Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued an order that — if DOJ abides by it — should have the effect of forcing DOJ to do what they should have done in the first place before charging Jim Comey: Obtain a warrant for materials it claims supports their imagined crime.

At first, this looks like a tidy solution — and (as Politico notes) it may well present unbridgeable barriers to a renewed indictment of Jim Comey in EDVA, to say nothing of the Grand Conspiracy in SDFL. It’s also a solution that may prove resilient to appeal and because of that, avoid further scrutiny of its apparent tidiness.

But I’m not sure it is a just solution.

Start with the end result: DOJ has to destroy all copies of Dan Richman’s data in its possession, but first, Kollar-Kotelly ordered, they must give a copy of it all under seal to EDVA.

[T]he Court shall further ORDER that, before returning the covered materials to Petitioner Richman, the Government may create one complete electronic copy of those materials and deposit that copy, under seal, with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, which shall have supervisory authority over access to this material, for future access pursuant to a lawful search warrant and judicial order. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia may then exercise its discretion to decide whether to allow Petitioner Richman an opportunity to move to quash any such warrant before it is executed.

Kollar-Kotelly describes this as a balancing solution, protecting Richman but preserving the government’s ability to use this data against Comey.

Allowing the Government to retain a copy in its own possession therefore would not provide adequate redress to Petitioner Richman. Meanwhile, requiring the Government to return all copies of the files to Petitioner Richman could unduly impede the Government’s interests in pursuing future investigations and prosecutions if—as the Government strongly suggests in its briefing—it intends to pursue further prosecution of Mr. Comey. See supra Section III.C. The appropriate way to balance these interests, and to provide redress to Petitioner Richman without transforming his motion into a “collateral (and premature) motion to suppress evidence in another criminal proceeding,” see Gov’t’s Opp’n & Mot. at 7, is to allow a copy of the files to be retained for

As noted, this solution may well pose grave problems for the government, at least its hopes of reindicting in EDVA.

When Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick first laid out the Fourth Amendment violations involved in the searches targeting Jim Comey, he speculated that the reason DOJ did not get a warrant to access the material is because they were rushing to beat the statute of limitations.

That may be part of it, but there’s another reason. The theory of crime behind the indictment is that Jim Comey lied in September 2020 when he said that he had never authorized anyone at the FBI to leak anonymously. But as Comey laid out as part of his bid for a Bill of Particulars, none of the exhibits presented to the grand jury match that theory: they either involve stuff Richman did publicly or stuff he did after he left the FBI.

Here, the government has repeatedly failed to provide a coherent factual basis for its theory that Mr. Comey authorized Mr. Richman to be an “anonymous source” in news reports regarding the Midyear Exam investigation while Mr. Richman was “at the FBI.” Of the communications following Mr. Comey’s October 28, 2016 letter that the government cites in both briefs, none reflect Mr. Comey authorizing Mr. Richman to be an anonymous source. For instance, the communications show Mr. Richman discussed materials that were already public, like Mr. Comey’s letter to Congress. See, e.g., Opp. at 3 (“Wittes and I are spending a lot of time saying your letter means exactly, and only what it says.” (emphasis added)); id. at 3-4 (quoting the defendant as telling Mr. Richman that Richman’s contributing to a New York Times Opinion piece “would [be] shouting into the wind,” and “that they would ‘figure it out’” without Richman’s contributions). And even where the government alleges that Mr. Comey encouraged Mr. Richman to speak to the press in late October and early November 2016, there is no indication that Mr. Richman did so anonymously; to the contrary, one of the exhibits the government cites references Mr. Richman’s televised interview with Anderson Cooper. Opp. at 4 (citing ECF No. 138-6, 138- 7). The remaining communications cited by the government in its Opposition to Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss Indictment Based on Vindictive and Selective Prosecution suffer from numerous defects, but most critically, all occurred after February 7, 2017, when Mr. Richman left the FBI. This alone makes the government’s theory that Mr. Richman was “at the FBI” when these communications occurred incomprehensible. [Emphasis original]

To get a warrant — at least for the theory of the case presented in the EDVA indictment — DOJ would have to lay out what it failed to here, that there’s probable cause that Comey intentionally had Richman leak stuff anonymously while still at the FBI. Worse, in a warrant affidavit, unlike in a grand jury, the FBI would have to be honest about all the exculpatory evidence, such as the date Richman left. And even assuming DOJ could get that warrant, they would have to adhere to the terms of it; the warrant likely would not permit them to access materials that post-date Richman’s FBI departure, for example, which is the stuff they want the most.

Putting the materials at EDVA — where DOJ claims, unpersuasively, any and all ongoing investigation is — would ensure that prosecutors from WDVA or SDFL have to go there to obtain this information for other investigations. Even if Aileen Cannon approved an outrageous warrant for the Grand Conspiracy investigation, EDVA would have some visibility on it, most notably on any claim that there’s something criminal about releasing a memo showing Trump’s corruption when John Durham couldn’t find a crime in that after four years of looking.

And putting the material at EDVA would ensure that prosecutors do what they tried to avoid with their bid for a filter protocol: ignoring Fourth Circuit precedent by excluding courts from any privilege determination. They will not get a warrant in EDVA that does not provide Comey an opportunity to assert his own privilege claims.

Where I have some discomfort with Kollar-Kotelly’s opinion, though, is in limiting her holding to how badly DOJ fucked Richman’s Fourth Amendment rights.

As she laid out, Richman described three ways DOJ violated his Fourth Amendment rights: (1) by seizing data outside the temporal limits of the warrants, (2) by failing to scope the data specific to the crimes under investigation and sealing or destroying the rest, and then (3) by searching the raw data without a warrant five years later.

To obtain the return of his property under Rule 41(g), Petitioner Richman must show that “the property’s seizure was illegal.” United States v. Wright, 49 F.4th 1221, 1225 (9th Cir. 2022) (citation modified). Petitioner Richman contends that the Government’s seizure of his property violated his Fourth Amendment rights “in at least three ways.” Pet’r’s T.R.O. Mem., Dkt. No. 9- 1 at 17. First, he argues that the Government “exceeded the scope” of the prior warrants it obtained in 2019 and 2020 to search his property by “seizing both responsive and non-responsive materials.” Id. at 17–20. Second, he argues that the Government has continued to retain his materials for an “unreasonable” period of time. Id. at 17, 20–22. Third, he argues that the Government executed an unreasonable warrantless search of the retained property in 2025. Id., at 17, 22–23.

William Fitzpatrick, in ruling these were likely Fourth Amendment violations, put the fault on the original Arctic Haze investigators more than on the current Jim Comey team.

There is nothing in the record to suggest the government made any attempt to identify what documents, communications or other materials seized from Mr. Richman constituted evidence of violations of 18 U.S.C. § 641 and § 793. To be clear, ensuring that agents and prosecutors seize only those things which a court has authorized is a critical early step in the execution of any warrant and an elemental responsibility of all government agents.

But having laid those out as three problems, Kollar-Kotelly then flattens item one and two into one issue: the initial seizure. Her initial discussion discusses only whether or not the government scoped the material it seized within the two crimes at question; it ignores the question of the temporal overseizure, which (unless there are warrants DOJ is hiding) should be clearcut.

Petitioner Richman’s motion concerns the Government’s seizure of his property pursuant to four different search warrants executed in 2019 and 2020. Petitioner Richman claims that the Government’s execution of these warrants violated his Fourth Amendment rights because the Government seized more material than the warrants authorized. Pet’r’s Mem., Dkt. No. 2-1 at 13. Petitioner Richman neither contests the validity of the four search warrants nor disputes the fact that the warrants permitted the Government to search his property “broadly.” Id. Petitioner Richman, however, claims that the warrants only authorized the Government to seize information that constituted “evidence and/or instrumentalities of” a violation of either 18 U.S.C. § 641 (theft and conversion of government property) or 18 U.S.C. § 793 (unlawful gathering or transmission of national defense information).

