I’ve started reading Andrew Weissmann’s book.

I’m sure I’ll have a review of it one day, like I one day will finally do the post explaining why I think Peter Strzok’s book came 6 months or maybe a year too late.

But for the moment, I want to talk about this Robert Mueller comment obliquely pushing back on Weissmann’s book.

Former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III pushed back Tuesday against a prosecutor in his office who says in a tell-all book that investigators should have done more to hold President Trump accountable, suggesting that the account is “based on incomplete information” and asserting that he stands by his decisions in the case.

The rare public statement from Mueller came on the day Andrew Weissmann, a former prosecutor in the special counsel’s office, released a book alleging that the group did not fully investigate Trump’s financial ties and should have stated explicitly that it believed he obstructed justice.

Although Mueller’s statement did not name Weissmann or the book, “Where Law Ends,” it seemed clearly designed to address some of his complaints — particularly those directed at Aaron Zebley, Mueller’s top deputy, whom Weissmann said was not sufficiently aggressive.

“It is not surprising that members of the Special Counsel’s Office did not always agree, but it is disappointing to hear criticism of our team based on incomplete information,” Mueller said.

Weissmann’s book bills itself as the tell-all from the investigation. But it’s generally not. It’s the tell-all of one-third of the investigation, the Manafort team. The book will tell how they got Rick Gates to flip and thought they got Manafort to cooperate but in the end Manafort just used that as an opportunity to find out what prosecutors new, so he could report back to Trump. There are interesting details in that. But the interesting details cover just a third of the investigation.

Just as a metric of what I mean, the name Stone shows up 18 times in his book, and a number of those contextualize the rat-fucker’s decades-old relationship with Manafort.

I think Mueller’s comment suggesting that Weissmann had “incomplete information” is particularly salient, given what is public with regards to the obstruction investigation, another third of the investigation.

That’s because the way the Mueller Report is built, it lays out predicate such that when Trump commutes Stone’s sentence or when Trump causes his Attorney General to move Manafort to home confinement or when Trump gets Barr to use throw multiple different flunkies to blow up the Mike Flynn prosecution — all in an effort to get Roger Stone and Paul Manafort and Mike Flynn to continue to cover up what really happened in 2016 — that only builds on the obstruction volume. Those efforts become part of a continuing conspiracy to cover all this up. So, short of the increasing likelihood that Trump pardons himself and/or refuses to cede power, the Mueller investigation is preserved, the obstruction charges are preserved. They’re even preserved given Billy Barr’s judgement that the facts, on March 22, 2019 did not yet merit obstruction charges, because after that time, Trump would have done what it was obvious he would do as laid out in Volume II, in fact what Billy Barr said was a crime three times in his confirmation hearing.

The way in which the Mueller Report is drafted, it takes the rule that you cannot charge the President for anything, and preserves the obstruction charges that everyone agrees he should be charged with. It not only does that, but it lays out evidence that if Trump uses his pardon power to reward his flunkies for covering up his actions — something even Billy Barr has said is a crime — then it will amount to completing the criminal act of obstruction. The Mueller Report lays out the evidence why the actions that Trump will eventually take (and to a significant extent, has already taken) amount to a crime.

That’s a still-imperfect solution, given that Congress didn’t do what Mueller seems to have expected (impeach) and given that Trump looks increasingly likely to refuse to leave. It doesn’t negate what Weissmann argues about the rule of law.

But it does make Mueller’s public but oblique rebuke of Weissmann far more interesting.

Jim Comey’s testimony in Lindsey’s Graham’s purported investigation of FISA — by which Lindsey means using the Carter Page FISA application as a stand-in for the Russian investigation more generally while remaining silent about both DOJ IG findings that the problems identified with the Page application are true more generally, and about ongoing 702 abuses under Bill Barr and Chris Wray — just finished.

As a Comey hearing connoisseur, it wasn’t bad. Notably, he repeatedly refused to answer questions for which the presumptions were false.

But as a connoisseur of hearings on FISA and FBI oversight, it was an atrocity.

This hearing was meant to talk about the dangers of counterintelligence investigations that unfairly treat people as Russian agents, meaning Page. But by my count, on at least 19 occasions, Republicans raised the investigation into Christopher Steele’s primary subsource, Igor Danchenko, for being a suspected Russian Agent. The investigation lasted from 2009 to 2011. It used many of the same tactics used against Page, Mike Flynn, and Paul Manafort. While the FBI closed the investigation in 2011 because Danchenko left the country — meaning they never affirmatively decided he wasn’t a Russian spy — neither did they decide he was.

That makes Danchenko exactly like Carter Page, someone once suspected of and investigated over a period for being a Russian Agent, but about whom the investigation was inconclusive, with remaining unanswered questions.

If you believe in due process in this country, you treat Igor Danchenko exactly like you’d like Carter Page to be treated.

And Republicans — starting and ending with Lindsey Graham — over and over again — stated that Danchenko was a suspected Russian agent in 2016 (which is plausible but for which there is no evidence) and even, repeatedly, stated as fact that he was a Russian spy. Lindsey claimed at one point that “the Primary Subsource was a Russian agent.” He later called Danchenko, “Igor the Russian spy.”

Republicans today did everything they complain was done with Carter Page, but they did so in a public hearing.

Danchenko may very well have been still suspect in 2016; that may very well have been something to consider when vetting the dossier (though as Comey noted, it could either corroborate that Danchenko had the sources he claimed or raise concerns about Russian disinformation). That absolutely should have been a factor to raise concerns about Russian disinformation. But everything in the public record shows that Danchenko was, in 2016, in exactly the same status Page will be in 2022, someone against whom an inconclusive foreign agent investigation was closed years earlier.

Still worse, at a hearing in which Lindsey Graham and other Republican Senators claimed they wanted to fix the problems in the FISA process identified as part of the Carter Page application, one after another — including Graham, Chuck Grassley, Mike Lee, Josh Hawley, and Joni Ernst — betrayed utter ignorance about the role of the FBI Director’s certification in a FISA application.

By statute, the FBI Director (or National Security Advisor) certification requires a very limited set of information, basically explaining why the FBI wants to and can use a FISA warrant rather than a criminal warrant, because they believe the desired information in part pertains to a national security threat.

