March 28, 2024 / by 

 

Tucking In Alexander Smirnov: Abbe Lowell Accuses David Weiss of Doing Russia’s Bidding

I was working on a complex post about a comment David Weiss’ prosecutors made in their response to Hunter Biden’s selective and vindictive prosecution claim in Los Angeles — bizarrely suggesting that because right wing claims had been debunked by David Weiss’ further investigation of Alexander Smirnov, it was proof that they were operating in good faith (while still adhering to claims about Joe Biden’s role in this investigation that are thoroughly debunked by the common sense implication that Biden was targeted by this investigation).

Tucked into a reply brief in Delaware, the defendant claimed that the Special Counsel’s investigation and recent indictment in the case of United States v. Alexander Smirnov “infected this case.” D. Del Dkt. 89 at p. 6. Anticipating he may make this claim in his reply here, the government notes the following. Ironically, in his recent congressional testimony before two House Committees, the defendant cited the indictment brought by the Special Counsel in the case of U.S. v. Alexander Smirnov as evidence that the Special Counsel had undermined the investigation by Republicans. He claimed, “Smirnov, who has made you dupes in carrying out a Russian disinformation campaign waged against my father, has been indicted for his lies.”12 While the defendant testified to Congress that the Special Counsel had undermined the impeachment inquiry conducted by House Republicans, to this Court he argues instead that the Special Counsel is working at the behest of House Republicans. Motion at 13. Which is it? Indeed, the defendant has no evidence to support his shapeshifting claims because the Special Counsel continues to pursue the fair, evenhanded administration of the federal criminal laws.

It was an utterly obnoxious comment, not least because prosecutors have not provided discovery relating to this — including, about David Weiss’ own role in the review of claims in 2020. These men enthusiastically chased Russian disinformation and now they’re trying to be snide about it.

I need not have bothered. In advance of a Delaware status hearing Wednesday, Abbe Lowell just filed what he fashions as a notice of additional authority — invoking the Scott Brady transcript — describing that even though David Weiss claimed to start investigating Alexander Smirnov’s allegation in July, he had already been briefed on Smirnov in 2020, but nevertheless chose to chase Russian disinformation again in July when House Republicans wailed loudly.

Although the Special Counsel claims that its investigation of Smirnov’s fantastical claims about Mr. Biden and President Biden receiving millions of dollars in bribes began in July 2023, Mr. Weiss and his team became aware of Smirnov’s claims years earlier. In October 2020, the FBI and then-U.S. Attorney Scott Brady (W.D.P.A.) passed Smirnov’s allegations to then-U.S. Attorney Weiss, and the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office was briefed on the claims contained in the now infamous FD-1023 alleging a fabricated foreign bribery scheme involving Mr. Biden and his father.1 Again, the FBI and DOJ had closed this investigation in August 2020 because they found Smirnov’s allegations baseless, and Mr. Weiss apparently agreed because he took no action based on them for over three years.

Then, in May 2023, it is uncontradicted that extremist Republicans in the House of Representatives pushed for the FBI (even threatening to hold its Director in contempt of Congress) to release the FD-1023 in an effort to publicly air these sensational allegations against Mr. Biden and President Biden, despite those allegations being baseless. Against its wishes, the FBI relented in July 2023. 2 With extremist Republicans and right-wing press outlets reviving interest in Smirnov’s claims, the Special Counsel apparently reopened its investigation days or weeks later. By the end of that month (July), the then-U.S. Attorney’s Office, instead of addressing with Mr. Biden’s counsel the specific questions this Court asked on July 26, instead abruptly backed away from a Plea Agreement that it signed and proposed to this Court and reneged on the Diversion Agreement. The connection between the reopening of the Smirnov allegations and the then-U.S. Attorney’s Office’s total rejection of the Agreement it made has, at the least, the appearance of catering to the shouts of extremist Republicans to scuttle the deal and keep an investigation into Mr. Biden alive.

Effectively, Lowell argues, Weiss’ decision to reopen the case against Hunter amounts to doing Russia’s bidding.

From the filings in Smirnov and other disclosures, it turns out that a Russian intelligence operation has the same goal of spreading disinformation to influence the U.S. presidential election in Russia’s favor. At a subsequent detention hearing in Smirnov’s case, Mr. Wise explained that Smirnov “met with Russian intelligence agencies on multiple occasions, and the U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russian intelligence interfered in the 2020 election and continues to interfere in our elections by spreading misinformation.” United States v. Smirnov, No. 2:24- MJ-00166-DJA (D. Nev. Feb. 20, 2024) (Ex. 1 at 20). Mr. Wise explained that Smirnov’s “disinformation story” is part of a Russian intelligence operation “aimed at denigrating President Biden” and “supporting former President Trump.” Id. at 20–21, 33. Russia’s support of President Trump makes sense, as President Trump has praised the dictatorship of President Putin repeatedly and he continues to favor Russia over U.S. allies. See, e.g., Kate Sullivan, Trump Says He Would Encourage Russia To ‘Do Whatever The Hell They Want’ To Any NATO Country That Doesn’t Pay Enough, CNN (Feb. 11, 2024). The Special Counsel told the Nevada Court: “The effects of Smirnov’s false statements and fabricated information continue to be felt to this day.” Smirnov, DE 15 at 8 (Ex. 2 at 8); see also Govt’s Memo. in Support of App. for Review of Bail Order, United States v. Smirnov, No. 2:24-cr-00091-ODW, DE 11 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 21, 2024) (Ex. 3).

This case illustrates the very continuing harm identified by the Special Counsel. The Special Counsel tells us Russian intelligence sought to influence the U.S. presidential election by using allegations against Hunter Biden to hurt President Biden’s reelection. 3 And what did the now-Special Counsel do? The Office abandoned the Agreement it signed and filed felony gun and tax charges against Mr. Biden in two jurisdictions, which public records and DOJ policy indicate are not brought against people with similar facts as Mr. Biden. In these actions, the Special Counsel has done exactly what the Russian intelligence operation desired by initiating prosecutions against Mr. Biden.

Read the whole thing — along with other additional authority posted, a Third Circuit case holding that prosecutors have to deliver on their promises.

Whatever else these two filings do, they’ll force Weiss to explain his wildly conflicted role in this case.


David Weiss Is Smoking Roger Stone’s Witness-Tampering Gun

On Friday, David Weiss submitted most of his responses to Hunter Biden’s Motions to Dismiss in the Los Angeles tax case (he should submit a response to Hunter’s claim that the disgruntled IRS agents’ media tour amounted to a gross violation of his due process today; see links for everything here).

Expect a few posts going through them in the next few days.

Start with another embarrassingly false claim Weiss made in response to Hunter Biden’s vindictive prosecution claim that is worse, in some ways, than claiming that Keith Ablow’s picture of sawdust was instead a picture Hunter Biden had taken of cocaine.

It has to do with Roger Stone.

In an effort to claim that Hunter Biden deserves to be criminally prosecuted for tax crimes when Roger Stone was permitted a civil settlement, David Weiss falsely claimed something distinguishes Hunter — that he wrote a memoir about his alleged crime and Stone did not — when in fact, the memoir Stone did reissue during the period he was defrauding the IRS was more closely connected to Stone’s other, more damaging crimes, than Hunter’s memoir was.

If a memoir justifies a tax indictment, then Stone, not Hunter, should be the one facing prison right now.

David Weiss waives response about the import of threats to his family

There are two ways the Los Angeles vindictive prosecution discussion in Weiss’ twin prosecutions of Hunter Biden differs from the one in Delaware, at least so far. Most obviously, it’s a tax case, not a gun case, so Hunter’s attorney Abbe Lowell is making a different argument about how unusual it is for DOJ to charge someone who, like Hunter, late filed his tax returns before he knew of a criminal investigation and then, later, paid those taxes, with penalties.

That’s one difference.

A more subtle one is that Lowell, in his motion to dismiss, made explicit something he had not before: at the time David Weiss reneged on a signed diversion and plea deal, the Special Counsel feared for the safety of his family.

As a result, Mr. Weiss reported he and others in his office faced death threats and feared for the “safety” of his team and family.22

In his response, Weiss didn’t acknowledge, at all, that his own fears for the safety of his family have been made a part of the official record.

Instead, he continued to claim there’s no logical explanation for how the pressure ginned up by Trump and Republicans in Congress led him to renege on a signed plea deal. Weiss continued to claim that any connection is fictional.

[T]o state an obvious fact that the defendant continues to ignore, former President Trump is not the President of the United States. The defendant fails to explain how President Biden or the Attorney General, to whom the Special Counsel reports, or the Special Counsel himself, or his team of prosecutors, are acting at the direction of former President Trump or Congressional Republicans, or how this current Executive Branch approved allegedly discriminatory charges against the President’s son at the direction of former President Trump and Congressional Republicans. The defendant’s fictious narrative cannot overcome these two inescapable facts.

