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Joshua Schulte Found Guilty on All Counts

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The jury has returned guilty verdicts in all nine charges against Joshua Schulte. While I expected guilty verdicts on the revamped CFAA charges, I wasn’t sure about the far more circumstantial Espionage charges. DOJ must be breathing a sigh of relief.

I have no doubt Schulte will appeal. He has been setting up appeals on a Sixth Amendment SAMS challenge and on a Van Buren challenge to the CFAA charges; plus I imagine he’ll challenge some of the instructions and other decisions Judge Jesse Furman made (though I thought Furman was more favorable to Schulte than Paul Crotty before him).

I’m as interested in what happens with WikiLeaks after this.

WikiLeaks has been spamming references to the misleading Yahoo story about the response to WikiLeaks’ publication (and, more importantly, non-publication) of the stolen CIA files. And I know Assange’s US defense attorney has been getting transcripts from the case.

The WikiLeaks team surely recognizes what I have for years: The existing charges against Assange are all teed up to expand the CFAA count to incorporate the Vault 7 release and Vault 8 non-release (and, possibly, WikiLeaks’ role in the 2016 Russian effort). And Schulte was given discovery on an ongoing investigation into what is almost certainly WikiLeaks.

So while this closes the known part of the case against Schulte, it likely represents further headaches for Assange.

Update: SDNY’s statement calls this, straight up, Espionage.

Today, Schulte has been convicted for one of the most brazen and damaging acts of espionage in American history.

DOJ’s Ex Parte Classified Plans for Joshua Schulte — and Maybe, Julian Assange

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Update: The High Court has overturned Baraitser’s ruling, finding that the US should have had an opportunity to give the assurances it has since given that Assange will not be subjected to solitary confinement. I expect Assange will appeal immediately.

Per a tweet from Stella Morris, the decision in the appeal of a Vanessa Baraitser’s decision denying the US extradition request for Julian Assange on humanitarian grounds will be announced Friday at 10:15 GMT. Because of something that happened in the High Court extradition hearing, I want to point to some things that happened in the Joshua Schulte docket in recent months.

On August 5, DOJ filed notice of an ex parte classified status letter in the Schulte case.

The Government respectfully submits this letter to provide notice of an ex parte, classified status letter submitted yesterday.

By filing an ex parte classified status letter, the government would have informed the judge (then Paul Crotty but the case has since been reassigned to Judge Jesse Furman) something about the case, without sharing it with Schulte or the public. The letter would have been filed five years to the day after the start date, August 4, 2016, for searches DOJ has described that Schulte did on WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden, and (as described elsewhere) Shadow Brokers.

In addition to the numerous searches for “wikileaks” which commenced on August 4, 2016, SCHULTE also conducted multiple related Searches, including: prior to the March 7, 2017 release of the Classified Information, “assange” (Julian Assange is the founder and “editor-in-chief’ of WikiLeaks.org), “snowden its time,” “wikileaks code,” and “wikileaks 2017”-and after the March 7, 2017 release of the Classified Information, “wikileaks public opinion,” and “officials were aware before the WikiLeaks release of a loss of sensitive information.”

On September 23, the government wrote a letter to Judge Crotty, voicing its support for adjourning Schulte’s trial date — which at that point was scheduled for October 25, two days before Assange’s extradition hearing — and revisiting the schedule after November 1, several days after the extradition hearing.

The Government respectfully submits this letter in response to the defendant’s request to adjourn the trial date, currently scheduled for October 25, 2021. (D.E. 495). As discussed at the pretrial conference held on September 15, 2021, the Government consents to the defendant’s request for an adjournment. We respectfully suggest that the Court enter an order adjourning the trial sine die, and the Government will provide an update with respect to our views on an appropriate trial date by November 1, 2021.

On September 26, Yahoo published a story that made claims about assassination discussions that, the story itself revealed, were overblown. The story debunked WikiLeaks’ claims that the charges against Assange were political retaliation pertaining to the Russian investigation from Trump. It corroborated the obvious temporal link between the initial charge against Assange and a Russian exfiltration attempt. And it provided details of CIA’s clandestine plans to limit the damage of the still (then, and now) unreleased Vault 8 source code of CIA’s hacking tools. There’s reason to believe WikiLeaks has known aspects of those damage mitigation plans for at least two years, via means they do not want to disclose.

Since its publication, WikiLeaks has used the story to try to suggest that the DOJ extradition should not go forward, but the British judges who heard the appeal seemed unimpressed by tales of CIA outrage about WikiLeaks’ hoarding CIA’s hacking tools.

As part of the extradition hearing on October 28, according to the WikiLeaks’ Twitter account, the lawyer representing the US in Assange’s extradition hearing, James Lewis, asserted that if this effort to extradite Assange fails, they can just start again with another extradition request.

Note: I looked for a more credible source for this quotation than WikiLeaks, which has been sowing more propaganda than usual in recent months, but did not find it quoted by other credible journalists. For the purposes of this post, though, I will accept this as accurate. A representative for US DOJ said that if this extradition attempt fails, Lewis seemed to suggest, DOJ can ask the UK to extradite on a different indictment.

Shortly after the extradition hearing, on November 5, in response to an order from Judge Furman, DOJ proposed March 21, 2022 as the earliest feasible trial date, largely because of expected CIPA proceedings, but in part because of whatever DOJ discussed in that August 4 ex parte classified status letter.

Although the Government is available for trial at any time in the first or second quarters of 2022, the Government does not believe it would be practical to schedule the trial prior to March 2022.

[snip]

The proposed trial date also takes into consideration matters discussed in the Government’s ex parte letter submitted on August 4, 2021. Accordingly, in order to afford sufficient time both for the likely upcoming CIPA litigation and for the parties to prepare for trial with the benefit of any supplemental CIPA rulings, the Government believes that the earliest practical trial date for this matter would be March 21, 2022.

March 21 would be two weeks after the five year anniversary of the first publication of Vault 7, the less harmful development notes stolen from the CIA, but with them, the names or pseudos of several colleagues that Schulte allegedly scapegoated. That would be the likely date for any statutes of limitation on another CFAA conspiracy to toll.

That is, this timing would provide DOJ an opportunity to learn the fate of Assange’s first, declassified charges through 2015, in case DOJ wanted to ask for extradition on a second case charging actions since 2015.

