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DOJ Is Abusing FOIA Exemptions to Hide Later, More Damning Testimony of Trump Aides

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The government has now “released” around 200 302s (FBI interview reports) in response to BuzzFeed/CNN’s FOIA. The vast majority of those, however, are heavily and at times entirely redacted. DOJ is using an unprecedentedly broad interpretation of the already badly abused b5 (deliberative) FOIA exemption to keep much of this hidden. This includes treating communications with the following people as “presidential communications:”

a. Donald Trump, President

b. Michael Pence, Vice President

c. John Kelly, Chief of Staff

d. Reince Priebus, Chief of Staff

e. Donald McGahn, Counsel to the President

f. Michael Flynn, National Security Advisor

g. Emmett Flood, Special Counsel to the President

h. Sean Spicer, Press Secretary

i. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Deputy Press Secretary; Press Secretary

j. Robert Porter, Staff Secretary

k. Stephen Bannon, Chief Strategist and Senior Adviser to the President

l. Richard Dearborn, Deputy Chief of Staff

m. John Eisenberg, Deputy Counsel to the President and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council

n. K.T. McFarland, Deputy National Security Advisor

o. Uttam Dhillon, Deputy Counsel to the President

p. Annie Donaldson, Chief of Staff to the Counsel to the President

q. Jared Kushner, Senior Adviser to the President

r. Ivanka Trump, Senior Adviser to the President

s. Hope Hicks, Director of Strategic Communications; Director of Communications

t. Stephen Miller, Senior Adviser to the President

DOJ has offered a similar — albeit smaller — list (pages 16-17) of people covered by “Presidential” privileges during the Transition (yes, both Ivanka and Jared are on that list, too).

This is outright abuse, and given yesterday’s opinion stating he will review the existing redactions in the Mueller Report, I expect Judge Reggie Walton to deem it as such once the litigation rolls around to that point.

All the more so given that it can be demonstrably shown that DOJ is selectively releasing 302s such that Trump aides’ false statements are public, but their later more accurate (and damning) statements are hidden. There are at least three examples (Steve Bannon, KT McFarland, and Mike Flynn) where DOJ is still withholding later, more accurate statements while releasing earlier deceitful ones, and two more cases (JD Gordon and Sam Clovis) where DOJ may be hiding discussions of Trump pro-Russian policy stances. And in one case (Clovis), DOJ appears to have used a b3 (protected by statute) exemption that doesn’t appear to be justifiable.

Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon was interviewed on at least five occasions:

  • February 12, 2018: large swaths unredacted
  • February 14, 2018: Heavily redacted under both b5 and (pertaining to WikiLeaks, Stone, and Cambridge Analytica, ongoing investigation), but with key passages revealed
  • October 26, 2018: Not yet released
  • January 18, 2019: Proffer released, but 302 not yet released
  • Unknown date (in advance of Stone trial): Not yet released

There are significantly redacted discussions (protected under ongoing investigation redactions) in Bannon’s February 14 302 that conflict with his later public admissions. And Bannon’s testimony in the Roger Stone trial shows that his 302s — including the trial prep one — conflict with his grand jury testimony. What has thus far been made public includes denials of coordination on WikiLeaks that both his October 2018 and January 2019 302s must contradict. Yet DOJ has not released the later, more damning 302s yet.

KT McFarland

As has been publicly reported, KT McFarland at first lied to the FBI but — in the wake of Mike Flynn’s plea deal — unforgot many of the key events surrounding discussions about sanctions during the Transition. While DOJ has not yet released her first 302, the others are, in general, lightly redacted. They show how she appears to have told a cover story about discussions about sanctions during the Transition. The 302 in which she cleaned up her testimony, which would show what really happened during the Transition, is largely redacted.

  • August 29, 2017: Not yet released
  • September 14, 2017: Lightly redacted (though hiding details of Tom Bossert email and her claims about the Flynn sanctions discussion)
  • October 17, 2017: Lightly redacted, though with some Mar-a-Lago and sanctions cover story details redacted
  • October 19, 2017: Significantly redacted
  • December 5, 2017: Lightly redacted; this captures McFarland’s panic in the days after Flynn’s plea
  • December 22, 2017: Very heavily redacted

Mike Flynn

Mike Flynn’s initial 302, from January 24, 2017, has been public for some time. Flynn has twice admitted, under oath, that he lied in that 302.

None of his other Russia-related 302s, including those where he corrected his story in November 2017, have been made public (though DOJ may be withholding these because he has not yet been sentenced). Among the 302s DOJ is withholding involves at least one describing how the Trump campaign discussed reaching out to WikiLeaks after the John Podesta emails dropped.

JD Gordon

JD Gordon’s testimony was critical to Mueller’s finding that Trump and Paul Manafort had no personal involvement in preventing convention delegate Diane Denman from making the RNC platform more hawkish on Ukraine. Details of this investigation into Gordon’s role appear entirely unredacted in the DOJ IG Report on Carter Page as part of the case that FBI should have removed any claim that Page was involved in the platform.

Gordon’s first interview is largely unredacted. It soft-pedals Trump’s pro-Russian stance on the campaign.

GORDON flagged DENMAN’s amendment because TRUMP had mentioned not wanting to start World War III over Ukraine. TRUMP had mentioned this both in public and in private, including at the campaign meeting on March 31, 2016. This was not GORDON’s stance but TRUMP’s stance on Ukraine.

[snip]

DENMAN [redacted] and asked GORDON what he had against the free people. GORDON explained TRUMP’s statements regarding World War III to her. She asked why they were there and who GORDON was on the phone with. GORDON told her he was on the phone with his colleagues but didn’t provide names.

But Gordon’s final 302 is largely redacted, though it leaves unredacted the World War III excuse. Some of the redactions appear to hide Gordon’s testimony about the things Trump said in campaign appearances that Gordon used to explain his intervention in the Convention.

There is also discussion in his last interview about whether he consulted with Jeff Sessions on the platform issue during phone calls placed at the time (which he denied he had).

The Mueller Report also describes how Sergey Kislyak invited Gordon to his residence in DC shortly after the convention; that reference is based entirely on emails exchanged between the two; it would be worthwhile to know what he said if he was asked about the invite in his FBI interviews, but if so, it is redacted.

Sam Clovis

Sam Clovis appears to have had three interviews, though it seems Mueller’s team may never have trusted his testimony. The interviews are cited just three times in the Mueller Report, and he makes denials in his interviews that conflict with communication-based evidence laid out in the Mueller Report and what he is reported to have told Stefan Halper in the DOJ IG Report on Carter Page (PDF 367-370). Clovis’ testimony is particularly important because he claims there was a shift in policy towards Russia during the campaign, but his released testimony is inconsistent on that point.

Clovis was first interviewed on October 3, 2017 at his office at USDA. The 302 makes clear that “about a quarter of the way through the interview, CLOVIS was warned that lying to the agents could constitute a federal offense.” In that interview, Clovis makes extremely strong denials about Russia.

CLOVIS started off the interview by explaining that he hates Russia and that should be clear throughout his interview.

[snip]

Russia was never a topic between CLOVIS and TRUMP. They would occasionally discuss it in debate prep. CLOVIS did most of the debate prep during the primaries. They talked about a Ukrainian policy and discussed having a bipartisan approach to this because of the divided based on Ukraine.

[snip]

A lot of people approached the campaign with ideas about foreign policy topics. Some of them wanted to approach and engage Russia but CLOVIS never trusted RUSSIA.

[snip]

CLOVIS thought interacting with Russia was a bad idea on any level because of comments TRUMP made.

[snip]

CLOVIS thinks the Special Counsel investigation is more political than practical. From CLOVIS’ perspective he didn’t see anything that warranted an investigation. CLOVIS said the campaign didn’t have anything to do with Russians. No one advised anyone to meet with Russians. CLOVIS wanted nothing to do with Russia and would never approve a meeting with the Russians. CLOVIS explained that Russians are different with Russia. You can’t just sit down at the table with them.

[snip]

CLOVIS does not recall Russia being brought up in the March 31, 2016 meeting.

