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If an Informant Narcs on a Riot But No FBI Agent Asks about It, Did It Really Happen?

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Way at the back of the DOJ IG Report on January 6 showing that there were roughly 26 informants present at the attack, only three of whom had been tasked with telling their handlers what was going down, is the FBI response.

Here’s the signature block.

These are normally signed. For example, the report on subpoenas to Congress and journalists was signed by Brad Weinsheimer, the top career official at DOJ.

But on the day Chris Wray announced his upcoming departure, no one at FBI wanted to take responsibility for their response.

The response disputes a key finding of the Report: DOJ IG concludes (after a close review of emails that went out) that no one bothered to ask field offices if their informants knew anything about the event.

[T]he FBI did not take a step that could have helped the FBI and its law enforcement partners with their preparations in advance of January 6. Specifically, the FBI did not canvass its field offices in advance of January 6, 2021, to identify any intelligence, including CHS reporting, about potential threats to the January 6 Electoral Certification. Several FBI officials told the OIG that it is common practice for the FBI to ask field offices to canvass their sources for information—in advance of a large event, such as the Inauguration, the Super Bowl, or other events with significant attendance and to report that information to the requesting field office, which, in this instance, would have been the WFO. FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate, who was Associate Deputy Director at the time, described the lack of a canvass prior to January 6 as a “basic step that was missed,”

The FBI, however, says,

[T]he FBI continues to disagree with certain of the factual assertions in the Report regarding the manner of specific steps, and the scope of the canvas undertaken by the FBI in advance of January 6, 2021, a time period during which the Report recognizes as including multiple field offices providing information in response to direction from Washington Field Office and FBI Headquarters.

Among the things that an FBI informant knew but — not having been asked by his or her handler — did not report until after the riot? That the informant reported on the meeting between Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio in a parking garage.

During the course of the FBI’s January 6 investigation, the FBI learned that on the night of January 5 the CHS was in contact with Tarrio and reported on a meeting with Tarrio and Rhodes, which became a subject matter of the Tarrio prosecution

An earlier report from this informant, claiming 100 Proud Boys would make the trip and they were beginning to get cranky, did get filed in DC on January 4. But not the detail that Stewie and Enrique were in cahoots — a meeting that remains unexplained to this day, a piece of intelligence that might have led to a different approach to policing the militias or the Trump associates they had in common, people like Roger Stone and Alex Jones.

The FBI also didn’t share another informant’s tips about Rhodes’ plans to travel to DC for January 6.

On December 15, the Field Office 1 CHS reported to the Field Office 1 Handling Special Agent and the Field Office 1 RA 1 Special Agent that Rhodes intended to travel to DC for the events of January 6. This was the first time the Field Office 4 CHS provided reporting that specifically referenced January 6. According to the FD-1023 documenting this contact, the Field Office 1 CHS reported that Rhodes had been “trying to attract Oath Keepers who are current law enforcement members to travel for events on that day so they can carry concealed firearms legally.” In addition, the FD-1023 stated, “Rhodes has made recent public statements suggesting Oath Keepers and the militia can be called up on [sic] to assist the current president to stay in office and resist perceived deep state enemies.” The Field Office 1 CHS reported that the CHS “[doesn’t know of] specific plans by Rhodes or any of his associates to instigate any acts of violence,” but was “very concerned that extremist members of Oath Keepers or other groups may become involved in unplanned violent activity on January 6.

This information, including that Rhodes was planning to travel to DC for January 6, was recorded in Field Office 1 case files on December 22 but was not emailed or otherwise provided to WFO. The Field Office 1 handling agent told the OIG that the Field Office 1 RA 1 Special Agent, as the assessment’s case agent, took the lead in communicating with WFO and that she may have sat in on conference calls with WFO, but she did not initiate any contact with WFO.

[snip]

The Field Office 1 RA 1 Special Agent told the OIG that even though this source reporting was properly documented and was not “dynamic” information, “this was one where I kick myself every day” for not emailing a copy of the reporting to WFO and DTOS. The Field Office 1 RA 1 Special Agent said that given that Rhodes had been present for the MAGA I and MAGA II election protests and was so visible about his objections to the election results, and given Field Office 1’s many communications with DTOS and WFO about Rhodes, he would have expected DTOS and WFO to be made aware that Rhodes was planning to be in DC on January 6.

We determined that the last reporting from the Field Office 1 CHS before January 6 was on January 4 when the Field Office 1 CHS told the Field Office 1 handling agent that the Oath Keepers “contingent headed to DC is 200+ strong.” The FD-1023 includes the statement that the “CHS did not have anything more detailed to provide.” This reporting also was not provided to WFO or filed in any WFO case file. The Field Office 1 CHS did not travel to DC for the events of January 6.

The report is, nevertheless, unbelievably soft on the FBI, which built and sustained a phone dragnet for fourteen years after 9/11 because the FBI missed one phone call involving Osama bin Laden. Here, FBI’s informants gave it multiple warnings about plans men since convicted of sedition had on January 6. And a number of those warnings weren’t shared.

Instead of hammering the FBI for missing such leads from its informants, the report concluded that the FBI didn’t miss anything “critical” by failing to call on its extensive informant network to find out what they knew.

Although WFO and DTOS did not direct field offices to canvass their CHSs in advance of January 6, our review of documented CHS reporting in FBI field offices as of January 6 did not identify any potentially critical intelligence related to a possible attack on the Capitol on January 6 that had not been provided to law enforcement stakeholders prior to January 6. For example, the FBI had received CHS reporting about online threats to the Electoral Certification that included maps of the Congressional tunnels. WFO distributed this intelligence through the established January 6 coordination mechanisms. Moreover, we found that the USCP, the MPD, the USPP, DHS, and the Supreme Court Police all learned about similar intelligence in advance of January 6 through their own intelligence gathering mechanisms and other established coordination efforts. 95 Additionally, our review of information in the FBI’s possession as of January 6, in addition to the then-documented CHS reporting, did not identify any potentially critical intelligence that had not been provided to, or was not otherwise known to, law enforcement stakeholders prior to January 6. We also took note of the fact that the extensive previous oversight (by Congress, the GAO, and other Inspectors General) of the events of January 6, including preparation by law enforcement in advance of January 6, did not identify potentially critical intelligence that was not shared by the FBI in advance of January 6. [my emphasis]

This applies a wildly different standard for white seditionists than it did, for decades, for Muslim men.

