Tim Parlatore Quit After Trump Lawyers Couldn’t Find the Iran Document

Tim Parlatore’s decision to quit the Trump team — and the reports on the infighting on Trump’s legal team that followed shortly thereafter — sure look a lot different in light of CNN’s report, from a team that includes the journalist to whom Parlatore has twice given big scoops, Paula Reid, that Trump’s lawyers haven’t been able to find an Iran document Trump got caught on tape claiming to have at Bedminster.

Attorneys for Donald Trump turned over material in mid-March in response to a federal subpoena related to a classified US military document described by the former president on tape in 2021 but were unable to find the document itself, two sources tell CNN.

[snip]

Prosecutors sought “any and all” documents and materials related to Mark Milley, Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Iran, including maps or invasion plans, the sources say. A similar subpoena was sent to at least one other attendee of the meeting, another source tells CNN.

The sources say prosecutors made clear to Trump’s attorneys after issuing the subpoena that they specifically wanted the Iran document he talked about on tape as well as any material referencing classified information – like meeting notes, audio recordings or copies of the document – that may still be Trump’s possession.

Parlatore, remember, is the guy who oversaw searches in November and December of Trump’s other properties. He then appeared before the grand jury to attest to the thoroughness of the searches, effectively playing the same role that Christina Bobb had last summer. Bobb, an OAN host, was smart enough to include caveats before she did that.

According to Hugo Lowell’s account of the clusterfuck legal team, Parlatore didn’t similarly protect himself. He told the grand jury that there were no impediments to his searches and then brought a transcript back to the team to make clear what he had said.

In fact, the legal team is said to be confident that Parlatore will not flip on Trump after he told the grand jury hearing evidence in the case last year that Trump gave him free rein to search for any remaining documents at his properties last year, according to a transcript of his testimony.

Trump’s team seems to be confident that Parlatore won’t revise that story because he’s already on the hook for perjury for it.

In mid-March, in the same time period Trump’s lawyers would have first learned of the recording Trump made, Parlatore gave my favorite quote of any regarding Boris Ephsteyn: that the rest of Trump’s lawyers would be okay so long as Ephsteyn was not named a target (he didn’t say, in which investigation).

“Boris has access to information and a network that is useful to us,” said one of the team’s lawyers, Timothy Parlatore, whom Mr. Epshteyn hired. “It’s good to have someone who’s a lawyer who is also inside the palace gates.”

Mr. Parlatore suggested that he was not worried that Mr. Epshteyn, like a substantial number of other Trump lawyers, had become at least tangentially embroiled in some of the same investigations on which he was helping to defend Mr. Trump.

“Absent any solid indication that Boris is a target here, I don’t think it affects us,” Mr. Parlatore said.

That would also have been around the time that the subpoena — the one that Trump’s lawyers ultimately couldn’t completely fulfil because they couldn’t find the Iran document — would have made the past searches Parlatore vouched for, the searches he reportedly told a grand jury he had unfettered access to conduct, seem incomplete.

Even as Parlatore was publicly hailing the value of Boris, he was staging an attempted intervention, to get him removed as a gatekeeper to Trump.

Parlatore and Trusty’s interpersonal conflicts with Epshteyn reached new levels as they grew increasingly annoyed at what they considered their inability to directly consult Trump without having to go through Epshteyn.

The pair chafed that when they spoke to Trump on the phone, Epshteyn was typically also on the line. At other times, they sniped that Epshteyn would give overly rosy outlooks to Trump and, in March, travelled to Mar-a-Lago to seek Trump’s permission to exclude him from future deliberations.

It was not clear whether the issue was actually resolved. Parlatore came away from the meeting content that he no longer needed to speak to Epshteyn. However, Epshteyn remained Trump’s in-house counsel and the legal team’s liaison with the Trump 2024 campaign.

Around that time, Parlatore and Trusty also started withholding information from Corcoran because they worried that Corcoran was too close to Epshteyn and was briefing him behind their backs.

Just over a month after this attempt to get Boris removed as gatekeeper, Boris spent two days interviewing with prosecutors (but not appearing before the grand jury, the kind of thing someone might do if he were trying to stave off a target letter).

In the same period, Jack Smith subpoenaed Trump Organization for details of his business deals, including the golf deal with the Saudis. He also kept pursuing gaps in the surveillance footage (gaps the details of which Parlatore may know, but the public does not).

And then, after attempting to stage an intervention to get Boris removed, Parlatore quit himself. Shortly after, he provided a public story (to Paula Reid) that seems to dramatically conflict with his grand jury testimony as described by Lowell, specifically citing Boris’ interference with a search of Bedminster.

Boris Epshteyn [] had really done everything he could to try to block us [the lawyers], to prevent us from doing what we could to defend the President, and ultimately it got to a point where — it’s difficult enough fighting against DOJ and, in this case, Special Counsel, but when you also have people within the tent that are also trying to undermine you, block you, and really make it so that I can’t do what I know that I know that I need to do as a lawyer, and when I’m getting in the fights like that, that’s detracting from what is necessary to defend the client and ultimately was not in the client’s best interest, so I made the decision to withdraw.

[snip]

He served as kind of a filter to prevent us from getting information to the client and getting information from the client. In my opinion, he was not very honest with us or with the client on certain things. There were certain things — like the searches that he had attempted to interfere with, and then more recently, as we’re coming down to the end of this investigation where Jack Smith and ultimately Merrick Garland is going to make a decision as to what to do – as we put together our defense strategy to help educate Merrick Garland as to how best to handle this matter, he was preventing us from engaging in that strategy. [my emphasis]

All that may have been an effort to be invited to clarify his testimony.

It didn’t come. As of last Tuesday, Jack Smith had shown no interest in this apparently revised story.

Parlatore noted that Smith’s investigators have not yet reached out to him as of Tuesday night.

Or Parlatore may have changed his tune too late for his own good. NBC reports that this grand jury, which had been on a month-long hiatus, is set to meet again this week.

The notion that four or five real lawyers have tolerated — for months — having a guy whose phone had already been seized by the prosecutor investigating their client to serve as a gatekeeper between them and their client is nuts. Crazier still is that you’d put your career on the line even after that guy had obstructed your effort to do your work diligently.

In March, DOJ Asked Trump for the Iran Document; In April, DOJ Asked for His Saudi Business Records

Remember how I responded to CNN’s scoop that DOJ had recordings of Trump bragging about a document describing a plan to attack Iran that he acknowledged remained classified?

I suggested that if DOJ knew he had the document in July 2021, but didn’t find it in the documents returned in January 2022 or June 2022 or August 2022, then we’d have problems.

If it is, then it would be a document that Trump transported back and forth from Florida — something that would make it easier for DOJ to charge this in DC instead of SDFL.

If it’s something DOJ didn’t obtain in the search, but also didn’t obtain among the documents Trump returned in either January or June 2022, then … then we have problems. If this is among the documents that DOJ thinks Trump didn’t return, then we have problems, especially given Jack Smith’s focus on Trump’s LIV golf deal, because this is the kind of document that the Saudis would pay billions of dollars for.

CNN has a follow-up, revealing that after Margo Martin was asked about the recording in her March grand jury appearance, DOJ subpoenaed Trump for the document.

His lawyers couldn’t find it.

Attorneys for Donald Trump turned over material in mid-March in response to a federal subpoena related to a classified US military document described by the former president on tape in 2021 but were unable to find the document itself, two sources tell CNN.

[snip]

Prosecutors sought “any and all” documents and materials related to Mark Milley, Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Iran, including maps or invasion plans, the sources say. A similar subpoena was sent to at least one other attendee of the meeting, another source tells CNN.

The sources say prosecutors made clear to Trump’s attorneys after issuing the subpoena that they specifically wanted the Iran document he talked about on tape as well as any material referencing classified information – like meeting notes, audio recordings or copies of the document – that may still be Trump’s possession.

That was in March.

In April, DOJ asked Trump for records on — among other things — his business ties to the Saudis.

The Trump Organization swore off any foreign deals while he was in the White House, and the only such deal Mr. Trump is known to have made since then was with a Saudi-based real estate company to license its name to a housing, hotel and golf complex that will be built in Oman. He struck that deal last fall just before announcing his third presidential campaign.

The push by Mr. Smith’s prosecutors to gain insight into the former president’s foreign business was part of a subpoena — previously reported by The New York Times — that was sent to the Trump Organization and sought records related to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of his golf clubs. (Mr. Trump’s arrangement with LIV Golf was reached well after he removed documents from the White House.)

Collectively, the subpoena’s demand for records related to the golf venture and other foreign ventures since 2017 suggests that Mr. Smith is exploring whether there is any connection between Mr. Trump’s deal-making abroad and the classified documents he took with him when he left office.

In March, DOJ asked for this Iran document Trump boasted on tape of having at Bedminster in July 2021, but his lawyers couldn’t find it.

In April, DOJ asked for records describing how and when he made a deal to host Saudi golf tournaments, and for how much.

In May, DOJ got Trump’s Chief Operating Officer to explain what he knew about gaps in the five months of surveillance footage Trump Organization turned over.

Lordy, There Are Tapes [of Trump Acknowledging He Had Stolen Classified Documents]!

CNN has a blockbuster report about a recording, taken in conjunction with Mark Meadows’ memoir, capturing Trump claiming that he had a document planning an attack on Iran that he wished he could share, but could not, because it was classified.

The July 2021 meeting was held at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with two people working on the autobiography of Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows as well as aides employed by the former president, including communications specialist Margo Martin. The attendees, sources said, did not have security clearances that would allow them access to classified information. Meadows didn’t attend the meeting, sources said.

Meadows’ autobiography includes an account of what appears to be the same meeting, during which Trump “recalls a four-page report typed up by (Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Mark Milley himself. It contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency.”

The document Trump references was not produced by Milley, CNN was told.

[snip]

The meeting in which Trump discussed the Iran document with others happened shortly after The New Yorker published a story by Susan Glasser detailing how, in the final days of Trump’s presidency, Milley instructed the Joint Chiefs to ensure Trump issued no illegal orders and that he be informed if there was any concern. The story infuriated Trump.

Glasser reported that in the months following the election, Milley repeatedly argued against striking Iran and was concerned Trump “might set in motion a full-scale conflict that was not justified.” Milley and others talked Trump out of taking such a drastic action, according to the New Yorker story.

On the recording and in response to the story, Trump brings up the document, which he says came from Milley. Trump told those in the room that if he could show it to people, it would undermine what Milley was saying, the sources said. One source says Trump refers to the document as if it is in front of him.

Several sources say the recording captures the sound of paper rustling, as if Trump was waving the document around, though is not clear if it was the actual Iran document.

This is clearly an elaboration of what WaPo reported (as evidence of obstruction!) here, which I wrote about here. It is one of two documents — the other is a map — persistently described as something prosecutors asked about because Trump discussed sharing it with others.

The meeting was in Bedminster, not Mar-a-Lago.

One reason witnesses would be asked about it is to find out if Trump really had the document in front of him.

Let me explain how I think it relates (WaPo’s conceit notwithstanding) to potential Espionage Act or 18 USC 2071 charges.

First, it’s certainly possible this is one of the documents pertaining to Iran that WaPo has reported were among the ones obtained in the search in August 2022.

If it is, then it would be a document that Trump transported back and forth from Florida — something that would make it easier for DOJ to charge this in DC instead of SDFL.

If it’s something DOJ didn’t obtain in the search, but also didn’t obtain among the documents Trump returned in either January or June 2022, then … then we have problems. If this is among the documents that DOJ thinks Trump didn’t return, then we have problems, especially given Jack Smith’s focus on Trump’s LIV golf deal, because this is the kind of document that the Saudis would pay billions of dollars for.