[snip]

Second, to state the obvious, former President Trump is not the President. The defendant’s father is the President. The defendant fails to establish how President Biden or the Attorney General, to whom the Special Counsel reports, or the Special Counsel himself, or his team of prosecutors, are being improperly pressured by former President Trump or Congressional Republicans, such that the Executive Branch approved allegedly selective and vindictive charges to be brought against the President’s son in violation of the law. [my emphasis]

The centrality of Weiss’ claims that President Biden has a role in all this — leftover from the period when the Alexander Smirnov prong of the investigation remained secret — is all the more ridiculous now that it’s public that, after Weiss reneged on the plea deal, he chased Russian disinformation framing Joe Biden.

But is also utterly false that Lowell offered no explanation for how pressure from Trump led Weiss to renege on that plea deal. Once you include Weiss’ own stated fear for his family in the face of threats ginned up by Trump and Congress, what Weiss himself called intimidation, Lowell has established how pressure from Trump and Congress might have led Weiss to capitulate to that pressure. The fear of stochastic terrorism is all you need.

Which brings us to Roger Stone.

Abbe Lowell raises Roger Stone as a tax cheat who got a civil resolution

As noted, the Los Angeles indictment against Hunter is a tax case. And in a selective and vindictive prosecution claim, you need to explain the norm to be able to prove you’re being treated differently. To be sure, this filing is even less focused on selective prosecution, as opposed to vindictive prosecution, than the gun case, meaning such arguments are a small part of the argument. But Weiss has been unduly focused on selective prosecution from even before Hunter first made the claim, presumably because it’s easier to prove that the Hunter Biden case is different than anything DOJ has seen before than to rebut the evidence that Donald Trump and Bill Barr tried to frame Hunter and David Weiss is a witness to that effort.

So the selective prosecution argument, in which defendants have to argue that people just like them have not been charged before, was a minor part of this filing.

But it explains why Roger Stone ended up in a footnote of the filing — as Chris Clark promised they would do over a year ago.

56 The government does not generally bring criminal charges for failing to file or pay taxes, especially if the individual paid the taxes, interest, and penalty afterwards, as Mr. Biden did in October 2021. According to the IRS Data Book for 2021, 2,600,000 taxpayer returns were not timely filed. Many, if not the vast majority, of those cases were resolved with civil resolutions, even in the most high-profile cases. For example, in United States v. Shaughnessy, a DC law partner and his wife failed to file and pay their taxes for 11 years with nearly $7.2 million owed. DOJ ultimately resolved this civilly with tax, penalties and interest only. See Joint Motion for Entry of Consent Judgment, No. 22-cv-02811-CRC (D.D.C. 2023), DE 9. In United States v. Stone, where former Trump adviser Roger Stone and his wife owed nearly $2 million in unpaid taxes for 4 years, DOJ again resolved the matter civilly. No. 21-cv-60825-RAR (S.D. Fla. 2022), DE 64.

Here’s how Weiss, treating this as the guts of Lowell’s selective prosecution claim and therefore distracting from the rest of it, responded to that footnote:

The defendant compares himself to only two individuals: Robert Shaughnessy and Roger Stone, both of whom resolved their tax cases civilly for failing to pay taxes. Shaughnessy failed to file and pay his taxes, but he was not alleged to have committed tax evasion. By contrast, the defendant chose to file false returns years later, failed to pay when those returns were filed, and lied to his accountants repeatedly, claiming personal expenses as business expenses. Stone failed to pay his taxes but did timely file his returns, unlike the defendant. Neither Shaughnessy nor Stone illegally purchased a firearm and lied on background check paperwork. And neither of them wrote a memoir in which they made countless statements proving their crimes and drawing further attention to their criminal conduct. These two individuals are not suitable comparators, and since the defendant fails to identify anyone else, his claim fails. 5

Roger Stone’s tax fraud is different from Hunter Biden’s and that’s why Hunter’s selective and vindictive prosecution claim must fail, David Weiss says.

Weiss distinguishes Donald Trump’s rat-fucker from Joe Biden’s kid in three ways (note, Weiss doesn’t address that DOJ claimed Stone hid his business income, just as Hunter allegedly did):

  • Stone didn’t pay his taxes, but did file timely returns
  • Stone didn’t buy a gun while addicted (as far as we know — though there are pictures of Stone with guns and some of his associates have alleged that Stone had addiction problems in this period)
  • Stone didn’t — Weiss claims — write a memoir “proving [his] crimes and drawing further attention to [his] criminal conduct”

It’s that last bullet that is garbage bullshit, sawdust-as-cocaine levels of stupid.

But let’s take them in order.

David Weiss uses gimmicks to limit extent that addiction can undermine the tax case

Regarding the first bullet, using the failure to file taxes in the LA case to distinguish Hunter from Stone is problematic for several reasons. First, Lowell is arguing that what changed between the plea agreement, which charged only failure to pay, and the tax indictment, which charged a mix of failure to file and failure to pay, was political pressure (and, now, threats that made Weiss worry about his family’s safety).

Notably, Weiss avoids claiming that Stone didn’t evade taxes, probably because the complaint against him alleges that Stone hid his income from the IRS in an alter ego, Drake Ventures, a kind of tax evasion for which Weiss has charged Hunter Biden, but for which Stone was not criminally charged. “By depositing and transferring” over $1 million paid to Stone in 2018 and 2019, “into the Drake Ventures’ accounts instead of their personal accounts, the Stones evaded and frustrated the IRS’s collection efforts,” the complaint alleges (my emphasis). Right there, in the complaint, DOJ claimed that Stone evaded IRS collection efforts, but Stone was not criminally charged.

To get to claiming that Hunter willfully failed to file his taxes charges during the years of his addiction, Weiss relies on a bunch of gimmicks that are at the core of his indictment against Hunter Biden. In Weiss’ responses to Lowell’s technical complaints about the indictment — which I wrote up here — he explained each of those technical complaints away using a gimmick designed to allow him to ratchet up the charges on Hunter while also mitigating the risk that Hunter’s addiction will make it harder to prove the tax case to a jury.

For example, in addition to claiming he could charge Hunter for the 2016 tax year because the President’s son signed tolling agreements with two entities — the Delaware US Attorney’s Office and DOJ Tax Division — that are not involved in this prosecution, Special Counsel Weiss claims that Hunter’s failure to pay his 2016 taxes occurred in 2020, when Hunter was sober, rather than 2016, when he misplaced a finalized tax submission.

Similarly, it’s not so much that Weiss charged Hunter twice for failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes, which Lowell argued made the charges duplicitous, Weiss claims; it’s that Weiss intends to give the jury a choice for which year they want to convict Hunter on those charges — whether he failed to pay when he missed filing deadlines in 2018 and 2019 or he failed to do so when he ultimately filed in 2020, when he was sober.

It doesn’t matter that Hunter didn’t live in California for some of the tax years for which Weiss charged him in California, Weiss says, because Hunter lived in CA when he ultimately did file his taxes in 2020, without paying them. Weiss has used gimmick after gimmick to eliminate problems posed by both Hunter’s addiction and the fact that he filed his taxes before he learned of the criminal investigation into him, on top of the gimmick that he claims Hunter could afford to pay his tax burden in 2020 because Kevin Morris paid for some of his other expenses.

Effectively, to get around the willfulness problem posed by Hunter’s addiction, Weiss has shifted the date of Hunter’s crimes to 2020. But once you’ve done that, Hunter and Stone did the same thing: fail to pay taxes and also hide their income from 2018 (and 2019, in Stone’s case).

The gimmicks are just the kind of normal prosecutorial dickishness we’ve come accustomed to from this Baltimore crowd. But once you understand the effect of the gimmicks — to displace Hunter’s alleged crimes to 2020, when he submitted tax returns for four years at once — then Hunter and Stone are similarly situated, albeit with Stone accused of “evading” taxes in two calendar years, not one.

Weiss says a gun that was never fired is a worse related crime than witness tampering that was

But Weiss has a bigger problem with his effort to dismiss Stone as a comparator. He pulls two things out of his arse to present as distinguishers between Hunter Biden and Stone without (apparently) first doing the least little due diligence to check whether those things he pulled out of his arse have any basis in reality, much less to make sure they don’t actually prove him wrong.

David Weiss says that Hunter Biden is different from Roger Stone because he unlawfully owned a gun for 11 days in 2018. But the gun charge has no tie to the tax charge. Not even Weiss makes that claim!

Indeed, it’s the reverse: investigators decided not to charge gun crimes in 2018, before the tax investigation started. Prosecutors only reconsidered that because of the tax investigation — and (Lowell has alleged with no response from Weiss) because Republican politicians made Weiss afraid for the safety of his family. The only tie between the gun charges and the tax charges would be exculpatory in the tax case — Hunter’s addiction. Weiss’ prosecutors admitted the inverse relationship in Hunter’s initial appearance in Los Angeles. ‘[A]rguably,” Leo Wise said to Judge Mark Scarsi on January 11, “information in that case that is inculpatory in this case, may be arguably, exculpatory in that case.” The things prosecutors will use to prove Hunter was an addict in 2018 undermine prosecutors’ case that Hunter’s failure to file tax returns for 2017 and 2018 was willful.

