The two sides have submitted additional filings in advance of a hearing about the attorney-client and Fourth Amendment violations in the Jim Comey case:

• • Comey filing
  • Government filing (once again, authored by James Hayes)
    • Affidavit from Agent who read privileged comms
    • Affidavit describing how grand jury witness Miles Starr was verbally briefed on them

The government claims that Comey hasn’t demonstrated a need to see what happened in the grand jury because there’s no way any privileged or Fourth Amendment violative material was presented, and even if it were, that would be insufficient to dismiss the indictment, which is the standard.

Even assuming the defendant could prove that the government violated the Fourth Amendment or attorney-client privilege in its grand jury presentation (and to be clear, he cannot), the remedy would be to suppress that evidence at trial—not to dismiss the indictment. So, the defendant has not shown that “a ground may exist to dismiss the indictment because of a matter that occurred before the grand jury.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(e)(3)(E)(ii). He is not entitled to access grand jury material.

There are problems with both these claims.

First, Miles Starr was briefed orally on the comms between Dan Richman and Mike Schmidt and Jim Comey the morning of the grand jury presentment. Then, the FBI Agent who was tainted provided a written document that only covered stuff on May 11.

On the morning of September 25, 2025, the team was preparing for an indictment of James Comey, to occur later that afternoon. SA Warren provided case agent SA Miles Starr and an FBI Office of General Counsel (OGC) attorney a limited overview of the text message communications to and from “Michael Garcia” (now understood to be Daniel Richman). SA Warren advised SA Starr and the FBI OGC attorney that some of the messages appeared to reference potential future legal representation. The FBI OGC attorney immediately advised that any of the text message communications referencing potential future legal representation should not be part of the indictment preparation. SA Warren provided the indictment preparation team a two-page document containing limited text message content only from May 11, 2017, predating the reference to potential future legal representation.

But DOJ itself recognizes that anything after May 9, the day Comey was fired, may be privileged.

4 The defendant was removed as FBI Director on May 9, 2017. He told the Office of Inspector General that “the day after his removal, or ‘very shortly thereafter,’ he retained attorneys Patrick Fitzgerald, David Kelley, and Daniel Richman.” Dkt. No. 138-11 at 33 (Aug. 2019 Office of the Inspector General Report). Any claim of privilege involving those attorneys would necessarily arise after May 9, 2017.

So they took insufficient steps to prevent taint of the grand jury, because materials between Richman and Comey from May 9 and 10 may well be privileged.

Even if that were sufficient, there’s no reason why communications between Comey and Richman in May could be deemed relevant to the grand jury. That’s because he admitted sharing information with Richman back in 2017. He didn’t hide it from the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Meanwhile, the government has no fucking clue whether it presented other Fourth Amendment violative content to the Grand Jury. They confessed last night, days after telling Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick they had complied with his order to provide this information, that they had no fucking clue whether they were looking at data that included both scoped and unscoped content (though this passage suggests that the materials obtained from Columbia, which includes the only material that remotely matches the first charge, with the second warrant were scoped).

5 The Order also required the government to provide, in writing, by the same deadline: “Confirmation of whether the Government has divided the materials searched pursuant to the four 2019 and 2020 warrants at issue into materials that are responsive and non-responsive to those warrants, and, if so, a detailed explanation of the methodology used to make that determination; A detailed explanation of whether, and for what period of time, the Government has preserved any materials identified as non-responsive to the four search warrants; A description identifying which materials have been identified as responsive, if any; and A description identifying which materials have previously been designated as privileged.” ECF No. 161 at 1-2.

Despite certifying on November 6 that it had complied with the Court’s Order, ECF No. 163, the government did not provide this information until the evening of November 9, 2025, in response to a defense inquiry. The government told the defense that it “does not know” whether there are responsive sets for the first, third, and fourth warrants, or whether it has produced those to the defense, and said that in that regard, “we are still pulling prior emails” and the “agent reviewed the filtered material through relativity but there appears to be a loss of data that we are currently trying to restore.”

Remember, this entire investigation started when Kash discovered documents that had been handled improperly. And now, because these documents have been handled improperly, his own team has been violating Jim Comey’s Fourth Amendment rights.

There are several more alarming details in today’s filings. First, both FBI agents exposed to tainted information (in addition to Miles Starr, from whom DOJ didn’t bother to obtain an affidavit, and who has not been withdrawn from this or any other investigative teams) are part of the Director’s Advisory Team, meaning they work directly for Kash Patel.

The agent who first saw the privileged material claims:

• They didn’t know who Michael Garcia was (a pseudonym Richman used for these communications), but nevertheless reviewed them as part of a search for communications between Comey and Richman
• They were handed the entire extraction of Dan Richman’s devices, suggesting it did not extract the privilege reviewed content

Indeed, the materials DOJ provided Comey — the ones they had been accessing — had not been filtered for privilege or responsiveness.

4 On November 6, 2025, the government produced various copies of what appear to be the raw returns for the search warrants at issue, unscoped for responsiveness and filtered for Mr. Richman’s privileges. But the government provided incorrect passwords to large subsets of those materials. The defense engaged a vendor who worked throughout the weekend to load and process those materials; the government provided the correct passwords on November 9, 2025.

Effectively, Kash has been investigating Comey using a general warrant on his friend Dan Richman.

It’s not just Kash and his personal squad of Jim Comey hunters who’ve violated Comey’s Fourth Amendment rights, Comey’s filing suggests.

Pam Bondi’s imagined “ratification” of the grand jury proceedings — the ones based on incomplete records — would have exposed her, too, to unlawful material.

2 Concerns about taint arising from the improper use of potentially privileged and unconstitutionally-obtained materials are heightened because of the government’s continued use of the materials obtained pursuant to the warrants and grand jury transcripts. On October 31, 2025, the Attorney General purported to ratify the indictment based on her review of the grand jury proceedings. ECF No. 137-1 at 2-3. If that review entailed further improper use of privileged or unconstitutionally-obtained materials insofar as they were presented to the grand jury, it casts further doubt on the propriety of the government’s conduct of this case. The government produced the grand jury materials on November 5, 2025 to Judge Currie for in camera review, and thus could quickly produce the same materials to the defense. See ECF No. 158.

The Loaner AUSAs are trying to cut their losses, by asking Fitzpatrick to conduct a review of the grand jury materials himself — no doubt to prevent Comey from using grand jury material in his challenge of these warrants, which is currently due on November 19.

But there’s virtually no way he would be able to figure out if Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer presented material that violated Comey’s Fourth Amendment rights.

This should all be sorted out at a hearing at 4PM ET.

Update: Fitzpatrick came in ready to accept the government’s request he review this in camera. But after it became clear he would not budge on that, Rebekah Donaleski asked to submit something ex parte tomorrow to lay out where they believe the violations are.

I agree with those who complain that the eight Democrats who voted for a deal to reopen the government caved, and they caved too early. Catherine Cortez Masto, Dick Durbin, John Fetterman, Maggie Hassan, Angus King, Tim Kaine, Jackie Rosen, and Jeanne Shaheen voted for cloture (Shaheen was the leader of the capitulating Democrats).

Jon Ossoff (who is the most vulnerable incumbent in next year’s election) and Chuck Schumer did not.

Start with the timing part. The shutdown was just entering a phase where two things were beginning to cause a lot more pain: airport slowdowns and food stamp cuts.

On the flights, Katie Porter had just cornered Sean Duffy on letting private jets fly while commercial flights were being canceled. He claimed that he had not done that. But at least per WSJ, he has now imposed flight restrictions for private flights.

The Federal Aviation Administration is slated to limit business jets and other private flights to some of the country’s largest airports to ease strains on air-traffic personnel during the government shutdown.

The restrictions are due to begin Monday and will affect private jet flights at a dozen airports, including Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver and Chicago’s O’Hare, according to the National Business Aviation Association trade group.