And yet, having been treated with an incredibly lax standard, the FBI still refuses to own up to their January 6 failures.

The Lessons of Zero Accountability for a Kash Patel Bureau

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This is not your Chris Wray resignation post.

That’ll come later.

This post is a lessons learned about how Republicans — not just at FBI — exploited efforts to share fabricated evidence about Hunter Biden with Wray’s FBI.

In this post, I laid out the five different examples of fabricated evidence FBI or DOJ dealt with in the Hunter Biden case, along with four more instances where we can’t assess the rat-fuckery.

  1. After sharing a debunked Fox News meme, Alexander Smirnov makes false claims of bribery
  2. Derek Hines narratively plants a crack pipe in Wilmington
  3. The gun shop also lied on the gun form
  4. Tony Bobulinski[‘s FBI report] claims he saw a diamond pass hands
  5. Gal Luft claims Joe Biden met directly with CEFC Chairman Ye in 2016
  • FBI enthusiastically welcomes “The Economist’s” claims
  • The Scott Brady side channel launders dirt Rudy Giuliani obtained from Russian agents
  • FBI makes Peter Schweizer their special Hunter Biden informant
  • Judge Maryellen Noreika admits a laptop that has never been indexed

I argued that several examples of that fabricated evidence directly harmed Hunter Biden’s due process. The pressure to chase Alexander Smirnov’s alleged attempt to frame Joe Biden with bribery seems to have played a significant role in the collapse of Hunter’s plea deal and the ratcheting up of charges afterwards. At least as early as Hunter’s bid to defeat a vindictive prosecution claim, AUSA Derek Hines misrepresented Hunter’s own memoir to claim the book helped prove Hunter was doing drugs when he owned a gun, a misrepresentation Hines sustained before the jury that convicted Hunter. While evidence that others lied on gun purchase forms, as the gun shop owner had done by doctoring the very gun form on which Hunter was convicted of lying, is routinely excluded at trials, doing so in this case prevented Hunter from arguing his lie was not material.

Fabricated evidence was allowed to infringe on the due process rights of the son of the President. And the dick pic sniffing media didn’t make a squeak.

But in other of the attempts to politicize Hunter’s case that I laid out, things worked the way it is supposed to. Other examples of fabricated or potentially fabricated evidence were excluded by diligent prosecutors or FBI agents. AUSA Lesley Wolf attempted to keep dirt funneled from Russian spies, Smirnov, and Rudy Giuliani through the Brady side channel from infecting the case. At the request of case agents, FBI supervisory agent Tim Thibault shut down Peter Schweizer as an informant … again, out of an interest to preserve the integrity of the case. Someone in that same vicinity deemed Tony Bobulinski’s claims to be suspect, so investigators didn’t rely on his testimony, but continued to investigate Hunter’s payments from CEFC via other means.

But this is the important lesson, especially going forward: those efforts to maintain the integrity of the investigation were punished, severely. House Republicans (assisted by the disgruntled IRS Agents, in the case of Wolf), treated Wolf and Thibault like villains, eliciting threats against them and leading to their retirement. Because they attempted to prevent the case against Hunter from being deliberately politicized, Trump’s allies in the House made them pariahs and chased them out of government.

This is what already happened to people who tried to uphold rule of law. This is what will happen more going forward. Congress will work in tandem with a politicized DOJ to ensure that the good guys get targeted and chased out.

Often, House Republicans efforts to demonize people who had upheld the integrity of evidence relied on “whistleblowers” who (with just a few exceptions) had themselves been caught politicizing law enforcement themselves, and to retaliate, ran to Jim Jordan to complain.

Aspiring FBI Director Kash Patel funded some of these people telling stories to undermine FBI’s efforts to uphold its integrity.

That’s not the only role the House GOP played in this process.

Congressman like Jim Jordan and James Comer are protected by Speech and Debate even if they lie. And they did lie — or perhaps were too stupid to realize the claims they made were baseless. They lied on right wing propaganda outlets. They lied in reports and hearings.

Whereas the legal prosecution against Hunter generally relied on actual facts (even if Derek Hines moved them around to where he wanted them to be), the House did not. They platformed Bobulinski (and then thought better of it), they championed Luft and Smirnov (and then thought better of it), they championed the Brady side channel. They made Matt Taibbi’s mistaken misrepresentations about the FBI a repeat feature. They turned loan repayments and daily check-in calls into international spy scandals. They guaranteed that the claims discarded by the Bureau because they didn’t meet evidentiary standards would be magnified in the public sphere.

In the Republican House, you don’t need facts to make a case in the court of public opinion. And such false claims played a key role in persecuting even the people who had done nothing more than exercise their First Amendment rights, people like disinformation experts and former spooks honestly expressing concerns about Russian influence operations.

As Kash Patel likely assumes control over an agency that is supposed to be bound by facts — but that even under Wray had begun to be corrupted by Trump’s politicization — remember how Congress has served as a annex to the presumptively evidence-bound investigations as to matters of law, an annex spun free of such bounds. Even before Patel dismantles those bounds, there’s always the alternative of having the loudmouths in Congress do Trump’s dirty work.

Importantly, the loudmouths can do so only as long as a supine press plays along.

But play along they have.

With Hunter Biden, two things facilitated that. For the political and DOJ beat journalists, the existence of the laptop seemingly melted their brain, making them incapable of seeing details through the dick pics.

