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The Six Trump Associates Whom DOJ Is Investigating

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Because I keep having to lay out the proof that DOJ, in fact, has investigated close Trump associates of the sort that might lead to Trump himself, I wanted to make a list of those known investigations. Note that three of these — Sidney Powell, Alex Jones, and Roger Stone — definitely relate to January 6 and a fourth — the investigation into Rudy Giuliani — is scoped such that that it might include January 6 without anyone knowing about it.

Rudy Giuliani

As I said a month ago, the treatment of Rudy Giuliani’s phones single-handedly disproves claims that Merrick Garland’s DOJ wouldn’t investigate Trump’s people, because a month after he was confirmed and literally the same day that Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco was sworn in on April 21, DOJ obtained warrants targeting Rudy Giuliani.

The known warrants for Rudy’s phone pertain to whether, in the lead-up to Trump’s impeachment for trying to coerce Ukraine’s assistance in the 2020 election, Rudy was acting as an unregistered agent of Ukraine.

But as this table shows, Judge Paul Oetken ordered Special Master Barbara Jones to conduct a privilege review for Rudy’s seized devices from January 1, 2018 through the date of seizure, April 28, 2021. That means anything on Rudy’s devices from the entire period when he was helping Trump obstruct Mueller’s investigation well past the time he played the central role on orchestrating a coup attempt would be available to DOJ if it could show probable cause to get it.

There’s good reason to believe DOJ could show probable cause to access Rudy’s phones from April 2018 (before he formally became Trump’s lawyer), because during that period he was attempting to buy Michael Cohen’s silence with a pardon. There’s equally good reason to believe that act of obstruction is one of the referrals still redacted in the Mueller Report.

On or about April l 7, 20 l 8, Cohen began speaking with an attorney, Robert Costello, who had a close relationship with Rudolph Giuliani, one of the President’s personal lawyers. 1022 Costello told Cohen that he had a “back channel of communication” to Giuliani, and that Giuliani had said the “channel” was “crucial” and “must be maintained.” 1023 On April 20, 2018, the New York Times published an article about the President’s relationship with and treatment of Cohen. 1024 The President responded with a series of tweets predicting that Cohen would not ” flip” :

The New York Times and a third rate reporter . . . are going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will ‘flip. ‘ They use nonexistent ‘sources’ and a drunk/drugged up loser who hates Michael, a fine person with a wonderful family. Michael is a businessman for his own account/lawyer who I have always liked & respected. Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble, even if it means lying or making up stories. Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media! 1025

In an email that day to Cohen, Costello wrote that he had spoken with Giuliani. 1026 Costello told Cohen the conversation was “Very Very Positive[.] You are ‘loved’ … they are in our corner … . Sleep well tonight[], you have friends in high places.”1027

Similarly, there’s good reason to believe DOJ could show probable cause to access Rudy’s phone for his involvement in Trump’s attempted coup, not least because Rudy himself tweeted out some texts he exchanged with a Proud Boy associate discussing specific insurrectionists in the aftermath of the attack.

We wouldn’t know if DOJ had obtained warrants for those separate periods, because those periods will be covered by Jones’ review one way or another.

In any case, the details of the Rudy investigation show, at a minimum, that Barr went to extraordinary lengths to attempt to kill this investigation (and may have even ordered that FBI not review the materials seized in 2019). It took mere weeks after Garland took over, however, for the investigation to take very aggressive steps.

It also shows that SDNY managed to renew this investigation without major leaks.

Tom Barrack

Just this Tuesday, in a Zoom hearing for Brooklyn’s Federal Court, lawyers for the guy who installed Paul Manafort as Trump’s campaign manager suggested that Merrick Garland had politicized DOJ because, after the investigation into Tom Barrack had apparently stalled in 2019, he was indicted as an unregistered agent of the Emirates in July 2021.

According to reporting from 2019, this investigation was a Mueller referral, so it’s proof that Garland’s DOJ will pursue such referrals. According to CNN reporting, the indictment was all ready to go in July 2020, a year before it was actually charged. That provides a measure of how long it took an investigation that was deemed complete at a time when Barr seemingly prohibited filing it to be resuscitated under Garland: at least four months.

Barrack’s prosecution proves that DOJ can indict a top Trump associate without leaks in advance.

Jury selection for Barrack’s trial is now scheduled to start on September 7.

Sidney Powell

Two different outlets have reported that there is a grand jury investigation into Sidney Powell’s grifting off lies about election fraud. WaPo’s story on the investigation describes that Molly Gaston is overseeing the investigation (she is also overseeing the Steve Bannon referral). As I noted, Gaston was pulled off three prosecutions for insurrectionists by last March.

Gaston originally pulled three January 6 cases in the investigation’s early days, those of Robert Packer, Robert Gieswein, and Derrick Evans, just the latter of which, involving a then-West Virginia state politician, had any possible public corruption component. But, at a time of immense staffing shortages at DC’s US Attorney’s Office, she dropped off those cases on February 18 (in the case of Packer) and March 29 (in the case of Gieswein and Evans). I’ve long wondered what, in the weeks after Merrick Garland came in, became a higher priority for the DC US Attorney’s leading public corruption prosecutor. We now know one thing she picked up in the interim was the prosecution of Michael Riley, the Capitol Police Officer who advised rioter Jacob Hiles to delete Facebook posts about his role in the riot. And by September, Gaston’s grand jury investigation into Sidney Powell’s grift had started taking overt steps like subpoenaing Powell’s nonprofit.

For at least the Michael Riley prosecution and the Steve Bannon prosecution, Gaston is using two of at least three grand juries that are also investigating insurrectionists. For at least those investigations, there is no separate grand jury for the public corruption side of the investigation and the assault on the Capitol. They are the same investigation.

The investigation into Powell will necessarily intersect in interesting ways with Trump’s pardon of Mike Flynn.

There have been a lot of complaints that DOJ is not following the money. Powell’s investigation is proof that DOJ is following the money.

Alex Jones

Over the last year, DOJ has collected a great deal of evidence that the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and an alarming number of former Marines worked together to open a second breach on the Capitol via the East doors. Instrumental to the success of this breach were a large number of MAGA tourists who joined in the breach. DOJ has proof that at least some of them were there because Alex Jones had lured them there by lying about a second Trump speech on the East side of the building.

DOJ has already arrested two of Jones’ employees: videographer Sam Montoya in April and on-air personality Owen Shroyer in August.

In a November DOJ response in the Shroyer case, Alex Jones was referred to as Person One, as numerous others believed to be under active investigation have been described. That filing debunked the cover story that Shroyer and Jones have used to excuse their actions on January 6. Judge Tim Kelly, who is also presiding over the most important Proud Boys cases, is currently reviewing Shroyer’s First Amendment challenge to his arrest.

This strand of the investigation has likely necessarily lagged the exploitation of former Alex Jones’ employee Joe Biggs’ iCloud and phone, which were made available to Biggs’ co-travelers in August. This post has more on the developments in the Montoya and Shroyer cases, including that a different prosecutor recently took over Monotya’s case.

Roger Stone

Roger Stone, who has close ties to both the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys who coordinated the attack on the Capitol, has shown up repeatedly in the Oath Keeper conspiracy. In March, DOJ debunked Connie Meggs’ claim not to know her co-conspirators by including a picture of an event she did with Roger Stone and Graydon Young (this was close to the time that Connie’s husband Kelly organized an alliance between Florida militias).

In a May 25 FBI interview, Mike Simmons, the field commander for the Oath Keepers on January 6, appears to have been specifically asked why Simmons had so many conversations with Joshua James, who was providing security for Roger Stone at the Willard the morning of the insurrection. Simmons appears to have explained that James called him every time Stone moved.

In June, Graydon Young, the Floridian who attended that Stone event with Connie, entered a cooperation agreement. Also in June, Mark Grods, one of the Oath Keepers who had been at the Willard that morning, entered a cooperation agreement. In September, Jason Dolan, a former Marine from Florida who also interacted with Stone in advance of the insurrection and who was waiting there on January 6 as the other Oath Keepers, a number of Proud Boys (including former Alex Jones employee Joe Biggs) and Alex Jones himself all converged at the top of the East steps just as the doors were opened from inside, entered a cooperation agreement.

Erik Prince

There’s one more grand jury investigation into a powerful Trump associate that I know of via someone who was subpoenaed in the investigation in the second half of last year. The investigation reflects a reopening of an investigation Billy Barr shut down in 2019-2020. What’s interesting about it is the scope seems somewhat different and the investigating District is different than the earlier investigation. That may suggest that, for investigations that Barr shut down, DOJ would need to have a new evidence to reopen it. But the existence of this investigation shows, again, that Garland’s DOJ will go after powerful Trump associates.

Update, 2/8/22: NYT just named the sixth person under investigation: Erik Prince.

Mr. Prince is separately under investigation by the Justice Department on unrelated matters, according to people familiar with the case. The scope of that investigation is unclear.

It baffles me why TV lawyers continue to claim there’s no evidence that Merrick Garland is investigating anyone close to Trump — aside from they’re looking for leaks rather than evidence being laid out in plain sight in court filings. One of the first things that Garland’s DOJ did was to take really aggressive action against the guy who led Trump’s efforts to launch a coup. Alex Jones and Roger Stone are clearly part of the investigation into how the breach of the East doors of the Capitol came together, and the two of them (Jones especially) tie directly back to Trump.

There are other reasons to believe that DOJ’s investigation includes Trump’s role in the assault on the Capitol, laid out in the statements of offense from insurrectionists who’ve pled guilty, ranging from trespassers to militia conspirators. But one doesn’t even have to read how meticulously DOJ is collecting evidence that dozens of people have admitted under oath that they participated in the attack on the Capitol because of what Trump had led them to believe on Twitter.

Because DOJ clearly has several other routes to get to Trump’s role via his close associates. I’m not promising they’ll get there. And this will take time (as I’ll show in a follow-up). But that’s different than claiming that this evidence doesn’t exist.

