Yesterday, the NYT broke the news that Jared Kushner testified before Jack Smith’s grand jury last month and told them — in testimony that conflicts with other witness testimony — that his father-in-law really did believe he had won the election.

Federal prosecutors investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election have questioned multiple witnesses in recent weeks — including Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner — about whether Mr. Trump had privately acknowledged in the days after the 2020 election that he had lost, according to four people briefed on the matter.

The line of questioning suggests prosecutors are trying to establish whether Mr. Trump was acting with corrupt intent as he sought to remain in power — essentially that his efforts were knowingly based on a lie — evidence that could substantially bolster any case they might decide to bring against him.

Mr. Kushner testified before a grand jury at the federal courthouse in Washington last month, where he is said to have maintained that it was his impression that Mr. Trump truly believed the election was stolen, according to a person briefed on the matter.

The scoop, which brings the old team of Maggie and Mike back together again, is fine. Whoohoo! Another top witness.

Just as interesting that Jared has testified is the news — buried in paragraph 31 — that Ivanka has not yet testified before the grand jury, though there’s a good deal of wiggle room about whether she has complied with a document subpoena or whether she has spoken with prosecutors outside of a grand jury.

The New York Times reported in February that Mr. Smith’s office had subpoenaed Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, to testify before the grand jury. The special counsel’s office has yet to question her before the grand jury. Ms. Trump testified before the House committee last year.

Maggie and Mike, always solicitous of Ivanka and her family, mention Ivanka’s testimony to the January 6 Committee, but they neglect to mention that after Ivanka testified to the January 6 Committee, the committee specifically called her out for her lack of candor, effectively inviting DOJ to consider false statements charges for her. So it may not be a good sign for Ivanka that she hasn’t been called before the grand jury.

That’s an interesting detail, but given that this is Maggie and Mike, I’m as interested in what appears between the Jared news and the Ivanka news: Maggie and Mike’s explanation for why (they claim) this matters. They explain that asking whether Trump knew he lost is important to ascertaining whether he had a “corrupt purpose” in obstructing the vote certification. Based on that premise, Maggie and Mike raise doubts about whether Jack Smith will be able to charge this, because without that, they suggest, Smith will lack one key element of the obstruction statute.

Maggie and Mike don’t mention that dozens — probably over a hundred — people have been convicted under 18 USC 1512(c)(2) for their actions on January 6 already; by DOJ’s most recent count, 310 people have been charged with it. Many if not most of them tried to argue at some point that their crimes were cool because they really did believe Donald Trump’s lies.

To be fair to poor Maggie and Mike, who after all are mere journalists, the conceit that Trump might dodge obstruction charges because he believed his own hype is one that has long been parroted by TV lawyers, and Maggie and Mike do cite several lawyers talking about how having proof that Trump knew he lost would strengthen the case.

But we have two years of public record showing that’s not how it works.

What VIP obstruction looks like: Alan Hostetter

Here’s what a guilty verdict for obstructing January 6 looks like in reality, taken from findings that Reagan-appointed Judge Royce Lamberth wrote up to support his guilty verdict yesterday for Alan Hostetter, a southern California anti-mask activist who played a key role in organizing others from southern California to come to DC on January 6.

In December 2021, I wrote about the challenges and import of prosecuting people like Hostetter — I called him and similar figures organizer-inciters — for obstruction, in part because it’s a test of whether DOJ will be able to hold even more senior people accountable for inciting others to commit violence.

Like Trump, Hostetter is a VIP who didn’t enter the Capitol, but who spent the weeks leading up to January 6 riling up others to obstruct the vote certification. As such, he’s a really good read on how obstruction might apply to Trump.

Every time Lamberth presides over a bench trial, he writes up and dockets his findings. I could hug him for doing so, because they provide a really superb way to understand how a very senior judge who has been presiding over these cases for over two years views them. Journalists and TV lawyers who, unlike Lamberth, haven’t been living and breathing January 6 for two years could learn a lot from reading every one of his findings reports, or at least this one.

Lamberth pointed to the following evidence to support his guilty verdict that Hostetter had obstructed the vote certification:

After arriving at the West Plaza, Mr. Hostetter advanced underneath the inauguration stage scaffolding and up a set of stairs leading to the inauguration stage. While on the stairs, Mr. Hostetter used a bullhorn to cheer on the crowd below as it violently fought against police and attempted to break the lines. Meanwhile, on a landing at the top of the stairs, several officers formed a line to prevent a group of rioters from reaching the inauguration stage. Mr. Hostetter’s co-conspirator, Mr. Taylor, joined the group of rioters and began pushing against the officers who were blocking access to the stage.

[snip]

Mr. Hostetter’s actions obstructed and impeded the proceeding by, together with the actions of others, forcing the evacuation of Congress and the end of the certification session, as shown in the testimony of Inspector Hawa and Mr. Schwager. By joining the riot, exhorting the crowd, standing with a vanguard of rioters making a highly-visible and violent effort to access the inauguration stage, and remaining on the Upper West Terrace for two hours while police attempted to clear out rioters, Mr. Hostetter helped ensure that Congress was under a sufficient security threat requiring adjournment and then an inability to resume the official proceeding that their actions helped to disrupt.

It’s not just that Hostetter’s own physical premise obstructed the vote certification, his exhortations to other, more violent people, did too.

Lamberth specifically noted that Hostetter’s purpose was to obstruct an election result he viewed as fraudulent.

Among other evidence … Mr. Hostetter’s own testimony[] demonstrate[s] that Mr. Hostetter understood his purpose on that day to be stopping an election result that he viewed as fraudulent by obstructing or impeding the Electoral College Certification.

Lamberth cited multiple exhibits and testimony showing that Hostetter knew the significance of the Electoral Certification. Notably, he describes how Hostetter listened to Trump explaining what he wanted, and then took action.

Mr. Hostetter testified that he had been closely following the efforts to overturn the 2020 Presidential Election and news about what was happening with the Electoral College Certification. Additionally, Mr. Hostetter testified that he listened to speeches at the Ellipse given by Rudy Giuliani and President Trump, was engaged by them, and remembers President Trump talking about Vice President Pence. During President Trump’s speech, President Trump made statements concerning what he wanted to happen with the certification and Vice President Pence’s role in the certification, which Mr. Hostetter heard.

Lamberth substantiated Hostetter’s corrupt purpose — what Maggie and Mike claim requires proof of knowledge that Trump lost — by pointing to the former cop’s consciousness of wrong-doing by walking, armed with a hatchet, onto Capitol grounds, what Dabney Friedrich adopted as “otherwise illegal means” standard to meet the statute’s corrupt purpose requirement.

Mr. Hostetter had the necessary mental state to meet the “corruptly” requirement. First, by himself carrying an inherently dangerous weapon into the restricted grounds of the Capitol, Mr. Hostetter used an unlawful means, specifically the independently felonious means of entering and remaining in a restricted building with a deadly or dangerous weapon.

Lamberth also pointed to Hostetter’s own incitement of others as evidence of corrupt purpose.

Additionally, Mr. Hostetter sent numerous messages and made speeches before and immediately after January 6 effectively calling for revolution. He also recorded videos in which he called for executions of public officials in connection with the 2020 Presidential Election.

Importantly, Lamberth specifically addresses, and dismisses the import of, Hostetter’s claims that he believed he was doing something good.

I also find that even if Mr. Hostetter genuinely believed the election was stolen and that public officials had committed treason, that does not change the fact that he acted corruptly with consciousness of wrongdoing. Belief that your actions are ultimately serving a greater good does not negate consciousness of wrongdoing.

[snip]

[T]he point isn’t that the defendant needs to understand what he’s doing is morally wrong; it’s that he needs to understand that what he’s doing is unlawful. Even if Mr. Hostetter sincerely believed–which it appears he did–that the election was fraudulent, that President Trump was the rightful winner, and that public officials committed treason, as a former police chief, he still must have known it was unlawful to vindicate that perceived injustice by engaging in mob violence to obstruct Congress.

And Lamberth addresses the mid-point of the appellate debate at the DC Circuit on corrupt purpose in the Fischer decision — requiring an unlawful benefit to find corrupt purpose.

I find that Mr. Hostetter took these actions in order to provide an unlawful benefit to his preferred presidential candidate, President Trump–by disrupting the Electoral College Certification that would have led to President Trump’s loss of the presidency.

Requiring finding an unlawful benefit is not, yet, the standard for obstruction in the DC Circuit. A separate panel considered the standard for corrupt purpose in Thomas Robertson’s appeal on May 11. But it is likely to be the most conservative standard that the DC Circuit (and even SCOTUS) would adopt, so Lamberth is protecting this verdict in advance of further rulings from the Circuit.

In any case, as I’ve noted over and over, even if that were the standard, it would apply to Trump if he were charged far more easily than any of the 300-plus people who’ve already been charged with obstruction for January 6. For Trump, whether he believes he won or not is not only unnecessary, but because he was trying to steal the election, it’s easier to prove corrupt purpose under this standard for him than for anyone else.

This is what applying the obstruction statute to January 6 looks like in real life. One after another judge has, like Lamberth, explained why it doesn’t matter whether someone believed that Trump won.

It doesn’t matter. Maggie and Mike built an entire story around a standard that two years of directly applicable precedents — precedents that will dictate terms of the elements of offense if Trump ever is charged under 18 USC 1512(c)(2) — show doesn’t matter.

Whether Trump believes he won doesn’t matter for 18 USC 1512(c)(2).

Jared Kushner’s central role in monetizing the lies

Whether Trump knew he won doesn’t matter for 18 USC 1512(c)(2).

It does matter — a lot — for any campaign finance charges arising out of January 6, and in that, it could have an indirect impact on Jack Smith’s charging decisions.

And, in part because Jared made himself scarce for January 6 itself, that’s actually the area where the former President’s son-in-law has more personal exposure than on the conspiracy to obstruct the vote certification.

