsuit captioned, “Black Lives Matter v. Donald Trump:” Bill Barr is a named defendant.

Defendant William Barr is the Attorney General of the United States. He is sued in his individual and official capacity. He personally issued the order that resulted in the unlawful actions complained of in this lawsuit.

[snip]

At approximately 6:08 pm, Defendant Barr entered Lafayette Square.

At 6:10 pm, Defendant Barr was behind the law enforcement officials in Lafayette Square pointing north towards St. John’s Church. The Department of Justice subsequently acknowledged that Defendant Barr personally ordered that Lafayette Square be cleared.

Let me be clear: because this suit focuses on Bivens complaints about the violation of Constitutional rights, it probably won’t succeed in terms of the damages requested. Recent proceedings have largely gutted Bivens.

But what the suit does do is trace a link between Barr’s actions and the complaints of the plaintiffs (who include a 9-year old boy, a Navy veteran, and a former Eagle Scout). It does so through some of the same details that Barr is now trying to obfuscate.

And what the lawsuit may do is force a way to make the events that Barr is trying to cover up public.

Barr’s lies are consistent with all his other lies. He makes broad claims to power — not authority — and then he keeps changing the story as needed to try to give his claims retroactive legal cover.

This time, he may be forced to do so in court.

Update: WaPo did an unbelievably detailed piece showing no evidence for Park Police claims of dangerous projectiles, and making evident how the clearance of the Square led to the photo op.

When Billy Barr Called a Press Conference to Target Non-Terrorists Rather than Brag about the Right Wing Terrorists FBI Caught

June 5, 2020/125 Comments/in emptywheel, Intelligence, Terrorism /by emptywheel

What if the FBI succeeded in thwarting a right wing terrorist attack but rather than bragging about that success, instead redoubled its efforts to target peaceful protestors as terrorists?

That’s what happened this week.

On Tuesday, the FBI terrorism agents arrested three adherents of the “Boogaloo” movement, a group of extremists planning a civil war. All have military experience and one, Andrew Lynam, is currently in the Army Reserve. At a ReOpen Nevada protest held in April, at which they were all heavily armed, Lynam told a person who’d go on to become an FBI informant that, “their group was not for joking around and that it was for people who wanted to violently overthrow the United States government.” One of them planned to use the cover of the George Floyd protests to conduct attacks and sow panic.

CHS stated that PARSHALL and LOOMIS’s idea behind the explosion [targeting Lake Mead] was to hopefully create civil unrest and rioting throughout Las Vegas. They wanted to use the momentum of the George Floyd death in police custody in the City of Minneapolis to hopefully stir enough confusion and excitement, that others see the two explosions and police presence and begin to riot in the streets out of anger.

They were arrested on the way to a Black Lives Matter protest with the makings of Molotov cocktails and an AR-15 in their vehicles.

Normally when the FBI thwarts a terrorism attack in process, they hold a big press conference to brag about it. As of this morning, however, neither DOJ nor FBI have posted the arrest on their national news websites (the Nevada US Attorney’s Office has).

Instead of boasting about the plotters arrested as terrorists, yesterday Billy Barr, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Acting DEA Administrator (and Barr flunky) Timothy Shea, and the head of ATF had a press conference that seemed designed to provide post hoc and advance justification for abusive steps Barr has and plans to authorize. (The Daily Beast also remarked on their silence about the Boogaloo arrests, and noted that that was one of the only arrests of ideologically motivated groups that have taken place during the uprising.)

The specifics of their statements, given the legal framework around national security investigations and known and presumptive OLC memos authorizing such things, deserves more attention.

The culprit is Antifa, not (also) the right-wingers carrying guns

In questions, for example, Pierre Thomas asked Bill Barr about the Boogaloo bust. Barr responded by focusing on Antifa.

And that’s why in my prepared statement, I specifically said, in addition to Antifa and other extremist groups like Antifa, there were a variety of groups and people of a variety of ideological persuasion. So I did make that point. I’m not going to get too specific, but the intelligence being collected by our US attorney’s office is particularly integrated by the FBI from multiple different sources is building up. There are some specific cases against individuals, some Antifa related.

Chris Wray also responded to the question about Boogaloo by emphasizing that Antifa was a terrorist organization.