But for Hill journalists, process was the hook. Jordan and Comer guaranteed breathless coverage by delivering bullshit disguised as events that Hill journalists treated as normal — a stern letter, a subpoena (issued, at first, without the authority to enforce it, which went widely unnoticed and unreported), a formal impeachment inquiry. Never mind that the thing underlying those events was a naked political stunt. Few ever got around to stepping back and observing that the House GOP blew almost their entire two year majority on making enemies. Few ever reported that the House GOP had spent millions of taxpayer dollars, not in paying the bills or funding highways, but in creating enemies. And by treating that process as normal legislative process, journalists normalized it all.

As we move forward to an even more politicized DOJ, keep in mind that with this kind of symbiosis already in place, with the House GOP already prepared to blow up stuff that gets thrown out by the FBI, much of Patel’s work — chasing out honest people trying to protect the integrity of investigations, manufacturing more bullshit claims — will be done for him.

There is one thing that Kash can and undoubtedly will do: recruit more allies — people like Schweizer, or the Proud Boys Bill Barr deputized to try to turn Antifa into a thing — to inform against Republican adversaries. With Pam Bondi’s help, Kash can trade immunity for fabricated claims against his targets, just as Rudy Giuliani was selling in search of dirt on Hunter Biden.

Otherwise, though, Kash can instead focus on ensuring that none of Trump’s people face consequences for their actions.

Amid Global Threats that Remain (Publicly) Unspeakable, Trump Makes Himself Vulnerable

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Christopher Wray and Alejandro Mayorkas managed to get Republicans and Democrats to agree yesterday — in condemning the two men after they blew off two public Global Threats hearings.

Top officials from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security on Thursday drew bipartisan fire for declining to testify in public at a Senate hearing on “worldwide threats” and instead offering to testify in a classified setting.

Both Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security Committee expressed anger at what they called Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray’s “refusal” to testify in public.

“In a shocking departure from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s longstanding tradition of transparency and oversight of the threats facing our nation, for the first time in more than 15 years, the Homeland Security and FBI Director have refused to appear before the Committee to provide public testimony at our annual hearing on Threats to the Homeland,” Chairman Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, said in a statement.

The jilted members of Congress (and NBC’s Ken Dilanian) seemed to believe the snub was simply defensive. And while I wouldn’t blame either Wray or Mayorkas for wanting to limit their public statements in advance of leaving government and being targeted by Trump’s vengeance machine, it’s possible that the two men had stuff to say that simply couldn’t be said in public.

Given Mark Warner’s alarming commentary about China’s hack of the US telecom system and the shared jurisdiction Wray and Mayorkas would have had over that investigation, that’s could be part of the explanation (though as a telecom guy, Warner’s alarm may simply reflect his better knowledge of the exposure here).

The Chinese government espionage campaign that has deeply penetrated more than a dozen U.S. telecommunications companies is the “worst telecom hack in our nation’s history — by far,” a senior U.S. senator told The Washington Post in an interview this week.

The hackers, part of a group dubbed Salt Typhoon, have been able to listen in on audio calls in real time and have in some cases moved from one telecom network to another, exploiting relationships of “trust,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a former telecom venture capitalist. Warner added that intruders are still in the networks.

Though fewer than 150 victims have been identified and notified by the FBI — most of them in the D.C. region, the records of people those individuals have called or sent text messages to run into the “millions,” he said, “and that number could go up dramatically.”

Those records could provide further information to help the Chinese identify other people whose devices they want to target, he said. “My hair’s on fire,” Warner said.

Those details, some previously undisclosed, add to the alarming understanding of the scope of the hack since late September, when the U.S. government, after being alerted by industry, began to grasp its seriousness. “The American people need to know” how serious the intrusion is, Warner said.

The hackers targeted the phones of Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, as well as people working for the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris and State Department officials.

The world is a mess right now. Donald Trump’s victory makes it likely that authoritarians around the world will defeat the Western order — with Trump thrown scraps by those holding leverage, and phone intercepts, over him.

Which is why Trump’s paranoia about the American “Deep State” is so foolish.

WaPo last week reported on the many transition services Trump has eschewed because those same services caught him engaging in misconduct last time around. Trump won’t work with General Services Administration because in 2017 they turned over emails showing that Trump had secret contacts with Russia during the transition.

Presidential transitions are formally led by the GSA, which typically provides furnished office space and computer support to both nominees for pre-election planning.

Trump won’t use State Department translators because transcripts leaked in his first term.

In calls with foreign heads of state, Trump has cut out the State Department, its secure lines and its official interpreters.

[snip]

Government officials also traditionally rely on State to help create an official record of such conversations, in case disputes arise over what was said.

Trump’s calls have raised alarms from some foreign policy experts — particularly his call with Vladimir Putin. He advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe, as The Washington Post reported. The absence of an official transcript of the exchange already has created a challenge for Trump, said Daniel Fried, a retired diplomat now at the Atlantic Council think tank, because the Kremlin quickly denied that the call had taken place.

“It would be a lot easier for the Trump team if he were able to say that the Russia team was lying,” said Fried, who played key roles in designing American policy in Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. “So there’s a cost to doing it this way. People are scratching their heads and saying, ‘Somebody’s lying.’”

Trump doesn’t want the FBI vetting his nominees because they found disqualifying details on people like Jared (and it should be said but WaPo does not, Johnny McEntee and Boris Epshteyn).

As his team considers hundreds of potential appointees for key jobs, he’s so far declined to let the Federal Bureau of Investigation check for potential red flags and security threats to guard against espionage — instead relying on private campaign lawyers for some appointees and doing no vetting at all for others. Trump’s transition team is considering moving on his first day in office to give those appointees blanket security clearances, according to people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations.

Trump won’t sign the Presidential Transition Act’s ethics code because, well, he has every intent on looting government for his own profit.

Trump’s team says its staffers have signed their own ethics code and conflict-of-interest pledge, although those documents do not cover Trump or meet the requirements of the Presidential Transition Act. Transition officials said they continue to “constructively engage” with the Biden administration, but have not provided details of the negotiations.

As a result, Trump can’t access the hardened facilities that would protect his people from known, ongoing operations by Iranian and Chinese hackers.