By contrast, the government did claim that Roger Stone’s tax avoidance tied directly to his other crimes, crimes for which a jury had already found him guilty when DOJ filed the tax complaint in 2021.

The complaint against Stone described how he engaged in fraud to shelter his money because he was indicted.

40. In May 2017, the Stones entered into an installment agreement with the IRS that required them to pay $19,485 each month toward their unpaid taxes. They made these payments each month from a Drake Ventures’ Wells Fargo account.

41. Roger Stone was indicted on January 24, 2019, and the indictment was unsealed on January 25, 2019.

42. After Roger Stone’s indictment, the Stones created the Bertran Trust and used funds that they owned via their alter ego, Drake Ventures, to purchase the Stone Residence in the name of the Bertran Trust.

[snip]

52. The Stones intended to defraud the United States by maintaining their assets in Drake Ventures’ accounts, which they completely controlled, and using these assets to purchase the Stone Residence in the name of the Bertran Trust.

53. The Stones’ purchase of the Stone Residence using funds they held in the Drake Ventures’ Wells Fargo account is marked by numerous badges of fraud. They include:

a. The Stones were in substantial debt to the United States at the time of the transfer, rendering them insolvent at the time of the transfer and unable to pay their debt to the United States;

b. The Stones faced the threat of litigation. Roger Stone had just been indicted;

c. The Stones anticipated that the United States would resort to enforced collection of their unpaid tax liabilities once they defaulted on their monthly installment payments to the IRS; [my emphasis]

It seems DOJ believed that Stone sought to shelter his wealth in a Florida residence that would be beyond the reach of any criminal forfeiture, just like his buddy Paul Manafort did.

And this is why it matters that David Weiss continues to bury his confession to Congress that, when he reneged on the plea deal, he was afraid for the safety of his family.

The crimes for which Stone was indicted — the prosecution which DOJ explicitly tied to Roger Stone’s efforts to defraud the government — involved real threats, not the hypothetical threat of an addict owning a gun.

Roger Stone was convicted for trying to intimidate Randy Credico against testifying to Congress and Robert Mueller. Credico has described that his first contact with the FBI in 2018 was actually a Duty to Warn meeting associated with the plotting of Stone’s militia buddies, not a witness interview.

And Judge Amy Berman Jackson applied a sentencing enhancement for the threat Stone — again, with his militia buddies — made against her personally.

The defendant engaged in threatening and intimidating conduct towards the Court, and later, participants in the National Security and Office of Special Counsel investigations that could and did impede the administration of justice.

Before the Proud Boys launched an attack on the Capitol to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, before Stone allegedly threatened to assassinate one or another Democratic Congressman as well as Leo Wise and Derek Hines’ colleague and Stone prosecutor, Aaron Zelinsky, Enrique Tarrio helped Stone threaten his judge.

That’s the weapon Roger Stone was found guilty of wielding: stochastic terrorism that posed a risk to justice. Just like Donald Trump attacked David Weiss before Weiss got threats that led him to worry about the safety of his family.

And yet, having systematically ignored the threats that Donald Trump and other Republicans ginned up against his family, David Weiss is arguing that Hunter Biden owning a gun unrelated to failing to pay taxes is more incriminating than DOJ’s claims in the tax complaint that Stone’s adjudged witness intimidation tied directly to Stone’s efforts to defraud the IRS.

One is connected to the charged crime. One is not. One led to threats against a key witness and a judge. One did not.

But David Weiss, still refusing to acknowledge his testimony that he feared for the safety of his family, claims the one unconnected to the alleged tax crimes explains his decision to charge the tax crimes. Weiss’ claims about Stone don’t help his case, they show that a criminal case against Stone had more merit than this one.

David Weiss claims Hunter’s memoir is great evidence and then proves it is not

Crazier still, David Weiss is claiming that Hunter Biden wrote a memoir “proving [his] crimes and drawing further attention to [his] criminal conduct” of being an addict (neither the gun for which he is charged nor his failure to pay his taxes appear in the memoir) but Roger Stone did not.

To raise the stakes of this (embarrassingly false) claim, Weiss dedicates three paragraphs laying out how Hunter’s memoir helps to prove the gun case that, prosecutors have admitted, is inversely related to the tax case.

Then, after announcing his awareness of a federal investigation in late 2020, the following year (2021) he chose to author, sell, and promote his memoir, Beautiful Things, and to release an audiobook in a lucrative deal that heightened his prominence and drew further attention to his crimes. 1

1 As outlined in the Indictment, the defendant made statements and admissions in the book relevant to the charges against him.

B. The Defendant Also Chose to Commit Serious Gun Crimes

The defendant’s crimes were not limited to tax violations. In 2018, he chose to purchase a gun, he chose to lie on background check paperwork by stating he was not addicted to drugs, and he certified that his answers on the paperwork were true, when in fact, he had lied about his addiction. See generally United States v. Robert Hunter Biden, Indictment, Dkt. 40 (D. Del). When he later chose to publish his memoir, he included countless admissions about his drug use in 2018 when he possessed the gun.

Again, prosecutors have described that these cases are inversely related. If you prove that Hunter was an addict, as Weiss says the memoir helps him do, you also make it harder to prove that the failure to file for 2017 and 2018 was willful.

Here’s how Weiss treats Hunter’s memoir in the equivalent filing in the gun crimes case.

After the defendant publicly announced his awareness of a federal investigation of him in late 2020, see ECF 63 at 5, the following year (2021) he chose to author, sell and promote his memoir, Beautiful Things, and to release an audiobook in a lucrative book deal. Relevant to the charges in this matter, the defendant made expansive admissions about his extensive and persistent drug use, including throughout the year 2018 when he purchased the gun. For example, the defendant admitted that he was experiencing “full blown addiction” to crack cocaine and by the fall of 2018 he had gotten to the point that:

It was me and a crack pipe in a Super 8, not knowing which the fuck way was up. All my energy revolved around smoking drugs and making arrangements to buy drugs—feeding the beast. To facilitate it, I resurrected the same sleep schedule I’d kept in L.A.: never. There was hardly any mistaking me now for a so-called respectable citizen. Crack is a great leveler.

Hunter Biden, Beautiful Things (2021) at 203, 208

In the Delaware case, Weiss is arguing something different than he is in the LA case, that is about how much evidence (Weiss claims) there is to prove the gun case. As I noted, that’s actually counterproductive in the selective prosecution response, because it proves that the evidence Weiss claims to think is so damning was available in 2021, before he decided to divert the gun crime in 2023, before he came to fear for the safety of his family and then reneged on that diversion agreement.

Oh. And also? Weiss again botches the evidence. The passage cited above about a crack pipe in a Super 8 on page 208 describes the aftermath, in February 2019, of the Ketamine treatment Hunter got from Roger Stone buddy Keith Ablow that — Hunter’s memoir describes — made things worse.

The therapy’s results were disastrous. I was in no way ready to process the feelings it unloosed or prompted by reliving past physical and emotional traumas. So I backslid. I did exactly what I’d come to Massachusetts to stop doing. I’d stay clean for a week, break away from the center to meet a connection I found in Rhode Island, smoke up, then return.

[snip]

Finally, the therapist in Newburyport said there was little point in our continuing.

“Hunter,” he told me, with all the exasperated, empathetic sincerity he could muster, “this is not working.”

I headed back toward Delaware, in no shape to face anyone or anything. To ensure that I wouldn’t have to do either, I took an exit at New Haven. For the next three or four weeks, I lived in a series of low-budget, low-expectations motels up and down Interstate 95, between New Haven and Bridgeport.

I exchanged L.A.’s $400-a-night bungalows and their endless parade of blingy degenerates for the underbelly of Connecticut’s $59-a-night motel rooms and the dealers, hookers, and hard-core addicts—like me—who favored them. I no longer had one foot in polite society and one foot out. I avoided polite society altogether. I hardly went anywhere now, except to buy. It was me and a crack pipe in a Super 8, not knowing which the fuck way was up. [my emphasis]

This is in no way a description of the state of Hunter’s addiction in “fall of 2018,” when he bought a gun. It’s a description of the state of Hunter’s addiction in February 2019, after treatment from Ablow exacerbated the addiction. To make things worse, Hunter gets the timing of the 2019 follow-up treatment wrong in the book, saying it happened in February when it started in January. This passage is utterly worthless to prove the gun crime, and instead helps to prove that memoirs, especially those written by recovering addicts, are prone to narrative embellishment and error.

To sum up how dumb it is to use the memoir to rebut a selective prosecution claim at all: First, the existence of a 2021 memoir doesn’t help Weiss’ selective prosecution rebuttal in either case, because that evidence was available before Weiss decided to resolve both cases without jail time in June 2023 and so only raises more questions about why he reneged on that deal. The memoir actually isn’t all that helpful to prove the status of Hunter’s addiction in October 2018, because Hunter doesn’t provide as much detail of that as he did of his exploits in Los Angeles, from earlier in the year. Worse still, relying on a passage describing events in February 2019, after Ketamine treatment led Hunter to backslide, and claiming it describes the status of Hunter’s addiction in fall 2018 is only going to prove you never bothered to check your evidence before you indicted on gun crimes. And, finally, Weiss’ prosecutors have admitted there’s an inverse relationship between these two cases! Proving that Hunter was addicted in this period will only make it harder to prove that his non-payment in 2017 and 2018 was willful and may even provide basis to argue that Hunter didn’t willfully lie to his accountant in 2020, but rather couldn’t remember what happened in 2018. The fact that Hunter gets dates wrong in the memoir will actually help that case.