But then she just waves her hands and says she doesn’t have enough information to hold that that is a Fourth Amendment violation.

In light of Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick’s findings, the Court concludes that Petitioner Richman has established a reasonable basis for his claim that the Government exceeded the scope of the 2019 and 2020 “Arctic Haze” warrants when seizing his property. On the present record, however, the Court shall not determine whether Petitioner Richman has conclusively established a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights based on his claim that the 2019 and 2020 “Arctic Haze” seizures at issue were overbroad. Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick’s findings raise a substantial question as to whether Petitioner Richman’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when the Government executed the 2019 and 2020 warrants at issue. However, the parties have not provided the Court with additional information in the record that would enable the Court to make a conclusive determination of Petitioner Richman’s Fourth Amendment claim about over-seizure as to the 2019 and 2020 “Arctic Haze” warrants.

So Kollar-Kotelly bases her baby-splitting ruling exclusively on DOJ’s search in 2025 without a warrant.

The Court will address each of Richman’s arguments in turn. In doing so, the Court concludes that, although the Government’s initial seizure of Richman’s property and its continued retention of that property did not violate Richman’s Fourth Amendment rights, the Government’s warrantless search of his property in 2025—approximately five years after it initially seized that property—did violate those rights. The Court further concludes that the Government’s mishandling of Petitioner Richman’s property renders its continued retention of that property an unreasonable Fourth Amendment seizure.

My guess is Kollar-Kotelly did this because she didn’t need to pursue the question further to achieve her Solomonic outcome. Simply finding a clear Fourth Amendment violation — here, in searching Richman’s data without a warrant — proved enough to find him aggrieved and injured.

There are several problems with this.

Having dispensed with the mystery overseizure by date and the failure to seize the data pertinent to two suspected crimes and seal the rest, Kollar-Kotelly then applies four different decisions to this data:

• United States v. Jacobsen: A 1984 case about the test of white powder after having seized it.
• Asinor v. DC: An effort to get a bunch of physical cell phones (one belonging to an independent journalist) back years after DC’s Metropolitan Police Department seized them at an August 13, 2020 George Floyd protest. Last year, Greg Katsas ruled for the protesters.
• In the Matter of the Search of 26 Digital Devices: A set of opinions in which first Magistrate Judge Michael Harvey and subsequently then-Chief Judge Beryl Howell considered a warrant to access a bunch of devices. Harvey first held that the government could not go back into data retractions after closing an investigation. Howell reversed that.

Here’s how Kollar-Kotelly incorporated these decisions.

Judge Howell noted two critical procedural requirements for searches of stored extracts of digital device data from prior investigations, both of which had been satisfied in the case before her. First, and most fundamentally, “in order for the [G]overnment to search a cell phone’s digital data[,] the [G]overnment must get a probable cause warrant.” Digital Devices II, 2022 WL 998896, at *15 (citing Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014)). Second, “[o]nce the government’s investigation unearths the likelihood that evidence of offenses not covered by the initial warrant exists, the government must set forth adequate probable cause and particularity to secure a warrant expanding the scope of its search of previously seized evidence.” Id.

Although nearly all of Judge Howell’s reasoning remains powerfully persuasive, one aspect of her analysis appears to have been altered by the D.C. Circuit’s intervening decision in Asinor v. District of Columbia, 111 F.4th at 1262. Judge Howell’s decision that the closure of the prior investigation did not preclude the Government from obtaining a warrant to search the stored extracts for a later proceeding rested in part on a conclusion that “[t]he Fourth Amendment does not operate as an arbiter of law enforcement retention policies for lawfully seized evidence.” Digital Devices II, 2022 WL 998896, at *1. Although Judge Howell’s conclusion on this point is consistent with the law of many circuits, the D.C. Circuit recently held in Asinor that the Fourth Amendment does regulate the Government’s retention of evidence by requiring “continuing retention of seized property to be reasonable.” 111 F.4th at 1261. The court reasoned that although it is not clear from the text of the Fourth Amendment’s protection of the right to be “secure” against “unreasonable . . . seizures” whether the provision regulates retention after an initial lawful seizure, history and common-law tradition from the Founding era support the conclusion that the reasonableness requirement governs not only the “taking possession” but also the “continued retention” of property. Id. at 1254–55.

[snip]

Applying each of these principles, the Court concludes that it was reasonable for the Government to retain Petitioner Richman’s files after it closed the “Arctic Haze” investigation, but only so long as the Government adequately protected those files by refraining from accessing or searching them without a warrant.

But let’s go back and look at the problems. The most direct precedent, the 26 Digital Devices, involves warrants served the same year (2021) as the phones were originally seized. There’s a difference between retention for a matter of months and for years.

And all of these rulings assume the initial seizure was legal; by hand-waving over the two claimed overseizures in 2020 (one based on temporal overseizure, another based on failure to scope and seal), Kollar-Kotelly has applied potentially inapt precedents to this case, and in so doing simply said that the government needed a warrant and the government needs a warrant.

And then she sent the data to EDVA in the Fourth Circuit, where a different set of precedents apply which … now that part of the decision looks especially reckless.

From there, Kollar-Kotelly goes further, refusing to adopt Richman’s application of taint to the data the government already unlawfully seized (Kollar-Kotelly dodges all discussion of DOJ’s attorney-client violations in this opinion as well).

Finally, Petitioner Richman requests an order barring the Government from “using or relying on in any way” the information derived from the image of his laptop. See Pet’r’s Rule 41(g) Mem. at 26; see also id. at 19 (arguing that the Government should be “barred from using evidence obtained from” the image in its case against Mr. Comey). This remedy would be broader than an order for return of property to which Petitioner Richman is entitled. It would not only deprive the Government of the opportunity to use Petitioner Richman’s materials as evidence, but it would also presumably bar the Government from presenting testimony or Finally, Petitioner Richman requests an order barring the Government from “using or relying on in any way” the information derived from the image of his laptop. See Pet’r’s Rule 41(g) Mem. at 26; see also id. at 19 (arguing that the Government should be “barred from using evidence obtained from” the image in its case against Mr. Comey). This remedy would be broader than an order for return of property to which Petitioner Richman is entitled. It would not only deprive the Government of the opportunity to use Petitioner Richman’s materials as evidence, but it would also presumably bar the Government from presenting testimony or pursuing investigative leads based on what Government agents learned by reviewing those materials before returning them. Such a broad order might also bar the Government from seeking to obtain the materials again in the future by obtaining a valid search warrant from a judicial officer

Here, too, Kollar-Kotelly’s initial scope — accepting just one of Richman’s three claimed injuries — allows her a baby-splitting solution. The searches that got into Jim Comey’s privileged communication would have been illegal on the scope issue, but Kollar-Kotelly is making it available the government (pending a warrant and privilege review) in a way in which Comey would not have Fourth Amendment injury.

As I said, perhaps Kollar-Kotelly adopted this solution because she just wants an answer that is far easier than the data provides. Perhaps she adopted the solution because something that the unnamed AUSA with whom she was in communication (who might be Jocelyn Ballantine) explained — at least — the temporal overcollection but did so in such a way that renders the AUSA’s testimony unavailable to Richman.

First, although the Court has been in communication with attorneys from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, 1 the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has not yet entered an appearance to make representations on behalf of the Government, and counsel for the Government has not yet been identified. See Pet’r’s Ex. A, Dkt. No. 9-2.

1 These attorneys have helpfully facilitated communication on administrative matters. The Court appreciates counsel’s prompt assistance on these matters.