[snip]

PAGE had an interesting background, including time in the Navy, experience in energy policy and Russian business. They were rushed into putting a foreign policy team together. CLOVIS thought PAGE was pretty harmless but also didn’t provide much value. CLOVIS said he never talked to PAGE about meetings with Russia and doesn’t remember PAGE ever bringing up Russia.

[snip]

CLOVIS didn’t think the change [in platform] was in line with TRUMP’s stance. CLOVIS thought their plan was to support Ukraine in their independence by engaging their NATO allies. CLOVIS is concerned PUTIN is trying to establish a Soviet empire.

That very same day, the FBI interviewed Clovis a second time, also in his USDA office. In the second interview, Clovis made comments that probably conflict with what Clovis told Stefan Halper in August 2016.

CARTER PAGE and GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS were not involved with the campaign team. They were not players in the campaign.

More importantly, in the second interview — on the same day!! — Clovis admitted that Trump did want better ties with Russia.

TRUMP wanted improved relations with Russia. The “bromance” TRUMP had with PUTIN bothered CLOVIS but the press and the public fed on it. CLOVIS felt like he had to cleanup with a shovel because TRUMP played up his bromance with PUTIN for the public.

Clovis also denied discussions of a trip to Russia that the FBI had proof he was personally involved in.

CLOVIS was asked about emails regarding an “unofficial trip” to Russia which were discussed in a Washington Post article. CLOVIS indicated this was info he was not privy to. CLOVIS said he doesn’t know who would have authorized such meetings but he never gave PAPADOPOULOS any indication to setup meetings.

CLOVIS denied learning about any dirt on Hillary, something that Papadopoulos provided conflicting testimony on.

CLOVIS was asked if he ever heard anyone discuss Russians having dirt on HILLARY CLINTON. CLOVIS said he wasn’t aware of that and if someone had that info they probably wouldn’t bring it to CLOVIS. CLOVIS pointed out that he was never asked to do anything untoward.

And in this second interview, Clovis softened on whether anyone had been compromised by Russia.

CLOVIS further explained how Russia can be very sneaky and will try to distract you on one side while sneaking by you on the other side. They will use any mechanism they can. CLOVIS fought them for years. CLOVIS didn’t feel like there was anything going on with the campaign though.

The interview ends with what may to be a discussion about a subpoena.

CLOVIS asked the agents [redacted] since he had cooperated. He was concerned about his travel plans and indicated he planned on leaving [redacted] and returning to D.C. [redacted] Agents agreed to [redacted] but said they would contact him later with information [redacted].

Note, the most substantive redactions in these two 302s have b3 redactions, which covers information “exempted from disclosure by statute.” While some of the last paragraph might be a discussion about serving a grand jury subpoena, none of the rest of it should be. And in other 302s, discussions of the same events (such as the March 31 meeting) are not redacted under b3 exemptions. It is hard to see how that redaction is permissible.

Clovis’ October 26 interview is entirely redacted under b5 exemptions.

Mueller Told Trump He Was Being Investigated for Hacking, Wire Fraud, and Mail Fraud

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Having followed Carol Leonnig’s reporting since the Scooter Libby case, I’m thrilled she finally wrote — with Philip Rucker — a book, A Very Stable Genius. She is one of the reporters who mixes an ability to read public records with very good sourcing. And while attentive readers of this site will be familiar with much of the reporting in Stable Genius, there are tidbits that make the book well worth your time.

One example is a description of the discussions between Trump’s lawyers and Mueller’s team from summer 2018. In the middle of a description of talks between Jane Raskin and James Quarles, the book reveals that Quarles told Trump’s team that the President was being investigated for hacking, wire fraud, and mail fraud.

In early September 2018, Trump’s lawyers finally reached a conclusion with Mueller over his request for a presidential interview. Trump’s lawyers had argued to prosecutors all summer why they didn’t believe it was necessary to provide the president’s responses to their questions and tried to appear open to a possible compromise for him to provide limited answers. The discussion took the form of a volley of emails and memos between Trump’s lawyer Jane Raskin and her old law firm friend James Quarles.

Some of the correspondence was rudimentary. The Trump lawyers wanted to know what criminal statutes Mueller’s team was investigating as possible crimes and why this would require answers from the president. Raskin’s shorthand version was something to the effect of “You have told us our client is the subject of the investigation and you won’t even tell us what you are looking at.” It took roughly three weeks to get an answer to that question. Quarles responded that the statutes governed the criminal acts of hacking, under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as the very general crimes of wire fraud and mail fraud. Trump’s lawyers shrugged. That’s it? That’s useless, they said to each other. They were certain the president hadn’t engaged in any of those crimes.

Mueller’s team would be silent for long stretches, especially later in the summer. At one point, Quarles told the Trump lawyers that it was important to ask about the president’s view of events surrounding his pursuit of the Trump Tower Moscow project, as well as his role in describing Donald Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer who was expected to provide damaging information on Clinton. Raskin and her colleagues had a shared reaction: “What conceivably is criminal about that? Why do you want to ask about that?” The president’s team also argued that prosecutors were not entitled to question Trump on decisions he made as president because anything prosecutors needed to know from Trump’s time in office could be obtained from the thousands of documents and dozens of witnesses the White House had helped provide. [my emphasis]

That’s a fairly surprising detail!

There’s a heavily redacted section of the Mueller Report that explains why they didn’t charge someone under CFAA (PDF 187) that might pertain to Don Jr’s use of a password to access a WikiLeaks related website before it was public, or might pertain to some skiddies who tried to access Guccifer 2.0’s social media accounts who were investigated in Philadelphia.

More interesting is the 3-page redaction, starting at PDF 186 in the FOIA version, that footnote 1278 makes clear pertains to the publishing of post-hacking emails. That may well related exclusively to WikiLeaks, but it was redacted under exemptions tied to Roger Stone’s case.

And filings in the Roger Stone case — most explicitly, this opinion from Amy Berman Jackson — make it clear that Mueller’s team had shown probable cause to obtain warrants against Stone including CFAA and wire fraud charges as late as August 28, 2018. (The numbering Stone’s lawyers used does not match the timeline, so search warrant 18 is not the last; see footnote 2 of the opinion for the dates of the warrants, which I’ve tracked in the Mueller warrant docket.)

Fourteen of the eighteen warrant applications sought authorization to search for evidence of, among other crimes, the intentional unauthorized access of computers in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030. See SW1-SW13, SW18.

[snip]

The fourteen affidavits also sought to search for evidence of violations of other crimes, including 18 U.S.C. § 2 (aiding and abetting), 18 U.S.C. § 3 (accessory after the fact), 18 U.S.C. § 4 (misprison of  a felony), 18 U.S.C. § 371 (conspiracy), 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (false statements), 18 U.S.C. § 1505 (obstruction of justice); 18 U.S.C. § 1512 (tampering with a witness), 18 U.S.C. § 1513 (retaliating against a witness), 18 U.S.C. § 1343 (wire fraud), 18 U.S.C. § 1349 (attempt and conspiracy to commit wire fraud), and 52 U.S.C. § 30121 (foreign contributions ban).

This accords with the timing laid out in Stable Genius: during the period when Quarles and Raskin discussed possible charges against Trump, Stone was still under investigation for hacking or abetting hacks after the fact. And we know from public records that Stone’s efforts to optimize the WikiLeaks releases occurred in close coordination with Trump himself.

This detail may take on renewed import given Reggie Walton’s decision to review the redaction decisions on the Mueller Report himself. DOJ institutionally redacted some details — and sustained those redactions even when Stone asked for an unredacted copy of the Mueller Report — to protect Trump’s privacy.

I still maintain that Walton will release little more than what has already been released, if at all (pending the lifting of the Stone gag, at which point Walton will release everything currently redacted under it).

But if there’s a passage that explains why Mueller considered charging Stone — and possibly even Trump! — with CFAA charges for so long, which would, in turn, explain why Trump worked so hard to obstruct the investigation, Walton might find a way to release it.

Questioning Bill Barr’s “No Collusion” Propaganda, Reggie Walton Orders an In Camera Review of Mueller Report

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Before the Trump Administration started really politicizing justice, Reggie Walton had already proven himself willing to stand up to the Executive Branch. During the George W Bush Administration, he presided over the Scooter Libby trial, never shirking from attacks from the defendant. And in the first year of the Obama Administration, as presiding FISA Judge, he shut down parts of the phone dragnet and the entire Internet dragnet because they were so far out of compliance with court orders.