Update: I did a podcast where I explained how the misdemeanor arrests are necessary to moving up the chain.

DOJ’s Approximate January 6 Conspiracies

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Amid the clamor for Merrick Garland to say something about the January 6 investigation, DOJ has announced he will give a speech, tomorrow, to mark Thursday’s year anniversary of the assault on the Capitol.

Meanwhile, late last year, DOJ released a one-year summary of the investigation. It’s similar to periodical reports the DC US Attorney’s Office has released before, including that its numbers generally skew high. It includes DC Superior Court arrests, in addition to federal arrests, to come up with “more than 725 defendants;” (GWU’s count, which those of us tracking this closely consider the canonical list, shows 704 arrests). DOJ appears to mix assault and civil disorder arrests to come up with 225 in some way interfering with cops; my own count, while low, counts fewer than 150 people charged with assault. DOJ’s summary boasts that 275 people have been charged with obstruction, a number that includes those who’ve been permitted to plead down to misdemeanors.

One number, however, is low: DOJ claims that,

Approximately 40 defendants have been charged with conspiracy, either: (a) conspiracy to obstruct a congressional proceeding, (b) conspiracy to obstruct law enforcement during a civil disorder, (c) conspiracy to injure an officer, or (d) some combination of the three.

By my count, this number is at least 25% off the known count. There are 39 people currently charged in the top-line militia conspiracies, plus five people cooperating against them.

There are at least another 13 people charged in smaller conspiracies (though the Texas “Patriot” conspiracy has not been indicted yet), with two more people cooperating in those cases.

It’s most likely DOJ got this number so badly wrong because it is overworked and some of these (like the Texas one and the status of Danny Rodriguez co-conspirator “Swedish Scarf”) aren’t fully unsealed.

But it’s also likely that these numbers are not what they seem.

That’s because in (at least) the larger conspiracies, there have been a lot of plea discussions going on behind the scenes, if not hidden cooperators. Certainly in the wake of five decisions upholding the obstruction application (including in the main Oath Keeper conspiracy, in the Ronnie Sandlin conspiracy, and by Tim Kelly, who is presiding over three of the Proud Boy conspiracies), we should expect some movement. I expect there will be some consolidation in the Proud Boy cases. The Texas case and some other Proud Boy defendants have to be indicted.

Importantly, too, these conspiracies all link up to other key players. For example, Roger Stone, Ali Alexander, and Alex Jones coordinated closely with the Proud Boy and Oath Keeper conspirators. The state-level conspiracies are most interesting for local power brokers and the elected officials with whom these conspirators networked — like Ted Cruz in the case of the Texas alleged conspirators or Morton Irvine Smith in the SoCal 3%er.

The utility of conspiracy charges lies in the way they can turn associates against each other and network others into the crime. Prosecutors love to use secrecy and paranoia to increase that utility.

And so while DOJ is undoubtedly overwhelmed, it may also be the case that DOJ would like to keep potential co-conspirators guessing about what’s really behind them.

Why That Peter Navarro Interview Isn’t Enough To Charge Him with Sedition

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A slew of people have asserted as fact that an interview that Peter Navarro did on his book offers adequate proof to charge him with sedition. The interview (and I assume the book) lays out a plan called the Green Bay Sweep that, Navarro hoped, would result in Trump remaining in power. It entailed:

  • Recruiting “over 100 congressmen, including some senators” to raise objections to the vote count, setting off 24-hours of news coverage on false claims about the election
  • Increasing public pressure — unrelated to threats of violence — to lead Mike Pence to send the electoral vote back in six swing states
  • Using that delay, getting those states to change their vote results

Navarro’s role was to invent the false claims members of Congress would use to fill up 24-hours of “debate.”

Navarro’s part in this ploy was to provide the raw materials, he said in an interview on Thursday. That came in the form of a three-part White House report he put together during his final weeks in the Trump administration with volume titles like, “The Immaculate Deception” and “The Art of the Steal.”

“My role was to provide the receipts for the 100 congressmen or so who would make their cases… who could rely in part on the body of evidence I’d collected,” he told The Daily Beast. “To lay the legal predicate for the actions to be taken.” (Ultimately, states have not found any evidence of electoral fraud above the norm, which is exceedingly small.)

I’d like to talk about why this book and interview are not enough to charge Navarro with sedition, and in fact the current media frenzy into is is actually counterproductive to the legal investigation.

A book and an interview are not evidence

The most important reason why this book and Navarro’s interviews on it are not enough to charge him is that books are probably not admissible evidence.

This is retroactive telling about what, Navarro claims, he and Steve Bannon and others planned to do. While the book might be part of a conspiracy to cover up what Navarro and Bannon planned, in and of itself, it’s not clear it would be admissible at trial (though it could be useful at trial for other reasons, such as challenging any testimony Navarro gave).

Instead, you’d need to get all the texts and memos Navarro says documents this effort, the former of which may require seizing his phone with a probable cause warrant.

Although the bipartisan House committee investigating the violence on Jan. 6 has demanded testimony and records from dozens of Trump allies and rally organizers believed to be involved in the attack on the nation’s democracy, Navarro said he hasn’t heard from them yet. The committee did not respond to our questions about whether it intends to dig into Navarro’s activities.

And while he has text messages, phone calls, and memos that could show how closely an active White House official was involved in the effort to keep Trump in power, he says investigators won’t find anything that shows the Green Bay Sweep plan involved violence.

You’d likely need cooperating witnesses that were willing to tell this story, perhaps Navarro himself and Steven Bannon (the same guy refusing to testify to the Jan6 Committee right now).

As such, this interview is at most an investigative blueprint that, months down the road, might lead to evidence that could be used to prosecute Navarro.

Much of this is not illegal

Another reason why this interview and book are not a smoking gun is that, as Navarro describes it, much of it is not illegal.

It is not illegal to invent false claims about an election, as Navarro said he did. It might be sanctionable for a lawyer to make those same false claims to a court (as it finally became for Sidney Powell). I might be illegal to raise money off promises of electoral changes you knew to be false, which seems to be one of several premises for the investigation of Sidney Powell. But it’s not illegal to lie.

It’s also not illegal for members of Congress to raise objections on the floor, which was a central part of this plan. As Republicans never tire of reminding, Jamie Raskin did so himself in 2017.

Unlike Raskin’s challenge, the plan here was to base electoral challenges off bullshit. But even if you could prove that members of Congress knew it was all bullshit (and you would need to prove that), it’s also not illegal for members of Congress to push bullshit in Congress. Indeed, that is pretty aggressively protected under Speech and Debate. To criminalize this behavior you’d have to distinguish it from what lobbyists do all the time when they push members of Congress to adopt storylines that are factually false.

All this only becomes illegal in the context of a plan to violate the law. DOJ has been using 18 USC 1512(c)(2) to charge deliberate efforts to prevent the certification, but at least as stated, Navarro didn’t want to obstruct the proceeding in question, he wanted that process to occur, albeit stretched over 24 hours according to the very rules that judges have pointed to to affirm that it is an official proceeding. So if you were to charge it, you’d need to charge something else, perhaps trying to get Pence to violate his duty.

Much of this is probably a lie

Crazier still, people claiming that this book and interview are the smoking gun in a prosecution are treating it as a truthful description, which it would need to be to serve as admissible evidence for any crime itself (which is why it would have limited evidentiary value short of getting a whole lot of texts and testimony).

Peter Navarro is a noted liar and Steve Bannon is an even more accomplished one. And we know — because BuzzFeed fought to liberate Mueller materials — that Bannon is all too happy to tell serially false stories to protect himself from criminal exposure. At a very similar time in the Mueller investigation, Roger Stone got the press to chase his false claims like six year olds chasing a soccer ball, and to this day, the overwhelming majority of the press believe his claims about why he was prosecuted are actually why he was (though prosecutors used that to their advantage, too).

We should assume this story is of the same ilk, a cover story, which has successfully led the press to grasp onto it as a smoking gun rather than a distraction. If it is a cover story, it serves to:

  • Claim that “‘Stephen K. Bannon, myself, and President Donald John Trump’ were ‘the last three people on God’s good Earth who want to see violence erupt on Capitol Hill,'” as it would disrupt their plans. This claim is crucially important with regards the pressure campaign focused on Pence, as I’ll return to. And it is undoubtedly bullshit.
  • Claim that Navarro “felt fortunate that someone cancelled his scheduled appearance to speak to Trump supporters that morning at the Ellipse, “because “It was better for me to spend that morning … Just checking to see that everything was in line, that congressmen were on board.” This adopts the same strategy that Stone has, blaming those who organized the Ellipse rally rather than those orchestrating events at the Hill. And in this telling, Navarro was just talking to members of Congress, not communicating to any of the people who would go on to attack the Capitol.
  • Distance himself from Sidney Powell’s equally outlandish claims. In his telling, this is a plan that arose from the failures of Sidney Powell’s false claims, not a continuation of them. This treats Navarro’s efforts as an alternative to Powell’s false claims, not a continuation of them.

[Navarro] said it started taking shape as Trump’s “Stop the Steal” legal challenges to election results in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin fizzled out. Courts wouldn’t side with Trump, thanks to what Navarro describes in his book as “the highly counterproductive antics” of Sydney Powell and her Kraken lawsuits.

  • Focus on January 6 rather than January 5. Navarro emphasizes that he spoke to Bannon first thing in the morning on January 6. Given what we know about the way the riot was finalized on January 5, I’m more interested in whom he spoke with before he went to bed.

In my experience, you learn far more in mapping out what liars are trying to cover up than you do chasing their claims as if they are the truth. And the same is probably true here.

But at the very least, Navarro’s tale attempts to dissociate himself with several contributors to January 6 that might be more obviously tied to crimes than the lies he packaged up for members of Congress to tell.