The FAA’s plan effectively halts business aviation operations at those airports, the trade group said.

“Safety is the cornerstone of business aviation, and NBAA is fully committed to ensuring the safety of the NAS,” Ed Bolen, the trade group’s chief executive, said in a statement Sunday. He added that the group will ensure that business aviation operators understand the restrictions and their implications.

The FAA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. transportation officials have said that efforts to curb air traffic are designed to alleviate workload on controllers who are increasingly stressed and fatigued after going weeks without pay. Controllers are calling in sick while working second jobs, prompting sharp reductions in air travel with fewer FAA employees to oversee air traffic.

One way or another Porter’s success at magnifying this issue would have shifted (and will, if the deal takes a week to pass, as is predicted) the responsibility for this pain solidly onto Trump. Either Trump’s rich buddies will be prioritized, which will be a pitchfork moment. Or they won’t, which will create the kind of political pressure that works on Trump.

All that said, Duffy says it’ll be some time before flights are back to normal; the shutdown led to increased Air Traffic Controller retirements, so this problem will linger even if government reopens.

Then there’s the matter of SNAP. Trump and courts gave conflicting instructions over the last two weeks about what will happen to SNAP funding for November. It would be provided, then only half would, two judges ruled it had to be delivered, but then Trump appealed, ultimately to the Supreme Court (see Steve Vladeck for an explanation of what Ketanji Brown Jackson was likely thinking when she grated Trump a stay to allow that appeal).

SNAP payments went out to some Dem states — including at least Oregon and Wisconsin — and those states got them out the door right away.

I think far too many people complaining about the cave aren’t considering how SNAP funding offsets the healthcare cave. Millions of Americans were and are going to really struggle to feed their families.

But with a few more days, the fact that Trump chose to do — the fact that Trump is bullying states for sending out food stamp benefits that Trump’s own administration sent out — that would have become more clear.

If you were going to cave, you should have waited a week for all this to play out.

But cave they did.

On the primary asks for this shutdown — health insurance subsidies — they got nothing that hasn’t been on the table for weeks, an agreed on vote at a 60-vote margin, which will fail.

That said, several details about the cave provide means for Dems to regain some leverage about how this cave happened.

If John Thune honors his end of the deal, this cave does add a minibus appropriation funding Ag, DOD, and Congress. The Ag bill fully funds SNAP. Congressional funding restores all the reductions in force that Russ Vought unlawfully imposed during this shutdown. It also fully funds GAO. It does not, however, reverse Vought’s rescissions, thereby effectively ceding the power of the purse to Vought and inviting him to do more of it.

Some of those details — the fully funded SNAP and GAO — are things House Republicans hate. So there’s a non-zero chance they’ll kill the CR based on the inclusion of the minibus, in which case the eight Dems’ attempt to cave will have failed and the onus for the shutdown would shift even more onto the House Republicans than it currently is.

Then there’s the question of ACA subsidies. One thing the eight capitulators did do with the timing of their cave was wait until after all ACA subsidy recipients got their new rates, which will double costs, that start in January. The promised unsuccessful vote for ACA subsidies will happen between those rate hikes and the imposition of those new rates in January. While the vote for ACA is virtually certain to fail, the timing of it will make it more clear to ACA recipients that Republicans are responsible for the pain — either in the form of giving up health insurance, or crippling price increases — they’ll be feeling in January.

And that will happen just before this CR expires at the end of January.

There’s a non-zero chance that the government will be back in shutdown then, though with a few of the hostages — most notably, 40 million SNAP recipients — now protected by these minibus appropriations.

And that will happen in the wake of one and possibly two more politically fraught developments.

When Mike Johnson brings back the House — after their two month paid vacation — to vote on this, he will presumably finally swear Adelita Grijalva in, meaning we’ll also finally see a vote on the Epstein files (which, rumor has it, are worse than we imagine).

It’s also likely that Trump will be dealing with the aftermath of the SCOTUS decision on his tariffs, which is likely to rule that Trump unlawfully and unilaterally taxed importers. The revenue from tariffs that John Sauer falsely argued weren’t about generating revenue has served as cover for the tax cuts right wingers gave billionaires last summer, and if they’re overturned it’ll make the fiscal recklessness of the Big Ugly Bill (also the source of the cut ACA subsidies) more apparent. Still worse for Trump, if he loses, he’ll be faced with the prospect of paying back around $200 billion in revenues raised, starting with the five named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and then likely moving onto those who sued in advance of any SCOTUS decision. Last week, Neal Katyal suggested that maybe Congress could help Trump out of the problem he caused, which is laughable — but if he tried it, it would change leverage calculations around the next CR expiration in less than 60 days.

And that’s all before any crash in AI stocks, which some are predicting. That could cause a major financial catastrophe.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I mentioned in comments beneath my first Lapsed Catholic’s Bible Study post that I had other biblical material I was chewing on.

Funny enough, the chapter and verses I was referring to are absolutely appropriate to the Trump administration’s ethical and moral failures as well as that of the GOP’s congressional caucus.

It’s one of the most popular portions of the Bible. It may be familiar to you even if you’re not a church-going Christian as you may have heard as a reading at Christian weddings. It’s frequently used as an exhortation to the newlyweds and their future lives together.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13
13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant
5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Nice, huh? You can imagine the newlyweds before the altar, glowing with happiness, feeling all the wonderful attributes of love described in these verses.

Except that’s not what appears in every Bible published. In the King James version, this is 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 —

13 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

I don’t ever recall this selection being read at Christian weddings, do you?

But even this version in which the word charity is used to describe the greatest of three virtues still doesn’t fully convey the intended meaning.

The English words love and charity are rough approximations of a Greek word ἀγάπη, agape — the love of humanity. Agape is both love and charity; it is the emotion of love combined with action of charity, felt for and offered to fellow humans who are God’s creations.

Trump and his minions, particularly Russell Vought, wanted to reshape the U.S. by way of Project 2025:

An influential think tank close to Donald Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas in his administration should the former president return to power, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

…

Christian nationalists in America believe that the country was founded as a Christian nation and that Christian values should be prioritized throughout government and public life. As the country has become less religious and more diverse, Vought has embraced the idea that Christians are under assault and has spoken of policies he might pursue in response.

One document drafted by CRA staff and fellows includes a list of top priorities for CRA in a second Trump term. “Christian nationalism” is one of the bullet points. Others include invoking the Insurrection Act on Day One to quash protests and refusing to spend authorized congressional funds on unwanted projects, a practice banned by lawmakers in the Nixon era.

Emphasis mine. Source: Trump allies prepare to infuse ‘Christian nationalism’ in second administration, Politico, Feb 20, 2024.

By actively choosing to starve or bankrupt Americans by refusing to extend healthcare subsidies and fully fund SNAP, thereby endangering human lives, Trump and his administration are doing the furthest thing from establishing a Christian nation. They are not acting with charity, and in this sense the demonstration of agape. They are treating persons who are marginalized by circumstances with more than disrespect but malignant disregard.

It is yet another mortal sin, on top of other mortal sins committed by knowingly seeking individuals to murder in the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, by turning over individuals for abuse and torture abroad as part of deportations, by encouraging cruel and unusual punishments in painful forms of execution of inviduals on death row. I’m sure there are more examples in this profile of Chicago under occupation by Trump’s ICE.

Being the lapsed Catholic that I am, I don’t ordinarily ask this kind of question, however I feel I need to ask as Trump and his Christian nationalist purveyors clearly haven’t asked either. What would Jesus do if confronted with this level of hate for fellow humans? What would Christ say about consciously choosing to deny food and healthcare to those most in need, including persons who are needy because they serve now or have served in the military? This level of hate for fellow humans is creating a national security threat; we can’t expect strong defense of our nation from people who haven’t eaten, or who are worried about feeding their family.