And Walton had already showed his impatience with Trump’s stunts, most notably when presiding over a FOIA for materials related to the firing of Andrew McCabe. He finally forced DOJ to give the former Deputy FBI Director a prosecution declination so he could proceed with the FOIA lawsuit.

So it’s unsurprising he’s unpersuaded by DOJ’s request to dismiss the EPIC/BuzzFeed lawsuits over their FOIAs to liberate the Mueller Report, and has ordered DOJ to provide him a copy of the Report before the end of the month to do an in camera review of redactions in it.

The Court has grave concerns about the objectivity of the process that preceded the public release of the redacted version of the Mueller Report and its impacts on the Department’s subsequent justifications that its redactions of the Mueller Report are authorized by the FOIA. For the reasons set forth below, the Court shares the plaintiffs’ concern that the Department “dubious[ly] handl[ed] [ ] the public release of the Mueller Report.” EPIC’s Mem. at 40; see also id. (“Attorney General[] [Barr’s] attempts to spin the findings and conclusions of the [Mueller] Report have been challenged publicly by the author of the [Mueller] Report. [ ] Attorney[] General[] [Barr’s] characterization of the [Mueller] [R]eport has also been contradicted directly by the content of the [Mueller] Report.”); Leopold Pls.’ Mem. at 9 (“[T]here have been serious and specific accusations by other government officials about improprieties in the [Department’s] handling and characterization of the [Mueller] Report[.]”). Accordingly, the Court concludes that it must conduct an in camera review of the unredacted version of the Mueller Report to assess de novo the applicability of the particular exemptions claimed by the Department for withholding information in the Mueller Report pursuant to the FOIA.

To justify this review, Walton cites Barr’s silence about the multiple links between Trump and Russians and about the reason why Mueller didn’t make a decision about charging Trump with obstruction.

Special Counsel Mueller himself took exception to Attorney General Barr’s March 24, 2019 letter, stating that Attorney General Barr “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of th[e] [Special Counsel’s] Office’s work and conclusions,” EPIC’s Mot., Ex. 4 (March 27, 2019 Letter) at 1, and a review of the redacted version of the Mueller Report by the Court results in the Court’s concurrence with Special Counsel Mueller’s assessment that Attorney General Barr distorted the findings in the Mueller Report. Specifically, Attorney General Barr’s summary failed to indicate that Special Counsel Mueller “identified multiple contacts—‘links,’ in the words of the Appointment Order—between Trump [c]ampaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government,” Def.’s Mot., Ex. D (Mueller Report – Volume I) at 66, and that Special Counsel Mueller only concluded that the investigation did not establish that “these contacts involved or resulted in coordination or a conspiracy with the Trump [c]ampaign and Russia, including with respect to Russia providing assistance to the [Trump] [c]ampaign in exchange for any sort of favorable treatment in the future,” because coordination—the term that appears in the Appointment Order—“does not have a settled definition in federal criminal law,” id., Ex. D (Mueller Report – Volume I) at 2, 66. Attorney General Barr also failed to disclose to the American public that, with respect to Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation into whether President Trump obstructed justice, Special Counsel Mueller “determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment[,] . . . recogniz[ing] that a federal criminal accusation against a sitting [p]resident would place burdens on the [p]resident’s capacity to govern and potentially preempt constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct,” but nevertheless declared that

if [he] had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that [ ] President [Trump] clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, [he] would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, [he] [is] unable to reach that judgment. The evidence [he] obtained about [ ] President[] [Trump’s] actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent [him] from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while th[e] [Mueller] [R]eport does not conclude that [ ] President [Trump] committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

Id., Ex. D (Mueller Report – Volume II) at 1–2.

Walton further cites claims that Barr made in his April 18 press conference and letter — where he specifically claimed Mueller had found no evidence of collusion — to judge that Barr lacked candor in his statements about the report.

Similar statements were made in his April 18, 2019 letter. See Def.’s Mot., Ex. 7 (April 18, 2019 Letter) at 1–3 (stating that Special Counsel Mueller’s “bottom-line conclusion on the question of so-called ‘collusion’ [was] [that] [t]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump [c]ampaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities” and that “the evidence set forth in the [ ] [Mueller] [R]eport was [not] sufficient to establish that [ ] President [Trump] committed an obstruction-of-justice offense”).

As noted earlier, the Court has reviewed the redacted version of the Mueller Report, Attorney General Barr’s representations made during his April 18, 2019 press conference, and Attorney General Barr’s April 18, 2019 letter. And, the Court cannot reconcile certain public representations made by Attorney General Barr with the findings in the Mueller Report. The inconsistencies between Attorney General Barr’s statements, made at a time when the public did not have access to the redacted version of the Mueller Report to assess the veracity of his statements, and portions of the redacted version of the Mueller Report that conflict with those statements cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary.

[snip]

Here, although it is with great consternation, true to the oath that the undersigned took upon becoming a federal judge, and the need for the American public to have faith in the judicial process, considering the record in this case, the Court must conclude that the actions of Attorney General Barr and his representations about the Mueller Report preclude the Court’s acceptance of the validity of the Department’s redactions without its independent verification.

Walton doesn’t say it explicitly, but he seems to believe what the unredacted portions of the report show amount to “collusion,” the kind of collusion Trump would want to and did (and still is) covering up.

Be warned, however, that this review is not going to lead to big revelations in the short term.

There are several reasons for that. Many of the most substantive redactions pertain to the Internet Research Agency and Roger Stone cases. Gags remain on both. While Walton is not an Article II pushover, he does take national security claims very seriously, and so should be expected to defer to DOJ’s judgments about those redactions.

Where this ruling may matter, though, is in four areas:

  • DOJ hid the circumstances of how both Trump and Don Jr managed to avoid testifying under a grand jury redaction. Walton may judge that these discussions were not truly grand jury materials.
  • DOJ is currently hiding details of people — like KT McFarland — who lied, but then cleaned up their story (Sam Clovis is another person this may be true of). There’s no reason someone as senior as McFarland should have her lies protected. All the more so, because DOJ is withholding some of the 302s that show her lies. So Walton may release some of this information.
  • Because Walton will have already read the Stone material — that part that most implicates Trump — by the time Judge Amy Berman Jackson releases the gag in that case, he will have a view on what would still need to be redacted. That may mean more of it will be released quickly than otherwise might happen.
  • In very short order, the two sides in this case will start arguing over DOJ’s withholding of 302s under very aggressive b5 claims. These claims, unlike most of the redactions in the Mueller Report, are substantively bogus and in many ways serve to cover up the details of Trump’s activities. While this won’t happen in the near term, I expect this ruling will serve as the basis for a similar in camera review on 302s down the road.

Update: Here’s the FOIA version of the Mueller Report; here is Volume II. The b1 and b3 redactions won’t be touched in this review. Where Walton might order releases are the b6, b7C redactions. I expect Walton may order these redactions removed, which show that Don Jr and someone else was investigated.

Update: I did a post last August about what Walton might do with these redactions. It holds up, IMO.

Roger Stone Accuses Jerome Corsi of Lying When He Testified Stone’s Cover Story Was a Cover Story

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In a conflict between some of the worst people in the world, Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, and Larry Klayman have all been in the news of late. That’s because on February 12 and 13, Klayman deposed Stone in lawsuits he and Corsi filed against Stone for defamation — basically, for tarnishing their reputation with the frothy right. I tweeted out some of the highlights of the painful deposition here. Politico edited some highlights of the video for this story. Then last night, Judge Timothy Kelly dismissed Corsi’s suit without prejudice, finding venue improper (meaning Corsi can refile it in Florida).