And maybe it’ll work? Maybe this will result in Richman’s entire digital life collecting dust in EDVA, where his standing to challenge it is much less clear.

Or maybe DOJ will give the data to Richman (as opposed to simply destroying it) and he’ll have basis to prove the two underlying Fourth Amendment injuries and be able to (and willing to) ask for more.

But while it is an interesting ruling for the Comey case, it is a highly unsatisfying ruling from a Fourth Amendment.

As originally scheduled, Magistrate Judge Michael Harvey would have held a detention hearing today for Brian Cole, the guy accused of planting pipe bombs on January 5, 2021.

We might have learned more about evidence and motive at such a hearing, but now we’ll have to wait until December 30, if at all.

Last Wednesday, the AUSA in the case, submitted a filing basically saying, “Regarding your question about whether we still need a detention hearing on December 15, I respond that the defense wants another two weeks to review discovery before such a hearing, and we’d like an exclusion of time under Speedy Trial Act.”

The United States respectfully moves the Court to exclude time under the Speedy Trial Act from the date of defendant Brian J. Cole, Jr.’s arrest on December 4, 2025, through the date of the detention hearing, which the defense has requested to continue. 1

In response to the Court’s inquiry, the government conferred with defense counsel. Defense counsel has requested that the government represent the following to the Court in this motion: The defense requests that the Court continue the detention hearing in this case currently set for December 15, 2025, to allow the defense additional time to review the significant amount of discovery provided by the government to date. The defense consents to the exclusion of time under the Speedy Trial Act from December 4, 2025, through the date of the rescheduled detention hearing.

The government does not oppose a defense continuance of the detention hearing. The parties jointly request that the detention hearing be reset for December 30, 2025.

1 For administrative efficiency, the government is submitting a single motion reflecting the relief sought by both parties.

Before I unpack what this means — and what we can or cannot assume from this — let me point to this WSJ story that explains why it took so long to find Cole: Basically, an FBI Agent wrote code to be able to read cell tower dumps T-Mobile provided, which the government had claimed — for years! — was corrupted.

For four years, a tranche of cellphone data provided to the FBI by T-Mobile US sat on a digital shelf because investigators couldn’t figure out how to read it, people familiar with the matter said. The data turned out to be essential to cracking the case, the people said, a breakthrough that happened only recently when a tech-savvy law-enforcement officer wrote a new computer program that finally deciphered the information. That move led to the arrest of 30-year-old Brian Cole Jr. at his home in Northern Virginia, where he had been quietly living with his mother and other relatives.

[snip]

Increasingly desperate and under pressure to make progress, supervisors urged agents and analysts to take a new look at what they had, including the data from T-Mobile—reflecting phone locations based on internet usage—that investigators had set aside years earlier.

Once investigators were finally able to read the data, they said it led them to Cole’s phone number because his cellphone’s movements tracked what investigators had seen in surveillance footage.

I have no doubt that the government believed they couldn’t access some or most of the T-Mobile data; it is a problem that has shown up in court filings for years. How well-founded that belief was is something we may learn in the months ahead.

WSJ also describes why we’re getting — and why we should expect to continue get  — so much leaking from this investigation: Because Kash Patel is claiming credit and accusing the FBI of sandbagging before now.

In a four-hour interview with investigators, Cole acknowledged placing the bombs, people familiar with the probe said. He expressed support for Trump and said he had embraced conspiracy theories regarding Trump’s 2020 election loss, the people said. He had thrown out the Air Max sneakers, he said. Cole hasn’t entered a plea, and his lawyer didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Inside the Justice Department, agents and prosecutors have privately expressed widespread relief that an arrest has finally been made, but also resentment over FBI Director Kash Patel, who has suggested that they didn’t work doggedly on the probe until Trump administration leadership arrived.

The assertion that Cole is a Trump supporter, which was always the most likely explanation for his actions, adds to the likelihood of leaks. All the people crowing about the Cole arrest — Pam Bondi, Kash, and Dan Bongino — could well get fired if they find proof of another Trump supporting terrorist. So they’re no doubt trying to minimize the chances that becomes public via official channels.

The fact that the FBI had to write code simply to read the T-Mobile data may explain something that I allude to here: The language the complaint uses to refer to location data is not described in the normal way, usually expressed as a percentage likelihood that a device was within a certain rage at the time in question.

The seven transactions between the COLE CELLPHONE and Provider’s towers occurred at approximately 7:39 p.m., 7:44 p.m., 7:59 p.m., 8:14 p.m., 8:23 p.m., and 8:24 p.m. Two transactions took place at 7:39 p.m. During this time period, the COLE CELLPHONE had transactions with five different sectors on Provider’s cell towers.

a. At approximately 7:39:27 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE interacted with a particular sector of Provider tower 59323, which faces southeast (approximately 120˚) from its location at 103 G Street, Southwest in Washington, D.C. (“Sector A”). Also at 7:39:27 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE interacted with a particular sector of Provider tower 126187, which faces east1 (approximately 90˚) from its location at 200 Independence Avenue, Southwest in Washington, D.C. (“Sector B”). Video surveillance footage shows that at approximately 7:39:32 p.m., the individual who placed the pipe bombs walked westbound on D Street, Southeast and then turned southbound on South Capitol Street, Southeast. These locations are consistent with the coverage areas of Sector A and B.

b. At approximately 7:44:36 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE interacted with Sector B of Provider tower 126187. Video surveillance footage shows that at approximately 7:44:36 p.m., the individual who placed the pipe bombs walked east on Ivy Street, Southeast. This location is consistent with the coverage area of Sector B.

Here, the complaint claims only that the cell tower data is consistent with Cole’s presence in a certain cardinal directions from the cell towers; it doesn’t even explain how far that cell site is.

Even without the hack of the data needed to read the T-Mobile data, this case might have been vulnerable on Fourth Amendment grounds in any case. While the geofences for the Capitol itself have been sustained in a series of court orders, these tower dumps did not (as the Capitol-focused geofences did) collect data of people who were by definition culprits or victims. But if the T-Mobile data showing Cole’s location comes from some untested code, it would be far more vulnerable to challenge, with the likelihood of dueling experts about whether the software hack faithfully rendered the location data.

Sure, there’s the confession, but any good defense attorney will attempt to challenge any Miranda waiver, particularly in the case (as here) where a suspect is reportedly on the spectrum or is otherwise vulnerable to pressure.

Meanwhile, consider the implications of DOJ finding a way to read T-Mobile data that had been unavailable for years. What else might that data reveal? Might that data reveal a meeting between Cole and someone else on Capitol Hill on December 14?

Approximately three weeks before the pipe bombs were placed, on or about December 14, 2020, COLE made a purchase at a restaurant located near First and D Streets, Southeast. The restaurant is located across the street from the entrance to Rumsey Court on D Street, Southeast.

I think it inconceivable that Cole placed those bombs at the perfect location set to explode at the perfect time for an attack the following day. Which means any investigation into Cole could break open (or reopen) an investigation into the far more coordinated attack that was evident in movement that day but — for whatever reason — not charged.

Imagine the possibility that the FBI could find proof — and a witness — to explain how January 6 was an exceedingly well-coordinated terrorist attack? That would be sure to get Bondi, Kash, and Bongino fired!

As noted, DOJ asked for and got an exclusion of the 15-day delay in detention hearing time from the Speedy Trial Act (STA). That’s actually a very big deal, because when DOJ arrested Cole on December 5, the month they had to indict Cole under the STA coincided with the month that existed before the normal 5-year statute of limitations on most crimes expired.

The charges against Cole, 18 USC 844(d) & (i), actually have an extended (at least ten year) statute of limitations, as would some other charges, but some other possible charges (or conspiracy charges) might not.