It’s all such a nutty argument, using this memoir as a distinguisher in the tax case.

Roger Stone’s memoir was far more closely connected to his crimes and tax evasion than Hunter’s was

Nuttier still, given the fact — fact! — that Roger Stone did too write a memoir about his crimes!

The claim that Stone didn’t write a memoir about his crimes is as transparently, embarrassingly false as David Weiss’ claim that a photo of a photo of sawdust was instead a picture of Hunter Biden’s cocaine.

Not only did Stone write a memoir about his claimed actions in the 2016 election, he reissued it in paperback, with a lengthy introduction in which he codified the cover story that would prove to be false at trial later that year. As noted in this post, that introduction made a number of claims that were part of Stone’s cover story, including:

  • Describes learning he was under investigation on January 20, 2017
  • Discounts his May 2016 interactions with “Henry Greenberg” — a Russian offering dirt on Hillary Clinton — by claiming Greenberg was acting as an FBI informant
  • Attributes any foreknowledge of WikiLeaks’ release to Randy Credico and not Jerome Corsi or their yet unidentified far more damning source while disclaiming any real foreknowledge
  • Gives Manafort pollster, Tony Fabrizio, credit for the decision to focus on Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in the last days of the election
  • Blames Jeff Sessions for recusing from the Russian investigation
  • Harps on the Steele dossier
  • Dubiously claims that in January 2017, he didn’t know how central Mueller’s focus would be on him
  • Suggests any charges would be illegitimate
  • Complains about his financial plight
  • Falsely claims the many stories about his associates’ testimony comes from Mueller and not he himself
  • Repeats his Randy Credico cover story and discounts his lies to HPSCI by claiming his lawyers only found his texts to Credico after the fact
  • Suggests Hillary had ties to Russia
  • Notes that Trump became a subject of the investigation after he fired Jim Comey [my emphasis]

Those two bolded bits are the core of the case that would be charged in January 2019 and convicted in November 2019. This introduction is part of the same cover-up, one that attempts to profit off his cover-up and protection of Donald Trump.

He reissued it, in part, for financial reasons, including an effort to pay collaborators in the 2016 story that were likely also trial witnesses. That paperback came out in precisely the period in 2019 during which, the tax claim against Stone alleged, he was shifting money to defraud the government because he had been indicted. Stone planned a media blitz that clashed with the gag imposed on him — imposed on him, again, because he and his militia buddies were posting pictures of Judge ABJ with a crosshairs on it.

We know all this because Roger Stone almost went to jail for it. This post describes that conflict.

On February 21, 2019, Amy Berman Jackson gagged Stone in response to the Instagram post targeting her, describing that his incitement might lead “others with extreme views and violent inclinations” to take action.

Let me be clear, at the time of his post he was permitted to criticize the special counsel, the designation of the cases related, and the previous decisions of the judge to whom the case had been assigned. But I am not reassured by the defense suggestion that Mr. Stone is just all talk and no action and this was just a big mistake.

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. You don’t have to read the paper beyond today to know that that’s a possibility.

And these were, let there be no mistake, deliberate choices. I do not find any of the evolving and contradictory explanations credible. Mr. Stone could not even keep his story straight on the stand, much less from one day to another. There is some inconsistency in his telling me on the one hand that these public communications are an existential endeavor, essential not only to his income but his very identity, and then, on the other hand, telling us, It wasn’t me.

On March 1, Stone’s attorneys filed a “notice” arguing that the book should not be covered by her gag. On March 4, they submitted a filing saying, oops! it is too late. On March 5, ABJ denied Stone’s request that the book be excluded from the gag and ordered more briefing. On March 11, Stone submitted a bunch of documentation showing (among other things) that at least one of his attorneys was centrally involved in the book publication.

The Bertran Trust was not only an effort to keep money away from the IRS.

It was an attempt to keep the proceeds of a book that violated the gag order imposed to avoid more incitement. It was an attempt to profit off continuing to protect Donald Trump.

And David Weiss, after relying on a Hunter Biden memoir that might help prove the gun case but actually hurts his tax case, claims that memoir doesn’t exist.

And that’s before you consider the book introduction that Stone wrote for Keith Ablow, the guy whose therapy — Hunter’s memoir describes — made his addiction worse, the guy in whose cottage Hunter was staying when his life was packaged up to be sent to David Weiss to use in prosecution.

After looking at Keith Ablow’s sawdust picture and claiming it was Hunter’s cocaine, Weiss has now looked at Ablow buddy Roger Stone and claimed that a memoir that is more closely connected with his tax dodging and dangerous crimes and instead claimed that memoir simply doesn’t exist.

And that is the basis Weiss gives for charging Hunter Biden with tax crimes.

Timeline

October 30, 2018: ABC reports that Stone hired Bruce Rogow in September, a First Amendment specialist who has done extensive work with Trump Organization.

October 31, 2018: Date Corsi stops making any pretense of cooperating with Mueller inquiry.

November 6, 2018: Democrats win the House in mid-term elections.

November 7, 2018: Trump fires Jeff Sessions, appoints Big Dick Toilet Salesman Matt Whitaker Acting Attorney General.

November 8, 2018: Prosecutors first tell Manafort they’ll find he breached plea deal.

November 12, 2018: Date Corsi starts blowing up his “cooperation” publicly.

November 14, 2018: Date of plea deal offered by Mueller to Corsi.

November 15, 2018: Mike Campbell pitches Stone on a paperback — in part to ‘retake the narrative — including a draft of the new introduction.

November 18, 2018: Jerome Corsi writes up his cover story for how he figured out John Podesta’s emails would be released.

November 20, 2018: After much equivocation, Trump finally turns in his written responses to Mueller.

November 21, 2018: Dean Notte reaches out to Grant Smith suggesting a resolution to all the back and forth on their joint venture, settling the past relationship in conjunction with a new paperback.

November 22, 2018: Corsi writes up collapse of his claim to cooperate.

November 23, 2018: Date Mueller offers Corsi a plea deal.

November 26, 2018: Jerome Corsi publicly rejects plea deal from Mueller and leaks the draft statement of offense providing new details on his communications with Stone.

November 26, 2018: Mueller deems Paul Manafort to be in breach of his plea agreement because he lied to the FBI and prosecutors while ostensibly cooperating.

November 27, 2018: Initial reports on contents of Jerome Corsi’s book, including allegations that Stone delayed release of John Podesta emails to blunt the impact of the Access Hollywood video.

November 29, 2018: Michael Cohen pleads guilty in Mueller related cooperation deal.

December 2, 2018: Roger Stone claims in ABC appearance he’d never testify against Trump and that he has not asked for a pardon.

December 3, 2018: Trump hails Stone’s promise not to cooperate against him.

December 9, 2018: Stone replies to Campbell saying that because he never made money on Making of the President, he has no interest.

December 13, 2018: Tony Lyons and Grant Smith negotiate a deal under which Sky Horse would buy Stone out of his hardcover deal with short turnaround, then expect to finalize a paperbook by mid January. This is how Stone gets removed from the joint venture — in an effort to minimize his risk.

December 14, 2018: Mueller formally requests Roger Stone’s transcript from House Intelligence Committee.

December 17, 2018: Smith, saying he and Stone have discussed the deal at length, sends back a proposal for how it could work. This is where he asks for payment the next day, to pay someone off for work on the original book.

For some reason, in the ensuing back-and-forth, Smith presses to delay decision on the title until January.

December 19, 2018: It takes two days to get an agreement signed and Stone’s payment wired.

December 20, 2018: HPSCI votes to release Stone’s transcript to Mueller.

January 1, 2019: Stone includes Keith Ablow on his annual best dressed list.

January 8, 2019: Paul Manafort’s redaction fail alerts co-conspirators that Mueller knows he shared polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik.

January 13, 2019: Stone drafts new introduction, which he notes is “substantially longer and better than the draft sent to me by your folks.” He asks about the title again.

January 14, 2019: Stone sends the draft to Smith and Lyons. It is 3386 words long. Lyons responds, suggesting as title, “The Myth of Collusion; The Inside Story of How I REALLY Helped Trump Win.” Lyons also notes Stone can share the book with Senators.

Stone responds suggesting that he could live with, “The Myth of Collusion; The Inside Story of How Donald Trump really won,” noting, “I really can’t be seen taking credit for HIS victory.”

By end of day, Skyhorse’s Mike Campbell responds with his edits.

January 15, 2019: The next morning, Smith responds with his edits, reminding that Stone has to give final approval. Stone does so before lunch. Skyhorse moves to working on the cover. Late that day Campbell sends book jacket copy emphasizing Mueller’s “witch hunt.”