Weeks ago, CNN also reported that Smith had asked NARA for 16 documents about declassification decisions. Few have considered the possibility those documents relate to specific documents that Trump still retained — though if there are any Russian investigations among those Trump retained at least until January 2022, then there surely would be. The same could be true here.

The document is, as CNN reports, evidence that Trump knew he had stolen classified documents.

Importantly, though, it’s also evidence about motive. No matter what reason Trump originally stole this document, this incident shows how Trump was exploiting it: To prove a critic wrong.

It’s precisely the same reason why Trump spent his last days attempting to declassify all the Russian investigation documents: revenge. It’s the most Trump motive ever.

But it also goes a long way to prove one of the more serious crimes listed in the warrant authorizing the search last August.

As I laid out in August, the elements of a straight up 18 USC 793 offense are:

  • Did the defendant, without authorization, have possession of, access to, or control over a document that was National Defense Information?
  • Did the document in question relate to the national defense?
  • Did the defendant have reason to believe the information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation?
  • Did the defendant retain the above material and fail to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it?
  • Did he keep this document willfully?

All of Trump’s behavior here fulfils these elements of offense. The document could be heard rustling on the recording, and several witnesses can describe whether he really had it. The document pertained to an attack on Iran, quintessentially a matter of national defense. Trump exhibited awareness that he couldn’t share it, because it was classified. And Trump had it, at least in part, to avenge what he perceived as a slight by Milley.

The one caveat — one made by Charlie Savage on Twitter — is the bolded bullet. DOJ had not yet subpoenaed this document. If he wasn’t caught in possession in of this document, it would serve only as evidence of 18 USC 2071 — the law prohibiting taking classified documents that disqualifies someone from holding federal office. Though if he ever did share it with people, it could exposure him to more serious levels of the Espionage Act.

All trials are about prosecutors telling stories.

This incident is a story so good that Trump tried to tell it himself, and in the process got recorded admitting he had stolen classified documents. And that’s why prosecutors asked a bunch of witnesses about it.

Update: Hugo Lowell’s version of this includes important details (the NYT also got several of these):

  1. The meeting in question was in July 2021.
  2. The recording came from Margo Martin, whose devices prosecutors obtained and imaged.
  3. The actual document in question predates Mark Milley’s tenure as CJS.
  4. Trump’s lawyers claim a document matching this description was among those returned to the Archives.
  5. Prosecutors have shown the actual document to grand jury witnesses.

All GOP Horserace Analysis Is Useless without Consideration of Possible Indictments

The NYT did a 3-byline 1,700-word story describing how the number of minor Republican candidates joining the race serves Trump’s purpose.

Its analysis of the numbers and Ron DeSantis’ early failures isn’t bad. But because it is silent about how the expanding field might play in the likelihood of Trump indictments, it is entirely worthless.

For example, the content and timing of indictments may have an utterly central impact on the two dynamics described in the piece: Trump’s diehard base and the unwillingness of others in the party to criticize Trump directly.

The rapidly ballooning field, combined with Mr. Trump’s seemingly unbreakable core of support, represents a grave threat to Mr. DeSantis, imperiling his ability to consolidate the non-Trump vote, and could mirror the dynamics that powered Mr. Trump’s takeover of the party in 2016.

It’s a matter of math: Each new entrant threatens to steal a small piece of Mr. DeSantis’s potential coalition — whether it be Mr. Pence with Iowa evangelicals or Mr. Scott with college-educated suburbanites. And these new candidates are unlikely to eat into Mr. Trump’s votes. The former president’s base — more than 30 percent of Republicans — remains strongly devoted to him.

[snip]

The reluctance to go after Mr. Trump, for many Republicans, feels eerily like a repeat of 2016. Then, Mr. Trump’s rivals left him mostly alone for months, assuming that he would implode or that they were destined to beat him the moment they could narrow the field to a one-on-one matchup, a situation that never transpired.

Consider how each of three legal risks (and these are only the most obvious) might affect these issues. This post builds on this series I did last month:

August Georgia indictments

The NYT itself has, as have many other close observers, noted the many signs that Fani Willis has given that she will indict Trump and others in August — probably mid-August.

The Georgia prosecutor leading an investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his allies has taken the unusual step of announcing remote work days for most of her staff during the first three weeks of August, asking judges in a downtown Atlanta courthouse not to schedule trials for part of that time as she prepares to bring charges in the inquiry.

The moves suggest that Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, is expecting a grand jury to unseal indictments during that time period. Ms. Willis outlined the remote work plan and made the request to judges in a letter sent on Thursday to 21 Fulton County officials, including the chief county judge, Ural Glanville, and the sheriff, Pat Labat.

“Thank you for your consideration and assistance in keeping the Fulton County Judicial Complex safe during this time,” wrote Ms. Willis, who has already asked the F.B.I. to help with security in and around the courthouse.

Ms. Willis had said in a previous letter that any charges related to the Trump investigation would come in the grand jury term that runs from July 11 to Sept. 1. Her letter on Thursday appears to offer more specificity on timing.

That means these indictments will come around the same time as the GOP primary debate scheduled for Milwaukee, hosted by Fox.

Trump has already signaled he may not attend this debate and the party has talked about floating minimum requirements to avoid another cattle call like we saw in 2016. If Willis indicts before this debate, the debate will focus closely on those indictments, meaning the middling candidates will be on a stage without Trump talking about alleged crimes he committed to try to win the 2020 election — alleged crimes he committed instead of doing what he could to win the two Georgia Senate seats that tipped control to Democrats.

While I agree with NYT that a cattle call primary and DeSantis’ weaknesses help Trump, had DeSantis had a stronger start, Trump might have been able to finish off any perceived opposition before substantive indictments drop. Now a bunch of other people will be prepped to capitalize on opportunities created by any Trump charges.

A far more important dynamic than the timing of this, though, is the likelihood Willis will indict others. If those others are just top Trump aides and a handful of fake electors (with other fake electors cooperating against them), it could set up a Trump versus the party dynamic, especially given Brian Kemp’s singular success at finding a way to ignore Trump’s demands while not antagonizing him. But if more Republicans are indicted — and commentary on the fake electors plot always seems to forget that the plot involved some of the most prominent Republicans in all the swing states necessary to win the presidential — then it may tend to solidify the Republican party with Trump, in spite of the legal damage his efforts to steal the last election will start to do.

It matters that Fox will host this debate, too, though it’s still too early to tell how. In the wake of the Dominion settlement and with Smartmatic still to come, Fox News has swung wildly from supporting to criticizing Trump. But Rupert Murdoch does seem intent on finding an alternative to him. And that means this debate may provide an opportunity for someone else to break out of the pack.

Stolen documents

Recent reporting suggests that possible August Georgia indictments may not even be the next indictments against Trump.

Last week, both the WSJ and Bloomberg reported that the stolen documents investigation is substantially finished, with Bloomberg suggesting it could be a matter of days or weeks after today’s federal holiday before Jack Smith announces charges.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is wrapping up his investigation into former president Donald Trump’s refusal to return classified documents after his election defeat and is poised to announce possible criminal charges in the days or weeks after Memorial Day, according to people familiar with the matter.

For months, key Republicans like Bill Barr and Andy McCarthy have been treating the stolen documents case as a legitimate investigation, effectively giving firebreathing Republicans permission to criticize Trump for these suspected crimes. And they’re doing so even if this is charged only as obstruction, 18 USC 1519.

Jack Smith might tell any of four stories with a hypothetical stolen documents indictment:

  • A straight-up obstruction charge for blowing off the August subpoena, the likes of which Barr envisions
  • An 18 USC 793 indictment charging fairly innocuous documents — the two classified documents used along with post-presidential records and the schedules Chamberlain Harris copied — both of which show Trump made use of stolen classified documents for his own personal benefit; such an indictment might focus on the fact that Trump made classified documents available to others, including non-staffers, too
  • An 18 USC 793 indictment making it clear that Trump sought out some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets in advance to take with him when he left; such an indictment might plausibly include a 18 USC 2071 charge, which with conviction, disqualifies someone from holding federal office (though that punishment is constitutionally suspect)
  • An Espionage Act indictment making it clear that documents Trump is believed to have stolen have not yet been retrieved and tying gaps in surveillance footage to business meetings at Mar-a-Lago with foreigners reflecting Smith’s recent focus on Trump’s business deals

We don’t know how Jack Smith will charge it if he does (or where, which for reasons I laid out here, is critically important). But the very last thing Smith is known to have done — the one thing he has done since what WaPo described as the last known grand jury meeting on May 5 — is obtain 16 documents from the Archives advising Trump about whether or how he should declassify specific records.

In a May 16 letter obtained by CNN, acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall writes to Trump, “The 16 records in question all reflect communications involving close presidential advisers, some of them directed to you personally, concerning whether, why, and how you should declassify certain classified records.”

[snip]

According to the letter, Trump tried to block the special counsel from accessing the 16 records by asserting a claim of “constitutionally based privilege.” But in her letter, Wall rejects that claim, stating that the special counsel’s office has represented that it “is prepared to demonstrate with specificity to a court, why it is likely that the 16 records contain evidence that would be important to the grand jury’s investigation.”

The special counsel also told the Archives that the evidence is “not practically available from another source.”

The letter goes on to state that the records will be handed over on May 24, 2023 “unless prohibited by an intervening court order.”

Smith would have obtained these records last Wednesday, three weeks after the last activity of the grand jury.

You don’t hold off on indicting someone to obtain such records — the content of which Smith surely already knew from interviews with those who wrote the documents — solely to indict on obstruction.

There’s literally no predicting how Republicans would respond to a stolen documents indictment. But Barr and McCarthy have been laying the foundation to use it to finally split with Trump for months. And if such an indictment included a 18 USC 2071 count, it would present the additional dilemma for Republicans that if an inevitable constitutional challenge of the statute failed, their leading candidate could not legally be President.

It matters, too, that Jack Smith is a white male who has said literally nothing since he was appointed, not an elected Black prosecutor. It matters that Merrick Garland didn’t take the bait last week (though virtually every journalist did), when Trump responded to news of an imminent indictment by trying to turn this into a legal fight between him and Joe Biden’s appointed Attorney General, rather than him and laws his own advisors told him not to break.

I don’t know what to expect from a hypothetical stolen documents indictment; nor does anyone else. But I do know that if it drops in the next month or so, if it is perceived as legitimate and serious, it provides an opportunity for Republicans who have long been seeking an opportunity to split with Trump.

January 6 conspiracy

Finally, there are potential charges tied to January 6, which may have to wait on appellate certainty around the presumed lead charge, 18 USC 1512(c)(2) or may require an interim set of charges against others.

Aside from expecting some conspiracy charge under that obstruction statute, though, we have no idea what such an indictment might look like. Here are some possibilities that would affect how the GOP responds:

Trump could be charged with inciting the attempted assassination of his Vice President. Smith — and DOJ prosecutors before him — spent a lot of time obtaining details about the communications between Mike Pence and Trump in advance of insurrection, as well as on Trump’s inaction that day. While it would be the most aggressive potential charge, there is evidence to support it. How would mainstream Republicans respond if Trump were charged with siccing a mob he knew to be armed on a lifelong GOPer, someone who will be an announced primary challenger to Trump by then?