(6)a certification or certifications by the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, an executive branch official or officials designated by the President from among those executive officers employed in the area of national security or defense and appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, or the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, if designated by the President as a certifying official–

(A)that the certifying official deems the information sought to be foreign intelligence information;

(B)that a significant purpose of the surveillance is to obtain foreign intelligence information;

(C)that such information cannot reasonably be obtained by normal investigative techniques;

(D)that designates the type of foreign intelligence information being sought according to the categories described in section 1801(e) of this title; and

(E)including a statement of the basis for the certification that—

(i)the information sought is the type of foreign intelligence information designated; and

(ii)such information cannot reasonably be obtained by normal investigative techniques;

Thanks to the declassification of the Carter Page FISA applications, we can see what the declaration Comey signed looked like. In 8 pages tracking the statutory requirement, it explains (in redacted language) what kind of foreign intelligence information FBI hoped to obtain from the FISA, and why normal investigative methods are not sufficient to achieve those objectives.

Not a shred of that declaration pertains to the underlying affidavit.

And Comey tried to alert people to this, over and over, in the hearing, stating that his certification was very limited, even while taking responsibility in the affidavit that he didn’t sign (and once, in response to a question from Lindsey, stating explicitly that he had not signed). Rather than asking him what his certification entailed and how he thought about that responsibility, Republican Senators entrusted with overseeing FISA insinuated over and over, falsely, that he should have known the underlying pieces of evidence used to obtain the FISA.

Maybe he should have. He frankly exhibited some awareness of what was in that.

But that’s not what the law requires. And if the Senate Judiciary Committee wants FBI Directors signing FISA applications to have that kind of granular awareness of case, they need to rewrite the law to mandate it.

Instead, they simply exhibited their utter lack of awareness of what FISA law requires.

Some of these Senators, notably Grassley, have been overseeing FISA for decades. Lindsey heads this committee. Mike Lee is easily among the Senators who is best informed about FISA. And yet none of them know — not even with a declassified application to read — what it is that the FBI Director certifies.

As a number of people have observed, in last night’s debate, Donald Trump not only refused to condemn white supremacist terrorists, but seemed to call on them to stand by to support him.

President Donald J. Trump: (42:10)
What do you want to call them? Give me a name, give me a name, go ahead who do you want me to condemn.

Chris Wallace: (42:14)
White supremacist and right-wing militia.

President Donald J. Trump: (42:18)
Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right wing problem this is a left wing.

He named the Proud Boys explicitly.

Today, I noted that the reason why Randy Credico took Roger Stone’s threats seriously — the reason the witness tampering charge merited the full enhancement — was because of Stone’s ties to the Proud Boys. Credico confirmed that by posting a picture of Stone with his gang.

In Stone’s sentencing hearing, Judge Amy Berman Jackson described how Credico told the grand jury he was worried about Stone’s gang.

I note, since the defense has informed me that I can consider this material, that that is not consistent with his grand jury testimony, which was closer in time to the actual threats, at which time he said he was hiding and wearing a disguise and not living at home because he was worried, if not about Trump, about his — about Stone, but about his friends. So, I think his level of concern may have changed over time.

It’s not just Credico. When ABJ held a hearing to consider a gag on Roger Stone, she first got him to explain how his associates — whom he first declined to identify but then, when pressed by prosecutor Jonathan Kravis, named Proud Boys members Jacob Engles and Enrique Tarrio — had been working with him on that post but he couldn’t really describe who had picked the image of Judge Jackson with the crosshairs on it.

Amy Berman Jackson. How was the image conveyed to you by the person who selected it?

Stone. It was emailed to me or text-messaged to me. I’m not certain.

Q. Who sent the email?

A. I would have to go back and look. I don’t recognize. I don’t know. Somebody else uses my —

THE COURT: How big is your staff, Mr. Stone?

THE DEFENDANT: I don’t have a staff, Your Honor. I have a few volunteers. I also — others use my phone, so I’m not the only one texting, because it is my account and, therefore, it’s registered to me. So I’m uncertain how I got the image. I think it is conceivable that it was selected on my phone. I believe that is the case, but I’m uncertain.

THE COURT: So individuals, whom you cannot identify, provide you with material to be posted on your personal Instagram account and you post it, even if you don’t know who it came from?

THE DEFENDANT: Everybody who works for me is a volunteer. My phone is used by numerous people because it can only be posted to the person to whom it is registered.

[snip]

Jonathan Kravis. What are the names of the five or six volunteers that you’re referring to?

Stone. I would — Jacob Engles, Enrique Tarrio. I would have to go back and look

When she imposed a gag on Stone, she explained that his Instagram post amounted to incitement of others, people with extreme views and violent inclinations.

What concerns me is the fact that he chose to use his public platform, and chose to express himself in a manner that can incite others who may feel less constrained. The approach he chose posed a very real risk that others with extreme views and violent inclinations would be inflamed.

[snip]

The defendant himself told me he had more than one to choose from. And so what he chose, particularly when paired with the sorts of incendiary comments included in the text, the comments that not only can lead to disrespect for the judiciary, but threats on the judiciary, the post had a more sinister message. As a man who, according to his own account, has made communication his forté, his raison d’être, his life’s work, Roger Stone fully understands the power of words and the power of symbols. And there’s nothing ambiguous about crosshairs.

Then, again at the sentencing hearing, ABJ talked about the risk that, “someone else, with even poorer judgment than he has, would act on his behalf.

Here, the defendant willfully engaged in behavior that a rational person would find to be inherently obstructive. It’s important to note that he didn’t just fire off a few intemperate emails. He used the tools of social media to achieve the broadest dissemination possible. It wasn’t accidental. He had a staff that helped him do it.

As the defendant emphasized in emails introduced into evidence in this case, using the new social media is his “sweet spot.” It’s his area of expertise. And even the letters submitted on his behalf by his friends emphasized that incendiary activity is precisely what he is specifically known for. He knew exactly what he was doing. And by choosing Instagram and Twitter as his platforms, he understood that he was multiplying the number of people who would hear his message.

By deliberately stoking public opinion against prosecution and the Court in this matter, he willfully increased the risk that someone else, with even poorer judgment than he has, would act on his behalf. This is intolerable to the administration of justice, and the Court cannot sit idly by, shrug its shoulder and say: Oh, that’s just Roger being Roger, or it wouldn’t have grounds to act the next time someone tries it.

Both Credico and ABJ, then, pointed to the white supremacist gang that Roger Stone hangs out with to explain why Roger Stone’s threats must be taken seriously.

And Bill Barr dismissed the seriousness of both those threats — the threats Roger Stone makes that might lead one of his associates to take violent action — when he undermined the sentencing recommendation on Stone.

Trump’s invocation of the Proud Boys is no idle threat. Because the Proud Boys have already been used to intimidate those holding Donald Trump accountable.

The epic five hour hearing in the Mike Flynn case just wrapped up.