January 16, 2019: Tony Lyons starts planning for the promotional tour, asking Stone whether he can be in NYC for a March 5 release. They email back and forth about which cover to use.

January 18, 2019: By end of day Friday, Skyhorse is wiring Stone payment for the new introduction.

January 24, 2019: Mike Campbell tells Stone the paperback “is printing soon,” and asks what address he should send Stone’s copies to. WaPo reports that Mueller is investigating whether Jerome Corsi’s “severance payments” from InfoWars were an effort to have him sustain Stone’s story. It also reports that Corsi’s stepson, Andrew Stettner, appeared before the grand jury. That same day, the grand jury indicts Stone, but not Corsi.

January 25, 2019, 6:00 AM: Arrest of Roger Stone.

January 25, 2019, 2:10 PM: Starting the afternoon after Stone got arrested, Tony Lyons starts working with Smith on some limited post-arrest publicity. He says Hannity is interested in having Stone Monday, January 28 “Will he do it?” Smith replies hours later on the same day his client was arrested warning, “I need to talk to them before.”

January 26, 2019: Lyons asks Smith if Stone is willing to do a CNN appearance Monday morning, teasing, “I guess he could put them on the spot about how they really go to this house with the FBI.”

January 27, 2019: Smith responds to the CNN invitation, “Roger is fully booked.” When Lyons asks for a list of those “fully booked” bookings, Smith only refers to the Hannity appearance on the 28th, and notes that Kristin Davis is handling the schedule. Davis notes he’s also doing Laura Ingraham.

January 28, 2019: The Stones pay $19,485 to IRS.

January 28, 2019: The plans for Hannity continue on Monday, with Smith again asking for the Hannity folks to speak to him “to confirm the details.” In that thread, Davis and Lyons talk about how amazing it would be to support “another New York Times Bestseller” for Stone.

February 15, 2019: After two weeks — during which Stone was indicted, made several appearances before judges, and had his attorneys submit their first argument against a gag — Stone responded to Campbell’s January 24 email providing his address, and then asking “what is the plan for launch?” (a topic which had already been broached with Lyons on January 16). Campbell describes the 300-400 media outlets who got a review copy, then describes the 8 journalists who expressed an interest in it. Stone warns Campbell, “recognize that the judge may issue a gag order any day now” and admits “I also have to be wary of media outlets I want to interview me but don’t really want to talk about the book.”

February 18, 2019: Release of ebook version of Stone’s reissued book.

February 21, 2019: After Stone released an Instagram post implicitly threatening her, Amy Berman Jackson imposes a gag on Stone based on public safety considerations.

February 25, 2019: The Stones transfer $70,000 from Drake to Attorney account.

February 28, 2019: The Stones transfer $70,000 from Drake to Attorney account. The Stones pay $19,485 to IRS.

March 1, 2019: Ostensible official release date of paperback of Stone’s book. Stone submits “clarification” claiming that the book publication does not violate the gag.

March 4, 2019: Stone submits filing saying it is too late to hold the book.

March 5, 2019: The Stones establish Bertran Trust.

March 5, 2019: ABJ denies Stone’s request to exclude the book from the gag and orders further briefing.

March 11, 2019: Stone response to ABJ order, including exhibits showing that at least one of his attorneys knew of the imminent book release at the gag hearing.

March 22, 2019: The Stones purchase condo using $140,000 transfered from Drake Ventures account.

March 27, 2019: The Certificate of Trust recorded in Broward.

March 28, 2019: The Stones fail to make IRS payment, leading to default.

May 24, 2019: The Stones open three bank accounts in name of Bertran Trust.

June 2, 2020: Roger Stone writes forward to Keith Ablow book celebrating Trump.


emptywheel Takes to MSNBC to Explain the January 6 Investigation

MSNBC was kind enough to invite me to make the case, again, that those blaming Merrick Garland for delays in the January 6 investigation simply aren’t familiar with the investigation. Readers will be familiar with much of this, but two details are new.

First, I describe what investigative steps prosecutors had to take to prepare the most obvious piece of evidence, Trump’s 2:24 tweet targeting Mike Pence.

Take the tweet Trump sent at 2:24 p.m. Jan. 6: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage.” It was right there in public! But to present that in court first required the exploitation of at least two phones, nine months of fights over executive privilege, a 23-day stall from Twitter and two sets of interviews with at least eight different top aides.

And something that’s long overdue: Holding the January 6 Committee responsible for their unnecessary delays, which almost bolloxed the Proud Boys trial.

One delay that was unnecessary was caused by some of the people who most loudly blamed Garland: the Jan. 6 Committee. DOJ first asked the committee for witness transcripts in April 2022. That June, prosecutors in the trial of leaders of the Proud Boys agreed to reschedule their trial from August until December because the committee would not release transcripts until September. The prosecutors were vindicated when those transcripts finally came out in December, after three additional months of delay and jury selection had already started. Twice during the trial, prosecutors learned that witnesses had told the committee something they hadn’t told the FBI; in one instance, a committee transcript revealed an attorney conflict that threatened prosecutors’ reliance on testimony from their most important cooperating witness. Given that court filings suggest Smith will treat the Proud Boys akin to co-conspirators when this case finally goes to trial, those are the kinds of unnecessary screw-ups that could jeopardize Trump’s trial itself.


Jack Smith Is Not Amused

By Trump’s motions to dismiss the stolen document case.


Fresh Off an Interview with Vladimir Putin, Tucker Carlson Repeats the Trick with Keith Ablow

“I settled a few cases,” onetime Hunter Biden shrink Keith Ablow said, just over ten minutes into an interview with Tucker Carlson. “Because, I don’t know. Maybe God saying ‘you didn’t have the quijones [sic],’ I don’t know. But I wanted some safety for my family.”

It was the only explanation he gave for why Massachusetts stripped his license in the wake of multiple claims he sexually abused patients. For the bulk of the interview, Ablow carried on, as if he were still a shrink.

Ablow similarly claimed to be ignorant of why the DEA searched his office.

“I can’t explain why these things were ever taken or why I would be raided. … I never figured out why the DEA would come to my office. ”

In fact, Ablow provided an anachronistic claim suggesting he got “raided” for the same reason Roger Stone and Donald Trump did — politics, he insinuates.

A: I texted Roger Stone, Man, you, me, and Trump get raided. Who doesn’t get raided. And he, because he’s Roger Stone, he texted right back, “The bad guys.”

T: He’s right. Unfortunately, he’s right.

This exchange couldn’t have been a response to the search of Ablow’s office; rather, it could only have been a response to Trump’s search for stealing classified documents.

This conversation could have occurred no earlier than August 2022 — 30 months after the search of Ablow and 43 months after the search of Roger Stone. It’s an interesting comparison. After all, one of those searches sought notes Roger Stone took of all the conversations he had with Trump in 2016. Another found documents recording a grant of clemency for Roger Stone that has some unknown tie to a French President — possibly Macron, whom in 2017, Stone’s buddies colluded with GRU to target in a hack-and-leak.

Are you really suggesting there’s a similarity between the Stone and Trump searches and your own, Keith? Because that’s a whole lot of rat-fuckery you’re tying this search to.

Having endorsed Ablow’s claim that he, Trump, and Trump’s rat-fucker are really the good guys, Tucker predictably never pointed out that Ablow might learn why he was searched by looking at the warrant, nor did he ask what the warrant said.

Ultimately, after more babbling and blaming an assistant, though, Ablow offered up that if you call in prescriptions to pharmacies around the country, you might get in trouble for doing so.

A: Right. And so no idea, as to motive, agenda, again, I mean, I did have a disgruntled former employee. One who thinks the laptop had nothing to do with it, well maybe that person told them that you were selling drugs. They raided a pharmacy in my town, at the same time, in Newburyport, Mass. Again, no charges. it’s run by a very nice guy, Louis, he’s about 85.

T: Did anyone apologize to you?

A: No. And it’s not necessarily over. They never say, sorry, and by the way, you have a clean bill.

T: Wait. So they can just show up with guns at your house, not explain why they’re there,

A: That’s right.

T: Steal all your stuff. And then never charge you, much less convict you. And that just kind of hangs over your head.

A: It hangs over your head and if I had called my lawyer prior to this, he would have said, absolutely not. You are not going on Tucker Carlson’s show, because, as you know, you’re still under Federal investigation. Any doctor — any doctor in America, if you said, did you ever have to wonder if you could call in prescriptions around the country for pharmacies, would say, I don’t know. I’ve done it. Is that a bad thing, if they fill it? But, if they find out that any single doctor did that, for instance, they can make a beef about it. So this is a way to shut people up. Right. Because anybody can be messed with.

[snip]

The reason I’m here … is I don’t like being shut up. It’s safer not to. Really safer. [my emphasis]

That’s important context to the interview: Slightly more than four years after the DEA search and more than five after Hunter Biden left his care, Ablow is claiming that if anything were to happen to him, it would be because he opened his mouth. The timing of this is important.

Unless someone were charged with a continuing conspiracy through the time Rudy Giuliani started disseminating the laptop, the statute of limitations on Ablow’s hypothetical role would have expired. They would not have, though, on any drug-related crimes that continued through February 2020. “You’re still under federal investigation,” Ablow’s lawyer would say to him.

