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A Summary of Kash Patel’s Disqualifications to Lead FBI

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I expect Kash Patel will be confirmed; I even expect that Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee will be utterly feckless in Kash’s confirmation hearing tomorrow.

Nevertheless I wanted to summarize his disqualifications.

Kash got where he is by substituting the Steele dossier for the real Russian investigation, which was instrumental in Trump’s success at minimizing the damage of one after another Trump associate lying about what really happened in 2016.

Kash gets a lot of credit for the Nunes Memo, with many right wingers claiming that the Horowitz Report vindicated it.

It didn’t. As I showed, both the Nunes Memo and the Schiff Memo got things right and got things wrong; mostly they just spoke past each other, which was fundamentally based on that substitution of the Steele dossier for the real Russian investigation.

Nevertheless, one of Kash’s lasting gripes (against Robert Hur) has to do with efforts to limit how much Kash was releasing at the time.

Kash did more than that as a House staffer, though. He continued to chase his conspiracy theories as Congress turned to criminalizing Hillary Clinton. He’s actually the staffer who asked the question that set up Michael Sussmann for a failed prosecution years later. He set up what would later become the Durham investigation — a four year effort to criminalize being victimized by a hostile nation-state.

And then, after Durham filed a wildly misleading court filing misrepresenting the discovery by some Georgia Tech researchers that someone was using a YotaPhone inside the Executive Office of the Presidency during the Obama term, Kash sent out a letter outright lying about the claims.

The whole thing is riddled with lies, but ultimately it amounts to a conflation of the Obama-era discovery with the discovery of the ties between a marketing server, Alfa Bank, and a Spectrum Health server. Kash’s letter was the final step before Trump jumped on the lies and called for Sussmann’s execution. Kash is a key cog in the way Trump has elicited threats against others.

Kash also paid a lot of former FBI agents who were disgruntled about having to investigate Trump supporters.

And when news of the discovery that boxes of documents that Trump had returned had classified documents in them, Kash invented a claim that Trump had declassified all those documents.

At least one Jack Smith witness — someone with the potty mouth of Eric Herschmann — disputes any claim there was a standing order to declassify documents. That witness described someone “unhinged” and “crazy” who first got access to the White House through the Member of Congress he worked for, who started the “declassified everything” claim when it first started appearing in the media, which is when Kash Patel made the claim.

Jack Smith described what happened next. When investigators subpoenaed Kash to test his claims that Trump had this standing order, Kash tried to delay compliance indefinitely by hiring a lawyer already busy defending a January 6 seditionist. When the aspiring FBI Director did first testify, Kash pled the Fifth repeatedly.

On Monday, September 19, 2022, the FBI personally served witness Kashyap “Kash” Patel with a grand jury subpoena, commanding him to appear on September 29, 2022. Prior to engaging with counsel, Patel contacted government counsel on Friday, September 23, 2022, to request a two-week extension. The government agreed to that extension and set his appearance for October 13, 2022. Thereafter, [Stan] Woodward contacted government counsel on September 27, 2022, explaining that he had just begun a lengthy jury trial–United States v. Rhodes et a., No. 22-cr-15 (D.D.C.)–but that Patel had retained him. On September 30, 2022, Woodward request an addition indefinite extension of Patel’s grand jury appearance until some point after the Rhodes trial concluded. (Ultimately, the verdict in the trial was not returned until November 29, 2022, approximately six weeks after Patel’s already-postponed appearance date of October 13, 2022.) The government was unwilling to consent to the indefinite extension that Woodward sought. Woodward, for his part, declined various alternatives offered by the government, including scheduling Patel’s grand jury appearance for Friday afternoons, when the Rhodes trial was not sitting, and a voluntary interview by prosecutors and agents over a weekend.

On October 7, 2022, Patel (through Woodward) filed a motion to quash his grand jury appearance, arguing that requiring Patel to appeal pursuant to the grand jury’s subpoena would violate his constitutional rights by depriving him of his counsel of choice, i.e., Woodward, who was occupied with a jury trial elsewhere in the courthouse. The Court denied the motion to quash on October 11, 2022, see In re Grand Jury No. 22-03 Subpoena 63-13, No. 22-gj-41, Minute Order (Oct. 11, 2022), and required Patel to appear as scheduled on October 13. See id. (“Mr Patel requests a delay of some unspecified time period in his testimony because his counsel, Stanley Woodward, will be engaged in the United States v. Rhodes trial, Case No. 22-cr-15, scheduled to last several weeks, with no promises as to when his counsel will still have time available. Mr. Patel retained Mr. Woodward on the attorney’s first day of jury selection in Rhodes when such circumstance made fully apparent that counsel would be unavailable during Mr. Patel’s scheduled grand jury testimony. In addition, the government has already demonstrated flexibility in meeting Patel’s scheduling needs . . . . Testifying before a grand jury is not a game of find-or-seek-a-better-time or catch-me-if-you-can, and a witness cannot indefinitely delay a proceeding based on his counsel’s convenience. . . .”).

Patel appeared before the grand jury on October 13, 2022, where he repeatedly declined to answer questions on the basis of the rights afforded to him by the Fifth Amendment. Thereafter, the government moved to compel Patel’s testimony. The Court granted the government’s motion to compel, contingent on the government offering statutory immunity. [my emphasis]

Aileen Cannon has buried any description of what Kash said when compelled to testify. This nomination should be held until any discussion of Patel in the Jack Smith report is released (but thus far Dick Durbin has shown no interest in doing so; DOJ just dropped their appeal).

But it should never be passed, because Kash is a menace. In his repeated efforts to falsely claim that January 6 defendants were treated any worse than any other mostly-violent pretrial detainees during the COVID period, he suggested that the people detained for assaulting cops were being mistreated.

As I have shown (and Bulwark did before me) Kash’s cheerleading for January 6 defendants amounts to arguing that someone accused of assaulting cops who grabs a gun when his probation officers show up should not then be jailed, nor should someone who directly threatened members of Congress, called on a mob to grab their weapons, and then assaulted cops.

Kash Patel will do and say anything to protect Trump and his flunkies — up to and including risking the safety of members of Congress.

Such a person would not serve as Director of FBI. He would serve as a means to turn government against Trump’s adversaries.

Confirming Kash Patel Will Get Senators “Drug through the Streets”

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When Kash Patel boosted the J6 Choir claiming the video of those housed in DC Jail in March 2023 was proof of a two-tier system of justice, he was suggesting that someone who brought a crowbar — which he called a “weapon” — to the Capitol while promising to drag members of Congress through the streets, then assaulted cops protecting Congress, should not be detained while awaiting trial for assaulting cops.

That’s the significance of Ryan Nichols’ inclusion in the footnote Jack Smith put in his report, listing the identities of some of the J6 Choir members Trump had endorsed.

Nichols was in jail because of the threats he posed to members of Congress.

I’m hearing that Pence just caved. I’m hearing reports that Pence caved. I’m telling you if Pence caved, we’re gonna drag motherfuckers through the streets. You fucking politicians are going to get fucking drug through the streets. Because we’re not going to have our fucking shit stolen. We’re not going to have our election or our country stolen. If we find out you politicians voted for it, we’re going to drag your fucking ass through the streets. Because it’s the second fucking revolution and we’re fucking done. I’m telling you right now, Ryan Nichols said it. If you voted for fucking treason, we’re going to drag your fucking ass through the streets. So let us find out, let the patriots find out that you fucking treasoned this country. We’re gonna drag your fucking ass through the street. You think we’re here for no reason? You think we patriots are here for no reason? You think we came just to fucking watch you run over us? No. You want to take it from us, motherfucker we’ll take it back from you.