Admittedly, one explanation for that August 4 filing could be that DOJ obtained new evidence (though if it is evidence Schulte will ultimately get, it should not be ex parte). But given Lewis’ comment and the timing of DOJ’s various updates about trial schedule, one explanation is that DOJ would ask to extradite Assange for the Vault 7 publications (and related actions that have nothing to do with journalism) if the current extradition effort fails.

Ultimately, Schulte’s decisions have created a further delay than the one the government proposed. Because Schulte’s expert, Steve Bellovin, has limited availability due to his teaching schedule, the trial is scheduled to start on June 13, 2022, more than six years after Schulte allegedly stole the files in question.

Depends on what happens tomorrow, though, we may learn sooner what that ex parte filing was.

The Julian Assange Question: True Claims about Prison Conditions or Lies in Service of Martyrdom?

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Today and tomorrow, the United States will appeal Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s decision in the Julian Assange case that American prisons are too inhumane to house someone with suicidal tendencies safely. The US will argue several things about the decision, including that Baraitser had wrongly credited testimony of an expert that, like that of several others presented in Julian Assange’s extradition defense, was obviously misleading.

On Wednesday, judges said the weight given to a misleading report from Assange’s psychiatric expert that was submitted at the original hearing in January could form part of Washington’s full appeal in October.

Sitting in London, Lord Justice Holroyde said he believed it was arguable that Judge Vanessa Baraitser had attached too much weight to the evidence of Prof Michael Kopelman when deciding not to allow the US’s appeal.

[snip]

Delivering the latest decision, Holroyde said it was “very unusual” for an appeal court to have to consider evidence from an expert that had been accepted by a lower court, but also found to have been misleading – even if the expert’s actions had been deemed an “understandable human response” designed to protect the privacy of Assange’s partner and children.

The judge said that, in those circumstances, it was “at least arguable” that Baraitser erred in basing her conclusions on the professor’s evidence.

“Given the importance to the administration of justice of a court being able to reply on the impartiality of an expert witness, it is in my view arguable that more detailed and critical consideration should have been given to why [the professor’s] ‘understandable human response’ gave rise to a misleading report.”

The US government had previously been allowed to appeal against Baraitser’s decision on three grounds – including that it was wrong in law. Assange’s legal team had described the grounds as “narrow” and “technical”. The two allowed on Wednesday were additional.

One key issue is whether assurances the US offered to the UK that Assange won’t be held under Special Administrative Measures are worth the paper they were written on (they’re probably not).

The summary of the decision to accept the appeal said that the United States had “provided the United Kingdom with a package of assurances which are responsive to the district judge’s specific findings in this case.”

Specifically, it said, Mr. Assange would not be subjected to measures that curtail a prisoner’s contact with the outside world and can amount to solitary confinement, and would not be imprisoned at the supermax prison in Florence, Colo., unless he later did something “that meets the test” for imposing such harsh steps.

“The United States has also provided an assurance that the United States will consent to Mr. Assange being transferred to Australia to serve any custodial sentence imposed on him,” the summary said.

While the basis for refusing extradition — expanding on a precedent established with Lauri Love, whose Aspergers was far more severe and better established than Assange’s depression — may be controversial, the severe conditions in American prisons are not.

And that’s why the focus of Assange’s team over the past nine months and in the next few days will be so telling.

Assange’s team would need to look no further than Joshua Schulte — the accused source for the stolen CIA hacking tools who has been held under draconian Special Administrative Measures (which sharply curtail Schulte’s ability to communicate with anyone besides his lawyers and immediate family) for over three years — to demonstrate how WikiLeaks associates have been treated in US jails. Judge Paul Crotty recently rejected Schulte’s latest bid to end the SAMs before the case got reassigned — with no public explanation — to Judge Jesse Furman (Crotty must be getting close to going senior status, but Schulte also asked Crotty to recuse). In his order affirming the SAMs on Schulte, Crotty noted that the former CIA developer, “intentionally disclosed information he knows to be classified–including in a recently filed motion seeking declassification of that very information,” and prosecutors just warned that Schulte may face additional consequences for doing so.

In recent weeks, the defendant has, through standby counsel, attempted to file several documents on ECF that appear to contain classified information. Section 5 notices are particularly likely to contain classified information, since the statute requires the defendant to “include a brief description of the classified information” at issue, and prohibits the defendant from “disclos[ing] any information known or believed to be classified in connection with a trial or pretrial proceeding until notice has been given under this subsection” and the United States has had an opportunity to seek a CIPA § 6 hearing and, if applicable, an appeal from the Court’s determination under § 7. Should the defendant knowingly and intentionally publicly file or attempt to publicly file information “known or believed to be classified,” including as part of a § 5 notice, he could be subject to penalties.

Likewise Assange’s team could point to the case of Daniel Hale, who was jailed prior to sentencing because it was feared he would harm himself, but then was placed in the Marion Communications Management Unit, a less harsh regime restricting prisoners’ communications than SAMs, but nevertheless not something known to be justified by anything Hale did during pre-trial release, and something that exacerbates Hale’s isolation in prison.

Rather than focusing on these very uncontroversial issues, Assange’s team has spent the last nine months spinning wildly about topics other than US prison conditions. They did so, first, by falsely claiming that an article in which Siggi Thordarson reaffirmed one of the most damning things he said about Assange would doom the case against Assange, even though as a co-conspirator, Siggi is unlikely to be called as a witness. More recently, Assange’s team has embraced an article showing that CIA Director Mike Pompeo was unable to pursue a variety of measures to attempt to thwart the release of (still substantially unreleased) stolen hacking tools, even though the article proves that Assange lied wildly in his extradition hearing about when and why the US government changed its understanding of his actions and further shows that the US didn’t charge Assange in the face of Pompeo’s pressure, but only did so when Russia attempted to exfiltrate Assange.

Assange has a really good case to make about US jail and prison conditions.

Instead, Assange has spent the last nine months telling wild stories in an effort to make a man credibly accused of conspiring to hack US targets a martyr of journalism.

More on Joshua Schulte’s Attempted Hack of the Justice System

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A few weeks ago, I described what I believed was an attempt by Joshua Schulte to hack the judicial system — not by using computer code, but by exploiting legal code. In a status hearing, he claimed that he had informed prosecutors that he wanted to proceed pro se (representing himself). The sole remaining member of the prosecution team, David Denton, said he hadn’t heard of it.