So several things are likely going on:

First, while I think it likely FBI got their guy, if Cole’s confession is at all vulnerable to challenge, the case might be exceedingly weak, not least because the data has been manipulated.

Meanwhile, DOJ really is in crunch time regarding both the charges and any further investigation. That likely suits Trump’s appointees, who could be fired if the arrest of Cole provides cause to investigate further.

And that’s all on top of any colorable claim that Cole is entitled to the pardons Trump has already given his mob (not least if he had contact with someone else who has already been pardoned).

That’s the kind of mix that gives DOJ strong incentive to push for a plea, using as leverage the possibility of further charges, on top of an already draconian possible 40-year sentence.

Everyone else may be focused on holidays. But the people involved in this prosecution are likely involved in a very delicate game of chicken, as the ticking clock of dual deadlines threatens to explode.

Listen on Spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

Yesterday, the guy in charge of FBI’s National Security Branch, Michael Glasheen, exhibited the same kind of cowardice that allowed January 6 to happen, when he delivered the scripted lines that Kash Patel and Donald Trump permit him to say at the Global Threats Hearing. First, he sustained the bullshit claim that Antifa was the greatest threat to the US, then he played dumb when asked about the Proud Boys.

This is precisely the kind of cowardice that allowed January 6 to happen.

To be sure, there are several layers of cowardice built into this. Glasheen shouldn’t have been testifying in the first place; Kash should have been. But unusually for the Global Threats hearing, Kash blew off the committee entirely and Kristi Noem left early after one and then another Democrat personalized the veterans her goons have targeted and the Americans she arrested.

Then early in the hearing, Bennie Thompson (after making a clear misstatement to call the shooting of two National Guards members in DC only to have Noem refuse to admit that Rahmanullah Lakhanwal received asylum under Trump) asked Glasheen about terrorist threats. Here’s how USA Today described the exchange.

“When you look at the data right now, you look at the domestic terrorist threat that we’re facing right now, what I see from my position is that’s the most immediate violent threat that we’re facing on the domestic side,” he said.

But when Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, the ranking chairman of the House Homeland Security committee, asked whether the group is headquartered or how many members it has, Glasheen did not have answers.

“We are building out the infrastructure right now,” Glasheen said.

“So what does that mean?” Thompson replied. “We’re trying to get the information. You said antifa is a terrorist organization. Tell us, as a committee, how did you come to that? How many members do they have in the United States, as of right now?”

Glasheen said the number is “very fluid” and that the investigation into the movement and its members is ongoing, comparing it to al-Qaeda and ISIS.

[snip]

“Well, the investigations are active,” Glasheen responded, pausing before closing his mouth.

Thompson shook his head.

“Sir, you wouldn’t come to this committee and say something you can’t prove. I know you wouldn’t do that. But you did,” the congressman said, ending the exchange.

The exchange was one of the most-reported stories from the hearing yesterday (the advantage Ranking Members have for going first).

But few provided the background.

It was this kind of cowardice — it was precisely this kind of politicized threat focus — that allowed January 6 to happen. Bill Barr, too, was pushing the Antifa myth in advance of Trump’s insurrection. Trump even prepared precisely the kind of terrorist designation in advance that he rolled out in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing, no doubt anticipating clashes that didn’t arise.

More troubling, a bunch of people in the Proud Boys network were treated as informants on Antifa rather than used to collect awareness of the militia. There was Jenny Loh, as Brandi Buchman described in her coverage of the trial.

Tarrio’s next witness is teed up for Monday after much commotion: FBI informant Jennylyn Salinas, also known as “Jenny Loh.”

Loh’s anticipated appearance threw proceedings into disarray last week as defense attorneys claimed they had no idea Loh was an informant. Loh maintains she told her handlers nothing about her interactions with the Proud Boys and that once the government became aware that she could be called to testify in the case, her informant relationship ended completely. Prosecutors say Loh, who was associated with Latinos for Trump, was an informant from April 2020 through this January and only received a single payment from the bureau after sharing footage with agents of people harassing her at home. Loh has said that her communications with the FBI were not about Proud Boys but the threat that antifa posed.

More troubling still, there was “Aaron,” whose participation in the Kansas City cell made it incredibly difficult for prosecutors to prosecute those participants. WaPo described his testimony while describing the larger problem.

[A]t least four FBI sources were approached by the defense. Two others are on trial. And it was federal prosecutors who undermined the credibility of a federal informant, suggesting that the man — who only pronounced his name as “Aaron” — had deleted evidence and eliciting testimony that he repeatedly understated his own participation in the riot.

[snip]

On cross-examination, “Aaron” — who did not spell his name into the trial record — acknowledged that a member of his Kansas City Proud Boys chapter “had said some pretty wild things” about violence in advance of Jan. 6 that he did not share with the FBI. He admitted entering the Capitol without FBI authorization and not revealing that he helped prop open a gate for other rioters.

He later tried to justify his actions to agents by saying he thought he could help stop the destruction of “items of historical significance or historical artifacts,” according to the testimony.

The evidence shown in court indicates that many of the FBI sources inside the Proud Boys were asked only about their ideological opponents on the left, even as the right-wing group was implicated in threats and violence at protests across the United States.

[snip]

“Aaron” testified Wednesday that before Jan. 6, the FBI never asked him to look for information about the Proud Boys. When he informed his handler that he was coming to D.C. for the protest, he was asked only “to try to see if I could locate someone in D.C. that had nothing to do with the Proud Boys,” he testified.

The FBI missed an attack on the Capitol in significant part because they treated right wing threat actors as informants rather than a far more urgent threat.

I have no doubt Glasheen knows he’s chasing ghosts, which explains his discomfort. I have no doubt that Glasheen, as Chris Wray did before him, is treading carefully to avoid being fired. He probably calculates, correctly, that if he gets fired, a less competent whack job would replace him.

This is all by design: The fearmongering at FBI did, already, and will, again, blinds the FBI to real threats.

Oh hey!

If it’s Thursday, it must be get no-billed by the Letitia James grand jury again!

Virtually every outlet (Politico, NYT, WaPo, AP, CNN) reports that DOJ tried again to indict New York’s Attorney General, once again getting no-billed by the grand jury. Maybe, just maybe, there’s not probable cause that Attorney General James did what frothers claim she did?

The day was not entirely a loss for Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer Masquerading as a US Attorney, though.

She almost managed to comply with Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s order yesterday to comply with Judge KK’s earlier order from last Saturday.

Before Judge KK’s deadline of 10 AM, Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer Masquerading as a US Attorney filed something called, “NOTICE of Appearance by Lindsey Halligan on behalf of UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (Halligan, Lindsey) (Entered: 12/11/2025),” dated Monday, which looks like this:

The metadata shows that Fay Brundage created the document. It also shows that it was actually created on December 8, as if they thought the better of actually filing a notice of appearance.

And at the same time, Robert McBride filed something called, “NOTICE of Appearance by Robert Kennedy McBride on behalf of UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (McBride, Robert) (Entered: 12/11/2025),” also dated Monday, which looks like this:

The metadata for that show no one changed the metadata from the original US Courts template created in 2008.

Hours and hours after Judge KK’s deadline, Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer Masquerading as a US Attorney filed something called, “NOTICE Certificate of Compliance by UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (Halligan, Lindsey),” meant to comply with this order from Judge KK.

The United States and its agent, the Attorney General of the United States, are ORDERED to identify, segregate, and secure the image of Petitioner Richman’s personal computer that was made in 2017, his Columbia University email accounts, and his iCloud account; any copies of those files; and any materials obtained, extracted, or derived from those files (collectively, “the covered materials”) that are currently in the possession of the United States.