And even then, he didn’t remain in prison for the period before he pled guilty.

Nichols challenged his treatment in the DC jail, complaining about the seizure of his discovery and claiming that his incarceration was exacerbating his known PTSD diagnosis. He was further involved in an altercation in September 2022, after which he was segregated, then moved to another facility. He had repeated diagnosis issues with his health care. So in November 2022, Judge Thomas Hogan released Nichols from custody, and he remained out until he pled guilty on November 7, 2023.

But ultimately, Reagan appointee Royce Lamberth sentenced Nichols to what would have been three more years in prison — a total of 63 months and (because Nichols refused to cooperate with Probation on his finances) a record $200,000 fine, one the pardon will presumably wipe away entirely.

Nichols blamed his untreated PTSD for his actions. But Nichols’ sentencing memo revealed a 2019 arrest for assault causing bodily harm that resulted in diversion, one that belies his defense attorney claim he had never been violent before January 6. And prosecutors’ sentencing memo raised all the conspiracy claims Nichols made — many of the same claims that Kash Patel has made about him and others — raising some question about his remorse for his actions.

In addition, although Nichols “agreed with the conduct described in the Statement of Offense” in his presentence interview, PSR ¶ 50, in a post circulated after the plea hearing, members of Nichols’ defense team refers to him as a “political prisoner.” Exhibit J (Substack blog post authored by defense team law clerk present at counsel table for the plea hearing titled “Ryan Nichols: Political Prisoner Of His Own Country”); see also Exhibit K (GiveSendGo page titled “Free My Patriot Prisoner” with messages attributed to Nichols, his wife, and his father prior to the defendant’s plea). Even prior to Nichols entering his plea, his attorney was tweeting statements that directly contradicted the statement of offense in this case. See Exhibit M (October 30, 2023, twitter post from Nichols’ lead counsel).12 These statements threaten “public trust in the rule of law and the criminal justice system [, which] is paramount in the context of January 6 cases.” United States v. Nester, 22-cr-183 (TSC), ECF No. 113 at 6 (internal citation omitted). While the government does not attribute counsel’s statements to the defendant himself (nor does it base its recommendation on such bombastic rhetoric), this Court must appropriately assess whether the defendant has independently accepted responsibility for his criminal conduct. Pleading guilty is not simply the same as accepting the consequences and showcasing remorse under these trying and unique circumstances.

12 The government also notes that, in the months leading up to his plea, Nichols was claiming in public court filings that, in effect, “shadowy teams of plainclothes government agents orchestrated the attack [on the Capitol], leaving a far larger number of innocent Americans to take the fall.” ECF 266 (Order Denying Defendant’s Motion for Disclosure) at 13; see also ECF 244 (Motion for Disclosure), 245 (Supp. Motion for Disclosure), and ECF 251 (Reply to Government’s Opposition to Motion for Disclosure)

The sentence Judge Lamberth imposed in May 2022, 63 months, was about 75% of the government ask of 83 months. While Nichols had a lot of heartfelt things to say about his actions, Judge Lamberth noted that Jan6ers had repeatedly reneged on their statements of remorse, which the recent statements laid out in the government sentencing motion addressed.

Importantly, Nichols himself noted that the solitary confinement to which he was subjected was a COVID protocol, not anything specifically targeting Jan6ers.

I spent months in solitary confinement for 23 to 32-plus hours at a time due to COVID protocols, only allowed out for one hour to shower or make a phone call just to be locked in that 10-by-7-foot cell for another 23 to 32-plus hours at a time. Mental torture is an understatement. I heard grown men screaming and crying out for their mothers, me included. Many nights, I cried myself to sleep. With no court dates, no discovery, and no ending in sight, I felt hopeless and my mental health spiraled out of control. Eventually, I decided that, maybe, I needed to seek professional help. I put in a mental health request, and two weeks later I was back on Zoloft. Though this certainly helped control my mind and get my emotional imbalance in alignment, the solitary confinement was still overwhelming.

And he expressed empathy with the incarceration of people of color.

Your Honor, I know, after almost two-and-a-half years of incarceration, how terrible jail and prison is. The entire atmosphere is violent, dark, and unforgiving. For the majority of my life, I’ve heard, but never been able to empathize with, people of color when they testified to the harsh environment and treatment within the jail and the prison system. Make no mistake, I am now a witness to their testimony. Being in jail and prison is a living hell of eternal separation from the light. Sometimes it feels like not even God himself can penetrate those walls.

Nichols’ PTSD and other maladies did make incarceration onerous. The DC jail treated him just as shitty as it treats everyone else. And he was released because of it.

But that’s not a proof of a two-tier system of justice. That’s proof that America’s prisons suck, and that Jan6ers had more success in using that to get released than others.

Ultimately, though, Patel is claiming that one can get in your truck with guns in the back, drive to DC, threaten to drag people like Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley through the streets because they certified Joe Biden’s win, spray cops with toxic chemicals, and then call on the mob to grab more weapons to break into the Capitol, and not be assigned to pre-trial detention. That’s what Nichols did: He directly threatened Senators, both Republicans and Democrats. The notion that Nichols was improperly detained suggests one can assault cops after threatening the members of Congress they’re protecting with impunity.

And that’s what the aspiring FBI Director has said: that people can threaten to assault the very people who are rushing to confirm him with impunity.

After Yesterday’s DOJ Purge, Pam Bondi Cannot Fulfill Promises Made at Her Confirmation Hearing

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Among the many things that happened in the ongoing DOJ purge was the reassignment of DOJ’s top career official, Brad Weinsheimer, to Trump’s sanctuary cities task force.

The department’s most senior career official, a well-respected department employee responsible for some of the most sensitive cases, was reassigned to a much less powerful post.

Were that official, Bradley Weinsheimer, to remain as the associate deputy attorney general, he would have handled critical questions about possible recusals — a thorny issue for a department that will soon be run by a number of Mr. Trump’s former lawyers.

[snip]

Like many of the other officials who have received transfer emails, Mr. Weinsheimer has been given the option of moving to the department’s sanctuary cities task force — an offer seen by some in the same situation as an effort to force them into quitting.

Mr. Weinsheimer, a respected veteran of the department for three decades, played a critical role under multiple administrations, often acting as a critical arbiter of ethical issues or interactions that required a neutral referee.

He was appointed to his current role on an interim basis by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in July 2018 during Mr. Trump’s first term, a move that was made permanent by one of his successors, William P. Barr.

Mr. Weinsheimer also served four years in the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates complaints about prosecutors. An email to his government account was not immediately returned.

I’ve written about the key role Weinsheimer has played here.

In response to a question from Dick Durbin about her lobbying for Qatar (which she did not disclose as a potential conflict to the committee),

If there are any conflicts with anyone I represented in private practice, I would consult with the career ethics officials within the department and make the appropriate decision.

When Durbin asked if she would face a conflict with private prison contractor GEO, Bondi again said she would “consult with the career ethics officials within the Department of Justice and make the appropriate decision.”

But now the DOJ purge has made that impossible. Weinsheimer will be stuck prosecuting Chicago officials somewhere, and someone hand selected will take his spot.