This is a point MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin made at length in response to this news yesterday (and her coverage of this is so good I hereby create a special category of people who happen to be lawyers but even in spite of that provide superb TV analysis based on the actual facts).

Here’s how J6C addressed it.

Several days earlier, Trump Campaign Senior Advisor Jason Miller had explained the intention for this round of advertisements in an email. He wrote that, “the President and Mayor Giuliani want to get back up on TVASAP, and Jared [Kushner] has approved in budgetary concept, so here’s the gameplan” in order to “motivate the GOP base to put pressure on the Republican Governors of Georgia and Arizona and the Republican controlled State legislatures in Wisconsin and Michigan to hear evidence of voter fraud before January 6th.”317 Miller anticipated a budget of $5 million and asked for the messaging to follow an earlier round of advertisements, “but the endings need to be changed to include phone numbers and directions to call the local Governor or state legislature.”318 On December 22nd, Jason Miller texted Jared Kushner that “POTUS has approved the buy.”319

[snip]

Trump Campaign leadership was fully aware of post-election fundraising totals. According to Coby, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner “had the most interest in the digital program” and “would just check in on [fundraising] results,” and routinely received updates regarding fundraising from Coby.70 Coby also made clear that Kushner was heavily involved in the Campaign’s budget process71 and that he updated Kushner on TMAGAC’s post-election fundraising totals.72

The Select Committee received documents confirming Kushner’s involvement. For example, on November 8, 2020, Kushner requested that a daily tracker be created showing the Trump Campaign’s financial position from election day forward.73 In an email, Kushner noted that the tracker would allow the Campaign to consider its cash flow ahead of the creation of “a new entity for POTUS[’s] other political activities.”74 Just days after the election, and after the Campaign had three of its four best fundraising days ever on November 4th, 5th, and 6th,75 Kushner was preparing for the launch of President Trump’s new leadership PAC, Save America. Kushner stated that he needed this new daily tracker because the Trump Campaign was going to continue fundraising post-election.76 Kushner continued to receive these detailed daily trackers, which included Save America’s fundraising hauls, through at least December 2020.77

Jared Kushner isn’t much use as a witness about Trump’s actions and intent on January 6 itself.

He’s a central witness to the decision to monetize Trump’s lies by sowing violence — and even, to then use that money for purposes other than addressing election integrity. That’s why his grand jury testimony last month is of interest.

And his claim that Trump really believed he won may not help Trump; it may hurt Jared. But then, Jared has a very direct interest in claiming that all this fundraising based off lies were based on a good faith belief Trump had won.

Campaign finance fraud is an otherwise illegal action

I’m not promising here that Trump will be charged with obstruction — though, as noted, I long ago pointed to people like Hostetter as early tests of whether he could be, and his conviction yesterday shows how that might work.

I’m saying that people who came late to the understanding that DOJ is using obstruction to prosecute January 6 — which I first mapped out 23 months ago — seem little interest in the two years of precedent about how it will be applied. I include, for special notice, this “model prosecution memo” from JustSecurity — which doesn’t even mention the Justin Walker concurrence in Fischer (which Lamberth addressed in his findings), much less the pending Robertson decision in the DC Circuit that will dictate this application for Thomas Robertson, for Alan Hostetter, and for Donald Trump — in that category.

Trump’s knowledge of his loss matters far more for his decisions about fundraising than it does for obstruction charges. But they may influence any obstruction charges, because campaign finance violations — Trump’s fundraising through the moment he sicced his mob on the Capitol — would be one way DOJ could prove otherwise illegal conduct to meet that corrupt purpose standard under 18 USC 1512(c)(2) if that’s what the DC Circuit adopts in Robertson.

Plus, profiting off false claims of being robbed is another way that Trump personally benefitted from the incitement, even ignoring his bid to stay in power.

Update: This post on Maggie’s curious foray into campaign finance journalism notes that shortly after that misleading story, she and Mike broke the news of the Jared and Ivanka subpoena, which Maggie and Mike claimed was about calling off dad’s attack.

After I started unpacking Maggie’s story, I got distracted with the possibility that DOJ will tie Trump and Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman directly to the almost-murder of Michael Fanone. So, in the interim, Maggie broke the news that Smith’s prosecutors had subpoenaed Jared and Ivanka.

That story, written with Mike Schmidt, is exceptional only for the fact that they managed to avoid most of the hype about “aggressive steps” that peppers most reporting on Jack Smith. It pointed to things like the morning Oval Office meeting (Ivanka’s response to which her Chief of Staff Julie Radford was likely already questioned about, since — as the J6C Report noted explicitly — Radford was far more candid about it than Ivanka) and efforts to get Trump to call off his mob as likely topics of questioning.

Smith no doubt wants to get Jared and Ivanka’s stories about such topics locked in. Given questions about their candor before J6C, too, Smith will likely also give them an opportunity to revise their prior answers so they more closely match known facts.

Back to Maggie’s solo endeavor to read FEC filings.

[snip]

As it happens, all this ties back to Maggie’s newest story breaking the news of a subpoena to Ivanka and Jared. I’m sure Jack Smith wants to ask Ivanka and Jared about their efforts to get dad to call off his mob.

But he may also want to know why Herschmann — a lawyer whose legal status in the White House remains entirely unexplained — why Herschmann, according to Pat Cipollone’s testimony, told the White House Counsel not to join in that Oval Office meeting where Trump ordered Pence to break the law because “this is family.”

“This is family,” Cipollone said Herschmann told him before he walked in the door. “You don’t need to be here.”

I would imagine that Jack Smith wants to know why, at that moment when Trump prepared to give his Vice President an illegal order, Herschmann was treated as family.

 

This post talks about what the government filing in the Trump stolen documents case says about the evidence. This other post talks about the legal argument against a delay.

As I noted, Trump’s response to DOJ’s bid for a December trial made an argument for complex designation, based in part on the volume of evidence involved. If that argument convinces Aileen Cannon, Trump is more likely to get her to order a significant delay.

It’s a reasonable argument — and would be more so were the discovery burden as onerous as Trump laid out.

But at least according to the government’s reply, it’s not. Not even close. The government reply shows how Trump inflated these numbers and how the government has streamlined the discovery process.

Whereas Trump claimed there were 800,000 pages of evidence,

Therein, the Government produced more than 428,300 records (in excess of 833,450 pages) consisting of approximately 122,650 emails (including attachments) and 305,670 documents gathered from over ninety (90) separate custodians.

DOJ noted that only about 4,500 of that is “key” to the case and a third of that consists of email headers involving two people.

Although the Government’s production included over 800,000 pages, the set of “key” documents was only about 4,500 pages. 2

2 Nearly one-third of the over 800,000 pages consists of non-content email header and footer information obtained pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d) for two account holders.

Whereas Trump complained about 57 terabytes of surveillance footage,

The initial production also included some 57 terabytes of compressed raw CCTV footage (so far there is approximately nine months of CCTV footage, but the final number is not yet certain).

DOJ explained that while the footage might be selected from across nine months of time, here, too, DOJ has selected the key bits and “many” of the cameras don’t record continuously (which means some do, which would be stuff obtained since the August search).

The Government similarly identified to the Defendants a small subset of “key” CCTV footage referenced in the Indictment or otherwise pertinent to the case. See id. And although the CCTV footage the Government obtained and produced comes from various months, the Defendants’ characterization of the production as including “nine months of CCTV footage,” see Resp. at 4, is misleading. The Government obtained footage only from selected cameras (many of which do not continuously record) from selected dates throughout the period for which it obtained footage

This argument may well make or break the government’s bid for a timely trial, because they’ll need to refute Trump’s complex designation bid to keep on a tight schedule.

And that’s one of many reasons (another is to make sure Trump and, especially, Walt Nauta can see what else they might be looking forward to) why they’re basically providing everything up-front, include Jencks production reflecting what witnesses have said about this case, which they’re not obligated to turn over until the morning of trial. And they’re providing every witnesses’ testimony, not just those they’re calling at trial.

The Defendants also rely on the Government’s statement in its discovery letter that “there will be additional productions of discovery” related to some devices and search warrant returns, and note that “the Government has not produced all interview-related materials, including certain witness statements and associated memorialization of those statements.” Resp. at 4. Defendants omit representations in the Government’s discovery letter about the timing of discovery that has been and will be provided. The Government has informed the defense that it intends to disclose promptly all witness statements and associated memorialization of those statements, even if they would not be discoverable under 18 U.S.C. § 3500. To that end, the Government has already produced all unclassified witness statements and the associated memorialization of those statements for interviews that occurred prior to May 12, 2023, and transcripts of all grand jury testimony from the District of Columbia and the Southern District of Florida through the present. See ECF No. 30 at 1. In the next week, the Government will produce unclassified witness statements and associated memorialization for interviews conducted between May 12, 2023, and June 23, 2023. The Government has made these productions promptly following arraignment despite having no obligation to do so. See ECF No. 28 at 4, obligating the Government to turn over Jencks Act material no later than “the morning of the first day of trial.”

With respect to the devices and search warrant returns, the Government has produced all applications for search warrants and the warrants themselves, in order to facilitate the Defendants’ ability to file pretrial motions. The Government has also produced all relevant content from devices it obtained, except for (a) three devices that were produced voluntarily, the relevant content of which will be produced in the next week; and (b) two of Defendant Nauta’s devices. For Defendant Nauta’s devices, the Government has already produced much of the responsive filtered, scoped content based on the Government’s earlier review of the devices’ content in a different form. In short, the Government has promptly produced thorough discovery in an organized manner, to include early production of Jencks Act materials. It also bears emphasis that the Government has already sought a nearly four-month continuance of trial, in part because of the need for both sides to review and process discovery. Mot. at 3. There is no discovery-related reason to further delay the jury selection in this case beyond December 2023. [my emphasis]

The government really did have this prosecution all prepped to go.