Trump could be charged with aiding and abetting the near-murder of Michael Fanone. I’ve laid out how distinctly DOJ treated the prosecution of Danny Rodriguez’ co-conspirator. Prosecutors aired footage from Ellipse speeches rather than excluding it from trial, as DOJ has successfully done with dozens of other defendants. DOJ developed evidence to show Rodriguez responding viscerally and violently to Rudy Giuliani and Trump’s Ellipse speeches just hours before he walked to the Capitol and tased a cop defending it. Rodriguez confessed to the FBI he knew in advance such casualties might be necessary. If DOJ were to implicate Trump in such an assault — something Judge Amit Mehta said was at least plausible over a year ago — it would implicate Trump in the worst assault of an officer that day.

Trump could be charged with conspiring with convicted seditionists. As I laid out here, Trump asked Alex Jones to bring his mob to the Capitol, and after Jones brought the mob there, the Proud Boys exploited those bodies to attack the Capitol. Trump is — as an exhibit introduced in the Christopher Worrell case (whose guilty verdict was closely reliant on evidence implicating Roger Stone) showed — literally the coin of the Proud Boys gang.

DOJ emphasized the import of Trump’s Stand Back and Stand By comment from the opening arguments of that sedition trial. Those are just some of the reasons why it is possible DOJ could charge Trump for conspiring not just with Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, but also with men already convicted of sedition. Such a charge would take more time to develop — but charging Trump with conspiring with the Proud Boys is completely within the realm of conspiracy law.

Trump’s efforts to cheat could damage swing-state Republican parties. Before Trump asked Republicans from seven swing states to help him create fraudulent certificates in an attempt to steal the election, Kenneth Cheesebro wrote down (!!!) that such an effort would be legally problematic in Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. It’s bad enough asking key Republicans to break the law to help win an election; it is insane that Trump’s lawyers wrote down that it would be illegal before asking them. Of those four states, only Republicans in Pennsylvania took adequate efforts to protect themselves legally from Trump’s requests that they submit fraudulent certificates to the Archives. That means it is possible that DOJ will charge some of the most prominent Republicans in precisely the states that Trump proved unable to win in 2020. Such charges could align Trump and those Republican parties on the same side, or it could really piss off those whom Trump’s recklessness endangered. In Georgia, at least, some prominent Republicans have chosen to testify against others if it means avoiding jail time themselves and I could see Republicans in other states making the same choice.

Trump could be accused of cheating Republican small donors. Trump’s success in 2016 and since has always built off his success at fundraising from small donors. But even as he reaped millions from such efforts, he played fast and loose with campaign finance law, violations of the law for which Republican Federal Elections Commissioners have thus far refused to punish him. Now Jack Smith is reportedly considering criminal charges for the same kind of conduct — in fact, criminal charges tied to claiming he was going to pursue election integrity but then paying lawyers for unrelated legal exposure. Such charges for defrauding his supporters — parallel to the successful charges SDNY prosecuted in the Build the Wall case — would make it clear that Trump has been cheating loyal Republicans for years. They may not care in bulk, but some of the Build the Wall victims did. Such charges might also limit the ways Trump could fundraise going forward. Republicans might not care about the fraud itself, but they would care if a presidential candidate might be disadvantaged financially because of alleged crimes he had committed in the past.

Obviously, we don’t know whether these prosecutors will charge and if so with what (though in both the Georgia and stolen documents case, prosecutors look poised to ask a grand jury for an indictment). The Georgia case is the only one where we have a good idea of timing (though that timing is guaranteed to matter for the primary).

Trump actually used the Russian investigation brilliantly to win personal loyalty from Republicans who had previously been tepid to him (something I’ve been meaning to write up). The Alvin Bragg indictment, similarly, helped him at least in the short term. Trump’s bio on his failed media site literally equates the pursuit of him with an attack on his aggrieved supporters.

This is an utterly central part of his brand, the conceit that totally justified legal pursuits of him were really just an attack on the core identities of angry white nationalists.

And that brand has worked stupendously well. They love him because he is a suspected criminal according to the code of their imagined Deep State. There’s some reason to believe that Boris Epshteyn, a political advisor gatekeeping his legal advisors, has pursued a strategy in the stolen documents case that emphasizes this confrontation even while putting Trump at far greater legal risk.

Thus far, Trump has successfully used his own legal exposure as a way to grievance-monger with other Republicans, building loyalty every time his own legal jeopardy increases. If he were able to seal the GOP nomination before more serious indictments drop, he might do the same here.

But the possibility — the likelihood even — of criminal charges before he makes this equation into the GOP slogan for the entire 2024 election may disrupt that power.

The next three months, before the primary formally starts with a debate, are likely to be unprecedented in the history of presidential elections. Because they are unprecedented, literally no one can envision how those events will affect the primary, even if we know what the charges were and who else will get charged.

What we can be sure of, though, is that the old stale horse race analysis won’t apply to this race.

Update: I should have made something clearer. This analysis, about the impact of potential indictments alone, is meant to be separate from the possibility he’ll be convicted of these crimes. It is virtually impossible that Trump would be convicted before November 2024, and barring a successful application of 18 USC 2071, none of these charges would prevent him from being elected.

Rather, the argument here is that these indictments have the ability to alter the loyalty calculus for Republican voters. I’m not even arguing that will work against Trump! There are a number of ways it could actually help him, at least through the primary. All I’m saying is that each of these potential indictments carries with it the possibility of upending the loyalty that the NYT described, and doing so in ways that are so unprecedented (even setting aside the way Trump himself is almost unprecedented in the US), that no one will really know how it’ll all fall out.

And that’s probably why more Republicans keep hopping into the race.

OATHS BROKEN, OATH KEEPERS BOWED: Sentences for 2 more in marquee Jan. 6 conspiracy case

Raw emotions positively dominated a federal courthouse in Washington, D.C. this week as the Justice Department secured significant sentences for two more Oath Keepers involved in a larger conspiracy to forcibly stop America’s transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021. 

On the heels of an 18-year-sentence delivered to a defiant Elmer Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right group, and a 12-year-sentence handed down to Kelly Meggs, Rhodes’ deputy on the 6th, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins, once the founder of the Ohio Regular Militia, to 8.5 years and Kenneth Harrelson, a ground team leader on the 6th, to four years. Both were acquitted of the sedition charge in this case but they were found guilty of multiple felonies including serious obstruction charges. Sedition itself is rarely prosecuted in the United States and rarer still are these prosecutions successful since the bar to prove this sort of conspiracy is set so high. 

This week marked a victory for the Justice Department, the rule of law, and the victims of Jan. 6 even if Donald Trump, the man who started it all, has yet to bear any real legal responsibility for his role in inciting an attack on the U.S. Capitol to stay in power. 

That day may come. But in the meantime, the willing pawns in Trump’s betrayal of the U.S. Constitution and common decency alike will now begin to serve their time. 

Underlining the severity of events, prosecutors initially sought an 18-year sentence for Watkins noting the jury’s conclusion that her true objective on Jan.6 was to storm the Capitol, use her body—and the bodies of her recruits—to violently obstruct the certification of the 2020 election, and intimidate Congress and impede police. 

Judge Mehta told a highly emotional Watkins in court Friday that though she was acquitted of the most serious charge, at the time of Jan. 6 she was nevertheless a self-professed Oath Keeper who conspired to mar and disrupt democratic proceedings and lead recruits who, he believed, wouldn’t have been there but for her leadership. That would include, Mehta noted, Oath Keepers Bennie and Sandra Parker. She also led Donovan Crowl and Graydon Young into the fray. 

Watkins was on the Nov. 9, 2020, GoTo Meeting with Stewart Rhodes and other Oath Keepers, where, Judge Mehta described, the origins of a violent conspiracy began to emerge. Before sentencing, the judge told her she “knew exactly what Rhodes had said, [and] was listening carefully on the call.” 

In that meeting, Rhodes said he had abandoned all hope of a peaceful way to keep Trump in office or stave off a civil war. There was “nothing left but to fight,” and “we’re not getting out of this without a fight,”  he said in November 2020. 

He was primed for violence and ready to issue orders. Watkins was ready to take them. 

Jessica Watkins

She would ask Rhodes then about providing weapons for Oath Keeper events, Mehta noted, pointing to a discussion about transporting altered, weaponized pool cues. She and Oath Keeper Donovan Crowl called them “nightsticks.” 

The foreseeable violence of Jan. 6 was evident in her constant willingness to prepare for it in the days and weeks leading up to the certification, Mehta said. And on that day, Watkins used an “aggressive, assaultive” posture and was “purposeful” as she coursed through the Capitol. Communications between her and others like Oath Keeper Donovan Crowl showed she wasn’t in D.C. merely to provide a security detail for Trump VIPs or to protect Trump supporters attending speeches like she and her defendants argued at trial.

She understood why Oath Keepers had set up the arsenal of weapons they dubbed a “quick reaction force” or a “QRF” at a hotel in northern Virginia, Mehta said. She brought an AR-15 from her home base of Ohio to Winchester, Virginia on the 6th. At trial, she said she decided to leave it at Crowl’s property there because she worried cleaning staff at the hotel outside of D.C. (the QRF) would “freak out” if they saw them. 

In court Friday, Mehta told Watkins he believed she would have gone to get weapons if Rhodes had asked her and it was “small comfort” that she had left her own personal weapon further behind. 

In any event, it is unlikely Watkins would have needed to drive hours back to Winchester anyway: The arsenal at the hotel in Arlington, Virginia, was just over the Potomac River from the U.S. Capitol, and it had more weapons than Oath Keeper Terry Cummings had seen in one place since his time in the military, he testified in October.

Watkins was part of the first stack, or line formation, inside of the Capitol. Leading the group on the ground was Kelly Meggs. He was sentenced to 12 years for seditious conspiracy earlier this week. Watkins used Zello, a walkie-talkie messaging app to communicate her maneuvering inside the Capitol and Mehta said there was no doubt that she pushed her way past police and headed toward the Senate. She could be seen and heard in footage urging “push! push! push!” and encouraging rioters to overrun police. 

Watkins kept some of her communications tied to Jan. 6 intact but others she deleted, and this, both the jury and Judge Mehta concluded, indicated an intent to conceal her activities and obstruct an investigation into her crimes after she was identified in press reports in the wake of the attack. He told Watkins he didn’t know if there was a direct connection between Rhodes’ orders to Oath Keepers to delete communications after the 6th and her decision to remove her own communications but he considered it obstruction nonetheless. 

Mehta agreed to a terrorism enhancement sought by the Justice Department but still went below the guidelines. He was sympathetic to her and her background. Watkins is transgender and she had a difficult upbringing in a strict religious household. Once in the Army she temporarily went AWOL because of harassment from a bunkmate who discovered her online searches involving gender identity. Her military service didn’t earn her any special deference at sentencing. 

“I don’t think you’re Stewart Rhodes. I don’t think you’re Kelly Meggs. But your role in those events was more than a foot soldier. I think you can appreciate that,” Mehta told her in court Friday. 

She nodded slightly as he spoke to her. 

Watkins was racked with emotions during the sentencing hearing. She burst into tears the moment she took the podium and it was her chance to ask for mercy from the court. After somewhat composing herself, she spoke loudly though often her voice would quake as her tears flowed. She clutched a tissue for a few moments as she spoke. Her face flushed.

 I wrote this letter to you today to express my feelings of remorse considering my participation in Jan 6. As I said previously, my actions and behaviors that fateful day were wrong and as I now understand, criminal. This is what has brought me before you today and why you must hold me responsible. The events of Jan. 6 are unfortunate and while I believe in peaceful protest and redress of government, violence is never the answer,” Watkins said.

She expressed her “strong” frustration with people who assaulted police and told Judge Mehta since she had been incarcerated she had studied video evidence online and emphatically claimed she had “solved the crime” of a police assault on Jan. 6 unrelated to her case.