Ed Walker examined Trumpist Moral Choice in his most recent post as part of his excellent series on Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity. I’m beyond the eeny-meeny-miney-moe of moral choice; our fellow Americans’ urgent needs call for more than mental exercise by the Trumpists who appear unable to consider consequences in advance of decisions.

Nor are platitudes enough; they don’t pay healthcare premiums and medical bills, make the rent, or put food on the table.

We need deeds not words. Genuine, immediate demonstrations of agape, the greatest of Christian virtues.

Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
— 1 John 3:18

Vindictive and selective prosecution cases are always nearly impossible to win, because of how narrowly the precedent draws the analysis. To prove vindictive prosecution, the defendant has to prove that the prosecutor who made a charging decision harbored animus to the defendant.

But of course, in Jim Comey and Letitia James’ case, the playacting prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, is just doing what her boss installed her to do. She didn’t act out of animus towards Comey and James, except insofar as such animus is a litmus test for belonging in Trump’s tribe (though her brief stint at the Smithsonian also exposed her as a dumb bigot, which could be relevant in James’ case). She acted out of a corrupt willingness to do anything her boss tells her to do.

Here’s how Lindsey’s Loaner AUSAs argued that Comey had not met that standard in their response to his vindictive and selective prosecution motion.

To start, the relevant analysis is whether the “prosecutor charging” the offense “harbored vindictive animus.” Wilson, 262 F.3d at 316; see United States v. Gomez-Lopez, 62 F.3d 304, 306 (9th Cir. 1995) (noting that the focus “is on the ultimate decision-maker”). Here, that prosecutor is the U.S. Attorney. Yet the defendant doesn’t present any evidence that she harbors animus against him. Instead, he says that he doesn’t need any such evidence because his claim “turns on the animus harbored by the official who prompted the prosecution.” See Def. Mem., Dkt. No. 59 at 21. And, according to him, that is the President. See id. As discussed below, the President does not harbor vindictive animus against the defendant in the relevant sense. Before reaching that issue, however, the Court should determine whether the defendant has offered sufficient evidence to find that the President displaced the U.S. Attorney as “the ultimate decision-maker” in bringing this prosecution. See Gomez-Lopez, 62 F.3d at 304. The only “direct evidence” on the issue says otherwise. See Wilson, 262 F.3d at 314.

The defendant’s argument relies on the imputed-animus theory. The Fourth Circuit has never adopted that theory. In fact, when a defendant asked the Fourth Circuit to impute animus from investigating law-enforcement agents, the Fourth Circuit categorically rejected the theory. See United States v. Hastings, 126 F.3d 310, 314 (4th Cir. 1997) (“We will not impute the unlawful biases of the investigating agents to the persons ultimately responsible for the prosecution.”); see also United States v. Cooper, 617 F. App’x 249, 251 (4th Cir. 2015). That is consistent with other circuits’ application of the theory in that context. See, e.g., United States v. Gilbert, 266 F.3d 1180, 1187 (9th Cir. 2001) (“In all but the most extreme cases, it is only the biases and motivations of the prosecutor that are relevant.”); United States v. Spears, 159 F.3d 1081, 1087 (7th Cir. 1998).

When courts have entertained the imputed-animus theory in other contexts, they have required a significant evidentiary showing: there must be “evidence that the federal prosecutor did not make the ultimate decision to bring the indictment.” Spears, 159 F.3d at 1087.

It is true that Comey and James (in a filing submitted Friday) both did ultimately say Trump ordered up their prosecutions, relying heavily on his tweet ordering Pam Bondi to install Lindsey Halligan to do so.

But they took a different approach in laying out the weaponization of DOJ. Comey, relying on a 60-page exhibit of Trump tweets to demonstrate the President’s animus, focused relentlessly on Trump. He didn’t even mention the now-FBI Director’s equally rabid animus.

Tish James had her exhibit showing how obsessively Trump hates her too; it includes not just tweets, but also speeches, and at 113 pages is almost twice as long as Comey’s exhibit.

But James also focused on the way the Trump Administration, more generally, has been (literally) stalking her, notably in the form of Eagle Ed Martin, as well as Pam Bondi, Stephen Miller, and Bill Pulte (this section is where James includes the Reuters report about firing the FHFA IG to prevent him from sharing information with prosecutors; that footnote and others are at the bottom of this page).

AG Bondi took the President’s mission to heart, and on the first day of her appointment, established DOJ’s “Weaponization Working Group,” with the stated objective to examine “[f]ederal cooperation with the weaponization” by “New York Attorney General Letitia James” to “target President Trump, his family and his businesses,” among other top priorities. 15 Ex. C. The goal was to retaliate against the President’s perceived political enemies, including AG James.

In March, President Trump also issued a Presidential Memorandum, “Rescinding Security Clearances and Access to Classified Information from Specified Individuals,” specifically calling out AG James, claiming “it is no longer in the national interest” for her, along with fourteen of his other perceived political opponents, to have a security clearance or access classified information. Ex. D.

The retribution campaign against AG James had only just begun. Around the same time, another federal agency, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), led by Director William Pulte, was also looking for dirt to use against AG James. By April 14, they had concocted it. Mr. Pulte delivered a criminal referral “[b]ased on media reports” to DOJ against AG James, claiming she had “in multiple instances, falsified bank documents and property records to acquire government backed assistance and loans and more favorable loan terms.” Ex. F at 1. The criminal referral cherry-picked documents to claim fraud over three properties—one even going back to 1983—none of which was the Peronne Property at issue in the indictment.16 The referral asked DOJ to open a criminal investigation into AG James. See Ex. F at 1. Mr. Pulte also coordinated with Edward Martin—the self-described “captain” of DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group who is President Trump’s close confidante and would later also be named a Special Attorney.17 Reporting even indicates that President Trump had been bypassing his senior DOJ lead regularly telephoning Martin for updates on his work, leaving [DAG Todd] Blanche ‘frustrated and annoyed,’” according to sources.18

Standing outside the White House on the day the referral was released, one of the President’s aides, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, told reporters AG James “is one of the most corrupt, shameless individuals ever to hold public office” and “is guilty of multiple, significant, serial criminal violations” for having “persecute[d] an innocent man,” referring to President Trump.19 President Trump also did not withhold his views about FHFA’s criminal referral to DOJ, attacking AG James directly in several social media posts discussing the referral:

Turns out you can’t have your principal residence in Virginia and be AG of New York. You can’t say your dad’s your husband. Or claim a five-unit is a four. But that’s what Letitia James did—while going after Trump for the same thing. You’ve got to be kidding me

Ex. A. at No. 334;

Letitia James, a totally corrupt politician, should resign from her position as New York State Attorney General, IMMEDIATELY. Everyone is trying to MAKE NEW YORK GREAT AGAIN, and it can never be done with this wacky crook in office.

Id. at No. 333.

On the heels of the referral to DOJ, in May, Mr. Martin admitted that he planned to use his authority to expose and discredit opponents of the President whom he believes to be guilty. 20 He made plain that it did not matter if there were no facts to back up President Trump’s accusations or even if a charge had no merit: “If they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them. And we will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, there should be people that are shamed.”21 Discussing targets for criminal investigation, Martin stated that the Weaponization Working Group’s prerogative included “Letitia James.”22

And to support this additional prong of animus, James included a second, 12-page exhibit, which includes (among other things), all the creepy pictures Eagle Ed has posted of himself stalking James, including pictures showing him reviewing files with Halligan just before she indicted James or just randomly chatting up someone at FHFA.

It also documents Eagle Ed’s juvenile trolling on Xitter.

It may be an awkward time, for Eagle Ed, to have such a focus on his trollish obsessions.

That’s because he is currently involved in equally pathetic troll campaign targeting a woman that right wing nutjobs have decided must be the Pipe Bomber based off gait analysis — I guess they’ll get around to using phrenology? — and their dislike of how she testified against Guy Reffitt, the first Jan6er to go to trial.