The most notable events, one which may utterly sway Judge Sullivan’s opinion, were two details that would give Sullivan reason to say this is the exceptional case where he should not grant the motion to dismiss.

The first was Sidney Powell’s admission that she has spoken to the President about this case, and also spoken with Trump’s campaign lawyer, Jenna Ellis, about it, the latter apparently more than once. Powell tried to claim Executive Privilege for her conversation(s) with the President about the case, until Sullivan pointed out the sheer absurdity of that. Powell was never asked why she was speaking to a lawyer, Ellis, whose job it is to make sure the President doesn’t break any campaign finance laws about this case. Still, those admissions, handled with all the leaden aplomb that Powell exemplifies, will provide Sullivan ample basis (on top of Trump’s tweets and everything else) to prove that this was all politicized by the President.

The other detail that might really sway Sullivan was the judge’s mention of Aitan Goelman’s letter informing Judge Sullivan that someone — and Goelman did not speculate on who might have done this — altered the notes of his client. Sullivan said he was “floored” when he read the letter.  Later on, Powell accused Strzok of being the dirtiest FBI agent of all time. Some other things make me wonder — though this would make the logistics rather interesting — whether Powell was the one who altered the notes. In any case, Sullivan ordered that someone authenticate the filings submitted to the court.

Judge Sullivan was already bugged by the letter Sidney Powell wrote to Billy Barr asking that he do all the things he subsequently did, notably appoint a lawyer to review the entirety of the prosecution. The confirmation that Powell has been personally lobbying Trump’s (!!!) campaign lawyer for intervention seems to seal the proof that this is political.

Still, perhaps a more substantive problem with the pro-Flynn argument is that DOJ’s two representatives (Ken Kohl for the DC US Attorney’s Office) and the Solicitor General’s counsel, Hashim Mooppan) contradicted each other on a key issue.

Mooppan repeatedly claimed, “what if it were true that this was a witch hunt”? He relied, significantly, on two things. First, Bill Priestap’s notes clearly recording that FBI did the interview to figure out whether Mike Flynn would tell the truth.

Rather than focusing on what Priestap and every witness confirmed in real time and since was the purpose of the interview, Mooppan instead focused on Priestap’s notation of the debate before this, about whether they just wanted to get Flynn to lie. As John Gleeson pointed out, though, that would not make Flynn abnormal at all. That happens to defendants all the time. But in fact, Gleeson further noted, that’s not what happened; Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka actually cued Flynn with his own words to make sure he had an opportunity to fix the record, and Flynn did not do so. Moreover, all other witnesses said the same thing Priestap did: the point of the interview was to see if Flynn would tell the truth.

Plus, there’s a real problem with Mooppan’s reliance on Priestap’s notes. As the NYT reported, DOJ rushed to move to dismiss the case while Priestap’s 302 was being finalized.

Priestap, the former head of F.B.I. counterintelligence, two days before making their extraordinary request to drop the case to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. They did not tell Judge Sullivan about Mr. Priestap’s interview. A Justice Department official said that they were in the process of writing up a report on the interview and that it would soon be filed with the court.

The department’s motion referred to notes that Mr. Priestap wrote around the bureau’s 2017 questioning of Mr. Flynn, who later pleaded guilty to lying to investigators during that interview. His lawyers said Mr. Priestap’s notes — recently uncovered during a review of the case — suggested that the F.B.I. was trying to entrap Mr. Flynn, and Attorney General William P. Barr said investigators were trying to “lay a perjury trap.”

That interpretation was wrong, Mr. Priestap told the prosecutors reviewing the case. He said that F.B.I. officials were trying to do the right thing in questioning Mr. Flynn and that he knew of no effort to set him up. Media reports about his notes misconstrued them, he said, according to the people familiar with the investigation.

The department’s decision to exclude mention of Mr. Priestap’s interview in the motion could trouble Judge Sullivan, who signaled late on Tuesday that he was skeptical of the department’s arguments.

In spite of its ability to turn Bill Barnett’s 302 around in a week, DOJ has never disclosed Priestap’s 302 debunking this claim to Judge Sullivan. These notes don’t say what Mooppan falsely claimed to Sullivan they did. And that may become more clear in days ahead.

The other thing Mooppan relied upon, repeatedly, was the claim that Pientka and Strzok didn’t believe Flynn had lied after they interviewed him (he also relied on a Jim Comey comment, made without knowledge of all the evidence that FBI subsequently gathered, that corroborated the evidence that Flynn had lied). Except that’s not what they said (and some of the texts that DOJ has released make this clear). They believed Flynn either believed what he said (though they’d get proof later he did not), or that he was just a very accomplished liar.

Meanwhile, Ken Kohl, who was named Acting Principal AUSA at around the same time as this motion to dismiss, and who seemed genuinely ignorant of key details of the case but nevertheless wanted to claim that DC USAO wasn’t acting politically (Roger Stone’s case did not come up), said a number of things that conflict with what DOJ has already said (including that any of this was Brady).

Significantly, however, he seemed really impressed with Bill Barnett’s 302, perhaps because he doesn’t know the case well enough to know how many glaring contradictions there are in the 302 (which makes me wonder whether he was a source for WaPo’s supine treatment of the interview). Kohl talked about all the claims — belied by actual primary documents, basic logic, and gravity — Barnett made that don’t hold up to scrutiny.

The question of whether Bill Barnett sent pro-Trump tweets on his FBI phone — making him the mirror image of Peter Strzok — never came up in today’s hearing.

But John Gleeson did note that Barnett had none of the doubts that Mooppan claimed (falsely) that Strzok and Pinetka had.

That means, ultimately, DOJ was arguing against DOJ.

Mooppan claimed that Strzok and Pientka’s alleged doubts that Flynn lied — refuted by documents already shared with Sullivan — proved DOJ had to dismiss the case. Kohl, meanwhile, claimed that Barnett’s 302 — which showed he had absolutely no doubt that Flynn lied to the FBI — proved DOJ couldn’t prosecute the case.

There’s not actually a controversy here: At least Strzok and Barnett agree that Flynn lied, which should be all it takes. (Indeed, Barnett could testify that Flynn did lie, if DOJ needs an aggressively pro-Trump agent to put on the stand.)

But the Solicitor General’s office relies on the agents who said that Flynn was a good liar and DC USAO sides with the agent who states clearly that Flynn lied.

John Gleeson has noted that DOJ can’t keep its story straight from week to week. In today’s hearing, they couldn’t even keep their story straight from lawyer to lawyer.