On top of some crazy, bitter exchanges there are some interesting details, such as that Jack Posobiec is the person who introduced Cassandra Fairbanks to Stone during the 2016 campaign, though Stone claims not to remember when that happened. There are also some curious claims (such as, at February 12 16:10 and following, that Stone has rarely deleted any comms); during Stone’s trial, an FBI agent testified they had never obtained any texts Stone sent from roughly November 2016 to November 2017, though Klayman asked Stone whether he had lost or replaced a phone that might address that, except he focused on just the last two years. There’s some debate over how to pronounce “Judas Iscariot” and “Nevada.” There’s a lot of potty mouth. There are claims Stone made — under oath, days before being sentenced for lying to Congress — that probably wouldn’t stand up to the scrutiny of a prosecutor with a grand jury.

But I wanted to examine a key issue behind the dispute. In his lawsuit, Corsi alleged that Stone defamed him by falsely accusing him of lying about writing a report that would serve as a cover story for his August 21, 2016 tweet about John Podesta.

18. At 2:27 in the InfoWars Video, Defendant Stone falsely and misleadingly publishes that, “He (Corsi) was perfectly willing to lie, to perjure himself saying that a memo that he had wrote me was written on the 30th for the purposes of cover-up…. which is further proof that Jerry lied under oath.”

19. At 2:55 in the InfoWars Video, Defendant Stone falsely and misleadingly publishes, “and then states that I knew about John Podesta’s emails being stolen in advance, the only proof of that is Jerry’s feeble alcohol affected memory – it’s a lie….”

20. At 3:35 in the InfoWars Video, Defendant Stone falsely and misleadingly publishes that “Jerry was prepared to stab a principle Trump supporter in the back, he was perfectly prepared to bear false witness against me, even though I had done nothing in my entire life other than help him.”

That is, Corsi’s lawsuit claims that Stone falsely accused him of perjuring himself when he gave damning testimony about Stone to Mueller’s prosecutors; that false accusation, Corsi argues, has damaged his reputation with the frothy right.

The dispute pertains to a report Corsi wrote — which Stone submitted (PDF 39) as part of the materials he shared with the House Intelligence Committee, and which is dated August 31, 2016, not August 30 — explaining why he and Corsi had been focused on Podesta on August 21 when Stone tweeted that it would soon be Podestas’ time in the barrel.

Here’s how Corsi explained that report in his book.

In my late evening telephone call with Stone on August 30, 2016, I suggested Stone could use me as an excuse, claiming my research on Podesta and Russia was the basis for Stone’s prediction that Podesta would soon be in the pickle barrel. I knew this was a cover-story, in effect not true, since I recalled telling Stone earlier in August that Assange had Podesta emails that he planned to drop as the “October Surprise,” calculated by Assange to deliver a knock-out blow to Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations.

On my birthday, August 31, 2016, I emailed to stone at 4:49 p.m. EST a nine page background memorandum on John Podesta that I had written that day at Stone’s request. I couched the Podesta background paper as a rejoinder Stone could use to counter a report CNN published August 15, 2016, entitled “Manafort named in Ukrainian probe into millions in secret cash.”30 The CNN article highlighted the FBI had begun an investigation of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for his financial dealings regarding the consulting he had conducted for former Ukraine president Victor Yanukovych.

At Roger’s request, after a telephone conversation in March 2017 that I vaguely recall from memory—I have no recording or notes from the conversation—Roger asked me to write an article how he got his information for his Twitter post on August 21, 2016. Roger and I agreed once again that the Tweet was unspecific as to why Stone believed Podesta would be in the pickle barrel. That allowed us once again to roll out the cover-story that Stone based his comment on background information I provided Stone from public source materials on Podesta’s financial dealings in Russia while Hillary was secretary of state.

[snip]

Stone used the cover-story excuse again when he testified under oath to the House Intelligence Committee on September 26, 2017. In that testimony, Stone claimed his “pickle barrel” Tweet was based on “a comprehensive, early August opposition research briefing provided to me by investigative journalist, Dr. Jerome Corsi, which I then asked him to memorialize in a memo that he sent me on August 31st, all of which was culled from public records.” To stress the point, Stone attached to his testimony a copy of my background research memorandum on Podesta.

In the deposition (at February 12 at 13:14 and following) Stone defended against those claims by affirming under oath that Corsi’s testimony to Mueller’s prosecutors and the grand jury was false.

Klayman: What statement did Dr. Corsi ever make that stabbed you in the back?

Stone: The previous one that you just stated, for example. Regarding a memo that he incorrectly said that he wrote to give me a cover story at a time that I needed no cover story because the controversy regarding John Podesta’s emails, which was never mentioned in the indictment whatsoever, would not happen until six weeks after he had written said memo. So it’s just patently false.

Klayman: But you were not indicted by the Special Counsel for a cover story. You were indicted because you testified falsely to Congress, correct?

Robert Buschel (Stone’s attorney): Let’s not get into the indictments and the whole trial thing. The answer to your question, um, you know what he was indicted for.

Klayman: I’ll ask the question a different way. There’s no aspect of your indictment that deals with a cover story by Doctor Corsi on your behalf.

Buschel: It calls for a legal opinion.

Stone: No. But he certainly said that on numerous interviews and in public. So I certainly have the right to respond to it. It’s not true.

Stone makes similar comments after 16:05.

It did get quite a bit of press. As you recall Mr. Corsi went out and did a press tour in which he claimed that he had created some memo as a cover story. I suspect that that was suggested to him because it just wasn’t true.

[snip]

He portrayed a number of falsehoods in those interviews, which is certainly reason to believe that somebody had suggested this falsehood to him, since it is chronologically impossible for him to have created a memo as a cover story because there was nothing to cover.

Ultimately, we’ve got a rat-fucker and a hoaxster, arguing about which one of them perjured themselves (Corsi in the Mueller grand jury or Stone in this sworn deposition) regarding this report.

The record, though, backs Corsi’s story. Even though prosecutors presented little evidence involving Corsi at trial (both sides subpoenaed Corsi but neither side put him on the stand), the exhibits did include several pieces that suggest something substantive did occur on August 15, the date Corsi’s alleged cover story would explain away, and the first time Stone ever mentioned Podesta in a tweet.

  • July 25, 2016 Stone email to Corsi telling him to “Get to Assange” at the embassy to “get the pending wikileaks emails”
  • July 31, 2016 Stone email to Corsi telling him to call MON (August 1) and that Malloch should see Assange
  • August 2, 2016 Corsi email to Stone explaining “word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. … Time to let more than Podesta to be exposed as in bed with enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC.”
  • August 13, 2016 Corsi text to Stone directing, “I’m now back from Italy. Give me a call when you can.”
  • August 15, 2016 Corsi text to Stone directing, “Give me a call today if you can. Despite MSM drumroll that HRC is already elected, it’s not over yet. More to come than anyone realizes.”
  • August 15, 2016 Corsi email to Stone repeating the same message he had texted, “Give me a call today if you can. Despite MSM drumroll that HRC is already elected, it’s not over yet. More to come than anyone realizes.”

In addition, there were exhibits that made it clear Corsi was aware that Stone was covering things up:

  • March 24, 2017 email from Stone to Corsi (and Gloria Borger) forwarding the letter Robert Buschel sent to HPSCI; Buschel sent this letter two days after Corsi and Stone spoke about publishing the cover story and the day after Corsi did so
  • November 30, 2017 email thread between Corsi and Stone, in which Corsi responded to Stone’s request that Corsi write about Stone’s claim that Credico was his back channel by advising, “Are you sure you want to make something out of this now? … You may be defending ourself too much–raising new questions that will fuel new inquiries. This may be a time to say less, not more.”
  • April 3, 2018 email from Stone lawyer Grant Smith to Stone and cc’ing Corsi explaining that “At Roger’s request” he was forwarding “the only 2 emails on the subject between the two of you;” the subject line was “Emails about Finding information,” attached the July 25 and July 31, 2016 emails, and were sent in the wake of a surprised Ted Malloch interview and one day before Stone insisted to Credico he was the source of everything Stone learned about the WikiLeaks disclosures

Prosecutors would also have had an email Stone sent Corsi on August 30, 2016, record of Corsi’s call in response, and Corsi’s Google searches showing that he didn’t start the research for the report until after that exchange. So contrary to later claims from Corsi, prosecutors had proof that he didn’t start the report until after Stone’s August 21, 2016 tweet. Plus, before the WikiLeaks files were released in October 2016, Corsi seemed to know what they’d contain. Corsi and Stone would use that August 2016 report twice more to try to explain away Stone’s seeming advance knowledge.