The United States and its agents, including the Attorney General of the United States, are further ORDERED not to access the covered materials once they are identified, segregated, and secured, or to share, disseminate, or disclose the covered materials to any person, without first seeking and obtaining leave of this Court.

Here’s the language of the certificate of compliance, which is also dated December 8, which — hey! — is closer than Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer Masquerading as a US Attorney normally gets.

On December 6, 2025, the Court entered an Order [DE 10] stating that the government would “identify, segregate, and secure the image of Richman’s computer that was made in 2017, his Columbia University email accounts, and his iCloud account; any copies of those files; and any materials obtained, extracted, or derived from those files . . . currently in the possession of the United States.” The Court further ordered the government to not access, share, disseminate, or disclose these materials without further permission of the Court. Finally, the Court required the government to certify compliance with the Order by 12:00 p.m. ET on December 8, 2025.

The metadata shows that our good friend James Hayes — the guy in the thick of efforts to try to use material unlawfully accessed — is back, if only in spirit.

According to Carol Leonnig, Lindsey will be formally nominated to be US Attorney (which was already in the works). But Chuck Grassley pushed back on Trump’s complaints about the confirmation process (though without mentioning blue slips specifically). Honestly, it would be a lot of fun to have a Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer confirmation hearing.

But she may be too busy studying up on the difference between a man, a woman, and a ham sandwich.

It is just over nine years to the day since Jared Kushner naively asked Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak to use Russian secure facilities to communicate in such a way that US spies wouldn’t find them.

Kushner went forward with the meeting that Kislyak had requested on November 16. It took place at Trump Tower on November 30, 2016.1139 At Kushner’s invitation, Flynn also attended; Bannon was invited but did not attend.1140 During the meeting, which lasted approximately 30 minutes, Kushner expressed a desire on the part of the incoming Administration to start afresh with U.S.-Russian relations.1141 Kushner also asked Kislyak to identify the best person (whether Kislyak or someone else) with whom to direct future discussions—someone who had contact with Putin and the ability to speak for him.1142

The three men also discussed U.S. policy toward Syria, and Kislyak floated the idea of having Russian generals brief the Transition Team on the topic using a secure communications line.1143 After Flynn explained that there was no secure line in the Transition Team offices, Kushner asked Kislyak if they could communicate using secure facilities at the Russian Embassy.1144 Kislyak quickly rejected that idea.1145

Shortly after Kushner indicated his enthusiasm for back-channel discussions that US spies couldn’t find, Sergei Kislyak threw Sergey Gorkov at him — someone who would dangle financial goodies that would require overturning sanctions to collect, someone functionally analogous to Kirill Dmitriev.

The accounts from Kushner and Gorkov differ as to whether the meeting was diplomatic or business in nature. Kushner told the Office that the meeting was diplomatic, with Gorkov expressing disappointment with U.S.-Russia relations under President Obama and hopes for improved relations with the incoming Administration.1157 According to Kushner, although Gorkov told Kushner a little bit about his bank and made some statements about the Russian economy, the two did not discuss Kushner’s companies or private business dealings of any kind.1158 (At the time of the meeting, Kushner Companies had a debt obligation coming due on the building it owned at 666 Fifth Avenue, and there had been public reporting both about efforts to secure lending on the property and possible conflicts of interest for Kushner arising out of his company’s borrowing from foreign lenders.1159)

In contrast, in a 2017 public statement, VEB suggested Gorkov met with Kushner in Kushner’s capacity as CEO of Kushner Companies for the purpose of discussing business, rather than as part of a diplomatic effort. In particular, VEB characterized Gorkov’s meeting with Kushner as part of a series of “roadshow meetings” with “representatives of major US banks and business circles,” which included “negotiations” and discussion of the “most promising business lines and sectors.”1160

It’s all there in the Mueller Report, plain as day: From the very start Jared Kushner planned to use his role in Trump’s White House for his own benefit. It was in the background of his dealings with Mohammed bin Salman, who has domesticated him since. It was the plan for Russia, too, until Mike Flynn’s shitty OpSec scuttled the plan.

Even in the first iteration of this fraud, Jared was hiding what he was doing from the Secretary of State — at that point Rex Tillerson.

And then Kirill Dmitriev picked right up where he left off eight years earlier, finding the weak venal levers for Trump and, ultimately, Jared. The plan didn’t succeed in February. It came closer but didn’t succeed in August. In November, once Dmitriev finally got Kushner on board, it seems to be succeeding.

It’s all worth revisiting again given this important (but nauseating) report from WSJ– one they themselves suggest is the follow-up to their report, Make Money Not War: Trump’s Real Plan for Peace in Ukraine.

The way the Russians succeeded in getting Trump to sell out Ukraine and the West (and I promise you, Trump has no fucking clue the ramifications of this and probably doesn’t give a fuck anyway) was by taking the $300 billion seized by Europe as punishment for their invasion of Ukraine — money Europeans were hoping to use to arm Ukraine — and instead used it to bribe Trump, effectively.

The Trump administration in recent weeks has handed its European counterparts a series of documents, each a single page, laying out its vision for the reconstruction of Ukraine and the return of Russia to the global economy.

The proposals have sparked an intense battle at the negotiating table between America and its traditional allies in Europe. The outcome stands to profoundly alter the economic map of the continent.

The U.S. blueprint has been spelled out in appendices to current peace proposals that aren’t public but were described to The Wall Street Journal by U.S. and European officials. The documents detail plans for U.S. financial firms and other businesses to tap roughly $200 billion of frozen Russian assets for projects in Ukraine—including a massive new data center to be powered by a nuclear plant currently occupied by Russian troops.

Another appendix offers America’s broad-strokes vision for bringing Russia’s economy in from the cold, with U.S. companies investing in strategic sectors from rare-earth extraction to drilling for oil in the Arctic, and helping to restore Russian energy flows to Western Europe and the rest of the world.

[snip]

If the U.S. vision prevails, it would override Europe’s own plans to shore up Ukraine’s wartime government and further cement Russia’s economic isolation. The result is what several officials described as a frenzied race to move ahead before the U.S. imposes its own arrangements.

U.S. officials involved in the negotiations say Europe’s approach would quickly deplete the frozen funds. Washington, on the other hand, would tap Wall Street executives and private-equity billionaires to invest the money and expand the amount available to invest. One official involved in the talks said the pot could grow to $800 billion under American management. “Our sensibility is that we really understand financial growth,” the official said.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had held productive conversations with the investment firm BlackRock’s chief executive, Larry Fink.

The U.S. negotiating team sees shared economic activity and energy interdependence as the cornerstone of its business-for-peace philosophy: Ukrainian data centers would draw power from the currently Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, for example.

Some European officials who have seen the documents said they weren’t sure whether to take some of the U.S. proposals seriously. One official compared them to President Trump’s vision of building a Riviera-style development in Gaza. Another, referring to the proposed U.S.-Russia energy deals, said it was an economic version of the 1945 conference where World War II victors divvied up Europe. “It’s like Yalta,” he said.

Just as pitching Trump on a Riviera where millions of Gazans once lived, Bibi Netanyahu solicited Trump’s assistance in genocide, so has Dmitriev convinced Trump to sell out the Western order by turning the nuclear plant they stole into fuel for a data center.

As Judd Legum lays out, this is all happening via a guy, Jared, effectively serving as an agent of the Saudis.

Kushner is engaged in activities that can only be conducted by government officials. The Logan Act bars private citizens from engaging in negotiations with foreign governments without authorization. Kushner is acting in an authorized capacity, under Trump’s direction, and that creates a host of legal issues.

As a de facto SGE with substantial authority, the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution prohibits Kushner from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Since leaving the White House in 2021, Kushner has raised at least $4.8 billion for Affinity Partners, his private equity firm. Nearly 99% of Affinity Partners’ funding comes from foreign sources. The largest investment, $2 billion, came from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF).