Sure. Let me say first, as I’ve said for quite some time and including even my first few months in job, we, the FBI have quite a number of ongoing investigations of violent anarchist extremists, including those motivated by an Antifa or Antifa like ideology. And we categorize and treat those as domestic terrorism investigations and are actively pursuing them through our joint terrorism task forces.

This repeats comments both Wray and Barr made in their prepared speeches. Barr saidhe culprit here is “Antifa” and it is violent.

At some demonstrations, there are groups that exploit the opportunity to engage in looting. And finally, at some demonstration, there are extremist agitators who are hijacking the protests to pursue their own separate and violent agenda.

We have evidence that Antifa and other similar extremist groups, as well as actors of a variety of different political persuasions, have been involved in instigating and participating in the violent activity.

Wray said the same. The culprits are “Antifa” and other agitators.

We’re seeing people who are exploiting this situation to pursue violent, extremist agendas—anarchists like Antifa and other agitators. These individuals have set out to sow discord and upheaval, rather than join in the righteous pursuit of equality and justice. And by driving us apart, they are undermining the urgent work and constructive engagement of all those who are trying to bring us together—our community and religious leaders, our elected officials, law enforcement, and citizens alike.

There is a foreign nexus that will allow us to use transnational tools

In his prepared speech, Barr claimed that there are foreign actors involved.

We are also seeing foreign actors playing all sides to exacerbate the violence.

It’s true that the Russians who helped Trump get elected are sowing dissension but that would be dealt separately from a press conference if Barr weren’t trying to use the foreign nexus to access national security tools he says can’t be used with Trump supporters.

Barr returned to this later, and specifically said they maybe can’t offer proof.

I may ask Chris if he cares to provide a little more detail. I’m not sure how much detail we want to get into, but people shouldn’t think that countries that are hostile to the United States, that their efforts to influence the US or weaken the US or sow discord in the US is something that comes and goes with the election cycle. It is constant. And they are constantly trying to sow discord among our people, and there’s a lot of disinformation that circulates that way. And I believe that we have evidence that some of the foreign hackers and groups that are associated with foreign governments are focusing in on this particular situation we have here and trying to exacerbate it in every way they can. Unless Chris has something to add, I can turn it over to … Yeah.

By suggesting there’s a foreign nexus, Barr is laying the groundwork to claim to need tools only available with that foreign nexus (something that has been done with past protest movements).

Every store that gets raided gives federal jurisdiction

After making it clear that Billy Barr intends to target Antifa as the culprit here, and use national security tools to do so, Barr and his flunkies then laid out how they think they have national jurisdiction.

Barr asserted his own jurisdiction based off the federal buildings he said that had been targeted (and because protestors were in front of the White House).

Many of the buildings, as you know, and facilities here, and the monuments are the responsibility of the federal government and the proceedings and process of the federal government take place here. And so when you have a large scale civil disturbance that is damaging federal property, threatening federal property, threatening federal law enforcement officers, threatening the officials in government and their offices and our great monuments, it is the responsibility of the federal government to render that protection.

Barr described how that Federal jurisdiction — and his invocation of the word “riot” — allows them to lead the response via what is the intelligence-driven network used against terrorists.

The Justice Department is also working closely with our state and local partners to address violent riots around the country. Our federal law enforcement efforts are focused on the violent instigators.

Through the FBI, U.S. Attorney’s Offices, component field offices, and state and local law enforcement, we are receiving real-time intelligence, and we have deployed resources to quell outbreaks of violence in several places.

While Wray didn’t use the word “riot” he described the centrality of the Joint Terrorism Task Force to the Federal response.

We’re making sure that we’re tightly lashed up with our state, local, and federal law enforcement partners across the country, by standing up 24-hour command posts in all of our 56 field offices. We have directed our 200 Joint Terrorism Task Forces across the country to assist local law enforcement with apprehending and charging violent agitators who are hijacking peaceful protests.

Timothy Shea invented an excuse not used in his request to get involved: the DEA has jurisdiction because some people stole controlled substances from pharmacies, possibly after they had been looted.