Anna Bower has been spending her weekend documenting how Eagle Ed first posts, then deletes, tweets trying to gin up the frothy mob. In the first such instance, someone — maybe Todd Blanche — made Eagle Ed affirmatively deny the gait-analysis claims as a “fake.”

These tweets show not just that a key cog in the James prosecution — the guy who accepted allegations from Bill Pulte and then ferried them to the woman playacting as US Attorney — is a wild conspiracy theorist happy to magnify any kind of bullshit he gets from frothy right wingers, but also that some babysitter at DOJ knows he is, and is attempting to rein him in.

I’m not sure whether Comey’s more focused approach or James’ wholistic one works better. Given that prosecutors dismissed Comey’s comparators because none had precisely the same role he once did, he certainly has an opportunity to use the opening memo that Tyler Lemons submitted last week which led to these charges to show that the current FBI Director lied his ass off to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he told Mazie Hirono that he had no intention of revisiting history to prosecute Comey.

Senator Hirono (02:18:49):

Do you plan to investigate James Comey, who’s on your list?

Kash Patel (02:18:54):

I have no intentions of going backwards-

The opening memo shows that Kash wasted no time in doing just that — not just chasing the John Durham prosecution predicated of Russian disinformation, but putting Durham’s wildly-conflicted lead investigator in charge, literally finding a lame excuse to revisit the Durham investigation.

The broad or narrow scope may not matter. Indeed, unless the cases get dismissed because Lindsey was just playacting as US Attorney, there’s a non-zero chance these arguments will be appealed through the Fourth Circuit together, which is presumably why Comey had loaded his team with appellate lawyers and scores of people are submitting amicus briefs.

These vindictive and selective prosecution arguments may make new precedent, about whether the President can repurpose the Department of Justice to prioritize jailing his political adversaries.

But Eagle Ed has now made clear that one element of that repurposed DOJ is seizing and stoking baseless conspiracy theories to rile up the base.

15 Ryan Lucas, New attorney general moves to align Justice Department with Trump’s priorities, NPR (Feb. 5, 2025), https://perma.cc/WLU8-FPBL.

16 Mr. Pulte’s conduct demonstrates how far allies of the President would go to carry out his “get James” orders. Public reports indicate that Mr. Pulte “skipped over his agency’s inspector general when making criminal referrals” against President Trump’s political enemies. Reports also indicate he may have bypassed ethics rules in doing so. Marisa Taylor & Chris Prentice, Exclusive: Trump official bypassed ethics rules in criminal referrals of Fed governor and other foes, sources say, Reuters (Oct. 6, 2025), https://perma.cc/HK6Y-LJVR. The FHFA has no generalized crimefighting or anti-fraud authority. It does not even have an express authority to make criminal referrals besides those granted to the FHFA’s Inspector General under the Inspector General Act of 1978. In addition to violations of the act itself, Mr. Pulte may have failed to comply with the FHFA’s own Privacy Act regulations, which require FHFA to “ensure” that records containing personally identifiable information are “protected from public view.” Domenic Powell, Are Pulte’s “Mortgage Fraud” Investigations Legal?, Yale J. Reg.: Notice and Comment (Nov. 1, 2025), https://perma.cc/2U6G-S46X.

17 Alan Feuer et al., Trump Demands That Bondi Move ‘Now’ to Prosecute Foes, N.Y. Times (Sept. 20, 2025), https://perma.cc/FC9R-U8TK.

18 Andrew Feinberg, Trump ally probing rivals’ ‘mortgage fraud’ speaks directly with the president – and skips typical DOJ hierarchy, The Independent (Aug. 29, 2025), https://perma.cc/4LXUUUAC.

19 Statement of Stephen Miller, White House Homeland Security Adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, to Reporters outside the White House (Apr. 18, 2025), https://perma.cc/9X5GX7YB (emphasis added).

20 U.S. Attorney Ed Martin Holds News Conference, C-SPAN (May 13, 2025), https://www.cspan.org/program/news-conference/us-attorney-ed-martin-holds-news-conference/659817.

Index to posts in this series

My last post and Rayne’s excellent post A Lapsed Catholic’s Sunday Bible Study raise a question: how does a person claim to be both a Christian and a Trumpist? These two things seem utterly incompatible. In this post I look at this question using a formulation from Lecture 3 of Christine Korsgaard’s book The Sources Of Normativity, augmented by Simone de Beauvoir’s book The Ethics Of Ambiguity.

Identities

Normativity is a neutral word for moral principles. The point of Korsgaard’s book is to show how ethics can be formulated and justified without recourse to external sources, like sacred books.

Korsgaard begins with a description of the individual. She says we adult humans are reflective creatures. We are able to examine our behavior and evaluate it against standards we choose. This is the same ability we use to decide on plans of action. She says that when we are deciding how to act we require reasons. For example, when we experience hunger mid-afternoon, we have to decide whether to grab a snack or not. We give ourselves reasons for each and decide.

Korsgaard says we have different identities. We are spouses, parents, members of a tribe, residents of a city, workers, followers of religions, citizens of a nation. We are also human beings, members of an entire species. Each identity carries with it a set of behaviors, norms, and obligations.

For example, I was a lawyer. I operated under norms set by the ethical requirements of Tennessee. I practiced in the Bankruptcy Courts of Nashville and was bound by an unwritten set of norms established and enforced by my colleagues and the courts. Those norms were reasons to act in particular ways, even when other actions would be easier or more rewarding.

I think these two ideas, reflection and identity, fit nicely with other books I’ve discussed here. We looked at Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus in the discussion of Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Habitus is much like identities. The notion of reflection is very close to Michael Tomasello’s description of decision-making in The Evolution of Agency.

Korsgaard says that the demands of our identities can clash, and that is what gives rise to moral dilemmas. Here’s an overly simplified example. The father of the guy who murdered Charlie Kirk is apparently a Mormon, a father, and a citizen of Utah, and of course a human being. When confronted with the act of his son, he has to make a moral choice. His identities give rise to reasons for actions, and his internal arbiter has to choose. He chose to act on the norms of a good citizen and a good Mormon, and encourage his own son to turn himself in, despite the fact that Utah is a death penalty state.

It seems that in effect he has to stand away from his identities and examine their claims. It is as if there is another identity, not a social role, but something that is personal to him. Korsgaard refers to this as his internal arbiter. This is the source of his own normativity and in fact, the source of his identity. As Korsgaard puts it:

… [W]e require reasons for action, a conception of the right and the good. To act from such a conception is in turn to have a practical conception of your identity, a conception under which you value yourself and find your life to be worth living and your actions to be worth undertaking. That conception is normative for you and in certain cases it can obligate you, for if you do not allow yourself to be governed by any conception of your identity then you will have no reason to act and to live. P. 122.

The Christian Trumpist

It appears that there is a conflict between the moral teachings of Christianity and the actions of the Trump administration’s program of attacking immigrants and anyone who gets near them. The conflicts with The Parable of the Good Samaritan and the verses cited by Rayne are obvious.

I can think of three ways Trumpist Christians might explain their support for these atrocities. First, they may refuse to see the conflict. For example, if the Trumpist is a serious person in de Beauvoir’s sense, they may have internalized each of their identities so deeply that they only need to identify the situation in order to respond. If the person sees the question purely as a political question, only the Trumpist identity is in action and there is no conflict.

So, if the libtard asks Trumpist Uncle his opinion about the vile treatment of ICE detainees, Trumpist Uncle sees it as political and never ever sees it as a question about Christian values. In such a case Trumpist Uncle can regard himself under both identities without any recourse to an internal moral arbiter.

But worse, I’ve often wondered if Trumpists have an internal arbiter of any kind. Korsgaard and de Beauvoir both say that humans are reflective creatures, able to step back from their behavior and judge it. I don’t see that happening in the Trumpists I see in the media.