She also said she accepted that “her actions in and around the Capitol inspired those people to a degree.” 

“They saw me there and that probably fired them up,” she said, noting how Oath Keepers were pat on the back as they ascended the Capitol steps. 

“At trial, I said I was an idiot for going in there. But idiots can be held responsible and this idiot must be held responsible,” she said. 

Watkins cried as she left the stand, saying she still loved her country and that it was never her intent to harm it or anyone. She regretted that Metropolitan Police Officer Christopher Owens was not present Friday. She wanted to personally apologize again though she aired the same sentiments at trial while he was in the courtroom. Owens, who was on the receiving end of Watkins’ push inside the Capitol, issued a poignant and painful victim impact statement two days before her sentencing. She was present for it but unable to address him then.

Judge Mehta’s empathy for Watkins was substantial. She had overcome a lot, he said. And in a tone that sounded stern yet near fatherly, the federal judge looked at Watkins earnestly, telling her he believed she was someone who could one day be a role model for others. 

“I’m happy you have found someone who loves you. You and he tried to make a go of it with your own business… you served as a firefighter and a medic, and frankly, I do believe that the purpose of the Ohio State Regular Militia was not to battle our government,” Mehta said. “But somewhere along the line, that all got waylaid and perverted. I don’t know what it was. Whether it was Alex Jones or other corners of the internet you found yourself in; you clearly began to have delusional thoughts about what the risks were if the other guy won and what you would need to do to ensure the safety of your countrymen.” 

No one with a “human bone in their body,” Mehta added, could hear Watkins’ life story and not feel some degree of compassion.

“You have overcome a lot. You are resilient. You are someone who could serve as a role model. I say that at a time when people who are trans are so readily vilified and used for political purposes. It makes it all the more hard for me to understand why there is still a lack of empathy for those who suffered that day. Maybe it’s part of the process, the journey,” Mehta said. 

The “lack of empathy” the judge referred to was tied to Watkins’ remarks in private calls reviewed by prosecutors and raised at sentencing. In one call, she had derided police who came under attack on Jan. 6 and spoke publicly of their post-traumatic stress. 

“‘Boo hoo, poor little police officers got a little PTSD, wah! ‘I had to stand there and hold the door open for people. Wah!'” Watkins had said, according to prosecutor Alexandra Hughes.

Her attorney, Jonathan Crisp, said Watkins had undertaken efforts at deradicalization. She’s been detained for two years. Mehta did raise the question with Crisp of how he could reconcile her seeming callousness in the phone call with her more remorseful presentation in court. The lawyer, who is a JAG and served in Iraq but did not see combat, admitted, “it may sound evil,” to make the comment but it came from an opinion that any wearer of any uniform in law enforcement or military service should expect that risk, danger and sacrifice effectively come with the territory. Crisp argued that wasn’t to diminish the unique circumstances of Jan. 6 and the unexpected conditions police were under, but that was the opinion, deluded as others may perceive it to be.

At her sentencing as well as at Rhodes and Meggs’ sentencing and later, at Harrelson’s, the judge made it a point to underline to each that their sentences would need to reflect the role they played and how serious it had impacted not just people of the United States but also the very people who defended the Capitol with their lives, forsaking their own families, self-interest and self-preservation instincts. 

Mehta said it was an officer’s job to expect sacrifice though this did not diminish their heroism in the face of something that, “I would dare say, even a police officer would have expected [on the 6th.]”

Roughly an hour after Watkins, her co-defendant Florida Oath Keeper Kenneth Harrelson was sentenced by Judge Mehta to four years in prison. Prosecutors initially sought 15. Much like it was with Watkins, Harrelson was deeply emotional before the judge. 

He was acquitted of seditious conspiracy. He was also acquitted of conspiracy to obstruct proceedings and destruction of property. The jury convicted him on just two of six counts that he faced: obstructing an official proceeding and conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging his duties. He did not testify at trial whereas Watkins, Rhodes, and co-defendant Thomas Caldwell, did. 

Harrelson was somewhat enigmatic in court. He was reserved throughout roughly 30 days of proceedings; reading from paperwork ceaselessly, his head down and face close to the pages before him. His lawyer, Bradley Geyer, while certainly not a shrinking violet when he would speak before the jury, was among the least chatty attorneys at trial, seemingly preferring to let Harrelson fade into the background. 

Harrelson wasn’t a prolific texter or user of social media and very few of his messages emerged in evidence. He deleted most and deleted Signal off his phone. The extent of his communications around the 6th is something that will remain a mystery for prosecutors for sometime and maybe forever. 

“We don’t know what we don’t know,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler said in court Friday. 

Prosecutors considered Harrelson a “ground team leader” who took orders from Meggs. Another fellow Oath Keeper, Jason Dolan, told the jury in October he considered Harrelson to be his superior and it was Dolan who also helped transport weapons to the QRF in Arlington. Harrelson also participated in firearms training with Meggs and was close with Rhodes in the days leading up to the critical Nov. 9 GoTo meeting. Like Watkins, Harrelson heard Rhodes call for violence if Trump wasn’t permitted to stay in the White House (despite his defeat). 

At sentencing, Judge Mehta was unwilling to add leadership enhancements to Harrelson’s sentence because while he thought there were elements of Harrelson’s role that could fall into the leadership category, what he reviewed he didn’t consider dispositive proof that the Florida man “controlled” anyone in a significant sense on the 6th.

Harrelson went up the Capitol steps in the first stack led by Meggs and once atop, turned to wave at others to come inside. Once in, he and Dolan screamed “treason!” at police officers and “This is our fucking house!” Dolan told the jury when he was on the stand this was done to put fear into lawmakers preparing to certify the election. 

Kenneth Harrelson

When law enforcement came calling for Harrelson after the 6th, he hid the AR-15 he brought to the D.C. area as well as the rifle case. He failed to tell investigators about several photos he took on the 6th during the melee. 

And, Nestler noted, he didn’t show any remorse in the days afterward. Quite the contrary: he continued to speak with Meggs, Rhodes and Oath Keeper and Roger Stone security goon Jeremy Brown

Mehta told Harrelson he believed he was just as responsible in many ways for the conspiracy as his cohorts on Jan. 6, including his superior Kelly Meggs. He knew the QRF was packed to the gills with weapons, for one, and his time in the Capitol—while fleeting—was not unimportant since it advanced the group’s mutual attempt to stop Congress from its work.

Oath Keepers like Caleb Berry testified at another Oath Keeper trial that Harrelson had bubbled over after leaving the Capitol because he had patted down an officer at one point and made a tantalizing revelation.

“It was clear as day in the video that you did pat down Officer [Ryan] Salke as you are leaving the building and if that were not enough, we had [Oath Keeper] Graydon Young who testified you did pat him down and Caleb Berry said you told him you did the pat down and said you were surprised at how little armor they had,” Mehta said. 

Mehta noted too how Berry, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding in July 2021, said Harrelson was “pumped” at this and excited. Then the men talked about how they could have been more effective if they would have brought gas masks and firearms. 

At the trial and at sentencing, Geyer emphasized how rioters burst into singing the National Anthem on the stairs. And while Geyer and the defendants had invoked that moment with a type of romantic patriotic reverence in court last year, on Friday, Mehta’s tone was pointed when he told the Army veteran” video may have indeed shown rioters singing the National Anthem on the Capitol steps as the Oath keepers ascended and burst inside,  but it, more importantly, showed him walking through the crowd to the landing. 

“And you are the first one. You were the first one to get close enough to see what was happening at the doors and what was transpiring there. Nevertheless, you enter and you immediately start recording and the words “treason!” are being uttered” Mehta said. 

Harrelson claimed once inside, he and Meggs attempted to “help” U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn after coming upon him in the small rotunda near then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s office.

A jury may have agreed that as Harrelson made his way through a Capitol under siege, the Florida Oath Keeper would have, at the bare minimum, clearly understood this was not the place to be. The judge said he would only guess that the jury acquitted him of the conspiracy to obstruct charge because they didn’t agree beyond a reasonable doubt that he actually understood how Congressional proceedings actually worked. (Harrelson voted once his entire life and in a state election; had no political interests prior to his involvement with Rhodes and the Oath Keepers and had a very hardscrabble upbringing with a “junkie mom,” his attorney said, and an absentee father.) 

Harrelson has a one-point terrorism enhancement on his sentence because he did intimidate officials: staffers were trapped inside the office he stalked outside of; police inside, like Officer Dunn had been fighting off the mob, defending colleagues, helping people who were overcome, when Harrelson and Meggs came upon him, adding to his already crushing burden. 

When he spoke on his own behalf, Harrelson cried several times, sniffing hard with his body tightening up as he delivered remarks to the court. 

“I got into the wrong car at the wrong time and I went to the wrong place with the wrong people,” Harrelson said before going to explain how he got to D.C.. and was told to report to Michael Greene, a designated Oath Keepers operations leader on the 6th. Greene was acquitted of conspiracy at the third Oath keepers trial in March.

“I have no gripes with the government… I shouldn’t have been there. I should have paid more attention to what was being said [and] on my phone…to Officer Harry Dunn: I would like to truly apologize. when he came up those stairs and expressed that they were killing his friends and carrying out his buddies on stretchers,  all I said was ‘really’? I didn’t know what was happening on the west side…I didn’t know I was hurting anyone and I could have done more and I apologize. I think about that a lot,” he said, choking through tears. “I know I should have done more. I apologize.”

Harrelson continued on to say that he had “demolished” his life, loved his wife and children, was scared for them, and apologized to them as well. 

After Mehta sentenced him, and after the terms of his supervision were read and the Oath Keeper left the courtroom in his prison-issued jumpsuit, he turned his head to the pews and blew his wife a kiss. 

(Coming up this week at the federal courthouse: Oath Keepers and co-conspirators Roberto Minuta, Edward Vallejo, Joseph Hackett, and David Moerschel— all of whom were found guilty of seditious conspiracy—will be sentenced on June 1 and 2.)

‘NOTHING HAS CHANGED, MR. RHODES, NOTHING HAS CHANGED’: Seditious Oath Keeper Elmer Rhodes sentenced to 18 years

After expressing zero remorse and heralding himself to a federal judge as a “political prisoner” who “like Donald Trump only committed the crime of opposing those who are destroying our country,” Oath Keeper Elmer Stewart Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role leading and orchestrating a seditious conspiracy to stop America’s transfer of presidential power by force on Jan. 6, 2021. 

It would have been surprising if Rhodes took any other tack when it was his chance to speak. 

But Rhodes offered no surprises at the Prettyman courthouse in Washington, D.C. on Thursday. 

He was unrepentant, just as he was at trial when he testified on his own behalf for a little over a day. Even then, as a jury actively held his fate in their hands, he publicly smeared proceedings in jailhouse interviews while comparing himself to Nelson Mandela. And just four days ago, in yet another interview from jail, Rhodes kept up The Big Lie. 

The 2020 election was fraudulent, he argued, and the U.S. government had launched a “terror campaign” on Jan. 6 defendants. Four days ago he called for “regime change” and in words that could haunt any appeal of his conviction in the future, he added: “We’re going to have to stop it, the American people” and “It’s not going to stop until it’s stopped.” 

In his bright orange jumpsuit on Thursday, Rhodes gripped the sides of the podium as he read eagerly from his lengthy remarks, perhaps soothed by the sound of his own voice. 

“All Jan. 6 defendants are political prisoners. They are grossly overcharged. A steep sentence here won’t help or deter people, it will make people think this government is even more illegitimate than before,” Rhodes said.