The Saudi government pays Kushner 1.25% of its investment, or $25 million annually. Other investors, including the governments of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), pay annual fees of up to 2%. As of September 2024, Affinity Partners had collected $157 million in fees, mainly from Middle Eastern governments.

Kushner is continuing to collect these fees as he serves in a top foreign policy role for the Trump administration. This is precisely the kind of behavior the Foreign Emoluments Clause was designed to prevent.

See also Legum’s assessment of Jared’s role in Paramount’s effort to buy Warner using foreign (and Jared’s) money.

Horse trading away a half century alliance is bad enough.

But remember: These people are horrible businessmen. There’s no sign that Jared has any competence to judge these deals on the merits. He’s not a competent businessman, he’s a captured one.

And Trump was vastly more successful as a businessman when reality TV show producers controlled the plot than he every was IRL.

Throw enough goodies at my son-in-law and I will betray Europe, Donald Trump seems to be saying.

And that’s all it took.

Around mid-day (maybe my time? maybe yours?), everything went wrong in the Dan Richman docket, in his bid to stop DOJ from violating his Fourth Amendment rights in their bid to indict Jim Comey.

The Clerk alerted the filers of four of the last filings they had fucked up.

Richman’s attorneys — lawyers from NY who filed docket # 9 and 15 — had filed a document signed by the people who posted it under someone else’s PACER login. The Clerk reminded Richman’s lawyers the person who actually signs into PACER to file something must have signed the document.

The other error was potentially more serious. DOJ’s two filings, 12 and 13, which were DOJ’s identical bid to lift the restraining order on accessing Richman’s data and opposing Richman’s motion for a TRO, noticed a different error. Best as I can explain it, the guy who filed this stuff, John Bailey, is not on the filings at all.

Not scintillating, perhaps. But nevertheless a testament to the fact that this docket, with its NY lawyers for Richman and a mix of shady lawyers for DOJ, were not doing what the clerk’s office checks to make sure the people actually making court filings have ethical skin in the game.

This came after another apparent problem in the docket. By all appearances, Pam Bondi had blown off Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s order that someone at DOJ confirm they were following her order that the entire government will stay out of Dan Richman’s stuff until Friday.

The Attorney General of the United States or her designee is further ORDERED to certify that the United States is in compliance with this Order no later than 12:00 p.m. ET on Monday, December 8, 2025.

It turns out DOJ’s failure to file anything on the docket was just another problem with the docket.

After both DOJ and Richman filed their filings yesterday (which I wrote about here) and after neither responded to Judge KK’s order that if they want to discuss these files, they may need to do a filter protocol, Judge KK weighed in again.

She noticed the same thing I did!! None of the people making these claims wanted to put their own ethical skin in the game. This is, significantly, what she seemed to be looking for when she made sure Richman got someone to file a notice of appearance.

Today’s order reveals what happened with her order to file a notice of compliance by Monday: They emailed it, two minutes before her deadline (but fucked up Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s filing … and anything else would frankly shock me at this point, because this has happened with pretty much everything filed under her name since she first showed up for Trump).

In response to this Court’s [10] Order dated December 6, 2025, Attorney Robert K. McBride sent an email to this Court’s Chambers at approximately 11 :58 a.m. ET on December 8, 2025, attaching a document certifying the Government’s compliance with the Court’s [10] Order, along with proposed Notices of Appearance for himself and Attorneys Todd W. Blanche and Lindsey Halligan. 1

1 The document that the Court is construing as a proposed Notice of Appearance for Attorney Halligan was attached with the filename “NOA Halligan,” but the substance of the document appeared to be a Notice of Appearance for Attorney Blanche. Another document attached to Attorney McBride’s email, entitled “NOA Blanche” was identical to this document except that it omitted Attorney Blanche’s Bar number.

She then laid out the two problems I did here. “[P]roviding documents by email is not a substitute for filing them on the docket.” “Attorney Bailey’s electronic signature does not appear in the body of the Government’s [12] Response and Motion–only the electronic signatures of Attorneys Blanche, Halligan, and McBride appear-and Attorney Bailey has not filed a notice of appearance.”

And then she laid out the problem with it — the reason I’ve been watching it closely this week.

To ensure that counsel who are accountable for the Government’s representations and legal positions in this matter are accurately identified in the official record of this case, it is ORDERED that all counsel of record for the Government shall file notices of appearance no later than 10:00 a.m. ET tomorrow, December 11, 2025.

She needs someone to hold accountable. She needs ethical skin in the game.

And then she ordered someone to file a certification of compliance on the docket, like she originally expected, by tomorrow morning.

It is further ORDERED that, no later than the same deadline, 10:00 a.m. ET tomorrow, December 11, 2025, the Government shall file on the docket its certification of compliance with this Court’s [10] Order dated December 6, 2025.

Who knows what happens next?!?!

What I do know is Todd Blanche and his buddies are awfully squirmy about what they’re doing. And I’m not the only one who noticed.

Update: Here are two other dockets in which Todd Blanche played a key role:

• In LaMonica McIver, in which he is witness, substitute US Attorney, and the guy who bypassed PIN, only the AUSAs appear.
• In Jeffrey Epstein (and Ghislaine Maxwell), in which Blanche was the only signer of the original motion to unseal and in the district where he worked as an AUSA, he did file a notice of appearance, before others filed after him. Of course he got admitted in DC via representing Trump.

Update: Welp. DOJ failed. Robert McBride and Lindsey Halligan filed notices of appearance (albeit in each other’s names). Todd Blanche did not.

But they did not, as Judge Kollar-Kotelly ordered them to do, filed their certification of compliance to the docket.

Lawrence Freedman must have finished his post on the National Security Strategy before the latest news on it, which is that there’s an even more alarming longer version.

Nevertheless, Freedman’s observations about the process behind the document — that Michael Anton is thought to have started it, before he left in September, and Stephen Miller may have finished it — provide one possible explanation for why the document is so short, shoddy, and unenthusiastic about matters of standard policy.

It is worth reading the most recent NSS in its entirety. It is less polished than its predecessor, betrays little evidence of consultation, and is considerably shorter (33 as against 70 pages). It reads like time had run out and a deadline had been reached. It ends abruptly with a short discussion on Africa, this administration’s least important region, without a proper conclusion. It was released without fanfare in the early hours of Friday morning, without a press conference, suggesting the White House was not sure what to do with it.

The first draft has been attributed to Michael Anton, who was the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department until September 2025, when he left. It may be that Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff who represents the hardest line MAGA views, completed the document or at least oversaw its completion. This perhaps explains why, as Gideon Rachman notes, when restating standard policy positions, for example on Taiwan, the prose is ‘dutiful’ – ‘one senses that the author’s heart is not in it.’ Only on the civilizational issues and when praising Trump does it get fired up.

Much of the document seeks to give the administration’s disparate policies, including those directed against DEI hires or climate change or immigration, some coherence and international relevance.

This hypothesis — that some of its unfinished nature arises from having its author, Michael Anton, depart before he finished would raise a bunch of questions in any case.

Politico first reported Anton’s departure in August (so in the wake of the Anchorage summit), but said he would leave once he finished the National Security Strategy.

A senior Trump administration official and a Senate aide said Anton plans to depart this fall. The State Department later confirmed that he is leaving his post.

Anton, who directs the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, has been a low-profile but powerful presence with major roles on Russia, Iran and other foreign policy matters, including helping shape President Donald Trump’s still-unpublished national security strategy.

With Secretary of State Marco Rubio also serving as the national security adviser, a handful of political appointees such as Anton and Counselor Mike Needham have taken on more of the daily responsibilities of running the State Department.