In Bondi’s case, it won’t matter. She is, at least, qualified for the job, unlike so many of Trump’s other nominees.

But a key promise she made in her confirmation hearing just became meaningless.

Update: Fixed my typo to state correctly that it will be impossible for Bondi to keep her promise.

On the Misguided Tactical Conversations about Volume Two of the Jack Smith Report

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Like everyone else, I badly want to see Volume Two of the Jack Smith report. If it were a fulsome report, it might give us explanations for the kinds of documents Trump hid in his bathroom, it might explain why there was a grant of clemency to Roger Stone with some tie to a Secret document about Emmanuel Macron in Donald Trump’s desk drawer, and it might reveal more about Kash Patel’s efforts to help Trump lie about the documents. It might even describe what investigators might have learned if Walt Nauta had cooperated.

Given the ways that Jack Smith pulled his punches in Volume One, however, I’m far less optimistic the report is as expansive as it could have been if it had adopted Robert Hur’s approach to declination decisions. It’s more likely the report would offer explanations for why Smith charged the case in SDFL and why he didn’t charge 18 USC 2071 — both of which would be useful for those who don’t understand those issues, but still wildly unfulfilling.

If Volume One is any indication, Smith did not use his report to get out previously unknown details.

Plus, I’m not sure what good it would do anyway. The most interesting response to Volume One, in my opinion, was seeing a lot of the same pundits who had complained that Jack Smith hadn’t released more information publicly making it clear they didn’t realize that most of the factual discussion was cited directly to the immunity brief Smith fought to release before the election, in October. Thanks for proving my point that you weren’t paying attention to the stuff that was getting released! Not to mention the Garland whingers who, in their misreading of the Jack Smith report, confessed they had never been reading the public documentation about how the investigation proceeded and weren’t going to before using it to attack Garland. You all failed to make something of this investigation when it could have mattered. It’s not clear how you’ll do better with Volume Two.

I think the House Judiciary Committee letter calling on Merrick Garland to release the report — something I want too! — by dismissing the case against Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira is the same kind of misguided intervention. Particularly given DOJ’s emphasis in court filings that Jamie Raskin has a constitutional entitlement to review the document in his function as Ranking Member of HJC, just like Dick Durbin has a heightened interest given his duty to advise and consent to the Kash Patel confirmation.

I’m no genius on criminal procedure, but I simply don’t understand how this would work. DOJ can’t just dismiss the case. They have to have to dismiss it somewhere in court, just like Bill Barr tried with Mike Flynn. I’m not even sure where you would do that, because there’s not currently a pending case. There’s an appeal of the complete dismissal of the case in the 11th Circuit, where you could dismiss the appeal. And there’s Aileen Cannon’s courtroom, where the legal status of the case is that everything that happened after November 18, 2022, after Jack Smith was appointed, is unconstitutional. If Cannon’s ruling holds, then arguably even writing the report was unconstitutional (which is why it was dumb, in my opinion, not to have written a two-part Volume Two, breaking out the stuff (to include the Kash Patel interview) that happened before Smith was appointed. Aileen Cannon is not going to let you dismiss the case, I promise you.

There’s something being missed in this discussion that’s worth pondering. It’s not Merrick Garland who made the decision to withhold Volume Two until Trump destroys the remaining case against Nauta and De Oliveira. It was Jack Smith who recommended that course of action.

Because Volume Two discusses the conduct of Mr. Trump’s alleged co-conspirators in the Classified Documents Case, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, consistent with Department policy, Volume Two should not be publicly released while their case remains pending.

Which Garland adopted.

I have determined, at the recommendation of the Special Counsel, that Volume Two should not be made public so long as those defendants’ criminal proceedings are ongoing.

Given what we saw in Volume One, there are multiple possible reasons he may have made that recommendation. Possibly, as he did in Volume One, Smith is just trying to adhere to normal procedure as much as possible, to prove that he and any lawyers who attempt to remain at DOJ after next week never tried to pull a fast one on Trump. Possibly, Smith simply believes the legal posture of the case, in which ceding Aileen Cannon’s view that everything that happened after November 18, 2022 is unconstitutional would concede the report is too, makes releasing it impossible at the moment.

Possibly someone involved with all this believes there’s a different way to get the volume released.

Again, given what we see in Volume One, I assume it’s one of the first reasons: It really is department policy not to harm the trial rights of defendants (Mueller succeeded in releasing his report even though both Roger Stone and Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s trolls still had to stand trial, which led to many squabbles about redactions). For whatever well- or ill-considered or naive opinions, Smith really is trying to reassure everyone that everything is normal.

That said, there are some reasons to believe the report won’t get destroyed right away. One is that several people have already FOIAed it, creating legal problems (that Trump and possibly even Pam Bondi don’t care about) if it disappears. A far stronger one is that to investigate anyone from Jack Smith’s team, you need to preserve Jack Smith’s records.

I can think of several ways this report might still be liberated via other means.

But it’s worth noting that when it comes time to make Nauta’s appeal go away, every single person Trump wants at DOJ has a conflict: aspiring Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was Trump’s attorney on this, aspiring Solicitor General John Sauer his appeals attorney. Emil Bove, who will serve in the unconfirmed position of PADAG and will run the department starting Monday until others are confirmed, was also on Trump’s Florida team. And Pam Bondi joined an amicus before the 11th.

When Bondi, at least, was asked about her many conflicts in her confirmation hearing, she gave the standard rote answer: that she would consult with the career ethics officials at DOJ. That amounted to a tacit, non-binding commitment that she (and Bove, who’ll get there before her) won’t eliminate those key career officials. If that were to include Brad Weinsheimer, who supervised all of the Special Counsels Garland approved (and may have influenced the unsatisfying scope of Smith’s final report), that would put him the middle of these decisions.

As noted, even while DOJ seems to be pursuing a least-damage approach with Volume Two, they are establishing the prerogatives of Congress to access this report — and not just the report, but even underlying 302s from the investigation.

The Department has historically made materials available for in camera review by members of Congress as part of the process to accommodate the Executive Branch’s interests in protecting the confidentiality of sensitive information while ensuring that Congress can fulfil its own constitutional oversight functions.2 For example, when a congressional committee sought FBI Form 302 interview reports referenced in the Final Report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the Department reached an agreement with the Committee to make those reports available in camera, at the Department, pursuant to specified terms, with redactions to protect privileged and grand jury information. See Supplemental Submission Regarding Accommodation Process ¶¶ 1-2, In re: Application of the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, No. 1:19-gj-00048- BAH, ECF No. 37 (D.D.C. October 8, 2019).

2 Congress has recently, on multiple occasions, taken the position that it has a particularized legislative interest in information about Special Counsel investigations, in order to consider possible legislative reforms regarding the use of special counsels. See., e.g., Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction or, in the Alternative, for Expedited Summary Judgment at 43, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives v. Garland, No. 1:24-cv01911, ECF No. 11 (D.D.C. Aug. 16, 2024); Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction or, in the Alternative, for Expedited Summary Judgment at 4, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives v. Garland, No. 1:24-cv-01911, ECF No. 11 (D.D.C. Aug. 16, 2024); Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction or, in the Alternative, for Expedited Summary Judgment at 10, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives v. Garland, No. 1:24-cv-01911, ECF No. 11 (D.D.C. Aug. 16, 2024).

