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The Missing Detail about Encryption in the Pavel Durov Investigation

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Yesterday, France charged Pavel Durov and set €5 million bail for the Telegram founder. The public release regarding the charges provides scant new detail from what prosecutors released when he was first arrested.

For example, the new release confirms that a preliminary inquiry started in February, before the formal investigation was started on July 8. That’s consistent with a Politico report that France first issued arrest warrants for Pavel and his brother, Nikolai, subsequent to an investigation into someone using Telegram to engage in child sexual abuse, including rape.

Warrants for Pavel and his brother Nikolai, the platform’s co-founder, were issued on March 25 over charges including “complicity in possessing, distributing, offering or making available pornographic images of minors, in an organized group.” French media had previously reported the probe was opened in July.

The warrants were issued after an undercover investigation into Telegram led by the cybercrime branch of the Paris prosecutor’s office, during which a suspect discussed luring underaged girls into sending “self-produced child pornography,” and then threatening to release it on social media.

The suspect also told the investigators he had raped a young child, according to the document. Telegram did not respond to the French authorities’ request to identify the suspect.

The list of charges in the release yesterday does not exactly match those released last week. The lead charge, “web-mastering an online platform in order to enable an illegal transaction in organized group,” is further described as a crime that carries a 10-year sentence and/or a €500,000 fine. Given how particular French code is about punishment, one might be able to hone in what lead crime that language is pursuing (it seems more common for five year sentences to match a €150,000 fine).

In addition to listing Telegram’s refusal to cooperate with law enforcement requests second among suspected crimes, as the original release did, yesterday’s release has that bolded below, with a description of how other authorities, including Belgium, are having the same problem. This investigation seems to primarily stem from the way Telegram has allowed crimes to flourish on the platform, and as such, most of the rest of the charges may reflect efforts to further criminalize Durov’s choice to do nothing about crimes that rely on Telegram.

There are other changes between the initial release and yesterday’s, which may be of little or no import or may reflect what prosecutors have learned since they arrested Durov. For example, possessing (as distinct from disseminating) CSAM images has been dropped; that’s the kind of change that might reflect the server configuration Telegram uses, and whether any Telegram server hosts CSAM material within France.

Criminal association has now been included in the general list, rather than as a separate bullet point. Money laundering, however, has not. One unanswered question is whether Durov was more directly involved in money laundering than the other crimes, in which case prosecutors might show that he had a personal pecuniary incentive to let all the other crime flourish on Telegram.

In that same general list, the dissemination of hacking tools was moved up to first, from fourth.

But one of three encryption-related crimes, “Importing a cryptology tool ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration,” was dropped. Again, that could reflect new information about server locations.

It’s the commentary regarding the (now two) encryption-related crimes that most befuddles me. The American press, at least, continues to discuss this as if this is a crime about using encryption.

Some online speech experts and privacy advocates agreed that France’s indictment of Durov raises concerns for online freedoms, pointing in particular to charges relating to Telegram’s use of cryptography, which is also employed by Apple’s iMessage, Meta’s WhatsApp and Signal.

“French law enforcement has long hated encryption,” said David Kaye, a professor at University of California, Irvine School of Law and former U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression. “This seems like a potential avenue for them to blame what happens on Telegram at least in part on encryption, when the truth is that the other counts suggest that Telegram’s noncooperation with judicial orders is the real problem.”

Stamos agreed the charges related to cryptography are “concerning,” because “that seems to apply even to platforms that are actively working to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse material.” He said that while Telegram has at times banned groups and taken down content in response to law enforcement, its refusal to share data with investigators sets it apart from most other major tech companies.

As far as I understand it, the law in question is one passed in 2004 that required affirmative registration of encryption. Signal, easily the most protective encrypted messaging app, did register under this law when it first applied to offer Signal in French app stores. So, no, they’re not going to be prosecuted under that law, because they’re following the law.