As I noted in this post, the discovery shared with Mike Flynn is rife with inconsistencies. While I think the most egregious decision pertains to the decision to hide William Barnett’s descriptions of what must be descriptions of Brandon Van Grack agreeing with Barnett on the least damning interpretations of Flynn’s lies, the alteration of Peter Strzok’s notes to smear Joe Biden may have the most immediate impact.

That said, I want to note that in the last batch of documents released, DOJ has adopted yet another way to add dates to undated notes.

On notes by one OAG lawyer, DOJ includes the date of a meeting, March 6, 2017, in the redaction.

But DOJ provides no date for another set of notes included with the batch. The date on this note is important because the view of Flynn’s involvement in “collusion” evolved as call records came back to reveal that Flynn had coordinated with Mar-a-Lago.

To sum up then, DOJ has used at least two and probably 3 different methods to write its own date on handwritten notes. Adding post-it notes (in the case of Strzok’s notes), apparently writing the date on the notes itself (in the case of McCabe’s notes), and integrating it into the redaction.

That makes the use of post-it notes on Strzok’s notes all the more problematic.

Later today, DOJ will stand up before Emmet Sullivan and argue that Peter Strzok — whom, they’ll claim, had it in for Mike Flynn even though they’ve submitted evidence that Strzok protected Flynn in August 2016 and December 2016 and February 2017 and May 2017 — obtained National Security Letters targeting Mike Flynn without proper predicate.

In fact, their “evidence” to support that claim will show that in his interview with Jeffrey Jensen, William Barnett misrepresented the evidence when he claimed it was “astro projection” that Mike Flynn lied to hide Trump’s involvement in Flynn’s effort to blow up sanctions on Russia. Indeed, their evidence will actually affirmatively provide more reason to think that this entire effort is an attempt to protect Flynn because he protected the President from being charged in a quid pro quo, rewarding Russia with sanctions relief in exchange for help getting elected.

What DOJ wants to show is that, in December 2016, Barnett and others on the Flynn investigation wanted to get NSLs targeting Flynn, but Strzok stopped them, in part because the investigation into Flynn — but not the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign as a whole — did not treat Flynn as an Agent of a Foreign Power. [I’ll fill this post in with links once I post it.] But then, in February and March — after DOJ said that they didn’t think Flynn was a Foreign Agent (but also said they needed to check to make sure!!!) — Strzok approved NSLs targeting Flynn. DOJ plans to claim that Strzok had no other reason to do this except to take Trump down.

The claim is amazing, in its own right, because even making the claim suggests that FBI had reason to know at that point that an investigation into Flynn which FBI believed to involve only Flynn might bring down Trump. That is, DOJ is claiming that FBI knew precisely what they only discovered by obtaining these NSLs.

FBI didn’t know at the time — but the NSLs would reveal — that in fact, the investigation might take down Trump.

And one reason they didn’t know that is because Flynn told Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka these three lies when they interviewed him on January 24, 2017:

FLYNN noted he was not aware of the then-upcoming actions [the sanctions] as he did not have access to television news in the Dominican Republic and his government Blackberry was not working.

[snip]

The U.S. Government’s response was a total surprise to FLYNN.

[snip]

FLYNN reflected and stated that he did not think he would have had a conversation with KISLYAK about the matter, as he did not know the expulsions were coming.

Strzok and Pientka knew — as Flynn offered up they must — what he said to Kislyak in a series of calls to Sergey Kislyak during the Transition, because they had transcripts of those calls. But what Strzok and Pietka did not know, and what Flynn’s lies were designed to hide, was that Flynn had consulted with Mar-a-Lago before returning the call with Kislyak, and so not only knew about the sanctions, but had learned about them from the people staffing the President-elect, and in fact Flynn raised the sanctions he claimed not to know about himself.

That lie — that Flynn did not know about the sanctions when he called Kislyak — served (for a time) to hide his consultations with Mar-a-Lago. That lie served to protect the President.

That’s a lie that Barnett professed ignorance of in his interview with Jeffrey Jensen.

And it’s a lie that Strzok discovered was a lie with a series of NSLs, as laid out in this summary.

The day after Flynn’s interview, FBI told DOJ that they didn’t think Flynn was a Russian agent, but they needed to confirm that. (DOJ documents would record the conclusion, without recording FBI’s determination that they needed to verify it.)

On February 2, 2017 — a week after FBI told DOJ that they didn’t think Mike Flynn was an Agent of Russia but needed to check — Strzok obtained an NSL for subscriber and toll billing records (meaning call records) on one Flynn phone line [Phone 1] from July 1, 2015 to the present. Probably, that’s the phone FBI learned he used — instead of his government BlackBerry, which Flynn claimed wasn’t working in Dominican Republic — to call Kislyak.

On February 7, 2017, FBI submitted 2 more NSLs:

• Transactional records for a Mike Flynn email account from July 15, 2015 to the present (this may have reflected emails implicated in Flynn’s trip to Russia in December 2015)
• Subscriber records (but not transactional records) for a Mike Flynn phone [Phone 2] from August 1, 2016 to the present (given the date, which coincides when GSA normally starts providing materials to candidates and their aides in support of a Presidential Transition, this is likely the government BlackBerry that Flynn claimed wasn’t working in Dominican Republic)

On February 23, 2017, FBI submitted 3 more NSLs:

• Toll records for 3 different phone numbers for the period from January 1, 2016 to the present [Phone 3, Phone 4, possible Phone 5]
• An email address, from inception to the present

On March 7, 2017, FBI submitted a last NSL, for subscriber and transactional information for a Mike Flynn phone [possibly Phone 2] between December 21, 2016 and January 15, 2017. Given the abbreviated dates (narrowly scoped to the days when Flynn was secretly contacting Kislyak), this may be Flynn’s government BlackBerry. Or maybe it’s a phone he used to contact Trump directly. Whatever it is, it can’t be Phone 1, 3, or 4, because DOJ already had that span of call records. And whatever it is, the narrowed scope suggests some recognition that the phone was particularly sensitive, as a phone involving Trump or the Transition would be.

On January 25, 2017, when the FBI said they didn’t think Mike Flynn was a Foreign Agent but needed to check that, they would have had no idea why Flynn lied when he claimed not to know about sanctions. More importantly, they would have had no idea that Flynn lied about the source of his advance warning about the sanctions: From those staffing the President-elect at Mar-a-Lago.

Over the next six weeks, though, Peter Strzok did what FBI said they were going to do in that meeting on January 25, 2017: Actually check.