He continued on to issue what sounded like a veiled threat with his voice moving from even and calm to more emphatic as his tone was slightly raised. 

“Characterizing Trump supporters as racists, fools and led down the primrose path by Trump as fools doesn’t help either,” Rhodes exclaimed. “My goal will be to be an American Solzhenitsyn to expose the criminality of this regime.”

He said his guilt was “preordained” and told presiding U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta claims that he is a white supremacist should lead him to “sue for defamation.” He said the “regime change” he hoped for a few days ago meant he hoped Trump would win in 2024. He went on a tear about leftist violence and antifa. Rhodes may impress himself or his supporters with such diatribes, but Judge Mehta appeared thoroughly unimpressed. (Mehta has presided over three Oath Keepers trials alone in recent months and his familiarity with this defense is arguably second to none.)

So long did Rhodes’ defiant remarks ramble on that Mehta actually interrupted him at one point and quite politely reminded him that his time speaking was finite. 

When Rhodes was finally done, Mehta looked at the Oath Keeper leader. On Thursday, Rhodes met Mehta’s eyes only sometimes. He frequently jotted down notes as Mehta spoke. 

“Mr. Rhodes, you are convicted of seditious conspiracy. You are a lawyer. You understand what that means,” Mehta said. 

For those who are not, Mehta provided a background. It was true, he said, neither Rhodes nor his conspirators assaulted police. It was true there were those who “did worse” in this regard on Jan. 6 than Rhodes specifically or members of his organization. 

But Rhodes is unique nonetheless. The seditious conspiracy he led against the United States is the most serious crime one can commit against this government, Mehta said. 

“It is an offense against the government to use force. It is an offense against the people of this country,” Mehta told Rhodes. 

The Oath Keeper founder looked right at the judge at this comment. 

“This isn’t confined to one day or how you reacted… it is a series of acts in which you and others committed to use force, including potentially with weapons against the government of the United States as it transitioned from one president to the other. And what was the motive? You didn’t like the new guy. I get it. But let me be clear to you, Mr. Rhodes, and anyone else who is listening: In this country, we don’t paint with a broad brush, and shame on you if you do,” Mehta said.

He continued: “What we cannot have, what we absolutely cannot have is a group of citizens who because they did not like the outcome of an election and don’t believe the law was carried out in the way they believe it should be, for them to take up arms and foment a revolution. That’s what you did. Those aren’t my words. Those are yours… you are not a political prisoner, Mr. Rhodes. You are not here for your beliefs or because Joe Biden is president or because you supported the other guy.”

The evidence presented to jurors was convincing beyond a reasonable doubt, Mehta underlined. And though Rhodes has been quick to whine about unfair jurors, Mehta reminded him Thursday that it was this jury that acquitted him of multiple other counts. 

“But they found you guilty of sedition. That was a jury of your peers. Make no mistake about it,” Mehta said. 

Telling Rhodes the enduring legacy of Jan. 6 belonged to the police and people working on Capitol Hill that day who “protected this democracy as we know it,” Mehta emphasized how law enforcement officers “laid their bodies on the line.” 

“You talk about keeping oaths? No one is more emblematic of that than those police officers. Their heroism, their stamina, their courage. But for their acts, it could have been a far uglier day than it already was and it is one of the blackest stains on our country. People shouldn’t forget that,” he said. 

In the days leading up to Jan. 6, Rhodes convinced dozens of people to come to Washington, D.C. simply because he called on them to do so, the judge said. 

“You sir, present an ongoing threat and peril to this country and to the fabric of this country. You are smart, charismatic, and compelling and that is frankly, what makes you dangerous,” Mehta said. “Anyone think for a moment that Joseph Hackett would come to D.C. with a weapon to fight in the streets? That only happens because of you, Mr. Rhodes.”

Everyone Rhodes called to D.C. for Jan. 6 was a victim of the “lies and propaganda” he shared. It would have been one thing, the judge noted, if Rhodes had looked at what happened on Jan. 6 and said anywhere in his communications with Oath Keepers or in public that it wasn’t a good development. But he didn’t. He celebrated the carnage. 

And just three days after the attack on the Capitol, Rhodes wasn’t dialing it back. 

At trial in November, Jason Alpers, a military veteran and government witness, testified that he met with Rhodes on the night of Jan. 10 in a parking lot outside of an electronics store. Alpers said he was asked to meet with Rhodes by one of Alpers’ former employees. Rhodes, Alpers said, wanted to pass a message to Trump.  

Uneasy about the meeting from the outset, Alpers secretly recorded Rhodes. The recording was played for jurors. 

“If he’s not going to do the right thing, and he’s just going to let himself be removed illegally, then we should have brought rifles,” Rhodes told Alpers. “We could have fixed it right then and there.”

Rhodes said he would have hung then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi from a “fucking lamppost.” 

The Oath Keepers defense has hinged almost entirely on the claim that members did not come to the Capitol on Jan. 6 to foment violence, but to act as a “security detail.” 

After the judge read Rhodes’ own words back to him from that Jan. 10 meeting, Mehta noted: “Doesn’t sound like you were there for a security detail.” 

Mehta pointed to Rhodes’ comments during a “Freedom Corner Rally” broadcast from the jailhouse four days ago and how Rhodes said, “at the risk of another charge, I’m going to leave it at that” after he mentioned finding a “way to fix this” situation for Jan. 6 defendants.

With just a hint of exasperation, Mehta told the 58-year-old: ”Nothing has changed, Mr. Rhodes. Nothing has changed.”

“The reality is, based on the words we hear you speak, the moment you are released, you will be prepared to take up arms against your government. Not because you think the wrong president is in office but because you think that is an appropriate way to have redress of government when the law is applied in a way you don’t think it should be,” Mehta said. 

And then perhaps encapsulating the very gravity of his decision, Mehta told Rhodes that when the Oath Keeper found himself in a bad place, “everyone else did too, leaving everyone as objects of his willingness to engage in violence.”

“And we just cannot have that in this country,” Mehta said.  

In an interview during a break in proceedings Thursday, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn told me it was clear that Rhodes had no remorse. 

“He didn’t care how much time he got,” Dunn said. 

The sentence brought him little comfort, he said. 

Rhodes is “misguided,” and he is fixated on assigning himself labels, Dunn said. Rhodes picked “political prisoner” as his label because he certainly wasn’t going to choose the more accurate one of “insurrectionist,” Dunn said. 

If Trump is elected in 2024 or Ron DeSantis wins the White House or there is any political candidate that has sympathy for seditionists, Dunn expects there could be pardons for Oath Keepers in the future. DeSantis has already said he would consider them. Including one for Trump. 

“That’s why we need to make sure they don’t get the opportunity to pardon them. That’s why we have to have people vote for people who aren’t insurrectionists or seditionists. There is a possibility it could happen we have to make sure it doesn’t. We the American people,” Dunn said. 

Rhodes’ sentence gave him little solace. Dunn said while it was abundantly clear to him that Mehta understood the threat Rhodes poses to society until there is also accountability for Trump, lawmakers, or even some of the influencers involved with undertaking or promoting the violence and destruction of Jan. 6, he genuinely worries about what is ahead.

“My heart and mind still wander about this looming threat. It’s hard to find comfort knowing this threat still exists,” Dunn said. 

A day prior, when Dunn delivered a victim impact statement to the defendants, Rhodes rarely looked at Dunn. He was writing notes most of the afternoon. On occasion, he did look up though his face was expressionless. 

Dunn described how the violence on Jan. 6 upended his life and left him, nearly 900 days later, “a shell of his former self,” Rhodes didn’t look up then. Then Dunn uttered three words that snapped the extremist leader right to attention: “real oath keepers.” 

Dunn was describing how on the day he testified at the Oath Keepers trial, he was originally scheduled to speak to first responders. But instead of talking to them—“real oath keepers, real victims”— he had to testify instead and tell the jury about “what actually happened” on Jan. 6. 

Dunn turned to look right at the defendants when he said this. Rhodes looked back at Dunn. His head was already cocked to one side but the “real oath keepers” remark prompted Rhodes’ neck to crane downward even further. He didn’t blink. He seemed to bristle instead, though he kept it just barely under the surface. 

Tasha Adams, who recently won her divorce after a years-long estrangement from Rhodes, told me in an interview Thursday that she thinks Rhodes is “incapable” of feeling remorse. 

“He only ever adjusts his version of reality to fit into his personal storyline. He believes he has done nothing wrong, that he has been wronged himself, and that someday he’ll get even,” Adams wrote in an email. 

In court Thursday, Rhodes was “speaking to get the attention of DeSantis and Trump,” she said. 

“He is in this for the pardon and the long game, even if that is not 2024. Even if it means 2028. He is not sorry. He is only sorry it wasn’t bigger,” she wrote. 

As for Adams, there is closure with the sentence.

She has been outspoken about her now ex-husband as she watched the trial from afar. She has publicly described his history of abusing her or isolating her. And when the government submitted its sentencing proposal, prosecutors included excerpts of an interview with Adams where she described the depths of Rhodes’ abuses against her and their children. 

“There was always violence in little ways. If he was really mad over something, he would want to do what he called martial arts training which included sticks and knives with a dulled edge or a knife with its edge taped. He would usually hurt us when he would do this training and it would always wind up with whoever he was angry at at the time. It was never just rough training or when he was happy with you… I don’t know if you can see all the scars on my arms. That’s from knife training. He would keep me pinned down in a chair….and he would hit the chair or sofa next to my head when he was upset with me,” she told Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczy. 

“[I have] closure in that I know at least we have a couple of years of peace. I’m more focused on getting passed this next election, but at least we are all in the clear for a while.  It is also a statement. It says that Stewart is definitively not a good guy. Which is extremely powerful to me, after decades of people telling me what a good man is and how lucky I am,” Adams said Thursday.

Today, her children are happy and relieved, she said. 

“They were of course hoping for 25 years. But 18 is pretty solid. I think they’re mostly glad to just not have to think about him for a while,” Adams wrote. 

I also asked Adams what the big takeaway was for the day or what she thinks society can do to move away from extremism. 

“That is a very big question. I wish we could find a way to move away from the fear of change. I really believe that is what extremism is deeply rooted in. Extremists are a group of people whose self-worth is completely entangled with a way of life that society has grown up and left behind. We don’t need those old belief systems of race, and gender and control anymore. And yet they truly they believe they will cease to exist in any meaningful way without them. I don’t know if there is a way to solve it, beyond time and communication (whenever possible,)” she wrote. 

Judge Mehta also sentenced Rhodes’ 54-year-old co-defendant Kelly Meggs to 12 years in prison on Thursday. Meggs was found guilty of seditious conspiracy, too. (Rhodes was also convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding and tampering with documents and proceedings. Meggs was also found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct a proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging their duties, and tampering with documents or proceedings.)

Meggs cried several times as he spoke in court, reeling at the pain he said he caused his family. Many of his family members, including his sister and son, attended the hearing. No one showed up for Rhodes. The moment Meggs’ sister, Crystal, approached the podium to provide character testimony, Meggs began to weep. His face turned red and his shoulders shook as he cried. A marshal handed him a box of tissues. 

“I truly apologize for being here,” Meggs said, choking through tears. “It has not only ruined my life but the life of my entire family.”

Meggs’ son, Zachary, asked Mehta to show mercy on his father. His father put him through college and employed him at a car dealership, he said. Without his father at home, he fears he won’t be able to keep the family’s house.

Meggs’ wife, Connie Meggs, was tried separately and found guilty in March for obstructing an official proceeding. Connie was one of several Oath Keepers who breached the Capitol in a stack formation on Jan. 6. 