Trump’s transition teams cannot participate in national security briefings, enter federal agencies or speak with employees, and can’t receive formal briefings about ongoing operations and projects. (Trump has begun receiving intelligence briefings.) The transition team cannot use secure federal email servers to communicate (a particular concern, security experts said, after the Trump campaign was hacked by Iran).

Trump hates his own government so much, he makes himself an easy target for hostile governments and disloyal appointees. Hell, he couldn’t even get Pete Hegseth to honestly disclose the sexual assault allegation against him.

What Trump will do to the United States is awful.

But because he hates the US government so much, he’ll also make “America First” wildly vulnerable to hostile forces, at a time when they’re already poised to undercut America’s strength.

It’s why he’s such a godsend to hostile countries: Because he will serve as a cancer within the US government, deliberately eating away at America’s defenses from inside.

The Habitual Lies on Which Trump Has Built His Attack on Rule of Law

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Credit where it’s due: WaPo has already published two stories this week that attempt to cover Trump like the conman he is, rather than the good faith politician he is often treated as.

Yesterday, Ashley Parker wrote about how Trump spins ridiculous lies to gin up fear against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

It is a distorted, warped and, at times, absurdist portrait of a nation where the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to deadly effect were merely peaceful protesters, and where unlucky boaters are faced with the unappealing choice between electrocution or a shark attack. His extreme caricatures also serve as another way for Trump to traffic in lies and misinformation, using an alternate reality of his own making to create an often terrifying — and, he seems to hope — politically devastating landscape for his political opponents.

Later yesterday, Isaac Arnsdorf and Josh Dawsey described what Trump was trying to do with a statement that — among other things — said Trump wanted Florida to take the lead in investigating the Ryan Routh suspected assassination attempt: He was trying to “foment distrust of federal law enforcement.”

His statement sought to implicate President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, picking up on other recent remarks blaming them for failing to protect him. There is no evidence that Biden or Harris were involved in any security decisions leading up to the apparent assassination attempts, and Biden has since ordered the administration to provide the Secret Service with every available resource and asked Congress for more funding.

These pieces treat Trump’s language as utilitarian means to accrue power, rather than transparent statements of truth, something that — in my opinion — is necessary to reclaim truth from him. It’s a rare moment of a news outlet applying savviness to the manipulation Trump is attempting rather than how it fits into a campaign strategy.

The means of manipulation are the news, not (primarily, anyway) the measure of their success.

That said, while the Arnsdorf/Dawsey story fact checks two of Trump’s claims,

There is no evidence that Biden or Harris were involved in any security decisions leading up to the apparent assassination attempts, and Biden has since ordered the administration to provide the Secret Service with every available resource and asked Congress for more funding.

[snip]

He also complained that FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, who Trump appointed, testified to Congress in July that he was not certain what struck Trump’s ear at the July 13 rally in Butler, Pa. The FBI quickly clarified that Trump was injured by a bullet or a fragment.

They don’t fact check the lies on which Trump’s grievances are based. For example, they misstate what Trump claimed that Director Wray said:

[T]he FBI Director went before Congress and falsely said that it may not have been a bullet, “It was just glass or shrapnel — a lie condemned by even my worst enemies. What he said was disgraceful, especially since it was witnessed LIVE by millions of people, and he was forced to immediately retract.

This quotation, presented as such, completely misstates what Chris Wray said.

He said, “there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear.” As the FBI clarified immediately, what hit Trump was, “a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces.” Bullet fragments are shrapnel.

Wray never raised glass (from the teleprompter).

Similarly, WaPo never debunks Trump’s false claim that the “Biden/Harris DOJ/FBI [have] control over local D.A.s and A.G.s.”

Perhaps the most curious choice, however, is how WaPo defined half a paragraph of shorthand for readers…

In the statement, Trump proceeded to recite a long list of legal problems that he attributed to his political opponents, using shorthand familiar to his fans, including:

  • “Russia, Russia, Russia,” meaning special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election
  • “Impeachment Hoax Number One,” again meaning the 2019 impeachment, for which the Senate acquitted him; and “Impeachment Hoax Number Two,” meaning his 2021 impeachment for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, again resulting in acquittal
  • “the Lawless Documents Hoax,” meaning the court-authorized search of his Mar-a-Lago estate as part of a federal prosecution for mishandling classified documents, which a Trump-appointed judge dismissed in July
  • “the January 6th Hoax” and “the J6 Unselect Committee,” meaning the House investigation into the attack on the Capitol
  • “the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case,” meaning his conviction in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a 2016 hush money scheme
  • “the New York A.G. Scam,” meaning New York Attorney General Letitia James’s lawsuit accusing Trump’s businesses of fraud, resulting in a $450 million judgment in February

… without debunking the lies.

For example, DOJ has repeatedly debunked Trump’s claim that the January 6 Committee deleted documents and Republicans haven’t been able to prove it with their majority either.

Letitia James didn’t just accuse Trump and win a judgment, she proved that Trump and his sons are fraudsters.

And the balance of that paragraph includes a set of lies implicating Hunter Biden and his father. Trump invented the quote, “Russian interference and disinformation;” the false claim that the former spooks used the word “disinformation,” rather than “information operation,” has always been central to an orchestrated campaign claiming they lied. Moreover, the letter expressed a non-falsifiable opinion; to this day many of the former spooks who signed it stand by that opinion that the laptop “has the earmarks of a Russian influence operation.” (And contrary to some WaPo reports, FBI has never claimed to have done the things it would need to do to dispute it.)

Nothing in the laptop shows evidence of Joe Biden’s grift (indeed, after six years of investigation, DOJ didn’t substantiate any unlawful grift on the part of Hunter).

In other words, it’s not just the general insinuation that the Deep State can’t be trusted. WaPo is right that Trump uses a lot of shorthand when he attacks the Deep State.

But even that shorthand is riddled with deliberate false claims. In each instance, Trump transforms something that has a perfectly understandable explanation — Chris Wray was trying hard to avoid overstating what the FBI had concluded, the spooks expressed an opinion — and by misrepresenting it, makes it appear far worse, Wray dismissing the seriousness of Trump being hit, former spooks trying to cover for the Biden family.