The takeaway from this book and interview ought to be that Navarro has admitted his goal was to bring maximal pressure on Mike Pence. As such, it means he shares a stated goal of a number of January 6 defendants who have already pled guilty.

The Trump to Willard War Room to Militia Connection

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The name Roger Stone does not appear in the Guardian story reporting that the January 6 Committee will soon seek more information on Trump’s calls to the Willard Hotel late on January 5 and on January 6, as he faced the prospect that Mike Pence would not violate his oath and fail to certify the legitimate winner of the election.

Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, has said the panel will open an inquiry into Donald Trump’s phone call seeking to stop Joe Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January hours before the insurrection.

The chairman said the select committee intended to scrutinize the phone call – revealed last month by the Guardian – should they prevail in their legal effort to obtain Trump White House records over the former president’s objections of executive privilege.

“That’s right,” Thompson said when asked by the Guardian whether the select committee would look into Trump’s phone call, and suggested House investigators had already started to consider ways to investigate Trump’s demand that Biden not be certified as president on 6 January.

Thompson said the select committee could not ask the National Archives for records about specific calls, but noted “if we say we want all White House calls made on January 5 and 6, if he made it on a White House phone, then obviously we would look at it there.”

Instead, the story lists a bunch of people who have been even less cooperative with the Jan 6 investigation than Stone.

The former president’s remarks came as part of wider discussions he had with the lieutenants at the Willard – a team led by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn and Trump strategist Steve Bannon – about delaying the certification, the sources said.

The story also mentions that the Jan 6 Committee is finally considering a subpoena to Rudy Giuliani — a subpoena that will hit just as debates over crime-fraud excepted conversations start to appear on the SDNY docket.

A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment about what else such a line of inquiry might involve. But a subpoena to Giuliani, the lead Trump lawyer at the Willard, is understood to be in the offing, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The underlying Guardian story had noted that the calls to the Willard proved a direct tie between the White House and the war room.

Trump’s remarks reveal a direct line from the White House and the command center at the Willard.

The reason I raise Stone is that the repeated reports from Joshua James to Oath Keeper field commander Mike Simmons about a VIP disgruntled about his shoddy treatment — a VIP that is almost certainly Stone — show there was a direct tie from the Willard to one of several militias who were instrumental in breaching the Capitol from multiple points.

Particularly given the confirmation that the government believes he was lying, I’d like to point to some redacted references to a VIP that Joshua James was guarding who was bitching that he wasn’t getting VIP treatment.

This is likely Roger Stone. That’s true because — as Dan Friedman reported — James was “guarding” Stone that day (and Simmons guarded Stone the previous day), the name seems to fit, and Stone has publicly complained about his treatment that day.

While exchanging calls with Simmons, James traveled from the Willard Hotel, in downtown Washington—where he had been leading a security detail guarding Stone—to the Capitol.

What appears to be the first reference to this person also seems to fit the name, which would be the full name, Roger Stone, on first reference. Roberto Minuta, Jonathan Walden, and the now-cooperating Mark Grods were also guarding Stone.

Which brings us to the middle reference. Simmons claims that James called him every time his VIP moved.

Only, if that VIP was Roger Stone, he didn’t move. By his own account he stayed at the Willard before taking his bruised ego and leaving town.

If that’s right, it means Simmons was trying to explain multiple calls with James, and to do so, he offered the bullshit excuse that Stone, who by his own account never left the Willard, kept moving.

These reports in on said VIP’s non-movement would have taken place the morning before the assault on the Capitol, during the same period when, the Guardian reports, Trump alerted the Willard war room that Pence was likely going to put his duty to the Constitution over his fealty to Donald Trump.

The Guardian reports that Thompson may go this route to increase pressure on the people who were privy to the contents of those calls. That pressure could work in multiple directions. If it coughed up evidence from a less-damning non-privileged call, it might help SDNY in battles to access such materials from Rudy’s phones. It might increase pressure on John Eastman, a lawyer who has only inconsistently claimed privilege for his conversations with Trump. Or it might cause one or another of Trump’s bottom-feeders — Stone and Steve Bannon — to take the other out.

Even just identifying the times of such calls, though, would provide a way to understand how White House input into the Willard intersected with Willard communications with the Oath Keepers, Willard directions to Congress, and White House pressure on Congress intersected.

Two Months after Insinuating Ali Alexander Should Be Held Responsible for January 6, Jonathan Moseley Claims To Be His Lawyer

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Like Mark Meadows and John Eastman before him, Ali Alexander has sued Verizon in an attempt to keep evidence about a coup out of the hands of Congress.

The lawsuit seems significantly intended to provide information to others involved in the coup, both by identifying which texts Alexander shared with Congress and which (by omission) he did not, but also by communicating that everything he did provide to Congress constituted telephony communication. That seems to suggest that Alexander did not share any communications involving Signal, Telegram, or other messaging apps.

On November 24, 2021, Mr. Alexander provided the Select Committee with over one thousand and five hundred (1,500) mobile messages sent and received by him and people he corresponded with. All of these were using his Verizon phone service. Mr. Alexander expressed his concerns to the Select Committee about compromising the privacy rights of uninterested parties, and members of political group(s), and productions that exceeded the scope of H. Res. 503.

More importantly, Alexander provided the Select Committee with a privilege log of his text messages noting where the subject matter of the text was not pertinent to the Committee’s scope of inquiry or otherwise privileged but did not identify the party or the phone number of the sender or recipient of the text unless it was Mr. Alexander.

[snip]

At Alexander’s December 9, 2021 deposition, he testified that he had a few phone conversations with Representative Paul Gosar and no verbal phone conversations with Representatives Andy Biggs or Mo Brooks that he recalls. The Select Committee asked him about all three Members of Congress. Mr. Alexander testified that he had phone conversations with Rep. Brooks’ staff about a “Dear Colleague” letter and how his activists could be helpful. Mr. Alexander believes he exchanged a text message with Rep. Brooks, contents which he provided to the Committee. He also testified that he spoke to Rep. Biggs in person and never by phone, to the best of his recollection. In January, Mr. Alexander held an organizing call where Members of Congress might have been present and some were invited. He doesn’t recall who was in attendance because there was no roll call of attendees because the call was so large.

On January 6, 2021, it was reported that Mr. Alexander had a call with fundraiser Ms. Kimberly Guilfoyle. Mr. Alexander volunteered this information on a radio show that early morning. The Select Committee asked him about this call. He stated that it was a short and pleasant call. Ms. Guilfoyle thanked Mr. Alexander for being a leader on voting rights and creating the “Stop the Steal” movement. The two spoke about the ongoing Georgia election and the GOP primaries that would take place in 2022. The Select Committee seemed satisfied with Alexander’s explanation of that short call.

The more remarkable part of the lawsuit, however, is his legal team.

As I previously noted, Alexander is represented by Paul Kamenar, the lawyer who played a key role in attempting to cover-up Roger Stone’s role in coordinating with Russia in 2016 by delaying the testimony of Stone’s aide, Andrew Miller. Alexander had at least two other lawyers at his deposition last week, including Baron Coleman and Joseph McBride, who recently told Ryan Reilly (in regards to his representation of a different January 6 defendant) that he doesn’t give a shit about spreading bullshit conspiracy theories.

But as HuffPost went into more detail explaining why the idea that Rally Runner was some sort of undercover law enforcement agent was absurd, McBride shifted a bit. He said his job was to defend his client, and he didn’t “need to be right” in everything he claimed.

“If I’m wrong, so be it, bro. I don’t care,” McBride said. “I don’t give a shit about being wrong.”

McBride said he was simply “theorizing things” and “not publishing conclusive findings,” and he said his appearances on Carlson’s show were a part of his effort to combat the narrative being given about his Jan. 6 clients.

“If this guy turns out to be some, some guy who runs around the Cardinals’ stadium with his face painted, then that’s great,” he said. “If that’s the truth, then so be it, and God bless America.”

McBride is not on Alexander’s lawsuit, though Kamenar — Alexander’s Roger Stone cover-up specialist — is (Kamenar cc’ed Coleman on the letter he sent to Verizon alerting him to this suit).

The surprising appearance, however, is from Jonathon Moseley. Moseley currently represents Kelly Meggs — one of the Oath Keepers with ties to Roger Stone — and until Tuesday, also represented Zach Rehl, one of the Proud Boys accused of conspiring with Stone associate Joe Biggs to mastermind an attack that encircled the Capitol and involved Stone associate Alex Jones, using the excuse of permits obtained using covers by Alexander, luring unwitting Trump fans to the East doors just before they opened from inside.

Moseley’s legal promiscuity among these coup plotters is itself notable.

Crazier still is his claim to be representing Alexander just over two months after — back when he was ostensibly representing Rehl — filing a motion suggesting that Alexander (whom he repeatedly called “Ari”), not Rehl, should be the one held accountable for any crimes arising from the riot.

The one person who claims to have been the National Organizer of the “Stop the Steal movement” through events across the country and the “Stop the Steal rally” in Washington, D.C., is Ali Alexander, born Ali Abdul-Razaq Akbar. See Allam, Hannah; Nakhlawi, Razzan (May 16, 2021). “Black, Brown and extremist: Across the far-right spectrum, people of color play a more visible role”. The Washington Post, accessible at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/minorities-far-right-visiblerole/2021/05/16/e7ba8338-a915-11eb-8c1a-56f0cb4ff3b5_story.html

The mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was overwhelmingly White,1 but the official speaker lineup for the rally that day was more diverse. Vernon Jones, a Black former Georgia state lawmaker, and Katrina Pierson, a Black adviser and former spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, were among the speakers parroting the baseless assertion that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Another familiar face was main rally organizer Ali Alexander, born in Texas as Ali Abdul-Razaq Akbar, of mixed Black American and Middle Eastern descent.

Id. (emphasis added).

