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Leaks on Top of Leaks Related to Roger Stone

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In February, when I wrote up the latest performance art from serial hoaxsters Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, I suggested that their failure to hide the hand-written notes on one of the juror questionnaires they leaked from the Roger Stone jury might lead to quick discovery of the culprit.

But the poor execution may be the downfall. The released documents don’t actually reveal anything beyond what had already been identified during the initial frenzy against he foreperson (and since the foreperson gave credible responses in the hearing, backed by the testimony of two other jurors who said she was one of the last jurors to vote to convict). But Wohl and Burkman failed to redact the handwritten notes about a potential juror on one of the questionnaires.

This is going to make it easier to identify the potential sources for this document, something that ABJ was already trying to do in the hearing earlier this week.

There is a concerted effort on the part of the frothy right to violate every single norm of jury service, all to discredit a slam-dunk case against Roger Stone that even Bill Barr said was righteous. And for once these shithole hoaxsters may have done some good — in the form of helping the FBI figure out who’s behind it all.

Apparently, I was wrong.

Seven months later, as Will Sommer reported, the FBI continues to investigate Wohl and Burkman for potential witness intimidation.

The FBI is investigating blundering conservative operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman for a series of possible crimes, according to a document filed by federal prosecutors.

Ironically, the document revealing the investigation was filed just days after Wohl and Burkman staged a fake FBI raid on Burkman’s home in a bid for media attention.

The FBI investigation centers on Wohl and Burkman’s February release of confidential juror questionnaires from the trial of Trump associate Roger Stone. The FBI is investigating the pair for potential witness harassment, criminal contempt, and obstruction of justice, according to the filing.

[snip]

The HD Carrier subpoena relates to a series of phone numbers that Burkman contacted prior to the publication of the questionnaires, according to the filing. HD Carrier provides phone numbers for teleconferencing companies and other businesses that use temporary phone numbers, suggesting that the phone numbers were used only briefly by whoever Burkman was in contact with. The court filing notes that Burkman contacted the phone numbers around the time of the questionnaire release, according to a law enforcement review of his call records.

There are a number of interesting things about the request for call records, but not content.

First, as Sommer noted, this is a DC District order, but it was signed by the US Attorney and two AUSAs from Philadelphia. That’s not that surprising. The Stone prosecutors got the list of jurors that was part of this leak and passed it onto Stone’s team. They are potential (if highly unlikely) culprits for the leak. By asking outsiders to investigate it, DOJ avoids a conflict. This may be (though I always get proven wrong when I say this) the rare example where Bill Barr has appointed one of his favored US Attorneys to investigate something pertaining to Trump that doesn’t reek of interference.

It’s almost certain Wohl and Burkman are not the primary targets. The application notes that they, “may have been engaged in an attempt to influence or injure the jurors, as well as tampering with potential witnesses before the court,” which covers two of the three crimes under investigation, obstruction and witness tampering. And they did do that.

But the third, criminal contempt, probably wouldn’t apply to them. How could Amy Berman Jackson hold them in contempt, after all, when they were not party to her authority?

Another detail that supports that is the time frame — from last year during the pre-trial period. As explained in a hearing exchange after Wohl and Burkman had released the questionnaires, Jonathan Kravis went and got the list from the court on October 31 and sent it to the Stone team sometime thereafter.

In the hearing, Stone’s lawyer Seth Ginsberg tried to suggest that Stone’s team might not have had the list until closer to September 5, to which Michael Marando responded it was likely that it got sent out on November 1, which was a Friday.

THE COURT: Okay. Do you have any questions for this witness about any of these issues?

MR. GINSBERG: Just one. It may have been answered. I may have been distracted, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Just for the record, I don’t know that you’ve talked yet today. Can you put your name on the record.

MR. GINSBERG: Seth Ginsberg, appearing for Roger Stone.

THE COURT: Okay.

MR. GINSBERG: Do you recall the date on which it was transmitted to the defense?

MR. MARANDO: No, but it would have been close in time. My feeling, just going back and remembering, it was very close in time.

MR. GINSBERG: And the date that you said that Mr. Kravis went and created the list was what date?

MR. MARANDO: I don’t know the exact date, but it would have been shortened time to after we were invited to go and copy it down, and then we would have gotten the list and sent it over.

MR. GINSBERG: And you were notified on or about October 31st, 2019, that the list was available?