A letter submitted by Denton and AUSA Michael Lockard today, who has joined the team, explains why: after they reviewed one of many appeals Schulte had filed (this one a demand for the judge in this case to recuse), he actually informed of his purported decision Judge Paul Crotty ex parte, before he sent a contrary filing, also ex parte. Crotty, having gotten no unequivocal indication that Schulte intended to proceed pro se, did nothing, which is part of the basis for Schulte’s mandamus filing.

On June 9, 2021, the defendant filed a pro se petition for a writ of mandamus in the Second Circuit seeking to recuse the District Court, claiming, among other things, that the defendant “petitioned [the Court] to represent himself in multiple letters throughout November 2020,” and that the Court “did not hold a Faretta hearing as required by law.” In Re: Joshua Schulte, 21-1445, Dkt. 1 at 10 (2d Cir. 2021). At the status conference in this matter on June 15, 2021, the Government noted that no such request appeared on the docket for this case, and that the Government was not aware of the defendant expressing “an unequivocal intent to forego the assistance of counsel.” Williams, 44 F.3d at 100. At the conference, defense counsel, at the defendant’s apparent request, stated that this was incorrect, and the defendant did wish to proceed pro se. Following the conference, defense counsel forwarded the Government a copy of a letter dated November 6, 2020, in which the defendant indicated his desire to proceed pro se, and informed the Government that the request had been submitted by the defendant to the Court ex parte. Defense counsel further explained that, in subsequent ex parte communication with the Court following the defendant’s November 2020 letter, defense counsel had advised the Court that the defendant intended to continue with counsel.

Much of the letter submitted today is routine process for when a defendant claims to want to represent himself. Among the precedents the government cites are two (one in this circuit) holding that a defendant cannot be co-counsel with his defense attorney, which is effectively what Schulte has done.

(4) a defendant who elects to proceed pro se “has no constitutional or statutory right to represent himself as co-counsel with his own attorney,” United States v. Tutino, 883 F.2d 1125, 1141 (2d Cir. 1989); see also Schmidt, 105 F.3d at 90 (“[T]here is no constitutional right to hybrid representation.”).

And while at the hearing Sabrina Shroff had suggested she and Deborah Colson serve as stand-by counsel, the government rightly notes that in his mandamus petition, Schulte raised conflicts reviewed before his first trial, which is something amounting to advice from Shroff that Schulte write down everything he wanted to leak in his prison notebook. They’re using that to ask that Crotty appoint someone besides Shroff (though they don’t name her) as standby counsel.

With regard to the appointment of standby counsel, the Government notes that the defendant’s recently filed pro se mandamus petition reiterates his prior claims that he wishes to call as witnesses certain of his prior and current counsel from the Federal Defenders of New York, although that claim is framed in the context of arguing that the Court’s prior rulings on this issue demonstrate bias that requires the Court’s recusal, rather than seeking relief from the Court’s orders themselves. See In Re: Joshua Schulte, 21-1445, Dkt. 1 at 4-9 (2d Cir. 2021). Accordingly, in order to avoid later claims alleging any purported conflict-of-interest, the Government respectfully suggests that it would be prudent for the Court to appoint as standby counsel one of the defendant’s current or former attorneys not implicated in the defendant’s claims asserting conflict or implicating the attorney-witness rule.

So the letter explains what, in a normal court room, is going on. But I maintain that Schulte is (and has been, for some time) attempting to do what he did with CIA’s computer systems: send a bunch of conflicting messages to get the machine to operate in a way entirely unexpected. Indeed, one tactic he’s using is one he used several times at CIA, the same tactic small children use when one parent gives them a response they don’t like: Schulte is bypassing his criminal docket (both through the use of the ex parte letters and the non-associated dockets, to ensure the government didn’t learn of this ploy until all the Speedy Time would, if the ploy is successful, have elapsed).

If I were the government I’d have some good hacking investigators review the docket to try to understand it all from a hacker’s brain. Because, at the very least, I suspect Schulte plans to claim that the government simply forgot to hold his second trial.

Joshua Schulte Attempts to Hack the Court System

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Joshua Schulte attempted to complete a hack of the court system yesterday.

I don’t mean that Schulte used computer code to bring down the court systems. His laptop doesn’t connect to the Internet, and so he does not have those tools available. Rather, over the 3.5 years he has been in jail, he has tested the system, figured out which messages can be used to distract adversaries, and which messages have an effect that will lead the system to perform in unexpected ways. He identified vulnerabilities and opportunities — SDNY arrogance, the pandemic and related court delays, Louis DeJoy’s postal system, and even the SAMs imposed on him — and attempted to exploit them.

As a reminder, a jury hung on the most serious charges against Schulte in March 2020. Afterwards, the government moved to retry Schulte quickly, but his defense attorneys said they needed more time, in part because their expert, Steve Bellovin, was for health reasons unwilling to serve as an expert during COVID. Last November, Judge Paul Crotty scheduled a trial to start June 7, 2021, which would have been a week ago Monday. In March, Schulte’s superb attorney, Sabrina Shroff, moved to delay the trial once more, to October, still citing Bellovin’s withdrawal.

Meanwhile, starting in January, Schulte started submitting pro se filings, some filed through Shroff, and some sent directly. The government responded to a motion for habeas corpus (basically, to point out he needs to file suit against the Warden of MCC, not the prosecution), but did not respond to his motion to suppress evidence seized from the MCC jail. When Schulte filed to request direct access to Lexus Nexis, the government responded, in part, by asking Judge Crotty to force Schulte to decide whether he was representing himself, pro se, or, if not, then to solely allow Shroff and her team to make filings on his behalf.