It as if he’s saying that if he were charged with drug-related crimes, it would be because of his role in the Hunter Biden caper.

That claim came even as Ablow falsely claimed to have protected Hunter’s privacy. He did so, several times, when describing how he came to sit on Hunter’s laptop for a year. In the first instance, he described that, generally, he has no interest in someone’s private life.

T: How did Hunter Biden’s laptop end up in your office or your house?

A: Well, I think that texts and emails that exist would prove out that, you know, he leaves laptops places.

T: Yeah?

A: Despite my saying to him, pick it up, dude, along with your Loro Piana clothes, because they’re my size and I might wear them [laughs], or keep them, he didn’t. And so there it was. And it was taken.

T: You knew it was in your house.

A: Oh yeah. It was … locked up.

T: And you told him, you left your laptop at my place, pick it up, and he didn’t?

A: Correct. Multiple times. [Funny mouth gesture]

T: And so, what happened next? I mean, did you look at the laptop?

A: No. That’s why this theory from Hunter’s pal and benefactor — his lawyer — Kevin Morris is absurd. Cause they could open it up. He has it back! And they could do some sort of forensic look at it. Not only did I never open the lid, I never turned it on, I have no interest in looking at somebody’s private stuff. [my emphasis]

But then prodded by Tucker, he claimed to have Hunter’s secrets independent of the laptop and then shared what he claims Hunter’s diagnosis was — cocaine dependency.

T: But you were his shrink. So you would know his secrets anyway.

A; Exactly.

[Cackling from Tucker.]

A And I don’t have to look at his laptop to know his secrets and his secrets are safe with me, which is why if you have a lawyer, I’ve said this before, if you have a lawyer who represents you, and you allow that lawyer to suggest that your shrink is a scumbag, then I give you a diagnosis, additionally, besides, cocaine dependence, which is scumbag.

T; Yeah.

A: Because that, I made clear to a few people, who suggested, you should have turned it over. Look what you had! You could have helped America! No no no. You don’t understand. This is sacred. This is like a blood oath. If you think I’m gonna be on my death bed, and look my kids in the eyes and say, well I was the one who made it kind of confidential, when you go to a psychiatrist. Uh uh. Like I’m willing to die for that. I’m not breaking confidentiality with a patient, ever. That’s, like, one of those tripwires. [my emphasis]

He has no interest in looking at private stuff, Hunter’s secrets are safe with him, and he wouldn’t break confidentiality, he said, after claiming to repeat a diagnosis that would be useful for prosecutors in the gun case.

The most telling example of Ablow violating Hunter’s privacy, though, is Ablow’s thinly veiled description of his opinion regarding Hunter Biden’s ills. As Ablow explained to Tucker how he (used to, when he had a license, which again he doesn’t mention) helps clients reclaim their own story, he spoke about a hypothetical patient who exactly matches Hunter Biden. His description pitched a claim that Hunter was ordered to earn money for the family by the Bidens — something Hunter expressed when complaining about his financial woes, but something that had far more to do with his divorce than his father. Which is how he insinuated Joe Biden doesn’t love his son.

They suffer depression, anxiety, all manner of things, when their stories are not known to them. When they think of people, let’s say, in the family, or others or events that unfolded as beneficial to them when they were, let’s say, very bad for them. They need to recast the characters that they thought were the heroes in their lives and say, maybe not. Maybe when I abandoned my self, my interest, to take a common example, maybe when I allowed myself to not pursue that real passion of mine because I wanted to satisfy people around me, maybe that means that those people didn’t love me as much as I thought they did. Right? Now, that’s an incredible epiphany, when that happens. If a man, for instance, is supposed to be an artist, and he goes around the globe doing deals, to create wealth for his family, because he’s not sure what else to do because that was assigned to him? That man needs to embrace his art again and reevaluate everyone around him who suggested he not do that. [my emphasis]

We’ve seen this — Ablow minimizing Joe Biden’s love for his son — before. As I showed in this post, Ablow completely rewrote a statement Hunter wrote for a Vanity Fair piece and took out all the love. Ablow replaced this fairly amazing paragraph about Joe Biden … [I’ve left all typos, including the charming, “iOS” instead of “is.”]

The reason people love my Dad Chris iOS because he’s the son they hope to raise he’s the parent they hope to be he’s the brother and friend we all look up to. They love him Chris because he is as real an American as they are and they all want to be. He’s not perfect’ he’s got a horrible temper, he spoils his grandkids, he loves my Mom almost too much and he still thinks he can still make me angrier than anyone on earth sometimes. There’s nobody I want to make more proud of me than my Dad and there’s no-one that I know can ever be more proud of me and my whole family. May Dad never has asked anyone of us to be less human he’s just taught us all what it means to be a good man in hard world. He taught me what his mom and dad taught him “Always remember no man is better than you and you are no better than you.”if er to break I m certain they would all say —no one will ever know you better than your brothers and your sisters you always take their side no matter how badly they screwed up. Every Biden kid knows there’s nothing that they could do to make anyone in this family to stop loving you. And finally always be kind to the people in pain (unless they hurt your grandmother your mom your aunt or your sister- then you’re free to beat the shit out of them if your sister hasn’t beat you to it.) [my emphasis]

With a paragraph that turned Trump’s opponent into a fighter, stripped of his love.

I believe that my father has become an ongoing symbol of what it means to keep on fighting for what is good in oneself, in others and in our country. I can tell you that I wouldn’t be alive today, if my dad hadn’t kept fighting for me, too, through my darkest days. So the idea that tragedy or tough times or any number of trials would dissuade a Biden from serving his fellow man—whether a friend or a fellow citizen—could not be more misguided. My dad has proven, ag ain and again, that he is (as Teddy Roosevelt once said of himself) “as strong as a bull moose” and that America “can use [him] to the limit.”

In an interview in which Ablow advised Tucker to get a dog so he can experience unconditional love, Ablow stole the love Joe has for Hunter, one of the things that has sustained Hunter in sobriety.

Given Ablow’s inconsistent claims about confidentiality and his attack on Joe Biden’s love for his son, take a look at Ablow’s claims about why he got the DEA to give the laptop back to Hunter. As Ablow described it, after the raid he moved immediately to inform the DEA that the Hunter laptop was not his own.

T: So, and then, how did they get Hunter Biden’s laptop?

[describes seizure]

A: And then I immediately called my lawyer and said, look, a patient’s item was taken amongst the things that were mine. It has a sticker on it. It looks different than mine. It’s messy. Mine are clean. His was messy. We have to get it back to him because that’s not okay. And uh, that’s what we did.

[snip]

T: They returned it to him. How did that happen?

A: Well, I did suggest that that would be the right thing for them to do. They made a — they could have made a different decision given that he was under investigation, federally. They didn’t. That’s their business, as to why not. You know it sure put me in a funny position because I had guys like Garrett Ziegler, who’s a far right guy, saying, Keith Ablow must be in business selling drugs with Hunter Biden. He wouldn’t turn over that laptop — he had it all this time. Well, no. It’s patient confidentiality.

He again cited patient confidentiality, the same confidentiality that didn’t prevent him from repeating his diagnosis of Hunter or describing generally what he told Hunter to malign his father’s love. The exclusion of a laptop from a warranted search has nothing to do with patient confidentiality: Ablow has already said that he didn’t look at the laptop. The laptop, at that point, had more to do with Ablow’s rental than with his psychiatric care.

Importantly, Ablow pointed to the fact that he got the DEA to return the laptop to Hunter as proof that he had no role in compromising the other laptop.

I [effected?] the return of Mr. Biden’s laptop to him through my attorney, interacting with the DEA, because that’s the responsible thing to do. Which is, by the way, why Kevin Morris’ theory that Keith Ablow is the source of the laptop originally — he’s the leak — is absurd.

Is it, though? Or did Ablow rush to get the laptop back to Hunter to prevent them from doing a search, to prevent the Feds from seeing the Hunter Biden laptop?

There are two more details of interest. First, note that Ablow is equivocating about what building was — is — next to the cottage Hunter occupied when his digital life got picked up. Yes, that building is currently (as far as I understand it) Ablow’s house. It wasn’t then. It was his office (note Tucker’s reference to house or office above, as if he knows this detail).

It’s an open network of people who have descended in my town. I have a cottage next to mine. They’ve made use of that at times. In order to heal!

It’s very private, etcetera. Of course, not so private if you end up going to dinner many times as we did, in our town, and if you’re a person — [my emphasis]

But in the course of offering up what a private place that cottage is, Ablow let it be known that he and Hunter repeatedly were outside the cottage, in public, at which point the rental cottage would be vacant.

He had nothing to do with the compromise of Hunter’s digital life that occurred while he was staying in the cottage next door to his office, Ablow says. But if it was compromised then and there, he had an alibi: he was out to dinner with Hunter!


Kash Patel’s Deep State: How Trump Trained the GOP to Hate Rule of Law 2

I realized after I wrote my first post on how Trump trained Republicans to hate rule of law that I didn’t lay out what I meant by that. After all, that first post showed that for decades before Trump ran for President, Republicans were already willing to gin up criminal investigations against people named Clinton for political gain.