The rest of this, while also intended to help persuade Judge Cannon that the government has done everything it can to facilitate discovery here, provides a few interesting details about the case.

First, one of the last things the government is turning over are the three devices produced voluntarily. These probably came from a cooperating witness or witnesses, and if that’s right, DOJ may have held them until everyone had filed their appearance and signed a protective order, since any cooperating witnesses are most likely to be targeted for harassment.

The government seems to have seized two of Walt Nauta’s devices recently, possibly with arrest. The government seems to think they had most of this content already (perhaps from a backup). The phones themselves might include Signal or other encrypted app primarily available from the phones themselves.

The timing described is the most interesting thing:

• The first batch of discovery included everything prior to May 12, around when Jack Smith decided to charge this in Florida
• The government is about to turn over everything between May 12 and June 23
• It has already provided all grand jury testimony from grand juries in DC and SDFL

Note the last bullet: You don’t need to specify that you’re referring to the DC and SDFL grand juries if they are the only ones.

Indeed, the scope of that discovery suggests DOJ may have started with a third grand jury after June 23. It’s not even — necessarily — New Jersey (though that’s the most obvious possibility). If evidence was altered in New York, it could be there too.

The government has provided Trump and Nauta virtually every unclassified thing they’d need to defend this case and bundled it up to make it easy (which, again, will also make it easier for Nauta to decide whether he really wants to risk his future on Trump winning the 2024 election).

The hold-up now is that at least two attorneys have not submitted their SF-86 forms to get clearance — which, the government helpfully notes, are due today: “The Court has set a deadline of today for them to do so. ECF No. 57.”

Meanwhile, any other hypothetical grand juries can keep working.

Update: Both Trump and Nauta’s lawyers have submitted their certificates of compliance with Judge Cannon’s order that they submit their SF-86 forms by yesterday. Chris Kise, who is the lawyer who may be disqualified from clearance (because he has recently worked as an agent of Venezuela’s government), technically did not comply: he still has to be fingerprinted, though promises that will be done by next Monday. Meanwhile, Nauta’s lawyers have laid the groundwork for a 6th Amendment challenge to the requirement that they get clearance. It’s an interesting issue, but he’s being disingenuous about why Judge Cannon (separation of powers) and the jury (because they only see things after CIPA has been finished) don’t need clearance.

Update: ABC reports that the guy who handled the surveillance video has received a target letter.

Special counsel Jack Smith in recent weeks transmitted a target letter to the staffer indicating that he might have perjured himself during a May appearance before the federal grand jury hearing evidence in the classified documents probe, the sources told ABC News.

[snip]

Reached Thursday by ABC News, the employee declined to answer questions about a possible target letter and his discussions with investigators, saying only, “It’s none of your business.”

Stanley Woodward, a lawyer who has represented the employee and who represents several other Trump advisers, declined to comment to ABC News.

By description (see this post for background), this is the IT contractor Yuscil Taveras (whom NYT described to be represented by Woodward) not longtime maintenance guy Carlos Deoliveira (whom WaPo described to be represented by John Rowley).

This makes the timing of the discovery more interesting. The government is about to turn over DC grand jury materials and other interviews from after May 12 — that is, they haven’t yet turned over Taveras’ to Woodward. That suggests they may be about to charge him before they turn that over.

Taveras testified to the DC grand jury, so if he is charged with perjury, he’ll be charged there.

This likely complicates Woodward’s life significantly.

This post talks about the government’s legal argument against delay in the Trump stolen documents case. This other post talks about the filing’s description of the evidence in the case. 

My favorite part of the government’s reply to Trump’s request to put off his Espionage Act trial indefinitely comes in how they rebut Trump’s argument that there are novel issues that will require more time.

DOJ dismisses Trump’s suggestion that there’s a question about whether the Special Counsel could prosecute him by pointing to the appeal from the key witness protecting Roger Stone, Andrew Miller.

In re Grand Jury, 916 F.3d 1047, 1052–54 (D.C. Cir. 2019), the D.C. Circuit held that a special counsel appointed by the Attorney General has the authority to investigate and prosecute federal crimes.

More hilarious is the way they dismiss the claim that Trump needs a lot of time to make the Presidential Records Act argument he lifted from (noted non-attorney) Tom Fitton. They do so in several ways: noting that the argument really isn’t going to work and that even if they want to try it, the only thing they need to try is the indictment.

But then they note that Trump, with one of his existing counsel — Chris Kise, already made that argument, before Judge Cannon.

As for the impact of the Presidential Records Act on this prosecution, any argument that it mandates dismissal of the Indictment or forms a defense to the charges here borders on frivolous. The PRA is not a criminal statute, and in no way purports to address the retention of national security information. The Defendants are, of course, free to make whatever arguments they like for dismissal of the Indictment, and the Government will respond promptly. But they should not be permitted to gesture at a baseless legal argument, call it “novel,” and then claim that the Court will require an indefinite continuance in order to resolve it.

[snip]

As with any pretrial dispositive motion, all that is necessary is the Indictment—which the Defendants have had for over a month. And in fact, Trump (including his current counsel) has already briefed in this Court a variation of this argument. See, e.g., No. 22-CV-81294-CANNON, ECF No. 171 (filed Nov. 8, 2022). The legal issues Defendants raise do not justify deviation from a speedy trial date, much less open-ended deferral of considering one.

Jay Bratt went easy on Trump: He doesn’t bother reminding Kise (and Aileen Cannon) how that worked out before the 11th Circuit the last time they tried it.

Ultimately, though, the core nugget of the filing is this: The Speedy Trial Act requires a judge to set a trial date.

Any discussion of setting a trial date must begin with the Speedy Trial Act of 1974, 18 U.S.C. §§ 3161–3174 (the “Act”). The very first sentence of the Act forecloses Defendants’ proposal here:

In any case involving a defendant charged with an offense, the appropriate judicial officer, at the earliest practicable time, shall, after consultation with the counsel for the defendant and the attorney for the Government, set the case for trial on a day certain, … so as to assure a speedy trial.

18 U.S.C. § 3161(a). The Defendants chide the Government for seeking an “expedited” trial (Resp. at 1, 2, 8), but in doing so they have it exactly backward. A speedy trial is a foundational requirement of the Constitution and the United States Code, not a Government preference that must be justified. See U.S. Const. amend. VI; 18 U.S.C. Ch. 208 (captioned “Speedy Trial”).

[snip]

“That public interest cannot be served, the Act recognizes, if defendants may opt out of the Act entirely,” id., which the Defendants effectively try to do here by requesting an indefinite adjournment of the trial, for a minimum of some fifteen months.1 See Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 519 (1972) (noting the “societal interest in providing a speedy trial which exists separate from, and at times in opposition to, the interests of the accused.”).

This filing doesn’t get very deep into Trump’s claims about the election. It side-steps the issues I pointed to — voters’ need to know whether Trump reneged on the promises he made the last time he got elected. It acknowledges picking a jury may be tough but says that’s good reason to get started on it earlier. It even notes that Trump’s busy work schedule, like those of a lot of powerful people charged with a crime, is not an excuse to put off trial indefinitely.

[T]he demands of Defendants’ professional schedules do not provide a basis to delay trial in this case. Many indicted defendants have demanding jobs that require a considerable amount of their time and energy, or a significant amount of travel. The Speedy Trial Act contemplates no such factor as a basis for a continuance, and the Court should not indulge it here.

While I find several of these arguments persuasive, ultimately, it’s unclear whether this filing will work. We’re at the point where we’ll get the first hint of how Judge Cannon plans to approach this case.

But by laying out that she cannot do what Trump has asked, simply delay the case indefinitely, it simplifies her choices.

In the third part of Gus Dimitrelos’ report* on the laptop attributed to Hunter Biden, he examines what he could find in the unallocated space of the laptop — the place where deleted files go on computers until they eventually get written over. He does it, in laymen’s terms, to prove that there was someone at the keyboard of the laptop, deleting individual files by hand, which he claims (falsely) is proof that, “Robert Hunter Biden is in control of the MacBook Laptop.”

He shows remarkably little interest in what got deleted.

At least two of the files deleted from the laptop pertain to the therapist from whom the President’s son was getting Ketamine treatment during the period his digital life appears to have been taken over, Keith Ablow, and in whose office the DEA discovered a different laptop owned by Hunter Biden in 2020.

According to two people familiar with the matter, a different Hunter Biden laptop landed in the custody of the DEA in February when they executed a search warrant on the Massachusetts office of a psychiatrist accused of professional misconduct. The psychiatrist has not been charged with a crime.

Hunter Biden was not a target of the search or the investigation, and his lawyer ultimately got his laptop back. It’s not clear why his computer was left in the doctor’s office.

Who is Keith Ablow?

One enduring mystery about the “Hunter Biden” “laptop” affair is why the son of a top Democrat ended up doing Ketamine therapy with a Fox personality just weeks short of allegations that the shrink had sexually harassed patients, an accusation that would lead to his suspension.

Ablow’s career on Fox extended back years by the time in 2018 when Hunter Biden got involved with him. He made obnoxious comments both about the Obamas and marriage equality and a ludicrous pitch in favor of Newt Gingrich. There’s no reason a Democrat should ever have trusted him.

And then, shortly after the time when Hunter Biden’s digital world appears to have been taken over by his droidhunter Gmail, several lawsuits accusing Ablow of sexual harassment went public.

The women allege that Dr. Keith Ablow, an author who was a contributor to Fox News network until 2017, abused his position while treating them for acute depression, leaving them unable to trust authority figures and plagued with feelings of shame and self-recrimination.

“He began to hit me when we engaged in sexual activities,” wrote one plaintiff, a New York woman, in a sworn affidavit filed with her lawsuit. “He would have me on my knees and begin to beat me with his hands on my breasts,” she wrote, “occasionally saying, ‘I own you,’ or ‘You are my slave.’”