The defendant’s request appears to be an attempt to further his pattern of engaging in inappropriate, quasi-pro se litigation. The Court should not consider the defendant’s instant letter for that reason. “A defendant has a right either to counsel or to proceed pro se, but has no right to ‘hybrid’ representation, in which he is represented by counsel from time to time, but may slip into pro se mode for selected presentations.” United States v. Rivernider, 828 F.3d 91, 108 (2d Cir. 2016). Although the Court has “discretion to hear from a represented defendant personally,” id. at 108 n.5, “the interests of justice will only rarely be served by a defendant’s supplementation of the legal services provided by his . . . counsel,” United States v. Swinton, 400 F. Supp. 805, 806 (S.D.N.Y. 1975). To the extent the defendant has any colorable claims for relief, his attorneys can present them to the Court, and the Court should reject the defendant’s attempts to “slip into pro se mode,” Rivernider, 828 F.3d at 108, whenever it suits him. See, e.g., United States v. Crumble, No. 18 Cr. 32 (ARR), 2018 WL 3112041, at *4 (E.D.N.Y. June 25, 2018) (“As Markus has not elected to represent himself, he does not have a right to make a motion on his own behalf, nor does he have a right to insist that the district court hear his applications. While I have previously exercised my discretion to entertain Markus’s pro se submissions, I will do so no longer. If Markus wishes to file any further motions, he is directed to ask his trial counsel—or appellate counsel— to adopt this motion. I trust that assigned counsel will file any motions that they do not view as frivolous on Markus’s behalf. Any pro se motions made by Markus, however, will be summarily denied.” (cleaned up)).

In any event, even if the Court considers the defendant’s submission, it is without merit. As his letter acknowledges, he has access to legal databases (a fact confirmed by the volume of his recent pro se filings), but additionally he demands special access to “filings, briefs, modern search, and the ability to print.” The defendant’s claims about the purported deficiencies of the databases to which he does in fact have access do not support such demands or establish a basis for relief. “[A]n inmate cannot establish relevant actual injury simply by establishing that his prison’s law library or legal assistance program is subpar in some theoretical sense.” Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 351 (1996). The defendant identifies no reason he should be afforded special access beyond that which the facility provides in the normal course, and at bottom, he is represented by counsel who have the ability to make well-researched and thoroughly prepared legal claims on his behalf.

Crotty denied Schulte’s request for Lexus Nexis, but didn’t address the pro se request.

Meanwhile, two of the three prosecutors on the team, Matthew LaRoche and Sidhardha Kamaraju, withdrew from the case, both because they’ve left government. LaRoche was involved in a prosecution that collapsed because the government committed a Brady violation, but Kamaraju was not. Kamaraju, however, probably has the most computer expertise of the original three.

Yesterday there was a remarkable status hearing. Crotty started by asking the remaining prosecutor, David Denton, when replacement prosecutors will file an appearance. Imminently, Denton said, though it sounded like he didn’t believe that.

Crotty asked whether Shroff has found an expert. Curiously, she explained that Bellovin still can’t do it, even with the waning risk of COVID, because of his schedule at Columbia University. Crotty noted that it is her responsibility to find an expert (she had said in a November status conference that it would amount to ineffective assistance not to have one).

But the real stunner came at the end, when Shroff said that Schulte wanted her to tell the court that he had told the government back in November that he was proceeding pro se. Denton responded that this was the first he had heard of such a thing, and Shroff responded that he was incorrect; Schulte had informed the government in November.

The hearing ended with a commitment to brief whether Schulte can proceed pro se.

It is almost without exception an insanely bad idea for a defendant to represent themselves, and this is probably not that exception. Still, there are advantages that Schulte would get by representing himself. He’s brilliant, and clearly has been studying the law in the 3.5 years he has been in prison (though he has made multiple errors of process and judgment in his own filings). He has repeatedly raised the Sixth Amendment problems with Special Administrative Measures, notably describing how delays in receiving his mail make it impossible for him to respond to legal developments in timely fashion. So I imagine he’d prepare a Sixth Amendment challenge to everything going forward. He’d be able to demand access to the image of the server he is alleged to have hacked himself. By proceeding pro se, Schulte could continue to post inflammatory claims to the docket for sympathetic readers to magnify, as happened with a filing he submitted earlier this year. And after the government has made clear it will reverse its disastrous strategy from the first trial of making the trial all about Schulte’s conflicts with the CIA, by questioning witnesses himself, Schulte would be able to make personality conflicts central again, even against the government’s wishes. Plus, by not replacing Bellovin, Schulte would serve as expert himself. In that role, Schulte would present the false counter story he has been telling since he was jailed, but in a way that the government couldn’t cross-examine him. So it would probably be insanely detrimental, but less so than for most defendants that try it. It certainly would provide a way to mount the defense that Schulte clearly wants to pursue.

But I think that’s just Schulte’s fall-back plan.

I think his current plan is to argue that, because anything his attorneys did in his name after he purportedly informed prosecutors he was proceeding pro se would be a legal nullity, then two things have happened since that allegedly occurred that will permit him to demand immediate release. First, if his attorneys’ agreements to exclude time from the Speedy Trial clock were not valid, then it would mean the government has run out of time to prosecute Schulte. Additionally, if a request that Shroff made in March to reschedule the trial was not valid, then the trial would have still been scheduled for last week. I suspect Schulte will try to argue that the government forgot to hold their trial and so must be released.

Mind you, there’s no evidence in the docket that Schulte informed prosecutors, much less the court, that he was proceeding pro se. There’s a filing he made in April 2020 that claimed he had no lawyers and made requests as if he was proceeding pro se, one that everyone ignored. But according to Shroff, that’s not the notice; the notice took place in November. Still, given how Schulte has carefully tested how the mail system works with SAMs and COVID, I don’t rule out him sending a letter directly to prosecutors.

The other problem with his claim to be proceeding pro se is that in a May filing, Schulte referred to the October trial (meaning, he recognizes the validity of both that request and Shroff’s exclusion of time under the Speedy Trial Act) and complained that his attorney-client mail was being opened. If he were proceeding pro se without Crotty formally appointing Shroff as standby counsel, their communications would have no privilege. So he has said two things in a pro se filing that are inconsistent with really proceeding pro se.

Certainly, Shroff has said things — in multiple venues — that indicate she believed she remained Schulte’s lawyer.

Given that Schulte claims everything his legal team has done since November was done without his sanction, though, the government would seem to have cause to ask Crotty to assign entirely different lawyers to serve as Schulte’s stand-by counsel, if indeed he does proceed pro se going forward. Which would make his plan for the actual trial, if it ever happens, untenable.

To be sure, I’m not saying this is going to work. But the government — what’s left of the prosecution team, anyway — had better understand that Schulte has been treating the court system with the same adversarial approach as he allegedly did the CIA’s servers. Schulte is claiming to have entered a command into his prosecution back in November that hacked the system, effectively changed the effect of everything that has happened since. Just trusting that such a possibility cannot happen under the legal system is probably a bad idea given where the CIA’s trust that Schulte wouldn’t hack the system turned out.