And therein lies the question I keep asking but people are ignoring: whether this law works like the affirmative registration requirements in the US for acting as a foreign agent. The US uses 18 USC 951, for example, to prosecute people who are secretly doing things for a foreign government — such as the targeting for which Maria Butina was prosecuted — without having to prove they were affirmatively spying. DOJ didn’t have to prove that Butina (speaking purely hypothetically here) honey trapped Patrick Byrne as part of a Russian effort to recruit nutballs with an investment in cryptocurrency; they could instead prove merely that she was taking orders from a government official (in this case, Alexandr Torshin), without alerting DOJ to that fact. The obligation to register provides a law enforcement tool that can be used when an underlying crime — like spying — is far more difficult to prove, or would harm counterintelligence if one tried.

For example, 18 USC 951 was used in the failed prosecution of Mike Flynn and his business partner, Bijan Kian. it wasn’t until the eve of the Kian’s trial that DOJ revealed the existence of, but not the details about, far more extensive communications pertaining to Flynn and the Turks (that revelation did not explain whether these were communications between Flynn and the Turks, and/or communications the Turks had about Flynn) than had previously been revealed.

I don’t know if this is how France uses this law, or if they may be doing here. What I’m saying is that the crime is failing an affirmative obligation to register, a law that has not prevented Telegram’s counterparts from operating lawfully in France.

Let me extend the analogy to a case where we know Telegram was used to facilitate crime (though not one of the crimes in which Durov has been charged with complicity).

As I laid out here, we know that after January 6, the FBI discovered that the Proud Boys were using unencrypted Telegram group chats to organize in advance of the insurrection. But once it obtained and exploited Enrique Tarrio’s phone, which took over a year to do, the FBI also discovered that Tarrio was using Telegram (in addition to Google Voice chat and iMessage) to communicate with a DC intelligence cop, Shane Lamond. Those encrypted communications will be key evidence in Lamond’s trial in October, but the use of Telegram, whether encrypted or not, was not a crime and not charged as one.

Those Telegram communications include:

  • The message where Lamond was added to an unencrypted Proud Boys chat (meaning, of course, that a cop with close ties to the FBI did know how the Proud Boys were using Telegram long before January 6, and indeed Tarrio tried to use his comms with Lamond as an affirmative defense to the sedition charges against him).
  • Private unencrypted Telegram messages that at least started as Lamond’s effort to learn what the Proud Boys were doing ahead of time, and so fell squarely within Lamond’s job as an intelligence officer, but which — after the election — started to include advice about how to avoid law enforcement scrutiny.
  • Starting after the December 12, 2020 burning of a DC Church’s BLM flag, secret, encrypted Telegram messages about Tarrio’s role in that act and the investigation into him for it; those encrypted communications would later include discussion of the planning and aftermath of January 6.
  • Telegram calls about the investigation that could not be reconstructed (though some conducted with his replacement phone may have been).
  • Starting on December 22, encrypted Telegram messages with the auto-delete set; the FBI was able to reconstruct some, but not all, of these. Among those they weren’t able to reconstruct, a January 4, 2021 encrypted text successfully destroyed must have alerted Tarrio that DC had obtained a warrant for his arrest, because Tarrio immediately told some girlfriends and Jacob Engels via unencrypted Telegram texts, as well as some Proud Boy Telegram group chats, that about the arrest warrant. The men appear not to have tried to delete Tarrio’s self-exonerating encrypted Telegram text, “I could have stopped this thing.” But they did resume destroying encrypted Telegram messages as the investigation into the Proud Boys progressed.

That use of Telegram, whether unencrypted, encrypted, and/or self-deleting, is not illegal in the US. Rather than busting Lamond for that, prosecutors charged him for lying about the earlier communications, for obstructing the investigation into burning the BLM flag. There’s no charge related to Lamond’s warnings about January 6, and indeed, the reconstruction or not of later texts between the men is not included in the trial exhibit. But more of the January 6 texts were successfully destroyed.