The malpractice lawsuits, two of them filed on Thursday in Essex Superior Court and a third filed last year, paint a picture of a therapist who encouraged women to trust and rely on him, then coaxed them into humiliating sexual activities, often during treatment sessions for which they were charged. When the New York woman had trouble paying her therapy bills, she said, Ablow advised her to work as an escort or stripper because the work was lucrative.

The three lawsuits were settled. But as a result Ablow’s medical license was suspended. As noted above, for some reason the DEA searched his office a year later, where they found yet another Hunter Biden laptop left behind.

Update: Here’s a picture of Ablow speaking at a Trump rally in MA on March 4, 2017.

 

Deleting Ablow

In fact, the accusations against Ablow were one of two things that Dimitrelos found in the unallocated space of what would have been the laptop.

On February 25, 2019, Hunter Biden texted someone else a link to the BoGlo report on the accusations, which had been published four days earlier. “My psychiatrist,” Hunter Biden explained in a follow-up text. “I can’t catch a break,” he said in the third. If authentic, these texts appear to capture Hunter’s immediate response to the abuse allegations, and the four-day delay in his discovery of them.

That someone would delete those is interesting enough.

But I’m far more interested in the other file Dimitrelos found. It was a December 10, 2018 invoice, sent by iChat. It reflected the following psychotherapy sessions with Hunter, which were identified as “New Incident”:

• November 10, 2018: 90 minutes
• November 11, 2018: 90 minutes
• November 12, 2018: 30 minutes
• November 14, 2018: 60 minutes
• November 14, 2018: 60 minutes
• November 15, 2018: 60 minutes
• November 16, 2018: 60 minutes

It was a three page invoice, but Dimitrelos only shows the first page, so there could be more sessions in the weeks between November 16 and December 10, 2018. All sessions were paid by credit card within days.

But even just that single page shows that Hunter was spending time with Ablow in the period when he obtained new devices — including the laptop believed to be the one that ended up in John Paul Mac Isaac’s shop.

It’s easy to see, then, how and when Ablow might have come into possession of a Hunter Biden laptop and Hunter Biden might have started using the new one that would end up becoming a big political hit job.

[Update: I corrected my timeline here. Hunter Biden started using the laptop believed to be the one brought to Mac Isaac’s shop in October, not November.]

Baystate or Bluewater

Dimitrelos says the invoice, “correlates [with] email communications with Keith Ablow and the Practice Manager.”

But the invoice doesn’t. It differs with the emails we see with Ablow and his practice manager, a woman named Tiffany Bartholemew, as they appear in the BidenLaptopEmails dot com collection, in at least one key respect. The bill is from “Bluestate Psychiatry.” But Bartholomew writes from “Bluewater Wellness.”

The discrepancy may arise from a difference in treatment: and therefore also payment schemes. Of the emails related to Ablow sent by Hunter, about a dozen had to do with accommodations, including:

• Emails Bartholomew sent on December 4, 2018 (and so before the invoice) about payment for “this week” at Plum Island Rental
• The confirmation for that reservation, sent the same date as the invoice, to the rhbdcicloud and cc’ed to Bartholomew, followed by one sent on January 3, not cc’ed to Bartholomew, providing instructions for getting in
• An email sent on January 26 from the “manager of Dr. Ablow’s cottage”
• Seven emails from a guy who seems to have made himself Hunter’s Chief of Staff at a meeting on January 24, all of which pertain in part or in whole to finding a new place in Newburyport, MA

Those were all sent to the rhbdcicloud. Another email from Bartholomew, sent to the same email, alerted Hunter to a rescheduled Yoga session while in Massachusetts.

There were several other more curious emails involving Bartholomew:

• An email sent on January 5, 2019 to rhbdc at me.com, seemingly asking Hunter for advice about how to deal with an insane temp leaving adverse reviews on Google
• An MP4, dated January 8, 2019, titled Neverending story, sent first via Google Drive from a Gmail account, then forwarded the next day from her Ablew email account, both times to the rhbdcicloud

In this same period, Hunter paid someone with the last name Bartholomew but a different first name, via Venmo, for purchases at CVS, using his rhbrspdc account.

Guys are you getting my emails?

But several of the emails demonstrate Hunter’s communication woes during this period.

The very first email from Hunter Biden to Ablow in the Marco Polo set, sent on January 3, 2019, was misaddressed, and bounced. It was sent again, with the subject line “yyyy.”

While no body of that text appears in the Marco Polo set, Ablow responded to it, adding a third person, Rock, and asking for help getting a doctor to review Hunter’s daughter’s x-rays from a bad skiing accident.

Hunter responds, saying he is attaching the x-rays (and reply emails show jpg attachments):

I am attaching the X-rays and would so much appreciate your helopmputting [sic] them in the right hands.

Hunter and Ablow exchange two emails among themselves.

Then Ablow responds to his own email, which this time is marked [External], noting that “His [apparently meaning Hunter’s] email is screwed up,” and then saying he had texted Rock.

From: Keith Ablow <kablow[redacted]>
Sent: Thursday, January 3, 2019 11:40 AM
To: Positano [redacted]; rhbdcicloud
Subject: [EXTERNAL]Re: From Keith

CAUTION: External Email.

Rock
His email is screwed up

I texted you

The doctor responds — happy to help — and provides his contact. Ablow thanks him. Hunter responds to that, plaintively,

Guys are you getting my emails?

And though neither of the external interlocutors ever said a thing directly to Hunter, Ablow says, yes, suggesting they had gotten his emails, then instructs Hunter to contact the doctor and “send him the x-rays,” even though in the original email Hunter already sent 2 jpgs.

Hunter then tried to email the doctor directly, using the same email included in Ablow’s email (possibly even using the link from the doctor’s own email), and it bounces, “RecipientNotFound; Recipient not found by SMTP address lookup.”

At least based on the Marco Polo set, Hunter Biden didn’t send much between then and January 15 (though I may return to what he did send; he had important exchanges with his lawyer George Mesires).

Then he had another communication failure with Ablow’s team, though apparently of a different type.

On January 15, 2019 at 11:13AM, Hunter sent Ablow’s practice manager, Bartholomew. an email from his droidhunter account, asking “Schedule?” The email itself appears in the MarcoPolo collection, but any other body of the email is not preserved.

Bartholomew responded, on January 15 at 11:19PM, to the droidhunter account, describing his schedule for both “today” (seemingly meaning January 15) and “tomorrow,” his Ketamine treatment on January 16.

Then, just under 3.5 hours later, she sent that same email again, to both the droidhunter and rhbdcicloud with the message:

Below is the response I sent within minutes of receiving your email.

I called you this morning
Both Keith and I texted – I, multiple times, both on the group text and solo
I tried calling
I had Jodi text and call and you did not answer until 2pm

I texted you after sending the below email and mentioned adding yoga on for tomorrow – I did not receive a response and I will not waste people’s time booking them if you do not stay in touch

Bartholomew appears to have attributed this to Hunter’s mental struggles, and it may well have been (though it is notable since it is the sole exchange with her involving the droidhunter email).

The reason people love my Dad Chris iOS because he’s the son they hope to raise

The questions about whether Hunter was communicating externally — to say nothing of the effect of the Ketamine treatment, which by context would have been January 16 — makes me really uncomfortable with what happened with a statement Hunter Biden shared for this Vanity Fair story on whether Hunter’s problems were leading Joe to hesitate about running.

The exchange starts with Hunter forwarding an email he sent to Doug Brinkley on his rosemontseneca email to Ablow, using his rhbdcicloud email, with his long and very rough draft of a statement.

Ablow asks if he wants edits.

I could also make a few other edits, with humility. Would you like me to?

Hunter responds by saying it needs both edits and to be more concise. So Ablow promises to do it overnight.

I can make it all happen by 8 am.

Not to worry.

This is my thing.

Stay tuned.

As that exchange was happening, Hunter sent the statement to his lawyer, George Mesires, via his rhbdcme address. Mesires responded saying, “I can’t stop crying,” but providing no edits.

Hunter sends two snide comments to the journalist to his attorney George Mesires, from the rosemontseneca email, ccing Ablow.

Then ultimately he sends the statement as rewritten by Ablow to Mesires.

“FIXED A FEW OF MY TYPOS . . .” Hunter said of the statement substantially written by Ablow. Mesires would have no way of knowing that Ablow had made all the changes.

Vanity Fair removed one paragraph about Hunter’s own background as well as this significantly edited snide comment to him:

I hope that answers your question, Chris. I would ask this one of you: Are your talents best used as a tabloid journalist? If you were willing to endure more pain to make a more powerful contribution to our shared world, what would you do? What has stood in your way? My father would tell you this: Don’t let it. Reach deep down and deliver the gifts you were meant to give to others. And that’s the message Americans will see come to life in 2020.

At a time when Hunter Biden was in a communications vacuum, just days off a Ketamine treatment, and probably getting his life hacked irreparably, to become the non-stop political hit job of those trying to take down his father, Keith Ablow replaced Hunter’s statement with his own.

In the process 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.)

With this one:

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.”

There’s no sign Brinkley ever responded to Hunter’s email. Instead, Hunter sent him three emails — one, responding to an email Brinkley sent him in July 2018, saying,

Obviously I didn’t send that stream of conscience rant with personal attacks and 7000 grammatical spelling and plain unintelligible errors made tons of edits and cutout 80%.

A minute later he sent two more responding to the email he had actually sent Brinkley, quoting just the bolded part of this last line of his own second paragraph.

And its made us understand that the one thing that binds us all not just my family everyone you will ever meet is what it is to feel pain and how the even the smallest gesture of genuine kindness and love can make you hope for a better day.

That line about small gestures of kindness, like much else from Hunter’s own statement, had been removed.

It’s not yet clear what happened between Ablow and Hunter — or whether Ablow’s awareness of Hunter’s technical communication problems went further than that single email.