Update: Via InnerCity Press, there’s the transcript of the hearing.

April 12, 2020: Schulte claims he has no attorneys, claims only a few months remain on Speedy Trial

May 31, 2020: Shroff asks for a week extension to respond to government scheduling motion

June 8, 2020: Schroff requests a status conference for August or September 2020, acting as if Schulte’s request did not exist

June 15, 2020: Shroff initiates White Plains grand jury challenge

June 19, 2020: SDNY extends Speedy Trial to July 1, 2020

July 16, 2020: Shroff informs Judge Crotty Schulte will not reply to Rule 29 motion

July 27, 2020: Shroff asks for extension on grand jury challenge

July 28, 2020: Shroff asks for ESXi server (basically a repeat of Schulte’s April request)

July 30, 2020: Shroff asks for two week delay on status hearing citing (in part) Steve Bellovin’s withdrawal

August 14, 2020: Shroff asks for two week extension on reply to request for ESXi server

September 15, 2020: Shroff reply on ESXi laptop

September 16, 2020: SDNY proposes schedule, with January 2021 trial date

September 21, 2020: SDNY responds to Bellovin submission of ex parte declaration

October 14, 2020: SDNY asks for 30 day exclusion

October 30, 2020: Shroff requests Schulte appear remotely

November 4, 2020: Status conference, trial set for June 7, 2021, with time excluded; Shroff maintains it would be ineffective counsel to go to trial without expert

THE COURT: Are you entitled to an expert?

MS. SHROFF: In a case like this, yes. I’m quite certain I’m entitled to an expert. I think it would be clear error and ineffective assistance of counsel to try this case without an expert, without a doubt.

November 16, 2020: Shroff-submitted motion to dismiss on White Plains grand jury

November 19, 2020: Shroff submits request for VTC meeting with Schulte’s family

January 1, 2021: Schulte motion to suppress MCC evidence (docketed February 24)

January 7, 2021: Shroff requests 2 week extension on White Plains grand jury reply

January 19, 2021: Shroff files Schulte pro se motion for writ of habeas corpus regarding SAMs, dated December 25, 2020

January 22, 2021: Shroff requests two week extension on January 21 deadline for reply on White Plains grand jury reply

January 22, 2021: Shroff requests funds for new laptop for Schulte

January 27, 2021: Civil Division AUSA asks Crotty to dismiss motion for writ so it can be refiled naming Warden as defendant

February 22, 2021: Shroff submits reply on White Plains grand jury challenge

February 24, 2021: Schulte files motion to reconsider decision on habeas (docketed March 4)

March 19, 2021: Schulte calls on Crotty to decide his motion to suppress on the merits, given government non-response (docketed April 5)

March 22, 2021: Shroff moves, with consent of Schulte, to reschedule trial to last quarter of 2021

March 24, 2021: Crotty denies motion to dismiss; Crotty reschedules trial for October 25, excludes time

April 12, 2021: Schulte asks for Lexus Nexis (docketed April 29)

May 5, 2021: Schulte complains about mail delays (docketed May 19); among other things it reflects an October trial date and references attorney-client mail

May 7, 2021: Matthew LaRoche withdraws

May 11, 2021: SDNY submits opposition to Lexus Nexis request, including request for order that Schulte not submit pro se

June 3, 2021: Sidhardha Kamaraju withdraws

June 7, 2021: Date of trial scheduled in November 2020

June 15, 2021: Status hearing at which Schulte claims to have been representing himself pro se since November

Grits: The Difference between Joshua Schulte’s Complaints about SAMs and Those of His Attorneys

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Accused Vault 7 leaker Joshua Schulte got himself back in the news with a challenge to the Special Administrative Measures he has been under since he tried to leak information from jail in October 2018.

His latest complaints closely mirror those he made in a separate lawsuit in April 2019 (though in the earlier one, Schulte claimed that Chapo Guzmán was one of the few people on the same floor, not like that should have mattered).

You can tell this one is self-indulgent from Schulte’s claim that there’s no legitimate reason to require his meetings with his family be monitored.

There is no “legitimate governmental objective” to denying a pre-trial detainee the ability to see both his parents at once, to have a contact visit with them, to visit with them in private, or to contact them as often as other inmates. The government has never charged Mr. Schulte with disclosure of classified information through social visits or phone calls. Regardless, the government cannot take a preventative measure of limiting free speech to stop future potential crimes.

Not only did Schulte share protected information via his family in the past, but he was caught sharing information he recognized was protected (which the government suggests may have been classified) on a phone with someone appearing to be a journalist. Sure, he wasn’t charged for that. The government waited until he did it again, this time using ProtonMail, before charging him.

Plus, some of his complaints really address the sheer arbitrariness of prison life, not SAMs per se.

The MCC bans 10S inmates from equal commissary. These randomly banned items include mouthwash, vitamin E, a book light, a bowl, a radio, earbuds, composition notebooks, reading glasses, honey, A&D ointment, artificial tears, gas relief tabs, prilosec tabs, Tylenol, mirrors, dish soap, pens, albums, Sudoku puzzles, mugs, socks, shorts, V05 body soap, suave lotion, herbal essence shampoo, bagels, BBQ sauce, grits, salt and pepper, honey buns, jolly ranchers, shabangs, combs, sharp cheddar cheese, crackers, soy sauce, wheat thins, assorted tea, and coffee, among many, many more items. It’s so random that “raisin brand” cereal is allowed, but “cheerios” cereal is banned (sold in same bag).

One can best measure of the merit of Schulte’s claim, however, by comparing that April 2019 complaint with what his attorneys submitted in a formal challenge to his SAMs shortly thereafter.

B. The SAMs are unconstitutional.

i. The SAMs unconstitutionally punish Mr. Schulte because they are not rationally related to the legitimate governmental interests underlying 28 C.F.R. § 501.

ii. The SAMs impose restrictions on Mr. Schulte’s defense counsel and attorney-client communications in violation of the Sixth Amendment.

C. Limitation on the “dissemination” of communications.

a. Restrictions on third-party communications.

D. Overall chilling effect on defense counsel.

E. The SAMs violate Mr. Schulte’s First Amendment rights by prohibiting non-legal contact with anyone who is not an immediate family member.

That filing, written by experienced defense attorneys who understand the real difference between Schulte’s treatment and that of other defendants, focused on his ability to defend himself and maintain as much contact with his family as possible.