If that’s the baseline, what did Trump change? And to what degree was that change driven by Russian interference, which I argued did little more than drop a match on an already raging bonfire in 2016?

So I want to show the trajectory, using this Politico piece about the concerns a bunch of spooks have about Trump’s plans to remake the Deep State in his image. The story is not all that new — there have been a bunch of stories that included Trump’s goal to remake the Deep State in his image, both during his Administration and in more recent descriptions of Trump’s plans for a second term. But it does certain things that make it helpful to explain what I mean.

The spooks described three concerns with Trump in a second term. He would:

  • Selectively ignore intelligence on certain issues [cough, Russia], blinding the Intelligence Community and weakening our collective alliances
  • Leak [more of] America’s secrets
  • Staff the agencies with loyalists

POLITICO talked to 18 former officials and analysts who worked in the Trump administration, including political appointees from both parties and career intelligence officers, some who still speak to the former president and his aides and had insight into conversations about his potential second term. A number of them were granted anonymity to avoid provoking backlash and to speak freely about their experience working with him. Others are now vocal Trump critics and spoke publicly.

“He wants to weaponize the intelligence community. And the fact is you need to look with a 360 degree perspective. He can’t just cherry pick what he wants to hear when there are so many U.S. adversaries and countries that don’t wish the U.S. well,” said Fiona Hill, a top Russia adviser on the National Security Council in Trump’s administration who has regularly criticized his policies. “If he guts the intel on one thing, he’ll be partially blinding us.”

Many of the former officials said they opted to speak to POLITICO because they believe the extent to which Trump could remake the intelligence community remains — despite the copious media coverage — underestimated.

Trump’s demands for “loyalty” — often read as a demand to skew findings to fit his political agenda — have not been limited to his spy agencies, but in the intelligence world, those demands carry particularly dire risks, they said.

If Trump is cavalier with his treatment of classified information or material — as alleged in a June 2023 indictment of the former president — it could endanger those who supply much-needed intelligence, said Dan Coats, who served as director of national intelligence early in Trump’s tenure.

Kash Patel gets special mention as someone who would both burn intelligence and spin fantasies by Politico.

Kash Patel, former top adviser to Devin Nunes, a former representative from California, and director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, served as an informal adviser to Grenell but was also considered for a top post at the CIA. He later became chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense in Trump’s final months. Patel also helped advise on an initiative to declassify material related to the origins of the Russia investigation.

Patel is likely to return to serve under Trump if he is elected, raising worries among current and former intelligence officials about the preservation of sources and methods of U.S. intelligence.

“There were often a lot of appointments that seemed designed to make sure that the intelligence assessments could be shaped to paint certain pictures that simply didn’t match up with what the intelligence community had come up with,” said one former Trump administration intelligence official.

The guy who rose to prominence by turning an investigation into a Russian attack on democracy into a counterattack on the FBI, the guy who spends his time writing children’s books in which he, Kash, protects his liege from imaginary threats from the Deep State, is presumed to be the future steward of Trump’s efforts to politicize the intelligence community.

You could argue that the replacement of civil servants with Trump partisans in the IC is little different than what Trump plans everywhere else in government, if he’s elected. That’s true with regards to the means — gutting civil service protections and replacing them with loyalty oaths to a person rather than the Constitution. But not the effect.

One reason Trump floated putting Kash in charge of the FBI, after all, was because efforts to punish Trump’s enemies weren’t producing the results he desired. The Durham investigation didn’t exact revenge on FBI figures like Jim Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strzok; when it finished, Kash complained that it “failed” precisely because people who tried to protect the country from Russia weren’t prosecuted for doing so. Five years of investigating the Clinton Foundation failed to find a chargeable crime. After he left government, a Kash Patel charity started funding right wing FBI agents accused of the same thing McCabe and Comey were — improper disclosures — but did so to discredit investigations into the right wing.

An IC led by Kash Patel would not just be a politicized intelligence community, intentionally blinded to the threat from countries like Russia, and by degrading intelligence on certain adversaries corroding the alliances built on that shared intelligence.

But it would be an instrument for exacting loyalty.

That instrument can and would be targeted at disloyal Trump party members. Look at efforts by the GOP House to investigate Cassidy Hutchinson, for example.

It’s not just Jack Smith or Nancy Pelosi’s spouses who get targeted with threats for challenging Trump, but also Don Bacon’s.

This, then, is the trajectory along which Trump has coaxed Republicans. At first, a goodly many Republicans defended the integrity of the Mueller investigation, until they didn’t anymore. With the first impeachment, virtually all Republicans excused Trump’s defiance of their own appropriations choices. With the second, reportedly fearful Republicans made excuses for an attack that threatened their own lives rather than fulfill their constitutional duty to check Trump. Since then, Trump has used his legal woes not only as an electoral plank, but also as leverage to demand that the party continue to pay his bills, diverting funds that otherwise might help to reelect down-ticket candidates.

What used to be the Grand Old Party has become, literally, a criminal protection racket serving one man.

The fate of the party depends on that man defying the law.

In a post examining why Elise Stefanik might have parroted Trump’s assertion that January 6 felons were, instead, hostages, I laid out a taxonomy of potential motives that would convince Republicans to follow Trump down this path. Aside from ideological true believers, I think Republicans are motivated because they’ve fallen for Trump’s grift, they’re afraid, or they calculate they can stay on Trump’s good side long enough to advance their career.

One way or another, a series of individual choices brought Trump’s party to this point.

Moments ago, Mitch McConnell endorsed a man who launched a terrorist attack targeting, among others, McConnell himself.

A series of individual choices have brought the party that used to be Mitch McConnell’s to this point.

Update Mike “Moses” Johnson is bragging about defunding the FBI and DOJ.


SCOTUS Invites Jack Smith to Supersede Trump with Inciting Insurrection

The Supreme Court has not only held that states cannot enforce the 14th Amendment for Federal offices,

This case raises the question whether the States, in addition to Congress, may also enforce Section 3. We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.

But it held that Congress must exclude insurrectionists from office.

The respondents nonetheless maintain that States may enforce Section 3 against candidates for federal office. But the text of the Fourteenth Amendment, on its face, does not affirmatively delegate such a power to the States. The terms of the Amendment speak only to enforcement by Congress, which enjoys power to enforce the Amendment through legislation pursuant to Section 5.

It points to the predecessor to 18 USC 2383 as means to exclude someone.

Instead, it is Congress that has long given effect to Section 3 with respect to would-be or existing federal officeholders. Shortly after ratification of the Amendment, Congress enacted the Enforcement Act of 1870. That Act authorized federal district attorneys to bring civil actions in federal court to remove anyone holding nonlegislative office—federal or state—in violation of Section 3, and made holding or attempting to hold office in violation of Section 3 a federal crime. §§14, 15, 16 Stat. 143–144 (repealed, 35 Stat. 1153–1154, 62 Stat. 992–993). In the years following ratification, the House and Senate exercised their unique powers under Article I to adjudicate challenges contending that certain prospective or sitting Members could not take or retain their seats due to Section 3. See Art. I, §5, cls. 1, 2; 1 A. Hinds, Precedents of the House of Representatives §§459–463, pp. 470–486 (1907). And the Confiscation Act of 1862, which predated Section 3, effectively provided an additional procedure for enforcing disqualification. That law made engaging in insurrection or rebellion, among other acts, a federal crime punishable by disqualification from holding office under the United States. See §§2, 3, 12 Stat. 590. A successor to those provisions remains on the books today. See 18 U. S. C. §2383. [my emphasis]

Taken in tandem with SCOTUS’ punt on Trump’s immunity bid, this seems like an invitation for Jack Smith to supersede Trump with inciting insurrection. After all, SCOTUS has now upheld the DC Circuit opinion that says there’s no double jeopardy problem with trying someone for something on which they were acquitted after impeachment.

Jack Smith could — today — charge Trump with inciting insurrection in response to this order. It is the one Constitutional means to disqualify him, according to this order.


Russia’s Flipping Focus: Alexander Smirnov Is No Exception

When I started spinning the Ball of Thread out of which I hoped to explain how Trump trained Republicans to hate rule of law, this post was described, “The FBI keeps getting pwned.”

The bullet point was, perhaps, a misnomer.

What I had planned to talk about, two months ago and some forty days before David Weiss accused a 14-year FBI informant of framing Joe Biden in 2020, was the way that Russia has long exploited one-time FBI informants as part of their operations against the US.

Since then, we’ve learned that a guy who first established contact with Russian spies, way back in 2002, by helping another intelligence service (likely Israel’s) flip a low-level Russian spy, and who would therefore have been readily identifiable as an asset of intelligence services throughout that period, attempted to frame Joe Biden in 2020. If you can believe his reporting, Alexander Smirnov has since established contact with four to six high level Russian spies.