I don’t mean to be greedy. I’m grateful that WaPo has, at long last, started explaining how Trump exerts his power, rather than treating his false claims as if they were delivered in good faith.

But if we’re going to unpack the very cynical way Trump has deployed lie after lie to get his supporters and the Republican Party generally to hate rule of law, this cumulative process needs to be unpacked. The press has, for years, simply let Trump repeat those underlying claims without contest, as WaPo again does here. None of them are true, but his followers believe them, not least because the press disseminates them in various ways without contest.

There is no underlying basis for Trump’s grievances about the Deep State. None.

To invent that grievance, Trump has created lie after lie, and built them together into a caricature of the Deep State that his loyal followers have been trained to attack.

Trump Commends the Deep State; Media Buries That Fact

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The Trump press conference yesterday has left me thinking that goldfish might do a better job of covering this guy than the people currently doing so.

As I’ll describe, after covering it live, many outlets have chosen to bury what a blubbery mess the former President was. Then NYT, which assigned multiple reporters on any given day to repeat, “Joe Biden old,” had taken all stories about the presser off its front page by the time it released the Dead Tree version.

Admittedly, there wasn’t much news.

But there was a piece that I think merits more attention. Trump was apparently asked (the entire presser was set up such that Trump claimed not to be able to hear the questions, and they weren’t picked up on the coverage) whether the FBI had interviewed him as part of the investigation into the Thomas Crooks shooting attempt. He described:

They have. The FBI came to see me about the shooter. Uh, I think they’ve done a very good job. And I think they did a very good job with respect to this other lunatic that they have in custody.

The reference to “this other lunatic” is likely a reference to Asif Merchant, the Pakistani man accused of attempting to solicit paid killers to assassinate Trump on behalf of Iran.

This is newsworthy!

It’s newsworthy, because Trump’s allies in Congress are gunning for Chris Wray regarding the Crooks investigation.

And it is newsworthy, because Trump has spent years demonizing the Deep State, only to commend them when they preempt an attack on him.

Nevermind that (as LOLGOP and I laid out in one of our Ball of Threads episodes) almost everyone the FBI first targeted in Crossfire Hurricaine (including Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Mike Flynn, and Paul Manafort) were, or were attempting to, monetize their access to Trump. Trump was, at first, one of the victims of that investigation too.

If you believe what Konstantin Kilimnik told Paul Manafort in December 2016, Page even went to Russia and claimed to be negotiating on Ukraine on behalf of Trump.

Trump could have viewed himself as a victim of that influence peddling, but his narcissism prevented that.

He undoubtedly does view himself as the victim here, rightly so. And because of that, he’s willing to commend the work the FBI does.

That answer deserves wider coverage, not least so the Trump mob that has been targeting the FBI might tone things down.

Alas, the media wants horserace, and to hell with US democracy and rule of law.

Update: ABC describes that during Trump’s victim interview, he quizzed them for more details about Crooks.

Trump Invites Reporters to Start Demanding His Medical Records

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More media outlets are beginning to report on the FBI’s uncertainty regarding whether a bullet or shrapnel wounded Donald Trump’s ear.

NBC quotes the FBI describing that their Shooting Reconstruction Team continues to investigate (though most of that story has turned into Republican flopsweat).

In a statement Thursday, the FBI said, “Since the day of the attack, the FBI has been consistent and clear that the shooting was an attempted assassination of former President Trump which resulted in his injury, as well as the death of a heroic father and the injuries of several other victims.”

“The FBI’s Shooting Reconstruction Team continues to examine evidence from the scene, including bullet fragments, and the investigation remains ongoing,” the statement added.

The NYT describes that the FBI seems to be focused on whether metal fragments, not glass from the teleprompters, hit Trump.

In a social media post Thursday night, Mr. Trump lashed out at Mr. Wray, saying: “No wonder the once storied F.B.I. has lost the confidence of America!”

Mr. Trump said there was no glass and no shrapnel. “No, it was, unfortunately, a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard.”

The F.B.I. said in a statement that the bureau “has been consistent and clear that the shooting was an attempted assassination of former President Trump, which resulted in his injury, as well as the death of a heroic father and the injuries of several other victims.”

It is not unusual for the type of bullet that Mr. Crooks fired from his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle to tumble end over end and break apart after hitting even a small solid object. Gun experts say a fragment might, for instance, have hit a metal stanchion.

Still, a bullet could have grazed Mr. Trump’s ear, and the F.B.I. has not ruled that out. Investigators found eight rifle casings on the roof where the shooter was positioned.

It is not clear if investigators have eliminated other potential sources of debris. But bureau analysts appear to be focused on metal fragments, as opposed to glass from the teleprompters onstage. Photos of the teleprompters next to Mr. Trump show they were intact after the bullets were fired.

Much higher in the story, though, NYT reveals something funny: after not subpoenaing Trump in the Mueller inquiry, blowing off Trump’s efforts to extort campaign help from Volodymyr Zelenskyy, after needing a search of his home to retrieve some subset of the classified documents Trump stole, the FBI has finally asked Donald Trump for an interview.

The bureau has asked to interview Mr. Trump as part of its broader investigation, hoping to provide insights into the shooting and possibly a more complete record of his injury, the official said,

This is going to be like the Feds getting Al Capone on taxes, isn’t it?

As noted by NYT, in response to all the attention, Trump has posted on the social media site he has propped up by influence laundering, insisting he was hit by a bullet (though mentioning only glass as an alternative), and then making a claim about his hospital diagnosis.

If Trump is going to make claims about what the hospital report says, then by all means he can ask them to release his records, including the CT scan results, and give a press conference.

Perhaps now — almost two weeks after the attack — journalists will start asking him for those records?

Update: Just above the story quoting an FBI source about the possibility that metal shards injured Trump, NYT posts a visual investigations piece suggesting those (like the FBI) still considering explanations other than the bullet are speculating.