Here’s another possibility: a) the Christian and Trumpist identities must both submit to the internal arbiter of the individual to determine the one which will dictate action; or b) the identity as a Christian is the fundamental to the internal arbiter, the one by which all others are judged.

In either of these cases, if the Trumpist identity controls, it’s fair to ask the person in what sense are they actually Christians. If it means I’m a Christian except when Trump makes a demand, are you truly a Christian?

There’s at least one more possibility. Maybe the Christian leaders that the person follows has explained everything in advance. For example, apparently many preachers assert that Trump is the imperfect tool used by the Almighty for good ends, followed by the claim that in this Trump is like King David. 1 Samuel 17 – 1 Kings 2:10.

I wonder how many Christians have read this story themselves. I have, and I reread it for this post. There is no way in which Trump is like King David. First, Trump is a draft-dodging coward who gets other people to do his dirty work (except around Epstein?). David was a powerful warrior, who spent much of his life fighting in actual wars to protect and expand the lands of the Chosen People.

Second, David did in fact sin, again and again. But in each case he repented, and in each case he was punished by the Almighty even after he repented. His biggest crime was the abuse of Bathsheba (the front page art is Rembrandt’s Bathsheba at the Bath, at the Louvre).

2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”

David first tried to get Uriah to sleep with her to cover his adultery, and when that didn’t work he had his top general put Uriah in the heat of the battle where he was killed.

The Almighty sent the prophet Nathan to tell David he would be punished for this heinous evil. David repents, as he does whenever he realizes he has sinned against the Almighty. But he is punished nevertheless by the treason and death of his beloved son Absalom, and by a life of war.

Trump has never repented any of his terrible sins, and has only rarely been held accountable for anything.

Actual Christians have at least some familiarity with the Bible, especially the important stories. How could anyone see anything of Trump in King David? How is this story a plausible justification for voting for Trump? If a Trumpist Christian bothered to read the story of David would they grasp this? Or is this a bit of evidence that they do not judge moral issues for themselves?

It looks increasingly likely that because someone snuck a peek into Jim Comey’s privileged communications — or, because Tyler Lemons cares enough about his bar license that he disclosed that someone snuck a peek into Comey’s privileged communications — Comey may get a ruling that the government violated his Fourth Amendment rights, throwing out some of the material used in the government’s filing laying out the theory of their case.

The exhibits to that filing which were seized from Dan Richman include a bunch of communications sent from two different Columbia University emails, as well as texts sent on Richman’s phone.

• January 2, 2015: Letter stating that Richman would not comment on matters he “work[s] on for the Bureau” [1st Columbia email]
• October 29, 2016: Text saying, “The country can’t seem to handle your finding stuff” [2nd Columbia email]
• October 30, 2016: Richman offering to write an op-ed for NYT [2nd Columbia email]
• November 1-2, 2016: Comey suggests perhaps Richman can make Mike Schmidt smarter [2nd Columbia email]
• November 2, 2016: Richman noting story about Hillary [2nd Columbia email]
• February 11, 2017: Richman recruiting Chuck Rosenberg for article [1st Columbia email]
• April 23, 2017: Email to Richman thanking him [Columbia email]
• May 2017: Texts between Schmidt and Richman [Dan Richman’s phone]

As Rebekah Donaleski described the warrants in Wednesday’s hearing, the Columbia emails likely came from a warrant served on the university in October 2019, whereas the texts should have only been available via the fourth warrant on Richman’s phone, but as I’ll show, may have instead come from unlawful searches from the hard drive seized with the first warrant in August 2019.

• August 29, 2019: FBI seizes Richman’s hard drive. The government does a privilege review of that, not Richman.
• October 2019: FBI obtains emails from Columbia. Richman withheld privileged or sensitive (from students), but conducted no responsiveness review.
• January 2020: FBI obtains Richman’s iCloud. His attorney did a privilege review. The warrant specifically said it could not seize privileged material.
• June 4, 2020: FBI gets warrants to access iPhone and iCloud back-ups on the original hard drive.

The arguably legal emails don’t prove DOJ’s case

Aside from the fact that the FBI accessed them without a warrant tailored to the current investigation, the two bolded emails were clearly responsive to the investigation into whether Richman leaked the SVR materials in advance of the April 22, 2017 story about them. But as I noted here, they don’t help the government prove that Comey lied to Ted Cruz about authorizing Richman, while he was at FBI, to be an anonymous source for a story about the Hillary investigation because:

• There’s no evidence of Comey’s involvement in the story in advance
• The emails unquestionably post-date Richman’s departure from FBI (Anna Bower expanded on the work I did to show that Richman was arguably never formally “at FBI” in this period)
• Richman was a named source in the story

The January 2, 2015 email might be legal, but who cares? It doesn’t help the government’s case at all (and most likely was used to mislead grand jurors about the time frame of Richman’s relationship with the FBI).

The emails that come closest to proving the government’s case may be out of scope

It’s less clear whether the emails from fall 2016 — the ones that best match the theory of the case — should have been accessible to investigators for the investigation into whether Comey lied to Ted Cruz. That’s because — at least per a November 22, 2019 interview — Richman didn’t learn about the SVR emails until January 2017.

According to Richman, he and Comey had a private conversation in Comey’s office in January 2017. The conversation pertained to Comey’s decision to make a public statement on the Midyear Exam investigation. Comey told Richman the tarmac meeting between Lynch and Clinton was not the only reason which played into Comey’s statement on the Midyear Exam investigation. According to Richman, Comey told Richman of Lynch’s characterization of the investigation as a “matter” and not that of an investigation. Richman recalled Comey told him there was some weird classified material related to Lynch which came to the FBI’s attention. Comey did not fully explain the details of the information. Comey told Richman about the Classified Information, including the source of the information. Richman understood the information could be used to suggest Lynch might not be impartial with regards of the conclusion of the Midyear Exam investigation. Richman understood the information about Lynch was highly classified and it should be protected. Richman was an SGE at the time of the meeting.

Nothing in the hearing on Wednesday describes the date scope of the warrants. But immediately after she described this warrant, Doneleski raised doubts about whether the Columbia emails had been reviewed for responsiveness, with non-responsive emails sealed.

As Your Honor is aware, each of these warrants require the government to conduct a responsiveness review and then seal and not review the nonresponsive set. I don’t know if that happened here, and Mr. Lemons didn’t describe whether the government created a responsive set.

[snip]

MS. DONALESKI: Judge, the government provided us with affidavits describing what happened; and from the affidavits, it sounds like the agents accessed the filtered returns, meaning both the nonresponsive and responsive set, because Mr. Richman’s counsel and Columbia did not conduct a responsiveness review. If that is indeed what they accessed, for the reasons we set forward in our papers, that clearly violates the Fourth Amendment because the government cannot then go back into a nonresponsive set that has not been identified responsive and continue searching pursuant to stale warrants for separate offenses.

If these emails were out of scope according to the 2019 warrants, then they should be sealed, inaccessible to anyone.

The privileged material was prohibited under the previous warrants

Tyler Lemons tried to excuse an agent for having read privileged communications by explaining that in those communications, Dan Richman used the name Michael Garcia.

MR. LEMONS: I don’t know the status — I don’t know if the team knew the status of their relationship. The other complicating factor, Your Honor — and we have two affidavits here that we’ve provided to the defense, and we have copies for the Court as well if you’d like to review it — one of the issues was the conversation that was being reviewed, the telephone name associated with one of the participants was Michael Garcia. And so it wasn’t as if the agent went in reviewing a conversation between James — the defendant and Daniel Richman; it was a conversation between the defendant and Michael Garcia. And so at a certain point, the agent began to understand the topics and the kind of factual — the history of the case; came to the conclusion that Michael Garcia looks like it’s actually Daniel Richman under a pseudonym or whatever it is. And at that point, it kind of brought into focus what, potentially, the conversations that the agent was looking at could be pertaining to.