In addition, DEA continues to investigate drug related crimes, including the theft of controlled substances from looted pharmacies, which is happening here in the District of Columbia and across the country. In the national capital region, approximately or over 150 DEA special agents have partnered with the metropolitan police department at their request and the National Guard to enforce security posts and maintain a secure perimeter in designated areas.

Acting ATF Director Regina Lombardo made a similar claim to jurisdiction (though theirs legitimately extends to explosives activity): ATF is investigating firearm dealer thefts.

ATF has also responded to 73 federal firearms licensed dealers. We have identified many suspects that made arrest and recovered many firearms already.

When it came to Bureau of Prisons Director Michael Carvajal, the only real excuse he offered was that Billy Barr requested BOP get involved. Though he did offer the bogus claim that BOP’s riot team is “experienced in … conflict resolution.”

The Attorney General asked the BOP to request and assist other law enforcement agencies in maintaining order and peace in the district of Columbia. BOP crisis management teams are highly trained to deal with various types of emergency situations, including crowd control and civil disturbances. They are experienced in confrontational avoidance and conflict resolution.

Barr offered even more transparently bullshit excuses for inviting in the kinds of people who put down riots among violent felons, claiming that there weren’t enough Marshals to go around, and that no one else in the US Government (like Park Police) know how to deal with the kinds of crowds they deal with all the time. Barr also provided a totally bullshit excuse for why the riot teams weren’t wearing identification.

Let me just add that the Bureau of Prisons SORT teams are used frequently for emergency response and emergency situations, in either civil disturbances or hurricanes or other things like that. They’re highly trained. They’re highly trained units. And in fact, in the Department of Justice, we do not really have large numbers of units that are trained to deal with civil disturbances. I know a lot of people may be looking back on history, think we can call on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of US Marshals, and that’s simply not the case. Our marshals’ response for us is approximately a hundred US Marshals. And so, historically when there have been emergencies where we have to respond with people who do have experience in these kinds of emergencies that are highly trained people, we use what are called SORT teams, response teams from the Bureau of Prisons.

And I could see a number … Now, in the federal system, we don’t wear badges with our name. I mean, the agents don’t wear badges and their names and stuff like that, which many civilian police agents, I mean, non-federal police agencies, do. And I could understand why some of these individuals simply wouldn’t want to talk to people about who they are, if that were, if that in fact was the case.

The photo op was not a photo op

But Barr’s bullshit explanation for why he sicced riot teams on peaceful protestors was still more credible than the excuse he offered for violently attacking peaceful protestors, including priests at a church serving them, for a photo op. He had decided (using the jurisdiction assumed by claiming everything is a federal building) to expand the perimeter around the White House.

Unfortunately, because of the difficulty in getting appropriate units into place, by the time they were able to move our perimeter up to I street, a large number of protestors had assembled on H Street. There were projectiles being thrown and the group was becoming increasingly unruly. And the operation to what… They were asked to three times if they would move back one block, they refused. And we proceeded to move our perimeter out to I Street.

And that had nothing at all whatsoever with the President’s desire for a photo op and he just happened to be in the photo op that had nothing to do with the violent attack on peaceful protestors and the exploitation of a house of worship.

Obviously, my interest was to carry out the law enforcement functions of the federal government and to protect federal facilities and federal personnel, and also to address the rioting that was interfering with the government’s function. And that was what we were doing. I think the president is the head of the executive branch and the chief executive of the nation, and should be able to walk outside the White House and walk across the street to the church of presidents. I don’t necessarily view that as a political act. I think it was entirely-I don’t necessarily view that as a political act. I think it was entirely appropriate for him to do. I did not know that he was going to do that until later in the day after our plans were well underway to move the perimeter, so there was no correlation between our tactical plan of moving the perimeter out by one block and the president’s going over to the church. The president asked members of his cabinet to go over there with him, the two that were present, and I think it was appropriate for us to go over with him.

Let me be clear. These are — most of them — transparently bullshit excuses. Unfortunately, the way our intersecting justifications for using national security authorities work, such transparently bullshit excuses provide the legal cover that the Federal government has long used, especially when it comes to spying on brown people.

To be clear, this is not new. It’s just incredibly ham-handed and pretty transparently done after the fact, after the press already identified Barr’s abuses. And I assume OLC only now is writing memos to match the transparently bogus claims made in yesterday’s presser.