Now consider the significance of a case where cops knew a militia group were using Telegram’s unencrypted features, ones the FBI could have hacked, but that collusion between the militia and law enforcement was hidden via the use of Telegram’s encryption. The FBI wasn’t looking in any case, but even if they had been, it is at least conceivable where a seditionist like Tarrio used better operational security and didn’t immediately undercut the value of using encryption by blabbing to others, but that the encryption prevented the FBI from understanding the extent that the cops were helping the seditionists.

The use of Telegram is not illegal in the US. As I understand it, the use of it is not being charged in France.

But in France, the requirement to pre-register provides a tool prosecutors might choose to use if the use of encryption ends up playing a detrimental role in crimes in the country, as Telegram notoriously has.

I have no idea whether that’s how it’s being used here.

But it is at least possible that Durov is being charged under these two encryption crimes because criminal (or intelligence) investigations in France discovered, via exploiting suspects’ phones or possibly even with the help of a cooperating witness, that Telegram encrypted chats played a key role in one or another particular plot. That could have been nothing more than the child sexual abuse whence this investigation started. Or it could be something that raised the stakes for France, such as sabotage attempted by a foreign power.

Pavel Durov is being charged because communications to which Telegram had ready access were used to commit a number of crimes (but not, notably, hate crimes). Far too many outlets are describing these crimes as pertaining to encryption; it may not be. It pertains to the commission of crimes, using Telegram, including a great number that Telegram allegedly had means to learn about but, by refusing law enforcement process, sustained deniability.

It appears that he is also being charged because he made it possible to further protect communications, including from Telegram engineers, without following French registration laws before he did that. That is, France appears to be charging Durov not because he knows what the encryption is serving to hide, but by dint of his failure to adhere to French registration requirements, his plausible deniability regarding encryption doesn’t help him dodge criminal liability.

I may be misunderstand the law — I’m still looking for French sources to explain this, because American ones are not citing French lawyers — but if people are writing about the role of encryption in this case, the difference between “providing” encryption and “providing it without registration” is key.

Update: Since we’re focused on Telegram’s non-cooperation with law enforcement, this exhibit list for Lamond’s trial shows how they have to authenticate those comms instead: Through a variety of forensic reports, and then via summary chart.

“They Spoke Often:” It Took the Fash-Friendly FBI Over Two Months to Document the Lies Their Informant, Joe Biggs, Told them

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The most telling detail released in DOJ’s sentencing package for Joe Biggs is this — the first 302 from after he led an attack on the nation’s Capitol, memorializing an interview done on January 8, one day after the first Proud Boy, Nicholas Ochs, was arrested.

DOJ included it — and excerpts from a second recorded interview from January 18 — to substantiate a 2-point obstruction enhancement to his sentence.

Biggs denied being with anyone he knew while he was inside the Capitol. Id. at 19:50 et. seq. (Q: “were you with anybody?” A: “No. I was lost. Like I didn’t know where to fucking go. I was by myself and I was scared shitless.”).

Biggs was asked again later in the interview whether there was anyone else with him. Biggs again claimed that he was separated and didn’t see anyone else he knew until after he left the Capitol. Id. at 25:45 et. seq. (Q: “Was there anyone else in your group that was in the Capitol?” A: [Pause] “Um, I mean, there had to have been.” Q: “You said you got separated, right?” A: “Yeah. I got separated. I didn’t see people until afterwards. I finally found people scraggling [sic] around running, you know, looking for people like me.”)

After initially denying breaking anything, Biggs was asked again whether there was anything else that was “worth sharing.” Twenty-four minutes into the interview, Biggs acknowledged “shaking” a black metal fence, but he claimed that he was only doing it because people were getting “pinned [] against it.” Id. at 24:25 et. seq. (Biggs: “I was shaking [the fence] at one point to get it loose so people could move and wouldn’t get pinned up against it” Biggs: “There was one guy who was pinned up against the fence like literally screaming; the pole was dug into his belly, and there was so much force from all the people around him, he couldn’t even breath . . . I thought that dude was gonna get hurt bad.”)

The sentencing memo suggests that Biggs victimized the FBI with these lies.