That’s the name Richman used in texts exchanged with Mike Schmidt about the memo Comey had documenting Trump asking to let the Mike Flynn case go and because of timing — Richman only formally represented Comey after he was fired on May 9 — it’s likely the privileged stuff is the counterpart to this discussion.

It’s unclear whether these texts would have been in scope for the Arctic Haze investigation. In addition to the leak crime, 18 USC 793, the government also investigated using government materials, 18 USC 641, converting government records for personal use. In an interrupted comment, Lemons claimed it was responsive, which it might have been to that second crime. Donaleski wondered how the government filed them if they paused all review.

The government filed, on Monday, text message chats that came from the Arctic Haze warrants.

The question is how privileged texts between Richman and Comey were available in the first place. Lemons blamed the review Richman did.

MR. LEMONS: It would appear that he was — I don’t know for sure, Your Honor, but my assumption and based on him raising his hand on this, is that he was reviewing material that had not been filtered by Daniel Richman or his attorneys.

But given Donaleski’s mention of that original warrant, the one for which Richman did not do a filter, I wonder if DOJ got unfiltered content by accessing the unfiltered backup (which is effectively how prosecutors got the most damning texts used against Hunter Biden at his trial).

However investigators got to the privileged texts, it doesn’t fix the problem because they still accessed stuff from Comey before he had had an ability to make privilege determinations. And Donaleski argued anything privilege was not permitted to be seized, so anything reviewed now would be unlawful.

the warrants themselves specify that the government could only seize non-privileged materials

[snip]

MS. DONALESKI: And so to the extent the government now wants to look at materials that Mr. Richman’s counsel identified as privileged, those were never within the scope of the warrants, so they were never properly seized by the government, so no one can look at those materials. They weren’t seized five years ago. The government’s filter team didn’t challenge those designations, so no one can look at them. There’s no case law that says the government can go back five years later under stale warrants for separate offenses to look at things that were not seized five years ago.

Here’s where things get interesting, though.

The Comey memos are unresponsive to this investigation

Comey’s team has until the 19th to submit a Fourth Amendment challenge to this material. I imagine their argument may include the privilege problem and the responsiveness problem.

But then there’s the issue of proving that these texts are relevant to this investigation.

The Comey memos are undoubtedly responsive to the conspiracy conspiracy Trump is attempting to put together in Florida. This entire privilege effort seems to be an effort to clean up the material for the other investigation, not this one (which may be why James Hayes is on all the most important filings in this fight). The Florida case seems focused on claiming that by releasing the memo with the intent of precipitating a Special Counsel investigation, Comey unfairly harmed Trump.

But to argue these texts are responsive to this investigation, prosecutors would have to claim that they’re still relevant even after Comey admitted he had shared the memo via Richman, way back in 2017. Republicans have known that detail for years. His public admission of that fact is central to their claim that Trump had legitimate cause to worry about Comey leaking.

But to make that claim, they have to rely on the same false claim prosecutors (one of the filings that metadata attributes to James Hayes) made last month: that the act of sharing a memo that Comey understood to be unclassified was a criminal leak. (Starting in 2020, the government began to have problems charging 18 USC 641 in this context and precedent may rule it out any longer.)

That is, if prosecutors have to get a warrant for this material, it’s not clear they could get one for the EDVA case. If they tried for the Florida case, it could well blow up that case.

This whole effort started when, in the wake of the taint, prosecutors decided to use this case to quickly force though access to the privileged texts they saw. But thus far, the effort may make it harder to access material for both this case and that one.

On October 20, in response to a Gateway Pundit article reporting on Judge Michael Nachmanoff’s decision not to accelerate the government’s bid for a privilege review, a guy writing under the moniker Spaceman Chuck claimed “we already have a team on” making sure that Comey “go[es] down” if he is not convicted.

A month earlier, in response to John Brennan’s criticism of the Comey indictment, Spaceman Chuck commented that their safety is not guaranteed.

As CourtWatch reported, Spaceman Chuck, AKA Greg Formicone, was arrested Wednesday for these threats, as well as others targeting Letitia James (also in response to a Judge’s decision) and Hunter Biden.

That very same day, in a hearing regarding the very same topic as that Gateway Pundit article — that is, the government’s bid to breach Jim Comey’s privileged communications — there was an exchange that hinted at how Loaner AUSA Tyler Lemons had made it easier for nutjobs like Spaceman Chuck.

Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick started the hearing by discussing warrants used to seize material from Dan Richman over five years ago. He asked whether the original warrants could be unsealed.

Rebekah Donaleski, representing Comey, asked to be able to propose redactions before the warrants are unsealed. She explained they were primarily hoping to seal things like email addresses.

THE COURT: Are your redactions simply limited to PII information or are they substantive in nature?

MS. DONALESKI: We expect that it will be primarily PII information or things of that nature, so email addresses, ID numbers, things —

But those kinds of things, Fitzpatrick noted, are already required to be sealed under court rules.

THE COURT: Anything like that, under court rules, are already going to be sealed. So anything having to do with emails, phone numbers, anything like that is never going to be unsealed with respect to this. But with respect to any of the substantive information, the more factual information, do you still want a chance to review that?

In a follow-up, Donaleski suggested that “the government has a different position” on whether those things are PII.

MS. DONALESKI: We would appreciate that. And, Your Honor, with respect to the PII, I understand the government has a different position on what is PII, so I appreciate Your Honor’s view that email addresses and phone numbers should be redacted as PII.

Lemons responded by suggesting that phone numbers and email addresses are not PII under Local Rules (which will surely go over well with Fitzpatrick).

There was basically a discussion between Defense and the government as exactly what is required to be redact — what is considered PII under Local Rule 47 and then the Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 49, and telephone numbers and email addresses are not considered that, but per the Defense’s request, when they requested us to redact that information, we did make that redaction, and we think that is the appropriate way to proceed going forward to make sure both parties are having a collegial conversation and redacting what needs to be redacted; and if there are any lingering issues that remain after that, it’s something appropriately brought to the Court prior to anything being filed on the docket.

Neither Donaleski nor Lemons mentioned what this discussion about PII referenced. But it is undoubtedly a reference to the way Lemons released exhibits in support of a filing earlier that week, leaving email addresses and phone numbers unredacted. Even after the first round of redactions, a phone number for Comey remained unredacted (it has since been redacted), though well before Comey and Richman’s PII was redacted, prosecutors had redacted an FBI email.

I’m fairly certain the threats from Forticone were nowhere near the first credible threats targeting Comey. Yet instead of minimizing such a threat, Lemons fueled it.

Listen on Spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

Back in July, in the wake of Trump’s struggles to distract from his own Epstein cover-up and as if in response to Tulsi Gabbard’s wild rants about the Intelligence Community Assessment, the FBI Director posted this tweet, RTing an inflammatory tweet from a propagandist who has been central to Kash’s disinformation about the Russian investigation.

Buried in a back room at the FBI, Kash claimed, was what John Solomon called “the smoking gun evidence … [i]f it is authenticated.”

Days later, Kash referenced these files again, explicitly tying his campaign to supplant the Steele dossier for the actual Russian investigation with his role, as FBI Director, now focusing on “uncovered burn bags/room filled with hidden Russia Gate files, including the Durham annex.”

It took just a matter of days for me and Charlie Savage to figure out that four years earlier, John Durham had not just not authenticated John Solomon’s “smoking gun,” but he had in fact concluded that the very email Solomon called a smoking gun was instead, “a composite of several emails.”

That is — a fabrication.

After the release of the Durham annex revealed that Kash — and John Durham and John Durham’s lead investigator Jack Eckenrode, along with John Ratcliffe — had been chasing Russian disinformation, Kash got even more desperate, clinging to Sean Davis propaganda in an attempt to rebut a plain reading of the Durham annex.