Wouldn’t it be better for Raskin to at least assert his own constitutional prerogative here, rather than a letter that doesn’t address the procedural means via which Garland could dismiss the case? Particularly given that, in the vacuum created by his silence, Trump is making Raskin’s partisanship cause to keep the document sealed?

The government does this despite knowing that these political actors will have every ability and incentive to use such information to undermine President Trump’s transition and his ability to govern our Nation moving forward.2 Nor is there any material doubt the ranking members will do so, given their immediate politicking on Volume I of Smith’s report, including extensive and hyperbolic commentary on the contents of that Volume. See Raskin, Ranking Member Raskin’s Statement on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Report on President-Elect Donald Trump’s Election Subversion and Incitement of Insurrectionary Violence (Jan. 15, 2025); Durbin, Durbin Statement On Former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Report On Trump’s Interference In The 2020 Election (Jan 14, 2025).

Thus, the government is not seeking, as it claims, to aid Congress in exercising its “oversight functions.” Doc. 703 at 3. Instead, by delivering Volume II to unashamed partisans, the government strategically aims to ensure the Volume’s public release. Although the government claims that a purported “agree[ment] to specified conditions of confidentiality,” id. at 4, would alleviate these concerns, it would do nothing of the sort. As the government well knows, the Constitution prohibits any enforceable restrictions on the ranking members’ use or disclosure of information in furtherance of their official duties. The ranking members could, for example, stand on the floor of the House or Senate and disclose the entire contents of Volume II, without fear of any legal consequence. U.S. CONST. art. I, § 6, cl. 1 (providing for Speech or Debate Immunity); Hutchinson v. Proxmire, 443 U.S. 111, 130 (1979) (“A speech by [a Senator] in the Senate would be wholly immune and would be available to other Members of Congress and the public in the Congressional Record.”). Thus, whatever “confidentiality agreement” the government purports to adopt (the terms of which the government has pointedly not provided the Court), it is entirely illusory, because no such agreement is enforceable. Disclosure to the ranking members is functionally equivalent to public disclosure. This, in turn, poses an extraordinary danger to President Trump’s ability and right to prepare for the Presidency free of such unconstitutional attacks by the incumbent administration.

If this report doesn’t come out, it can be made into an anvil to hang over the entire leadership of DOJ. To make it one, though, you need to establish clearly that Congress has equities in this document, too, and any abridgment of those equities will provide opportunity for Congress to intervene with DOJ.

Thus far, Congressional Democrats have chosen a far less effective route.

Aileen Cannon Interfering with Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin’s Constitutional Duty

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I’m a bit baffled by the status of Aileen Cannon’s Calvinball to keep both volumes of the Jack Smith report buried (I thought her three day stay was up, but I must be wrong). But I fully expect she’ll find some basis to bigfoot her way into DOJ’s inherent authority again by the end of the day.

But this week, the result of her bigfooting poses new Constitutional problems. She is interfering with Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin’s constitutional duty to advise and consent to Donald Trump’s nominees.

It’s not just me saying it. In the letter to Merrick Garland signed by aspiring Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and PADAG designee Emil Bove (whom WaPo says will serve as Acting DAG until Blanche is confirmed), complaining about the report, they state explicitly that release of the report would “interfere with upcoming confirmation hearings” (and, apparently, reveal damning new details about DOGE [sic] head Elon Musk’s efforts to interfere in a criminal investigation).

Equally problematic and inappropriate are the draft’s baseless attacks on other anticipated members of President Trump’s incoming administration, which are an obvious effort to interfere with upcoming confirmation hearings, and Smith’s pathetically transparent tirade about good-faith efforts by X to protect civil liberties, which in a myriad other contexts you have claimed are paramount.

This is premised on Smith’s report being biased.

Except what Cannon is suppressing consists of sworn testimony from some of Trump’s closest advisors. The damning testimony I keep raising, seemingly debunking Kash Patel’s claim (cited in search warrant affidavits) that Trump had “declassified everything” he took home with him almost certainly comes from Eric Herschmann, installed in the White House by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

This witness names at least two other people who, he claimed, would corroborate his claim that Kash’s claims were false.

Another witness described that Kash visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago before he made his claim in Breitbart.

Most importantly, Kash himself provided compelled testimony to a grand jury, represented by Stan Woodward, who not only has been named as Senior Counselor in Trump’s White House, but who (in the guise of Walt Nauta’s attorney), remains on filings fighting to suppress the release of information that could harm Kash’s bid to be FBI Director.

Do Trump’s intended DOJ leadership think Kash’s own sworn testimony is unreliable?

Did Kash renege on his public claims that Trump declassified everything?

Or did he provide testimony that conflicts with that of multiple witnesses, in which case Jack Smith might have had to explain they would have charged Kash with obstruction, too, except that he testified with immunity.

Kash’s testimony (and that of the witness who appears to be Eric Herschmann) precedes the date of Jack Smith’s appointment. It cannot be covered by Aileen Cannon’s ruling that everything that happened after that was unconstitutional.

Trump’s nominee for FBI Director gave sworn testimony in an investigation into a violation of the Espionage Act. That testimony is almost certainly covered in Volume II of the Jack Smith report. Merrick Garland has described that he would allow Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin (along with Jim Jordan and Jamie Raskin) to review the document — which is imperative for the ranking members of SJC to perform their duty to advise and consent to Trump’s appointments.

And Aileen Cannon has, thus far, said that Grassley and Durbin can’t do their job. They can’t consider Kash Patel’s conduct in an Espionage Act investigation in their review of Kash’s suitability to be FBI Director. The ranking members of the Senate Armed Services Committee have reviewed Pete Hegseth’s FBI background check, but Grassley and Durbin have been deprived of the ability to read about Kash Patel’s role in a criminal investigation into hoarding classified documents.

Durbin may well have standing to complain about Cannon’s interference in his constitutional duties. It’s high time he considered making the cost of Cannon’s interference clear.

Update: Steve Vladeck explains how I miscounted three “days:”

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 6(a)(1)(C), when a court order gives a time period in days, we “include the last day of the period, but if the last day is a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday, the period continues to run until the end of the next day that is not a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday.” In other words, Cannon’s injunction, if it’s not modified, will expire (clearing the way for the public release of the January 6 volume) at the end of the day, today (and not, as many assumed, yesterday).

Jack Smith Asks for Three Weeks

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Jack Smith just requested and got a consent motion to file a status report “or otherwise inform” Judge Tanya Chutkan of what they’re going to do with the January 6 case.

As a result of the election held on November 5, 2024, the defendant is expected to be certified as President-elect on January 6, 2025, and inaugurated on January 20, 2025. The Government respectfully requests that the Court vacate the remaining deadlines in the pretrial schedule to afford the Government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy. By December 2, 2024, the Government will file a status report or otherwise inform the Court of the result of its deliberations. The Government has consulted with defense counsel, who do not object to this request.

If that “otherwise inform” is a report, it would be done in plenty of time for Dick Durbin to hold a hearing.

Arrest First, Learn about Right Wing Terrorism Later

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In his Senate testimony the other day, FBI Director Chris Wray was not particularly cognizant of the granular details of the investigation into January 6. But he said something else, repeatedly, that bears consideration.

In response to a Dick Durbin question about whether he agrees that the Capitol attack involved white supremacists and other violent extremists, Wray responded by explaining that as the FBI arrests more and more people, it is developing a better understanding of the motivations behind those involved in the attack.