Judge Paul Crotty, in an August 2019 response to Schulte’s lawyers’ motion, upheld most of the SAMs but modified both his contact with lawyers and his family slightly. There’s no reason to believe Crotty will be more amenable to changing the SAMs now, not least given another Schulte filing that suggests his cell may have been raided back on March 8, on a day he would have had contact with the public at his trial. The government claims the officers in question did no more than deliver him to and from the loading dock that day. A separate judge instructed him to refile the complaint by December 23, but any response has yet to appear on the docket.

SAMs are undoubtedly onerous and some of Schulte’s complaints go to the core of whether such restrictions are humane.

But he also has demonstrated repeatedly that he’s a shameless liar aiming to try his case in public.

Prosecutors Have Discovered the Joshua Schulte Is a Hack-and-Leak Case, Not a Personnel Dispute

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While I’ve been buried in the Mike Flynn beat, on Monday, there was a status hearing in the Joshua Schulte case.

There were three main news items in the hearing.

First, prosecutors revealed unsurprisingly that they’re going retry Schulte. More interesting, they said they planned to supersede the indictment against Schulte, alleging the same charges, but providing more information on them. They cited the notes from jurors, which made it crystal clear that the jurors were confused by the forensic testimony and how the charges related to that testimony. What the limits of Schulte’s legal access were seemed to be particularly confusing (something that is not sufficiently clear in the law anyway). At the time of both the initial Espionage indictment and the superseding one, the CIA was still trying to keep secret specifically what had been stolen when and how, but now that that’s public. I expect the superseding indictment to explain more clearly what was stolen and how Schulte allegedly exceeded his legal accesses to do that.

In discussions around that superseding indictment, prosecutor David Denton said something to the effect that grand juries are only available in emergencies. As far as the public record goes, however, grand juries aren’t available at all, so Denton’s disclosure was news. That only matters in the Schulte case insofar as he’s going to refuse most Speedy Trial exclusions (meaning prosecutors may be forced to find some way to start a new trial before COVID lockdowns end). But it’s an interesting admission more generally.

Finally, prosecutors said they didn’t think the retrial will take as long as his initial trial. In my summary of why the prosecution was in a remarkably weak position as the last trial went to the jury, I described how prosecutors had made it look like the Vault 7 breach was just a really nasty personnel dispute to which burning the CIA’s hacking abilities to the ground was just a side dispute.

Add that to the pace of the trial, which feels like a nasty employment dispute to which the massive breach of the CIA’s hacking tools became just a side-dispute. That’s often true of CIA trials — it certainly was for Jeffrey Sterling. But the long parade of CIA witnesses — Schulte’s buddy, two other colleagues, his boss, his boss’s boss, his boss’s boss’s boss, her boss, and then yet another boss, plus a CIA SysAdmin and a security guy — all describing a series of disputes escalating from a nerf gun fight to WikiLeaks burning the CIA’s hacking capabilities to the ground refocused the trial onto whether Schulte’s complaints had merit and not on what the forensic evidence showed.

And Sabrina Shroff did a superb job of defending not the forensic case (indeed, defense expert Steve Bellovin did not take the stand to float any of the alternate theories that Schulte has been offering for two years, and in so doing will leave Shroff to claim Michael could have accessed the backup without prosecutors having gotten him to admit that wouldn’t have worked), but instead arguing that her client was maligned by the entire CIA. The boss, the boss’s boss, the boss’s boss’s boss, the boss’s boss’s boss’s boss, and then the senior-most boss are all lined up against Schulte for being an asshole. She even defused utterly damning notes about working with Russia (which I’ll return to). From the transcripts, it seemed like Shroff rattled a good many government witnesses, too, and a number of them (one of the FBI agents and the classification expert, especially) seemed to come off as unresponsive as a result.

I expect prosecutors will shorten the trial by limiting this testimony to just the four or so people who have first-hand knowledge of Schulte’s actions (and in the retrial, the government won’t have to backpedal as they try to fix their late disclosure that Schulte’s buddy Michael had been put on paid leave by the CIA). If so, that should make it easier for prosecutors to focus on why the circumstantial forensic evidence strongly supports Schulte’s involvement.

All that said, prosecutors also seemed to be fighting jury nullification in Schulte’s trial, with at least two jurors who were determined to acquit Schulte no matter what other jurors said. That may be a WikiLeaks thing (one that would be far less likely to happen if this were tried in EDVA, which is why Julian Assange says he can’t get a fair trial in EDVA). But it also may be the case that CIA’s hacking department doesn’t make a very sympathetic hacking victim.

King Josh in Jail, Part One: The Informant

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The testimony on accused Vault 7 leaker Joshua Schulte’s conduct in MCC raised more questions than answers. So I want to do a series of three or four posts to look more closely at it (I’m using the term “King Josh” because it was one of his passwords at the CIA).

In this post I want to look at the jail house informant who is the publicly acknowledged basis by which prosecutors discovered that Schulte had a phone in jail, Carlos Bentances Luna Mera.

Betances is a 41 year old citizen of the Dominican Republic who twice migrated to the US without documentation, the first time in 1996 (he was deported in 2001), and then again around 2008. At some point, Betances married and had children. During both periods, he began to work as a low level cog in narcotics trafficking.

Betances was arrested on March 15, 2018 in conjunction with the trafficking. The only federal complaint unsealed in the docket is for illegal reentry, and in that magistrates docket, proceedings were continued in both April and May 2018, something that would happen if Betances were forgoing indictment and moving directly to a plea. Given his testimony, there must be a sealed criminal docket showing a guilty plea on nine counts covering multiple narcotics trafficking and conspiracy counts, illegal reentry, identity fraud, mail fraud, and taking a phone into jail.

That suggests that Betances flipped almost immediately, perhaps, at first, to cooperate against his network of suppliers. That’s consistent with an answer Betances gave when Schulte’s lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, suggested that cooperation on using a phone in jail, “was the most valuable to the government,” more than on all his narcotics charges. Betances responded, “Well, may I remind you that I had been cooperating before I talked to them?”