But there’s a backstory, one Biggs himself told over two years ago, in a filing submitted on March 29, 2021, in a bid to stay out of pre-trial detention.

As Biggs told the story then — two days before this 302 was finalized — Biggs would routinely reach out to cops before the Proud Boys would stage an operation, much as Enrique Tarrio did with Shane LaMond, a DC cop now being prosecuted for giving Tarrio inside tips about the investigation into him.

The same year, 2018, after the move to Florida, Biggs became active as an organizer, event planner and thought leader in the Proud Boys. He used his platform as a radio and social media personality to promote Proud Boy events and ideas. In particular, he personally planned two major events: rallies in Portland, Oregon in both 2019 and 2020 designed as counterdemonstrations against Antifa, which had been active in and around Portland for over two decades. See generally, MARK BRAY, ANTIFA: THE ANTI-FACIST HANDBOOK (August 2017) (history of Antifa networks in the Americas and Europe by social historian and Dartmouth College lecturer); L. Magelson, “Letter from Portland: In the Streets with Anitfa,” The New Yorker (Nov. 2, 2020 issue). As part of the planning, Biggs would regularly speak with by phone and in person to both local and federal law enforcement personnel stationed in Portland, including the FBI’s Portland Field Office. These talks were intended both to inform law enforcement about Proud Boy activities in Portland on a courtesy basis but also to ask for advice on planned marches or demonstrations, i.e., what march routes to take on Portland streets, where to go, where not to go. Similar conversations were held regularly with local police and FBI personnel for less major events in other cities.

As Biggs described it, rather than cracking down on the right wing group that would go on to lead an attack on the Capitol, the cops could give him “cautionary” phone calls.

By late 2018, Biggs also started to get “cautionary” phone calls from FBI agents located in Jacksonville and Daytona Beach inquiring about what Biggs meant by something politically or culturally provocative he had said on the air or on social media concerning a national issue, political parties, the Proud Boys, Antifa or other groups. Biggs regularly satisfied FBI personnel with his answers. He also stayed in touch with a number of FBI agents in and out of Florida.

As Biggs described it, he “regularly satisfied FBI personnel” with his explanations for stoking violence.

He did so even though — as his sentencing memo describes — he was openly calling for violence and attacks on the government.

Perhaps more than any other defendant, Biggs promoted the use of force against the government. Beginning in the days after the election, Biggs declared that the country could face “civil war” because the “left” was “radicalizing people by stealing th[e] election.” Ex. 603-1 and 2. Biggs told his followers that it was “time for fucking War if they steal this shit.” Ex. 603-4. Biggs steadily escalated his calls for political violence. During an episode of the “Warboys” podcast with Tarrio and Nordean in late November, Biggs demonized the “party” that was telling the public to accept the result of the election. Biggs closed his diatribe by saying that “they are evil scum and they all deserve to die a traitor’s death.” Biggs Ex. 1. Biggs’s comment prompted Nordean to calmly lean toward his microphone and say, “the day of the rope.” Id.

Biggs’s calls for political violence escalated throughout the fall, and he consistently called for war while characterizing his enemies (which included government actors such as the police) as traitors. The critical issue to Biggs was the stolen election, and he tied his calls to violence to the election. For example, in late November, in a post on his social media, Biggs warned officers in Michigan (a state won by Biden) that if they stopped electors from casting a vote for Trump, the people would “treat your thin[] blue line like we do antifa . . . get in our way and get walked over.” Ex. 603-33. Biggs declared that the officers would be “tried for treason” and that “[w]e aren[‘]t here to play games. This is war.” Id.

In fact, as Biggs further described it back in March 2021, long after he had become a key figure staging violent confrontations, five months before leading an attack on the peaceful transfer of power, an FBI Agent in Daytona Beach recruited Biggs to be an informant targeting Antifa.