And using a series of NSLs that DOJ will try to claim were illegal, FBI would discover that Flynn was using at least four different phone lines — his known BlackBerry, the phone he used to call Kislyak, and at least two more. At a minimum, they would have discovered Flynn’s coordination with Mar-a-Lago, which would ultimately yield content showing that those at Mar-a-Lago were the ones who gave him the heads up on sanctions. They might have discovered a curious pattern of calls with SJC staffer Barbara Ledeen’s husband Michael. They may have found more extensive calls with Russians, or more interesting traffic around Flynn’s trip to Russia.

And who knows? They might have found a phone directly to the President.

This is the additional evidence that William Barnett, DOJ’s star witness, claims is not evidence that Flynn was hiding his Mar-a-Lago calls to protect the President.

As noted, Peter Strzok’s lawyer has confirmed something I laid out earlier: DOJ submitted at least two sets of Strzok’s notes in its effort to blow up the Mike Flynn prosecution that had been altered to add a date that Strzok did not write himself.

This post will lay out why it matters.

I discovered that DOJ [or Flynn’s team] had altered Strzok’s notes because DOJ shared — and Sidney Powell submitted in purported support of her claim of prosecutorial abuse — two sets of those notes.

This set, shared on June 23 (the red rectangle is my annotation).

And this set, shared on September 23. Again, my red rectangle shows where DOJ added a date, January 4-5, 2017.

As Strzok’s lawyer, Aitan Goelman, explained that date is wrong.

On at least one occasion, the date added is wrong and could be read to suggest that a meeting at the White House happened before it actually did.

The correct date is January 5, 2017. The notes could not have been written on January 4 because they memorialize a meeting that happened on January 5.

As I demonstrated here, there was never a doubt about the date of the notes. They were written on January 5, 2017, after the meeting in question. The notes clearly match the known details — as laid out in this contemporaneous memo to the file by Susan Rice and elsewhere — of a meeting in the White House, attended by the President, Sally Yates, Joe Biden, Susan Rice, and Jim Comey, regarding what to do about the discovery that Mike Flynn had secretly called up the Russian Ambassador and undermined the sanctions President Obama imposed, in part, to punish the Russians for tampering in our election.

In spite of the fact that there was never a doubt that the notes were from January 5, 2017, when DOJ shared the notes with Powell, they claimed that DOJ was uncertain of their date, and claimed falsely they could have been from January 3, 4, or 5.

This page of notes was taken by former Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok. While the page itself is undated; we believe that the notes were taken in early January 2017, possibly between January 3 and January 5.

Then, having been told, falsely, that the date of the notes was uncertain, Sidney Powell claimed they had been written on January 4, and used that to falsely claim that the idea of investigating Mike Flynn under the Logan Act came from Joe Biden.

Strzok’s notes believed to be of January 4, 2017, reveal that former President Obama, James Comey, Sally Yates, Joe Biden, and apparently Susan Rice discussed the transcripts of Flynn’s calls and how to proceed against him. Mr. Obama himself directed that “the right people” investigate General Flynn. This caused former FBI Director Comey to acknowledge the obvious: General Flynn’s phone calls with Ambassador Kislyak “appear legit.” According to Strzok’s notes, it appears that Vice President Biden personally raised the idea of the Logan Act.

Thus far, all DOJ did was falsely claim not to know key details of this investigation, allowing Powell to set off a frenzy designed to impact the election.

But then DOJ [or Flynn’s team] submitted the second version of the notes and Powell submitted them again, claiming they pertained to a March 2017 meeting.

Now, had DOJ told Powell when they shared the altered notes and told Judge Sullivan, by association, when they filed the notice of discovery correspondence (belatedly) last night that these were annotated copies of Strzok’s notes, they would not be at risk of committing the crime of making false statements by altering a record (the same crime Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty to). Had they just explained, “these come from so-and-so’s investigative notebooks and they show that he, the investigator, [falsely] concluded that the notes could be from January 4, 2017 and that’s why poor Sidney Powell made a false, still-uncorrected attack on Joe Biden in a filing before this court,” then this wouldn’t be a problem. I mean, they’d still have to explain why they submitted an altered copy of the notes, rather than just correcting the record before Sullivan. But it would not amount to a false representation that these were — as Ballantine’s letter to Powell claimed they were — “handwritten notes of former Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok (23501 & 23503).”

But now it is the case that the record before Sullivan shows that DOJ [or Flynn’s team] submitted these altered notes while claiming that they were Strzok’s hand-written notes (having already submitted proof that the annotation is not part of the original).

It’s not just that — as Goelman explained — the notes, “could be read to suggest that a meeting at the White House happened before it actually did.”

It’s that DOJ already did read the notes to suggest a meeting happened before it actually did. DOJ, and by association, Flynn’s lawyer, already made that false claim. And they did so specifically to support an attack on Presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Update, 9/30: I’ve altered this to reflect that the alterations to the notes could have come from Flynn’s team, which might explain why Sidney Powell was so nasty about Strzok’s lawyer’s letter yesterday.

Among a slew of last minute documents submitted in advance of today’s hearing in the Mike Flynn case, Peter Strzok’s lawyer, Aitan Goelman, confirmed what I laid out here and here: DOJ altered some of the exhibits submitted in their effort to blow up Flynn’s prosecution.

Some of Mr. Strzok’s notes included in this attachment appear to have been altered. On at least two occasions, there were handwritten additions, not written by Mr. Strzok, inserting dates, apparently designed to indicate the date or dates on which the notes were written. On at least one occasion, the date added is wrong and could be read to suggest that a meeting at the White House happened before it actually did.

Goelman included those both altered records pertaining to Strzok (there may be one related to Andrew McCabe as well), including the one that shows someone wanted to implicate Joe Biden in all this.

That may not be the most important thing Goelman established, however.

Among the things DOJ released the other night was yet another version of the Strzok and Lisa Page texts. When she sent them to Flynn’s lawyers, Jocelyn Ballantine admitted the relevant texts had been provided to Flynn in 2018, before he allocuted his guilty plea a second time.

We are also providing you with additional text messages between former DAD Strzok and Lisa Page (23516-23540). As you know, some of these messages were originally made available to Flynn’s former attorneys on March 13, 2018 through a publicly available link to a Senate webpage. On June 24, 2018, the government provided a link to a second website that contained additional text messages. In an abundance of caution, we are providing you additional text messages in this production; please note that purely personal messages have been deleted from this production.