Ari [sic] Alexander is – as far as Defendant Zachary Rehl knows – entirely innocent of the crimes committed on January 6, 2021. Surely, the FBI is busy identifying and charging those who actually attacked police officers. We are confident that the FBI will complete that important task of bringing to justice those who actually battled with police before silencing parents who are petitioning for the redress of grievances in school board meetings, thus alienating suburban mothers.

However, without undermining Alexander for exercising his rights as a citizen, the one person who CLAIMS credit for organizing the “Stop the Steal” rally and movement including in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, 2 is being basically ignored while Zachary Rehl who DID NOT organize anyone or anything but himself, and tell his friends that he would be there, too, is sitting in a jail cell for things he did not do. Zachary Rehl did not get to see his child being born while being locked up since March. His wife with a newborn is struggling arrange a forbearance on the mortgage on their modest rowhouse.

See, video interview with Ali Alexander, with Jenny Chang, “Ali Alexander on What Will Happen on January 6,” NTD News, December 31, 202[sic], https://www.ntd.com/ali-alexander-on-what-will-happen-on-january-6_547084.html. Ari [sic] Alexander is presented as the “National Organizer of ‘Stop the Steal.’

Without question, some idiots and brawlers also showed up who committed criminal acts of brawling with police, apparently initiated violent assaults on police, and reportedly (though counsel has not seen it directly) there were calls before the rally that were for a variety of violent acts that are not peacefully expressing a message under the First Amendment. [all emphasis Moseley’s]

Even ignoring the overt racism suggesting that one of the few brown people involved in the riot should be the one held accountable for it, Moseley as much as says that Alexander more responsible than Rehl for any violence that happened.

Now, Moseley claims it will badly harm Alexander if Congress learns even just the phone numbers of people Alexander engaged in telephony communications with.

It has long seemed as if there was a concerted effort to ensure certain January 6 defendants receive the kind of representation that might not protect their own interests, but would firewall those they had close ties to. But Moseley’s sudden conversion to representing Alexander strains credulity.

Joshua James’ Frequent January 6 Updates on His Jilted VIPer

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The other day, Kenneth Harrelson invented a premise to publish the 302s from Mike “Person 10” Simmons, the Oath Keepers’ still-uncharged field commander for January 6.

In a response (technically a surreply), AUSA Kathryn Rakoczy made it clear the government believes Simmons was being dishonest. She provides several data points to demonstrate that, contrary to what he told the FBI, Simmons was well aware about the breach of the Capitol … which raises questions why he hasn’t been charged, yet.

Person Ten, as an uncharged individual who was aware that others have already been charged, had a motive to downplay or disregard both his own involvement and any preplanning efforts. And documentary evidence contradicts Person Ten’s blanket denials. For instance, on October 8, 2021, the government disclosed a Signal chat thread named “Jan 5/6 DC Op Intel team,” which included Person One, Person Ten, codefendant Joshua James, and about seven other individuals. On the Signal thread, shortly before 2:00 p.m. on January 6, a participant posted a video titled “live stream of patriots storming capital.” Another participant asked, “Are they actually Patriots – not those who were going to go in disguise as Patriots and cause trouble[?]” Person Ten authoritatively answered, “[T]here [sic] patriots.” Person One added, “Actual Patriots. Pissed off patriots[.] Like the Sons of Liberty were pissed off patriots[.]” Codefendant Joshua James followed with, “Were coming to Capitol ETA 30 MIN[.]”

The Sixth Superseding indictment alleges that at 2:14 p.m. on January 6, Person Ten informed the “DC OP: Jan 6 21” Signal chat that “The[y] have taken ground at the capital,” and, “We need to regroup any members who are not on mission[.]” ECF 513 ¶ 125. At 3:05 p.m.— twenty minutes after Defendant Harrelson and other codefendants breached the Capitol, and ten minutes before Defendant James and his second wave of coconspirators breached the same doors—Person Ten also messaged another individual, “Were [sic] storming the capital.”

Particularly given the confirmation that the government believes he was lying, I’d like to point to some redacted references to a VIP that Joshua James was guarding who was bitching that he wasn’t getting VIP treatment.

This is likely Roger Stone. That’s true because — as Dan Friedman reported — James was “guarding” Stone that day (and Simmons guarded Stone the previous day), the name seems to fit, and Stone has publicly complained about his treatment that day.

While exchanging calls with Simmons, James traveled from the Willard Hotel, in downtown Washington—where he had been leading a security detail guarding Stone—to the Capitol.

What appears to be the first reference to this person also seems to fit the name, which would be the full name, Roger Stone, on first reference. Roberto Minuta, Jonathan Walden, and the now-cooperating Mark Grods were also guarding Stone.

Which brings us to the middle reference. Simmons claims that James called him every time his VIP moved.

Only, if that VIP was Roger Stone, he didn’t move. By his own account he stayed at the Willard before taking his bruised ego and leaving town.

If that’s right, it means Simmons was trying to explain multiple calls with James, and to do so, he offered the bullshit excuse that Stone, who by his own account never left the Willard, kept moving.

These calls are earlier than the ones that the indictments disclose. They would effectively serve to warn Roger Stone of this investigative interest.

But they also suggest that the Oath Keepers were keeping their operational lead closely informed of what some VIP — likely Roger Stone — was up to at the Willard that day.

Update: Way back in April — April!! — I argued that Person Ten — Simmons — played the role of a communication pivot that day, including at one point seemingly being on a 3-way call with Rhodes and Kelly Meggs.

Highlighted in yellow, Person Ten has a series of calls back and forth with Joshua James, pre-Golf Cart Grand Theft. Right in the middle of it all, someone — not described in this indictment — informs the Signal group as a whole that “the[y] have taken ground” and “we need to regroup any members who are not on mission.” Shortly thereafter, James and Minuta launch the Grand Theft Golf Cart to get to the Capitol, where Minuta taunts the police, preventing them from moving to reinforce the overrun Capitol on the other side, and the members of The Stack leave Trump’s speech prematurely and go to the Capitol. That is, Person Ten calls for reinforcements (Rhodes repeats his Signal text), and then Minuta and James in the golf carts and The Stack converge on the northeast side of the Capitol to breach a new entry point.

Now consider the pink highlight: Unless the government or I have made a mistake in the timing, Person Ten and Kelly Meggs are both on the phone with Stewart Rhodes together. Because of the length of Person Ten’s calls, it overlaps entirely with Rhodes’ call with Meggs (which — again, unless there’s an error of timing — means Rhodes either has two phones or either via conferencing or a hold, had both on the same phone at the same time).

In either case, Person Ten seems to have a key role as a communication pivot between different groups of Oath Keepers.

The calls that Harrelson — as a Floridian, someone with ties to Stone — revealed predated all these, to a period when Stone was at the Willard and everyone else was at the Ellipse.

DOJ Already Debunked the Lies Ali Alexander Is about to Tell Congress

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For all the whinging about the pace of the various investigations into January 6, DOJ’s investigation has already gotten further into the Roger Stone side of the investigation than the Mueller investigation had by the time Stone testified to the House Intelligence Committee on September 26, 2017. At that point, almost fourteen months into the investigation into which of Trump’s rat-fuckers were coordinating with Russia, Mueller had obtained warrants targeting just Stone’s Twitter and Hotmail accounts.

As Stone acolyte Ali Alexander testifies before the January 6 Committee today, by comparison, just 11 months into the investigation, DOJ is already more than 100 days past the arrest of one of the men Stone and Alexander worked closely with on sowing insurrection, Owen Shroyer.

That makes the feat Ali Alexander is going to try to pull off when he testifies today to the January 6 Commission that much more fraught than what Stone tried four years ago. That’s because DOJ has already debunked some of the lies he plans to tell Congress.

In his prepared statement, which the NYT obtained, Alexander (who was originally subpoenaed because of the way he used covers to obtain multiple permits around the Capitol and incited violence in advance, neither of which he addresses in his statement) claims that he was attempting to de-escalate the riot after it started.

There are a number of videos of my associates and me arriving at the Capitol on January 6 after the violence had begun but in the early stages of the lawbreaking. In those videos, our group can be seen working with police to try to end the violence and lawbreaking. We can be seen yelling and screaming at people to STOP trying to enter the Capitol and STOP violent lawbreaking in general.

I believe those videos have been provided to the committee. If they have not, I will be happy to share them.

While I was actively trying to de-escalate events at the Capitol and end the violence and lawlessness, it’s important to note that certain people were nowhere to be found, including Amy Kremer, Kylie Kremer, and Katrina Pierson; essentially, the Women for America First leadership of the Ellipse Rally that was originally titled the “March for Trump” in their National Park Service permit application. Press reports suggest they may have had their feet up drinking donor-funded champagne in a War Room in the Willard. I don’t know where they were. But they weren’t working with police trying to de-escalate the chaos like I was.

It is my belief there may not have been a problem had that same leadership at the Ellipse event not intentionally removed instructions from the program that were supposed to be included to provide clarity on exactly where to go following the Ellipse event. When I protested the removal of those instructions, I was barred from participating as an organizer at the Ellipse event that preceded the Capitol riot. Ultimately, I was a VIP guest at the Ellipse event.

As a result, civil authority collapsed before the Ellipse Rally was over, before I arrived, and before my event was scheduled to begin.

To clarify: My permitted event at Lot 8 never took place. The “One NationUnderGod”event that Stop the Steal was a part of did not start the chaos. The chaos was well underway before our event was scheduled to begin.

We never held our event. We weren’t allowed to. [bold my emphasis, underline Alexander’s]

When Shroyer attempted to make this very same argument in a motion to dismiss in October, he at least included one (but not the most damning) video along with his argument. Here, having received a subpoena asking for such items, Alexander vaguely waves at videos he assumes the Committee has already received.

As the government’s response to Shroyer’s motion laid out, as Shroyer and Jones and Alexander led mobs to the Capitol even after “civil authority” had, according to Alexander, already “collapsed,” the InfoWars personalities were further riling up the mob.