Zachary is getting married soon and he told Judge Mehta he “would really like to have my father at the wedding.” 

Meggs’ lawyer, Stanley Woodward, also represents Connie Meggs and as such, didn’t find it prudent to read a letter she wrote in support of her husband in court. Meggs, as he cried, said his “deepest regret is the pain I’ve caused my wife.” 

“I have failed her. I have caused my wife more pain than she should ever deserve, incarceration and home confinement for two years all because of me,” he said. 

Meggs also lamented how he lost his life as he knew it, including things like cars and retirement accounts. 

“Everything has been taken away… I’ve been taken away from my family for 828 days. I want to apologize to everyone I’ve let down,” Meggs said amid tears.

Meggs also addressed Officer Dunn who was seated in the pews behind him. Though Mehta said neither the jury nor he ever found any evidence to support the claim by Oath Keepers at trial that they were “helping” Dunn on the 6th, Meggs nonetheless circled around that unsupported claim once more Thursday.

Then he apologized. 

“Officer Dunn, if my presence in any way affected you, I do apologize, sir,” Meggs said before a U.S. Marshal quickly approached him and told him to turn around and address the judge. Defendants are not allowed to turn to address people in the pews. 

During the trial, prosecutors showed jurors a patch Meggs wore on Jan. 6.  It read, “I don’t believe in anything, I’m just here for the violence.” 

Before he was sentenced, Meggs said yes, he did wear a patch that said “I’m just here for the violence.” 

“I wasn’t there to cause violence or instigate violence. I was there to keep the violence from happening to anyone. It’s what I had done so many times before and what I was doing that day,” Meggs said. 

Whether he forgot or omitted it for convenience, Meggs did not mention the front half of the slogan: “I don’t believe in anything.” 

Meggs admitted the language he used in numerous texts and Oath Keepers communications was vile, but he chalked it up to hyperbole. 

And as to his own public comments about the trial—which have included the assessment that it is “bullshit” and that the jury is biased—Meggs said only: “I don’t blame them for having bias. I would too if my town had been locked down for some violent event but I still think they were biased.” 

In truth, the jury was vetted for bias extensively by both prosecutors and the defense, and in the end, the final verdicts were a mixed bag of acquittals and convictions. 

Mehta addressed Meggs directly before sentencing him. 

There may have been dispute by the defense about whether Meggs was looking for Nancy Pelosi once inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, for example. But while on this day he called that language unfortunate and hyperbolic, nonetheless, “there was a lot of it,” Mehta said. 

Witnesses at trial described how Meggs went searching for Rhodes on Jan. 6 and turned to him for direction and leadership. Meggs also led efforts to coordinate and establish a huge arsenal of guns to be held at a hotel in northern Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. This was what Oath Keepers dubbed a “quick reaction force” or QRF.

Mehta was at times incredulous with Meggs’ defense.

If Oath Keepers were there for security, why did they need the QRF? If the Oath Keeper talk was bombast and just bombast—well, Mehta said, he could understand a person believing that to be the case with one message.

But two? Or three? 

“I don’t know how anyone can stand here today and say this is just bombast. You were telling others on this ‘OK FL hangout chat,’ you were prepared to die and that’s what patriots did by the thousands,” Mehta said. 

And like he told Rhodes during his sentencing, it didn’t sound like Meggs was part of any security detail; the jury didn’t believe that and neither did he. Meggs didn’t even step foot in the area he claimed he was slated to be in to provide security, the judge added. And it didn’t help matters that Meggs had discussed bringing Proud Boys to D.C. to act as force multipliers on the 6th. 

The former chapter leader may disagree with the jury’s decision and that’s fair, Mehta acknowledged.

“But we have a process like this for a reason. In the mind of the 12 people in that jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, you committed conspiracy offenses in many ways that day,” Mehta said. 

The pain Meggs expressed in court was tangible and the judge said he felt it deeply.

“I have felt it deeply with every sentence I’ve made in connection to [Jan. 6] cases,” Mehta said. 

He added that he still finds it “astonishing how average Americans somehow transformed into criminals in the weeks before Jan. 6.”

“In contemplating violence to prevent the transfer of power: maybe you were just under the spell of Mr. Rhodes. I don’t know. Even today, I get it. I don’t really blame you for it. Unlike Rhodes, who I think poses a real threat, you’re not in the same category but you do continue to say things that are not consistent with reality,” he said.

This February, Meggs said in a media interview that police had invited people inside the Capitol and that he thought it was acceptable for him to walk through the door. Mehta also underlined the absurdity of Meggs’ claims that somehow if there was just more closed-circuit footage from the 6th made public, he would be absolved. 

That blurs the fact that there was access to every single hour of his conduct that day, Mehta said. 

In the end, Meggs still opposed the U.S. government by force.

“We have a process,” Mehta underlined. “It’s called an election. If your guy or gal loses, you hope for better results next time. You don’t take to the streets or join in for a war in the streets. You don’t rush into the U.S. Capitol with the hope of trying to stop the electoral count.”

On Friday, Rhodes’ and Meggs’ co-defendants Jessica Watkins and Kenneth Harrelson will be sentenced. Fellow co-defendant Thomas Caldwell’s sentencing date was originally set for this Wednesday but it was vacated on Monday as Judge Mehta awaits a ruling from the circuit in another Jan. 6 case that will provide a definition of the “corruptly” requirement in the obstruction of an official proceeding statute.

Stewart Rhodes: Yale Law Grad, Seditionist, Terrorist, and Ongoing Threat to Democracy

Judge Amit Mehta, one of the most measured judges in DC, just sentenced Stewart Rhodes to 18 years in prison.

In sentencing Rhodes, Judge Mehta observed,

I dare say Mr. Rhodes, and I have never said this to anyone I have sentenced: You, sir, present an ongoing threat and a peril to this country, the Republic and the very fabric of democracy.

Brandi Buchman will have a much more detailed report much later today, after fellow seditionist Kelly Meggs also gets his sentence.

Until then, consider this an thread for talking about Yale Law Grads who take up terrorism.

Update: Kelly Meggs, the car salesman who set up cooperation between the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, 3 Percenters, and Roger Stone before the attack and led the main stack into the Capitol, was sentenced to 12 years.

I’m really grateful we’ll have more of Brandi’s evocative reports from the courthouse. If you’d like to support Brandi’s coverage, please consider donating

ABC Reports that Sources Familiar Say 2 + 2 = 5

In a piece describing that Jack Smith has substantially completed his investigation into stolen documents, WSJ reported Trump’s associates believed that the former President would be indicted and were already making plans to profit off him being charged with one or more federal crimes.

Some of Trump’s close associates are bracing for his indictment and anticipate being able to fundraise off a prosecution, people in the former president’s circle said, as clashes within the Trump legal team have led to the departure of a key lawyer.

Hours after WSJ reported that Trump was going to try to profit off being a criminal suspect, he posted a letter, with just one substantive paragraph, on Truth Social. Aside from the letterhead and signatures from Jim Trusty and John Rowley, it was indistinguishable from Trump’s other grievance-farming on his failing social media platform, claiming that,

Unlike President Biden, his son Hunter, or the Biden family, President Trump is being treated unfairly. No President of the United States has ever, in the history of the country, been baselessly investigated in such an outrageous and unlawful fashion.

Then it asked for a meeting with the recused Attorney General to discuss the “ongoing injustice being perpetrated by your Special Counsel.”

It copied unnamed members of Congress, the last thing a letter seriously asking for dialogue with the Attorney General would do.

It’s a campaign stunt, not a letter designed to request a meeting about potential upcoming indictment(s). In fact, just days ago, Tim Parlatore explained that he quit because Boris Epshteyn would not permit him to engage in that kind of discussion professionally.

Nevertheless, multiple news outlets decided to treat this letter as a serious bid for discussion with the recused Attorney General. In ABC’s case, it falsely claimed that the letter “present[ed] arguments” that Trump should not be charged in the stolen documents case, citing “sources familiar with the matter.”

The letter, though thin on details, presents arguments that Trump should not be charged in the investigation related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

In other words, rather than convey to ABC’s readers what the document actually says — which is nothing more than a claim Trump is being treated unfairly, a claim that is easy to debunk — its reporters called up Trump’s lawyers and transcribed what they claimed the letter said, or perhaps simply parroted their cover for releasing a letter better designed to raise money and sow violence, rather than just reporting what the letter actually did say.

Because “sources familiar” told them so, ABC reported the letter said something it did not. 2 + 2 = 5.

Jim Trusty used to work at DOJ. He knows how to write such a letter. He did not. But ABC nevertheless claimed that he and John Rowley did.

2 + 2 = 5.

As the two journalists described how the letter was something that it wasn’t on Twitter, one of them — Alex Mallin — likened it to Trump’s purported request to speak with Garland last August, just before Garland publicly spoke about the search on Trump’s beach resort.

He didn’t mention that Trump’s comment came after Trump’s false claims of victimhood led a Trump supporter and January 6 participant to attempt to breach the Cincinnati FBI office. He didn’t mention that that earlier outreach sure looked like an implicit threat.

I really get the inclination to treat Trump’s response to being caught stealing classified documents as if it is a normal legal proceeding. I get the inclination to pretend everything is normal.

But that doesn’t justify describing the plain content of the letter as something it’s not.

The letter is a fundraising vehicle. It’s an attempt to discredit rule of law. It’s probably an attempt to sow violence again. Claiming it is something else because sources you’ve granted anonymity said it is is not journalism.

The Potential International Grift Hiding behind the Stolen Documents Investigation

Back in November, Devlin Barrett (along with WaPo’s Trump-whisperer, Josh Dawsey) published a column claiming investigators had found nothing to suggest that Trump was trying to monetize the documents he stole.

That review has not found any apparent business advantage to the types of classified information in Trump’s possession, these people said. FBI interviews with witnesses so far, they said, also do not point to any nefarious effort by Trump to leverage, sell or use the government secrets. Instead, the former president seemed motivated by a more basic desire not to give up what he believed was his property, these people said.

I mocked Devlin’s credulity at the time. His story was utterly inconsistent with — and made no mention of — several details we (or I) already knew about the documents. It also showed no consideration of the value that the already-described documents would have for Trump’s business partners, the Saudis.

As Devlin Barrett’s sources would have it, a man whose business ties to the Saudis include a $2 billion investment in his son-in-lawa golf partnership of undisclosed value, and a new hotel development in Oman would have no business interest in stealing highly sensitive documents describing Iran’s missile systems.

The story was transparently an attempt by someone to prematurely cement an investigative conclusion, almost a month before the stay on DOJ’s access to the unclassified documents seized last August was lifted. Just two days later, Trump announced his bid for another Presidential term, and two days after that, Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith, someone who had no partisan stake in issuing premature exoneration for Trump.

Yesterday, as the NYT published a second substantive story about Jack Smith’s subpoena for information about Trump’s business deals, Devlin published a perfunctory one. Even before he describes the subpoena, Devlin reports a single source concluding, as his sources concluded last November, “nothing to see here.”

But the inquiry produced little that wasn’t already publicly known, this person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation.

Prosecutors sought information on any real estate and development deals reached in China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, the person said.

The Trump Organization’s public website lists only one deal in that time frame in one of those countries, Oman, and that deal was done after Trump left the White House.

Devlin’s story notes his earlier report, but not how wildly it conflicted with even the events known at the time, emphasizing China not Iran.

The Washington Post reported last year that while the classified documents included sensitive information about U.S. intelligence-gathering aimed at China, among other subjects, investigators did not see an obvious financial motive in the type of documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago.