DOJ seems to have re-released the texts in an effort knit together unrelated actions to suggest they all related to Mike Flynn. Among the texts included in this release, purportedly in support of blowing up Mike Flynn’s prosecution, I can identify texts pertaining to:

• The investigation into Russia’s attack on the US
• The Mid-Year Exam investigation into Hillary’s server
• The general Crossfire Hurricane investigation
• Extensive efforts to ensure the Crossfire Hurricane investigation remained secret
• Efforts to ensure that Obama officials didn’t politicize the Mike Flynn intercepts
• Specific Crossfire Hurricane sub-investigations, including substantial threads pertaining to Carter Page and George Papadopoulos
• The opening of the Jeff Sessions false statements investigation
• The bureaucratic set-up of the Mueller investigation
• References to Kevin Clinesmith (and possibly some references to other Kevins)
• Substantive critiques of Donald Trump (for example, pertaining to his desire to blow up NATO)
• Discussions of Trump sharing highly classified Israeli intelligence with the Russians
• Proactive ethical discussions about how to deal with the appointment of Rudolph Contreras, whom Strzok was friends with, to the FISA Court
• Leak investigations, both into stories pertaining to Flynn or Trump and stories not related to Trump
• Unrelated FISA applications
• 702 reauthorization
• Apparently unrelated cases, including things like CFIUS reviews

There are long swaths with half the side of the conversation left out, hiding what are clear changes of topic.

Then there are personal details, like talks about showers and anniversaries, as well as some emotional chatter and one declaration of love.

That makes Ballantine’s claim that, “purely personal messages have been deleted from this production,” utterly damning, particularly given the timing, September 23, and the fact that unlike past productions, this was not noticed to the docket in real time.

“Did your anniversary go ok? I don’t really want a lot of deta[]” is by any sane measure a purely personal message. It was not deleted or redacted from this production.

What DOJ decided to do, just days before a decision in the parallel lawsuits Strzok and Page have against DOJ alleging a violation of the Privacy Act for the release of personal information, was to release more personal information, information that had — in the past, under an earlier purported ethics review of what was releasable — been deemed personal information.

DOJ knit together a bunch of texts that DOJ admits were already public before Flynn allocuted his guilty plea a second time, but threw in yet more personal texts.

And then, on September 25, Amy Berman Jackson ruled that Page and Strzok should both get discovery to prove their Privacy Act (and in Strzok’s case, other claims) cases. That makes all of this — all the decisions that led up to to the release of these texts — discoverable in what I assume will be an expanded Privacy Act lawsuit.

It’s unclear what malicious thinking led DOJ to include more texts attempting to humiliate Strzok and Page (even while providing a slew of other information making it clear that Strzok did not have it in for Flynn). But they just likely made this entire process subject to discovery in a lawsuit overseen by Amy Berman Jackson.

For a whole slew of reasons, I want to point out a detail in an exhibit released in Roger Stone’s trial: He asked for “lists” — once explicitly described as donor lists, but described as voter registration lists by Stone’s attorney, Bruce Rogow, at trial — from Rick Gates at least nine times:

4/30/16, 2:37:22 PM [Stone to Gates]: Obtain the donor list- I Need it soon to effect [sic] California!!

5/11/16, 7:16:14 AM [Stone to Gates]: Get the list. I don’t care about anything else.

5/11/16, 1:08:05 PM [Stone to Gates]: Get the list !!!!!!!

5/13/16, 1:52:51 AM [Stone to Gates]: Tried – corey trying desperately to tie me to New PAC and Trump seems to be unaware that this PA

5/13/16, 1:15:31 AM [Gates to Stone]: New updates.

5/13/16, 1:32:00 PM [Stone to Gates]: Can make sure Manafort makes sure Trump knows about Sovereignty PAC-???

5/15/16, 2:36:32 PM [Gates to Stone]: Did you see the positive press o. AS PAC? Hope it holds.

5/17/16, 3:54:53 PM [Stone to Gates]: Get the list.

5/17/16, 7:19:20 PM[Stone to Gates]: Get the list – “u need to reconcile against FEC report” crucial

6/21/16, 3:54:40 PM [Stone to Gates]: Lists Friday ??? please

7/2/16, 5:59:17 PM [Stone to Gates]: Lists? You said last weds

9/21/16, 10:30:25 PM [Stone to Gates]: Please get me lists – please.

9/26/16, 8:30:22 PM [Stone to Gates]: Lists????

9/28/16, 1:43:14 AM [Stone to Gates]: Are u going to send me the lists in time for me to use? do me no good after the election

10/19/16, 5:00:14 PM [Stone to Gates]: Lists…..pls

It’s not entirely clear why they were included at trial. The government had talked about introducing 404b information showing Stone illegally coordinating with the campaign, but there was more focus, on that point, on Stone’s discussions with Steve Bannon about obtaining funding from Rebekah Mercer while the latter was campaign manager.

Perhaps the defense wanted to include these exchanges as proof that Stone’s conversations with Gates focused more often on lists than on WikiLeaks. In his cross examination of Gates, Rogow got Trump’s former Deputy Campaign Manager to confirm that Stone, “continually asked questions about voter registration lists.”

Q. Mr. Stone’s role in the campaign dealt with voter registration lists, primarily, didn’t it?

A. I didn’t know what Mr. Stone was responsible for prior to when I arrived. When I arrived, Mr. Stone had already left the campaign.

Q. Did Mr. Stone continually ask questions about voter registration lists?

A. He did.

To be clear: I’m completely agnostic what Stone’s requests were about. But there are a slew of possibilities.

One reason I raise it — given a Campaign Legal Center complaint to the FEC, alleging that Trump laundered $170 million in campaign funding through Brad Parscale’s firms and news today of Parscale’s attempt at self-harm yesterday — pertains to some comments that Paul Manafort made in a September 27, 2016 interview:

Stone had a PAC that was not well funded and he wanted Manafort to designate it as the favored PAC for the campaign, but Manafort did not want to. Lewandowski also had a PAC and wanted the same thing, and Manafort did not want to deal with internal politics related to their PACs. He thought it was a good idea to have a designated PAC, he just did not want it to be either Stone’s or Lewandowski’s.

[snip]

Manafort was not sure how Stone made his money. Manafort knew Stone wrote books and gave speeches and did some consulting. Manafort knew Stone was working on a book about the Trump campaign and consulted with different candidates and on various referenda. Manafort did not know Stone’s client base. Manafort was not familiar with the company Citroen.

Manafort’s comments are positively hilarious. He presents this as a battle between Stone and Corey Lewandowski over who could make the most profit off of illegally coordinating with the campaign. That battle was real, and cut throat.

But at the time Stone and Lewandowski were fighting that out, Manafort’s allies had their own PAC that prosecutors at least suspected that Manafort used as a kick back system to get paid. Manafort didn’t want anyone else to be the official illegally coordinating campaign, presumably, because he wanted his PAC to have that role. And at the time Manafort made this comment in September 2018, he was pretty aggressively trying to hide how his own PAC worked.