MR. MARANDO: That’s what the e-mail says.

COURT: Yes, it says they were notified at 5:24 p.m. on October 31st. So it would be my guess that you did not come on October 31st. I don’t know that we would have kept chambers open for that, but that you could come at any point between — the next day was a Friday, and then Monday was the return of the pretrial conference; is that correct?

MR. MARANDO: Exactly; that’s right.

MR. GINSBERG: And jury selection was on the 5th?

MR. MARANDO: Yes.

THE COURT: It began on the 5th, correct.

MR. GINSBERG: So it was somewhere between November 1st and November 5th?

MR. MARANDO: Yes, but more likely it would have been November 1st. It would have been right after that. We wouldn’t have — because then November 2nd would have been a Saturday. November 3rd would have been a Sunday. We wouldn’t have waited until November 4th to get this. I’m assuming we would have just hopped on it the next day.

In the interim 7 months, the FBI may have narrowed when the questionnaires got sent out. Which makes Ginsberg’s attempt to muddy that timeline rather curious (he is a very thorough lawyer, but I also find it interesting that the one lawyer not on the trial team posed these questions).

At the time, Amy Berman Jackson seemed to suspect two lawyers who had not filed an appearance in the case might have been the culprits. One of them, Tyler Nixon, was also interviewed to be a witness against Randy Credico.

THE COURT: So you worked electronically on them until you came for trial and then had a paper set?

MR. BUSCHEL: Yes. We were able to — as you can see, each .pdf is broken down juror by juror. So if you’re looking for 12345, you could just pull up 12345 .pdf.

THE COURT: So who had access to the .pdfs?

MR. BUSCHEL: Everyone on the defense team, lawyers, Mr. Stone. And do we — and there are a couple of lawyers that did not file appearances in this case. Do you want to know their names?

THE COURT: Well, yes. I seem to remember they were seated here at the beginning of trial, and then we didn’t have space for them inside the well of the court, and they had to step out.

MR. BUSCHEL: Right. THE COURT: But yes, if there were additional attorneys
who had electronic access to the information —

MR. BUSCHEL: For a period of time electronically, Bryan Lloyd, Tyler Nixon.

But certainly Robert Buschel did admit that his client the rat-fucker had the files and could have sent them.

Ultimately, though, the real reason for this gag would seem to keep the information from Stone, who presumably expects a full pardon before Trump leaves office. If Stone were the culprit here, the charges would replace those he got commuted.

But magically this sealed application ended up on PACER, if that’s really how it happened, with people pitching the seemingly obscure site it got posted on to make it into a bigger story.

And I’m not sure it’s just the jury questionnaires at issue. As the application notes, Wohl and Burkman also claimed to have gotten Steve Bannon’s grand jury transcript. In it, he told some truths about the 2016 operation that he didn’t otherwise share with the FBI. Not all of it pertains to Stone (they had to redact it for trial). That suggests there may be more interesting details that would interest very powerful people.

As Sommer notes, this order was submitted just three days after the hoaxsters staged a fake FBI raid. It’s possible that they did know about the investigation, and the fake raid (for which they paid $400 per fake FBI officer) was just an attempt to alert co-conspirators.

And now a purportedly sealed call records order wasn’t properly sealed after all.

A Discussion of a Pardon for Assange Is Why Stone’s Threats against Credico Worked

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Given events of the last several days, I want to return to an exchange from Roger Stone trial. It came during Aaron Zelinksy’s questioning of Randy Credico. The exchange started with a discussion of a May 21, 2018 email exchange between Stone and Credico.

It started when Credico told Stone “you should have just been honest with the house intel committee… you opened yourself up to perjury charges like an idiot…”

Stone responded by threatening Margaret Kunstler.

You are so full of shit. You got nothing. Keep running your mouth and I’ll file a bar complaint against your friend Margaret.

Without any more context, Credico responded,

Go right ahead she’s no Assange lawyer never has been…

Several months earlier, Stone had threatened to expose that, in September 2016, Credico had forwarded a Stone request to find out of Assange had any emails relating to Libya and R.K. Paul to Kunstler.

But the questioning in the trial suggested this May 2018 threat related to something else. After getting Credico to read through the May 2018 email, Zelisnky immediately pivoted to something else: how Credico put Stone in touch with Kunstler in 2016 to discuss a pardon for Assange.