NYT’s more substantive story on this inquiry expresses far less certainty than Devlin’s single attributed source about what the subpoena obtained, much less what Smith already had to support this line of inquiry.

The Trump Organization swore off any foreign deals while he was in the White House, and the only such deal Mr. Trump is known to have made since then was with a Saudi-based real estate company to license its name to a housing, hotel and golf complex that will be built in Oman. He struck that deal last fall just before announcing his third presidential campaign.

The push by Mr. Smith’s prosecutors to gain insight into the former president’s foreign business was part of a subpoena — previously reported by The New York Times — that was sent to the Trump Organization and sought records related to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of his golf clubs. (Mr. Trump’s arrangement with LIV Golf was reached well after he removed documents from the White House.)

Collectively, the subpoena’s demand for records related to the golf venture and other foreign ventures since 2017 suggests that Mr. Smith is exploring whether there is any connection between Mr. Trump’s deal-making abroad and the classified documents he took with him when he left office.

It is unclear what material the Trump Organization has turned over in response to the subpoena or whether Mr. Smith has obtained any separate evidence supporting that theory.

Neither story describes whether the subpoena listed which crimes are under investigation. On that topic, the NYT, as part of boilerplate, repeats the same thing I do when I make boilerplate recitations of the crimes under investigation: 18 USC 793(e), refusing to return classified documents, and 18 USC 1519, obstruction of the efforts to get those classified documents back.

While establishing a motive for why Mr. Trump kept hold of certain documents could be helpful to Mr. Smith, it would not necessarily be required in proving that Mr. Trump willfully maintained possession of national defense secrets or that he obstructed the government’s repeated efforts to get the materials back. Those two potential crimes have long been at the heart of the government’s documents investigation.

Devlin uses similar boilerplate.

The Mar-a-Lago investigation has centered on two potential crimes — possible obstruction for not complying with the subpoena, and possible mishandling of national security secrets for keeping classified documents in an unauthorized location

We are — all of us, myself included — forgetting the third statute included on the search warrant that once seemed a mere backstop to the others, 18 USC 2071, intentionally removing government documents. That statute, which once upon a time might have been used as the crime to which Trump could plead down in a plea agreement, carries only a three year max sentence. But along with that sentence, it disqualifies someone convicted of it from holding public office, something that would be challenged constitutionally following any jury verdict but which would be waived under any plea deal.

Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.

I’ve always believed (as have experts I trust) that this would be a particularly hard crime with which to charge a former President, largely because a President has legal access to these documents until noon on January 20. But asking about business deals Trump might have been pursuing while in the presidency, all the way back to 2017, might provide evidence of intent that predates the actual removal of the documents.

And learning about Trump’s business deals with, especially, the Saudis, might develop evidence for 18 USC 794, the far more serious crime of providing intelligence to help a foreign government.

Let me caution, I still think it exceedingly unlikely that Smith is pursuing 794 charges against Trump for stealing documents and then selling them to the Saudis, to be paid in the form of golf tournaments and branding deals in Oman. Please don’t take from my mention of this that I’m predicting Smith is going to Go There. Rather, I suspect Smith is thinking of a package of potential charges that would give Trump an option to plead down quietly, one sufficiently ugly to make Republican politicians not want to join him in his fight. I’m merely stating that taking documents and refusing to give them back — which is the currently known lead charge in this investigation– is a dramatically different fact set than taking them and sharing them with a foreign government that pays you a lot of money, especially one that subsequently engaged in multiple actions — keeping gas prices high during the election and chumming up to China — that seem to have surprised the US intelligence community, as if some intelligence visibility had gone dark before those happened.

But let me go back to Devlin’s source’s certainty that there’s nothing to see there. It’s an odd claim to make given the number of other gaps in understanding that seem to exist in the understanding of those not directly participating in the investigation.

The story where NYT first broke the Trump business deal subpoena described at least five different subpoenas to Trump Org (though way down at the bottom of the story, it describes “numerous” subpoenas):

  1. The subpoena including the golf deal and — we now learn — all business deals Trump has chased since 2017
  2. A subpoena to Trump Organization seeking additional surveillance footage
  3. A subpoena to “the software company that handles all of the surveillance footage for the Trump Organization, including at Mar-a-Lago”
  4. First, a subpoena to Matthew Calamari, Jr.
  5. Then, a subpoena to Matthew Calamari, Sr.

Matthew Sr., at least, would have visibility on business deals with the Saudis and others. But all the reports on the two interviews with the Calamaris suggest they were focused, instead, on why Walt Nauta contacted them after DOJ first subpoenaed surveillance footage.

To resolve the issue about the gaps in the surveillance footage, the special counsel last week subpoenaed Matthew Calamari Sr, the Trump Organization’s security chief who became its chief operating officer, and his son Matthew Calamari Jr, the director of corporate security.

Both Calamaris testified to the federal grand jury in Washington on Thursday, and were questioned in part on a text message that Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, had sent them around the time that the justice department last year asked for the surveillance footage, one of the people said.

The text message is understood to involve Nauta asking Matthew Calamari Sr to call him back about the justice department’s request, one of the people said – initially a point of confusion for the justice department, which appears to have thought the text was to Calamari Jr.

Most reporters assume the gaps DOJ is trying to close pertain to Nauta’s own actions in advance of Evan Corcoran’s search of the storage closet. I’m not sure. That’s because DOJ got sufficient visibility from what they did receive to list the storage closet, Trump’s office, and Trump’s residence in the search warrant supporting the August search of Mar-a-Lago. They got sufficient visibility to lead Nauta to revise his testimony afterwards. That’s why I emphasized in my last post on this that DOJ asked for five months of surveillance video, predating the day, by eight days, that Trump sent boxes to NARA in January 2022. The gaps in question might have shown other people, not Nauta, entering the storage closet, or have shown Nauta entering at times entirely removed from the date of the subpoena. If — strictly hypothetically — those gaps coincided with business meetings with foreigners at Mar-a-Lago, it would be a flashing siren saying, “look here for the good stuff.” It might also explain why Nauta immediately reached out to Calamari about the video, if he knew some of that video would show things that were far more damning than the mere attempt to obstruct a subpoena response.

If Nauta had involvement in earlier sketchy activities, predating the subpoena, it might explain why — as Hugo Lowell reported — Nauta fairly obviously attempted to monitor Evan Corcoran’s own search.

The notes described how Corcoran told Nauta about the subpoena before he started looking for classified documents because Corcoran needed him to unlock the storage room – which prosecutors have taken as a sign that Nauta was closely involved at essentially every step of the search.

Corcoran then described how Nauta had offered to help him go through the boxes, which he declined and told Nauta he should stay outside. But going through around 60 boxes in the storage room took longer than expected, and the search ended up lasting several days.

The notes also suggested to prosecutors that there were times when the storage room might have been left unattended while the search for classified documents was ongoing, one of the people said, such as when Corcoran needed to take a break and walked out to the pool area nearby.

One more thing that might explain prosecutors’ concerns about gaps in the surveillance footage is if they coincided with the times when Corcoran had left the room unattended.

Yet every time someone writes about Nauta, they include language that might come from the vicinity of Stanley Woodward, the lawyer that Nauta shares with Kash Patel (as well as Peter Navarro and convicted seditionist Kelly Meggs and his wife), suggesting that it was a mistake not to immunize Nauta, as DOJ did with Kash, because it has prevented them from substantiating an obstruction case. The version of this in the NYT — which reflects the kind of internal DOJ dissent that WaPo has reported regarding a push to adopt a more cooperative stance in advance of the search — is especially unpersuasive.

Last fall, prosecutors faced a critical decision after investigators felt Mr. Nauta had misled them. To gain Mr. Nauta’s cooperation, prosecutors could have used a carrot and negotiated with his lawyers, explaining that Mr. Nauta would face no legal consequences as long as he gave a thorough version of what had gone on behind closed doors at the property.

Or the prosecutors could have used a stick and wielded the specter of criminal charges to push — or even frighten — Mr. Nauta into telling them what they wanted to know.

The prosecutors went with the stick, telling Mr. Nauta’s lawyers that he was under investigation and they were considering charging him with a crime.

The move backfired, as Mr. Nauta’s lawyers more or less cut off communication with the government. The decision to take an aggressive posture toward Mr. Nauta prompted internal concerns within the Justice Department. Some investigators believed that top prosecutors, including Jay Bratt, the head of the counterespionage section of the national security division at the Justice Department, had mishandled Mr. Nauta and cut off a chance to win his voluntary cooperation.

More than six months later, prosecutors have still not charged Mr. Nauta or reached out to him to renew their conversation. Having gotten little from him as a witness, they are still seeking information from other witnesses about the movement of the boxes.

If being misled by Nauta led prosecutors to look more closely at the larger timeline of the missing surveillance video, only to find suspect ties to the Saudis, it was in no way a mistake. On the contrary, Woodward’s own decisions would have directly led to intensified scrutiny  of his client (as his decisions similarly are, in the effort to get Navarro to turn over Presidential Records Act documents).

And there’s something that is routinely missed in all of this coverage. The Guardian’s Lowell rightly suggests that because Trump didn’t directly tell Corcoran to search only the storage closet, it might present challenges to an obstruction case. But Trump’s choice to use Nauta as an obvious gatekeeper makes it far easier to charge Nauta with 18 USC 793(g), conspiring to hoard classified documents. So the observation that DOJ hasn’t chosen to charge Nauta with just false statements in the interim six months should in no way be taken as solace by Nauta, because what has happened in the interim puts him at risk of charges that carry a ten year sentence for each document in question rather than the few months he might face for lying to the FBI.

Nauta’s not the only one who might insulate Trump from obstruction charges but expose all of them to greater Espionage Act danger.

Witness the evolution of how Tim Parlatore described Boris Epshteyn’s role in the investigation. In March, Parlatore described that, until such time as Boris started being treated as a target, his access to people “inside the palace gates” was useful.

Mr. Epshteyn’s legal role with Mr. Trump, while less often focused on gritty legal details, has been to try to serve as a gatekeeper between the lawyers on the front lines and the former president, who is said to sometimes roll his eyes at the frequency of Mr. Epshteyn’s calls but picks up the phone.

“Boris has access to information and a network that is useful to us,” said one of the team’s lawyers, Timothy Parlatore, whom Mr. Epshteyn hired. “It’s good to have someone who’s a lawyer who is also inside the palace gates.”

Mr. Parlatore suggested that he was not worried that Mr. Epshteyn, like a substantial number of other Trump lawyers, had become at least tangentially embroiled in some of the same investigations on which he was helping to defend Mr. Trump.

“Absent any solid indication that Boris is a target here, I don’t think it affects us,” Mr. Parlatore said.

But in the wake of Parlatore’s departure from Trump’s legal team a week ago, he went on Paula Reid’s show (on whose show he had earlier told an utterly ridiculous story about Trump using classified folders to block a light by the side of his bed) and lambasted Boris as an impediment to communication between Trump and his lawyers.

Boris Epshteyn [] had really done everything he could to try to block us [the lawyers], to prevent us from doing what we could to defend the President, and ultimately it got to a point where — it’s difficult enough fighting against DOJ and, in this case, Special Counsel, but when you also have people within the tent that are also trying to undermine you, block you, and really make it so that I can’t do what I know that I know that I need to do as a lawyer, and when I’m getting in the fights like that, that’s detracting from what is necessary to defend the client and ultimately was not in the client’s best interest, so I made the decision to withdraw.