After hearing that people may have breached the Capitol, [Shroyer], [Alex Jones],  and others began leading this large crowd down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol Building.4 The defendant is encircled in red below with a megaphone, at the front of the crowd.

En route, [Shroyer] continued shouting to the crowd walking behind and around him through his megaphone: “The traitors and communists that have betrayed us know we’re coming. We’re coming for all you commie traitors and communists that have stabbed us in the back. You’ve stabbed us in the back one too many times!” He continued, “We will not accept the fake election of that child-molesting Joe Biden, that Chinese Communist agent Joe Biden, we know where he belongs and it’s not the White House!” The defendant then led chants of “Stop the steal!” and “1776!”—an apparent reference to the “first” American Revolution and a renewed need to overthrow the government.

4 See Dkt. 1 at 4 n.5 (citing https://banned.video/watch?id=5ff634c2f23a18318ceb19f1 (last accessed on November 12, 2021)); see also Dkt. 1 at 6 n.8 (citing https://banned.video/watch?id=5 ff6148af23a18318ce99233 (last accessed on November 12, 2021)). [yellow circle marking Alexander added]

Then Jones, Shroyer, and Alexander gave a speech inside the restricted area of the Capitol (but not at one of the areas for which Alexander had a permit).

After the Joint Session got underway at 1:00 p.m., Shroyer entered the Capitol Grounds. He first positioned himself with others on the west side of the Capitol Building, within both the restricted area on January 6 and the broader Capitol Grounds boundaries on the defendant’s DPA map seen above. There, he stood on stacks of chairs and other equipment with [Jones] and led a crowd of hundreds of individuals on the Capitol grounds in chants of “USA! USA! USA!”6 [Shroyer] is encircled in red below on the Capitol grounds soon after leading these chants with a megaphone.

[yellow circle marking Alexander added]

The government doesn’t note it, but January 6 trespasser Stacie Getsinger did on Facebook: while at that non-permitted spot, Jones promised the mob that if they followed him to the East side of the Capitol, they’d get to hear Trump speak again.

Only after promising the mob they’d get to hear Trump did Jones’ handlers attempt to get sanction to go to the East side of the building by promising to de-escalate the riot that they had intentionally led more people to. As the government interprets the video that Shroyer himself provided, when Jones’ bodyguard offered to help de-escalate, the cop pointed northeast, which happens to be where Alexander had a permit and a stage already set up, at the “Lot 8” that Alexander claims they weren’t permitted to use.

INDIVIDUAL: I’m with [Jones], man. I’m telling you right now, he just tried to deescalate this stuff. If we can talk to someone and get him up there, we can get them to back off.

OFFICER: Take it over to the east, the east front’s the problem now. *Pointing east.*

INDIVIDUAL: This is the problem? *Pointing east.*

OFFICER: East front is the problem now.

INDIVIDUAL: Ok, so we need to get him up there and tell people to …

OFFICER: The east front is the problem now.

INDIVIDUAL: Alright, is there a way that we can get him to a position …

OFFICER: Through the hole, through the hole that you guys breached right there *Pointing northeast away from the Capitol Building.*

INDIVIDUAL: We didn’t breach anything.

OFFICER: Well, the whole group that was with you guys.

INDIVIDUAL: We’re just trying to help.

OFFICER: Out through there, all the way out there, take him up there. *Pointing northeast, away from the Capitol Building.* [my emphasis]

That is, this cop specifically told Jones and his entourage, including Alexander, to go to the area where Alexander had a permit (albeit for dozens, not thousands, of people). Instead of going in that direction, they instead circled around close to the Capitol, stepping over barricades and an “Area Closed” sign.

As the defendant and his group curved around the Capitol Building, the body-camera individual stated, “Here’s an opening right here.” The defendant and his group then walked toward where the body-camera individual pointed, passing downed and moved temporary barricades and stepping over at least one fallen sign that appeared to read “Area Closed,” as seen below circled in red.

When Jones’ bodyguard again asked for sanction to trespass in the area where they didn’t have a permit, the cops walked away.

The body-camera individual continued to yell that [Jones] could deescalate the situation, begging them to let Person One speak to the crowd. The two officers speaking then walked away and out of sight. The body-camera individual exhorted, “Nah, that’s not good, dude. That’s not good. That’s fucked. That’s fucked. No way. No fucking way. No way.”

After being told to pull the crowd away towards where Alexander had a permit, but instead deciding to go speak where he didn’t, Jones’ bodyguard acknowledged they might get in trouble for doing so.

The body-camera individual then walked back toward the defendant’s group and asked, “Just get him up there? Hey, Tim, just get him up there? Just do it? But we know we might catch a bang or two.”

And then, after the entourage joined former Jones’ staffer Joe Biggs and the advance guard of the Oath Keepers at the top of the East steps, Jones and Shroyer — still with Alexander present — called for revolution.

Once the defendant and others nearly reached the top, he began to use his megaphone to lead the large crowd in various chants, including “USA!” and “1776!”—again, a reference to revolution.

While, before Jones lured more mobs to the East side of the building, he did call people to stand down, once he got to the East steps, he further riled the crowd. As the government notes sardonically, calling for revolution “does not qualify as deescalation.”

Even assuming the defendant’s argument is true and the defendant received permission to go to the Capitol steps for the limited purpose of deescalating the situation, the defendant did not even do that. Quite the opposite. Despite the defendant’s arguments today that “Shroyer did nothing but offer his assistance to calm the crowd and urge them to leave United States Capitol grounds,” Dkt. 8-1 at 14, the defendant himself said otherwise in an open-source video recorded on August 21, 2021: “From the minute we got on the Capitol, the Capitol area, you [referring to Person One] started telling people to stand down, and the second we got on there, you got up on stacks of chairs, you said, ‘We can’t do this, stand down, don’t go in.’ … And I’m silent during all of this” (emphasis added).11 Moreover, as seen in other videos and described above, the defendant forced his way to the top of Capitol Building’s east steps with Person One and others and led hundreds of other rioters in multiple “USA!” and “1776!” chants with his megaphone. Harkening to the last time Americans overthrew their government in a revolution while standing on the Capitol steps where elected representatives are certifying a Presidential Election you disagree with does not qualify as deescalation.

Had Ali Alexander and Alex Jones taken the crowd they had led to the riot, like Pied Pipers, to Demonstration Area 8 (per the permits that BuzzFeed liberated), which is roughly where the cops directed them to go, and which is where they had a stage and a sound system, they might have prevented, or at least mitigated, the breach of the East front.

Instead, Alexander’s entourage joined their militia allies on the East steps and incited revolution, just moments before some of those militia members forcibly opened a second breach into the Capitol.

Alexander’s real goal, in testifying to the committee (rather than pleading the Fifth, which would be the smart thing to do) may be to learn what the Committee knows, while pretending that his cooperation — which has taken two months, not two weeks — is voluntary, not legally mandated.

In closing, I want to reiterate my posture of compliance. Over the past few weeks, I have spent more than 100 hours personally searching through my archives looking for relevant and responsive documentation to this committee’s requests. I’ve probably spent another 100 hours preparing to answer your questions. I have hired attorneys and computer consultants to be as responsive as possible and provide as much as I could find within the short amount of time I had to produce documents.

I did all of this despite not being accused of a crime. I did all of this despite being a private citizen with Constitutional rights protecting me from unreasonable searches and seizures and without a warrant entitling anyone to the documents I’ve voluntarily provided. It’s prevented me from working. It’s prevented me from sleeping, at times. It’s been extremely difficult and burdensome.

But I am voluntarily here to do the patriotic thing.

If this committee thinks of anything I haven’t turned over to which you believe I may have access, I ask you please to let me know and help refresh my memory. [bold my emphasis, italics Alexander’s emphasis]

When Stone tried to avoid telling the truth to Adam Schiff four years ago, when he actually hadn’t yet received a subpoena, it still led to his prosecution for multiple false statements. Here, Alexander is simply pretending he hasn’t been subpoenaed to appear.

Alexander will be represented today by, among others, Paul Kamenar, the lawyer who — after Roger Stone learned that his former aide had provided damaging information to the FBI — appealed Andrew Miller’s subpoena to testify to Mueller’s grand jury to the DC Circuit, thereby stalling until after the Mueller Report was done. Immediately after the trial was done, Stone hired Kamenar, presumably to learn what Miller had said in subsequent FBI interviews.

That raises real questions about whether Alexander is repeating Stone’s colossally stupid approach to the Russian investigation for his own benefit, or for Stone’s.

Ten Things TV Lawyers Can Do Rather than Whinging about Merrick Garland

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I continue to have little patience for the people–many of them paid to expound as lawyers on TV–who spend their time whinging that Merrick Garland is not moving quickly enough to hold Trump accountable rather than spending their time doing other more productive things to protect democracy.

I’m not aware that any of these people has tracked the January 6 investigation closely enough to name those one or two degrees away from the former President who have been charged or are clearly subjects of investigation. Similarly, I’ve seen none do reporting on the current status of Rudy Giuliani’s phones, which after a Special Master review will release a bunch of information to prosecutors to use under any warrant that DOJ might have. Indeed, many of the same people complain that Trump has not been accountable for his Ukraine extortion, without recognizing that any Ukraine charges for Trump would almost certainly have to go through that Rudy investigation. The approval for the search on Rudy’s phones may have been among the first decisions Lisa Monaco made as Deputy Attorney General.