We’re seeing quite a number, as we’re building out the cases on the individuals we’ve arrested for the violence, quite a number of what we would call militia violent extremists, so we have a number who self-identify with, you know, the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers, things like that. We also have a couple of instances where we’ve already identified individuals involved in the criminal behavior who we would put in the racially motivated extremists who advocate for what you would call sort of white supremacy. Some of those individuals, as well — one of the things that is happening is part of this is that as we build out the cases on the individuals when we arrest them for the violence we’re getting a richer and richer understanding of different people’s motivations.

Then, in response to a Chuck Grassley question about how the FBI will learn more about alleged left wing extremists (which Wray answered for anarchists), Wray said that by arresting these people, the FBI is learning about their tactics and tradecraft.

I think as with any domestic terrorism threat or, frankly, any counterterrorism threat more broadly, we’re also looking to develop more and better sources so we get more visibility and insight into the plans and intentions, tactic, tactics, procedures of any group of violent extremists. Another is to get better at how to navigate around some of the operational trade craft that they use. So, the more times, the more arrests we see and this is relevant both for the anarchist violent extremists and the racially motivated violent extremists, for example, the more arrests you see, that’s obviously good news that we’re arresting people that need to be arrested. There’s a whole ‘nother part of that is really important. The more arrests we make, the more from those cases we learn about who else their contacts are, what their tactics are, what their strategies are, et cetera. And that makes us smarter, better able to get in front of the threat going forward.

Finally, when Amy Klobuchar asked if the attack was planned and coordinated, Wray first responded that there were aspects that had been planned. Then, in response to a specific question about the Proud Boys’ coordination, Wray explained that the FBI is escalating charges after initial arrests based on what they learn subsequent to the initial arrest.

There have been a growing number of charges as we continue to build out the investigation, either individuals who are now starting to get arrested involving charges that involve more things like planning and coordination or in some instances individuals who were charged with more simple offenses, but now we’re superseding as we build out more of an understanding of what people were involved in. And there were clearly some individuals involved, which I would consider the most dangerous, the most serious cases among the group, who did have plans and intentions and some level of coordination.

None of this is surprising. It has been apparent from the court filings in the investigation.

But the significance of it is worth considering. The FBI blew it in advance of the attack for reasons that have yet to be confirmed but at least seem to arise from an unwillingness to see right wing terrorism being planned in plain sight. But, as I’ve repeatedly said, the nature of the attack is such that every single person who entered the Capitol and many of those who remained outside, physically fighting cops, committed a crime. And so, based on those trespass crimes, the FBI is arresting a lot of people. Because that’s the way the investigation has rolled out — and because, for every single trespass defendant, the record of what they said about their actions in advance make the difference between getting charged for obstructing the vote count or not — it means the FBI arrests people before they’ve done a lot of investigation they otherwise might do before an arrest. For better and worse, that means that the FBI is arresting people and then conducting intrusive collection on them, starting with their cell phone, even for people who seem to be just trespass defendants. That further means that the FBI will get access to communications that will support conspiracy charges when they otherwise would have a difficult time making such charges without a domestic terrorism statute.

There are real problems with this approach — Oath Keeper affiliate Jon Ryan Schaffer moved to dismiss the charges against him because DOJ has left him in an Indiana jail for 48 days without obtaining an indictment. For existing networks that aren’t recognizably a militia, I’m fairly certain the FBI is not seeing associations until after initial detention bids have been lost. Prosecutors have had to backtrack on claims with some notable defendants (such as Ethan Nordean, who got sent released to home confinement as a result).

But it means the FBI will obtain a far more detailed understanding of some of these people than they otherwise would have been able to get. And as it does so, it is seeing the networks of conspiracy that they otherwise might not have.

Trump’s Role in a Seditious Conspiracy Won’t Go Away with an Impeachment Vote

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There’s a conventional wisdom about the Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, scheduled to start in ten days. WaPo predicts that impeachment will leave no more than a “bitter aftertaste.”

The Senate is hurtling toward an impeachment trial that will accomplish almost nothing by design and likely leave everyone with a bitter aftertaste.

Democratic voters will be furious that GOP senators refused to hold former president Donald Trump accountable for his role in encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6. Republicans will be upset that congressional Democrats went through with an impeachment trial three weeks after Trump left the White House.

And independent voters, more focused on the health and economic crises fueled by the coronavirus pandemic, will wonder why Congress prioritized an impeachment process at all.

Perhaps most telling, WaPo describes Trump’s role as “encouraging” his supporters to march to the Capitol.

It’s true the word, “encouraged” appears in the article of impeachment against Trump.

He also willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged—and foreseeably resulted in—lawless action at the Capitol, such as: ‘‘if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore’’. Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed, in an attempt to, among other objectives, interfere with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election, unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress, the Vice President, and Congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts. [my emphasis]

But that description skips the “foreseeably result[ing]” in the interruption of the certification of the vote, the threats to Members of Congress, the deadly sedition that are also included in the article of impeachment.

Moreover, it ignores the other part of the article of impeachment, Trump’s other efforts to subvert democracy (the article describes his January 2 call to Brad Raffensberger explicitly), to say nothing of the description of Trump as a threat to national security.

President Trump’s conduct on January 6, 2021, followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election.

[snip]

Wherefore, Donald John Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.

That’s a notable oversight, particularly given the — inexplicable — claim from ascendant Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin that we may never learn the full extent of Trump’s role in the coup attempt.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the incoming chairman, said he would leave procedural questions up to the House managers.“I’m waiting to hear what their proposal is, but for us to suggest a trial strategy for the House managers, I don’t think that’s our job,” Durbin said.

So, instead, the Senate will rush through a trial in which the only evidence likely to be presented will be the stuff that senators themselves already lived, video clips of rioters breaking into the Capitol as senators fled through underground tunnels to their secure location.

Senators will likely not even attempt to answer the fundamental questions of every impeachment trial — what did the president know and when did he know it?

“It will be surprising to me if we ever know the answers to that,” Durbin said.

It may be true that impeachment managers will restrict themselves to the public record, though even that might include testimony from Raffensperger and evidence collected as part of the prosecution of insurrectionists. Q-Shaman Jacob Chansley even says he’d be willing to testify.

Lawyer Albert Watkins said he hasn’t spoken to any member in the Senate since announcing his offer to have Jacob Chansley testify at Trump’s trial, which is scheduled to begin the week of Feb. 8. Watkins said it’s important for senators to hear the voice of someone who was incited by Trump.

Watkins said his client was previously “horrendously smitten” by Trump but now feels let down after Trump’s refusal to grant Chansley and others who participated in the insurrection a pardon. “He felt like he was betrayed by the president,” Watkins said.

The words of Trump supporters who are accused of participating in the riot may end up being used against him in the impeachment trial. Chansley and at least four others people who are facing federal charges stemming from the riot have suggested they were taking orders from Trump.

If insurrectionists were to testify in person, the attendant security of orange jumpsuits and leg manacles might provide some sobering visuals (though COVID and real security concerns almost certainly rules that out).

But it seems foolish for any Senator to assume that the vote they’ll cast in a few weeks will make this thing go away forever.

That’s not even true for their Ukraine impeachment votes. Yesterday, Ukraine announced (much to Lev Parnas’ glee that Rudy Giuliani finally got Ukraine to announce an investigation) that it is launching a criminal probe into those — inside and outside Ukraine — who attempted to interfere in the 2020 election.