The FBI Director just endorsed the ignorant ravings of a long-discredited propagandist, Sean Davis, attempting to debunk the NYT’s factual reporting that the letters on which the entire conspiracy the frothy right has been chasing for years “were probably manufactured.”

Kash needs Davis to be right, because if he’s not, it exposes Kash as someone too stupid to understand he has been chasing Russian disinformation for years. Kash needs Davis to be right, because Kash just declassified this annex thinking it would help his boss distract from the Epstein scandal that him himself stoked, when in fact it shows that Russian spies have been laughing their ass off at everyone involved for nine years (which I’ll come back to).

The truth is, Kash has been chasing documents as self-evidently problematic as the Steele dossier all that time.

He has proven an easy mark.

That’s what we saw in real time. We also saw in the classified annex both that Durham, along with his chief investigator, Jack Eckenrode, tried to hide the evidence that they had been chasing Russian disinformation for years — indeed, continued to chase Russian disinformation for two years after obtaining confirmation they were doing that. Then Tulsi Gabbard and Chuck Grassley tried to hide that Durham had tried to hide that.

It became clear that John Durham and his lead investigator Jack Eckenrode had committed the very crime that Durham claimed he was investigating when he chased Russian disinformation for four years, which he described this way:

(i) knew the Clinton campaign intended to falsely accuse its opponent with specific information or allegations, (ii) intentionally disregarded a particular civil right of a particular person (such as the right to be free of unreasonable searches or seizures), and (iii) then intentionally aided that effort by taking investigative steps based on those allegations while knowing that they were false.

From the moment John Durham and his lead investigator Jack Eckenrode persisted in falsely accusing Hillary of framing Donald Trump and used that false accusation to take investigative steps like obtaining warrants, they were (in their model) conspiring against rights under 18 USC 241.

18 USC 241 happens to be the crime that the frothers claim they are pursuing against Comey and everyone else right now.

About a month after Kash first rejoiced about the opportunity to commit the crime Durham had chased, we learned that Jack Eckenrode — shockingly!! — had been invited back to commit the same crime some more. NYT since updated on how, little more than a month after Todd Gilbert was confirmed as US Attorney in WDVA and asked to oversee this investigation, he left under pressure.

That’s background to these two exhibits that prosecutors included in the government’s response to Comey’s vindictive prosecution motion.

Start with the opening memo for an investigation into whether someone deliberately put a bunch of documents in burn bags but … didn’t burn them, the precipitating event that Kash boasted about on July 31. In fact, those burn bags were discovered in April, and they were discovered in FBI Headquarters, not WDVA, where Kash and Bondi stashed the investigation. And the likely explanation for the documents is that senior FBI people were clearing out their offices to make way for … Kash Patel.

On or about April 15, 2025, the Director’s Advisory Team was informed of the unusual discovery of highly classified and sensitive documents found inside five “burn bags” located in Room 9582, a certified Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) at the FBI Headquarters building in Washington, DC.

A cursory inventory of the 9582 SCIF revealed the existence of classified documents, including documents believed to be official records, inside “burn bags” which appeared to have been placed in the SCIF around the timeframe of the 2025 presidential inauguration – Friday, January 17, 2025 through Wednesday, January 22, 2025. A brief review of the contents of the “burn bags” revealed that some of the documents left behind may have come from a collection of records held by certain unidentified senior government officials at FBI Headquarters.

What really set Kash off, it seems clear, is that — seemingly amid a bunch of files relating to the Special Counsel investigations that happened during the Biden Administration — was the document at the heart of Durham’s criminal investigation building on Russian disinformation, a document potentially referring to the fabrications Russian spies made.

Among the records found were many related to the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search, the January 06 capitol breach, the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, as well as a copy of the Classified Appendix to the John Durham Special Counsel investigation. Moreover, an additional record discovered as part of this management review process was an original referral by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to former FBI Director James Comey, known as a Counterintelligence Operational Lead (CIOL). This CIOL, believed to have been missing for several years, was dated September 07, 2016 and contained certain intelligence related to the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign. The CIOL was found in a storage closet adjacent to the Director’s office and was subsequently transported to the 9582 SCIF. Former Director Comey previously testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was unfamiliar with this CIOL as well as its related intelligence. [my emphasis]

Now, there are already several flashing lights here. 🚨🚨🚨 [Sorry Rayne!]

You cannot have Jack Eckenrode anywhere near the criminal investigation into a document he chased for years. He has more incentive to hide the Durham annex showing that he committed the very crime he was investigating than Comey (or anyone close to him) has to hide the CIOL. In any case, this still seems to fall well short of proof that the FBI actually received it. This opening memo describes that the people who are supposed to catalog such things did not, and if they found it after the fact, it would raise real questions if Eckenrode planted it.

Worse still, the opening memo for this investigation misrepresents Comey’s testimony from the hearing.

Lindsey: Do you recall getting an inquiry from the CI, excuse me, the intelligence community in September, 2016, about a concern that the Clinton campaign was going to create a scandal regarding Trump and Russia? Mr. Comey: I do not.

Senator Graham: You don’t remember getting a investigatory lead from the intelligence community, hang on a second … Let me find my document here.

Speaker 3: There it is.

Senator Graham: September the Seventh, 2016, the US intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server. You don’t remember getting that or being talk, that doesn’t …

Mr. Comey: That doesn’t ring any bells with me.

[snip]

Senator Graham: Did you have a duty to look at any allegations regarding Clinton in Russia?

Mr. Comey: I don’t know what you mean. Senator Graham: Well, you say you had a duty to look at allegations about the Trump campaign being involved with the Russians. You’ve got a letter now from Radcliffe saying that there was a, they intercepted information about an effort in July where Hillary Clinton approved an effort to link Trump to Russia or the mob. Did you have an investigation look and see if whether that was true?

Mr. Comey: I can’t answer that. I’ve read Mr. Radcliffe’s letter, which frankly I have trouble understanding.

That’s true, in part, because Graham misrepresented what the CIOL was. As it explains, the memo only served to provide the kinds of information that the CIA was finding in SVR documents obtained from the Dutch. It was not a request for the FBI to conduct an investigation, but right wingers have treated it as such for years.

The redaction in the pertinent paragraph, which seems to be a reference to Guccifer 2.0, likely obscures the entire meaning of the paragraph, to say nothing of the redaction of the other paragraphs. More importantly, there was no discussion at the hearing of what Comey would have understood this to belong to: the larger set of SVR documents that the FBI had deemed objectively false much earlier in the year.

In other words, that reference in the opening document shows that this entire investigation was predicated on a false claim about Comey — it represents Eckenrode’s false belief about Comey, not the actual transcript (remember, Loaner AUSA Tyler Lemons hid this transcript as an exhibit in his response to Comey’s selective prosecution bid).

And the Jim Comey notes that Lemons insinuates undercut Comey’s claims about receiving the CIOL on September 7, 2016 only serve to underscore this point.

The discovery of the handwritten notes is relevant considering the defendant’s prior testimony on September 30, 2020. Of note, during that hearing, the defendant was questioned by Senator Graham of South Carolina and Senator Hawley of Missouri. See Gov. Ex. 14. The questions focused on whether the defendant remembered “being taught” of “U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” See id. The defendant responded by stating that “it doesn’t ring any bells with me” and “I don’t know what that refers to” and “I don’t remember receiving anything that is described in that letter.” See id. at 1 and 5. Despite this testimony, the defendant’s handwritten notes dated September 26, 2016, read: “HRC plan to tie Trump.” See Gov. Ex. 13 (Defendant’s handwritten notes).

These notes are more consistent with the SVR files being disinformation, rather than the truth right wingers have adopted it as.