What is clear is that, in the process, Ablow managed to replace Hunter’s own, heartfelt words about his father and his own struggles.

---

* At least the first of Dimitrelos’ reports is on Scribe. He sent me copies, but would only permit me to repost them (which would take far more redactions) with some kind of indemnity for ongoing privacy violations. I instead reached out to Hunter Biden’s attorneys for permission to share it privately with some experts but have heard nothing.

James Comer plans to rely on Gal Luft’s testimony in his efforts to gin up conspiracy theories against Joe Biden, even in spite of the indictment against Luft DOJ obtained before James Comer started pursuing his conspiracy theories.

Andrew DeFilippis handled the classified evidence in the Patrick Ho case

Because of that, I want to flag a detail about the Patrick Ho case, the case out of which this one arose.

Ho is the person described as Co-Conspirator-1 in the Luft indictment.

Ho was sentenced on March 25, 2019 for bribing Chadian and Ugandan officials; the former scheme started in a suite in Trump Tower in 2014.

Through a connection, HO was introduced to Cheikh Gadio, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Senegal, who had a personal relationship with President Déby. HO and Gadio met at CEFC China’s suite at Trump World Tower in midtown Manhattan, where HO enlisted Gadio to assist CEFC China in obtaining access to President Déby.

Days after Ho was sentenced, the two lead prosecutors on that case, Catherine Ghosh and Daniel Richenthal, flew to Brussels to meet with Luft. As alleged in the indictment, Luft lied to those prosecutors and four FBI agents about both the arms deals and Chinese influence peddling for which he has since been charged.

64. On or about March 28, 2019, in the Southern District of New York, Belgium, and elsewhere outside of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States, GAL LUFT, the defendant, who is expected to be first brought to and arrested in the Southern District of New York, a matter within the jurisdiction of the executive branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully made a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and representation, to wit, LUFT falsely stated during an interview at the United States Embassy in Brussels, Belgium with federal law enforcement officers and prosecutors, in connection with an investigation being conducted in the Southern District of New York, that LUFT had not sought to engage in or profit from arms deals, and instead merely had been asked by an Israeli friend who dealt in arms to check arms prices so that the friend could use this information in bidding on deals, a request that LUFT said he fulfilled by having CC-1 check prices with CC-2 and then relay this information to LUFT–when in fact LUFT had actively worked to broker numerous illegal arms deals for profit involving multiple different countries, both in concert with CC-1 and directly himself, including as described in paragraphs Forty-Four through Fifty-Three above.

[snip]

84. On or about March 29, 2019, in the Southern District of New York, Belgium, and elsewhere outside of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States, GAL LUFT, defendant, who is expected to be first brought to and arrested in the Southern District of New York, in a matter within the jurisdiction of the executive branch the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully made a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and representation, to wit, LUFT falsely stated during an interview at the United States Embassy in Brussels, Belgium with federal law enforcement officers and prosecutors, in connection with an investigation being conducted in the Southern District of New York, that LUFT had tried to prevent CEFC China from doing an oil deal with Iran, that LUFT had been excluded from CEFC China meetings with Iranians, and that LUFT did not know of any CEFC China dealings with Iran while he was affiliated with the company–when in fact, including as described above in paragraphs Sixty-Six through Eighty, LUFT personally attended at least one meeting between CEFC China and Iranians and assisted in setting up additional such meetings for the purpose of arranging deals for Iranian oil, and also worked to find a buyer of Iranian oil while concealing its origin.

Starting in early 2018, DeFilippis handled the classified evidence on the Ho case — both CIPA and a FISA order. He would have spent a great deal of time reviewing what the spooks had obtained on Ho and his associates, undoubtedly including Luft.

Andrew DeFilippis investigated John Kerry for a year

DeFilippis’ efforts on the Ho case took place in parallel with his efforts to gin up a criminal investigation against John Kerry. Here’s how Geoffrey Berman described being ordered to do that by Main Justice.

On May 9, the day after the second Trump tweet, the co-chiefs of SDNY’s national security unit, Ferrara and Graff, had a meeting at Main Justice with the head of the unit that oversees counterintelligence cases at DOJ, which is under the National Security Division.

He said that Main Justice was referring an investigation to us that concerned Kerry’s Iran-related conduct. The conduct that had annoyed the president was now a priority of the Department of Justice. The focus was to be on potential violations of the Logan Act.

[snip]

From the outset, I was skeptical that there was a case to be made. I knew enough about the Logan Act to have strong doubts. Politicians from both sides of the aisle have talked about it from time to time, suggesting that some opponent is in violation of it. It never goes anywhere.

But I figured if they bring us a possible case, we’ll do our best. We’ll look into it. We brought a prosecutor from the national security unit, Andrew DeFilippis, into the investigation.

Trump, meanwhile, kept on tweeting. “John Kerry had illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime, which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people,” he wrote that September. “He told them to wait out the Trump Administration! Was he registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act? BAD!”

DeFilippis’ efforts extended into 2019, overlapping with the trial of Ho and the interview with Luft. National Security prosecutors at Main Justice kept pressuring SDNY to advance the investigation into Kerry, but first, Berman had DeFilippis research whether the Logan Act would be chargeable even if Kerry had committed it.

The next step would have been to conduct an inquiry into Kerry’s electronic communications, what’s known as a 2703(d) order. That would have produced the header information—the to, from, date, and subject fields—but not the contents. I decided that before moving forward, it made sense to evaluate whether we would ever have a viable, appropriate charge that matched up with Kerry’s alleged conduct.

At the risk of stating the obvious, under our system of law, pissing off the president is not a chargeable offense. I asked DeFilippis to conduct additional legal research into the Logan Act and other potentially applicable theories. “Look, we’re talking about going to the next step here,” I said.

“But before we do any further investigation, I want to know what the law is on the Logan Act. Let’s say we gather additional documents—I want to know, how is that helping us?”

I wanted to answer the question, even if these things happened, was it a crime? Let’s cut to the chase and find that out, because we’ve got plenty of other work to do and I don’t want us to just be spinning our wheels on this.

For the next several months, DeFilippis conducted extensive research into the Logan Act as well as statutes relating to possible criminal ethics violations by former senior government employees.

On April 22, 2019, Trump tweeted, “Iran is being given VERY BAD advice by @JohnKerry and people who helped him lead the U.S. into the very bad Iran Nuclear Deal. Big violation of Logan Act?”

The tweet was in the morning. That afternoon, Ferrara got a call from Main Justice. He was told that David Burns, the principal deputy assistant attorney general for national security, wanted to know why we were delaying. Why had we not proceeded with a 2703(d) order—the look into Kerry’s electronic communications?

The next day, Burns spoke to Ferrara, Graff, and DeFilippis and repeatedly pressed them about why they had not submitted the 2703(d) order. The team responded that additional analysis needed to be done before pursuing the order.

SDNY decided not to pursue the case against Kerry in fall of 2019.

We spent roughly a year exploring whether there was any basis to further investigate Kerry. Memos were written, revised, and thoroughly discussed.

Our deep dive into the Logan Act confirmed why no one has ever been successfully prosecuted under it in the more than 220 years it has been on the books: the law is not useful. It definitely does not prohibit a former US secretary of state from talking to a foreign official. We did not find that Kerry violated any ethics statutes or any laws having to do with the improper handling of classified material.

In September 2019, DeFilippis advised the National Security Division at Main Justice that we would not be pursuing the case further. He had earlier attempted to tell the specific NSD attorney assigned to the case of our decision, but he couldn’t connect because that attorney was engaged in another matter: the Craig trial.

Sometime after that, DeFilippis became the lead prosecutor on the Durham team, leading the prosecution of Michael Sussmann.

Andrew DeFilippis oversaw the most abusive parts of the John Durham prosecution

Over the course of the Michael Sussmann prosecution, DeFilippis and his prosecution team:

• Invented conspiracy theories in an attempt to introduce inadmissible evidence, even while criminalizing the research of private citizens that proved to be true
• In the wake of discovering the data in the Alfa Bank allegations was real, asked one of the FBI Agents who utterly botched the review of the Alfa Bank allegations to serve as an expert witness
• Took investigative steps that always worked in perfect concert with Alfa Bank’s efforts to undermine American ability to conduct DNS research
• Reportedly scolded a Georgia Tech researcher for trying to identify Guccifer 2.0
• Coached witness testimony so as to suppress evidence that multiple people at FBI believed the Alfa Bank tip came from the DNC
• Submitted a misleading filing that elicited death threats from Donald Trump
• Used an investigation into what the Durham Report showed involved Georgia Tech researchers to keep Rodney Joffe off the stand
• Tried to perjury tap a Fusion GPS witness based off evidence she couldn’t see
• Routinely ignored Judge Christopher Cooper’s orders, including to introduce part of a Hillary Clinton text that had been ruled inadmissible and elicit a non-expert opinion from the non-expert he had tried to make his expert

As noted above, Geoffrey Berman boasted that the investigation into Kerry didn’t leak. Even ignoring the inexplicably perfect concert between Alfa Bank’s efforts and Durham’s, it’s not clear the same can be said about the Durham investigation.

And it’s not just that DeFilippis routinely tried to introduce evidence that served his narrative rather than matched the facts. It’s that DeFilippis repeatedly — most notably in the alleged complaint that researchers working on a DARPA project would attempt to identify which Russians were interfering in the US election — proved more sympathetic of Russian efforts to help get Trump elected than to conduct an ethical prosecution.

Last August, shortly before Durham confessed the utter humiliation of his team at the hand of Sergei Millian, DeFilippis withdrew from the Durham team with almost no notice, left DOJ, and returned — in a Special Counsel role, not as Partner — to Sullivan & Cromwell.

These are just data points. There is no reason, yet, to believe that DeFilippis continues to unethically gin up conspiracy theories against Democrats.