[snip]

He served as kind of a filter to prevent us from getting information to the client and getting information from the client. In my opinion, he was not very honest with us or with the client on certain things. There were certain things — like the searches that he had attempted to interfere with, and then more recently, as we’re coming down to the end of this investigation where Jack Smith and ultimately Merrick Garland is going to make a decision as to what to do – as we put together our defense strategy to help educate Merrick Garland as to how best to handle this matter, he was preventing us from engaging in that strategy. [my emphasis]

At one level, this publicity stunt appears to be an attempt to persuade Trump that he should fire Boris. WaPo’s coverage of this clash describes that Parlatore’s public appearance followed what seems to have been a “he goes or we go” meeting with Trump a week ago (though Jim Trusty, at least thus far, has not chosen to follow Parlatore).

Before this weekend’s public feud, members of Trump’s legal team tried to settle the conflict quietly. Parlatore and another lawyer for Trump, James Trusty, recently traveled to Florida to advise Trump that he needed to remove Epshteyn from the document case and the 2020 election case, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal private deliberations. Smith, the special counsel, is tasked with investigating both cases.

[snip]

Trump did not appear to take Parlatore and Trusty’s advice, as Epshteyn remained in his role as a key legal adviser and coordinator to Trump.

Parlatore has said he’d be willing to return if Boris were gone.

At another level, Parlatore seems to be getting out while the getting is good, shortly before any charges are filed, so he’s not stuck defending an uncooperative client who won’t pay his bills. (Update: WSJ reports that the investigation is all but done and some associates are prepping for Trump to be charged.) The publicity stunt gives him the first say on who is responsible for what comes next, too. If Trump gets charged, Tim Parlatore didn’t fuck up, Boris did.

The publicity stunt, with its claim that Boris lied to both him and Trump, may also be an attempt to insulate Trump. As such it may be little different than the ridiculous folder-on-the-bedside-light story.

But Parlatore’s response to Reid’s follow-up on Parlatore’s claim that Boris interfered with searches may be more than that.

Reid: What searches are those?

Parlatore: This is the searches at Bedminster, um, initially. There was a lot of pushback from him where he didn’t want us doing the search and we had to, eventually, overcome him.

Reid: Why didn’t he want you to do the search?

Parlatore: I don’t know.

Trump’s lawyer do not know — never have! — why Boris was so reluctant to allow a search of the property to which Trump flew to host a Saudi golf tournament directly after failing to comply with a subpoena.

Immediately after that exchange, Reid invited Parlatore to clarify that when he testified to the grand jury in December, he did so in lieu of any custodian of records for the searches done on Mar-a-Lago. Parlatore clarified he did not testify in response to a subpoena and on several occasions, when he offered to come back and clarify, prosecutors declined his generous offer.

Reid then gave him an opportunity to explain why the claims Parlatore made to Congress (which conflicted with known facts and which Epshteyn declined to sign) didn’t fundamentally conflict with the insta-declassification story Boris has told. Parlatore left me convinced that everyone is lying, meaning by choosing to retain Boris over Parlatore, Trump is just picking which lie he finds more convenient.

Nevertheless, Parlatore got his story out. He got to describe how the story he planned to tell Merrick Garland doesn’t conflict with the currently operative declassification story and more importantly, that if his December testimony to the grand jury was incomplete in any way, it’s all Boris’ fault.

Parlatore said, midway between his testimony and now, that if Boris started looking like a target, he might be in trouble. But in the wake of a two day interview between Boris and Smith’s attorneys and in the wake of subpoenas that raise increased questions about why Boris may have tried to prevent any search of the property at which Trump hosted the Saudis immediately after Trump blew off a subpoena, Parlatore took to the TV and offered his defense. If Jack Smith finds the Bedminster obstruction interesting enough, Parlatore may well have earned himself a subpoena.

The belated, convenient description of Boris as a filter rather than worthwhile access “inside the palace gates” is particularly interesting given WaPo’s description about what kind of advice Boris gave, in lieu of legal advice.

Epshteyn, a lawyer, had helped guide communications for Trump’s campaign and the White House.

According to the source, Parlatore and Trusty argued that the lawyers needed to focus on protecting Trump legally, not politically.

A source close to the Trump campaign who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose the team’s private thinking defended Epshteyn and said he is focused on protecting Trump from a variety of angles, whether it’s legal, political or related to the media.

Parlatore imagines he was trying to defend Trump legally. Boris thinks he’s defending Trump from a “variety of angles,” one of which is politics. That’s consistent with how Boris billed his time, which until after the August search he billed as political consulting. But it also suggests Boris was not just a gap in Parlatore’s knowledge, but also a gap in any privilege claims Trump can make over the others.

If Trump’s own ex-lawyer says that Boris was lying to both sides about what went on there’s a big gap in anyone’s knowledge — at least outside the team that has been investigating for a year.

Plus there’s all the stuff — even beyond the evidence collected in this investigation that DOJ would have obtained about these particular documents — that DOJ already knows.

During the Mueller investigation, for example, DOJ spent some time investigating how Trump shared highly classified Israeli intelligence with Russia just days after he fired Jim Comey. That includes the way in which White House staffers altered the MemCon of that meeting (much as, years later, the White House would alter the MemCon of Trump’s perfect phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy). That particular leak of classified information did not violate US law, because as President, Trump could declassify it. But it is precedent for Trump sharing the secrets of America and its allies with foreign countries that have helped him.

More directly on point, DOJ has abundant evidence regarding Trump’s approval of Tom Barrack’s efforts to tailor US policy to serve the Emirates and, secondarily, the Saudis, including to treat Mohammed bin Salman with full diplomatic status. On Barrack’s request, during the course of discovery, DOJ obtained a great deal of information from other agencies about Trump’s policy towards the Gulf Kingdoms. DOJ’s prosecution of Barrack ended in failure. But what it showed is that from the very start, the guy who got Paul Manafort hired did so knowing he could use it to promise to shape US policy to the Emirates’ interests. Like sharing classified information with Russia in 2017, Trump’s choice to shape US policy to serve the Emiratis and Saudis is not illegal. It’s only after he left the presidency where a quid pro quo could be important.

Unless, of course, such business discussions started earlier.

Again, I want to emphasize that I’m not saying Jack Smith is about to indict Trump for selling US secrets to the Saudis. But investigative developments reported out in the last several weeks have suggested that this investigation may not be the obstruction investigation everyone is treating it as.

Instead, Jack Smith may get to obstruction via a conspiracy to hoard classified documents.

Update: Corrected date on NARA document return.

Peter Baker Discovers that Russia Sows Partisan Antagonism and Then Helps Them Do So!

I laughed yesterday when Peter Baker tweeted about how “striking” it is that Vladimir Putin is adopting Trump’s perceived enemies as his own.

But then Baker wrote up his laughably naive observation into a NYT story.

Baker, you’ll recall, is one of NYT’s crack journalists who buried Trump’s admission that he had spoken to Putin about adoptions before writing a false explanation about the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting emphasizing adoptions. Baker and Maggie Haberman chose instead to emphasize Trump’s scripted attack on Jeff Sessions. The Mueller Report showed that NYT’s willingness to dumbly repeat Trump’s script proved even more useful to Trump’s efforts to undermine the Rule of Law than his covert effort to get Corey Lewandowski to ferry orders to Jeff Sessions.

And here we are, almost five years later, and Baker still naively plays into obvious Russian efforts to sow division in the US, in significant part by playing to Trump’s narcissism and the feral loyalty of Trump’s supporters, to say nothing of playing up racial division. Baker picks out three names from among 500 newly added to Russian sanctions: Tish James, Brad Raffensperger, and Michael Byrd, the Black cop who prevented Ashli Babbitt from breaching the hallway through which Members of Congress were fleeing by shooting her.

Among the 500 people singled out for travel and financial restrictions on Friday were Americans seen as adversaries by Mr. Trump, including Letitia James, the state attorney general of New York who has investigated and sued him. Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia who rebuffed Mr. Trump’s pressure to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election, also made the list. And Lt. Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who shot the pro-Trump rioter Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6, 2021, was another notable name.

Reviewed more broadly, however, the sanctions were an attack on US Rule of Law generally, or certainly the notion that Trump’s people should be subject to it. They include the current or former Attorneys General of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington, DC, Wisconsin. Aside from former Oklahoma AG John O’Connor, which may be a mistake, it almost seems like they worked from an outdated membership list from the Democratic Attorneys General Association. Though for some reason, Putin missed Michigan’s Attorney General Dana Nessel, maybe because she’s a badass lesbian who makes Putin afraid.

The sanctions list does include every US Attorney who has presided over the January 6 investigation.

  • Michael Sherwin (who as Acting US Attorney in DC oversaw the beginning of the January 6 investigation)
  • Channing Phillips (who, as Acting US Attorney for DC in 2021 oversaw the early parts of the January 6 investigation)
  • Michael Graves (currently US Attorney for DC overseeing the January 6 investigation)
  • Jack Smith (Special Counsel)

But it also includes other senior legal officials, some of whom have gotten more attention for investigating Russia than Trump.

The inclusion of Kohler, who played a key role in the Trump stolen documents case but who also presided over the Charles McGonigal and other Oleg Deripaska cases that came through SDNY, is particularly notable. This is, in significant part, an attempt to suggest that if either Russia or Trump is held accountable legally, it will harm Russia. It is a transparent effort — no different than dozens of similar efforts going back to 2016, and to the extent that this plays to racism, goes back a half century — to lead Trump supporters to believe their interests are more aligned with Putin’s than those of the United States, or at least the United States when led by Joe Biden.

In addition to Brad Raffensperger, Putin also included Mark Esper, who got fired as Defense Secretary because he undercut Trump’s authority to attack the US government by invoking the insurrection act.

A broad swathe of the list includes members of NGOs, particularly those NGOs that fascists are attempting to discredit with claims that attempts to combat disinformation equate to censorship. Nina Jankewicz got sanctioned in her own right.

Of two members of the Open Society Fund, Leonard Benardo is included; his name may become prominent if John Durham’s abusive attempt to investigate Benardo, which may be detailed in the classified section of the Durham Report, begins to leak.

Along with all those defenders of truth and justice, Putin included Stephen Colbert and Heather Cox Richardson.

Again, this is a transparent effort, one that continues past efforts that extend to sheltering members of the far right and stoking US racism, to supplant the allegiance of Trump’s supporters to the United States with an affiliation, through Trump, to Russia. Trump’s narcissism might lead him to magnify these sanctions. His campaign advisors likely will try to prevent that.

But Putin won’t need to rely on Trump to magnify this statement of a shared allegiance.

He has Peter Baker for that.

Baker somehow could not distinguish language as transparent truth from language as an attempt to manipulate, and so stated as fact that “Trump’s perceived enemies” are Putin’s own. Aside from the law enforcement officials who’ve targeted both Russian hackers and Trump, they’re not. Rather, this is an attempt — an utterly transparent one!! — to make Trump’s followers believe that, and so regard Russia more favorably.

Because Baker thought his banal observation about these sanctions was worth a story in the NYT, he called up the Russian Foreign Ministry for comment. That’s how the claim that the people who attacked democracy on January 6 are simply dissidents got inserted into the NYT.

None of those three has anything to do with Russia policy and the only reason they would have come to Moscow’s attention is because Mr. Trump has publicly assailed them. The Russian Foreign Ministry offered no specific explanation for why they would be included on the list but did say that among its targets were “those in government and law enforcement agencies who are directly involved in the persecution of dissidents in the wake of the so-called storming of the Capitol.”

You got played, Peter Baker, into serving as a mouthpiece for Russian propaganda.

You got played into contributing to Russia’s efforts to undermine US democracy.

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