Anton is expected to leave as the Trump administration wraps up writing the national security strategy, of which he is a lead author, according to the senior administration official. The official, and others, were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

[snip]

The Senate aide and another person familiar with administration dynamics said that Anton had been frustrated by Office of Presidential Personnel Director Sergio Gor shooting down a number of his potential hires and officials with the Trump administration such as Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby freelancing on key issues.

Anton had tried to resign in the spring amid frustration with the foreign policy processes of the administration, but Needham refused to let him do so, according to the Senate aide and two other people familiar with the matter.

The aide and one of those people said Anton was frustrated after being passed over as deputy national security adviser in the reshuffle after the departure of former national security adviser Mike Waltz.

But he ended up leaving in September, months before the NSS was dumped onto the world with no notice.

Which makes the Defense One claim all the more interesting. There’s a longer version of the NSS, which is even more inflammatory.

A longer version of the NSS, circulated before the White House published the unclassified version late Thursday night, shares the main points: competition with China, withdrawal from Europe’s defense, a new focus on the Western Hemisphere. But the unpublished version also proposes new vehicles for leadership on the world stage and a different way to put its thumb on the scales of Europe’s future—through its cultural values.

It was even more hostile to the EU than the public version is.

Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Poland are listed as countries the U.S. should “work more with…with the goal of pulling them away from the [European Union].”

“And we should support parties, movements, and intellectual and cultural figures who seek sovereignty and preservation/restoration of traditional European ways of life…while remaining pro-American,” the document says.

It excluded European nations from the alternative to the G7 it proposed, a C5 composed of China, Russia, India, Japan, and the US.

His national security strategy proposes taking this a step further, creating a new body of major powers, one that isn’t hemmed in by the G7’s requirements that the countries be both wealthy and democratically governed.

The strategy proposes a “Core 5,” or C5, made up of the U.S., China, Russia, India and Japan—which are several of the countries with more than 100 million people. It would meet regularly, as the G7 does, for summits with specific themes.

Most interesting — and something to which I’ll return — the unpublished version disavows hegemony.

The full NSS also spends some time discussing the “failure” of American hegemony, a term that isn’t mentioned in the publicly released version.

“Hegemony is the wrong thing to want and it wasn’t achievable,” according to the document.

These are, at this point, just data points. The existing NSS is shoddy and illogical. Michael Anton was going to see it through to completion but did not. There is reportedly a longer version — could that be what Anton wrote? Or could that be why he left before it was finished?

And we’re left with something that could have been written by Russia.

Today was a big day in New Jersey. It was the day that both Congresswoman LaMonica McIver and DOJ had to submit supplemental fillings in McIver’s case about whether the second of three charges against her fit entirely within her duties of oversight as a Congressperson.

It was also the day after Alina Habba finally gave up play-acting as US Attorney in the wake of the Third Circuit ruling that such play-acting was unlawful, something that sane-washing journalists inaccurately called a resignation.

Indeed, the most interesting thing about the government’s response was that it was signed by the guy, Phillip Lamparello, Pam Bondi installed to oversee criminal matters as part of her contemptuous refusal to permit a US Attorney be appointed in a legal manner (which may be why Todd Blanche remains on these filings, because this is still bullshit).

Otherwise, that motion complained that, “the Defendant had not included among her exhibits the video footage that most clearly depicted the events described in Count Two.” It argued that physical contact initiated by ICE was just a continuation of what happened outside the gate.

The Defendant’s actions as alleged in Count Two were simply the continuation of her actions in Count One, albeit with a different individual being subject to her ongoing efforts to interfere with the Mayor’s arrest.

And it argued that when ICE assaults members of Congress it still must be treated as an assault on ICE unprotected by Speech and Debate.

The Government respectfully asserts that any assault upon a federal officer should qualify as an act that is “clearly non-legislative” given that such an act is clearly an “illegitimate activity.” And it would be clearly non-legislative whether the arrest that triggered the assault took place outside the Security Gate or inside of Delaney Hall.

By contrast to the government’s terse 9-page response, McIver’s 19-page supplemental brief cites ten videos and two sealed Signal chats.

2. Exhibit X is a true and correct copy of a signal chat produced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office as part of a folder titled USA-000353, including participants from DHS and HSI. This exhibit will be filed under seal pursuant to a protective order signed by the parties and entered by the Court. See ECF No. 38.

3. Exhibit Y is a true and correct copy of a signal chat produced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office as part of a folder titled USA-000334, including participants from HSI. This exhibit will be filed under seal pursuant to a protective order signed by the parties and entered by the Court. See ECF No. 38.

Most of McIver’s filing conducts a second-by-second analysis of the video, showing that when she got back inside the gate she immediately headed towards the facility and not to where Mayor Baraka was being arrested without probable cause.

But a footnote describes one of the things in those Signal chats (another appears to have been notice that McIver and her colleagues said they were there to conduct oversight).

It wasn’t until November 26 — almost two weeks after Judge Jamel Semper ruled on McIver’s immunity bid —  that DOJ turned over texts copying this video, observing that it looked bad.

5 The Spotlight News video came to light during the course of supplemental briefing only because it was referenced in a May 9, 2025, text message that the government finally turned over on November 26, 2025. HSI special agents exchanged the video in that May 9 conversation, where the agents also acknowledged that the evidence in the video was “bad.” Ex. Y at 2-3. The prosecution team therefore clearly knew about the text messages (and thus the video) when disclosures were due in July.

McIver’s lawyer, Paul Fishman, says he will address this delayed discovery in a follow-up letter.

Inexplicable delays in the government’s discovery productions mean that the record continues to be developed.1

1 Congresswoman McIver will detail these shortcomings in a forthcoming letter to the Court.

But the implication of this is clear.

DOJ was never going to turn over these discussions — conducted on Signal — until Judge Semper ordered this supplemental briefing. They were sitting on evidence that shows that before DHS first started calling McIver’s actions an assault on May 10 (McIver had to ask to have these Tweets taken down, but the timeline is in her motion to do so), they had shared video noting that their own actions looked bad.

Over and over this year, DHS has assaulted opponents of ICE and then charged them for it. And these Signal texts sure seem to support that they knowingly did the same thing with Congresswoman McIver.

And then buried it in a discovery violation.

Update: At the status hearing pertaining to these filings, which was on November 17. McIver’s attorneys complained they were getting screen shots of Signal texts collected by Agents rather than texts with actual metadata from the posts.

Your Honor, I will just tee up that we have, you know, that there is certainly going to be an issue with respect to the government’s messages. We have received a partial production of the messages. I believe it is 54. And, you know, we are going to be, you know, we are preparing a letter to send to Your Honor. We have had some dialogue —

THE COURT: The text messages between the agents on the day in question?

MR. CORTES: That is correct, Your Honor. We have gotten 54 of them. They are a mish-mash of things of what appear to be Signal chats. Some of which seem like text messages. We have gotten a few emails.

But the broader issue I think, Your Honor, and just to preview it, obviously, I will put this in writing because I don’t — I want Your Honor to have the complete take, and, obviously, the government is going to have responses; but just as an overview, Judge, the messages that we have gotten, appear to be messages that the agents themselves searched for on their devices, applying search terms that the government tells us that they supplied to the agents, but they would not share with us the entirety of what those search terms were.

And then the agents took their devices and took photographs, screen shots of the messages that were responsive to the search terms that they applied. And then provided that to the government. And the government provided us a selection of those screen shots.

This led the AUSA to ask Judge Semper to provide clear guidelines of what they should be turning over, which led to this colloquy.

MR. CORTES: That I — One, the government, that the prosecutor, the A.U.S.A. should be the one conducting this search, applying the search term, applying, you know, conducting the review. Right? They should be the ones conducting the review.