Perhaps most interesting, however, is Corsi’s Mueller testimony on November 1, 2018 (PDF 34) that a column he wrote on October 6, 2016 — seemingly anticipating that WikiLeaks would soon dump emails including details about John Podesta’s ties to Joule holdings — was an attempt to force Assange to publish the emails he had not released on October 4, 2016.

Corsi published the August 31, 2016 memo on October 6, 2016. At that time, he still held himself out as the connection to WikiLeaks. The trigger for the release of the article was the publication of an article about [Paul] Manafort and [Viktor] Yanukovych. Corsi wanted to counter it with a story about Podesta, but he really wanted to provide stimulus to Assange to release whatever he had on Podesta. Corsi was angry with Assange for not releasing emails on October 4, 2016.

This was a column that got sent to the campaign between the time it was posted and when WikiLeaks dumped the emails. Posting a story on Podesta wouldn’t really “provide stimulus to Assange to release whatever he had on Podesta” unless Corsi knew that what he had pertained to Podesta.

Two of the most shameless right wing liars are in a nasty fight that — in another world — could have real legal consequences over what the two agreed to cover up with a series of lies told over three years ago.

Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl’s Pathetic Disinformation May Finally Matter

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Yesterday, Jack Burkman (he of the press conference with his fly down) and Jacob Wohl (he of the precocious financial fraud) had a press conference at CPAC yesterday to spew disinformation.

Again.

They claimed they were releasing all sealed documents from the Roger Stone trial, not just juror questionnaires, but also grand jury testimony. Their statements were inconsistent about whether, by “sealed documents,” they meant everything that had been loaded onto the docket (which might include just Steve Bannon and Randy Credico’s grand jury transcript, both of which were litigated before the trial), or everything released in discovery to Stone.

They purported to be journalists exposing a miscarriage of justice of an American hero, by which they meant Roger Stone.

They were given to us, they did not come from Roger Stone, they did not come from anyone on his defense team, we’ve never met Roger Stone. … What happened was court packing.

They claimed they had a journalistic duty to release these documents to show a systematic conspiracy, led by Judge Amy Berman Jackson, against Stone, to pack the jury. They claimed, “Not a single juror” on Stone’s trial, “watches Fox News,” that they are instead “religious Rachel Maddow viewers.” They also claimed one could never have a lawyer on a jury.

The documents released (which I won’t link) demonstrated, once again, that their implementation was embarrassingly shoddy and their claims were false. All they released were juror questionnaires, and they didn’t release the questionnaires all 12 jurors. They uploaded the questionnaire of one juror twice (making ten total). Those jurors described their media diet this way:

  • occasionally a CNN headline
  • DC Fox 5 News
  • Fox 5 News
  • New York Times, established news sources that appear in my Google Feed (WSJ, Washington Post, etc.)
  • Wall Street Journal
  • NYT, Washington Post, NPR
  • Washington Post, NPR
  • Washington Post, Facebook, Twitter
  • Washington Post, PBS Newswire, NPR
  • Washington Post, Apple News Service, Twitter, Facebook, New York Times, CNN, Politico, The Hill, CBS News, “not regularly, but CNN Shows (Anderson Cooper), MSNBC — Rachel Maddow/Chris Hayes

Admittedly, local Fox News is not the same thing as Fox News Channel, but at least two of the jurors listed it as their primary news diet, a refutation of Wohl and Burkman’s entire premise.

The last bullet — the only one specifically naming Rachel Maddow — is from the foreperson, the woman on whose selection Stone based his bid for a new trial (and for more juror information on which Mike Cernovich is attempting to intervene in Stone’s case). But all the foreperson’s questionnaire shows is that Stone had notice of her liberal news watching diet during voir dire, and his team didn’t choose to disqualify her. That is, they are to blame for her presence on the jury, not ABJ or the DC District Court or anyone but Stone.

Likewise, just four or five jurors said they had heard anything about Stone’s case.  Three who had seen coverage of Stone had generally remembered his arrest (which, given the right wing propaganda suggesting he was ill-treated, would have been helpful to Stone). Again, the foreperson is the one person who commented negatively, describing that he “is accused of inappropriate contact Russian officials in the effort of helping Mr. Trump’s campaign for President.” She is also the person who had the most family members — a niece and a brother — who had been prosecuted for a crime.

Wohl and Burkman claimed that the jury was packed with CIA people and lawyers. In reality, that consisted of two people (including the foreperson) who each said they had a single friend who worked for the FBI, one person whose father had worked for CIA for 2-3 years in the 1960s before the juror was born, and one person whose son is in the Coast Guard.

This is the frothy right’s idea of a Deep State plot against Roger Stone.

Wohl and Burkman did not mention that the juror with the most direct, high level current political connection has a spouse who appears to work for a conservative Republican Senator.

In short, like all their hoaxes, this one was badly executed and based on lies.

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.

Kim DotCom Posts Evidence Trump’s “Best Friend (Name Redacted)” in Pardon Discussions

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Last night, Kim DotCom tried to take credit for brokering the meeting at which Dana Rohrabacher tried to pardon a pardon deal whereby Julian Assange would claim Seth Rich was his source for the DNC emails and Trump would pay him off with a pardon. He posted a bunch of texts with “Trumps best friend (name redacted)” where he pushed his  interlocutor to get Trump to take a public step in favor of the deal.

Only, the name of Trump’s “best friend (name redacted)” was not actually redacted.

While I have no doubt DotCom is overselling his own role in this, it does appear he was talking directly to Sean Hannity about it.

Which would suggest a real continuity between whatever happened when Hannity met Assange in January 2017, not long after Roger Stone reached out to Margaret Kunstler to discuss a pardon, and what happened in August 2017, when Dana Rohrabacher resumed discussion of the pardon. That suggests pardon discussions were not — as WikiLeaks is now falsely portraying — a one-time bid that got rejected, leading to Assange’s prosecution, but rather continued from late December 2016 until at least August 2017, through the time when Mike Pompeo labeled WikiLeaks a non-state hostile intelligence agency.

Hot and Cold Running Mike Pompeo and Other Ridiculous WikiLeaks Defense Claims

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Today is the first day of Julian Assange’s fight to avoid extradition. In addition to legitimate First Amendment concerns about extraditing Assange on the charges as written, Assange is challenging the extradition with some very selective story-telling to pretend that he’s being prosecuted for political reasons.

For example, WikiLeaks is pointing to the Dana Rohrabacher pardon discussion in August 2017 to suggest that Trump was extorting Assange, demanding he provide certain details about the 2016 hack (details that are consistent with the lies that Assange told consistently about Russia’s role in the hack-and-leak) or else he would prosecute him. Unsurprisingly, WikiLeaks did not mention that discussions of a pardon started at least as early as December 2016 as payback for his role in the election, and continued in February 2017 as Assange tried to use the Vault 7 files to extort a pardon. If you can believe Roger Stone, pardon discussions continued even after DOJ first charged Assange in December 2017until early January 2018 (though that may have been an attempt to silence Randy Credico and thereby keep details of what really happened in 2016 secret).

WikiLeaks is also misrepresenting the timing of the increased surveillance by UC Global in December 2017 to suggest Assange was always being surveilled that heavily.

I will pass over the intervening period during which Julian Assange continued to have his conversations with his lawyers and family constantly monitored and recorded by a private agency acting on the instructions of US intelligence and for their benefit.

As slides from Andrew Müller-Maguhn make clear, the surveillance only began to really ratchet up in December 2017, after Assange had helped Joshua Schulte burn CIA to the ground (and at a time when WikiLeaks remained in communication with Schulte).

Assange’s team then mis-states when Trump’s war on journalists began, suggesting it preceded the April 2017 targeting of Assange, rather than came in August 2017.

That temporal slight is necessary because Assange’s team is claiming that Mike Pompeo decided to attack WikiLeaks in April 2017 out of the blue, out of some kind of retaliation.