It’s not so much that I’m certain DOJ would prosecute Trump for his serial attempts to overthrow democracy. There are tea leaves that DOJ could get there via a combination of working up from pawns who stormed the Capitol and down from rooks referred from the January 6 Commission. But I’m more exasperated with the claims that there were crimes wrapped with a bow (such as Trump’s extortion of Ukraine) that Garland’s DOJ could have charged on March 11, when he was sworn in. Even the Tom Barrack prosecution, a Mueller referral which reportedly was all set to indict in July 2020, took six months after Biden’s inauguration before it was indicted. The January 6 investigation started less than eleven months ago; eleven months into the Russian investigation, Coffee Boy George Papadopoulos had not yet been arrested and he was still months away from pleading guilty, on a simple false statements charge. We have no idea how much deliberate damage Billy Barr did to other ongoing investigations arising out of the Mueller investigation, but his public actions in the Mike Flynn, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort cases suggests it is likely considerable. As for the January 6 investigation, as I’ve noted, it took nine months from the time FBI learned that a Capitol Police Officer had warned Jacob Hiles to delete his Facebook posts until the time DOJ indicted Michael Riley on two counts of obstruction. To imagine that DOJ would have already indicted Trump on anything he might be hypothetically under investigation at this point, particularly relating to January 6, is just denial about how long investigations take, even assuming the subject were not the former President with abundant access to free or RNC-provided legal representation.

It’s not that I don’t understand the gravity of the threat. I absolutely share the panic of those who believe that if something doesn’t happen by midterms, Republicans will take over the House and shut every last bit of accountability down. I agree the threat to democracy is grave.

But there is no rule that permits DOJ to skip investigative steps and due process simply because people have invested in DOJ as the last bulwark of democracy, or because the target is the greatest threat to democracy America has faced since the Civil War. DOJ investigations take time. And that is one reason why, if people are hoping some damning indictment will save our democracy, they’re investing their hopes in the wrong place, because an investigation into Trump simply will not be rolled out that quickly. Even if Trump were indicted by mid-terms, the Republicans have invested so much energy into delegitimizing rule of law it’s not clear it would sway Fox viewers or even independent voters.

I can’t tell you whether DOJ will indict Trump. I can tell you that if they do, it will not come in time to be the one thing that saves democracy.

And so, because I believe the panicked hand-wringing is about the least productive way to save democracy, I made a list. Here are ten way that TV lawyers could better spend their time than whinging that Merrick Garland hasn’t indicted Donald Trump yet:

  1. Counter the propaganda effort to treat the Jan 6 defendants as martyrs.
  2. Explain how brown and black defendants actually faced worse conditions in the DC jail — and have complained with no results for years.
  3. Explain how DOJ has lost cases against white terrorists (including on sedition charges) in the past.
  4. Describe what really goes into an indictment, what kind of evidence is required, how long it takes, and the approvals that are needed to help people understand what to really expect.
  5. Emphasize the prosecutions/charges/investigations that have or are occurring.
  6. Describe the damage done by Trump’s pardons.
  7. Describe the way that even loyal Trumpsters will be and have been harmed as he corrupts the rule of law.
  8. Focus on the efforts of Chuck Grassley, Jim Jordan, James Comer, and Ron Johnson to undercut the investigation into Project Veritas’ suspected theft of Ashely Biden’s diary
  9. Explain how shoddy John Durham’s indictments are.
  10. Focus on the legal threats to democracy in the states.

Counter the propaganda effort to treat the Jan 6 defendants as martyrs

Whether or not Trump is ever charged with crimes related to January 6, the right wing noise machine has already kicked into gear trying to make it harder to prosecute other culprits for the January 6 riot. They’ve done so by falsely claiming:

  • The event was just a protest like the protests of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, a claim DOJ already debunked, in part by showing that the Kavanaugh protestors who briefly halted his confirmation hearing had been legally admitted.
  • They’re being treated more harshly than those who used violence at BLM or Portland protests. DOJ has submitted multiple filings showing that such claims are based on cherry-picked data that ignore the state charges many of these defendants face, the better quality of evidence against Jan 6ers (in part because they bragged about their actions on social media), and the more heinous goal of the protest involved.
  • Large numbers of non-violent January 6 are being held in pretrial detention. In reality, the overwhelming majority of those detained were charged either in a militia conspiracy or for assaulting cops. The exceptions to this rule are generally people (like Brandon Fellows or Thomas Robertson) who violated pretrial release conditions. Additionally, a good number of those accused of assaulting cops have been released.
  • January 6 defendants are subjected to especially onerous treatment in jail. Many of the conditions they’re complaining about are COVID restrictions imposed on all detainees (though often more restrictive for those who, like a lot of January 6 defendants, choose not to get vaccinated). And in an inspection triggered by January 6 defendant Christopher Worrell’s complaints, the Marshals determined that the other part of the DC jail violated Federal standards, though the part in which the Jan 6ers are held did not.
  • January 6 defendants are just patriots trying to save the country. In reality, of course, these people were attempting to invalidate the legal votes of 81 million Americans.

Again, all these claims are easily shown to be false. But far too many people with a platform are allowing them to go unanswered, instead complaining that DOJ is not doing enough to defend the rule of law. This sustained effort to turn the Jan 6ers into martyrs will achieve real hold unless it is systematically countered.

Explain how brown and black defendants actually faced worse conditions in the DC jail — and have complained with no results for years

As noted above, after Proud Boy assault defendant Worrell complained about the treatment he received in DC jail, the Marshals conducted a snap inspection. They discovered that the older part of the DC jail, one housing other detainees but not Jan 6ers, did not meet Federal standards and have started transferring those detainees to a prison in Pennsylvania.

What has gotten far less attention is that problems with the DC jail have been known for decades. Even though the problems occasionally have gotten passing attention, in general it has been allowed to remain in the inadequate condition the Marshals purportedly discovered anew because a white person complained.

This is an example, then, when a white person has claimed himself to be the victim when, in fact, it’s yet another example of how brown and black people have less access to justice than similarly situated white people.

This development deserves focused attention, most of all because it is unjust. But such attention will flip the script that Jan 6ers are using in an attempt to get sympathy from those who don’t understand the truth.

Explain how DOJ has lost cases against white terrorists (including on sedition charges) in the past

There’s a lot of impatience that DOJ hasn’t simply charged January 6 defendants with sedition or insurrection.

Thus far, DOJ has chosen to use a less inflammatory and more flexible statute, obstruction, instead. Obstruction comes with enhancements — for threatening violence or especially obstructive behavior — that DOJ has used to tailor sentencing recommendations.

The wisdom of this approach will soon be tested, as several DC Judges weigh challenges to the application of the statute. If the application is overturned, it’s unclear whether DOJ will charge something else, like sedition, instead.

But DOJ probably chose their current approach for very good reason: because sedition is harder to prove than obstruction, and in the past, white terrorists have successfully beaten such charges. That’s true for a lot of reasons, partly because the absence of a material support statute makes association with a right wing terrorist group harder to prosecute.

A cable personality whom I have great respect for — NBC’s Barb McQuade — knows this as well as anyone, as she was US Attorney when a sedition conspiracy case against the Hutaree collapsed. In that case, DOJ had trouble proving that defendants wanted to overthrow the US government, the kind of evidentiary claim that DOJ will face in January 6 trials, even as currently charged.

There are real challenges to prosecuting white terrorism. Some education on this point would alleviate some of the impatience about the charging decisions DOJ has made.

Describe what really goes into an indictment, what kind of evidence is required, how long it takes, and the approvals that are needed to help people understand what to really expect

In the period between the time Steve Bannon was referred to DOJ for contempt and the time he was charged, a number of commentators used the delay to explain what it takes to get an indictment (against a high profile political figure) that stands a chance of work; one good example is this column by Joyce Vance.

There have been and are numerous examples of similar delays — the Tom Barrack indictment and the Rudy Giuliani Special Master review are two — that offer similar teaching opportunities about the process and protections involved in indicting someone.

Due process takes time. And yet in an era of instant gratification, few people understand why that’s the case. If we’re going to defend due process even while trying to defend our democracy, more education about what due process involves would temper some of the panic.

Emphasize the prosecutions/charges/investigations against Trump that have or are occurring

Given the din calling for prosecution of Donald Trump, you’d think none of his associates had been prosecuted. As Teri Kanefield noted the other day, it would be far better if, instead of saying Trump had suffered no consequences for his actions, there was some focus instead on where he had.

Trump’s business is currently under indictment with multiple investigations into it ongoing. His charity was shut down and fined for self-dealing. Trump’s Inauguration Committee will be civilly tried for paying above market rates to Trump Organization.

His Campaign Manager, his National Security Advisor, his Coffee Boy, his Rat-Fucker, and one of his personal lawyers were found guilty of lying to cover up what really happened with Russia in 2016. Several of these men (as well as a top RNC donor) also admitted they were secretly working for frenemy countries, including (in Mike Flynn’s case), while receiving classified briefings as Trump’s top national security aide. Trump’s biggest campaign donor, Tom Barrack, is being prosecuted for using the access he purchased to Trump to do the bidding of the Emirates. Another of Trump’s personal lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, is under investigation for the same crime, secretly working for another country while claiming to represent the interests of the President of the United States.

The sheer scale of this is especially breathtaking when you consider the projection the GOP has — successfully — focused on Hunter Biden for similar crimes. Even with years of effort and help from Russia, the GOP has not yet been able to prove that the President’s son’s influence peddling or potential tax accounting violated the law. Yet the GOP continues to focus on him relentlessly, even as the long list of Republicans who admit to the same crime continues to grow.

Trump has already proven to be the most corrupt president in some time, possibly ever. And instead of relentless messaging about that, Democrats are complaining about Merrick Garland.

Describe the damage done by Trump’s pardons

One reason why it’s hard to focus on all those criminal prosecutions is because Trump pardoned his way out of it. With the exception of Michael Cohen and Rick Gates, all the people who lied to cover up his Russian ties were pardoned, as was Steve Bannon and others who personally benefitted Trump.

Perhaps because these pardons happened in the wake of January 6, Trump avoided some of the shame he might otherwise have experienced for these pardons. But for several reasons, there should be renewed attention to them.