THE COURT: Yes.

MR. CORTES: The other thing I would add is, if there is material before and after the visit that is dealing with how to deal with the members of the congress that are showing up or in the wake of the experience that is, that is, right, that is material, that deals with it, that deals with reactions, all of that as well.

THE COURT: Then I think we are in search term land.

MR. CORTES: Sure.

THE COURT: But for this period of time 12 and 5, Ijust think we are in, you know, what do the videos show, what do the text messages show land. And if there is something beyond that that you see, counsel, you are an officer of the court, I respect whatever representation you put before me.

You can do your search terms on the other areas outside of the block that I’ve mentioned. If there are things that relate to the congressional delegation and the visit, procedures that would occur, obviously, I’m very focused on 527, so anything that relates to that, would be fair game.

But for right now, let’s just do it quick and dirty; 12 to 5. And then anything that floats from that, that you think needs individualized assessment, come to me. I’m here

So one explanation for the late disclosure of these messages are that the Agents were withholding them in their own searches.

Update: I realize that DOJ never complied with this part of Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s order.

The Attorney General of the United States or her designee is further ORDERED to certify that the United States is in compliance with this Order no later than 12:00 p.m. ET on Monday, December 8, 2025.

This court filing is a smokescreen.

DOJ — in the persons of Todd Blanche, some lady impersonating a US Attorney, and First AUSA Robert McBride — have responded to Dan Richman’s demand that they stop illegally rifling through his data.

It’s a remarkable filing for two reasons.

First, they cite a bunch of precedents claiming that one cannot use Rule 41 to thwart a prosecution. Best as I can tell, every single one of those precedents pertain to someone trying to withhold his own property to thwart his own prosecution. Michael Deaver trying to stop a Special Prosecutor investigation of himself. Paul Manafort trying to thwart a prosecution of himself. Justin Paul Gladding in a case where he was trying to get his own non-CSAM data back after a conviction. A grand jury case where the subject of the investigation tried to get his files back.

None of these apply here.

Effectively, Todd Blanche is saying Dan Richman has to lay back and enjoy digital compromise to allow the FBI to prosecute his friend and who cares if they’re breaking the law to do so.

But I’m also struck by the lies Blanche and the lady impersonating a US Attorney tell along the way. Consider this passage.

Richman served as a special government employee at the FBI between June 2015 and February 2017.1 Shortly after his departure from the FBI, the Government began investigating whether Richman had disclosed classified information to The New York Times concerning Comey’s decisionmaking process concerning the FBI’s investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. See CM/ECF No. 1-1 at 3. The investigation demonstrated, among other things, that Comey had used Richman to provide information to the media concerning his—that is, Comey’s—decisionmaking process concerning the Clinton email investigation and that Richman had served as an anonymous source in doing so.

During the course of the investigation, the Government sought and obtained four search warrants in this district authorizing the Government to search for and seize evidence of violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 641 and 793 from certain email accounts utilized by Richman, a hard drive containing a forensic image of his personal computer, and his iCloud account.2 See CM/ECF No. 1-1 at 3.

Comey provided relevant testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee shortly before his employment as FBI Director was terminated, and again in September 2020. In May 2017, he testified in response to questioning from Senator Grassley that he had never authorized someone at the FBI to serve as an anonymous source regarding the Clinton email investigation. And in September 2020, he reaffirmed that testimony in response to questioning from Senator Cruz.

1 The government has provided the concise factual summary herein out of an abundance of caution as a result of the Court’s December 6, 2025 temporary restraining order (the “TRO”). See CM/ECF No. 9 at 4. Should the Court have meant the TRO to permit the government to use materials obtained via the relevant search warrants as part of this litigation, the government is prepared to provide a more detailed factual summary if necessary.

2 The investigators sought to obtain evidence of violations of 18 U.S.C. § 641 because it appeared that Richman and Comey were using private email accounts to correspond regarding official government business, i.e., that their correspondence were “record[s]” of the United States. See id.

First, the passage makes a confession, one that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer Impersonating a US Attorney’s Loaner AUSAs never made: the use of May 2017 files involving attorney-client privilege had no basis in the prosecution, because they long post-dated the time Dan Richman left the FBI.

The filing misstates the genesis of Arctic Haze and the focus on Dan Richman. The investigation didn’t start by focusing on Richman. The focus on Richman appears to have started when John Durham discovered his communications while rifling through the image he shared with the Inspector General (a detail that seems quite sensitive, given the redactions).

The claim that the investigation demonstrated that Comey used Richman,

to provide information to the media concerning his—that is, Comey’s—decisionmaking process concerning the Clinton email investigation and that Richman had served as an anonymous source in doing so.

Is not backed by anything in the public record. Richman was not anonymous when doing this in fall 2016, and there’s no evidence that Comey asked Richman to do this in February 2017, where he was also an on-the-record source.

This filing obscures the fact that when Comey told Chuck Grassley he had not leaked anything anonymously, it preceded the time when Richman did share his memos anonymously, and he disclosed that publicly a month later, meaning it could not conceivably have been a lie on May 3, 2017 (before he shared the memo) or after June 8, 2017, in September 2020, because he had already disclosed it.

McBride claims he’s not using the unlawfully accessed materials in this filing, but he did disclose something new: that Richman and Comey were investigated under 18 USC 641 not because Comey shared a memo that the Inspector General would later rule was official FBI material, but because they were conducting official business on personal accounts (which is rich given that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer masquerading as US Attorney used Signal for official business).

The lies are important for a reason beyond the cynicism: They obscure that if the FBI tried to get a warrant for these very same files, they would never be able to access the files they want.

And so they’re telling Dan Richman to just lay back and enjoy the Fourth Amendment violations.

Update: Richman’s response says exactly what I did (but in fancy lawyer-speak): The citations DOJ relied on all pertain to someone trying to get their own content back to prevent their own prosecution.

[I]n every single case cited by the government on this point, the movant was the target of an active investigation or the defendant in a charged criminal case. See In re Sealed Case, 716 F.3d at 604, 607 (observing that “the [DiBella] Court . . . found that each motion was tied to a criminal prosecution in esse because both movants had been arrested and indicted at the time of appeal” and that the movant in the case before it was “the subject of an ongoing grand jury investigation”) 6 ; Martino v. United States, 2024 WL 3963681, at *1 (3d Cir. Aug. 28, 2024) (movant was the “subject of an ongoing grand jury investigation” and brought a Rule 41(g) Motion tied to “his criminal prosecution”) (emphasis added); United States v. Nocito, 64 F.4th 76, 79 (3d Cir. 2023) (movant entities were owned by person charged with crime); In re Grand Jury, 635 F.3d 101, 105 (3d Cir. 2011) (finding DiBella’s second requirement met because “the property was seized in connection with an ongoing grand jury investigation of which the appellant is a target”) (emphasis added); In re Warrant Dated Dec. 14, 1990 & Recs. Seized From 3273 Hubbard Detroit, Mich. on Dec. 17, 1990, 961 F.2d 1241, 1242 (6th Cir. 1992) (involving “records . . . sought in connection with a criminal investigation of the appellants for tax evasion, filing of fraudulent tax returns, and conspiracy”).

Professor Richman is not a subject, target, or defendant. Though the government elides this fact, it bears repeating: because Professor Richman is not a prospective criminal defendant, he has no suppression remedy to address an ongoing violation of his constitutional rights. His property was seized five years ago, pursuant to warrants tied to a separate and since concluded investigation, and there is no indictment and no pending criminal case.

I actually think they might envision including him in a Grand Conspiracy indictment. But they’re pretending they’re not currently working on this and so got too cute for their own good — he notes that they twice dismissed his claims of irreparable harm because he was only at risk of being a witness at trial.