The only reason people have revisited this is because of Wray’s testimony.

Today’s visual analysis does not factor in Michael Harrigan’s comment, made about the Doug Mills photo showing something flying by Trump. Harrigan suggested the angle of the bullet was too low to hit Trump’s ear.

That is the assessment of Michael Harrigan, a retired F.B.I. special agent who spent 22 years in the bureau.

“It absolutely could be showing the displacement of air due to a projectile,” Mr. Harrigan said in an interview on Saturday night after reviewing the high-resolution images that Mr. Mills filed from the rally. “The angle seems a bit low to have passed through his ear, but not impossible if the gunman fired multiple rounds.”

[snip]

In Mr. Harrigan’s last assignment, he led the bureau’s firearms training unit and currently works as a consultant in the firearms industry.

“Given the circumstances, if that’s not showing the bullet’s path through the air, I don’t know what else it would be,” he said.

Update: Trump’s Candy Man Ronny Jackson has rolled out another propaganda report.

Note that he says Trump was “evaluated and treated for a “Gunshot Wound to the Right Ear.”

But he doesn’t say that they concluded it was a gunshot wound.

Nor does he add to the description of Trump’s treatment from his last propaganda vehicle. It’s time for a practicing physician to tell us what happened with Trump’s injury.

I wonder if Savage Librarian or anyone else wants to craft lyrics about Jackson’s propaganda set to the Candy Man.

Update: The FBI has released a statement clarifying that if Trump was hit by shrapnel, it was shrapnel from the bullet.

What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject’s rifle.

Other coverage

As I’ve noted repeatedly in my posts on this, I’m pushing this issue largely for normative reasons. It is inexcusable that Trump’s failure to share his medical records has been largely ignored, even as the same press scrum was chasing conspiracy theories that Biden was hiding a Parkinson’s diagnosis. Here are my past posts on this.

Ronny Jackson Memory Holes His Nephew’s Injury

Since Leaving Butler, Trump Has Foregone the Best Medical Care and Is Withholding CT Scan Results

Will Peter Baker Exhibit the Same Tenacity about Medical Records on the Trump Shooting as He Did a Parkinson’s Conspiracy Theory?

Will Alex Jones Accuse Donald Trump of Being a Crisis Actor?

Ronny Jackson Memory Holes His Nephew’s Injury

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As I noted in real time, during a hearing on the Trump shooting yesterday, FBI Director Chris Wray suggested that the FBI is not sure whether the former President was hit by a bullet or shrapnel.

I’ve held off on posting about it, because I expect we’ll get further clarification from the FBI. But Josh Marshall and others have been focused closely on it since, which has set off some squirrelness among Trump’s boosters.

Propagandists have set Trump’s own narrative of the shooting to video.

Speaker Mike Johnson suggested Wray wasn’t credible — and that it wouldn’t matter anyway if Trump was falsely claiming he “took a bullet for democracy” if, in reality, he had taken shrapnel for fascism.

Johnson said he didn’t find Wray’s testimony credible.

“We’ve all seen the video, we’ve seen the analysis, we’ve heard it from multiple sources in different angles that a bullet went through his ear. I’m not sure it matters that much,” Johnson said.

He also said Wray “was not forthcoming with some of the information that we would expect.”

And then, finally, Ronny Jackson weighed in. First, he screamed that it was irresponsible for the FBI Director to suggest the evidence was not certainy.

More remarkably, he told CBS that, of course it was a bullet, because if it wasn’t, what would have hit him?

If it wasn’t a bullet wound, I ask you: ‘What was it’? Piece of glass? Where’d the glass come from? I’ve been told the teleprompters are completely intact. So what just mysteriously.. a piece of glass just appeared out of nowhere?

This is where things get really weird.

That’s because Ronny Jackson — I believe this was before he had yet seen Trump after the shooting — described that his nephew, who was sitting close to Trump, was injured when “something had grazed and cut his neck.”

Maybe, just maybe, the same kind of thing that hit his nephew also hit Trump, standing just a short distance away?

Again, I’m agnostic and don’t much care which it was. I care that Trump has refused to provide real medical transparency about the incident, and the press corp has — before Wray’s testimony — largely let that slide. If it was a bullet that damaged his ear, there are actually greater ongoing concerns about head injuries.

But this now smells like flopsweat.

Just release the medical records.

Jim Jordan Dragged Martin Estrada Away from Fighting Fentanyl To Chase Hunter Biden’s Dick Pics

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Yesterday, Ohio Senator JD Vance gave a speech explaining that he is holding up the confirmation of a US Attorney candidate for his own state because Donald Trump is being prosecuted for stealing classified documents but — Vance claimed in an earlier version of this rant — “the President and his family [go] completely untouched.”

Meanwhile, yesterday’s version of Vance’s harangue claimed that “it is Joe Biden’s border policies that have invited this fentanyl into our country at record levels.”

It’s an interesting take, given that Republicans keep dragging law enforcement away from fighting the fentanyl crisis  so they can explain that the conspiracy theories right wingers believe about the investigation into Hunter Biden are false.

In a July hearing where both Jim Jordan and now-Speaker Mike Johnson complained — relying on Terry Doughty’s badly misinformed opinion — that (they claimed) the FBI had prevented millions of people from sniffing Hunter Biden’s dick pics before the 2020 election, Chris Wray pointed to the impact two drug busts had had in Marion, Ohio.

Just last month, for instance, the FBI charged 31 members of two drug trafficking organizations responsible for distributing dangerous drugs like fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine throughout the area around Marion, Ohio. In that one investigation, run out of the FBI’s 2-man office in Mansfield, we worked with partners in multiple local police departments and sheriff’s offices to take kilos of fentanyl off  Marion’s streets, enough lethal doses, I should add, to kill the entire population of Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, combined.

As I noted at the time, this was good staff work. Marion, Mansfield, and Lorrain are all in Jim Jordan’s district (and so all obviously constituents of Vance, as well).

Jim Jordan took time out of Chris Wray’s day so he could complain about Hunter Biden’s dick pics, while ignoring the drug problems facing his own constituents.