That’s true, for starters, because Trump’s pardons put the entire country at risk. By pardoning Eddie Gallagher for war crimes, for example, the US risks being treated as a human rights abuser by international bodies. The military faces additional disciplinary challenges. And those who cooperated against Gallagher effectively paid a real cost for cooperating against him only to see him escape consequences.

Paul Manafort’s pardon is another one that deserves renewed attention. That’s true not just because the pardon ended up halting the forfeiture that otherwise would have paid for the Mueller investigation, the cost of which right wingers claimed to care about. It’s true because Trump has basically dismissed the import of industrial scale tax cheating (even while right wingers insinuate that Hunter Biden might have made one error on his taxes). And finally, it’s true because Trump made an affirmative choice that a guy who facilitated Russia’s effort to undermine democracy in 2016, sharing information directly with someone deemed to be a Russian spy, should not be punished for his actions.

Finally, there should be renewed attention on what Trump got for his pardons. Did Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn pay central roles in January 6 in exchange for a pardon?

The US needs some means to prohibit such self-serving pardons like Trump pursued. But in the meantime, there needs to be some effort to shame Trump for relying on such bribes to stay out of prison himself.

Describe the way that even loyal Trumpsters will be and have been harmed as he corrupts the rule of law

Donald Trump pardoned Steve Bannon for defrauding a bunch of Trump loyalists. According to very recent reporting, Sidney Powell is under investigation (and being abandoned by her former allies) on suspicion she defrauded the thousands of Trump supporters who sent money to support her election conspiracy theories.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party continues to dump money into protecting Trump for his own crimes, even as Republicans lose races that could have benefitted from the money.

However, some RNC members and donors accused the party of running afoul of its own neutrality rules and misplacing its priorities. Some of these same officials who spoke to CNN also questioned why the party would foot the legal bills of a self-professed billionaire who was sitting on a $102 million war chest as recently as July and has previously used his various political committees to cover legal costs. According to FEC filings from August, the former President’s Make America Great Again committee has paid Jones Day more than $37,000 since the beginning of the year, while his Make America Great

Again super PAC has paid a combined $7.8 million to attorneys handling his lawsuits related to the 2020 election.

“This is not normal. Nothing about this is normal, especially since he’s not only a former President but a billionaire,” said a former top RNC official.

“What does any of this have to do with assisting Republicans in 2022 or preparing for the 2024 primary?” the official added.

Bill Palatucci, a national committeeman from New Jersey, said the fact that the RNC made the payments to Trump’s attorneys in October was particularly frustrating given his own plea to party officials that same month for additional resources as the New Jersey GOP sought to push Republican Jack Ciattarelli over the finish line in his challenge to incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.

“We sure as heck could have used $121,000,” Palatucci told CNN.

Loyal Trumpsters are the victim of one after another grift, and that should be emphasized to make it clear who is really taking advantage of them.

And one after another former Trump loyalist get themselves in their own legal trouble. One of the messages Michael Cohen tried to share in his testimony before going to prison was that “if [other Republicans] follow blindly, like I have,” they will end up like he did, going to prison. Hundreds of January 6 defendants — some of whom imagined they, too, might benefit from Trump’s clemency (they still might, but they’ll have to wait) — are learning Cohen’s lesson the hard way.

Kleptocracy only benefits those at the top. And yet Trump’s supporters continue to aggressively pursue policies that will make the US more of a kleptocracy.

It’s fairly easy to demonstrate the damage degrading rule of law in exchange for a kleptocracy is. Except average people aren’t going to understand that unless high profile experts make that case.

Focus on the efforts of Chuck Grassley, Jim Jordan, James Comer, and Ron Johnson to undercut the investigation into Project Veritas’ suspected theft of Ashely Biden’s diary

The Project Veritas scandal remains obscure and may never amount to charges against PV itself. Yet even as it has become clear that DOJ is investigating theft, key Republicans Chuck Grassley, Jim Jordan, James Comer, and Ron Johnson are trying to shut down the investigation into that theft. Chuck Grassley’s efforts to do so are particularly noxious given that a long-term staffer of his, Barbara Ledeen, is a sometime co-conspirator of Project Veritas.

Republicans have undermined legitimate investigations into Trump, over and over, with little pushback from the press. This is an example where it would seem especially easy to inflict a political cost (especially since Grassley is up for re-election next year).

It would be far more useful, in defending rule of law, to impose political costs on undermining the investigations that commentators are demanding from DOJ than it is to complain (incorrectly) that such investigations aren’t happening. Merrick Garland (however imperfect) is not the enemy of rule of law here, Jim Jordan is.

Explain how shoddy John Durham’s indictments are

One of the complaints that David Rothkopf made in the column that kicked off my latest bout of impatience with the hand-wringing about Garland complained that Garland “is letting” Durham charge those who raise concerns about Trump’s ties to Russia, even while (Rothkopf assumes) ignoring Trump’s own efforts to obstruct the investigation.

We have seen that Garland is letting the highly politicized investigation of special prosecutor John Durham into the conduct of the Trump-Russia investigation continue (by continuing its funding). We therefore have the real prospect that those who sought to look into the Trump-Russia ties that both Mueller and Congressional investigations have demonstrated were real, unprecedented and dangerous might be prosecuted while those who actively sought the help of a foreign enemy to win an election will not be.

As I have noted, both of Durham’s indictments have been shoddy work, hanging charges on Twitter rants and other hearsay evidence.

And while there was some worthwhile criticism of the Michael Sussmann indictment (perhaps because he’s well-connected in DC), Democrats seem to take Durham’s word that Igor Danchenko — and not Christopher Steele or Russian disinformation — is responsible for the flaws in the dossier. Perhaps as a result, the legal experts who could point out how ridiculous it is to rely on a Twitter feed for a key factual claim have remained silent.

With such silence, it is not (just) Garland who “is letting [Duram’s] highly politicized investigation” continue unchecked, but also the experts whose criticism could do something to rein him in.

If the investigation is politicized — and it is — then Durham is a far more appropriate target than Garland.

Focus on the legal threats to democracy in the states

There has, admittedly, been deserved focus on the ways Republicans are chipping away at democratic representation in the states.

But that is where the battle for democracy is being fought. And in most of the states where Trump attempted to undermine the 2020 election, there are follow-on legal issues, whether it’s the investigation into the suspected voting machine theft in Colorado (including into a former campaign manager for Lauren Boebert), a seemingly related investigation in Ohio, or the effort to criminalize efforts to ease voting by seniors during the pandemic in Wisconsin.

Republicans are trying to criminalize democracy. That makes it all the more important to ensure that the call for rule of law remains laser focused on the criminal efforts to cheat to win, if for no other reason than to shame those involved.

The threat to democracy is undoubtedly grave. Republicans are deploying their considerable propaganda effort into legitimizing that attack on democracy (even while suggesting Biden has committed the kind of graft that Trump engaged in non-stop, classic projection).

In the face of that unrelenting effort, expert commentators who support democracy have a choice: They can defend the rule of law and shame those who have denigrated it, or they can spend their time complaining about the guy trying, however imperfectly, to defend it himself. The latter will make Garland less able to do his job, the former will help him do whatever he is willing and able to do.

Update: Added “suspected” to the PV bullet.

False Identifications and Two Delayed Arrests: Jeremy Baouche and Mark Mazza

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The pace of the January 6 arrests finally slowed considerably, presumably as DOJ finishes working through the arrests of trespassers whose phone they need for evidence against more serious defendants.

But two recent arrests, those of Jeremy Baouche and Mark Mazza, show that DOJ is also only getting around to suspects of more interest, but about whom the investigation faced early hiccups.

Jeremy Baouche

The FBI first got Jeremy Baouche’s name when several people falsely IDed him in this BOLO poster in mid-January, as well as a tip that may or may not have been a response to the poster that revealed that he worked at General Dynamics Electric Boat. Apparently based off those tips, the FBI attempted to interview him on January 20, but once he heard the FBI agents want to talk about January 6, he (wisely) refused to say anything without an attorney.

But as a result of those investigative steps into multiple tips misidentifying Baouche, the government got information from Baouche’s employer — through whom he has a Secret security clearance — showing him conducting alarming searches on his work computer in the weeks leading up to the riot.

On January 22, 2021,JEREMY K BAOUCHE’s employer, Electric Boat (a Department of Defense Contractor), voluntarily provided TFO Carter with an internet search history from BAOUCHE’s work computer from December 1, 2020, until January 20, 2021. They also provided the security banner that all employees see when they use a computer at Electric Boat that states it is subject to search by the employer. In BAOUCHE’s search history there were searches on topics including the inauguration, the U.S. Capitol building layout, guns, rifle scopes, lasers, Trump protests, FBI Capitol, and searches for jobs in the western U.S. It should be noted that BAOUCHE has a secret security clearance as part of his employment.

The affidavit doesn’t say whether the inquiries by the FBI led Electric Boat to look more closely and offer this up or whether the FBI asked for it.

At some point, the FBI obtained the Google GeoFence location for Baouche, showing his movements outside and then inside the building.

That alerted the FBI which videos to check, and from that, they found a picture of Baouche inside the Capitol that matched what he was wearing in a picture — they include this without explanation — “in a social media post standing with Roger Stone on January 5, 2021.”

On March 1, Grayson Sherrill, was arrested (he was identified by his family members). He was one of the guys shown in the BOLO mistakenly identified as Baouche. On March 16, Elliot Bishai, the guy confused with Baouche, was arrested. But by that point, the FBI had already confirmed that Baouche had also attended the riot, and so, after what started as misidentifications, he would end up being arrested himself.

On April 30, one of Baouche’s co-workers not only identified him from a surveillance video still showing him, but also described that he always cuffs his pants. One of the FBI agents who had tried to interview Baouche had noted that his pants were cuffed. The same witness described that Baouche had lied about why he took off from work on January 5 and 6, claiming he was going fishing with his grandfather in January.