That is why the prosecution of Mr. Assange, based on no new evidence, was now pursued and advocated by the Trump administration, led by spokesman such as Mike Pompeo of the CIA and Attorney General Sessions. They began by denouncing him in April 2017. I refer you to the following:

i. Firstly, the statements of Mr. Pompeo, as director of the CIA, on 13 April 2017, denouncing Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as “a non-state hostile intelligence agency“. [Feldstein, tab 18, p19 and K10] On the same occasion, Pompeo also stated that Julian Assange as a foreigner had no First Amendment rights (See Guardian article, bundle K)

ii. Then there was the political statement of Attorney General Sessions on 20 April 2017 that the arrest of Julian Assange was now a priority and that ‘if a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail‘ [Feldstein quoting Washington Post article of Ellen Nakashima, tab 18, at page 19]

That’s thoroughly absurd. Pompeo’s speech was entirely about CIA’s response to have been burned to the ground by WikiLeaks. This passage makes clear that, in his prepared speech at least, Pompeo’s comments about the First Amendment don’t pertain to him being a foreigner at all (I’m going to pull the video).

No, Julian Assange and his kind are not the slightest bit interested in improving civil liberties or enhancing personal freedom. They have pretended that America’s First Amendment freedoms shield them from justice. They may have believed that, but they are wrong.

[snip]

Third, we have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.

Here’s what he said in questions:

DIRECTOR POMPEO: Yeah, First Amendment freedoms. What I was speaking to there was, as – was a little less constitutional law and a lot more of a philosophical understanding. Julian Assange has no First Amendment freedoms. He’s sitting in an embassy in London. He’s not a U.S. citizen. So I wasn’t speaking to our Constitution.

What I was speaking to is an understanding that these are not reporters don’t good work to try to keep you – the American government honest. These are people who are actively recruiting agents to steal American secrets with the sole intent of destroying the American way of life. That is fundamentally different than a First Amendment activity, as I understand them, and I think as most Americans understand them. So that’s what I was really getting to.

We’ve had administrations before that have been squeamish about going after these folks under some concept of this right-to-publish. No one has the right to actively engage in the threat of secrets from America with the intent to do harm to it.

Mike Pompeo is and always will be a problematic figure to make this argument.

But all the evidence shows that Assange’s surveillance and prosecution arose in response to the Vault 7 leaks, not Trump innate hatred for journalists.

Update: Here are the Prosecution’s Opening Statement and Skeleton Argument.

The Kinds and Significance of Russian Interference — 2016 and 2020

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Trump’s meltdown last week — in which he purged top staffers at the Director of National Intelligence after a briefing on Russian interference in the 2020 election, followed by National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien making shit up on Meet the Press — has created a firestorm about Russian interference in the 2020 election. That firestorm, however, has spun free of what ways Russia interfered in 2016 and what effect it had.

Five ways Russia interfered in 2016

First, remember that there were at least five ways Russia interfered in 2016:

  • Stealing information then releasing it in a way that treats it as dirt
  • Creating on-going security challenges for Hillary
  • Using trolls to magnify divisions and feed disinformation
  • Tampering with the voting infrastructure
  • Influence peddling and/or attempting to recruit Trump aides for policy benefits

Stealing information then releasing it in a way that treats it as dirt

The most obvious way Russia interfered in 2016 was by hacking the DNC, DCCC, and John Podesta (it also hacked some Republicans it did not like). It released both the DNC and Podesta data in such a way as to exaggerate any derogatory information in the releases, successfully distracting the press for much of the campaign and focusing attention on Hillary rather than Trump. It released DCCC information that was of some use for Republican candidates.

Roger Stone took steps — not all of which are public yet — to optimize this effort. In the wake of Stone’s efforts, he moved to pay off one participant in this effort by trying to get a pardon for Julian Assange.

Creating on-going security challenges for Hillary

In addition to creating a messaging problem, the hack-and-leak campaign created ongoing security challenges for Hillary. Someone who played a key role in InfoSec on the campaign has described the Russian effort as a series of waves of attacks. The GRU indictment describes one of those waves — the efforts to hack Hillary’s personal server — which came in seeming response to Trump’s “Russia are you listening” comment. An attack that is often forgotten, and from a data perspective was likely one of the most dangerous, involved a month-long effort to obtain Hillary’s analytics from the campaign’s AWS server.

Whatever happened with this data, the persistence of these attacks created additional problems for Hillary, as her staff had to spend time playing whack-a-mole with Russian hackers rather than optimizing their campaign efforts.

Using trolls to magnify divisions and feed disinformation

Putin’s “chef,” Yevgeniy Prigozhin, also had staffers from his troll factory in St. Petersburg shift an ongoing campaign that attempted to sow division in the US to adopt a specific campaign focus, pushing Trump and attacking Hillary. Importantly, Prigozhin’s US-based troll effort was part of a larger multinational effort. And it was in no way the only disinformation and trolling entity involved in the election. Both parties did some of this, other countries did some, and mercenaries trying to exploit social media algorithms for profit did some as well.

Tampering with the voting infrastructure

Russia also tampered with US voting infrastructure. In 2016, this consisted of probing most states and accessing voter rolls in at least two, though there’s no evidence that Russian hackers made any changes. In addition, Russian hackers targeted a vendor that provided polling books, with uncertain results. The most substantive evidence of possible success affecting the vote in 2016 involved failures of polling books in Durham County, NC, which created a real slowdown in voting in one of the state’s most Democratic areas.

In recent days, there have been reports of a ransomware attack hitting Palm Beach County in September 2016, but it is unclear whether this was part of the Russian effort.

Because there’s no certainty whether the Russian hack of VR Systems was behind the Durham County problems, there’s no proof that any of these efforts affected the outcome. But they point to the easiest way to use hacking to do so: by making it harder for voters in particular areas to vote and harder for specific localities to count the vote.

Some of what Russia did in 2016 — such as probes of a particularly conservative county in FL — may have been part of Russia’s effort to discredit the outcome. They didn’t fully deploy this effort because Trump won.

Influence peddling and/or attempting to recruit Trump aides for policy benefits

Finally, Russia accompanied its other efforts with various kinds of influence peddling targeting Trump’s aides. It was not the only country that did so: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, UAE, and Israel were some of the others. Foreign countries were similarly trying to target Hillary’s campaign — and the UAE effort, at least, targeted both campaigns at once, through George Nader.

Importantly, however, these efforts intersected with Russia’s other efforts to interfere in the election in ways that tied specific policy outcomes to Russia’s interference:

  • An unrealistically lucrative Trump Tower deal involved a former GRU officer and sanctioned banks
  • At a meeting convened to offer Trump dirt about Hillary, Don Jr agreed in principle to revisit ending Magnitsky sanctions if Trump won
  • George Papadopoulos pitched ending sanctions to Joseph Mifsud, who had alerted him that Russia had emails they intended to drop to help Trump
  • Paul Manafort had a meeting that tied winning the Rust Belt, carving up Ukraine, and getting paid personally together; the meeting took place against the background of sharing internal polling data throughout the campaign

As I’ll note in a follow-up, information coming out in FOIAed 302s makes it clear that Mike Flynn’s effort to undercut Obama’s December 2016 sanctions was more systematic than the Mueller Report concludes. So not only did Russia make it clear it wanted sanctions relief, Trump moved to give it to them even before he got elected (and his Administration found a way to exempt Oleg Deripaska from some of these sanctions).

Manafort continued to pursue efforts to carve up Ukraine until he went to jail. In addition, Trump continues to take actions that undercut Ukraine’s efforts to fight Russia and corruption. Neither of these have been tied to a specific quid pro quo (though the investigation into Manafort’s actions, especially, remained inconclusive at the time of the Mueller Report).

So while none of these was charged as a quid pro quo or a conspiracy (and the reasons why they weren’t vary; Manafort lied about what he was doing, and why, whereas Mueller couldn’t prove Don Jr had the mens rea of entering into a quid pro quo), Russia tied certain policy outcomes to its interference.

Trump’s narcissism and legal exposure exacerbated the effects

The Russian attack was more effective than it otherwise would have been for two reasons. First, because he’s a narcissist and because Russia built in plausible deniability, Trump refused to admit that Russia did try to help him. Indeed, he clings more and more to Russian disinformation about what happened, leading the IC to refuse to brief him on the threat, leading to last week’s meltdown.