Q. What did you write to Mr. Stone on May 21st, 2018?

A. “Go right ahead. She’s not Assange’s lawyer.”

Q. I’m sorry. Below that. Let’s start at the first message, “You should have.” All the way at the bottom.

A. Where? Where am I? Here, “You should have.”

“You should have just been honest with the House Intel Committee. You’ve opened yourself up to perjury charges like an idiot. You have different versions. Maybe you need to get into rehab and get that memory straight.”

Q. What did Mr. Stone respond?

A. I don’t see it here.

Q. Just above that, do you see —

A. Oh, yes. “You are so full of S-H-I-T. You got nothing. Keep running your mouth and I’ll file a bar complaint against your friend Margaret.”

Q. And when he says “your friend Margaret,” who is he referring to?

A. Margaret Ratner Kunstler.

Q. Had you put Mr. Stone directly in touch with Ms. Kunstler after the election?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. And why had you done that?

A. Well, sometime after the election, he wanted me to contact Mrs. Kunstler. He called me up and said that he had spoken to Judge Napolitano about getting Julian Assange a pardon and needed to talk to Mrs. Kunstler about it. So I said, Okay. And I sat on it. And I told her–I told her–she didn’t act on it. And then, eventually, she did, and they had a conversation.

Q. And at this time period, in May of 2018, how did you feel about having put Ms. Kunstler directly in touch with Mr. Stone?

A. I was — I was ashamed of myself that I had done that. I should have never done that, you know. I don’t blame him; I blame me for doing that.

Q. For the remainder of 2018, did you continue to be concerned about Mr. Stone?

A. Remainder of 2018?

Q. Yes, sir.

A. Well, yes, I did.

Q. Why were you concerned about Mr. Stone?

A. Well, this is it, right here. This is the crux of it, is bringing Margaret into this, Mrs. Kunstler into it. That was the crux of it.

The suggestion — at least in the context of this particularly threat — is that it was the late 2016 contact, not the September 2016 one, that Credico primarily worried about.

For what it’s worth, this is not the only time Credico denied that Kunstler was Assange’s lawyer (even though he bragged about that colloquially during the election). During cross-examination from Robert Buschel, Credico dodged mightily, even claiming — in a statement that might put complaints about surveillance of Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in a different light — that Assange has “about 1,000 lawyers.” Though ultimately Credico said that Kunstler represented Sarah Harrison, not Assange.

Q. Margaret Kunstler is one of WikiLeaks’s lawyers?

A. You’ll let — she’s going to have to describe her role as a — what her role is with WikiLeaks. You know, I don’t — he has — Julian Assange has about 1,000 lawyers. You know, Michael Ratner was one of his lawyers. Alan Dershowitz was one of his lawyers.

Q. Thank you.

A. There are a lot of lawyers. All right? But, that — you know, who’s a lawyer —

THE COURT: The question is, do you know —

THE WITNESS: I don’t consider —

THE COURT: — do you have personal —

THE WITNESS: — her to be his lawyer. I consider her to be — to know people, be part of a team.

BY MR. BUSCHEL: Q. That was —

A. Yes.

Q. — giving legal advice to WikiLeaks?

A. I don’t know if they gave to WikiLeaks or somebody else. I think it was somebody else, Sarah Harrison, maybe, but not — I don’t think she was giving legal advice.

That’s consistent with what Kunstler herself testified, though she also said that she “sometimes represented WikiLeaks.”

Q. Who have you represented who is connected to WikiLeaks?

A. I have represented Sarah Harrison. I still represent Sarah Harrison. She was — did work at WikiLeaks, but she no longer does.

Q. How long had you represented her?

A. For about four and a half years.

Q. How did Ms. Harrison become your client?

A. She became my client because the lawyers representing Mr. Assange decided that it would be helpful to have a second lawyer for Ms. Harrison, and I was asked to do that.

Q. Do you know who the founder of WikiLeaks is?

A. Yes.

Q. Who is it?

A. Julian Assange.

Q. Have you, as an attorney, ever represented Mr. Assange?

A. Only to the extent that I sometimes represented WikiLeaks, so it kind of overlaps. But technically, I don’t know.

Q. Have you ever spoken with Mr. Assange?

A. Yes.

Q. How often have you spoken with him?

A. I think about a total of under ten times.

Q. When is the last time that you have spoken with Mr. Assange, if you can remember?

A. Probably the end of 1918.

Q. I’m sorry, do you mean 2018?

A. Yes, I’m sorry, 2018.

So something about what happened in late 2016 served as a point of leverage over Credico.