The investigation into Manafort’s PAC has been closed, whether because Bill Barr shut it down or prosecutors gave up trying to untangle it.

But the CLC complaint into Trump’s current campaign alleges that one of Parscale’s firms, American Made Media Holding Corporation, serves as a pass through for campaign vendor services that are therefore improperly shielded from campaign finance reporting.

Approximately one month after AMMC’s formation, the Trump campaign began reporting sizable payments to AMMC, and AMMC soon became the Trump campaign’s largest vendor. Since 2019, the Trump campaign has reported paying $106 million to AMMC for an array of general purposes, including placed media, consulting, online advertising, SMS advertising, and more; the Trump Make America Great Again Committee has reported over $61 million in payments to AMMC, largely for online advertising.

Available evidence indicates that AMMC is not directly providing those services to the Trump campaign, but instead is acting as a “clearinghouse”10 that disburses Trump campaign funds to other vendors, “effectively shielding the identities of the underlying contractors being paid for Trump campaign work.”11 In several instances, Trump campaign officials and public reports have described other firms as major contractors providing services to the Trump campaign, yet those contractors’ names do not appear on the Trump campaign’s reports filed with the Commission; instead, it appears that the Trump campaign reports payments to AMMC, which then passes on the funds to the intended payees.

For example, Trump campaign officials have spoken publicly about directing and managing the development of a mobile app produced by the software company Phunware, yet the Trump campaign has not reported direct payments to the company. Other public records suggest that the Trump campaign is contracting with Realtime Media and Opn Sesame— firms headed by the Trump campaign’s digital director, Gary Coby12—yet neither firm has appeared on the campaign’s reports filed with the FEC. Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) records show that the Trump campaign’s ads are placed by the firm Harris Sikes Media, but the campaign has not reported payments to that firm during the 2019-20 election cycle. Available evidence indicates that the Trump campaign is selecting, directing, and controlling these vendors and their work, yet is failing to report payments to the firms and is instead using AMMC as a conduit for its payments to the firms. Other possible vendors that the campaign may be paying through AMMC, such as those providing services for direct mail, software, subscriptions, or video production—all services for which the campaign has also described paying AMMC this cycle—are not ascertainable through public records.

In addition, CLC reviews some of the reporting that Parscale pays a number of people — notably Don Jr’s girlfriend and Eric Trump’s wife — for their work on the campaign.

Additionally, the Trump campaign is currently paying Parscale Strategy, the consulting firm of former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, approximately $48,000 a month for “strategy consulting,” and, according to multiple media reports, using Parscale Strategy as a conduit for salary payments to particular campaign staff.13

[snip]

Similarly, in a July 15, 2020 article reporting on Parscale’s change of position within the campaign, the Washington Post reported that Parscale’s “firm, Parscale Strategy, bills for the campaign salaries of Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the wife and girlfriend respectively of Trump’s two oldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr.”93

In the 2020 cycle, the Trump campaign has not directly reported making any salary payments to campaign manager Brad Parscale, nor has it reported any salary payments to Kimberly Guilfoyle or Lara Trump.94

This is the kind of scheme that the NYT described in its blockbuster report on Trump’s tax returns, though in that case the “consultant” was Ivanka.

Examining the Trump Organization’s tax records, a curious pattern emerges: Between 2010 and 2018, Mr. Trump wrote off some $26 million in unexplained “consulting fees” as a business expense across nearly all of his projects.

In most cases the fees were roughly one-fifth of his income: In Azerbaijan, Mr. Trump collected $5 million on a hotel deal and reported $1.1 million in consulting fees, while in Dubai it was $3 million with a $630,000 fee, and so on.

Mysterious big payments in business deals can raise red flags, particularly in places where bribes or kickbacks to middlemen are routine. But there is no evidence that Mr. Trump, who mostly licenses his name to other people’s projects and is not involved in securing government approvals, has engaged in such practices.

Rather, there appears to be a closer-to-home explanation for at least some of the fees: Mr. Trump reduced his taxable income by treating a family member as a consultant, and then deducting the fee as a cost of doing business.

The “consultants” are not identified in the tax records. But evidence of this arrangement was gleaned by comparing the confidential tax records to the financial disclosures Ivanka Trump filed when she joined the White House staff in 2017. Ms. Trump reported receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Vancouver and Hawaii.

When CLC filed an FEC complaint against the grift of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman in 2018, they shared the complaint with SDNY, which is what led to the prosecution of Rudy’s grifters. Here, the appropriate venue would likely be FL or TX (so less likely to pursue a vigorous investigation), but given CLC’s past practice, one should assume it’s likely the information was shared.

In 2016, Trump engaged in all sorts of dodgy campaign financing. But possibly because his key advisors were in such a cutthroat competition with each other, only the now-closed Manafort investigation and the inauguration funding got much scrutiny.

But now, with everything centralized in Parscale’s sports cars, it may be easier to see the grift.

Then there’s what Cambridge Analytica did, some independently and some with the campaign. Channel 4 in the UK has a story today on how aggressively Trump suppressed the black vote.

Finally, I think it’s also important to note that Trump’s Deputy Campaign Manager was being asked (there’s only one indication, May 13, 2016, that Gates delivered, and even that’s not definite) to provide Trump’s rat-fucker with voting lists in a parallel time table as he was providing Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik polling data. In September, Russian hackers would spend much of the month making copies of Hillary’s analytics on AWS.

In any case, Trump continues to be surrounded by people who are clearly grifting off their work with him, without much clarity on how they’re doing so and what the implications of all that are.

In February, when I wrote up the latest performance art from serial hoaxsters Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, I suggested that their failure to hide the hand-written notes on one of the juror questionnaires they leaked from the Roger Stone jury might lead to quick discovery of the culprit.

But the poor execution may be the downfall. The released documents don’t actually reveal anything beyond what had already been identified during the initial frenzy against he foreperson (and since the foreperson gave credible responses in the hearing, backed by the testimony of two other jurors who said she was one of the last jurors to vote to convict). But Wohl and Burkman failed to redact the handwritten notes about a potential juror on one of the questionnaires.

This is going to make it easier to identify the potential sources for this document, something that ABJ was already trying to do in the hearing earlier this week.

There is a concerted effort on the part of the frothy right to violate every single norm of jury service, all to discredit a slam-dunk case against Roger Stone that even Bill Barr said was righteous. And for once these shithole hoaxsters may have done some good — in the form of helping the FBI figure out who’s behind it all.