W-2 then said he recalled BAOUCHE taking off January 5, 2021 and January 6, 2021. W-2 said that BAOUCHE told him he was going fishing with his grandfather. W-2 said he thought this was strange to go fishing with a grandfather in January, but then thought maybe it was ice fishing.

In August, FBI obtained the full report from the warrant on Baouche’s Google account. The arrest affidavit describes evidence corroborating that Baouche traveled to DC.

On approximately August 4, 2021, TFO Banwell completed a review of the Cellbrite report from the BAOUCHE Google search warrant which was submitted in this investigation. TFO Banwell reviewed the material provided from Google from November 2020 until June 2021.

Information obtained through Google on BAOUCHE’S account includes videos that appear to be taken from his phone from inside and outside of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and photos of him with location data in Washington, D.C. on January 5, 2021. Also found was an email confirmation of a motel reservation in the name of JEREMY BAOUCHE for the Red Roof Inn Plus, in Washington, D.C. with check in on January 5, 2021 and check out on January 6, 2021. Furthert [sic] investigation revealed that BAOUCHE purchased a Pro-megaphone rechargeable battery and Pyle megaphone 50-watt siren bullhorn speaker with detachable microphone and lightweight strap sometime between November 22, 2020 and December 26, 2020,. The description matches the bullhorn BAOUCHE was seen carrying inside the Capitol.

But the arrest affidavit doesn’t explain whether Baouche conducted similarly alarming searches from his own computer.

It’s unclear whether there’s more to Baouche’s searches, his bullhorn purchase by Christmas, the two people who accompanied him to the riot, or his picture with Roger Stone. But what started as a mistake turned ultimately led to his arrest.

Mark Mazza

The FBI first identified Mazza on January 28 after the ATF alerted them that a gun that had been seized when it fell out of the waistband of a person who was fighting with cops on January 6 had been reported stolen by Mazza.

Mazza had claimed that the gun was stolen from a rental car in the parking lot of the Hard Rock Casino in Cincinnati sometime on January 6, after which, Mazza falsely told local cops, he returned to his home Indiana. But a location warrant obtained on Mazza’s phone in February showed that he had in fact driven through Ohio to DC for the riot. And a public review of Mazza’s Twitter account showed that he had replied to Don Jr and others linking a video from the riot.

A search warrant served on Twitter (the arrest affidavit doesn’t reveal its date) yielded selfies from the riot, as well.

On March 25, the FBI interviewed Mazza on his front porch in Shelbyville, IN. He admitted he had been at the riot and provided some details loosely resembling what video analysis would later show. But he claimed he had lost the gun while in the Lower West Tunnel, where video evidence placed him after the gun had already seized by the cop. And he denied assaulting any cop, even though video evidence showed someone believed to be him fighting with cops, armed with a baton. He also suggested that had he seen Nancy Pelosi that day he might have done something that would have gotten him arrested a lot quicker.

MAZZA was asked “Is there anything you told us that you want to change or add to?” MAZZA replied “It was cold as hell that day, that whole three days. … never did get to talk to Nancy … I thought Nan and I would hit it off.” And “I was glad I didn’t because you’d be here for another reason and I told my kids that if they show up, I’m surrendering, nope, they can have me, because I may go down as a hero.” MAZZA further stated that, “If you do have to come back and take me, put me in a fed. … I just want three squares and a nice clean room, someone takes care of my health care and I’m good.”

The arrest affidavit makes clear that when Mazza first entered the Tunnel on January 6, he wore a scarf that obscured his face.

And the affidavit suggests that he later used his baton to protect Michael Fanone and another officer after they got dragged into the crowd.

But it still took almost eight months after that interview before the FBI arrested Mazza, and as the affidavit notes, they’re still not sure whether he was the guy who was fighting with a cop when the gun fell out of the waistband.

It’s an example of something I’ve written about before: one reason so many Jan 6ers are being prosecuted for assault is because there’s video evidence. But in the case of the person who was fighting with a cop when Mazza’s gun dropped from that person’s waistband, there appears to be no official video, and the cop in questioned IDed someone else as his assailant. So thus far, at least, Mazza wasn’t charged for that assault.

Steve Bannon Was Made to Testify, Truthfully, Once

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Chuck Rosenberg has an interesting prosecutor’s analysis arguing — based on Steve Bannon’s indictment for fraud — that Bannon can never be made to testify truthfully, and so DOJ should be considering criminal contempt to send a message.

Recall, in August 2020, federal prosecutors in Manhattan indicted Bannon and others for “defraud[ing] hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction,” according to a Justice Department press release. As a legal matter, that meant that a grand jury found probable cause to believe that several defendants – including Bannon – committed an egregious fraud. Before Bannon could be tried on those felony charges, former President Trump pardoned him.

It makes sense for Justice Department prosecutors to ask whether Bannon – accused of defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors – would tell the truth about the January 6 insurrection. And because Bannon has demonstrated his disdain for the work of the select committee, helped spread election misinformation and fanned the flames ahead of the insurrection, it seems that he might be an unwilling witness and an untruthful witness. In that case, pressuring Bannon to testify seems pointless.

The notion of letting someone off the subpoena hook because they are unwilling to testify, or because they are untruthful, or both, is distasteful. Accountability matters, before Congress and in the criminal justice system. We should expect people to come forward and tell Congress what they know, to help better understand the events leading up to that awful day and to ensure that something like that never happens again.

But some people are more interested in staging insurrections and discrediting valid elections than they are in speaking the truth. Some people might use a congressional forum not to help heal the nation, but to further sow division. In that case, pursuing civil contempt against Bannon to pressure him to testify makes little sense. But charging him with criminal contempt – punishing his defiance – sends the right message to him and others.

I’m in no position to question Rosenberg’s wisdom speaking as a prosecutor.

But the public record suggests that Bannon can be coerced to testify in damning ways. That’s what happened with the Mueller investigation, possibly assisted with Bannon’s staged testimony to the House Intelligence Committee.

Steve Bannon is known to have testified in various forms at least nine times (this post analyzes Bannon’s second Mueller interview, this post describes how he read from a White House script at his second HPSCI interview, this post describes how he inched closer to the truth, and this post includes links and analysis on the Mueller interviews liberated by BuzzFeed).

  1. January 16, 2018: Bannon did an interview with the House Intelligence Committee at which he refused to testify about the Transition and Administration and falsely claimed the campaign would have all relevant emails on Russian interference, which served to cover-up damning emails he had with Roger Stone.
  2. February 12, 2018: Bannon’s first Mueller interview largely covered obstruction; as with the HPSCI interview days later and the SSCI interview nine months later, Bannon hid his involvement in sanctions discussions during the transition.
  3. February 14, 2018: Bannon’s second Mueller interview finished obstruction topics and covered campaign related events and included some breathtaking lies about his role and knowledge of optimizing the hacked releases.
  4. February 15, 2018: After Devin Nunes shared the transcript of his first interview with the White House, Bannon did another HPSCI interview and largely read from a pre-arranged script from the White House designed to hide (among other things) his involvement in discussions about sanctions before Mike Flynn attempted to undermine Obama’s sanctions on Russia.
  5. October 26, 2018: After Mueller obtained communications proving a number of Bannon’s lies in the earlier interviews, he inched closer to the truth on obstruction and the WikiLeaks releases (including about a December 2016 meeting between Roger Stone and Trump that Trump wanted Bannon to attend as a witness), though still told incredible stories about his ties to Russia during the transition.
  6. November 19, 2018: In an appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee, he told suspected lies that the committee referred for prosecution. [I’ve excerpted the parts of his testimony quoted in the SSCI Report here.]
  7. January 19, 2019: The content of a January 19, 2019 interview and grand jury appearance (one that took place after Mueller obtained Bannon’s HPSCI transcripts) remains entirely sealed, but he was forced to adhere to some of it at Roger Stone’s trial and Stone has recently accused Bannon of betrayal in this appearance.
  8. Unknown date (possibly July 26, 2019): A trial prep interview with DC’s AUSAs at which Bannon tried to back off his grand jury testimony.
  9. November 8, 2019: After prosecutors forced him to match his grand jury testimony, Bannon testified to speaking to Stone about the hacked emails both before and after he joined the Trump campaign.

Somehow, Mueller’s attorneys were able to get Bannon to be more truthful in that grand jury appearance, and then with it, they forced him to adhere to his more damning testimony at Roger Stone’s trial. But Stone’s continued attacks on Bannon suggest Bannon’s grand jury testimony extended beyond his trial testimony.

My guess is that Mueller’s team got Bannon to tell something approximating the truth on some topics via a range of tactics. First, Bannon originally lied about when he used his personal email on the campaign; after Mueller obtained some damning emails with Roger Stone from that email, Bannon conceded more of the truth. Additionally, Bannon clearly was playing different audiences for different purposes (for example, Republicans ensured that the entirety of the HPSCI investigation served to get Trump flunkies to tell false cover stories, and as noted, Bannon literally read from a White House issued script in his second appearance). But that likely served to alert prosecutors to what Bannon was trying to hide (and in the case of Bannon’s efforts to hide his knowledge of discussion of sanctions during the transition, Mueller actually got somewhat useful testimony from Flynn). Finally, it seems likely that prosecutors used earlier lies to coerce Bannon to tell the truth later in their investigation.

To be clear, the January 6 Select Committee doesn’t have the time to coerce some truths out of Steve Bannon, though it’s possible that DOJ could use any testimony he did offer as Mueller’s team seems to have done during their investigation, as a means to corner him about prior lies.

In any case, tough his testimony helped convict Roger Stone (after which Trump pardoned the rat-fucker), whatever truths Bannon told during the Mueller investigation were useless. The truthful bits remained sealed in an unreleased 302 and grand jury testimony, of no use to the public.

Still, the overriding lesson from Bannon’s book of laughter and forgetting is that his past lies and changing loyalties can be exploited, if you have the time to really work on him.