As I have noted, Stone used Credico’s shared support for a pardon for Assange as leverage through early January 2018, by which point Stone’s buddy’s government had charged Assange as part of a bid to stave off an Ecuadorian-Russian exfiltration attempt.

Right in the middle of Credico’s claims about what WikiLeaks was up to in early October 2016, for example, on October 3, he pushed Stone to get Trump to back asylum for Assange.

Then there are the exchanges on the topic that MoJo reported on a year ago from early January 2018.

In the wake of Stone’s successful effort to get Credico to plead the Fifth, the President’s rat-fucker suggested that if Credico publicly revealed that he couldn’t be Stone’s back channel, it might screw up efforts he claimed he was making to get Assange a pardon.

They resumed the discussion about a pardon several days later, when Stone sent Credico Jerome Corsi’s story on Ecuador’s grant of a diplomatic passport to Assange.

Remarkably, given what has transpired since, Credico informed Stone that the British government was not honoring the diplomatic passport, observed that “Infowars ” — which in this case would be Corsi — “doesn’t know what they’re talking about,” then taunted, ‘Maybe your back Channel knows more than I do.”

The current operative story, of course, is that Corsi was the backchannel, though Credico wouldn’t have known that at the time.

It’s certainly possible that Stone was blowing smoke, raising something he knew Credico cared deeply about, pardoning Assange, to get him to toe the line. It’s likely, too, he was just taking reporting on efforts made in late 2017 to liberate Assange and claiming credit for it.

But at the very least, it shows that Stone used a pardon for Assange — something Credico still spends a lot of time pushing — as leverage to try to get Credico to sustain his cover story. It doesn’t explain why that point of leverage was so effective, though.

Steve Bannon’s Grand Jury Secrets

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In preparation for several other posts, I want to follow up on this post — Steve Bannon’s 302 of Laughter and Forgetting — and lay out what we know of Bannon’s other testimony to Mueller.

I said in that post there are four known Bannon interviews.

  • February 12, 2018 (26 pages)
  • February 14, 2018 (37 pages)
  • October 26, 2018 (16 pages; the interview list lists three different interviews, but they are likely just copies of the same one)
  • January 18, 2019 (4 pages)

But that’s not right. Bannon was asked by Stone lawyer Robert Buschel in cross-examination at the Roger Stone trial whether he had “sat down with” prosecutors recently.

Q. You just gave an interview in preparation for your testimony today, right, with the government, with the Department of Justice?

A. What do you mean, an interview?

Q. Did you sit down with them recently?

A. Yes.

So one of the six 302s that post-date the end of the Mueller investigation must be from Bannon (at least two are presumably Randy Credico, there were two other non-governmental witnesses who testified, Rick Gates and Margaret Kunstler, and Andrew Miller was flown into DC to testify but did not ultimately do so).

The government got Amy Berman Jackson to approve the partial redaction of the grand jury transcript of one witness on August 26, 2019. That may well be Bannon (in which case his interview must have been on July 26, 2019), because as I’ll explain, prosecutors had to use his grand jury testimony to get him to adhere to his previously sworn testimony.

Before I get there, consider that the government is still withholding Bannon’s first interview report, from February 12, 2018 (I suspect, based on the unredacted content of the February 14, 2018 one, that that first one focuses on Trump’s obstruction). As I laid out in my “Laughter and Forgetting” post, Bannon clearly shaded the truth significantly in his February 14 one.

On October 26, 2018, we know Bannon admitted to details about the WikiLeaks dump that he hadn’t before, most notably an October 4, 2016 email from his non-campaign “arc-ent” email (which he described in his February 14 testimony) asking Stone why Assange hadn’t released emails as promised that day, because in the week after his testimony he and Stone floated competing half-truths and lies on the pages of the WaPo, NYT, and DailyCaller.

But Bannon likely still didn’t tell the full truth on October 26, because on his next known interview, January 18, 2019 (so just days before Stone’s arrest), he signed a proffer with Mueller covering that day’s interview and an appearance the same day before the grand jury. The government has released the proffer but not the actual interview. That means that, apparently for the first time in hours and hours of testimony, Bannon’s competent lawyers either expressed concern about his legal exposure or that he had lied in a past interview and Mueller was using that to finally get the truth out of him.