In late July 2020, an FBI Special Agent out of the Daytona Beach area telephoned Biggs and asked Biggs to meet with him and another FBI agent at a local restaurant. Biggs agreed. Biggs learned after he travelled to the restaurant that the purpose of the meeting was to determine if Biggs could share information about Antifa networks operating in Florida and elsewhere. They wanted to know what Biggs was “seeing on the ground.” Biggs did have information about Antifa in Florida and Antifa networks in other parts of the United States. He agreed to share the information. The three met for approximately two hours. After the meeting, Biggs stayed in touch with the agent who had called him originally to set up the meeting. He answered follow-up questions in a series of several phone calls over the next few weeks. They spoke often.

So during the entire period when Biggs and his buddies were planning an attack on the nation’s Capitol, during the entire fall period when (prosecutors describe) Biggs was openly talking about attacking the government, he and this FBI agent?

“They spoke often.”

The FBI claims it had no notice of the terrorist attack on the nation’s Capitol, not even with an FBI agent “speaking often” with one of its leaders and an DC intelligence cop speaking often with the other one.

So now, DOJ wants to hold Joe Biggs accountable for the lies he told to the FBI agent who thought a key leader of the Proud Boys would make an appropriate informant targeting Antifa. But thus far, his handler has not been held accountable for missing the planning of a terrorist attack in DC when while speaking “often” with one of its key leaders.

Notably, the Daytona FBI office is the same one where, after fake whistleblower Stephen Friend refused to participate in a SWAT arrest of a Three Percenter known to own an assault rifle, his supervisor said “he wished I just ‘called in sick’ for this warrant,” before taking disciplinary action against him (though Friend didn’t start in Daytona Beach until after Biggs had already been arrested).

The second of these interviews (but not the first) interview was mentioned in Biggs’ arrest affidavit. It’s possible that investigating agents didn’t even know about what occurred in the first one.

Indeed, it’s really hard to credit the reliability of a 302 written two days after Biggs described his chummy relationship but not this interview in an attempt to stay out of jail.

This is why the FBI didn’t warn against January 6. Because these terrorists were the FBI’s people.

DOJ Arrests Enrique Tarrio’s Cop Buddy, Shane Lamond

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On Friday, DOJ arrested the DC police lieutenant, Shane Lamond, whom Enrique Tarrio repeatedly used during trial in an attempt to claim he had cooperated with police and therefore hadn’t planned a seditious attack on the Capitol.

The indictment charges Lamond with one count of obstructing the investigation into the Proud Boys’ burning of the Black Lives Matter flag in December 2020, and three counts of lying in an June 2, 2021 interview when he claimed:

  • Lamond’s relationship consisted of just receiving tips from Tarrio instead of him providing confidential information to him
  • He never tipped Tarrio off to details of the BLM investigation
  • He didn’t provide Tarrio advance notice of the warrant for his arrest obtained on December 30, 2020

The case is largely built off Telegram communications obtained from Tarrio’s seized phone (which, remember, took a year to exploit, in part because Tarrio had good security for it).

One of the eye-popping details in the indictment is that of 147 Telegram texts Lamond and Tarrio exchanged between December 18 (when Tarrio took the blame for burning the BLM flag — though he’s not actually the one who burned it) and January 4, when he was arrested, 101 of their Telegram messages were auto-destructed.

Between December 18, 2020, and through at least January 4, 2021, LAMOND and Tarrio used Telegram to exchange approximately 145 messages using the secret chat function, utilizing end-to-end encryption and self-destruct timers. At least 101 of these messages were destroyed.

DOJ established what these texts said in significant part based on what Tarrio then told others about his communications with Lamond.

The case is largely built off the Telegram messages that would have been found on Tarrio’s phone when it was seized in January 4.

But not entirely.

Paragraphs 53 to 64 rely on Telegram texts sent after Tarrio’s arrest — and so must come from some other phone (possibly the one he borrowed after his arrest). They substantially pertain to January 6. I believe the March 16 grand jury that returned the indictment is the one that has been focused on January 6 cases.

That section includes language establishing that the investigation into the Proud Boys continues and Lamond knew of the investigation into the Proud Boys by January 7.