It’s not just Wray.

In testimony last week before Jordan’s committee, the US Attorney for Los Angeles, Martin Estrada, struggled to explain to Jordan’s staffers why his own top AUSAs didn’t think it smart to reallocate prosecutors to partner on the Hunter Biden investigation at a time his office was 40 prosecutors short of the number they’re supposed to have. As Estrada explained, instead, CDCA granted Special AUSA status to some prosecutors from Delaware and had done so even as Gary Shapley wailed that nothing was going on in LA.

Jordan’s top aide Steve Castor was incredulous that Estrada wouldn’t know specific details about what the Delaware prosecutors granted Special Assistant status to pursue a case against Hunter Biden in LA were doing.

I mean, this is a potential prosecution of the President’s son. If the lawyers from the District of Delaware were out in your district discussing the case, don’t you think you’d know about it?

When Estrada tried to get Castor to understand how different the priorities looked when you were running the country’s biggest US Attorney’s office, fentanyl was the first thing he raised.

I think a little context would be helpful. So, as I said, we have the largest district in the country. We have a Fentanyl epidemic which is one of the worst in the country’s. We’ve done more death-resulting cases than any other district in the country. We’re on pace to do more this year than we ever had before.

[snip]

There are a lot of high-profile cases, so I don’t meet with attorneys on every single high-profile case.

[snip]

We have a fentanyl epidemic. That includes not just death-resulting cases, it includes going after cartels which are distributing these pills, not just in powder form but in pill form. We routinely seize over a million pills at a time from vehicles, and we need to prosecute those cases. Each pill could be a death. And routinely now we’re finding cartels transporting fentanyl in liquid form, which is a new thing that they’re doing. So we have to do those cases.

Republicans claim to care about the fentanyl crisis. But in reality, they keep proving that they care more about Hunter Biden’s dick pics than they do about their troubled constituents in Marion, OH.

Donald Trump Agrees He Is Living By Barack Obama’s Rules

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I’ve been waiting for something like this: the moment where Donald Trump concedes that Barack Obama — Hawaiian birth certificate and all — will play a key role in decisions about his ridiculous claims about hoarding classified documents.

Midway through Trump’s bid to convince Aileen Cannon to reject DOJ’s motion for a stay of her injunction against using the documents marked with classification marks seized from Trump’s beach resort, he notes that the only power he ever had to classify and declassify documents was governed by an Executive Order signed by Barack Obama on December 29, 2009.

The Government does not contest—indeed, it concedes—that the President has broad authority governing classification of, and access to, classified documents. [ECF No. 69 at 10, 18 (quoting Dep’t of Navy v. Egan, 484 U.S. 518, 529 (1988))]. In fact, the Government advocates that “the protection of classified information must be committed to the broad discretion of the agency responsible, and this must include broad discretion to determine who may have access to it.” [ECF No. 69 at 18 (quoting Egan, 484 U.S. at 529)]. Congress provided certain parameters for controlling classified information but primarily delegated to the President how to regulate classified information. 50 U.S.C. § 3161. At the same time, Congress exempted the President from complying with such requirements. See id. § 3163 (“Except as otherwise specifically provided, the provisions of this subchapter shall not apply to the President . . .”).

President Obama enacted the current Executive Order prescribing the parameters for controlling classified information in 2009. See Exec. Order 13526 (Dec. 29, 2009). That Executive Order, which controlled during President Trump’s term in office, designates the President as an original classification authority. See id. § 1.3(a)(1). In turn, the Executive Order grants authority to declassify information to either the official who originally classified the information or that individual’s supervisors—necessarily including the President. § 3.1(b)(1), (3). Thus, assuming the Executive Order could even apply to constrain a President, cf. 50 U.S.C. § 3163, the President enjoys absolute authority under the Executive Order to declassify any information. There is no legitimate contention that the Chief Executive’s declassification of documents requires approval of bureaucratic components of the executive branch. Yet, the Government apparently contends that President Trump, who had full authority to declassify documents, “willfully” retained classified information in violation of the law. See 18 U.S.C. § 793(e); [ECF No. 69 at 9].7 Moreover, the Government seeks to preclude any opportunity for consideration of this issue.

7 Of course, classified or declassified, the documents remain either Presidential records or personal records under the PRA. [ed: See this post for how Trump debunked this claim. My emphasis]

Donald Trump concedes that Executive Order 13526 governed the classification and declassification of information on December 29, 2009. It continued to govern the classification and declassification of information on January 20, 2017. It continued to govern the classification and declassification of information on January 20, 2021. It continues to govern the classification and declassification of information today.

Donald Trump agrees that he never altered this EO. He agrees that he is bound by it still, unless the lawful President, a guy named Joe Biden, decides to change it.

This is a virtual capitulation to the arguments DOJ is making, including that the classification review of the documents he stole, the review ongoing as we speak, will be determinative of the classification status of those documents.

But it’s also a concession that he is bound by everything in the EO. There’s a whole bunch of things Trump concedes when he concedes that point (including that classified information must be kept secure).

One of those things, however, is that former Presidents — and the propagandists who work for them — still must get waivers to bypass Need to Know restrictions on classified information.

Sec. 4.4. Access by Historical Researchers and Certain Former Government Personnel.

(a) The requirement in section 4.1(a)(3) of this order that access to classified information may be granted only to individuals who have a need to-know the information may be waived for persons who:

(1) are engaged in historical research projects;

(2) previously have occupied senior policy-making positions to which they were appointed or designated by the President or the Vice President; or

(3) served as President or Vice President.

(b) Waivers under this section may be granted only if the agency head or senior agency official of the originating agency:

(1) determines in writing that access is consistent with the interest of the national security;

(2) takes appropriate steps to protect classified information from unauthorized disclosure or compromise, and ensures that the information is safeguarded in a manner consistent with this order; and

(3) limits the access granted to former Presidential appointees or designees and Vice Presidential appointees or designees to items that the person originated, reviewed, signed, or received while serving as a Presidential or Vice Presidential appointee or designee. [my emphasis]

This part of the EO — an EO that Trump, who served but no longer serves as President, agreed he is bound by — does not say that such access must be waived. It says it may be.