There were two topics in Bannon’s testimony that prosecutor Michael Marando used to get Bannon to adhere to the sworn testimony he was willing to give in a secret grand jury. First (though it came second in his testimony), that he regarded Stone as the campaign’s access point to WikiLeaks.

Q. While you were CEO of the Trump campaign, who, if anyone, was the campaign’s access point to WikiLeaks?

A. The campaign’s access point?

Q. Yes.

A. I don’t think we had one.

Q. I want to refer back to Government’s Exhibit 209 that’s in front of you. This is the same grand jury transcript that I showed you before, correct? Am I correct?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay, this is your testimony in the grand jury. This was the Robert Mueller grand jury, correct?

A. Yes.

Q. Now, I want you to turn to page 14, line 4. I’m going to read line 4 through 8 on page 14. And you’re asked, “And just within the campaign, who was the access point to WikiLeaks?”

And you responded, “I think it was generally believed that the access point or potential access point to WikiLeaks and to Julian Assange would be Roger Stone.”

Did I read that correctly?

A. That’s correct.

Q. And did you, at that time, did you personally believe or you personally view Roger Stone as the access point between Trump campaign and WikiLeaks?

A. Yes.

This what the testimony where Buschel described Bannon reversing his prior testimony in his more recent interview.

Q. And did they ask you that precise question, whether you thought Roger Stone was an access point to WikiLeaks?

A. I think they asked me the exact question they just asked me a few minutes ago.

Q. And you gave a different answer than you just gave right now, didn’t you? You said that Roger Stone — you and the Trump campaign did not view Mr. Stone as an access point between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks.

A. The campaign had no — had no official access to WikiLeaks or to Julian Assange, but Roger would be considered, if we needed an access point, an access point because he had implied or told me that he had a relationship with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

In addition, Bannon had to be forced to adhere to his grand jury testimony describing that Stone had boasted of his relationship with Julian Assange going back months before Bannon joined the campaign on August 14, 2016.

Q. Does that date sound like the time that — I’m sorry. January 18th, 2019. My apologies. Did you testify on January 18th, 2019?

A. I have no idea.

Q. Does that sound correct?

A. Yes.

Q. Now, there were prosecutors that were present there, correct?

A. They were, yes.

Q. Andrew Goldstein, does that sound correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And you were the witness that was there, correct?

A. Yes.

Q. There was a court reporter that was taking down everything you said, correct?

A. That’s correct.

Q. And there were grand jurors there; isn’t that right?

A. That’s correct.

Q. You took an oath — the defendant, Mr. Stone, was not there; is that right?

A. That’s correct.

Q. You took an oath to tell the truth; isn’t that right?

A. That’s correct.

Q. And the prosecutor asked you a number of questions; isn’t that right?

A. That’s correct.

Q. But before he asked you any questions, he advised you of your rights as a witness; is that correct?

A. That’s correct.

Q. All right. And he told you that if you failed to tell the truth before the grand jury, you could be charged with perjury; isn’t that right?

A. That’s correct.

Q. And you told the grand jury that you understood that right; isn’t that correct?

A. That’s correct.

Q. I want to turn to page 7, if you can. Let me know when you’re on page 7.

A. I’m at page 7.

Q. Line 15?

A. Yes.

Q. So you were asked at page 7, line 15, “And when you had private conversations with him about his connection to Julian Assange, approximately how far in advance of your joining the campaign did that conversation take place?”

And you responded, “Oh, I think the first time it was months before, but I think it all the way led up to right before I joined the campaign. It was something he would, I think, frequently mention or talk about when we talked about other things.”

Did I read that correctly?

A. That’s correct.

Q. All right. Now, in any of your conversations with Mr. Stone, did he ever brag to you about his connections to Assange?

A. I wouldn’t call it bragging, but maybe boasting, I guess the difference between bragging and boasting, but he would mention it.

Q. What do you mean by “boast”?

A. That he had a relationship with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

As noted, one witness — and Bannon is the only witness who had to be steered using a grand jury transcript — had selected bits of his grand jury released to Stone (though Amy Berman Jackson ultimately did not let prosecutors send the transcript to the grand jury).

That suggests there are other parts of that grand jury transcript in which he admitted to things he has otherwise tried to shade.