56. By January 7, 2021, LAMOND was aware of the Federal Investigation.

57. As part of the Federal Investigation, beginning on January 6, 2021, and continuing to the present, the FBI and USAO investigated and continue to investigate Tarrio’s, the Proud Boys”, and their associates’ participation in and planning for the January 6 Attack.

This is the kind of language that DOJ would use to lay out obstruction of a second investigation, the January 6 one. Given that the investigation is ongoing, it could put Lamond on the hook for ongoing obstruction of the investigation.

Yet they didn’t charge him for that, even though they describe that he told a lie about tipping off Tarrio to details about the January 6 investigation, in addition to tipping him off about the BLM investigation.

71. During the interview, LAMOND misleadingly stated that he had “one or two” conversations with Tarrio on January 6, 2021, or the day after, and that Tarrio had told LAMOND that Tarrio believed he could have stopped the January 6 Attack.

72. LAMOND did not disclose that Tarrio had identified to LAMOND an associate who was present at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 or that Tarrio had previously made comments about attending events in Washington, D.C. on January 6.

With no additional work, DOJ could charge Lamond with this lie too, and with it, obstructing a second investigation.

In other words, this looks like an opening gambit, one that invites Lamond to start cooperating in the January 6 investigation or risk being added to a conspiracy with a guy who just got convicted of sedition.

I’ve argued for years that a number of other investigative steps in the January 6 investigation were awaiting the Proud Boys trial and verdict.

Lamond’s prosecution is one of those things. And this indictment was structured to be an investigative indictment.

Update: Here’s a list of all the people IDed in this indictment.

Person 1: Someone whom Tarrio told on December 30, 2020, that, per his “contact,” the DA of DC had not yet signed his arrest warrant.

Person 2: Someone on MOSD who asked if Tarrio’s arrest would happen on January 6. (This should be available in the threads released at trial).

Person 3: An official with the Capitol Police Department whom Lamond likened hate crimes with political crimes.

Person 4: Another personal contact of Tarrio’s, he explained on January 1 that “he says that he doesn’t think they’re going to sign off on it.”

Person 5: Possibly a girlfriend of Tarrio’s. After he tells the person, “warrant was just signed,” she says, “Babe :/”

Person 6: Almost certainly Alex Jones, Lamond describes that it’s “fucking bad when Person 6 was the voice of reason and they wouldn’t listen to him.” Lamond parrots Jones’ cover story.

Person 7: After MD cops visited her house on January 6, Tarrio asked Lamond if she was on the suspect list.

“We Have a Plan. I’m with Rufio” … But the Government Does Not

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There was a big hole in the middle of the Oath Keepers prosecution that likely was a big part of the reason jurors didn’t convict on more of the conspiracy charges. Just after 2:30PM the day of the attack, field leader Michael Greene called Stewart Rhodes. A minute later, Kelly Meggs called Rhodes, who conferenced Meggs into the ongoing call with Greene.

Altogether, the three men were on the phone together for 1 minute 37 seconds, and Rhodes and Greene were on the call for several minutes afterward. The call immediately precedes the First Stack busting into the Capitol, and happens at the same time that Joshua James and others are racing to the Capitol on their golf cart.

By context, it appears to be the moment where Rhodes decided to use the attack on the Capitol to advance his plan to decapitate the government. But for all the cooperating witnesses DOJ flipped in the Oath Keeper case, they never got any of these three to cooperate, and so never were able to prove what was said on the call. On the stand, Rhodes made up some bullshit about difficulties connecting.

While by context it seems to be the moment that these three leaders made a decision on operationalizing their plan, which they then directed others to implement. But absent a cooperating witness from that call, they didn’t have that proof.

And so they got limited conspiracy convictions.

There’s a similar big hole in the middle of the Proud Boys case, one — a status conference just made clear — may be even more fatal for the government’s case. In the time on the evening on January 5 when everyone was trying to figure out what to do given the arrest of Enrique Tarrio, Ethan Nordean and Joe Biggs were temporarily AWOL.

When Biggs reappeared, he described “meeting w[i]th a lot of guys” and that “We have a plan. I’m with rufio,” that is, Nordean.