According to the testimony, Betances didn’t start spying on Schulte until sometime in summer 2018, at least four months after he was jailed, and didn’t first meet with prosecutors until September 2018. So the public story is that Betances got busted and flipped, managed to play a role in smuggling and hiding phones in jail that put him in a key spot to interact with Schulte and his cellmate, Omar Amanat (I’ll look at Amanat and his brother in the next post), and only after that happened witnessed something that led him to start taking pictures and videos of Schulte’s phone use. That went on for maybe a month before — aware that something big was going to go down in the library — Betances sent a note to the guards, who thwarted it. Some days later, Schulte was thrown in the SHU and a big hunt started for the phones and Schulte’s other activities in jail.

That thing that led Betances to prepare to inform on Schulte (again, per the testimony) is that one day sometime in the summer, Schulte said he wanted Russia’s help.

[W]e were in Chino’s cell [Chino was also part of the cell phone smuggling and sharing network] and I heard Josh saying that Russia had to help in in the things that he was doing.

Here’s how Betances described it on cross (through a translator) to a very dubious Sabrina Shroff:

Shroff: So anyway, it’s you who walks in when Mr. Schulte and Omar are talking, correct?

Betances: Yes, correct.

Shroff: And you walk in to give them a heads-up that somebody’s coming, correct?

Betances: Yes, correct.

Shroff: And just as you walk in, you hear him say the word “Russia,” correct?

Betances: That’s correct, yes.

Shroff: And that’s what prompts fear into you to go cooperate with the United States Attorney’s Office?

Betances: It sounded interesting to me.

Shroff: Right.

Hearing Schulte mention Russia led Betances to do a remarkable amount of surveillance on Schulte’s phones, which he stored for him behind his cell locker.

He took two pictures of the apps Schulte loaded onto the phone, and — per his testimony — got Schulte and Amanat to explain the function of WhatsApp, Signal, Proton Mail, Orbot, Turbo VPN, and Secure Delete. Betances also got pictures of the things Schulte was writing on his phone, including the initial emails to Shane Harris that would form part of the basis for the Espionage Act charges on which the jury was hung.

He took several videos of Schulte using his phone.

After having taken these pictures on September 1, Betances waited around three weeks before he alerted the guards that something big was going down in the library, and then was removed from MCC when guards found at least some of these phones in his cell.

Shroff: And before you decided to cooperate, you simply decided to take photos, is that your testimony?

Betances: Just to be clear with the defense attorney’s question in deciding to cooperate, when they were working on sending whatever they were going to send from the library, that’s when I decided to cooperate.

Shroff: My only question was when did you take this photograph?

Betances: In the summer of 2018.

Shroff: Right. Months before you’re now saying that you decided to cooperate, right?

Betances: Could you repeat that question? You confused me.

Shroff: You took the photo before you decided to cooperate, according to you, correct?

Betances: Yes, yes.

Shroff: Right. And you’re saying you just decided to take these photos for no reason at all, right?

Betances: May I remind you that the reason I took it was because I head the conversation that I heard?

According to his testimony on redirect, Betances did all this without government instruction.

Karamarju: Now, all of the photographs that you testified about, did the government tell you to take any of those photographs?

Betances: No.

The remarkable coincidence that a jailhouse informant would end up first smuggling in and then guarding her client’s illegal phones and then taking pictures from them is not the only thing Shroff was skeptical about. She also doubted the circumstances by which Betances exposed his wife to the risk of smuggling phones into jail as well as his ability — with little English — to figure out what Schulte was doing, to the extent he did.

Still, all that is explicable if Betances’ attorney negotiated a plea deal with narcotics prosecutors and the attorney coached Betances through how to dramatically increase the value of his cooperation by catching Joshua Schulte attempting to leak classified information from his jail cell.

Betances’ surveillance was critical to obtaining the jail warrants that would lead to the discovery of Schulte’s very damning prison notebooks, several phones, three of the Proton Mail accounts he was using, and his Signal traffic. And that’s just what prosecutors revealed in this case.

Betances met with prosecutors in Schulte’s case a bunch of times: first in September 2018, then October and December 2018, several times in 2019, and then perhaps five times in 2019.

None of that means Betances made this stuff up. He certainly doesn’t have the English skills to write those emails to Shane Harris. And while the evidence regarding Schulte’s comments about Russia are contradictory, there is corroboration for it.

But it does present a number of remarkable coincidences that just ended up providing Schulte the means to communicate “securely” from his jail cell, only to have that activity thwarted at the moment he attempted to act.

Judge Crotty Declares a Mistrial in Joshua Schulte Case

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This morning, Judge Paul Crotty declared a mistrial in the Joshua Schulte case. Jurors found Schulte guilty on the two least serious charges — false statements and contempt — but didn’t even find him guilty of obstruction, to say nothing of the Espionage and CFAA charges tied to his alleged theft of the CIA’s hacking tools. A sentence on those two charges would not even amount to the time he has already served since being jailed in December 2018.

This is an absolutely stunning rebuke for the government on the most serious Espionage case in years, and an unbelievable success for Schulte’s lawyers, especially Sabrina Shroff.

The two sides will have a conference on March 26 to decide what to do. The government will certainly push to retry Schulte; Sabrina Shroff asked for an extended deadline to file motions. She may try to do something further about the government’s late notice that Michael, a key witness, got put on paid leave last August (though the government has argued compellingly that Michael’s underlying lack of candor has been noticed to the defense throughout). She also may make yet another bid to get more access to the forensics, something I’ve argued that the government should have permitted in the first place.

That said, I think the government’s failure in this case stemmed largely from too much focus on the CIA and too little focus on the (abundant) evidence against Schulte. In addition, they do not appear to have shown — via the abundant evidence available to them — that Schulte is a compulsive liar, and that exhibits that show Schulte offering alternate theories of the theft all fall flat.

Plus, there were problems with two jurors, problems that I think Judge Crotty did not adequately manage.

That is, I think the government can learn from its failures in this case. I wouldn’t be surprised, either, if the vaunted SDNY is forced to add a cybersecurity prosecutor to their team, to ensure that the forensic case is presented more clearly to jurors.

I highly doubt Schulte can pull this off a second time. If he can, it will be a remarkable comment on the government’s ability to obtain justice against insider threats.

20 Questions (Plus 5): The Joshua Schulte Jury Is Lost, Possibly Hopelessly

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According to InnerCity Press (virtually the only press covering the Schulte verdict watch), by end of day today the jurors had sent out 25 notes, most questions but also problems with two of the jurors. At the end of the day they told the Court they “aligned” on two of the charges, but were at an impasse on the other. Given that there’s slam dunk evidence that he committed the least serious crimes (false statements and contempt), that suggests at least some members of the jury have reasonable doubt that the guy who wrote a virtual signed confession to committing the most damaging leak in CIA history actually did so.