More importantly, there’s no reason for Comey to be briefed (possibly by John Brennan) on a topic on September 26 if he received information about it 19 days earlier.

That is, these notes appear to be Comey writing down the reference, understanding it to be part of an attack on Hillary, weeks after Republicans want to catch him receiving a memo.

The part about prosecutors and FBI agents reading these notes in the least sensical way possible is not a crime.

What is a crime, though, is using Russian disinformation you know to be Russian disinformation (and Comey appears to have believed was disinformation) to obtain a criminal indictment.

And it appears that Lindsey Halligan tried to do that — but got no-billed.

Further, according to the transcript from the hearing on Wednesday, Comey’s team read Tyler Lemons’ response to Comey’s vindictive prosecution claim the same way I did:

As for the 18 USC 1505 charge, prosecutors will need to prove that Comey told lies that were intentional that impeded that investigation. Because of the scope of the hearing (and therefore the investigation), they can’t argue the two Hillary stories are material. Comey was aware of the scope of the hearing and Hillary wasn’t part of it.

There’s no way they can argue that Comey should have admitted asking Richman to serve as an anonymous source for the May 2017 story impeded the Senate investigation, because he had admitted that years earlier!!

That leaves just the Lindsey Graham question, which was specifically about whether Comey remembered the CIA referral, dated September 7, that Kash Patel had recently released in redacted — and therefore likely hopelessly misleading — form. As the transcript Lemons buries in an exhibit makes clear, the question — the one the grand jury no-billed — was not whether Comey was briefed; it was whether he recalls getting the document itself (Lindsey misstates what this document even was).

On Wednesday, Pat Fitzgerald expressed serious concern that “the government is expanding its case, we believe, to include the conduct that was no true billed in Count One as part of its proof of Count Two.”

And on top of that, Your Honor, I think there’s another motion coming from us, in light of some disclosures that were made Monday, where we think that the government is expanding its case, we believe, to include the conduct that was no true billed in Count One as part of its proof of Count Two, which raises serious issues for us. So we’ll do everything we can, but to do all that while getting Mr. Comey access to materials…

As I’ve said, this is the founding document of their conspiracy theories.

On Wednesday, Lemons didn’t raise an objection when Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick first said he was going to order DOJ to turn over grand jury transcripts, suggesting Lemons may have no fear Miles Starr presented privileged information to the jury.

By the end of day yesterday, he did have an objection. Michael Nachmanoff has bumped the whole grand jury question back to Fitzpatrick, so I expect Patrick Fitz (sorry, bad joke!) will get to test this theory shortly.

But that — relying on a no-billed charge for the obstruction charge — is not the only problem with chasing the Clinton Plan disinformation that John Durham debunked.

The far graver problem is it means Miles Starr is a witness to, if not a co-conspirator to, Jack Eckenrode (and FBI Director Kash Patel) committing a crime, precisely the crime they’re chasing.

Four years ago, Jack Eckenrode concluded this stuff was a Russian fabrication, the very thing they claim about the Steele dossier.

And then, Jack Eckenrode got an indictment for it anyway.

I just wanted to share three lists I’ve made about this week so far.

Wednesday’s hearings

The first was about the range and magnitude of hearings on Wednesday.

4 court hearings today:

1) Review of Trump’s tariffs in SCOTUS

2) Hearing on FBI’s review of Jim Comey material w/o new warrant

3) Closing arguments and deliberation for sandwich guy in DC

4) Preliminary injunction hearing for CBP/ICE invasion of Chicago, featuring Greg Bovino vids

As I noted here, not only did it sound like there are at least five votes to throw out Trump’s tariffs, Neil Gorsuch also said some important things about whether Congress can abdicate its power to declare war.

The Comey hearing did not go well for the government. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick ordered the government to hand over everything by end of day yesterday, to load up the grand jury transcripts to the docket, and to answer a bunch of questions.

ORDERED that, by 5:00 p.m. on November 6, 2025, the Government shall produce to Defendant, in writing, the following information:

• Confirmation of whether the Government has divided the materials searched pursuant to the four 2019 and 2020 warrants at issue into materials that are responsive and non-responsive to those warrants, and, if so, a detailed explanation of the methodology used to make that determination;
• A detailed explanation of whether, and for what period of time, the Government has preserved any materials identified as non-responsive to the four search warrants;
• A description identifying which materials have been identified as responsive, if any; and
• A description identifying which materials have previously been designated as privileged; and it is further

Fitzpatrick also forbade the government — which should apply both to this investigative team and the one trying to do the conspiracy against rights case in Florida — from searching the materials.

The government filed a notice of compliance, noting Fitzpatrick’s written order was filed just after noon, confirming it had handed him the materials, but not confirming that they had explained the scope and filter questions.

1 The Order at D.E. 161 was received via CM/ECF at 12:13 p.m. on November 6, 2025.

But after that, they filed an appeal of Fitzpatrick’s order to load the grand jury transcript that claimed Fitzpatrick had not filed a written order they noted in their earlier docketed filing.

1 A written order pursuant to the Magistrate Judge’s oral order at the November 5 hearing has not been entered on the docket.

They didn’t say whether they had answered Fitzpatrick’s questions (which, in any case, don’t reveal whether the investigative team had access). Fitzpatrick could simply file a response saying that Comey has an indvidualized need to figure out if Miles Starr relied on privileged information to get the indictment before he moves to suppress these warrants; in any case, stay tuned.

As you’ve no doubt heard, sandwich guy Sean Dunn was acquitted. Kudos to Sabrina Shroff, who is one of the most ferocious defense attorneys in the country.

In Chicago, Judge Sara Ellis enjoined CBP and ICE from continuing to abuse the First and Fourth Amendments of people in the city. Here’s Chicago Sun Times’ report on the hearing.

After Wednesday, we got two horrible decisions — one at SCOTUS, one in the Sixth Circuit — for trans people. All was not good. But there was important movement in some places.

Will Millennials finally lead us beyond the War on Terror?

The second list marked four things that suggest we could move out of the world Dick Cheney significantly created.

• Monday: Dick Cheney kicks it
• Tuesday: 34-yo Muslim becomes mayor of NYC
• Wednesday: Gorsuch raises grave concerns abt Congress abdicating the power to declare war
• Thursday: Pelosi announces retirement

Even assuming SCOTUS will throw out Trump’s tariffs, I’m sure we’ll be disappointed by whatever opinion they release doing so. Nevertheless I have hopes that this kind of language from Gorsuch makes it into that opinion.

JUSTICE GORSUCH: — we shouldn’t be concerned with — I want you to explain to me how you draw the line, because you say we shouldn’t be concerned because this is foreign affairs, the President has inherent authority, and so delegation off the books more or less.

GENERAL SAUER: Or at least —

JUSTICE GORSUCH: And if that’s true, what would — what would prohibit Congress from just abdicating all responsibility to regulate foreign commerce, for that matter, declare war to the President?

[snip]

JUSTICE GORSUCH: Can you give me a reason to accept it, though? That’s what I’m struggling and waiting for. What’s the reason to accept the notion that Congress can hand off the power to declare war to the President?

GENERAL SAUER: Well, we don’t contend that. Again, that would be —

JUSTICE GORSUCH: Well, you do. You say it’s unreviewable, that there’s no manageable standard, nothing to be done. And now you’re — I think you — tell me if I’m wrong. You’ve backed off that position

How to pay for free buses

Finally, there’s this observation.

Wednesday: The incoming Mayor of NYC names Lina Khan a key advisor

Thursday: Corrupt shareholders of Tesla create the Trillion dollar Keta-Man

When Jerry Nadler announced his retirement, Lina Khan was one of the first people mentioned as a worthy replacement. She almost immediately said she was not interested.

I’m wondering if she was already thinking about what more she can accomplish as an advisor to Mamdani.

This sure feels like a week that — if we survive long enough to look back at it — was a pivotal one.