Andriy Yermak, the head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on January 28 that Ukraine would do everything in its power to bring to justice forces within the country and outside it who attempted to damage relations between Ukraine and the United States.

“The State Bureau of Investigation has opened a criminal case,” Yermak was quoted as saying in an interview to the Ukrainian news outlet NV that was posted on the presidential website.

“The investigation is under way, and we are waiting for its results. The investigation must answer a lot of questions,” Yermak added.

Without anyone in the United States lifting a finger, then, Ukraine may provide damning new evidence about Trump’s attempt to coerce assistance on his “perfect phone call” with Volodymyr Zelensky that will make GOP negligence during the last impeachment more damning.

And in the case of the January 6 insurrection, DOJ has already mapped out a conspiracy charge that Trump could easily be charged under as well.

PURPOSE OF THE CONSPIRACY

18. The purpose of the conspiracy was to stop, delay, and hinder Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote.

MANNER AND MEANS

19. CALDWELL, CROWL, and WATKINS, with others known and unknown, carried out the conspiracy through the following manner and means, among others, by:

a. Agreeing to participate in and taking steps to plan an operation to interfere with the official Congressional proceeding on January 6, 2021 (the “January 6 operation”);

b. Using social media, text messaging, and messaging applications to send incendiary messages aimed at recruiting as large a following as possible to go to Washington, D.C., to support the January 6 operation;

Meanwhile, Acting DC US Attorney Michael Sherwin has repeatedly refused to rule out incitement charges. Indeed, I’ve argued that DOJ almost certainly will need to incorporate at least Mike Flynn, if not Trump himself, in their description of the crimes of January 6, if only to distinguish the events of that day from other protected First Amendment activity — and at least some prosecutors in DC closer to the overall investigation seem to be doing that.

There’s no guarantee that Merrick Garland’s DOJ will have the courage to pursue Trump’s role in this (though thus far, Bill Barr appointee Michael Sherwin has not shied from such an investigation, and if he oversaw such a decision it would mitigate the political blowback). There’s no sign, yet, that DOJ has identified how the coup attempt tied into Rudy’s attempts to delay the certification.

But no Senator serving as juror in this impeachment should assume the investigation won’t, inevitably, disclose the machinations that tied Trump’s efforts to stay in office to the death and destruction on January 6. Indeed, there’s no guarantee that the actions of key jurors — like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz for inciting the mob, Tommy Tuberville for his direct coordination with Rudy, and Lindsey Graham for his own efforts to throw out votes in Georgia and his meeting with accused insurrectionist Joe Biggs — won’t ultimately be incorporated into the larger conspiracy.

And so while it may be easy for lazy political journalism to spout conventional wisdom about everyone wanting to move on, this time around it is as likely as not that the votes cast next month will age poorly as the investigation into how Trump’s action ties to the death and destruction continues.

The Hack or Attack Debate: Answer Old Questions While Waiting to Learn Enough to Answer That One

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As people in government, particularly members of Congress posturing for the cameras, start responding to the SolarWinds compromise, some have adopted a bellicose language unsupported by the facts, at least those that are public. Dick Durbin, for example, called it, “virtually a declaration of war.” That has led to some necessary pushback noting that as far as we know, this is an act of espionage, not sabotage. It’s the kind of thing we do as well without declaring war.

As usual, I substantially agree with Jack Goldsmith on these issues.

The lack of self-awareness in these and similar reactions to the Russia breach is astounding. The U.S. government has no principled basis to complain about the Russia hack, much less retaliate for it with military means, since the U.S. government hacks foreign government networks on a huge scale every day. Indeed, a military response to the Russian hack would violate international law. The United States does have options, but none are terribly attractive.

[snip]

The larger context here is that for many reasons—the Snowden revelations, the infamous digital attack on Iranian centrifuges (and other warlike uses of digital weapons), the U.S. “internet freedom” program (which subsidizes tools to circumvent constraints in authoritarian networks), Defend Forward, and more—the United States is widely viewed abroad as the most fearsome global cyber bully. From our adversaries’ perspective, the United States uses its prodigious digital tools, short of war, to achieve whatever advantage it can, and so adversaries feel justified in doing whatever they can as well, often with fewer scruples. We can tell ourselves that our digital exploits in foreign governmental systems serve good ends, and that our adversaries’ exploits in our systems do not, and often that is true. But this moral judgment, and the norms we push around it, have had no apparent influence in tamping down our adversaries’ harmful attacks on our networks—especially since the U.S. approach to norms has been to give up nothing that it wants to do in the digital realm, but at the same time to try to cajole, coerce, or shame our adversaries into not engaging in digital practices that harm the United States.

Goldsmith’s point about the Defend Forward approach adopted under Trump deserves particular focus given that, purportedly in the days since the compromise became known, Kash Patel is taking steps to split NSA and CyberCommand, something that would separate the Defend Forward effort from NSA.

Trump administration officials at the Pentagon late this week delivered to the Joint Chiefs of Staff a proposal to split up the leadership of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command. It is the latest push to dramatically reshape defense policy advanced by a handful of key political officials who were installed in acting roles in the Pentagon after Donald Trump lost his re-election bid.

A U.S. official confirmed on Saturday that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley — who along with Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller must certify that the move meets certain standards laid out by Congress in 2016 — received the proposal in the last few days.

With Miller expected to sign off on the move, the fate of the proposal ultimately falls to Milley, who told Congress in 2019 that the dual-hat leadership structure was working and should be maintained.

As Reuters has reported, General Nakasone was pretty hubristic about NSA’s recent efforts to infiltrate our adversaries (Nakasone has, in unprecedented fashion, also chosen to officially confirm efforts CyberCom has made, which he must think has a deterrent effect that, it’s now clear, did not).

Speaking at a private dinner for tech security executives at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco in late February, America’s cyber defense chief boasted how well his organizations protect the country from spies.

U.S. teams were “understanding the adversary better than the adversary understands themselves,” said General Paul Nakasone, boss of the National Security Agency (NSA) and U.S. Cyber Command, according to a Reuters reporter present at the Feb. 26 dinner. His speech has not been previously reported.

Yet even as he spoke, hackers were embedding malicious code into the network of a Texas software company called SolarWinds Corp, according to a timeline published by Microsoft and more than a dozen government and corporate cyber researchers.

A little over three weeks after that dinner, the hackers began a sweeping intelligence operation that has penetrated the heart of America’s government and numerous corporations and other institutions around the world.

The failures of Defend Forward to identify this breach may raise questions about the dual hatting of NSA and CyberCommand, but there’s no good reason for these Trump flunkies to take any substantive steps in the last month of a Lame Duck period while it is serially refusing briefings to President Elect Biden’s team. All the more so because the more pressing issue, it seems, is giving CISA, the government’s defensive agency, more resources and authority.

More importantly, while it is too early to determine whether this goes beyond traditional espionage, there are questions that we can identify. For example, one detail that might suggest this was intended to do more than espionage is that the hackers stole FireEye’s Red Team tools. There are information gathering purposes for doing so, but they’re probably not important enough to risk blowing this entire operation, as happened. So we should at least consider whether the SolarWinds compromise aimed to pair intelligence (including that gathered from FERC, one of the agencies targeted) with the means to launch deniable sabotage on key critical infrastructure using FireEye’s tools.