In addition, rather than let FBI investigate the people who had entered into discussions of a quid pro quo, Trump obstructed the investigation. Trump has spent years now attacking the rule of law and institutions of government rather than admit what DOJ IG found — there was reason to open the investigation, or admit what DOJ found — there was reason to prosecute six of his aides for lying about what happened.

The Russian effort was just one of the reasons Hillary lost

It’s also important to remember that Russia’s interference was just one of the many things that contributed to Hillary’s loss.

Other aspects were probably more important. For example, Republican voter suppression, particularly in Wisconsin and North Carolina, was far more important than any effect the VR Systems hack may have had in Durham County. Jim Comey’s public statements about the email investigation had at least as much effect as the Russian hack-and-leak campaign did on press focus. Hillary made some boneheaded choices — like barely campaigning in WI and MI; while I had worried that she made those choices because Russia tampered with her analytics (with the AWS hack), that doesn’t seem to have happened. Disinformation sent by the Trump campaign and associates was more significant than Russian disinformation. It didn’t help that the Obama Administration announced a sharp spike in ObamaCare prices right before the election.

The response matters

As noted, Trump’s narcissism dramatically increased the effect of the Russian efforts in 2016, because he has always refused to admit it happened.

Compare that to Bernie’s response to learning that Russia was trying to help his campaign, which accepted that it is happening and rejected the help.

“I don’t care, frankly, who [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wants to be president,” Sanders said in a statement. “My message to Putin is clear: Stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do.

“In 2016, Russia used Internet propaganda to sow division in our country, and my understanding is that they are doing it again in 2020. Some of the ugly stuff on the Internet attributed to our campaign may well not be coming from real supporters.”

This was not perfect — Bernie could have revealed this briefing himself weeks ago, Bernie blamed the WaPo for reporting it when it seems like the story was seeded by O’Brien. But it was very good, in that it highlighted the point of Russian interference — sowing divisions — and it reaffirmed the import of Americans selecting who wins. Plus, contrary to Trump, there’s no reason to believe Bernie would pursue policies that specifically advantaged Russia.

Other factors remain more important than Russian interference

There’s very serious reason to be concerned that Russia will hack the outcome of 2020. After all, it would need only to affect the outcome in a small number of precincts to tip the result, and the prospect of power outages or ransomware doing so in urgent fashion have grown since 2016.

That said, as with 2016, there are far more urgent concerns, and those concerns are entirely American.

Republicans continue to seek out new ways to suppress the vote, including by throwing large swaths of voters off the rolls without adequate vetting. There are real concerns about voting machines, particularly in Georgia (and there are credible concerns about the reliability of GA’s tally in past elections). Republicans have continued to make polling locations less accessible in Democratic precincts than in Republican ones.

Facebook refuses to police the accuracy of political ads, and Trump has flooded Facebook with disinformation.

And Bloomberg’s efforts this year — which include a good deal of trolling and disinformation — are unprecedented in recent memory. His ad spending has undercut the ability to weigh candidates. And his personnel spending is increasing the costs for other candidates.

Russian efforts to sway the vote are real. Denying them — as some of Bernie’s supporters are doing in ways that hurt the candidate — does not help. But, assuming DHS continues to work with localities to ensure the integrity of voting infrastructure, neither does overplaying them. Between now and November there’s far more reason to be concerned about American-funded disinformation and American money distorting our democratic process.

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.

The Frothy Right Is Complaining that Amy Berman Jackson Sentenced Roger Stone to 57% of Lower Guidelines

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In the aftermath of the news of Roger Stone’s sentence yesterday, some of DOJ’s beat journalists are doing irresponsible pieces giving Bill Barr’s close associates anonymity to lie, with no pushback, about what happened.

Another Justice Department official called Stone’s sentence a “vindication” of the attorney general’s decision last week to insert himself into the process, calling for a revised sentencing memorandum that undercut the line prosecutors’ prior recommendation of seven to nine years in prison. Four prosecutors quit the Stone case over the disagreement, and current and former Justice Department officials grew alarmed Trump was short-circuiting the law enforcement agency’s traditional independence. More than 2,600 former employees have signed onto a letter calling on Barr to resign over his handling of the matter.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson in no way vindicated Bill Barr’s intervention, and any experienced DOJ reporter passing on the claim unchallenged is doing their readers a gross disservice.

Worse still, confusion about what happened yesterday has permitted the frothy right to attack ABJ for what was a lenient sentence.

So I’d like to show how ABJ came up with her sentence. It shows that ABJ sentenced Stone to 57% of the sentence she judged the guidelines call for.

Probation Recommendation: 70-87 months

Between the original sentencing memo and Stone’s own memo, we can obtain what probation initially recommended. It started with a base offense level for Stone’s Obstruction, False Statements, and Witness Tampering of 14 (which would result in a 15 to 21 month guidelines sentence). Then it added four enhancements (Stone even cites the paragraphs of the presentencing report where Probation recommended these enhancements). First, it called for an 8-level enhancement under U.S.S.G. §2J1.2(b)(1)(B), which reads (PDF 243):

If the offense involved causing or threatening to cause physical injury to a person, or property damage, in order to obstruct the administration of justice, increase by 8 levels.

Next, it called for a 3-level enhancement for substantial interference with the administration of justice under U.S.S.G. §2J1.2(b)(1)(2) (meaning, the obstruction worked):

If the offense resulted in substantial interference with the administration of justice, increase by 3 levels.

Probation called for a 2-level enhancement under U.S.S.G. §2J1.2(b)(3)(C) for the extensive nature of Stone’s obstruction:

If the offense … (C) was otherwise extensive in scope, planning, or preparation, increase by 2 levels.

Given a footnote in Stone’s memo (and something ABJ said in the hearing yesterday), it appears that the government objected to the original January 16 recommendation from the Probation office and convinced them to apply this enhancement.

Obstruction of Justice 2 U.S.S.G. §2J1.2(b)(3)(C) 2 level increase ¶77

2 Government’s Objection to Presentence Investigation Report, dated January 30, 2020.

Finally, it called for a 2-level enhancement U.S.S.G. §3C1.1 2 for obstruction of this proceeding (meaning, his prosecution for the original obstruction charge; this is at PDF 367).

If (1) the defendant willfully obstructed or impeded, or attempted to obstruct or impede, the administration of justice with respect to the investigation, prosecution, or sentencing of the instant offense of conviction, and (2) the obstructive conduct related to (A) the defendant’s offense of conviction and any relevant conduct; or (B) a closely related offense, increase the offense level by 2 levels.

The sentencing table can be found at PDF 415. It provides a range of 87 to 108 months for a first time offender, as Stone is.

According to the transcript, however, the final recommendation did not apply the 2-level enhancement for the extensive obstruction. That provides a range for 70-87 months.

Prosecution Recommendation: 87-108 months

In May 2017, Jeff Sessions issued an order stating that “prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense,” which are, “by definition … those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence.” It also stated that, “In most cases, recommending a sentence within the advisory guideline range will be appropriate.”

ABJ noted this policy yesterday in the sentencing hearing.

And that’s what the prosecution team did — recommend the same 87 to 108 months the Probation Office came up with. They justified each of the enhancements in their sentencing memo.

They argued the witness tampering enhancement was justified — even in spite of Randy Credico’s letter asking for leniency — because Credico still expressed fear that Stone’s associates might respond to his threats by attacking him, and because the threat itself triggers the enhancement.

Pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2J1.2(b)(1)(B), eight levels are added because the offense “involved causing or threatening to cause physical injury to a person, or property damage, in order to obstruct the administration of justice.” As detailed above, as part of Stone’s campaign to keep Credico silent, Stone told Credico in writing, “Prepare to die, cocksucker.” Stone also threatened (again in writing) to “take that dog away from you.” Stone may point to the letter submitted by Credico and argue that he did not have a serious plan to harm Credico or that Credico did not seriously believe that Stone would follow through on his threats. But Credico testified that Stone’s threats concerned him because he was worried that Stone’s words, if repeated in public, might make “other people get ideas.” Tr. 11/8/19, at 795.