But they are data points I thought worth collecting in one place.

I wrote last week that James Comer and Jim Jordan and Jason Smith have been immunizing misconduct and crime in an effort to gin up a conspiracy theory against Joe Biden and his family.

Last night, that effort was demonstrated in spectacular fashion. For months, Comer has been squealing about a secret informant he had who had proof that Joe Biden engaged in graft with CEFC. But then his imaginary whistleblower friend disappeared.

In recent weeks, Comer’s imaginary whistleblower friend was identified as Gal Luft. He disappeared because he skipped bail in Cyprus on an arrest warrant from the US.

Here’s how NYPost’s Hunter propagandist described it:

Gal Luft, the “missing” witness in the House Oversight Committee’s Biden family corruption investigation, has told The Post he is alive and living as a fugitive in an undisclosed location.

The former Israeli Defense Force colonel vanished from Cyprus last month while on bail awaiting extradition to the US on seven charges.

He denies the allegations, which include five charges relating to the Arms Export Control Act of conspiring to sell Chinese products to the United Arab Emirates, Kenya and Libya, as well as a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and of making a false statement.

Luft claims he was forced to skip bail because he is the victim of a political persecution by the US to protect Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and brother Jim.

A few days ago, Luft did a video, naming the prosecutors he met with at that meeting and daring DOJ to unseal his indictment. So they did. The November 1, 2022 indictment, by the same two prosecutors, charges Luft with a range of sanctions violations and serving as a Foreign Agent of China. The FARA violation alleges he insinuated someone who looks a lot like James Woolsey into the Trump Administration on the payroll of CEFC.

The date is important: He was charged before he started regaling dim-witted Chairmen about dirt on Hunter Biden. This prosecution can’t be about retaliation for the conspiracy theories he told Comer — the indictment precedes it all by months.

In any case, the indictment also lays out the false charges count against him.

He was charged with lying at that March 2019 meeting about his own ties to CEFC.

84. On or about March 29, 2019, in the Southern District of New York, Belgium, and elsewhere outside of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States, GAL LUFT, defendant, who is expected to be first brought to and arrested in the Southern District of New York, in a matter within the jurisdiction of the executive branch the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully made a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and representation, to wit, LUFT falsely stated during an interview at the United States Embassy in Brussels, Belgium with federal law enforcement officers and prosecutors, in connection with an investigation being conducted in the Southern District of New York, that LUFT had tried to prevent CEFC China from doing an oil deal with Iran, that LUFT had been excluded from CEFC China meetings with Iranians, and that LUFT did not know of any CEFC China dealings with Iran while he was affiliated with the company–when in fact, including as described above in paragraphs Sixty-Six through Eighty, LUFT personally attended at least one meeting between CEFC China and Iranians and assisted in setting up additional such meetings for the purpose of arranging deals for Iranian oil, and also worked to find a buyer of Iranian oil while concealing its origin.

In other words, well before Luft told Comer anything, he had been charged for lying at the very meeting he’s now claiming he was retaliated for. Comer was duped.

Again.

Given the precedent of Eric Swalwell, who was removed from the House Intelligence Committee after having been cultivated by a Chinese agent, Comer should be stripped of his gavel and referred to the ethics committee.

Instead, Speaker McCarthy is going to let him continue to make a mockery of himself offering to immunize all range of grifters in hopes of finding dirt.

As I alluded to here, hidden in Trump’s bid to push his trial out past the November 2024 election is a confession that the discovery he has gotten in the case is really damning — more damning than the documents seized last August.

In his filing, his attorneys say that the discovery is so sensitive, it is impossible to use contractors to help review the discovery.

[U]nlike most cases, all the discovery materials are sensitive and high-profile, the Defendants are unable to utilize contract or other third-party reviewers to the extent such resources would normally be available.

It’s hard to explain what a stunning claim this is, particularly given that Trump was perfectly happy to trust just such a third-party service in his Special Master bid before Judge Aileen Cannon last year, as evidenced by a series of filings last September and October.

Consistent with Judge Cannon’s order (ECF 125, at 3), the parties entered contracts with thirdparty vendors to scan, process, host, and provide a review platform for the Seized Materials.

Even though a key argument in Trump’s bid for that Special Master pertained to leaks, he nevertheless let a third party handle every unclassified document seized from Mar-a-Lago in August.

1 The Government is apparently not concerned with unauthorized leaks regarding the contents of the purported “classified records,” see, e.g., Devlin Barrett and Carol D. Leonnig, Material on foreign nation’s nuclear capabilities seized at Trump’s Mara-Lago, WASH. POST (Sept. 6, 2022), https://www.washingtonpost.com/nationalsecurity/2022/09/06/trump-nuclear-documents/, and would presumably be prepared to share all such records publicly in any future jury trial. However, the Government advances the untenable position in its Motion that the secure review by a Court appointed and supervised special master under controlled access conditions is somehow problematic and poses a risk to national security.

That’s not surprising: such vendors are involved in every legal case involving voluminous digital discovery. And their business model is so wrapped up in signing and upholding protective orders, they don’t leak.

Yet Trump’s lawyers imply they might here.

With that in mind, I want to look at what Trump says he has seen in discovery so far.

The Government anticipates producing discovery in stages due to the sheer volume of documents collected and because of procedural mechanisms necessary to protect against the unlawful production of classified information. The Government produced its “first production of unclassified discovery” on June 21, 2023. 1 That initial production was substantial and voluminous. Therein, the Government produced more than 428,300 records (in excess of 833,450 pages) consisting of approximately 122,650 emails (including attachments) and 305,670 documents gathered from over ninety (90) separate custodians. The initial production also included some 57 terabytes of compressed raw CCTV footage (so far there is approximately nine months of CCTV footage, but the final number is not yet certain).

In addition, “there will be additional productions of discovery” provided by the Government, as it continues to process “some devices and search warrant returns.” Notably, the Government has not produced all interview-related materials, including certain witness statements and associated memorialization of those statements. [my emphasis]

Some of this doesn’t look that burdensome, or surprising. Trump mentioned 90 separate custodians. Well, DOJ has a list of 84 witnesses with whom it doesn’t want Nauta and Trump to speak, so this is partly saying that witnesses who testified were asked for discovery. The likely additional custodians are going to be entities like Trump’s own corporation, NARA, and the Secret Service.

Some of those records will include texts. The list of Bates stamps released last year shows 21,792 pages of unclassified documents seized last August that Trump’s lawyers already got to review in detail. The government may be obliged to turn over copies of some or all of the 15 boxes returned in January 2021, too, since Trump’s sort through them is part of the indictment.

It’s a lot. But it wouldn’t be a lot if Trump were using a discovery vendor.

What I find more interesting are the “devices and search warrant returns” that Jack Smith’s team is still processing. There are phones or computers that the government has not yet finished searching. And there are witness statements that — whether for ongoing investigative reasons or other sensitivities — DOJ has yet to turn over. That’s interesting!

Then there are the nine months of surveillance footage. As I noted in this post, in response to the original June subpoena for five months of surveillance footage, Trump turned over just two months. It’d be easy to see how DOJ came to request surveillance footage through December of last year (because documents kept moving around), and it’s unclear whether this includes footage from Bedminster in addition to Mar-a-Lago.

Still, all that footage came from Trump’s own properties! He’s just getting what he already owns back.

DOJ obtained far, far more surveillance footage after that original batch focused just on a basement hallway. And it’ll show the much more mundane stuff of Trump’s corrupt flunkies wandering around his properties — and possibly who knows what foreign parties nosing through boxes in the gaudy bathroom to see what kind of documents Trump brought home. DOJ will undoubtedly point Trump to what they consider the highlights. But I can understand why Trump wouldn’t want that video in the hands of anyone he couldn’t trust implicitly, often for reasons entirely unrelated to the case at hand.

All that said, DOJ has had this information for months and months.

And contrary to what leaks to that favorite right wing outlet Devlin Barrett would have you believe, it hasn’t leaked. Trump says a vendor whose entire business model depends on keeping secrets can’t be entrusted with these secrets. But the FBI has been sitting on some of them for almost a year and they haven’t leaked.

Trump’s lawyers may just be bullshitting here because it is the surest route to get this case declared a complex matter, entitling them to expanded pretrial delays. But the claims about the sensitivity of the discovery they’re making to support that argument are fairly astonishing.

Last month, I did a post noting the legal significance of two paragraphs in Trump’s indictment, one quoting Trump’s promises to protect classified information during the 2016 election, and another quoting Trump’s rationale for (pretending to) strip John Brennan of clearance for using classified information for his own gain.

Here’s the paragraph quoting just some of the times Trump used a promise to protect classified information to beat Hillary Clinton.

22. As a candidate for President of the United States, TRUMP made the following public statements, among others, about classified information:

a. On August 18, 2016, TRUMP stated, “In my administration I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”

b. On September 6, 2016, TRUMP stated, “We also need to fight this battle by collecting intelligence and then protecting, protecting our classified secrets. . . . We can’t have someone in the Oval Office who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word confidential or classified.”

c. On September 7, 2016, TRUMP stated, “[O]ne of the first things we must do is to enforce all classification rules and to enforce all laws relating to the handling of classified information.”

d. On September 19, 2016, TRUMP stated, “We also need the best protection of classified information.”

e. On November 3, 2016, TRUMP stated, “Service members here in North Carolina have risked their lives to acquire classified intelligence to protect our country.”

The two paragraphs played a certain role in proving that Trump understands the import of classified information. But they also, I argued, bundled a public integrity component up inside this Espionage Act trial.

That is, they laid out how Trump himself has argued that voters need to know whether you’re going to mishandle classified information before they cast their votes.

Those paragraphs may come in handy as DOJ attempts to respond to Trump’s opposition to the government’s proposed schedule for trial. Because he is now arguing that he’s too busy running for President to take time out to be tried for stealing classified records.