I wanted to collect the known questions from jurors to give a sense of what issues have driven this uncertainty.

Note 1: A request for a summary of exhibits

Note 2: A request for a transcript of the testimony of David, a CIA Sysadmin, particularly as regards what jurors may have mislabeled 1209-8 (David testified about Schulte’s failed attempt to access Altabackups with regards to exhibit 1202-8).

Note 3 asked 7 questions:

  1. What is included in Count Three? We aren’t sure what the purview is — articles, search warrants, tweets? This pertains to the Espionage Charge tied to posting classified information in one of his diaries, sending a diagram of CIA’s servers to WaPo reporter Shane Harris, and planning to reveal details about how a CIA hacking tool, Bartender, was used in the field (which certainly would expose CIA officers, and probably NOCs).
  2. In 2015, when DevLAN went down, was Schulte called to fix the problem? How did he fix it? Schulte’s lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, had made much of the fact that when Schulte was at a conference he got called about DevLAN going down. It’s not directly related to any of his charges.
  3. Can you please reread what was found on Schulte’s home computer? This would have focused on deleted materials (and the lack of classified information), but given that Juror 5 almost certainly knew about the child porn allegations and there was a focus on Schulte’s hosting of movies, this may have been what they were looking for.
  4. Did GX 809 reference Schulte’s taking a drug (“took my last piece”)? If so, what was it? Was it regular use? This refers to part of one page of his prison notebook in which he discusses  taking his “last piece” and envisioning himself as a Cardinal. It is entirely unrelated to his charges.
  5. Is it confirmed that Schulte’s been diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome? One of the very senior CIA managers suggested to another that Schulte might have Asperbergers. It is entirely unrelated to his charges.
  6. For Count One, is Altabackups inclusive of Brutal Kangaroo? Is it inclusive of OSB libraries? The backup that Schulte is alleged to have stolen included both the libraries (which were not leaked) and Brutal Kangaroo (materials on which were leaked), but it included far more, but the parties did not answer this because they weren’t sure whether this was a network question or a charging one.
  7. Where were OSB libraries housed/where did they live? They were part of Stash.

Note Four: Can we please have simplified badge times/formats for Schulte on 4/20/16 in a format similar to GX 115. One piece of evidence that Schulte did the reversion during which the backup sent to WikiLeaks was stolen was that he was the only one in his SCIF with his computer during the time the commands doing the reversion were entered into it. The badge records would show that. Jurors did get simplified badge records.

Note Five: In Exhibit GX 107, what does lock/unlock computer mean in columns Source and Type? Is the computer locking itself? What is someone unlocking? This pertains to something tracked on CIA badge records and was not explained in testimony.

Note Six includes four questions:

  1. Is there evidence that April 18 and 20 were the only two times in 2016 that Schulte left the vault last? April 18, the day Schulte allegedly conducted reconnaissance on the backup files, and April 20, the day he allegedly stole him were the only two days he was the last person in his SCIF at RDB (the time period for which may include just the last seven months he worked at CIA).
  2. What does mount the Altabackups mean? This refers to how the CIA networks were set up, and Schulte’s role in doing that.
  3. What does create data store mean? This pertains to testimony about one attempt Schulte made to regain access to files he had been booted from.
  4. When someone logs out of a virtual machine, what happens to the log files from that session? There was no testimony on this point (jurors likely asked it to try to assess whether Schulte’s buddy Michael could have stolen the files).

Note Seven (Exhibits 16-17, I think) asked for the transcripts of Michael Berger (the FBI forensics expert who presented evidence of Schulte’s efforts to wipe evidence at home) and Michael (Schulte’s buddy who took a screen cap of him deleting logs).

Note Eight: Jurors complained that one of the jurors, Juror 4, was not deliberating with the rest of the jury and coming in late.

Note Nine included two questions:

  1. Can we please have testimony from Richard Evanchec. Evanchec is one of the FBI agents that interviewed Schulte and searched his home, and so is central to the false statements charges.
  2. What testimonies covered GX 1305-8 and GX 1305-9. Can we please have transcripts about that. These are Schulte’s Google records, which Evanchec also testified about.

Note Ten: Juror five has prior information, probably including details of Schulte’s child porn charges. She also looked up one of the lawyers. It became clear in a later sidebar that this is the juror who had said something inappropriate to another juror, possibly about deliberations, on February 13, during the trial.

Note Eleven included two questions:

  1. What happened to Schulte’s computers and workstation after he went to Bloomberg (after November 10)? This is likely a question testing a theory about whether someone — possibly Michael? — could have altered logs on Schulte’s computer after he left on November 10, 2016.
  2. When and where was Rufus’s SSH key found? Was it found in the home directory or was it found forensically? Schulte had stored the key of someone, Rufus, who had had Admin access but left, on his home directory. He used it when he was deleting logs on April 20. Sabrina Shroff had gotten one witness to testify that it was very easy to access other people’s home drives, so this is likely another effort to test an alternate culprit theory.

There were two more questions today (which I’ll update on Monday when that transcript is released):

  • Something about the CFAA charge, suggesting jurors are not treating the reversion as a hack, but might be treating Schulte booting his colleague off Brutal Kangaroo as one.
  • Something about unanimity on charges, possibly relating to the leaks from jail.

And then jurors told the court that they’re only in agreement on two charges, but stuck on the others.

For the reasons I laid out here — as well as the two problem jurors — I’m not surprised about that. And given the questions, it seems clear that the extended focus on Schulte’s employment disputes at the CIA made at least some of the jurors sympathetic to the idea that someone at CIA framed Schulte. Keep in mind, too, that Schulte adopted the moniker Jason Bourne in prison, so he fed that idea. And — as Shroff noted in her close — there was no good reason to focus on the continued employment disputes that extended two months after Schulte allegedly stole the files.

When the CIA puts its formers on trial, in my opinion, it believes the general population will be as outraged by a violation of CIA’s sacred trust as they themselves are. That may be why prosecutors aired that entire nasty employment dispute. But that’s generally not the case outside of EDVA, especially not in SDNY.

Between that, and the forensic complexity of this case, it appears the jury is lost.

Reminder; Calyx Institute and other donors sprung for the transcripts of this trial.