To this day, even those of use who’ve followed the case closely don’t even know with whom Biggs and Nordean met, much less what the plan was.

And that’s a problem because every Proud Boy witness, even senior prosecution cooperating witnesses Jeremy Bertino and Charles Donohoe, will testify that they knew of no plan to attack the Capitol in advance of January 6.

Absent that, DOJ will point to the plan to meet at the Washington Monument, the ways the Proud Boy plan deviated from the norm (including ditching Proud Boy colors to blend in), the orderly marching, the choice not to show up at Trump’s speech at all and instead to go to the Capitol and rile up a mob of normies.

They’ll put cooperating witness Matthew Greene on the stand to explain that he understood they were crowding the Capitol to pressure Pence.

They’ll presumably put their latest cooperating witness, Isaiah Giddings, on the stand to admit that, “before January 6, Giddings did not know that Congress would be certifying the election results in the Capitol building on January 6,” but that in advance of the attack, “leaders, including Rehl, Biggs, and “Rufio,” would meet separately from the larger group.” Giddings will testify that after the attack, “Rehl, and the other Proud Boys were laughing and celebrating what they had done; namely, stopping the certification proceeding.”

They’ll point to comments afterwards, taking credit for it all.

Tarrio asserted to the Proud Boys “Elders” who had approved his formation of the MOSD, “Make no mistake. We did this.” Similarly, Bertino told Tarrio “You know we made this happen,” and “I’m so proud of my country today,” to which Tarrio replied, “I know.” The next day, Rehl similarly told an MOSD chat group that he was “proud as fuck what we accomplished,”

There is far, far more evidence in the actions the Proud Boys took that day that they did have a plan and succeeded in implementing it beyond their wildest dreams. But they don’t have that plan.

And two likely developments will likely make proving they had a plan more difficult.

First, Proud Boy defense attorneys are alleging that prosecutors are pressuring their defense witnesses with threats of prosecution. One person about whom their making the claim — about MPD lieutenant Shane Lamond, who has been suspended since last February under investigation that he helped the Proud Boys — their complaints are not credible. About others — including a female witness who might either be journalist Amy Harris, who spent a lot of time with Tarrio after he was released and to whom he said a lot of obvious self-exonerating statements, or Eryka Gemma, the woman who gave Tarrio a plan about The Winter Palace — defense attorneys claim they can provide sworn statements that prosecutors interviewed a witness without her attorney present. (I don’t trust either side in this case, so we shall see what actually gets filed.)

That is, as with the Oath Keeper trial, defendants are claiming that prosecutors are making witnesses unavailable with threats of prosecution (and as with the Oath Keeper trial, only some of those claims are credible).

More damaging still for their case, an exchange at the end of a status hearing today suggested that Judge Tim Kelly is likely to prohibit the government from arguing that the Proud Boys were using other rioters are “tools” in their conspiracy (I wrote about this dispute here). That’s sound legally; the government argument doesn’t fit into existing conspiracy law. But it will make it difficult, if not impossible, for prosecutors to prove sedition, which requires the use of force. It is true that key Proud Boys expressed a goal to rile up the “normies” who would then carry out the violence on January 6. It’s even true that probably dozens of rioters said they were following the Proud Boys — but the prosecution here has shown no hint they would call those “normies” as witnesses. It is true that Ryan Samsel — the guy who kicked off the entire riot — had an exchange with Joe Biggs right before the attack. But DOJ never got Samsel to cooperate.

There’s a lot of evidence that the Proud Boys orchestrated the riot and conspired with others in doing so. But it seems likely that prosecutors have the same kind of evidentiary holes, including a potentially fatal one where the plan they finalized on January 5 is, that the Oath Keeper prosecutors did.

Update: On a late re-read, I realized I left out a key caveat on the issue of a plan: People do acknowledge there was a plan. That plan included meeting at the Washington Monument instead of at Trump’s speech, for example. The question is whether it included the attack on the Capitol (the language I’ve added, in bold).