Measurements of whether this is a hack or attack must also consider that the hackers are in a position where they could alter data. Consider what kind of mayhem Russia could do to our economy or world markets by altering data from Treasury. That is, the hackers are in a position where it’s possible, at least, to engage in sabotage without engaging in any kinetic act.

Finally, adopting the shorthand the industry uses for such things, there’s a bit of sloppiness about attribution. The working assumption this is APT 29, and the working reference is that APT 29 works for SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency (even though when it was implicated in key hacks in 2016, it was assumed to work for FSB). I’ve been told by someone with more local knowledge that the relationship between these hackers and the intelligence agencies they work for may be more transactional. The people who’ve best understood the attack, including FireEye, think this may be a new “group.”

While intelligence officials and security experts generally agree Russia is responsible, and some believe it is the handiwork of Moscow’s foreign intelligence service, FireEye and Microsoft, as well as some government officials, believe the attack was perpetrated by a hacking group never seen before, one whose tools and techniques had been previously unknown.

Which brings me to a question we should be able to answer, one I’ve been harping on since the DNC leak first became public: what was the relationship between the hackers, APT 28 (the ones who stole files and shared the with WikiLeaks) and APT 29 (who then, and still, have been described as “just” spying). From the very first — and even in March 2017, after which discussions of the hack have become irredeemably politicized beyond recovery — there was some complexity surrounding the issue.

I have previously pointed to a conflict between what Crowdstrike claimed in its report on the DNC hack and what the FBI told FireEye. Crowdstrike basically said the two hacking groups didn’t coordinate at all (which Crowdstrike took as proof of sophistication). Whereas FireEye said they did coordinate (which it took as proof of sophistication and uniqueness of this hack). I understand the truth is closer to the latter. APT 28 largely operated on its own, but at times, when it hit a wall of sorts, it got help from APT 29 (though there may have been some back and forth before APT 29 did share).

When I said I understood the truth was closer to the latter — that there was some cooperated between APT 28 and 29, it was based on what a firsthand witness, who had been involved in defending a related target in 2016, told me. He said, in general, there was no cooperation between the two sets of hackers, but on a few occasions APT 29 seemed to assist APT 28. That’s unsurprising. The attack in 2016 was ambitious, years in planning, and Putin was personally involved. He would obviously have the ability to demand coordination for this operation, so intelligence collected by APT 29 may well have dictated choices made in where to throw GRU’s efforts.

The point is important now, especially as people like CrowdStrike’s former CTO Dmitri Alperovitch recommends responses based on the assumption that this is SVR and therefore that dictates what Russia intends.

So we should assume this is espionage and therefore avoid escalating language for the moment. But having had our assess handed to us already, with a sophisticated campaign launched as we were busy looking for election hackers, it would be a big mistake IMO to rely on easy old categories to try to understand this.

Update: Corrected to reflect that Alperovitch is no longer with CrowdStrike.

On Rod Rosenstein’s Professed Unfamiliarity with the Mueller Report

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Something happened in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this month that is interesting background to some of the details about the Mueller Investigation that have come out of late.

The guy who oversaw the Mueller Report appears unfamiliar with the Mueller Report

In the hearing, Dick Durbin tried to get Rod Rosenstein to defend the investigation he had overseen. Early on in the exchange, Rosenstein claimed that,

I do not consider the investigation to be corrupt, Senator, but I certainly understand, I understand the President’s frustration given the outcome, which was in fact that there was no evidence of conspiracy between Trump campaign advisors and Russians.

That’s of course not what the Report said at all. Rather, it said that,

[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

[snip]

A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.

Had Durbin been prepared for this answer, he might have invited Rosenstein to quote where the Report says that there was no evidence of conspiracy, which he would have been unable to do. Instead, Durbin asked Rosenstein whether he agreed with several other things that (he claimed) the report said:

  • The Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome
  • There were more than 120 contacts between the Trump campaign and individuals linked to Russia
  • The Trump campaign “knew about, welcomed, and expected to benefit electorally from Russia’s interference”
  • The Trump campaign planned a messaging strategy around the WikiLeaks releases

In response to the first, Rosenstein claimed he didn’t know what the government (of Russia, apparently) was thinking, but could only say what their conduct was. To the second, Rosenstein said he had no reason to dispute the finding, though did not acknowledge directly that that’s what the report said.

In response to the third, Rosenstein asked Durbin what page he was referring to. Durbin claimed, incorrectly, it appeared on pages 1 to 2. Rosenstein made a great show of paging through the report, seemingly reading the passage in question, and said, “I’m not sure whether you were quoting from the Report or not Senator, but I have it in front of me … I apologize sir, I’m not seeing those words in the report if you could direct me to where it is in the report.”

In response to the fourth assertion, Rosenstein noted that that specific point says, “according to Mr. Gates, that’s attributed to Mr. Gates, I don’t think that’s a finding of the, Mueller, it’s what one of the … witnesses said.”

To be fair to Rosenstein, the exact words Durbin read do not appear in the report, just as “there was no evidence of conspiracy” does not appear in the report. Just the phrase, “the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts,” appears on pages 1 and 2 — though even that, Rosenstein was too cowardly to acknowledge. But unlike Rosenstein’s claim that the report showed no evidence of conspiracy, the rest of Durbin’s statement is backed by the report. On page 5, for example, the report explains that Trump showed interest in and welcomed the releases.

The presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump (“Trump Campaign” or “Campaign”) showed interest in WikiLeaks’s releases of documents and welcomed their potential to damage candidate Clinton.

And as for only Rick Gates describing a focused campaign effort to prepare for the WikiLeaks release, other witnesses, including campaign manager Paul Manafort, described similar obsession with the emails. At least five different witnesses gave testimony consistent with Gates’, and not all the people involved in such discussions were quoted in the Mueller Report.

Given Mueller’s own need to refer to the report and strict adherence to the specific language in the report when he testified before Congress, I can’t complain that Rosenstein seemed even less familiar with the contents of the report than Mueller (and elsewhere Rosenstein confessed he was uncertain about other key details). But my big takeaway from his testimony — aside from the fact that he seems intent on saying what Bill Barr, Donald Trump, and Lindsey Graham want him to say, whether or not it accords with reality — is that he exhibited none of the familiarity with the report I expected he would have.

It seems an important lesson. Rod Rosenstein, with no apparent familiarity with the report’s actual content, instead adopted the false lines that Trump and Barr have about the investigation, incorporating the ones on Barr’s four-page memo misrepresenting the findings, including where the memo neglected to provide the lead-up to the quotation that, “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Ed O’Callaghan (and Steve Engel) wrote Barr’s declination, not Rosenstein

That’s one reason I think the memo that Steven Engel and Ed O’Callaghan wrote Billy Barr on March 24, 2019 recommending he decline to prosecute the President is probably the most interesting Mueller-related release from Friday. In actuality, DOJ released just the first and last page of the memo, and redacted all the justifications. But the first page shows that Engel — who as OLC head should have absolutely zero input into the specifics of a criminal declination, particularly regarding a report that presumed OLC had ruled out such prosecutions categorically — and O’Callaghan wrote the actual declination of Trump. The memo only went “through” Rosenstein (though Rosenstein definitely initialed it).

About half that first page is redacted, but not a footnote that says,

Given the length and detail of the Special Counsel’s Report, we do not recount the relevant facts here. Our discussion and analysis assumes familiarity with the Report as well as much of the background surrounding the Special Counsel’s investigation.