May. Not must.

Moreover, this waiver requires that before waiving the Need to Know rule, agency heads first determine, in writing, that giving former Presidents and their propagandists access to classified information, “is consistent with the interest of national security.”

Right there, in the middle of his filing arguing that maybe the classification decisions Joe Biden’s Administration is making right now can be overridden by a Special Master, Donald Trump agrees that the Barack Obama order he says he is bound by means not even he gets access to this information without a waiver, and even then, only if the agency heads that own the information say it won’t make the country less safe.

In his bid to claw back classified information he stole, Donald Trump admits he’s still living by Barack Obama’s rules. And those rules, the rules Trump admits he is bound by, say he can only even access this information if Avril Haines and Paul Nakasone and William Burns and Chris Wray say he can.

Go to emptywheel resource page on Trump Espionage Investigation.

Now We Know Why Jeffrey Rosen Has Been Silent, How About Chris Wray?

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Since the attempted coup, both Jeffrey Rosen and Chris Wray (and Wray’s then-Deputy David Bowdich) were almost silent about the attack. A week after the attack, Rosen  a video in the middle of the night, explaining what he had done during the coup.

The day after, Wray released a short statement. More than a week later, he spoke at a closed-press meeting on inauguration security. Neither provided the kind of daily updates one would expect after such an attack.

Last night (as Rayne laid out here), NYT reported on why Rosen was so silent: because he’s a witness in what should be a criminal investigation into how the attack relates to the effort to overturn the election.

As the NYT lays out, in the days leading up to the coup attempt, Trump already tried to replace Rosen with someone, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, who would be willing to take steps to overturn the vote.

The effort to force Rosen to use DOJ resources to undermine a democratic election started on December 15, the day after Bill Barr resigned.

When Mr. Trump said on Dec. 14 that Attorney General William P. Barr was leaving the department, some officials thought that he might allow Mr. Rosen a short reprieve before pressing him about voter fraud. After all, Mr. Barr would be around for another week.

Instead, Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Rosen to the Oval Office the next day. He wanted the Justice Department to file legal briefs supporting his allies’ lawsuits seeking to overturn his election loss. And he urged Mr. Rosen to appoint special counsels to investigate not only unfounded accusations of widespread voter fraud, but also Dominion, the voting machines firm.

Then, over the weekend in advance of the certification, Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark told Rosen Trump was going to make him Attorney General so he could chase Rudy Giuliani’s conspiracy theories.

On New Year’s Eve, the trio met to discuss Mr. Clark’s refusal to hew to the department’s conclusion that the election results were valid. Mr. Donoghue flatly told Mr. Clark that what he was doing was wrong. The next day, Mr. Clark told Mr. Rosen — who had mentored him while they worked together at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis — that he was going to discuss his strategy to the president early the next week, just before Congress was set to certify Mr. Biden’s electoral victory.

Unbeknown to the acting attorney general, Mr. Clark’s timeline moved up. He met with Mr. Trump over the weekend, then informed Mr. Rosen midday on Sunday that the president intended to replace him with Mr. Clark, who could then try to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College results. He said that Mr. Rosen could stay on as his deputy attorney general, leaving Mr. Rosen speechless.

In a replay of the 2004 Hospital Hero moment, the others involved (including White House Counsel Pat Cipollone) agreed they’d resign en masse if Trump replaced Rosen, which led him to back off the plan.

NYT had four sources for this story, all of whom fear — even after Trump has been relegated to Florida — retaliation.

This account of the department’s final days under Mr. Trump’s leadership is based on interviews with four former Trump administration officials who asked not to be named because of fear of retaliation.

Clark claimed there were errors in this story, but ultimately he claimed Executive Privilege (his statement to WaPo on the topic, which I’ve used here, is more expansive).

In a statement that seemed to draw on language in the New York Times account, Clark said, “I categorically deny that I ‘devised a plan . . . to oust’ Jeff Rosen. . . . Nor did I formulate recommendations for action based on factual inaccuracies gleaned from the Internet.”

“My practice is to rely on sworn testimony to assess disputed factual claims,” Clark said. “There were no ‘maneuver[s].’ There was a candid discussion of options and pros and cons with the President. It is unfortunate that those who were part of a privileged legal conversation would comment in public about such internal deliberations, while also distorting any discussions. . . . Observing legal privileges, which I will adhere to even if others will not, prevent me from divulging specifics regarding the conversation.”

The WaPo version of this story names all who were involved in the confrontation with Trump (though the sources for the story are likely, in part, their aides).

At the meeting were Trump, Clark and Rosen, along with Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general; Steven A. Engel, the head of the department’s Office of Legal Counsel; and Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, the people familiar with the matter said. The people said Rosen, Donoghue, Engel and Cipollone pushed against the idea of replacing Rosen, and warned of a mass resignation.

Clark says he will only respond to a sworn statement. By all means, the impeachment managers should demand sworn testimony, from all involved.

Of course, that would mean Pat Cipollone, who led the former President’s defense in his first impeachment trial, would be asked about the second time Trump tried to use government resources to cheat. Steve Engel, who authorized the withholding of a whistleblower complaint describing Trump’s earlier attempt, would also testify. Rosen, who participated in having DOJ chase Sidney Powell’s conspiracy theories about Mike Flynn, would be asked to testify about why the conspiracy theories about Dominion machines were any less credible than the Flynn ones. And Donoghue, who served as a filter for some of the conspiracy theories Rudy Giuliani had been fed by men who have since been named Russian agents, would be asked to testify about why Rudy wasn’t a credible source.

Rosen was silent in his final two weeks, presumably, for fear he might get fired and replaced by someone who would be more pliant to a coup attempt. But he — and the three others — are also witnesses to a larger plot that ended up in violence and death.

I wonder if Chris Wray has similar evidence he’ll be asked to share.