Note that Trump misrepresents what his filing attempts to do (and few journalists are calling him on it). The filing is titled, “Response in Opposition to the Government’s Motion for Continuance and Proposed Revised Scheduling Order” — that is, it claims to be responding only to the government’s pitch for a December trial. But the first paragraph admits that it is also asking Cannon to entirely withdraw her own orders setting trial in August.

The Defendants, President Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta, in the above captioned matter, respectfully request that this Court deny the Government’s proposed scheduling order, withdraw the current Order (ECF No. 28), and postpone initial consideration of any rescheduled trial date until after substantive motions have been presented and adjudicated. [my emphasis]

As we all hold our breath to see how Cannon will respond to this request, understand that Trump has pitched this (smartly, probably), as him against the government, but there’s a tiny chance Cannon will be miffed Trump is downplaying her own authority both here and (as I note below) on picking a jury.

There are many reasonable parts of this filing:

• Trump argues this case should get complex case designation, leaving a longer time for pretrial proceedings (though he falsely claims the government is asking for an “expedited” trial)
• Trump states that CIPA is going to take some time
• Trump claims that this trial will present a number of matters of first impression — or at least matters of first impression for this Circuit (for example, Trump and Paul Manafort, have already lost on Special Counsel authority in DC, but not in the Eleventh Circuit)
• Trump unsurprisingly calls all the classified designations as “purported,” which reserves the issue for trial
• Trump describes that jury selection will be onerous (this is one issue on which Cannon has already issued a ruling)
• While Trump is bullshitting that he’s being tried by his opponent, it is true that there should be as little secret evidence in this case as possible

Much of it is typical defense attorney argument about the need to adequately review the evidence before figuring out where to go next — though this filing pitches what is actually fairly modest discovery, if you ignore the CCTV footage, as a great burden.

The Government anticipates producing discovery in stages due to the sheer volume of documents collected and because of procedural mechanisms necessary to protect against the unlawful production of classified information. The Government produced its “first production of unclassified discovery” on June 21, 2023. 1 That initial production was substantial and voluminous. Therein, the Government produced more than 428,300 records (in excess of 833,450 pages) consisting of approximately 122,650 emails (including attachments) and 305,670 documents gathered from over ninety (90) separate custodians. The initial production also included some 57 terabytes of compressed raw CCTV footage (so far there is approximately nine months of CCTV footage, but the final number is not yet certain).

There’s a hilarious line where the same guy who consented to a discovery vendor to turn some of this very same evidence for a Special Master review before this very same judge less than a year ago now says the use of such vendors will be impossible given the “sensitive and high profile” nature of the case.

Since, unlike most cases, all the discovery materials are sensitive and high-profile, the Defendants are unable to utilize contract or other third-party reviewers to the extent such resources would normally be available.

And Trump pitches a one year investigation as a totally long time — without mentioning that he, with Judge Cannon’s help, caused three months of that duration by demanding a stay in the investigation, to say nothing of his months of obstruction before that.

The Government’s investigation into the matters at issue in the indictment has been ongoing for over a year.

There’s a funny progression where Trump first says his day job running for President doesn’t leave him time to be prosecuted for stealing documents the last time he was President, then admits that he has found time in his busy schedule for two other trials.

President Trump is running for President of the United States and is currently the likely Republican Party nominee. This undertaking requires a tremendous amount of time and energy, and that effort will continue until the election on November 5, 2024. Mr. Nauta’s job requires him to accompany President Trump during most campaign trips around the country. This schedule makes trial preparation with both of the Defendants challenging. Such preparation requires significant planning and time, making the current schedule untenable and counseling in favor of a continuance

[snip]

Finally, previously scheduled trials in other matters for both President Trump and defense counsel make it nearly impossible to prepare for this trial by December 2023. For example, President Trump and Mr. Blanche are preparing for a March 2024 criminal trial in New York Supreme Court; Mr. Kise and President Trump are preparing for a lengthy civil trial in New York Supreme Court commencing October 2, 2023;

[snip]

The pendency of these other proceedings and their collective impact on the ability of defense counsel to prepare effectively for trial also support granting a continuance pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(7)(B)(ii) & (iv).

But, given that he got elected the last time by promising he would be more careful with classified information than his opponent, the most remarkable paragraph in the filing is this one, where Trump says there is no exigency to scheduling this trial (as opposed to his hush money or corporate fraud trials) before the election.

While the Government appears to favor an expedited (and therefore cursory) approach to this case, it cannot point to any exigency or urgency requiring a rapid adjudication. There is no ongoing threat to national security interests nor any concern regarding continued criminal activity

I suspect the paragraph is designed to elicit a response to the question, “is there any concern regarding continued criminal activity?” That is, I think it is an attempt to probe for what more the government continues to investigate.

And yes, the government may well respond to this by answering, “funny you should mention ongoing threats to national security because we’re still looking for all the things that disappeared up at Bedminster.”

But the underlying premise is even more remarkable, given how Trump’s got elected the last time.

Trump says that there is no exigency in telling the citizens and voters of the United States whether the last time he was President, all the promises he made to get elected were just bullshit, because in fact he used his position of power to steal the nation’s secrets and store them in his chandeliered bathroom.

There is a lot that is reasonable in this filing.

But at its core, it argues that a guy accused of using the access to the nation’s secrets he got by getting elected President on false promises the last time, should get a shot at accessing those secrets again, without first letting a jury decide whether he had abused his position of power the last time.

Trump promised voters in 2016 that he would protect classified secrets; it’s actually a key part of how he got elected. Now he says voters shouldn’t have a chance to find out whether he broke that promise before going to the polls again.

Update: This post originally suggested current Trump lawyer Todd Blanche was on Paul Manafort’s team when he tried to challenge Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel authority. That’s not the venue in which Blanche represented Manafort.

Update: Judge Cannon has reset the CIPA conference for Tuesday afternoon, as all parties had agreed would work.

Just days into Pro Hac Vice admittance before Judge Aileen Cannon, Walt Nauta’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward, is testing (as in, probing) her patience, to see how much she will play along with obvious attempts to stall this case.

He and the government have submitted dueling filings about whether the CIPA conference scheduled for Friday should be postponed to some uncertain time.

Before I get into what they say, remember that Woodward is being paid by Trump’s PAC, which is also under investigation for raising money promising one thing and then spending it on other things — such as paying for Woodward’s legal fees.

Remember, too, that after months of claiming that DOJ had screwed up by not immunizing Walt Nauta — a strategy that got his client charged in an Espionage Act indictment (in some legal circles, a sign of a legal strategy that has backfired, potentially catastrophically), Woodward then adopted a new strategy: belatedly accusing Jay Bratt of bullying him because Bratt tried to prevent him from setting his client up to be charged.

Finally, consider that we’ve already seen stories suggesting that Trump plans to stall this out past November 4, 2024, so he can pardon both of them.

The pace of hiring an attorney for Nauta has been slow — as has been the speed with which Trump is beefing up his own criminal defense team. Nauta continues to work for Trump’s organization and Trump’s political committee is financing his employee’s legal representation. Inside the former president’s orbit, top aides are prepping for a protracted and litigious fight with prosecutors that draws out the entire legal process through the 2024 general election that Trump hopes to win for a return to the White House.

“If you ask three different people in Trump world what’s going on, you’ll get five different answers,” said the source familiar with discussions. “But the reality is there’s no rush to do this. This seems to be their posture: ‘The case is probably going to happen after the election anyway [on Nov. 5, 2024]. So what’s the rush?’”

And before I present Woodward’s seven (!!!) excuses for not being able to make Friday’s hearing, consider that according to the government, Woodward hasn’t even submitted his SF-86 form required before he can get clearance.

Nauta’s second justification for a continuance is a claim that Mr. Woodward cannot “meaningfully” participate in a discussion about classified discovery or a CIPA discovery schedule at a Section 2 conference until obtaining a security clearance. Motion at 3. But he cites no case holding that a Section 2 conference is contingent on counsel having clearances, which is unsurprising since such a requirement would be inconsistent with Section 2’s language that “[a]t any time after the filing of the indictment or information, any party may move for a pretrial conference to consider matters relating to classified information that may arise in connection with the prosecution.” 18 U.S.C. App.3 § 2. Perhaps more to the point, as of this writing, Mr. Woodward has yet to complete his Form SF-86, which is necessary for him to receive both an interim clearance and final adjudication, despite having been put in contact with the Litigation Security Group on June 12, some three-and-a-half weeks ago.

With all that laid out, ready for Woodward’s seven complaints?

1) First, that DOJ charged his client in Trump country rather than in DC.

With little notice to Defendant Nauta, the operative indictment in this matter was returned in this District and only recently, on Wednesday, July 5, 2023, did Defendant Nauta retain local counsel, Sasha Dadan.

2) Then, that he opposed having a CIPA conference at all (a claim the government says is not true).

Although government counsel asked whether Mr. Nauta’s longtime counsel opposed such a hearing – we did – and provided an electronic courtesy copy of the same, the government did not request any dates when defense counsel would be unavailable for such a conference.

3) Then, that Nauta had delayed so long in hiring a Florida lawyer that poor Stan Woodward had no way to object on his own.

At that time, Mr. Nauta, through counsel was not receiving electronic notices through the Court’s CM/ECF filing system, the government did not advise counsel that the pretrial CIPA conference had been scheduled, and even when counsel did learn of the conference, Mr. Nauta had no ability to formally move the Court for relief based upon his counsel’s unavailability. Rather, it was not until Wednesday, July 5, 2023, that Mr. Nauta retained local counsel, Sasha Dadan, and Thursday, July 6, 2023, that Chief Magistrate Judge Torres entered an Order permitting Mr. Nauta, through counsel to file electronically with the Court.