In any event, it is the threat itself, not the likelihood of carrying out the threat, that triggers the enhancement. Endeavoring to tamper with a witness can involve a wide range of conduct. This enhancement recognizes that when the conduct involves threats of injury or property damage, rather than simple persuasion for example, the base offense level does not accurately capture the seriousness of the crime. To apply the enhancement, there is no “additional ‘seriousness’ requirement beyond the fact of a violent threat.” See United States v. Plumley, 207 F.3d 1086, 1089-1091 (8th Cir. 2000) (applying § 2J1.2(b)(1)(B) to a defendant who told coconspirators to “‘keep our mouth shut,’ because if anyone cooperated with the police he would ‘kick our ass’”); United States v. Bakhtairi, 714 F.3d 1057, 1061 (8th Cir. 2013) (holding there was no seriousness requirement and applying § 2J1.2(b)(1) to a defendant who wrote a menacing email, displayed a loaded rifle to a law partner, and doctored photographs of witnesses children to “add . . . crosshairs”); United States v. Smith, 387 F.3d 826, (9th Cir. 2004) (applying § 2J1.2(b)(1)(B) to a defendant who threatened to kill a witness and “kick [her] ass,” and noting that § 2J1.2(b)(1) does not contain a “seriousness requirement”).

Prosecutors argued the 3-level enhancement for substantial interference was justified because Stone’s obstruction led HPSCI not to call Jerome Corsi and not to subpoena Corsi and Credico for documents, both of which led to errors in the HPSCI report.

Pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2J1.2(b)(2), three levels are added because the offense resulted in substantial interference with the administration of justice. Because of Stone’s conduct, the House Intelligence Committee never received important documents, never heard from Credico (who pled the Fifth), and never heard from Corsi (who was never identified to the Committee as the real “back-channel” that Stone had referenced in August 2016). The Committee’s report even wrongly stated that there was no evidence contradicting Stone’s claim that all his information about WikiLeaks was from publicly available sources.

Prosecutors argued that the multi-year effort Stone engaged in merited the 2-level enhancement because of his obstruction’s extensive scope.

Pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2B1.2(b)(3)(C), two levels are added because the offense was otherwise extensive in scope, planning, or preparation. Stone engaged in a multi-year scheme involving (1) false statements in sworn testimony; (2) the concealment of important documentary evidence; (3) further lies in a written submission to Congress; and (4) a relentless and elaborate campaign to silence Credico that involved cajoling, flattering, crafting forged documents, badgering, and threatening Credico’s reputation, friend, life, and dog. Stone’s efforts were as extensive, if not more extensive, than those of other defendants who received this two-level enhancement at sentencing. See, e.g., United States v. Petruk, 836 F.3d 974 (8th Cir. 2016) (enlisting a friend to create a false alibi and scripting a false confession); United States v. Jensen, 248 Fed. Appx. 849 (10th Cir. 2007) (giving advance notice of testing and falsifying results of tests).

Finally, prosecutors argued for a 2-level enhancement for all the violations of ABJ’s orders during the trial, notably his implicit threat against her.

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

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

Prosecutors then showed how, under the guidelines, this adds up to an 87 to 108 month sentence.

Accordingly, Stone’s total offense level is 29 (14 + 8 + 3 + 2 + 2), and his Criminal History Category is I. His Guidelines Range is therefore 87-108 months.

Barr Recommendation: 30-46 months

In addition to violating DOJ policy of not deviating downwards from the Probation recommendation, the memo submitted under John Crabb Jr’s name (which his statements yesterday strongly indicate he did not write) offered little justification for why it was deviating from the Probation Office recommendation and never ultimately made a recommendation. But the memo suggested two of the enhancements — the 8-level enhancement for making a threat, and the 2-level enhancement for threatening ABJ — should not apply.

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

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

It pointed to Credico’s letter to justify ignoring it.

First, as noted above, the most serious sentencing enhancement in this case—the eightlevel enhancement under Section 2J1.2(b)(1)(B) for “threatening to cause physical injury”—has been disputed by the victim of that threat, Randy Credico, who asserts that he did not perceive a genuine threat from the defendant but rather stated that “I never in any way felt that Stone himself posed a direct physical threat to me or my dog.” (ECF No. 273). While Mr. Credico’s subjective beliefs are not dispositive as to this enhancement, the Court may consider them when assessing the impact of applying the enhancement – particularly given the significant impact that the enhancement has on the defendant’s total Guidelines range.

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

Second, the two-level enhancement for obstruction of justice (§ 3C1.1) overlaps to a degree with the offense conduct in this case. Moreover, it is unclear to what extent the Second, the two-level enhancement for obstruction of justice (§ 3C1.1) overlaps to a degree with the offense conduct in this case. Moreover, it is unclear to what extent the

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

Probably the only part of this memo that really affected ABJ’s sentence was a discussion of avoiding disparities in sentencing, where it mentions Scooter Libby’s 30 month sentence (and Manafort’s obstruction-related sentence, by ABJ, which was just one part of her 7.5 year sentence of him).

Third, the Court must “avoid unwarranted sentencing disparities.” See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(6). In its prior filing, the Government directed the Court’s attention to a non-exhaustive list of witness tampering, false statement, and obstruction of justice cases that resulted in sentences of thirty months (Libby), thirteen months (Manafort), six months (Lavelle), twelve months (Hansen), and thirty-five months (Solofa). While these cases involved lesser offense conduct, the sentences imposed constituted a fraction of the penalty suggested by the advisory Guidelines in this case.

In comments to Lindsey Graham, Bill Barr said he thought the guidelines should say 3.5-4.5 years, slightly more than the guidelines if the witness tampering were removed, but if you eliminate both the witness tampering and obstruction of proceedings enhancement the range would be 30-47 months.

ABJ Guidelines Calculation: 70-87 months

In court yesterday, ABJ started by going through the recommended sentence. Ultimately, she did the following with the guidelines (h/t Andrew Prokop for his great live tweeting):

  • Accepted the 8-level enhancement for witness tampering, but said she’d take Credico’s comments into account
  • Accepted the 3-level enhancement for substantial interference, noting that HPSCI was totally diverted by focusing on Credico
  • Rejected the 2-level enhancement for the extensive nature of Stone’s obstruction (thereby agreeing with the original Probation office recommendation)
  • Accepted the 2-level enhancement for Stone’s obstruction in this prosecution

That works out to a base level of 14 + 8 for the witness tampering threat + 3 for substantial interference + 2 for his obstruction in this prosecution. As ABJ calculated in court yesterday, that amounts to a guidelines offense level of 27, or a guidelines range of 70 to 87 months.

Importantly, these decisions mean ABJ disagreed with both the recommendations made in the Barr memo that she throw out the witness tampering threat and Stone’s interference in this trial (which included the threat against her).

Contrary to what the WaPo lets DOJ claim under cover of anonymity, this in no way vindicates Barr. Rather, it rebukes him, stating that neither of his interventions are valid.

ABJ Sentence: 40 months

Nevertheless, ABJ came up with a sentence of 40 months, a sentence that’s solidly in the range of what Barr wanted (and therefore a sentence he’s on the record as saying is just for Stone’s crimes).

ABJ got there, in part, by taking Credico’s comments into consideration, while still treating Stone’s threat as real. She got there in part by arguing that the sentencing guidelines are “inflated” — something anathema to Bill Barr’s policies at DOJ, and a stance that would say all defendants should be sentenced more leniently, not just Trump’s rat-fucker.

In her sentence, she explicitly said she was ignoring Trump’s comments and comments from the left asking for harsh punishment.

Ultimately, ABJ calculated the guidelines — which she said were inflated (and would be for all defendants) — at 70-87 months. She then sentenced Stone to 57% of the lower end of those guidelines.

And that is what has the frothy right in a tizzy — that she extended Roger Stone the same leniency that she would extend to other defendants, in defiance of Bill Barr’s demands that every defendant not covering up for the President be sentenced harshly.

This is in no way a vindication of Bill Barr. It is also, in no way, abusive.

Update: This has been updated to reflect what the transcript says about the final probation recommendation.