I have every reason to believe that O’Callaghan, unlike Rosenstein, is reasonably familiar with the workings of the Mueller Report (but Rosenstein must have gotten his misunderstandings of what it showed from O’Callaghan).

But whatever logic is laid out in that memo, the discussion apparently does not tie closely to the actual facts.

That means both Barr and Rosenstein could well have approved it without any familiarity with the actual facts.

In spite of Rosenstein’s ignorance, DOJ had to read about Roger Stone’s cover-up closely to redact it

Rosenstein’s professed lack of familiarity with Trump’s enthusiasm to exploit the WikiLeaks release is interesting given how important it had to have been in March 2019, when Mueller was publishing his conclusions. That’s because it was the one ongoing proceeding treated as such in the report release. So a great deal of the report got redacted — properly — in the interest of protecting Roger Stone’s right to a fair trial. Someone at DOJ — and the process may have been overseen by O’Callaghan — had to have read the Stone details closely if only to make sure none of the rest of us could.

That said, even before DOJ released the report, it was immediately clear how inconsistent the Stone findings were with Billy Barr’s public statements. Barr’s categorical comments about conspiracy pertained only to conspiring directly with Russia, which allowed him to make assertions that completely ignored Stone’s attempts — via means that have not yet been made public — to optimize the WikiLeaks releases.

On Friday, all the things that Barr was covering up became public in one narrative.

There was very little that had not been previously published in Friday’s release of the report. The details in the report showed up in Stone’s prosecution, the trial, and the warrants released in April. But the description of how many witnesses knew of Trump and Stone’s focus on the releases — including those like Paul Manafort and Steve Bannon who always tried to protect Trump in their testimony — sure does make Rosenstein’s denials look deliberate.

In debriefings with the Office, former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates said that, before Assange’s June 12 announcement, Gates and Stone had a phone conversation in which Stone said something “big” was coming and had to do with a leak of information.195 Stone also said to Gates that he thought Assange had Clinton emails. Gates asked Stone when the information was going to be released. Stone said the release would happen very soon. According to Gates, between June 12, 2016 and July 22, 2016, Stone repeated that information was coming. Manafort and Gates both called to ask Stone when the release would happen, and Gates recalled candidate Trump being generally frustrated that the Clinton emails had not been found.196

Paul Manafort, who would later become campaign chairman, provided similar information about the timing of Stone’s statements about WikiLeaks.197 According to Manafort, sometime in June 2016, Stone told Manafort that he was dealing with someone who was in contact with WikiLeaks and believed that there would be an imminent release of emails by WikiLeaks.19

Michael Cohen, former executive vice president of the Trump Organization and special counsel to Donald J. Trump,199 told the Office that he recalled an incident in which he was in candidate Trump’s office in Trump Tower when Stone called. Cohen believed the call occurred before July 22, 2016, when WikiLeaks released its first tranche of Russian-stolen DNC emails.200 Stone was patched through to the office and placed on speakerphone. Stone then told the candidate that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and in a couple of days WikiLeaks would release information. According to Cohen, Stone claimed that he did not know what the content of the materials was and that Trump responded, “oh good, alright” but did not display any further reaction.201 Cohen further told the Office that, after WikiLeaks’s subsequent release of stolen DNC emails in July 2016, candidate Trump said to Cohen something to the effect of, “I guess Roger was right.”202

After WikiLeaks’s July 22, 2016 release of documents, Stone participated in a conference call with Manafort and Gates. According to Gates, Manafort expressed excitement about the release and congratulated Stone.203 Manafort, for his part, told the Office that, shortly after WikiLeaks’s July 22 release, Manafort also spoke with candidate Trump and mentioned that Stone had predicted the release and claimed to have access to WikiLeaks. Candidate Trump responded that Manafort should stay in touch with Stone.204 Manafort relayed the message to Stone, likely on July 25, 2016.205 Manafort also told Stone that he wanted to be kept apprised of any developments with WikiLeaks and separately told Gates to keep in touch with Stone about future WikiLeaks releases.206

According to Gates, by the late summer of 2016, the Trump Campaign was planning a press strategy, a communications campaign, and messaging based on the possible release of Clinton emails by WikiLeaks.207 Gates also stated that Stone called candidate Trump multiple times during the campaign.208 Gates recalled one lengthy telephone conversation between Stone and candidate Trump that took place while Trump and Gates were driving to LaGuardia Airport. Although Gates could not hear what Stone was saying on the telephone, shortly after the call candidate Trump told Gates that more releases of damaging information would be coming.209

Stone also had conversations about WikiLeaks with Steve Bannon, both before and after Bannon took over as the chairman of the Trump Campaign. Bannon recalled that, before joining the Campaign on August 13, 2016, Stone told him that he had a connection to Assange. Stone implied that he had inside information about WikiLeaks. After Bannon took over as campaign chairman, Stone repeated to Bannon that he had a relationship with Assange and said that WikiLeaks was going to dump additional materials that would be bad for the Clinton Campaign.210

Rosenstein asserted there was no conspiracy in spite of ongoing investigations into a conspiracy

All of which leads me to something I’ve been pondering.

In this post, I analyzed what the Stone warrants suggest about the investigation into him. The investigation appeared to start as an effort to determine whether Stone’s efforts to optimize the hack-and-leak; the Mueller Report seems to explain that nothing Stone was known to have done was criminal. In August 2018, as Stone’s efforts to tamper with witnesses became clear from his press campaign, Mueller’s team obtained the warrants that would lead to his obstruction charges. On August 20, 2018, Mueller obtained warrants for Stone’s cell site location during the election and Guccifer 2.0’s second email account; while different FBI agents obtained those warrants, they got them within minutes of each other.

Then, on September 26 and 27, an FBI agent stationed in Pittsburgh obtained a bunch of warrants, most with gags citing 18 USC 951 and conspiracy, the descriptions of which were withheld in April, apparently because those investigations are ongoing.

*September 24, 2018: Warrant for Stone’s Liquid Web server

*September 26, 2018: Mystery Twitter Account

*September 27, 2018: Mystery Facebook and Instagram Accounts

*September 27, 2018: Mystery Microsoft include Skype

*September 27, 2018: Mystery Google

*September 27, 2018: Mystery Twitter Accounts 2

*September 27, 2018: Mystery Apple ends in R

The warrant targeting several Twitter accounts is sealed in part because, “It does not appear that Stone is fully aware of the full scope of the ongoing FBI investigation.”

In September 2018, Mueller’s team seems to have pursued a new line of investigation, one that the obstruction investigation into Stone may have provided cover for, one that may be ongoing. Mueller was specifically trying to hide that investigation from Stone.

But I’m struck by the date: September 26 and 27

In the wake of a September 21 NYT story, Trump almost fired Rosenstein when people close to Andrew McCabe leaked details of Rosenstein’s musing about wearing a wire to a meeting with Trump. Given Rosenstein’s apparent ignorance of even the public Stone related content — and O’Callaghan’s apparent misrepresentation of those details — I wonder whether Stone wasn’t the only person Mueller was hiding this from.

Rosenstein asserted, as fact, that the Mueller Report showed no evidence of a conspiracy between Trump and Russia (which is inaccurate by itself). He said that in spite of warrants in a still-pending investigation into conspiracy and Agent of a Foreign power involving Stone.