Apparently, I was wrong.

Seven months later, as Will Sommer reported, the FBI continues to investigate Wohl and Burkman for potential witness intimidation.

The FBI is investigating blundering conservative operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman for a series of possible crimes, according to a document filed by federal prosecutors.

Ironically, the document revealing the investigation was filed just days after Wohl and Burkman staged a fake FBI raid on Burkman’s home in a bid for media attention.

The FBI investigation centers on Wohl and Burkman’s February release of confidential juror questionnaires from the trial of Trump associate Roger Stone. The FBI is investigating the pair for potential witness harassment, criminal contempt, and obstruction of justice, according to the filing.

[snip]

The HD Carrier subpoena relates to a series of phone numbers that Burkman contacted prior to the publication of the questionnaires, according to the filing. HD Carrier provides phone numbers for teleconferencing companies and other businesses that use temporary phone numbers, suggesting that the phone numbers were used only briefly by whoever Burkman was in contact with. The court filing notes that Burkman contacted the phone numbers around the time of the questionnaire release, according to a law enforcement review of his call records.

There are a number of interesting things about the request for call records, but not content.

First, as Sommer noted, this is a DC District order, but it was signed by the US Attorney and two AUSAs from Philadelphia. That’s not that surprising. The Stone prosecutors got the list of jurors that was part of this leak and passed it onto Stone’s team. They are potential (if highly unlikely) culprits for the leak. By asking outsiders to investigate it, DOJ avoids a conflict. This may be (though I always get proven wrong when I say this) the rare example where Bill Barr has appointed one of his favored US Attorneys to investigate something pertaining to Trump that doesn’t reek of interference.

It’s almost certain Wohl and Burkman are not the primary targets. The application notes that they, “may have been engaged in an attempt to influence or injure the jurors, as well as tampering with potential witnesses before the court,” which covers two of the three crimes under investigation, obstruction and witness tampering. And they did do that.

But the third, criminal contempt, probably wouldn’t apply to them. How could Amy Berman Jackson hold them in contempt, after all, when they were not party to her authority?

Another detail that supports that is the time frame — from last year during the pre-trial period. As explained in a hearing exchange after Wohl and Burkman had released the questionnaires, Jonathan Kravis went and got the list from the court on October 31 and sent it to the Stone team sometime thereafter.

In the hearing, Stone’s lawyer Seth Ginsberg tried to suggest that Stone’s team might not have had the list until closer to September 5, to which Michael Marando responded it was likely that it got sent out on November 1, which was a Friday.

THE COURT: Okay. Do you have any questions for this witness about any of these issues?

MR. GINSBERG: Just one. It may have been answered. I may have been distracted, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Just for the record, I don’t know that you’ve talked yet today. Can you put your name on the record.

MR. GINSBERG: Seth Ginsberg, appearing for Roger Stone.

THE COURT: Okay.

MR. GINSBERG: Do you recall the date on which it was transmitted to the defense?

MR. MARANDO: No, but it would have been close in time. My feeling, just going back and remembering, it was very close in time.

MR. GINSBERG: And the date that you said that Mr. Kravis went and created the list was what date?

MR. MARANDO: I don’t know the exact date, but it would have been shortened time to after we were invited to go and copy it down, and then we would have gotten the list and sent it over.

MR. GINSBERG: And you were notified on or about October 31st, 2019, that the list was available?

MR. MARANDO: That’s what the e-mail says.

COURT: Yes, it says they were notified at 5:24 p.m. on October 31st. So it would be my guess that you did not come on October 31st. I don’t know that we would have kept chambers open for that, but that you could come at any point between — the next day was a Friday, and then Monday was the return of the pretrial conference; is that correct?

MR. MARANDO: Exactly; that’s right.

MR. GINSBERG: And jury selection was on the 5th?

MR. MARANDO: Yes.

THE COURT: It began on the 5th, correct.

MR. GINSBERG: So it was somewhere between November 1st and November 5th?

MR. MARANDO: Yes, but more likely it would have been November 1st. It would have been right after that. We wouldn’t have — because then November 2nd would have been a Saturday. November 3rd would have been a Sunday. We wouldn’t have waited until November 4th to get this. I’m assuming we would have just hopped on it the next day.

In the interim 7 months, the FBI may have narrowed when the questionnaires got sent out. Which makes Ginsberg’s attempt to muddy that timeline rather curious (he is a very thorough lawyer, but I also find it interesting that the one lawyer not on the trial team posed these questions).

At the time, Amy Berman Jackson seemed to suspect two lawyers who had not filed an appearance in the case might have been the culprits. One of them, Tyler Nixon, was also interviewed to be a witness against Randy Credico.

THE COURT: So you worked electronically on them until you came for trial and then had a paper set?

MR. BUSCHEL: Yes. We were able to — as you can see, each .pdf is broken down juror by juror. So if you’re looking for 12345, you could just pull up 12345 .pdf.

THE COURT: So who had access to the .pdfs?

MR. BUSCHEL: Everyone on the defense team, lawyers, Mr. Stone. And do we — and there are a couple of lawyers that did not file appearances in this case. Do you want to know their names?

THE COURT: Well, yes. I seem to remember they were seated here at the beginning of trial, and then we didn’t have space for them inside the well of the court, and they had to step out.

MR. BUSCHEL: Right. THE COURT: But yes, if there were additional attorneys
who had electronic access to the information —

MR. BUSCHEL: For a period of time electronically, Bryan Lloyd, Tyler Nixon.

But certainly Robert Buschel did admit that his client the rat-fucker had the files and could have sent them.

Ultimately, though, the real reason for this gag would seem to keep the information from Stone, who presumably expects a full pardon before Trump leaves office. If Stone were the culprit here, the charges would replace those he got commuted.

But magically this sealed application ended up on PACER, if that’s really how it happened, with people pitching the seemingly obscure site it got posted on to make it into a bigger story.

And I’m not sure it’s just the jury questionnaires at issue. As the application notes, Wohl and Burkman also claimed to have gotten Steve Bannon’s grand jury transcript. In it, he told some truths about the 2016 operation that he didn’t otherwise share with the FBI. Not all of it pertains to Stone (they had to redact it for trial). That suggests there may be more interesting details that would interest very powerful people.

As Sommer notes, this order was submitted just three days after the hoaxsters staged a fake FBI raid. It’s possible that they did know about the investigation, and the fake raid (for which they paid $400 per fake FBI officer) was just an attempt to alert co-conspirators.

And now a purportedly sealed call records order wasn’t properly sealed after all.