Russia’s focus on using informants was readily apparent in the results of the Mueller investigation. Key players in the Russian attack who were or had previously been informants include:

This was nothing new then. This Emma Best piece describes how a former FBI informant, Maxsim Popov, played a key role in Anonymous; they suggest Popov made have been a model for the Guccifer 2.0 persona.

Nor has Russia’s focus on informants diminished. In addition to Alexander Smirnov, informants dealing dirt on the Bidens leading up to 2020 include Ukrainians Rollie and The Economist and Peter Schweizer.

Sometimes, Russia’s identification of FBI informants may have been facilitated by hacking. In the lead-up to the 2016 operation, the Crackas with Attitude hackers — who got far more attention for hacking John Brennan’s AOL account — stole some lists of law enforcement partners and accessed FBI’s Joint Automated Booking System, which might provide a way to identify hackers the FBI was in the process of flipping. The Solar Winds hack compromised DOJ six months before the department figured out what was happening; it also targeted PACER, another source of information on sealed plea deals usually associated with cooperating witnesses. To this day, I’m furious that when DOJ IG discovered what amounts to a backdoor in the system used to archive texts sent on FBI devices — including those on which Peter Strzok and Lisa Page conducted an affair — there wasn’t a more focused effort to find out whether anyone had found and used that back door. And the reason US spooks changed their understanding of WikiLeaks is that, after burning State’s partners worldwide and DOD’s partners in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010, WikiLeaks went on to make CIA’s local assets readily identifiable in 2017.

None of this is surprising or unique to Russia. It’s good spycraft.

But the targeting of informants, particularly FBI informants, has been a central part of Russia’s recent campaign against the US. There are all sorts of sound operational reasons for Russia to do that. It probably helps to evade certain kinds of counter-surveillance. It’s a good way to inject information directly into investigative hands.

Just as importantly, by making it clear how shoddy FBI’s management of informants is, it discredits the Bureau more generally.


The Still Unidentified “Big Guy[s]” in the Alexander Smirnov Saga

With a few weeks to work with, several outlets have done profiles of the shady financial life of Alexander Smirnov, the former FBI informant accused of framing Joe and Hunter Biden.

The AP examines a series of what it calls “duplicitous business schemes,” including a pump and dump scheme.

Even as Smirnov was being paid as a government informant, he participated in duplicitous business schemes, according to court records and interviews.

One example is his investment in an obscure penny-stock company called Eco-Trade Corp.

Such companies can yield a handsome return on a minimal investment. They are lightly regulated and often subject to financial scams and market manipulation.

In 2010, Smirnov purchased a stake in Eco-Trade valued at roughly $3 million as the company was on the verge of launching an advertising blitz that dramatically inflated its value. A crash three years later saddled investors with losses.

WSJ focuses on schemes with closer proximity to Donald Trump — or more importantly, Rudy Giuliani. Of note, WSJ describes several occasions that Smirnov pitched Sam Kislin, a fellow Ukrainian, who has long-standing ties to Rudy and Trump.

Around 2021, on the beach at a private club in Boca Raton, Smirnov pitched Kislin on founding a company together that would market electric-car batteries and capture federal subsidies, Kislin said.

Smirnov told him he also could use his FBI ties to help him unfreeze more than $21 million in infrastructure bonds that belonged to Kislin but which Ukrainian authorities deemed had been issued illegally, embroiling Kislin in a corruption probe, Kislin said.

Kislin had for years been seeking to unfreeze the funds, traveling to Ukraine and meeting with officials there. His travel there coincided with efforts by Giuliani and his associates to push the Ukrainian government to investigate Biden, and in 2019, Kislin was subpoenaed by House impeachment investigators who were looking into those efforts. Kislin’s lawyer said he didn’t have relevant information, and he didn’t ultimately testify.

Smirnov set his fee for recovering Kislin’s $21 million at $1 million, according to Kislin, who said he paid Smirnov $224,000—partially as an advance and partially as an investment in the car-battery company, incorporated in Nevada in May 2021 as Quantum Force.

After a little over a year, Quantum Force dissolved and registered by the same name in a different state—this time without Smirnov listed in the corporate records.

When a solution to Kislin’s problem in Ukraine failed to materialize, Kislin said he deduced that Smirnov had taken him for a ride.

And while WSJ notes that Smirnov was repeatedly admonished that he might have to testify at trial, neither story notes he was admonished at least five times that the “Otherwise Illegal Activity” that he engaged in to stay close to subjects of interest to the FBI could not include obstruction.

In addition, when the Defendant was authorized to engage in illegal activity for investigative purposes, he was further admonished that: “Under no circumstances may the CHS … Participate in an act that constitutes obstruction of justice (e.g., perjury, witness tampering, witness intimidation, entrapment, or fabrication, alteration, or destruction of evidence, unless such illegal activity has been authorized).” When the Defendant was given this admonishment, he signed an FBI form that contained this statement, including on 10/8/2014, 1/18/2017, 10/8/2018, 1/10/2019, and 8/7/2020.

These sketchy business schemes were presumably the point — they were the reason Smirnov was useful to the FBI, because they provided the FBI access to learn about suspected crooks of more interest.

But his larger network is of interest for two other reasons.

First, because Scott Brady’s explanation for how he came upon Smirnov’s 2017 FD-1023 mentioning Hunter Biden — first telling Republicans he simply searched on Hunter Biden and Burisma, then telling Democrats something much more squishy — is garbage. There is nothing about the mention of Hunter in a 2017 FD-1023 claimed as that link that should have led Brady to look further.

During this call, there was a brief, non-relevant discussion about [Public Official 1]’s son, [Businessperson 1], who is currently on the Board of Directors for Burisma Holdings [No Further Information].

One possible link is that the process of (per Chuck Grassley) shutting down an investigation into Mykola Zlochevsky created the possibility of a derogatory conversation in 2019, which Smirnov claimed in 2020 but disclaimed in an FBI interview last September.

But another is that someone knew that, if asked, Smirnov would be willing to fabricate bribery allegations on demand. That someone would presumably need to know both that Smirnov was an FBI informant and that he had met with Zlochevsky in the past, even if not in a period that was convenient for a story about Joe Biden’s imagined corruption.

In Jerry Nadler’s referral of Scott Brady to DOJ Inspector General for misleading the Committee, he included an email from someone — he describes it as one of the investigators — telling the lead AUSA on the project that, two days after his interview with Brady, Rudy was in Florida, speaking “to the original source [redacted].”

There are plenty of Ukrainians in Florida from whom Rudy might have been digging dirt (Smirnov’s cousin, for example, lives there and has ties to Trump world). If such sources also had reason to know about Smirnov’s work with the FBI, they might provide guidance to look for the innocuous 2017 informant report as a pretext to set up an interview with Smirnov.

But by description, Smirnov was trading on his ties to the FBI, so plenty of people might have been able to offer his name as a worthwhile source.

There’s one other reason Smirnov’s network is of some interest.

In the allegedly fraudulent FD-1023, Smirnov used a line that would become famous months later when Tony Bobulinski would pitch it: Big Guy.

CHS mentioned Zlochevsky might have difficulty explaining suspicious wire transfers that may evidence any (Illicit) payments to the Bidens. Zlochevsky responded he did not send any funds directly to the “Big Guy” (which CHS understood was a reference to Joe Biden). CHS asked Zloehevsky how many companies/bank accounts Zlochevsky controls; Zlochevsky responded it would take them (Investigators) 10 years to find the records (i.e. illicit payments to Joe Biden). CHS told Zlochevsky if he ever needed help in the future and wanted to speak to somebody in the US government about that matter, that CHS could Introduce him to someone. [my emphasis]

While it’s true that some of Hunter Biden’s associates would recognize (and dispute) the use of the term by others, Hunter told Congress he doesn’t use the term.

Q One final question, because our round is up, I know everyone’s disappointed by that.

But the reference to the big guy, you would agree, is a reference to your father?

A I truly don’t know what the hell that James was talking about. All I know is that what actually happened.

[snip]

Mr. Raskin. Just, on the question of nicknames, I have not seen your father referred to as the big guy anywhere else in this record. Was that his nickname in your family, the big guy?

The Witness. No.

Mr. Raskin. Did you ever call him the big guy?

The Witness. No, I never called him that.

Hunter occasionally used “my guy” to refer to his father. Not The Big Guy.

When Smirnov’s FD-1023 was released last summer, the frothy right took this reference to the “Big Guy” not just that this allegation of corruption was true, but that Tony Bobulinski’s was too.

So it remains a fairly important question why — months before Tony Bobulinski went public with the “Big Guy” email, but months after he (described that he) started considering doing so, at a time Bobulinski was trying to navigate how to come forward, as he was being referred to a former Trump lawyer by someone whose identity he has protected jealously — why Smirnov would use the line that would become famous after Bobulinski made it public.

Smirnov’s shady financial ties are to be expected: that’s why he was useful to the FBI and some of those shady deals likely were negotiated with the FBI’s permission. What’s more interesting is whether any of those shady financial ties would explain why Smirnov told the specific story he did.

Update: I forgot, when I did this post, that I had already put the dates of Smirnov’s admonishments into a table.


Fridays with Nicole Sandler

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Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/2020-presidential-election/page/2/