4) Then, that Woodward has a trial for Freddie Klein this week (the government says it — this prosecution team — did not know that — it seems that Woodward is relying on prosecutors on a 1,000 defendant crime scene investigation to track Woodward’s other clients).

As the government has long been aware, Mr. Nauta’s longtime counsel, Mr. Woodward, is scheduled to begin a Bench Trial in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on July 10, 2023.

5) Woodward then says that even though he’s not required to attend, Nauta should be able to demand that he attend.

Presumably, the government will argue that Mr. Woodward’s appearance is unnecessary. But see Flanagan v. United States, 465 U.S. 259, 268 (1984) (like the Sixth Amendment right to self-representation, the right to counsel of choice, “reflects constitutional protection of the defendant’s free choice independent of concern for the objective fairness of the proceeding”). And defense counsel is aware of the Court’s admonishment that, “[l]ocal counsel must be ready to adequately represent [Mr. Nauta] at any time.” Paperless Order (July 7, 2023).2 However, as the government notes in its application for the hearing, a pretrial CIPA conference permits the Court to, “consider matters related to classified information that may arise in connection with the prosecution.” Motion at 6 (June 23, 2023) (ECF No. 32) (quoting 18 U.S.C. App. III § 2).

6) Woodward doesn’t see the point of using CIPA in a case charging 31 of the most sensitive documents ever charged in an Espionage Act case.

To that end, the government only broadly describes the basis for its request for a pretrial CIPA conference: “to establish a discovery and motion schedule relating to any classified information.” Motion at 19 (June 23, 2023) (ECF No. 32). Yet, defense counsel cannot meaningfully opine on, “a discovery and motion schedule relating to any classified information,” before their provisional security clearances, let alone complete clearances, have been approved.

7) Even though his brand spanking new co-counsel (who mostly does family law kinds of things but also dog bites) is obligated under local rules to hit the ground running, she’s not ready to hit the ground running.

Nor is it feasible to expect Mr. Nauta’s local counsel to appear at a pretrial CIPA conference and to agree upon, “a discovery and motion schedule relating to any classified information,” barely a week after she has been retained by Mr. Nauta.

2 Mr. Nauta respects the Order of the Court and submits that it was not unreasonable for him to retain local counsel and thereafter request this Court accommodate the unavailability of his longtime counsel, Mr. Woodward insofar as Defense counsel would note that Local Rule 4 of the Rules Governing the Admission, Practice, Peer Review, and Discipline of Attorneys for the United States District Court of the Southern District of Florida, which pertains to the admission of out-of-state attorneys pro hac vice does not indicate that the sponsoring attorney be required to, “be ready to adequately represent the defendant at any time.”

Tune in in January, when Presidential candidate Donald Trump says he needs to delay his trial because he has primaries to run in. It won’t be his fault that the lawyer his PAC is paying invented frivolous cause for day, after all.

As I said, Woodward is testing Judge Cannon’s patience. And why wouldn’t he? If she conducts herself like she did last summer, he’ll be able to buy Trump all the time in the world.

Last month, Bill Barr got Federalist Faceplant Margot Cleveland to claim that Jamie Raskin was lying when he said that the lead from an informant claiming that Joe Biden had been bribed was assessed by Pittsburgh US Attorney Scott Brady and then shut down.

It’s not true. It wasn’t closed down,” William Barr told The Federalist on Tuesday in response to Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin’s claim that the former attorney general and his “handpicked prosecutor” had ended an investigation into a confidential human source’s allegation that Joe Biden had agreed to a $5 million bribe. “On the contrary,” Barr stressed, “it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”

Then James Comer relied on that to claim that Raskin was wrong when he said that it was shut down as an assessment.

Bill Barr to Margot Cleveland to James Comer: At each new level, this Matryoshka doll of disinformation gets less and less credible.

So incredible, in fact, that even Chuck Grassley debunked them.

Unwittingly.

Like the proverbial blind squirrel finding a nut.

You see, Chuck is outraged that the IRS agents conducting the investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged tax crimes were not included in a meeting at which Pittsburgh FBI agents briefed the Delaware US Attorney’s office about the informant report. He has written Delaware US Attorney David Weiss a letter demanding an explanation of why.

The answer is clear from the timing of the briefing, which Senator Grassley reveals in his letter: October 23, 2020.

Based on information provided to my office from individuals aware of the meeting, on October 23, 2020, Justice Department and FBI Special Agents from the Pittsburgh Field Office briefed Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf, one of your top prosecutors, and FBI Special Agents from the Baltimore Field Office with respect to the contents of the FBI-generated FD1023 alleging a criminal bribery scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden; however, the meeting did not include any IRS agents. In addition, based on information provided to my office, potentially hundreds of Justice Department and FBI officials have had access to the FD-1023 at issue, which begs the question that I’ve been asking since the start of my oversight in this matter: what steps have the Justice Department and FBI taken to investigate the allegations?

This briefing was nine days after a NYPost story would have made clear that Rudy Giuliani had ties to the “Hunter Biden” “laptop” that the IRS agents had been relying on for investigative materials for the better part of a year.

It was one day after an October 22, 2020 meeting that the IRS agents did attend. As Gary Shapley confessed to the House Ways and Means Committee, the meeting was largely an effort to make sure that the government had used proper legal process before acquiring two devices that — it had only recently became clear — had become and may always have been part of a political hit job.

A Yes. So there are a couple significant parts of this. One was that, at this time, the laptop was a very big story, so we were just making sure that everything was being handled appropriately.

So we wanted to go through the timeline of what happened with the laptop and devices. I thought one of the most important first parts was that on November 6 of 2019, the FBI case agent, Josh Wilson, called up the computer shop owner, John Paul, and basically got the device numbers from him.

If Shapley’s notes are at all reliable, prosecutors at the meeting instead discovered that the FBI broke the most basic rules of forensics when exploiting the laptop purportedly owned by the former Vice President’s dissolute son, and in the process may have destroyed evidence about who was really behind it. I’m still not convinced his notes are reliable, but if they are, then the meeting should have raised all sorts of alarms within DOJ.

As I laid out here, Shapley has instead pitched the meeting as one that served the primary purpose of giving Whistleblower X opportunity to complain that the US Attorney’s office had prevented the IRS agents from being tainted by dodgy materials on the laptop. Whistleblower X did complain, mind you, but those complaints mostly raise questions about the extent to which he had already been accessing materials from the laptop that Rudy Giuliani had been tampering with, thereby tainting the investigation.

Shapley’s propaganda has worked, because that’s what our blind squirrel from Iowa focuses his letter on.

But as Shapley described in his prepared statement, even before that meeting he had written to AUSA Lesley Wolf complaining about how the laptop was being referred to in the news.

On October 19th, 2020, I emailed Assistant United States Attorney Wolf: “We
need to talk about the computer. It appears the FBI is making certain representations
about the device, and the only reason we know what is on the device is because of the
IRS CI affiant search warrant that allowed access to the documents. If Durham also
executed a search warrant on a device, we need to know so that my leadership is
informed. My management has to be looped into whatever the FBI is doing with the
laptop. It is IRS CI’s responsibility to know what is happening. Let me know when I can
be briefed on this issue.”

Shapley appears to have been concerned, in the weeks before the Presidential election, that people believed the laptop was being investigated by the FBI as an information operation targeting Joe Biden, when in his view, it remained the cornerstone of his investigation into Hunter Biden.

But if DOJ was not already investigating both topics by October 23, 2020 — both Hunter Biden’s tax crimes and a potential information operation targeting Joe Biden — if it has not spent years doing so, then the FBI has become even more captured than I already suspected.

Indeed, if the FBI hasn’t already significantly substantiated that Hunter Biden was hacked in early 2019, then I may renounce my citizenship. I know FBI’s cyber agents can be incompetent, but they can’t be that incompetent, can they?

Can they?

Chuck Grassley may not realize it because he is very old and he is staffed by a bunch of partisan cranks. But he’s basically complaining that DOJ might have learned their lesson after the Steele dossier — the lesson that Chuck Grassley spent years demanding they learn! — and decided, upon the revelation that a key piece of evidence they had been relying on for months had ties to a political hit job, they should figure out precisely what tie that key piece of evidence had to the political hit job.

Chuck Grassley may also not realize that the political cranks who staff him got him to sign a letter effectively complaining that the FBI thought it worthwhile to figure out if the information operation Russian spies had been bragging about for over a year at that point had actually succeeded. Chuck is bitching that the FBI decided to protect a presidential candidate.

Chuck Grassley also likely doesn’t realize his staffers got him to sign a letter bitching that David Weiss attempted to maintain the integrity of the tax investigation even while DOJ assessed whether they had been caught in another information operation. That’s why you don’t include the IRS agents in a meeting where Pittsburgh FBI agents explain to Delaware lawyers how sketchy was the information Rudy Giuliani was collecting from known Russian agents in Ukraine. If you include them, you risk blowing the otherwise meritorious tax investigation.

And Chuck Grassley definitely doesn’t realize that he has debunked Bill Barr.

You see, Bill Barr, who is a very adept liar, was sort of telling the truth to Faceplant Margot that the FD-1023 was referred to DE USAO for further investigation. It surely was. But Pittsburgh FBI agents shared it on October 23, 2020, because the US Attorney’s office was frantically trying to figure out whether the entire tax investigation had been blown, or only parts of it. The US Attorney’s office was undoubtedly trying to understand what kind of other garbage Rudy had produced that got shared with the FBI, in addition to any role he had with the “laptop” that had been used in the tax investigation.

Even Gary Shapley admitted that in the wake of the NYPost story, the Delaware US Attorney’s office did some quick CYA to figure out whether they had been using a tainted information operation for the better part of a year (they had!). The October 23 briefing would have had substantially the same purpose as the October 22 one: to figure out how tainted the investigation was.

And Bill Barr instead got even stupider people to believe that that an attempt to triage the damage done by Rudy’s political hit job amounts to an investigation for bribery.